Three: An Excerpt from In Her Eyes

This week's story is another excerpt from my upcoming book, In Her Eyes. Chapter Three looks back in again on the younger days of Charlie LeBleu, and how he came to meet certain lifelong aquaintances of strange worlds and doings...

Three: an excerpt of Chapter Three of In Her Eyes, a forthcoming novel by M. K. Dreysen

"Goddamnit, boy, you sure as hell know how wreck a fence."

Charlie had to agree. But he'd warned his great-grandfather. "I'm only thirteen, Paw-Paw, I don't know how to drive yet."

"You're old enough to figure it out."

Sort of. Charlie was supposed to just back the truck into place, in the gate of the cow pen.

Easy enough, right? And it was, everything had gone just fine, Charlie had ignored the blood rushing in his ears, popped it down into reverse, checked the mirrors, and hit the gas. Just like he'd seen his uncles and his grandfathers and dad and...

It all happened in slow motion. The truck started in the grass, and that went ok, until the back tires ran over a huge fire ant mound, but Charlie held the wheel all right, jarred the thing a little because his foot pulsed the gas pedal when the truck rocked up and down. He had it under control. Until the truck passed from the grass to the churned up dirt; where the cattle had worked the ground going in and out of the pen.

And the rodeo began. Charlie pushed down, but instead of the brake his foot found the gas, and the truck bucked and spun its tires and the wooden posts that formed the main corner of the pen jumped into view in the rearview mirror and it was time to hit the brakes for real where is it, Charlie?

Not where his foot searched and pushed. That was the gas pedal again.

The corner posts didn't stop the truck at all. Neither did the old boards of the fence. Charlie came to a stop after twenty yards or so of noise and splinters and rail boards scattering everywhere. But only because he'd finally convinced his brain and his foot to get off the gas and try for the big wide brake pedal instead.

"Are you ok, son?" Charlie's Paw-Paw asked him.

Charlie was ok. Horrified, at the pushed in bumper and tailgate. "Oh, Paw-Paw, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."

The old man wasn't pissed. His great-grandson was alive, and it was just a truck. "It's fine, son. You're not hurt, and you weren't going fast enough to do any damage we can't deal with. Here, let's see if we can get the tailgate open."

But first, Charlie had to move the truck out of the fence. Pen. The collection of debris, mostly.

He wanted to argue about it. But the field was open, and going forward he could handle. Maybe. He started the truck, put it in gear, and let it idle forward. Just far enough to clear the gate post. As soon as he saw that in the mirrors, Charlie braked.

This time his foot found the brake just fine. It had to, Charlie hadn't moved his foot anywhere near the gas to begin with.

"Did it drive ok?" Paw-Paw asked.

Charlie wasn't sure he'd have been able to tell one way or another. But the truck hadn't screamed at him, and it had gone where it needed to. "Yes, sir."

"Good. Help me with the tailgate."

The old man and the young man, the former cursing and the latter trying not to grin, managed to get the tailgate down.

"Good," Paw-Paw said, when the screech of the steel had receded. "Let's have a seat and look at your mess."

It was pretty epic. Charlie had taken out three sections, post to post to post, of the cattle pen.

"Good thing. Your uncle's needed to replace this thing for years. And now he doesn't have any more excuses."

Charlie heard a father's exasperation, and years of "I'm telling you". He just wished he hadn't been the one who'd forced the issue.

With that knack for knowing when trouble's on the loose, Uncle Levi drove up in his own truck just a few minutes later. "I knew leaving the two of you alone was a bad idea," he told the old troublemaker and the young one as he got out of the truck. "I just didn't expect it to be quite so expensive."

"At least he didn't burn down the hay baler," Paw-Paw responded. "If you're looking for expensive." The old man cocked his eyebrow, letting Levi know that he wasn't going to get away with anything, so long as his father was around.

Levi looked down, kicking the dirt like he'd just been caught out. "You're right, Daddy, it's not as expensive as burning the hay baler."

Charlie didn't bother concealing his smile; soon enough, neither did the other two. "I'm sorry, Uncle Levi. I stepped on the gas instead of the brake."

"Are you hurt?" Levi asked. "No? Then it's water under the bridge, son. There's nothing here that we can't fix. Besides, as I'm sure your Paw-Paw told you, I've needed to replace this thing for years. And now I can't hide from it. Besides," and now Levi walked over to the other side of the gate, where the pen fencing was whole. Only it wasn't. Levi walked around the pen, shaking the occasional board free as he went. "You didn't knock these down, son. If I put cattle in here, we'd just waste their time and ours. Best go ahead and get it fixed."

Paw-Paw leaned over Charlie's shoulder. "Besides, he's got money saved up to pay for an all-steel pen. Don't let him fool you. What he's really worried about is the fact he's going to spend the next two weeks tearing this one out. And then paying someone to build the new one."

"What lies are you telling that young man?" Uncle Levi called.

"Nothing you haven't heard before," his father responded.

"Good, I'd hate for you to run out of stories, this early in the day." Levi walked the remainder of the pen, cataloging the work he'd have to do. When he was done, he walked over to Paw-Paw's truck, pulled a diet Coke out of the ice chest, then he sat down on the tailgate. "I'm thinking we'll be best off just going ahead and pushing the rest of it down today. Tear it up as best we can, then I'll call George Benning next week."

"George give you a good price?" his father asked.

"Fair enough."

"Why not have Aaron and Ally do it?" Charlie asked. Ally was his mother's brother. A year older than Aaron, who was ten years older than Charlie. Aaron and Ally, from all the stories Charlie had heard, were the real reason his great-uncle and great-grandfather weren't too fussed over Charlie's bout of destruction.

At his age, Aaron and Ally had put the big red tractor into the pond. Sunk to the axles in mud, Paw-Paw had had to rent a bulldozer to get the tractor out of the pond. By their standard, Charlie was pretty mild.

"We need the thing finished two weeks from now, three at the most. I want to make the June auction, end of the month, so we need the pen to work the cattle." Levi laughed. "Ally wouldn't have any problem doing the welding, but George's crew will get it done in a couple days. Ally and Aaron would take a couple weeks at best."

"If you can get him," Paw-Paw added. "Ally's been on that new pipeline in Harlingen, they're working him sixteen hours a day."

Charlie had ridden in Ally's pipeline truck, a three-ton Ford rigged out with all the tools a pipeline welder and his fitter needed. The company expected Ally to be there whenever, wherever needed.

After Mom and Charlie's step-dad divorced the summer before, Charlie had moved in with his great-grandparents. Almost a year now; Ally had taken the pipeline job at about the same time. Since then, Ally had made it back to Lake Charles about one weekend in a month. "Maw-Maw says he's going to end up coming home with a senorita."

Levi and Paw-Paw laughed. "We'll know when that happens," Paw-Paw replied. "That'll be when we don't see him at all for six months."

"And then we'll be going to the wedding," Levi added. "Let's go get the tractor."

That afternoon was consumed with the pen. Charlie drove the tractor, most of the time. It had a hand throttle, and the clutch and brakes were under opposite feet. Besides, he'd had more experience with the tractor.

Levi made him step down when some of the older posts broke at the ground, instead of pushing free of the dirt. "I'll do this one. There's only about a hundred things that can go wrong with this part."

Charlie saw why when his uncle popped the clutch on one of the corner posts. The middle posts, the couple of them that snapped clean, their stumps pulled free under the tractor's torque as easy as a rotten tooth.

The corner posts didn't. They wrapped the chain, then Paw-Paw and Charlie backed off, well clear. When Levi was satisfied they weren't in danger of catching the chain in their teeth, he revved the hand throttle up, foot pressed on the clutch, and then popped it free.

The corner stump held under the stress, for just the least second. Long enough for the front wheels of the tractor to come off the ground, as the engine and the post fought for first fall. Charlie's heart jumped. He stepped forward, his Paw-Paw reached an arm across, "Hold it, kid, he's ok," and then the post stump lost the wrestling match.

The tractor settled back down onto its wheels, and Levi and machine and stump shot across the grass, the big square creosote-soaked piece of wood rolling in a big arc as Levi turned the tractor.

He eased the throttle down, and backed into place, in front of the second stump. When Charlie had cleared the chain and then wrapped it around the second corner stub, Levi nodded. "See what I mean?" he asked Charlie.

"Yes, sir." Charlie and Paw-Paw stepped away, and Levi repeated the performance. This time, Charlie knew what to look for.

It still seemed like this stump took longer. Like it held an extra heartbeat, just to remind the cowboy on the seat that he'd wrapped himself into a risky endeavor.

Levi and his father and the young man finished pulling and pushing by the time the sun signalled it was time to wrap things up for the day. "I'll go in and get something started for dinner, son. You stay here and help Levi clean up."

"Paw-Paw went in to cook dinner, I guess," Levi said, when the debris pile was as ordered as a pile of broken wood, rusted iron, and plenty of red dirt, could get. "Tractor's fine here, let's get the chain back in the box, and then you and I can go get cleaned up."

"What about all the stuff in the back of Paw-Paw's truck?" Charlie asked.

"Tomorrow. Can you get the tailgate closed?"

The tailgate was bent and ugly, but the hinges worked, and the latch held.

"He's not gonna care about it," Levi said, pulling another diet Coke from the ice chest. He stood there, leaning over the truck and using ice water from the ice chest to mop his face.

That looked so good, Charlie climbed into the back of the truck so he could do the same thing. He got a Coke, though. He'd tried the diet Coke, Levi had switched to that as his daytime drink just over the past couple of years. But the diet drink tasted almost too sweet to Charlie. Here under the sun, there was something about the Coke, damn near frozen, he almost drained the can before he could stop himself.

"Probably should have taken a break. Don't be afraid to stop and get something to drink, kid, it's goddamned hot out here."

Charlie remembered the summer before, pulling frozen gallon milk jugs of water from the stand-up freezer in the house, then running them to Levi or Paw-Paw on the tractor while they cut, raked, and baled the hay. "I remember."

"Good. How's Paw-Paw doing?"

Charlie thought his great-grandfather seemed just fine.

But Paw-Paw was seventy-two this year. And he'd had a stroke, or something, a couple years before Charlie was born. Levi's question was the first time Charlie connected Paw-Paw his great-grandfather to that most terrifying of things, mortality. "He looks good. Do you want me to keep an eye on him?"

"Yep." Levi fished a can of Skoal out the pocket of his overalls.

Levi had quit smoking when his father had, after the stroke, Charlie had figured out. The stash of cigarettes in the camp kitchen were there for when Levi broke down, otherwise he'd made the switch.

When he finished putting the dip into his mouth, Levi put the can back in his pocket. "You'll do better with the truck, I think. The only trick to it, it's just like the tractor. Don't get in a hurry, and don't be afraid to go slow, with your foot on the brake. The fast stuff will come later."

Charlie nodded. The two of them loaded up, Charlie in his Paw-Paw's truck, Levi in his, and they drove back to the camp.

Charlie didn't idle the truck the five hundred yards or so it took to get there from the pen.

But he didn't do much more than brush the accelerator, either.

The summer flew by, that one as thirteen became fourteen, and school started back up again. Hay cutting, cutting up; Charlie went back and forth between Dad and Mom's family. Talked to his mom on the phone on a semi-regular basis. She'd taken a job that put her on the road, audits. So she'd parked him with her grandmother. Not that he minded.

He listened for the marsh to speak to him again. He felt it, often. A brush up against his mind, a weight that never quite lifted. A point on the compass, as much as anything. He could point to it, anywhere he ran the three-wheeler, tractor. Increasingly, by August, the truck.

Charlie had more or less forgotten that the world of high school barreled down the road. Two weeks before that started, he had marching band to come back to. But even that still let him take off to the camp on the weekends. The only real difference was that he wasn't at his Dad's during the week.

"Are you ready for it?" Dad asked him.

Charlie didn't now the answer to that question. Not for sure. "I don't know. I guess so."

"Just be ready to work. The rest of it takes care of itself." Dad gave him a hug, an awkward one. "Tell your grandmother I said hello."

"Yes, sir." Charlie got down in Maw-Maw's driveway, wondering again why even his parents now had the habit of great-grandmother as grandmother. It was more funny than anything else, Charlie figured. He'd just have to make sure he never said anything to Grandma about it.

Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw were waiting for him. Should have been, last Friday before band camp started, he'd be headed to the camp with Uncle Levi... whose truck wasn't parked across the street at the shop. 'Where in the hell are they?' Charlie asked himself.

The door was locked. He tried it, nope, it really was locked. For the first time ever, as far as Charlie remembered. The way he'd always known it, you made the drive into Lake Charles from wherever you came from. Late night, early morning. It didn't matter, you pulled in, and maybe there'd be a hundred cars lining the street, maybe there'd only be Maw-Maw's car in the garage, but either way you just opened the door and walked in.

Until you didn't. The garage door was closed. Another first. He tried that, but they'd just installed a garage door opener a couple years ago, the manual lock had seized shut years before that. Because no one ever needed to use it. Charlie started to walk around to the back door.

Then he stopped himself and went to the shop first. Crossed the street, look for cars, Friday afternoon and people would be loose soon enough, don't get run over. "Hey, Miss Agnes, where did everybody go?"

Agnes Underlook ran the front office at Uncle Levi's shop. After what happened with Aunt Grace, she'd taken over the behind the scenes stuff, too. In Charlie's estimation, she'd become much more of the shop, at least the way outsiders interacted with it. And she'd become more part of the family doing it, too. "Your Maw-Maw took off for Houston, sweetie. She's going to visit her cousin, hmm, let me see if I remember..."

"Aunt Edith, and Uncle Lemore. They live about an hour north of town, just outside of Spring." Edith and Lemore came into Lake Charles a lot more often than Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw went that way. "Why'd they change?"

"Maw-Maw said it's too damned hot to cook for you bunch, so she's going vacation." Spend enough time within meeting distance of Charlie's great-grandmother, and she became everyone's Maw-Maw.

Charlie laughed at that. "I guess I'm lucky she didn't head to Mexico." Which was the last real vacation his great-grandparents had taken, almost ten years ago. Charlie barely remembered anything of it, but there were plenty of pictures of Paw-Paw's fishing trip, and Maw-Maw riding a horse through the middle of the little town they'd stayed in. "What about Uncle Levi? He doesn't usually leave until about three?"

"Took off this morning, sweetie. Grace is off on one of her church trips, we're pretty caught up here, so your uncle said he might as well get an early start."

Charlie's shoulders slumped. Dad was headed out to Lafayette on a service call; Charlie remembered the name of the restaurant, if he had to he could call the place and get ahold of him. Or Ophelia, but she was at work, too. She was working for a contractor, one Uncle Levi subbed for on occasion, she wasn't all that far, actually, if he had to he could...

But no. Oh, he could kill time here, Agnes probably wouldn't mind...

"What's wrong, Charlie?"

"I'm staying with Maw-Maw, Miss Agnes. And I don't have a key."

"Oh, lord. And you usually go up to the camp with Levi, on the weekends?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"There are times... I think the world of your family, child, but the whole damned bunch of them would wander off and leave their heads on the shelf, given the chance."

Charlie shrugged. "It's ok, Miss Agnes. I haven't checked the back door yet."

Agnes nodded at that, her face puzzled but calm. "Good point. I'm sure your great-grandmother has done many things in her life, but forgetting a kid doesn't sound like her. Go see if it's open, sweetie, and come let me know one way or another."

Charlie didn't tell Agnes about the time his Maw-Maw had left him sleeping in the middle bedroom, so she could run off and visit with her sister. Or something, Charlie didn't remember the details of it, he'd been only nine months old so he was going by his mom's description of it. Maw-Maw had taken charge of the baby, laid him down for a nap, and then forgot and took off to see her sister.

Charlie's mom and grandmother came in a couple hours later. He'd rolled off the high-sided bed, collected a bruise on his forehead for the trouble, and then taken off across the house. "You didn't complain at all, kiddo. For all I know, you'd have raised yourself just fine."

"Were you pissed?"

"I'd have cut that old lady apart with a butter knife," Mom laughed.

Charlie thought maybe she was joking. But when he considered how he'd have felt in that situation... yeah. He'd have been pretty goddamned mad about it. But it was Maw-Maw, and nobody got hurt. So the anger hadn't lasted.

'Or the memory, either,' Charlie told himself. 'Maybe Mom didn't have any choice, though.'

He peered in the back windows, the utility room, the kitchen. The front bathroom, the corner bedroom. Maw-Maw had storm screens on every window, so Charlie couldn't really see inside.

He enjoyed staying with Dad and Ophelia, Will and Margie. They were fun, they were love.

They were getting on his fucking nerves. Two years in a row now where he'd been there a whole summer. Charlie was glad of their love, and returned it. But he was also mostly an only child, and staying with that many people in one house, night after night... and here was Maw-Maw's house, empty until Sunday evening.

Not a soul would be around, over the weekend. Oh, maybe somebody would drift by. But Levi and Grace were gone, the shop would be locked up until Monday. If someone knocked on the door that he didn't care to see, Charlie could stay quiet and let them go away.

Charlie popped the storm screen loose on the kitchen window. Then he pressed and wiggled, jimmied the window lock.

To get it open, he need a thin-bladed screwdriver. But that was easy. Paw-Paw's shop was twenty yards away, and Charlie knew how to get into that. The lock needed a key; the shop had a window that Charlie could pry open. Even better than a screwdriver, Charlie found a spackling knife. It slid between the window panes, slid the lock aside, like it was the perfect tool for the job.

Charlie climbed in, opened the back door, then shut the window and put the screen back in place. Put the tools back in the shop, closed that window, and walked back to the house. Everything looked normal. He had a second way in, the window he'd left unlocked but with the screen on nobody could tell that. Yep, he'd do just fine staying here. Maw-Maw had more food in the fridge and the freezers than she could ever use. Cokes in the pantry, coffee if he wanted that, and cable television.

He walked around to Levi's shop. By the time he got there, his smile split his face and he almost floated across the road. "She left the back door open for me, Miss Agnes. I guess I'm staying here this weekend."

"Are you sure, sweetie?"

"I'll be just fine. Dad and Ophelia are home this weekend, if anything happens I'll be able to call them. Or Uncle Marion, if I have to."

"You'll be lucky if he picks up the phone, kid. On weekends all I ever get, if I have to call him, is the answering machine. Be careful, sweetie. Oh, and clean up after yourself. You don't want your great-grandmother coming home to a mess."

Charlie ran back across the street, barely looking to see if any cars were coming. He didn't know what the weekend held; all he could think of was that there would be frozen pizzas in the oven, as many Cokes as he could drink, and a three-gallon tub of ice cream in the freezer.

And hours of black and white monster flicks.

A year or so later, and Charlie would probably have found a way to get himself into trouble in a different way. The traditional way, by calling up a friend with a car and going out to look for it. Or maybe staying in and raiding Maw-Maw's pantry, where she kept the liquor bottles.

As it was, the trouble Charlie got into that weekend started in the back yard.

Charlie made epic work of the frozen pizzas, the little kind that a growing teenager needs two of just to get to pleasantly full. Maw-Maw had half a dozen of those, and a couple of the larger ones. During the school year, she liked to take those out for an easy dinner for the three of them.

Charlie kept Agnes's admonition in mind. When the pizzas were safely in the oven, he picked up the plastic and the boxes and tossed them in the trash. Trash day was Wednesday, so he didn't have to worry about that this weekend.

He just had to empty the food bowl Maw-Maw kept on the counter. That's where the cantaloupe rinds and the apple cores went. Plus the couple of pieces of pizza that Charlie couldn't quite make himself finish. There was no garbage disposal, so all the plates got scraped into the bowl before they headed for the sink and the dishwasher.

And the bowl went out to the raccoons. Paw-Paw owned about ten acres, with the road the parish had made him put in going right through the middle of it. The shop and Levi's house were on the south side of the road, along with an elementary school at the very end of the property, Paw-Paw had donated that bit to the parish, too.

On the north side, the house and a barn, plus a pasture, garden, and pig pen. One of Charlie's jobs this past year had to get out before dawn and shoot the rabbits that raided Paw-Paw's garden. Since Marcy graduated, the horse she'd used to ride barrels, Red, a big gelding, had been retired to the camp. His only job now was to join in when they worked cattle.

Here, Paw-Paw didn't have any pigs this year. No chickens, either, so the raccoons were the sole recipients of the food bowl garbage.

The back of the property was a huge thicket; two hundred or more acres of parish land, where the high voltage lines for the parish ran through. Those were a good two or three hundred yards away from the family property, though, and most of that stretch grew wild. Marsh trees, oak and gum trees mostly, with a scattered handful of pines. Coyotes lived there, most likely, the possums and the raccoons and the rabbits most definitely.

Charlie had waited until almost dark to start his pizzas cooking. By the time he'd stuffed himself and cleaned the debris, it was well after dark.

Abbott and Costello were busy chasing the Wolfman, or vice versa. Charlie let them get to it so he could clean the kitchen. Ahead of the ice cream massacre he had planned for later. But none of that would be heading out to the raccoons. So he gave the kitchen his best Maw-Maw look, the once over with the rag in one hand and a critical eye to survey the work, and then he took the bowl out to empty in the accustomed spot.

This was a big beech tree Paw-Paw had left in place when he'd cleared the property. Just behind it, but not all the way around, at ten or eleven o'clock, say, from the back porch, where Maw-Maw could sit quietly with a glass of tea and watch the little boogers go at it, Charlie dumped the bowl.

He'd done it enough finding the right spot was easy. But he'd have known it, in the daytime at least, from the scattered bits and pieces. Broken nibs of pork chop bones, coffee grounds, the little markers the banded pirates had scattered from their nightly feasts.

Charlie didn't call out to them; Maw-Maw did that. These were the closest pets she had, now that she didn't keep chickens. And she was terrified of dogs and cats. Which Charlie thought was kind of odd, she'd grown up on a farm, spent her entire life, more or less, keeping a farm, and dogs and cats are the ones she's afraid of?

He'd have to ask somebody about that, there had to be a story. But tonight, he settled for dumping the bowl and heading back inside.

The bowl he wiped with a paper towel, to get the coffee grounds and the gooey bits that wouldn't quite let go of the stainless, before he washed it and set it back in its place.

Then he went back to catch up with Abbott and Costello. The boys had apparently had a good time of it, because they were busy running from an invisible man holding a cigarette. "Good thing I've already seen it," Charlie told the tv.

But there were plenty more running. And now that the clock on Friday evening was running down, the shows coming down the pike were a little more of what Charlie thought of as "real horror", not the stuff that he could have watched with Will. Cat People, the black and white one, came on next. "Cool," Charlie said. He'd seen the remake, a staple of Elvira's show, but this was the first time Charlie remembered catching the original.

There was microwave popcorn, ice cream, and a horror movie on the tv. Charlie couldn't remember the last time he'd had this kind of night. Or maybe if he'd ever really had this kind of night.

The noise intruded on Charlie's moment. Low, soft. Low-pitched, at first. Then, the noise built. Louder.

Higher in pitch. Screaming. Charlie broke away from the movie and ran to the kitchen window.

Like Maw-Maw, Charlie had left only the light over the stove on. He'd be a shadow, he hoped the little bulb wouldn't be enough to outline him to the backyard. He looked first to the beech tree.

It had to be the raccons, fighting. Maybe a neighborhood cat got in the middle... he counted three shadows. Still dark forms.

Two smaller ones. And something larger. The light streaming from the kitchen, almost the yellow of a kerosene lantern in the late summer night, was too much, it showed Charlie some, but not enough to let him see beyond the mass of them.

They faced off over the food dump. That much he could make out. The smaller two closed in over the food, crouched in place and facing the back, the woods.

Where the larger form lurked. Just inside the trees and tall marsh grasses. It wove in and out, teasing whatever watched.

The noises stopped. Charlie figured they'd all seen his shadow moving across the backyard. He stood still, waiting.

The noises came back. Started in low and quiet, again. Growls, Charlie now understood, from the racoons standing guard over their meal. Then, building up, louder and higher to the scream.

As the larger shadow pushed out from the woods. Just far enough to ramp up the screeching. And then it faded back between the trees, until the low growls returned.

"Big dog," Charlie told himself. "Or maybe a coyote." He'd seen the signs of it, or them. A pack of dogs roamed the area, strays and orphans who'd made a living from the boundaries. The woods were dense and large enough to keep animal control from chasing them down. Whenever Maw-Maw or Aunt Grace called the cops, they'd show up, but the dogs would be gone. Trash raiders, and when they'd had chickens, hen killers if they could get away with it.

Since it was a rare dog to have any interest in vegetables, Charlie had been glad his Paw-Paw hadn't made him go out and shoot dogs. No need yet and thank God for that. Rabbits he could handle, if nothing else the fricasee Maw-Maw had made of the first batch he'd hunted from Paw-Paw's garden, last fall after the frost drove off their worms, had made him a lot more comfortable with the whole thing. But he wasn't much interested in shooting dogs.

If it was a dog. The raccoons had finally calmed down, quieted down to return to dinner. The only sound coming through now was the tv from the front room, and the cicadas winding up to helicopter levels.

Until it added its voice. This one started loud and got worse. A high cry, blinding scream, a woman finding her child dead scream, a thing to bury itself into the back of your skull and rattle your spinal cord loose scream. Charlie clutched the kitchen table, his fingers pulling now, on the table cover and then the wood beneath. Until his knuckles ached.

Whatever it was, it sounded just like a woman's scream, only ten times, a hundred times louder, penetrating. It locked his muscles into place. Only Charlie's mind ran, like a rat in a maze ran, back and forth, in circles, hunting for something that could tell him what the hell that thing was what in God's name could sound like that.

When it stopped, the first time, at last, Charlie thought of a cougar. A swamp cat, Paw-Paw had said you could hear them for miles when they screamed like that.

His mind threatened now to just blow it off. He knew what it was, now, and sure it was scary as all hell, the cougar screaming like that right outside the back door. But the big cats were shy, swamp cat panther shadow moving back into the woods it wouldn't have anything to do with... only why had it come so close, then? Back in the woods, ok, right up in the thicket, but the house was right here, and the lights, and sure Charlie was by himself...

It had been just more than a year since Charlie had first felt the touch of the spirit of that marsh, up by Levi's camp. He was a book kid, a story kid, he'd more than read enough of those over his life to have dreamt of touching another world. And he'd found it.

What Charlie's other grandmother, his Dad's mom, called the quiet world. But she'd never said that in front of Charlie, every time he'd heard anything it had been because she'd said it to Nicole, his oldest cousin. The one who was supposed to take on the secrets, Charlie figured. All he'd ever heard was that Dad had learned healing tricks, little things that helped burns, bruises, cuts. And that Nicole had learned to see, the future and the past and the present.

And that "It skips a generation." Which explained Nicole being the one Granny taught.

Charlie had blown all that off. Until last year. Every time he went to the camp now, he understood that the quiet world was there. Doing its own thing, moving along just out of sight, out of mind.

Except, apparently, when the worlds needed to meet.

But that was there, at the camp, not here in the mundane world. Charlie had dreamt and thought of that place and the touches of it on his mind. But he hadn't dared to dream it was anything other than one very special place he'd been allowed to glimpse and meet. Once.

Until tonight.

It happened when she screamed again.

When Charlie listened now to the vibrations of the bones at the base of his neck, her screams prying at those bones, tearing he was falling to the floor because she wanted to insert herself into his mind and... it was a she. She was a she, and she was a cougar because that was what Charlie's mind had conjured. Sitting on the couch, watching the old movie about shapechangers, he'd given her form and ideas and she'd taken it.

And now she was going to take him. As reward. The racoons, scant defence that they'd been, were gone. He didn't even have the obnoxious warning sign they'd given him.

She held him there. She came to the beech tree, just out of the light. A shadow against shadows, she waited for him. Why, she hungers and she calls for him so Charlie stepped to the back door.

He opened it, ignored the nerves and the way his hands and knees didn't want to work. His body heard the scream and felt the hunger and wanted to go anywhere but here. Or just slump in place. What it didn't want to do was listen and walk through the door to the back porch. Charlie forced his body and mind to do it anyway.

He walked, step after step, across the concrete. Hedges marked the edge of the back porch, a part of him pretended these were enough. That she'd have to come over, around, through the waist-high plants and that would give him time to run.

His mind knew better but they were all here together, bub, what you gonna do now?

Her hunger crept in and took over. The primal urge enveloped him, a hard hot blanket of need.

Standing at the edge of the porch, he saw her teeth flash in the light; she yawned, grinned to give him the full view. Fangs. And then she came for him.

Blink of an eye and she should have been over the hedge row in a bound. The form she'd chosen could leap the gap without touching a single leaf of the tree. He was less quick than a deer, he was prey and he was standing there, ignorant of what he'd stepped into. She leapt.

And crashed to the ground, still beyond the light, beyond the beech tree and the raccoons' feeding spot. She yowled, and the sound of it etched itself on Charlie's nerves. She jumped now, strong enough to clear the hedge and the porch roof and go all the way to the roof of the house.

And went nowhere. She crashed back down to earth, closer still to the woods and the boundary. She screamed frustration now, and this was fire burning Charlie's mind and drowning out all sight and sound until nothing but her anger and hunger existed.

'I will not fear in this house,' Charlie whispered. And this was a difficult thing to say. An impossible thing to believe, as her anger rolled over him, as she crouched for another jump. But he said it anyway. And said it again. "I have nothing to fear in this house, in this place."

He said it, and for just an instant the fear lessened. Not enough for Charlie to be brave, not yet.

But enough to know it was fear, of her and her hunger, that gave her the route into his mind. So he held his fear, closed it in, took it, accepted it because fear was from Charlie. No one else could give him himself, she could bare her fangs she could scream and tear at his mind she could throw the taste of him, the blood and the hot salty sweet delight of it the way she'd enjoy it and savor it for eons, that she could do. Induce.

But that fear was his. And here, in this place, under this roof, in this grass that he cut twice a week at the height of summer when the Gulf rains came on every afternoon and that was the only way to keep the stuff from turning the house into a hay lot. She stood there where he and his great-grandmother called in the raccoons and the possums and made them part of the family and she threatened him.

She claimed him as her own, under a tree he'd climbed since he could walk? Charlie let his fear bleed, let it overwhelm him, let it come up and blind him to where he stood and who, what stood in front of him ready to consume him. Charlie took that fear.

And he forged it, hammered it, with every step and every breath. He walked around the hedge that she couldn't jump to. Through the light and into the darkness and by the time he stood a hot breath's distance away from her... when he said "You are powerless in this my house. I have nothing to fear from you."

He said it, even as he tasted her own saliva from the tongue lolling out over her fangs and felt the panting breath on his face. He said it, knew it for truth, and he reached out his hand and told her, "Go."

She had no place here. And now she knew it. But she didn't move. Here, Charlie shared her shadows, the kitchen light was nothing but a memory. His eyes adjusted now, and he saw her. A magnificent mountain lion, cougar, but the black on black of a panther. She grinned at him, stretched her tongue out, almost within his reach. Enough so he could see her drool coating tongue and teeth. Close enough so his mind imagined it dripping down, hot and thick, as she feasted on his corpse.

Charlie took one more step. Close enough, he would breech whatever barrier now his mind screamed at her tongue would wrap around his hand trembled and she stretched and stood and bent her mouth and claws to grasp him.

Between them was only air. Bridged by a faint few drops of saliva, falling from her teeth onto the back of his hands.

In his mind, in his spirit, she grabbed him sank her teeth and claws into him drilled her hunt and hunger into his mind he was a deer prey food and she took away something of him in a tearing grinding bite of his mind and heart and soul she pulled it from the center of him where these things meet.

She touched down on all fours, a very large cat frustrated, admitting it, and now she was ignoring him, walking away into the night and wherever it is that she'd come from. Charlie realized she'd left him something, given him a glimpse of herself, that this was a place of excursion, her part of the quiet world lay distant from this part of the city and the parish. Her home was where? He didn't know, she was out of place and knew it.

But she took a piece of him with her. His mind insisted that the shadow weaving between the trees and the grass held a chunk of meat, dripping, bloody, in her jaws. Somewhere in the boundary region, his mind saw even as his eyes told him she was nowhere to be seen, she clawed her way into the branches of the only black oak in a thicket of white and live oaks. And she feasted on what she had stolen. Staring at him, grinning between bites.

Charlie shuddered, and the fear that he thought he'd mastered and forged into bravery turned to vapor, just like that. He stumbled back inside, quick quick almost ran back inside, and fell on the couch.

On the tv, the black and white movie gave way to the more recent color remake. Charlie looked for the remote, desparate to change the channel or turn up the volume and drown in the flickering horror of it he knew not which.

"Our time has begun, Charlie LeBleu. We will meet again, boy. Do not forget."

She whispered her promise into his mind. And for the first time, Charlie knew that what she had taken from him was something very real.

The weekend passed into the week. Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw came home Sunday afternoon, and she lit into Charlie as soon as she walked into the house. "You stayed here this whole time? You should have gone to your dad's house!"

Paw-Paw laughed her off. "She's just pissed because she forgot you were coming home, son. Don't worry about it. Just watch your step for a couple of weeks, make sure you don't piss her off more."