It was an unstoppered vial, and as the heavyset man waved it in his face he realized that part of his nausea came from the stench drifting out of its mouth. He gagged and turned his head.

"Don't like the tables turned, do you, boy?"

"I ... what?" He looked over the man's shoulder and saw a dozen students in the hall. Some were leaning against the wall and talking softly, others had handkerchiefs pressed over their noses. A few saw him and grinned; the rest saw him and glared.

"It was a stupid thing to do, Boyd."

"Do what?" His nose hurt. He had a headache that reached to the back of his neck. He pointed at the vial. "That? I didn't do that."

"Then who did? The ghost of Samuel Ashford?"

His head hurt; G.o.d, his head hurt.

"Well, Boyd?"

He tried to explain about his accident, about how he'd been running up the stairs when someone-two or three of them, he didn't know for sure, he didn't see-when someone ran past him and put that bottle in his hand.

Hedley tilted his head back and c.o.c.ked it to one side.

"But I didn't do anything!"

"Mr. Boyd, keep your voice down."

"But I didn't do it!"

Hedley grabbed his arm again, and Don shook him off.

"I didn't do it, d.a.m.nit," he said sullenly.

Hedley was about to reach again when a murmuring made him turn and see Norman Boyd striding through his cla.s.s. The princ.i.p.al paused to speak to several students and send them on their way, presumably to the nurse, with a pat on the54 shoulder. When he was close enough, Hedley explained over Don's silent protest that someone had opened the lab door in the middle of a test and dumped a bottle of hydrogen sulfide onto the floor.

"From this," he said, displaying the vial with a dramatic flourish, "which I found in your son's possession, over there in the stairwell."

Boyd cleared his throat and lifted an eyebrow.

Don told him, words clipped, att.i.tude defensive, and when he was done, he dared his father with a look not to believe him.

Boyd took the vial, sniffed, and grimaced. "My office."

"But Dad-"

"Do as you're told! Go down to my office."

Don looked to the chemistry teacher, who was smiling smugly, looked to the kids still in the hall, whispering and grinning. The odor of rotten eggs was making him sick. Boyd stoppered the vial with his handkerchief and gave the order a third time.

"Yeah," he muttered, turned, and walked away.

"Hey, Don," someone called as he went through the door, "tell him the giant crow did it!"

Norman slouched in his chair, a hand on one cheek, one eye closed as if sighting an invisible weapon. There was a stack of reports to be filed when he found the time to read them, the in basket was crowded with letters to respond to, the out basket held more files he hadn't bothered to look over, and in the middle of the blotter was Adam Hedley's vial with the handkerchief still dangling from the top.

A finger reached out to touch it, poke at it, shift it around, before the hand drew back and covered his other cheek.

Norm boy, he thought, for an intelligent man, you are one very stupid sonofab.i.t.c.h.'

A chill settled on the back of his neck and he shuddered 55.violently to banish it, and glanced up to see that the office was dark.

A look behind and out the window, and he groaned; the sun had gone down, the streetlamps were on, and the traffic on School Street was mainly people coming home from shopping and work.

He was virtually alone, then, in the building. Just him in his office, and the custodial staff sweeping the hallways and auditorium, washing the blackboards, and probably stealing him blind from the supply room in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Stupid," he muttered, staring at the vial. "Stupid, and dumb, and you ought to be shot."Jesus, how could he believe Don had really tossed that bottle into Hedley's room? How could he believe it? Or was he trying too hard to believe the boy was really normal, doing normal things like any normal kid.

That was the problem-thinking Don was special. He wasn't. He was perfectly, sometimes unnervingly fine, with quirks like any other kid to set him apart. And there was Norman Boyd, forgetting who they both were and playing King of the Mountain, Lord of the Hill, laying down the law as if he were Moses.

As if he were his own father.

For the first time in ages he wished Joyce were here, to remind him that he wasn't Wallace Boyd still working the mills, that Don wasn't Norman struggling out of the gutter. He recalled with a silent groan the day Joyce had told him she was pregnant the first time. He had sworn on everything he held dear that he would do better, that he would be there-a harbor for childhood storms, a rock to hang on to when the winds grew too strong. A father; nothing more, nothing less.

He covered his face with his hands and took a deep breath.

It was the pressure, that's what it was. After Sam had died, the pressure had begun; he didn't know how, and he wasn't sure why, but it was there. Waiting for him.

56.Whispering to him that Donald had to be protected at all costs. And when he recognized the futility of it, and the unreason, he hadn't realized how far in the opposite direction he had gone with the boy's life.

It was the pressure.

What he needed was a respite. What he needed was for Falcone and his teachers to cave in and stop the strike. Then they'd be off his back, and the board would be off his back, and the press and the mayor and the whole d.a.m.ned world would leave him alone to reacquaint himself with his son.

Twice he had blown it-first, Don's announcement about being a veterinarian, and now this afternoon.

Twice, and suddenly he was very afraid.

His wife was falling out of love with him.

What would happen if his son did the same?

... and so the crow saw how bad the little boy was feeling, and he flew out of the tree and into the night ...

The park was deserted. A breeze crept through the branches and shook loose a few leaves, spiraling them down through the dark, through the falls of white light, to the ground, to the paths, to the pond where they spun in lazy turns, creating islands that floated just below the surface.

No one walked.

The traffic's noise was smothered.... and found the evil king alone in his bedroom, and he flew in through the window, and before the evil king could wake up and defend himself, the giant crow had plucked out both his eyes!

The only concentrated light was set around the oval. A dim light, and there was no warmth to it, no weight, as he sat on 57.a bench and stared at the water, rolling his shoulders to drive off the cold.

His eyes were closed.

His lips moved so slightly they might have been trembling.

And then the giant crow flew through the castle until he found the evil king's brother, who was just as evil and just as mean, and the giant crow tore out his throat with one swipe of his giant talons.

The houses that faced the park were hidden by the trees and the width of the land, and the boulevard that ran past it on the south was too far away to matter. He was alone; no one would bother him unless he stayed until dawn, and on a night like this not even a tramp would try to make a bed on the redwood benches. He was alone. His hands were clasped tightly between his knees, and his jacket-was too light for the sudden temperature drop, turning the air brittle and the leaves to brown gla.s.s.

A noise in his throat; his shoulders slumped a little more.

He had waited nearly an hour in his father's office before the man finally walked in. Don had jumped to his feet and was ordered down again. A fussing with papers, instructions not to interrupt him, and he was lectured forever on the image both of them had to project-to the faculty as well as to the student body. Norman brandished the vial as if he were going to throw it. Don explained for the second time how the kid-he was sure now it was Pratt-shoved the bottle into his hand on the way down the stairs. His face hurt as he talked, and he kept touching the side of his face to be sure it hadn't bloated. His father saw the situation, sympathized for the injury, but refused the whole pardon while relenting to the degree that he supposed Brian was capable of such a trick.

"I didn't say it was him." Don had retreated, suddenly 58.fearful his father would call the boy in and unknowingly start a war. "I just think it was."

Norman seemed doubting, and Don didn't understand. In all his life he'd never done anything like that; he had been told often enough that he was neither to take advantage of his position-whatever that was-nor pretend he was only one of the boys. He wasn't. He was, by fate, special, with special problems to handle. And Norman expected more of him than to have it end up like this.

"End up like what?" He sprang to his feet and approached the desk. "Dad, why don't you listen to me? I didn't do it!"Norman stared and said nothing.

"All right, I left the nurse's office when I shouldn't have, I guess, and I wrote out my own pa.s.s. All right, that's wrong. Okay. But I did not throw that c.r.a.p in Mr. Hedley's room!"

"Donald," his father said in perfect control, "I will not have you speak to me that way, especially not in here."

"Oh, Jesus." And he turned away.

"And you will not swear at me. Ever."

Don surrendered. Suspended between belief and suspicion, bullied off the subject by time-worn and weary p.r.o.nouncements, he surrendered, he didn't care, and he didn't argue when he was given six days detention, beginning the next day.

"You should count yourself lucky," Norman said as he escorted him out the door just as the last bell rang. "Most other kids would have been suspended."

"Then suspend me!" he said, surprised to hear himself on the verge of begging. "Please, suspend me."

"Don't be smart, son, or I will."

Don pulled away from the hand that guided him around the counter, ignored the curious looks the five secretaries gave him. "You don't get it," he said as he walked out the door. "You just don't get it."

He fetched his books and went home. His mother wouldn't 59.be in for at least another hour, and his father would stay at South until just before dinner. That gave him time to unload his gear and change into his jeans, fix himself a peanut b.u.t.ter sandwich and go for a walk.

Shortly before dark he walked into the park.

... and then the crow ...

He stopped, and c.o.c.ked his head.

He could not see far beyond the lights that ringed the oval, but he was positive he had heard someone approaching out there. Listening, his hands gripping his knees, he guessed it was his mother, come to take him home and scold him and make him eat a bowl of soup or drink a cup of watery cocoa. And when the noise didn't sound again, he convinced himself it wasn't really a footstep he had heard.

He heard it again.

To his left, out there in the dark.

A single sound, sharp on the pavement, like iron striking iron as gently as it could.Without looking away he zipped his jacket closed and stood, slowly, sidling toward the pond for an angle to let him see through the light.

Again. Sharp. Iron striking iron.

Not his mother at all; someone else.

"Hey, Jeff, that you?" he called, jamming his hands into his pockets.

Iron striking iron. Hollow.

"Jeff?"

The breeze husked, scattering leaves at his feet and making him duck away with his eyes tightly shut. The pond rippled, and a twig snapped, and something small and light scurried up a trunk.

Swallowing, and looking once toward the exit, he walked around the oval and a few steps up the path. With the light now behind him his shadow crept ahead, reaching for the next lamppost fifteen yards away. And between there and here he 60.saw nothing that could have made the sound that he'd heard. A frown, more at his own nervousness than at the puzzle, and he walked on, cautiously, keeping to one side and wincing each time his elbow brushed against a shrub.

Iron striking iron, hollow, an echo.

He started to call again, changed his mind, and made a clumsy about-face. Whatever it was, it didn't want to be seen, and that was all right with him; more than all right, it was perfect. He hurried, shoulders hunched, cheeks burning as the wind worked earnestly to push him faster, the tips of his ears beginning to sting. His own shoes were loud, slapping back from the trees, and his shadow had grown faint, even under the lamps. He looked back only once, but all he could see was the pond reflecting the globes, freezing them in ice, turning the oval into a glaring white stage.

Iron. Striking iron.

He ran the last few yards, skidded onto the sidewalk and gaped at the traffic on the boulevard. The air was warmer, and he took a deep breath as he chided himself for being so foolish.

Then he turned to check one last time.

And heard iron striking iron, m.u.f.fled and slow, and not once could he see what was back there in the dark.

Tanker cowered in the bushes, covering his face with his hands and praying that the moon would keep him hidden from whatever was walking out there in the dark.

At first it had been perfect. He had been feeling the familiar pressure all day, building in his chest and making it swell, building in his head and making it ache. He had ignored it when it started, thinking it wasbecause he was hungry for people-food; so he had scrounged through some garbage cans, panhandled four bucks in front of the movie theater on the main street and had filled himself with hamburgers and dollar wine. But the pressure wouldn't go away, 61.and his hands shook with antic.i.p.ation when he could no longer deny it-it was going to be soon, no question about it. Maybe tonight, and that kid was going to help him.

Slowly, using every skill he had left and a few he hadn't learned from the babyf.u.c.ks in the army, he had made his way through the underbrush toward the oval once he had heard the lone voice telling itself a story.

It was too good to be true, but when he peered through the bushes, he almost shouted. It was the punk from the other night, the one who had been dressed in black and talked about a giant crow. And there he was, looking like he'd just lost his best girl, and for G.o.d's sake, would you believe it, telling himself a stupid story.

It was perfect.

Then the punk turned his head sharply, and Tanker had looked back into the park.

Iron striking iron.

There was absolutely no reason for it, but the sound terrified him, loosened his bowels, poured acid into his stomach, and he couldn't help it-he whimpered softly and covered his face with his hands. Listening.

Trying to make himself invisible. Hearing the punk walk away and swearing in a cold sweat that he couldn't follow and get him.

The sound grew louder and Tanker dropped to the ground, shifted his hands to the back of his head and waited, holding his breath, listening as whatever it was moved in front of him, as if following the boy.

And stopped.

The breeze died; there was no traffic noise, no footsteps.