Nocturnes

“Can I help you?” I said.

The Collector had turned to watch my approach. He looked sickly in the yellow glow of the single light that illuminated the lot, and appeared to be dressed in the same clothes that he had worn to his interview with Matheson. I could see the sole of his shoe gaping like a fish’s mouth.

“I think you can,” he said, “and perhaps I can help you in return.”

“I can give you the address of a good tailor,” I said. “He might also know someone who can fix your shoe. After that you’re on your own.”

The Collector glanced down, as if noticing his ruined sole for the first time.

“Well, well,” he said. “Look at that.”

He shot a plume of smoke into the night air. It went on for a long time, as though he were manufacturing it deep inside his lungs.

“You want to step away from my car?”

The Collector considered it for a moment. Just when it seemed as if I’d have to drive off with him draped across the hood, he tossed his cigarette to the ground and stamped it out with his good shoe, then moved a couple of feet away from my car.

“My apologies,” he said. “You work for Mr. Matheson.”

“I think we have a misunderstanding,” I said. “I wasn’t offering to exchange information in return for you finding someplace else to rest.”

I stood by the Mustang, but I didn’t take out my keys. If I tried to open the car door, then I might have to take my eyes off the man in the lot for an instant, and I didn’t want to do that. Matheson was right. The Collector’s appearance, his greasy hair combined with his filthy clothes, was a distraction, a ruse to fool the unwary. His movements were slow and precise because he chose to make them that way. When he wanted to, I sensed, he could move very quickly indeed, and his old coat and tattered trousers concealed strong bones and lean, stringy muscles.

“I suspect Mr. Matheson told you about me.”

I didn’t reply. I wasn’t going to reveal anything to him.

“I know about the picture,” he said.

Everything changed.

“What picture?”

“The picture of the little girl.”

“Do you know who she is?”

He shook his head.

“Do you know who took the photograph?”

Again, he shook his head.

“Then you’re no use to me. Go find another dark place to haunt.”

I made a show of fiddling with my keys.

“She’s at risk,” said The Collector. “If you give me what I want, some of that risk will diminish.”

I wondered if he had taken the photograph, if its placement in the mailbox was all part of his efforts to receive payment for whatever old debt he believed he was owed.

The Collector was smart. He was waiting for me when I reached that conclusion. “But she is not at risk from me,” he said. “I have no interest in children. I merely want my debt paid.”

I took a couple of steps toward him. He didn’t appear threatened.

“And what debt is that?”

“It’s a private matter.”

“Are you working for somebody?”

“We all work for somebody, Mr. Parker. Suffice it to say that John Grady attempted to secure a certain asset before he died. He partially succeeded. A token gesture will be enough to undo the damage. Your client is unwilling to make that gesture.”

“The debt is not his to pay. He has no obligation to you, and even if he had, I don’t see how paying it diminishes the ‘risk’ to the girl in the photograph.”

The Collector lit another cigarette. In the flare of the match, his eyes filled with flames.

“This is an old and wicked world. John Grady was a foul man, and the Grady house is a foul place. Such places retain a residue that can pollute others. If you help me, then some of that pollution may be removed.”

“What do you want?”

“A mirror, from the Grady house. It has many mirrors. One will not be missed.”

“Why don’t you just take one yourself?”

“The house is secured.”

“Not so secure that a man couldn’t get into it if he wanted something badly enough.”

“I am not a thief,” said The Collector.

It was more than that. For the first time, his eyes shifted from mine. He was scared of the house. No, not scared, but wary. For whatever reason, he was unable to enter the house himself.

“I think you need to talk to the lawyers, or the bank,” I said. “Talk to somebody, anybody, but just don’t talk to me again. I can’t help you.”

As I spoke, I opened the car door. He remained standing, isolated in the middle of the lot, watching me.

I closed the door and put the key in the ignition. When I looked up, The Collector was gone, or so I thought until the tapping came at my side window. He was close to the glass, so close that I could see the lines in his face and the veins ru

“I will collect,” he said. “Remember that.”

I gu

There was no moon over Scarborough as I drove home. Great swaths of cloud hid the light. Soon the marshes would flood, and a fresh round of feeding and dying would begin. I wondered what effect that cycle might have on me, and if the water in my own body might somehow be prey to the revolutions of a chunk of dead rock in space. Perhaps it affected my behavior, making me act in odd and unpredictable ways. Then I thought of Rachel, and what she might say if I shared those thoughts with her: she would tell me that my behavior was odd and unpredictable anyway, and that nobody would notice a difference if they tried to make a lunar co

Our first child was due, and every time my cell phone buzzed I expected to hear Rachel’s voice telling me that it was time. I had long given up cosseting her, for not only was she fiercely independent, but she saw in my actions an attempt to guard against the loss of another child. My daughter and my wife had been stolen from me only a few years before. I was not sure that I could live if another was taken from me. Sometimes that made me overprotective of those I now held dear.

I stopped my car before entering the driveway to our home. I thought of Matheson and his wife: how did they see themselves now, I wondered? Was one still a father, a mother when one’s child was dead? A wife who has lost her husband becomes a widow, and a husband bereaved of his wife a widower, but there was no name for what one became when one’s only child was wrenched from this world. But perhaps it didn’t matter: in my own mind I was still her father, and she was still my child, and regardless of the world in which she now dwelt, that would always be. I could not forget her, and I knew that she had not forgotten me.

For she came to me still. In the lost time, in the pale hours, in those moments between waking and sleeping when the world was still forming around me, she was there. Sometimes her mother was with her, cloaked in shadows, a reminder of my duty to them, and to those like them. I used to dream of being at peace, of no longer experiencing these visions. Now I know that it is not meant for me, not now, and that my peace will only come when I close my eyes and at last take my place beside them in the darkness.

Rachel was lying on the couch, reading, her hand resting on her belly and her long red hair descending in a braid across her left shoulder. I kissed her forehead, then her lips. She placed my hand alongside hers, so that I could feel the child within.

“You think the kid is pla

“Get used to saying that,” she said. “You’ll be asking the same question until our child goes to college. Anyway, I’m the one who has to carry another person around inside me. It’s about time you started shouldering some of the burden.”