Poe's children: the new horror : an anthology - By Peter Straub Page 0,97

your pleas. It wasn’t in my sketchbook, on the telephone table, stuck in a coat pocket. Neither the gray prairies under the beds nor the false pine and chemical smells in the kitchen closet offered anything. Would my son really lose his eye if I couldn’t find one stupid little drawing? Yes, that’s what the old man said. I believed him after seeing the picture of Leon and me together.

It was a terrible night, trying to be good old normal “Mom” to the family, while madly exploring every corner of our place for the picture. At dinner I casually asked if anyone had seen it in their travels. No one had. They were used to my drawings and doodles around the house. Now and then someone liked one and took it to their room but no luck with this one.

Throughout the evening I kept glancing at Adam, which gave me further reason to search. He had plain eyes but they were smart and welcoming. He looked straight at you in a conversation, gave you his full attention.

At midnight there were no further places to look. The drawing was gone. Sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice, I knew that there were only two things I could do when I met Thursday at the Bremen the next afternoon: Tell the truth or try and re-create from memory the drawing he demanded. It was such a simple sketch that I didn’t think there would be much trouble drawing something that looked similar, but exactly the same? Not possible.

I went into the living room and got my clipboard. At least the paper would be the same. Willy bought the stuff by the ream because it was cheap and sturdy and we both liked using it. You didn’t feel guilty crumpling up a piece if you’d made a mistake. I could easily see myself crumpling up that damned drawing and not thinking about it again. A child standing under a tree. A little girl in jeans. A chestnut tree. What was special about it?

It took five minutes to do, five minutes to be sure it was as I remembered, five more minutes with it in my lap knowing it was hopeless. Fifteen minutes from start to finish.

The next afternoon before I’d even sat down, Thursday was tapping an insistent finger on the marble table. “Did you find it? Do you have it?”

“Yes. It is in my bag.”

Everything about him relaxed. His face went slack, the finger lay down with the rest of his palm on the table, he leaned back against the velvet seat. “That’s great. Give it to me, please.”

He was feeling better, but I wasn’t. As coolly as I could, I pulled the wrinkled piece of paper out of my purse.

Before leaving the apartment I’d crumpled up the drawing into a tight ball to perhaps fool him a little. If he didn’t look too closely, maybe I’d be safe. Maybe I wouldn’t. There wasn’t much chance of being lucky, but at that point what else could I hope for?

Yet watching how carefully he flattened out the paper and pored over it as if it were some unique and priceless document, I knew he’d notice the difference any moment and everything would go to hell from there. I took off my coat and slid into the booth.

He looked up from the picture. “You can hum if you’d like. I’ll just be a minute.”

I liked this café so much, but today it had been changed by this man into an unpleasant, menacing place where all I wanted to do was finish our business and leave. Even the sight of Herr Ritter standing there at the counter reading the newspaper was irritating. How could life go on so normally when the worst kind of magic was in the air, thick as cigar smoke?

“You have a good memory.”

“What do you mean?”

He reached into his breast pocket and took out a piece of paper. Unfolding it, he held up the original drawing of the little girl under the tree I’d done.

“You had it!”

He nodded. “Both of us played tricks. I said you had it; you were trying to give me a copy and saying it was the original. Who was more dishonest?”

“But I couldn’t find it because you had it! Why did you do that?”

“Because we had to see how well you remember things. It’s very important.”

“What about my son?” I asked. “Will he be all right?”

“I guarantee he will. I can show