The Night Listener and Others Read Free Page A

sword blade, and I kneel beside him and draw it out of his sundered flesh. Huge gouts of blood follow the blade, and what seems a river of the stuff runs from the ragged hole I have made. I drop the sword and grab the tired rug beneath him, pressing it over the wound. The pressure of my hands makes it ooze like a sponge, but I hold it there for what can be no more than a few seconds.
    Then I look at the boy’s eyes and I stop. My hands release their grip on the impromptu bandage, and a final drowning breath whispers redly away as the eyes glaze over.
    I hear someone call my name and look up to see my wife standing in the doorway. From her position she can see only me and the lower half of the child’s body, his dungarees and white sneakers with red and blue stripes. She stands there and I look at her and mumble something about a burglar, I’ve killed a burglar, and she disappears into the darkness of the house. When she returns she is carrying my bathrobe. She comes into the kitchen, where she can see the body fully and holds out the robe for me. I put it on apologetically, thinking that the blood will stain it, but she appears indifferent to that. Then I call the police and an ambulance, though it is far too late.
    The police tell me that there have been several burglaries in the past few weeks, and that there should be no legal complications because of the law that permits the use of what they call deadly force to repel intruders. I learn later that the boy was sixteen. I try to apologize to his parents at the courthouse, but they will not speak to me. The father’s face is sad and stony, and his wife cries silently.
    It was so wrong. Such an unfortunate coincidence that the boy came that night, that I mistook him for what I truly sought to kill. Perhaps it sent the child as a scapegoat, thinking his death would satisfy me, put me off my guard. But I am not fooled. It should know I am a wiser, more fitting adversary than that. My sleep is always light, and often I arise and walk to the windows and doors, listening for its coming. It will not find me unaware. I will be ready when it comes.
    But it has been a long time now, a very long time. And I have not heard it return.
    Not once, in all these long, cold nights.

Season Pass
     
     
    I didn’t know what Mr. and Mrs. Younger were when I first saw them. To me they were just one more older couple who come out to Magicland for a sunny afternoon of watching the dolphin show, the stage act, and maybe taking one of the tamer rides—the carousel, or the Tunnel-of-Chills. I was sure I’d seen them before, for there was an easy familiarity about them. They looked at home, sitting on the bench near the bandshell, under the few oaks the new owners had let stand when they changed the old Rocky Grove Park into Magicland ten years before.
    I wasn’t here then, at least not as a security guard. But I came as a guest that first summer, as did almost everybody for a hundred miles around, to see what had been done to the grove. Some had liked the change. I hadn’t. The park had been sanitized away, the grotesque, laughing figures in the funhouse alcoves sold to collectors, the old rides like The Whip and The Octopus prettied up with fiberglass shells and cartoon animals. The Penny Arcade became the quarter arcade, and the flip movies that had intrigued my brother and me as boys were gone, replaced by video screens and pinball machines that offered only three balls for two bits. Everything was bright and clean and shiny. I hated it.
    I didn’t come back after that first visit until this spring, when I answered the ad for security guards. The office where I worked laid me off in March, and though the Magicland stint paid far less, I thought it would be a pleasant way to spend the summer while keeping my eyes open for something better. And I was hungry for something better. I used to think that hunger was a good thing, something that made us grow. Maybe open hunger, honest ambition,