Dark Eye

“But she wouldn’t have felt the pain.”

“Not if she was dead.”

Of course not. He’d captured her, sure. Probably terrorized her, just like he did me. And he’d taken the heart, because that’s what Poe wanted him to do, and that’s what he wanted to mail to me. But he couldn’t do it while she was alive. She wasn’t an offering, and outside of his twisted plan for redemption, he lacked the requisite cruelty. Or at least one of his personalities did.

And Darcy had known it all along.

“Tell me about thallium, Doc. Is it hard to get, like that voodoo zombie stuff?”

She shook her head. “Rat poison, most likely. Contains thallium sulphate. Half the people in Vegas probably have it in their garage, never suspecting how deadly it can be.”

“But Edgar would know. Edgar knows everything.”

“I feel like an idiot. I would’ve missed it altogether if it hadn’t been for that kid.”

“Don’t feel bad, Doc. You were meant to miss it.”

Je

I’m getting close to you, Edgar, I thought. I was still missing a few key pieces of information, but it was starting to fall into place, like snowflakes on a Colorado mountaintop. And the few things I didn’t know yet, I knew where to find.

In this book.

There was a reason why Edgar was who he was, why he did what he did. And I was going to discover it. Before his damned Day of Ascension. Before it was too late.

Who are you? Where did you come from?

29

“Please, Nana, please. We’ll be careful.”

“No. You’re too young. You children should stay near the house.”

“We’re old enough. Honest.”

“Ernie, I’ve given you my answer.”

“But Nana!”

The twins had lived with their grandmother for almost a month before she relented, on a bright summer morning when the California air was so cool and the sun so warm even she must’ve found the temptation irresistible. Her small rural house backed up against a forest full of brush and hidden dangers, maple and oak and tall pines, redwoods and relicts of redwoods. Even better, not a quarter mile beyond the forest was a vast expanse of beach, a private access road to the Pacific Ocean. Nana’s family had bought this choice land not far from Salinas at the turn of the century and never let it go, even though they were poor as dirt and it came to be worth a substantial sum. But what good did it do the twins if they weren’t allowed to leave the house?

“I want you children where I can see you. No telling what kinds of mischief you might get into.” She had a cat in her arms, a huge peach-colored Maine coon that stared at Ernie with eyes that never blinked. “I know what you were up to when your parents weren’t watching and I won’t have any of it. You just stay put.”

“But there’s nothing to do in the yard!”

“And what is it you think you’re going to do in the forest? Don’t you know that place is full of ticks? Poison ivy? Do you know what poison ivy looks like? I’ll bet you don’t. You get a dose of that and you’ll be miserable for days. Snakes out there, too.”

Ernie was unconvinced.

“Did I tell you about the wild boars? My mother saw one, just before the Lord took her home. Teeth like razors. Could eat little things like you two in a single gulp.”

But Ernie did not relent. To him, the forest was an unexplored wonderland teeming with adventure. Even from a distance he could see its dark and foreboding corners, and the mystery made it all the more alluring.

“We could play lots of games in there. We could build forts and play hide-and-seek.”

“You can do all that in the yard.”

“Not good. Not like we could there.”

Nana’s eventual surrender was inevitable, given how both Ernie and Gi

“All right, Nana. We will, Nana,” he said, throwing himself up against her and hugging her tightly.

“That’s enough of that,” she said, pushing him away.

“And what about the beach? Can we go there, too?”

“Under no circumstances are you to go near the beach. I couldn’t hear you out there even if you did blow that whistle. Now get along, before I change my mind.”

“Yes, Nana,” he said, already ru

And so the revels began. They were like pagans, Gi

On some afternoons, Ernie’s favorite ones, after the ru

“Do you ever miss Mom and Dad?” Gi

“I du

“Maybe. Sometimes.”

“I don’t miss Mom yelling all the time.”

“No.”

“And I don’t miss Daddy’s spankings. Which really weren’t spankings because they weren’t on my butt.”

“He never spanked me.”

“That’s ’cause he liked you. He spanked me all the time. He just liked you.”

“Yeah,” she said, drawing her arms inward as she spoke, staring at the leaves. “He sure did like me.”

“I hated it when they acted all weird and crazy and couldn’t hardly walk.”

“Me too. But that was when Daddy liked me the most.”

“And Nana’s pretty nice. Even if she is old and kinda strange.”

“Yeah.”

The breeze blew a trace of honeysuckle between them, rustling the leaves and giving them both a slight chill.

“But I still miss Mom and Daddy. Sometimes,” Gi

“Yeah. Me too, I guess.”

True to her word, when they returned from the forest each day, their grandmother performed full and thorough inspections.

“Those ticks are insidious. They dig down deep and they never let go. Strip!”

And she meant it. The inspection did not begin until both children were standing before her starkers. “No underwear. Nothing.” Now they really looked like wild animals, primordial wood nymphs, hair tangled and full of leaves, even bugs, dirt sweat-stained to their skin. Their grandmother checked each nook and cra

“Do you want to touch it?”

He had seen her looking at him while he went to the bathroom behind a tree. It was not the first time.

“No way. Gross.”

“Isn’t gross. It’s just me.”

“Well, I don’t have anything like that.”

“That’s ’cause you’re a girl.”

They sat on the stump in silence for a few moments. He knew what she was thinking. It was always like that, and not just with her. He could tell what anyone was thinking, sometimes before they knew themselves. And he knew Gi

“Okay,” she said, something like fifteen minutes later, out of the blue.

“Okay what?”

“Okay I want to touch it.”

He considered. “You’ll have to let me touch yours.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Well, whatever you got, I want to touch it.”

“Okay.”

Ernie dropped his shorts. And his Sears-bought Underoos, which drooped over his shoes.