bone. Strips of his rain shell and the T-shirt beneath stuck to the door, tacked in place by dried blood, and the flesh beneath had been beaten by the repeated slamming of the door until it was the color and texture of a rotten plum. The back of his head was caved in, glistening with brain matter and bits of skull. With each impact his lips worked to shape words, his eyes blinking hard as if trying to wake himself.
“Puh . . . puh . . . puh,” he said, a moldy syllable squashed between his blistered lips.
I gave myself one quailing moment of fear, of revulsion. And then I seized my horror, my hesitation, and flung them away. I couldn’t stand there and do nothing. I couldn’t let fear stop me from helping someone who needed it.
I crossed the last five steps and caught the door in mid-swing. For a moment we stood there, my fingers wrapped around the edge of the door. I closed my throat up, teeth clenched. I shunted my revulsion and fear into the void, and let cold calm take its place.
I’d had to call 911 once before. Some kids had gotten drunk and wrapped their car around a telephone pole. One of them shot through the windshield like a javelin and landed on the lawn, all crooked-limbed and limp. I’d gotten to my front door in time to see his friends bailing out, running. No one else was home and there was only me, walking across the lawn with bare feet, the dew cold and the boy’s blood blistering hot. The woman on the phone was the calmest person I’d ever talked to. She’d started out trying to calm me down, but quickly realized she didn’t have to. She gave me directions without any frills. Make sure his airway is clear. Put pressure around the cut on his arm. Talk to him.
When the ambulance showed up, she told me I should consider a career as a 911 operator, that I was cool under pressure. When I told the story to my foster mother later, she gave me a look I knew well. The is there something wrong with you? look.
Wrong or not, it was useful. “I’m going to go get help,” I said now, remembering the exact tone of voice that woman on the phone had used. “Come inside.”
I put my hand on his arm. I needed to get him out of the doorway to keep him from getting hurt any more than he already was—though how he was still standing, how he was still alive, I had no idea.
When my hand touched his arm, his head twisted around to look at me. He was white, with a reddish beard and brown hair. He looked familiar somehow, but I didn’t think he was one of the locals I’d encountered. “Puh,” he said. Then, “Please. Don’t. Please. Don’t touch me. What are you doing? What are you—what are—”
He rushed forward, away from me, stumbling and running out of the building and toward the steep hillside on the west side of the island, only to stop, stock-still, at the top of it and fling his arms outward with a bestial howl.
Beyond him, the sky was wracked with storms. They masked the horizon as far as I could see, lightning flashing within the clouds with the quick and steady tempo of a heartbeat. The thunder rumbled and cracked like massive planks of wood splintering and straining.
The wind blasted my face. In the distance, another howling voice answered the man, and then another voice, an inhuman keening shriek that came from across the water. From Belaya Skala. The man looked back toward me with a triumphant grin. And then he stepped back, and plunged over the edge.
I raced back inside and slammed the door shut. The birds were screaming again, trapped in that room. I was still clutching the skull. I could feel that there was something carved into the dome of its head, so I forced my fingers open and read: ПОЖИРАЕТ.*
My bones vibrated, the harsh thrum of an engine—
I opened my eyes and stared into the shocked gaze of my reflection in the window, and the thrumming vibration slammed to a halt.
“Ms. Hayes?”
I spun with a yelp and blinked. Fluorescent light bathed the hall. No screaming birds, just the faint hum of the lights and my own scattered breathing. Dr. Hardcastle stood a few feet away, a look of caution and concern on his face. Fresh