Terry Brooks - Running With The Demon

The park was old, Nest knew. It had never been anything but a park. Before it was officially titled and protected by state law, it had been an untamed stretch of virgin timber. No one had lived there since the time of the Indians. Except, of course, the feeders.

She took it all in for a moment, embracing it with her senses, reclaiming it for herself as she did each tune she returned, familiar ground that belonged to her. She felt that about the park–that through her peculiar and endemic familiarity with its myriad creatures, its secretive places, its changeless look and feel, and its oddly compelling solitude, it was hers. She felt this way whenever she stepped into the park, as if she were fulfilling a purpose in her life, as if she knew that here, of all places in the world, she belonged.

Of course, Pick had more than a little to do with that, having enlisted her years ago as his human partner in the care and upkeep of the park's magic.

She walked across the service road, kicking idly at the dirt with her running shoes, moving onto the heat–crisped grasses of the ball diamond, intent on taking the shortcut across the park to Cass Minter's house on Spring Drive. The others were ' probably already there: Robert, Brianna, and Jared. She would be the last to arrive, late as usual. But it was summer, and it really didn't matter if she was late. The days stretched on, and tune lost meaning. Today they were going fishing down by the old boat launch below the dam, just off the east end of the park. Bass, bluegill, perch, and sunfish, you could still catch them all, if not so easily as once. You didn't eat them, of course. Rock River wasn't clean enough for that, not the way it had been when her grandfather was a boy. But the fishing was fun, and it was as good a way as any to spend an afternoon.

She was skipping off behind the backstop of the closest ball field when she heard a voice call out.

"Nest! Wait up!"

Turning awkward and flushed the moment she realized who it was, she watched Jared Scott come loping up the service road from the park entry. She glanced down at her Grunge Lives T-shirt and her running shorts, at the stupid way they hung on her, at the flatness of her chest and the leanness of her legs and arms, and she wished for the thousandth time that she looked more like Brianna. She was angry at herself for thinking like that, then for feeling so bizarre over a boy, and then because there he was, right hi front of her, smiling and waving and looking at her in that strange way of his.

"Hey, Nest," he greeted.

"Hey, Jared." She looked quickly away.

They fell into step beside each other, moving along the third–base line of the diamond, both of them looking at their feet. Jared wore old jeans, a faded gray T-shirt, and tennis shoes with no socks. Nothing fit quite right, but Nest thought he looked pretty cute anyway.

"You get any sleep last night?" he asked after a minute.

He was just about her height (oh, all right, he was an inch or so shorter, maybe), with dark blond hair cut short, eyes so blue they were startling, a stoic smile that suggested both familiarity and long–suffering indulgence with life's vicissitudes, and a penchant for clearing his throat before speaking that betrayed his nervousness at making conversation. She didn't know why she liked him. She hadn't felt this way about him a year ago. A year ago, she had thought he was weird. She still wasn't sure what had happened to change things.

She shrugged. "I slept a little."

He cleared his throat. "Well, no thanks to me, I guess. You saved my bacon, bringing Bennett home."

"No, I didn't."

"Big tune. I didn't know what to do. I spaced, and the next thing I knew, she was outta there. I didn't know where she'd gone."

"Well, she's pretty little, so — "

"I messed up." He was having trouble getting the words out. "I should have locked the door or something, because the attacks can — "

"It wasn't your fault," she interrupted heatedly. Her eyes flicked to his, then away again. "Your mom shouldn't be leaving you alone to baby–sit those kids. She knows what can happen."

He was silent a moment. "She doesn't have any money for a sitter."

Oh, but she does have money to go out drinking at the bars, I suppose, Nest wanted to say, but didn't. "Your mom needs to get a life," she said instead.

"Yeah, I guess. George sure doesn't give her much of one."

"George Paulsen doesn't know how." Nest spit deliberately. "Do you know what he did with Bennett's kitten?"

Jared looked at her. "Spook? What do you mean? Bennett didn't say anything about it to me."

Nest nodded. "Well, she did to me,. She said George took Spook away somewhere 'cause he doesn't like cats. You don't know anything about it?"

"No. Spook?"

"She was probably scared to tell you. I wouldn't put it past that creep to threaten her not to say anything." She looked off into the park. "I told her I'd help find Spook. But I don't know where to look."

Jared shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. "Me, either. But I'll look, too." He shook his head. "I can't believe this."

They crossed the park toward the woods that bordered the houses leading to Cass Minter's, lost in their separate thoughts, breathing in the heat and the dryness and watching the dust rise beneath their feet in small clouds.

"Maybe your mom will think twice before she goes out with him again, once she learns about Spook," Nest said after a minute.

"Maybe."

"Does she know about last night?"

He hesitated, then shook his head. "No. I didn't want to tell her. Bennett didn't say anything either."

They walked on in silence to the beginning of the woods and started through the trees toward the houses and the road. From somewhere ahead came the excited shriek of a child, followed by laughter. They could hear the sound of a sprinkler running. Whisk, whisk, whisk. It triggered memories of times already lost to them, gone with childhood's brief innocence.

Nest spoke to Jared Scott without looking at him. "I don't blame you. You know, for not telling your mom. I wouldn't have told her either."

Jared nodded. His hands slipped deeper into his pockets.

She gripped his arm impulsively. "Next time she leaves you alone to baby–sit, give me a call. I'll come over and help."

"Okay," he agreed, giving her a sideways smile.

But she knew just from the way he said it that he wouldn't.

Nest and her Mends spent the long, slow, lazy hours of the hot July afternoon fishing, they laughed and joked, swapped gossip and told lies, drank six–packs of pop kept cool at the end of a cord in the waters of the Rock River, and gnawed contentedly on twists of red licorice.

Beyond the shelter of the park, away from the breezes that wafted off the river, the temperature rose above one hundred and stayed there. The blue dome of the cloudless sky turned hazy with reflected light, and the heat seemed to press down upon the homes and businesses of Hopewell with the intention of flattening them. Downtown, the digital signboard on the exterior brick wall of the First National Bank read 103°, and the concrete of the streets and sidewalks baked and steamed in the white glare. Within their airconditioned offices, men and women began planning their Friday–afternoon escapes, trying to think of ways they could cool down the blast–furnace interiors of their automobiles long enough to survive the drive home.

On the picket lines at the entrances to MidCon Steel's five shuttered plants, the union workers hunkered down in lawn chairs under makeshift canopies and drank iced tea and beer from large Styrofoam coolers, hot and weary and discouraged, angry at the intransigence of their collective fate, thinking dark thoughts and feeling the threads of their lives slip slowly away.