The blood drained from his face as he straightened his back. “What do you mean? Have you tried upstairs? Looked all over?”
Frustrated by his lack of trust, she frowned at him and hurried to the stairway, taking the steps in pairs, hollering for Jack and Nick. All of the rooms had been ransacked. The rugs wet beneath her feet. Quilts on the beds, rumpled and bodiless. Closet doors gaped wide and everywhere papers littered the surface of things. She sifted through scores of drawings, bodies and bones, pictures of monsters, the dead dog now prowling in the neighbor’s yard. What has he done? The pictures stopped her, the awful connections turning in her mind. From the middle of his desk, she picked up one of the drawings lying there: two boys wrestling beneath the sea. She curled it into a scroll and carried it back to Tim.
“How could you have left them alone?”
Trembling with pain, he bent over the kitchen table and steadied himself with two hands. “I’ve checked the other rooms down here, and the whole house is a wreck, even the workroom. They’re not here.”
“How could they not be here? Jack is outside?” She hollered and waved the scroll at him. “Where have they gone?”
“I told them if there was any trouble, they should go over to the Quigleys’. Let’s not panic. They might be right across the street.”
“With that beast waiting for them in the front yard?” She leapt for the phone and dialed the neighbors’ number. One of the twins answered with a cheery hello.
“This is Mrs. Keenan,” she said. “Is Jack there by any chance? Did he and Nick come over to your house today in the storm?”
The little girl seemed put off by the anxiety in Holly’s questions that she hesitated before answering. “No. Jack Peter never leaves the house.”
“I know, but are you sure he didn’t come over, and you just missed him?”
“No, we’ve been inside all day. There’s no one here.”
Holly caught her breath. “Is this Janie?”
The girl grunted a yes.
“Do you know anything about that dog that’s out in your yard?”
“Our dog is right here next to me, aren’t you, girl?”
The border collie barked in the background.
“No, the big white dog that’s out there right now?”
“I don’t know what you mean. If there was another dog out there, ours would go crazy. There’s nothing out there, and it’s been as quiet as church all day.”
Holly thanked her and hung up, holding on to the receiver, trying to sort through her fear and anger. “They’re not over there, Tim. Someone’s got them.”
The room looked like a crime scene, signs of struggle and foul play, and it spun in her eyes as if she was drunk. The pounding began in her head, steady as a heartbeat. She hammered on the wall with the paper clenched in her fist till the edges frayed. Papers on the floor, drawings everywhere. See what I made.
“They’re out there,” she said. “Do you remember the sheep, Tim? That day when Jack was lost and we found him with those sheep that just appeared—”
“I’ll go look for them.”
“Are you listening to me, Tim? I think Jack made them appear somehow.”
“Holly, what does this have to do with where the boys are? Let me go.”
“You? You can barely take care of yourself. I know where they are. But you need to take care of what’s inside. It’s the drawings, Tim.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“The drawings, the drawings he’s been doing. Not the ghosts, not the yurei. It’s been Jack all along. He drew the sheep, and they appeared. He drew the dog, and the dog appeared. Lord knows what else he’s made. We need to find all of Jack’s drawings, search the house, and burn them in the fireplace. You get rid of them, and I’ll find the boys.”
He looked at her as if she had lost her mind, but she did not care. She gave him a look as furious as the hammering in her head.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “His drawings are coming to life.”
*
The boys ran along the far side of the house and at the rear corner took off for a patch of evergreens, carving a new path through the drifts. The skies had burst, and the snow fell in rippling sheets; and in every shadow, they imagined a new terror. They lost sight of the creature and took the chance to rest for a moment under the pines. With his hands on his knees, Nick leaned over catching his breath, and looking with wonder at his friend, outside again. Red shields appeared on Jack Peter’s cheeks, and a rime of frost glistened at the corners of his chapped lips. He rubbed the matt of snow from his hair. Chests heaving, they sucked in deep breaths.
“It’s cold out,” Jack Peter said. “I’m tired of it.”
Nick rubbed Jack Peter’s face with the palms of his gloves, trying to help him get warm. “Why did you do this?” he asked.