Draw the Dark Read Free Page B

didn’t do it.”
    Mr. Eisenmann waved my words away. His fingers were skeletal and twiglike, and he had the face of a gargoyle: creased with scars from some kind of accident almost sixty years ago. A pink seam slashed a diagonal through the outer third of his left eyebrow, bisected his left eyelid and tracked over his cheek and the knob of his nose. Another scar carved a half moon over his right cheek. A deep horizontal gash cut his chin like a second mouth. The cuts had done something to the tear duct of his left eye, so he was always crying crocodile tears.
    “I think we’ve established, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you did indeed do this, young man. The issue now is what is to be done about it.” Dabbing at his eye with a folded white kerchief, Eisenmann swung his gargoyle’s head back at Uncle Hank. Eisenmann was eighty at least, and I’d never seen him in anything but a three-piece suit and a gold watch chain with heavy gold fobs. He always carried a redwood cane topped with a gold wolf’s head. “Hank, this boy isn’t right and never has been. You know that, I know that. Hell, everyone in town knows it, and now he’s getting violent, vandalizing—”
    “Wait a minute,” I said, but Uncle Hank held up a hand, and I knew better than to go on.
    “Violent and
morbidly
preoccupied.” Eisenmann held open the history notebook I’d been doodling in earlier that morning. “Cemeteries?
Tombstones?
It’s ghoulish, Hank. It’s disturbed.”
    For the record, I hadn’t remembered doing a single headstone—I was drawing my
mother
. But there they all were, marching across the page like fence posts. The tombstones were weird, too: not singleton stones but doubles shaped like the Ten Commandments and not a cross in sight. Three steep-roofed mausoleums loomed in the background, like something out of New Orleans. But I didn’t
remember
drawing on th—
    blood on my hands and Papa no no . . . the horses are screaming
    The thought was sudden and violent like a bolt of lightning in my brain and so sharp, I gasped. What?
    blood . . . no Papa no . . .
    The nightmare, again, but I wasn’t asleep, I was awake, how... ?
    watch out ...watch...
    Oh my God. I squeezed my head between my hands. My pulse thumped in my head, and the same muttering I’d noticed when I woke up was back now and louder, a grumble that was the sound of many voices all balled together. Not my thoughts, these were not mine, so who—
    “Christian?” Uncle Hank said.
    “I don’t remember.” I screwed my eyes shut and thought at the chaos in my brain:
Go away, be quiet, leave me alone, leave me alone .
I said, way too loudly, “I don’t
remember
!”
    Eisenmann started in again. “Hank, this boy needs help. You know it, I know it. Next thing you know, he’ll be shooting up the place like those Columbine kids—”
    “That’s enough.” Uncle Hank’s voice was low, soft, and deadly. “That’s
my
nephew. So I’ll thank you to watch your goddamned mouth.”
    Eisenmann gawped for a second, then spluttered, “Do you know who you’re talking to? One word from me, and I could get your tenure as sheriff revoked.”
    Uncle Hank’s lips thinned like the gash on Eisenmann’s chin. He said nothing.
    “That’s right.” Eisenmann nodded as if Uncle Hank had agreed. “That’s right. So don’t think I won’t press charges. Don’t even
consider
that we aren’t going to court.”
    “It’s Christian’s first offense.” I could tell that cost Uncle Hank. He wasn’t pleading exactly, but it was close. “I’ll take the boy to counseling. We’ll make restitution. For God’s sake, that barn’s seen nothing but trouble, needed to come down years ago. It’s not as if we’re talking something you actually use.”
    “That’s my concern, Sheriff, not yours and property is property. As for a first offense, I remind you of that business with Ms. Stefancyzk.... ”
    “She had a nervous breakdown. Christian had nothing to do with