III

Though Frannie wasn’t sick, she suffered a good deal more than Will had the day after the night in the Courthouse. She had managed to smuggle Sherwood and herself into the house and upstairs to clean up before they were seen by their parents and had entertained the hope that they were not going to be questioned until, out of the blue, Sherwood had begun to sob. He’d been thankfully inarticulate about what was causing him to do so and, though both her mother and her father quizzed her closely, she kept her answers vague. She didn’t like lying, mainly because she wasn’t very good at it, but she knew that Will would never forgive her if she let any details of what happened slip.

Her father simply grew cold and remote when his first fury was spent, but her mother was good at attrition. She would work and work at her suspicions, until she had them satisfied. So for an hour and a half Frannie found herself quizzed as to why Sherwood was in such a state. She said they’d gone out to play with Will, become lost in the dark, and they’d got frightened.

Plainly her mother doubted every word, but she and her daughter were alike in their tenaciousness. The more Mrs.

Cunningham repeated her questions, the more entrenched in her replies Frannie became. At last, her mother grew exasperated.

“I don’t want you seeing that Rabjohns boy again,” she said.

“I think he’s a troublemaker. He doesn’t belong here and he’s a bad influence. I’m surprised at you, Frances. And disappointed. You’re usually more responsible than this. You know how confused your brother can get. And now he’s in a terrible state. I’ve never seen him so bad. Crying and crying. I blame you.” 

This little speech brought the matter to an end for the evening. But sometime before dawn Frannie woke to hear her brother sobbing pitifully again, and then her mother going into his room, and the sobbing subsiding while quiet words were exchanged, and then the weeping coming again, while her mother tried—and apparently failed—to soothe him. Frannie lay in the darkness of her room, fighting back tears of her own. But she lost the battle. They came, oh they came, salty in her nose, hot beneath her eyelids and on her cheeks. Tears for Sherwood, who she knew was the least equipped to deal with whatever nightmares would come of their encounter at the Courthouse; tears for herself, for the lies she’d told, which had put a distance between herself and her mother, who she loved so much; and tears of a different kind for Will, who had seemed at first the friend she needed in this stale place, but who she had, it seemed, already lost.

At last, the inevitable. She heard the handle of her bedroom door squeak as it was turned and her mother said:

“Frannie? Are you awake?

She didn’t pretend otherwise, but sat up in bed. “What’s wrong?”

“Sherwood just told me some very strange things.”

He had told everything: about going to the Courthouse in pursuit of Will, about the man in black and the woman in veils. And more besides. Something about the woman being naked and a fire. Was any part of this true, Frannie’s mother wanted to know? And if so, why hadn’t Frannie told her?

Despite Will’s edict, she had no choice but to tell the truth now. Yes, there had been two people at the Courthouse, just as Sherwood had said. No, she didn’t know who they were; no, she hadn’t seen the woman undressing, and no, she couldn’t be certain she would recognize them again (that part wasn’t entirely true, but it was close enough). It had been dark, she said, and she had been afraid, not just for herself but for all three of them.

“Did they threaten you?” her mother wanted to know.

“Not exactly.”

“But you said you were afraid.”

“I was. They weren’t like anybody I’d ever seen before.”

“So what were they like?”

Words failed her, and failed her again when her father appeared and asked her the same questions.

“How many times have I told you,” he said, “not to go near anybody you don’t know?”

“I was following Will. I was afraid he was going to get hurt.”

“If he had that’d be his business and not yours. He wouldn’t do the same for you. I’m damn certain of that.”

“You don’t know him. He—”

“Don’t answer me back,” her father snapped, “I’ll speak to his parents tomorrow. I want them to know what a damn fool they’ve got for a son.”

With that he left her to her thoughts.

The events of the night were not over, however. When the house had finally become quiet, Frannie heard a light tapping on her bedroom door, and Sherwood sidled in, clutching something to his chest. His voice was cracked with all the crying he’d been doing.

“I’ve got something you have to see,” he said, and crossing to the window he pulled back the curtains. There was a streetlight outside the front of the house, and it shed its light through the rain-streaked glass onto Sherwood’s pale, puffy face.

“I don’t know why I did it,” he began.

“Did what?”

“It was just there, you know, and when I saw it I wanted it.” As he spoke he proffered the object he’d been clutching. “It’s just an old book,” he said.

“You stole it?” He nodded. “Where from? The Courthouse?”

Again, he nodded. He looked so frightened she was afraid he was going to start weeping again. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m not cross. I’m just surprised. I didn’t see you with it.”

“I put it in my jacket.”

“Where did you find it?

He told her about the desk, and the inks and the pens, and while he told her she took the book from his hands and went to the window with it. There was a strange perfume coming off it.

She raised it to her nose—not too close—and inhaled its scent. It smelled like a cold fire, like embers left in the rain, but sharpened by a spice she knew she would never find on a supermarket shelf. The smell made her think twice about opening the book, but how could she not, given where it had come from? She put her thumb against the edge of the cover and lifted it. On the inside page was a single circle, drawn in black or perhaps dark brown ink. No name. No title. Just this ring, perfectly drawn.

“It’s his, isn’t it?” she said to Sherwood.

“I think so.”

“Does anyone know you took it?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

That at least was something to be grateful for. She turned to the next page. It was as complex as the previous page had been simple: row upon row upon row of writing, tiny words pressed so close to one another it was almost a seamless flow. She flipped the page. It was the same again, on left and right. And on the next two sheets, the same, and on the next two and the next two.

She peered at the script more closely, to see if she could make any sense of it, but the words weren’t in English. Stranger still, the letters weren’t from the alphabet. They were pretty, though, tiny elaborate marks that had been set down with obsessive care.

“What does it mean?” Sherwood said, peering over her shoulder.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“Do you think it’s a story?”

“I don’t think so. It isn’t printed, like a proper book.” She licked her forefinger and dabbed it on the words. It came away stained. “It was written by him,” she said.

“By Jacob?” Sherwood breathed.

“Yes.” She flipped over a few more pages and finally came to a picture. It was an insect—a beetle of some kind, she thought—and like the writing on the preceding pages it had been set down exquisitely, every detail of its head and legs and iridescent wings so meticulously painted it looked uncannily lifelike in the watery light, as though it might have risen whirring from the paper had she touched it.

“I know I shouldn’t have taken the book,” Sherwood said, “but now I don’t want to give it back, ’cause I don’t want to see him again.”

“You won’t have to,” Frannie reassured him.

“You promise?”

“I promise. There’s nothing to be afraid of, Sher. We’re safe here, with mom and dad to look after us.” Sherwood had put his arm through hers. She could feel his thin body quivering against her own. “But they won’t be here always, will they?” he said, his voice eerily flat, as though this most terrible of possibilities could not be expressed unless stripped of all emphasis.

“No,” she said. “They won’t.”

“What will happen to us then?” he said.

“I’ll be here to look after you,” Frannie replied.

“You promise?”

“I promise. Now, it’s time you were back in bed.” She took her brother by the hand and they both tiptoed out along the landing to his room. There she settled him back in his bed and told him not to think about the book or the Courthouse or what had happened tonight anymore, but to go back to sleep.

Her duty done she returned to her own bedroom, closed the door and the curtains, and put the book in the cupboard under her sweaters. There was no lock on the cupboard door, but if there had been she would have certainly turned the key. Then she climbed between the now chilly sheets and put on the bedside light, just in case the beetle in the book came clicking across the floor to find her before dawn, which possibility, after the evening’s escapades, she could not entirely consign to the realm of the impossible.