possible, perhaps he had left the warehouse and returned to the hunt. He might be with the boy now, ready to confront the kidnapper when the creep showed up to collect his captive.
For a two-bit philosopher full of smug homilies about the danger of investing too much emotional capital in mere hope, I was laboring mightily to build another of those gossamer bridges.
I drew a deep breath, but before I could shout again, Orson barked twice.
At least I assumed it was Orson. For all I knew, it could have been the Hound of the Baskervilles. I wasn’t able to determine the direction from which the sound had come.
I called to him once more.
No response.
“Patience,” I counseled myself.
I waited. Sometimes there is nothing to be done but wait. Most times, in fact. We like to think we operate the loom that weaves the future, but the only foot on that treadle is the foot of fate.
In the distance, the dog barked again, ferociously this time.
I got a fix on the sound and ran toward it, from serviceway to serviceway, from shadow to shadow, among abandoned warehouses that loomed as massive and black and cold as temples to the cruel gods of lost religions, then into a broad paved area that might have been a parking lot or a staging area for trucks delivering freight.
I had run a considerable distance, leaving the pavement and plunging through knee-high grass lush from the recent rains, when the moon rolled over in its bed. By the light that came through the disarranged covers, I saw ranks of low structures less than half a mile away. These were the small houses once occupied by the married military personnel and their families who preferred on-base living.
Although the barking had stopped, I kept moving, certain that Orson—and perhaps Jimmy—could be found ahead. The grass ended at a cracked sidewalk. I leaped across a gutter choked with dead leaves, scraps of paper, and other debris, into a street lined on both sides with enormous old Indian laurels. Half the trees were flourishing, and the moonlit pavement under them was dappled with leaf shadows, but an equal number were dead, clawing at the sky with gnarled black branches.
The barking rose once more, closer but still not near enough to be precisely located. This time it was punctuated by yawps, yelps—and then a squeal of pain.
My heart knocked against my ribs harder than it had when I’d been dodging the two-by-four, and I was gasping for breath.
The avenue I followed led among the dreary rows of decaying, single-story houses. Branching from it was a large but orderly grid of other streets.
More barking, another squeal, then silence.
I stopped in the middle of the street, turning my head left and right, listening intently, trying to control my labored wheezing. I waited for more battle sounds.
The living trees were as still as those that were leafless and rotting.
The breath I’d outrun caught up with me quickly. But as I grew quiet, the night grew even quieter.
In its current condition, Fort Wyvern is most comprehensible to me if I think of it as a theme park, a twisted Disneyland created by Walt Disney’s evil twin. Here the guiding themes are not magic and wonder but weirdness and menace, a celebration not of life but of death.
As Disneyland is divided into territories—Main Street USA, Tomorrowland, Adventureland, Fantasyland—Wyvern is composed of many attractions. These three thousand small houses and associated buildings, among which I now stood, constitute the “land” that I call Dead Town. If ghosts walked in any neighborhood of Fort Wyvern, this would be the place where they would choose to do their haunting.
No sound was louder than the moon pulling the clouds around itself once more.
5
As though I had crossed into the land of the dead without having the good manners to die first, I slowly drifted spirit-silent along the starlit street, seeking some sign of Orson. So profoundly hushed and lonely was the night, so preternaturally still, I
For a two-bit philosopher full of smug homilies about the danger of investing too much emotional capital in mere hope, I was laboring mightily to build another of those gossamer bridges.
I drew a deep breath, but before I could shout again, Orson barked twice.
At least I assumed it was Orson. For all I knew, it could have been the Hound of the Baskervilles. I wasn’t able to determine the direction from which the sound had come.
I called to him once more.
No response.
“Patience,” I counseled myself.
I waited. Sometimes there is nothing to be done but wait. Most times, in fact. We like to think we operate the loom that weaves the future, but the only foot on that treadle is the foot of fate.
In the distance, the dog barked again, ferociously this time.
I got a fix on the sound and ran toward it, from serviceway to serviceway, from shadow to shadow, among abandoned warehouses that loomed as massive and black and cold as temples to the cruel gods of lost religions, then into a broad paved area that might have been a parking lot or a staging area for trucks delivering freight.
I had run a considerable distance, leaving the pavement and plunging through knee-high grass lush from the recent rains, when the moon rolled over in its bed. By the light that came through the disarranged covers, I saw ranks of low structures less than half a mile away. These were the small houses once occupied by the married military personnel and their families who preferred on-base living.
Although the barking had stopped, I kept moving, certain that Orson—and perhaps Jimmy—could be found ahead. The grass ended at a cracked sidewalk. I leaped across a gutter choked with dead leaves, scraps of paper, and other debris, into a street lined on both sides with enormous old Indian laurels. Half the trees were flourishing, and the moonlit pavement under them was dappled with leaf shadows, but an equal number were dead, clawing at the sky with gnarled black branches.
The barking rose once more, closer but still not near enough to be precisely located. This time it was punctuated by yawps, yelps—and then a squeal of pain.
My heart knocked against my ribs harder than it had when I’d been dodging the two-by-four, and I was gasping for breath.
The avenue I followed led among the dreary rows of decaying, single-story houses. Branching from it was a large but orderly grid of other streets.
More barking, another squeal, then silence.
I stopped in the middle of the street, turning my head left and right, listening intently, trying to control my labored wheezing. I waited for more battle sounds.
The living trees were as still as those that were leafless and rotting.
The breath I’d outrun caught up with me quickly. But as I grew quiet, the night grew even quieter.
In its current condition, Fort Wyvern is most comprehensible to me if I think of it as a theme park, a twisted Disneyland created by Walt Disney’s evil twin. Here the guiding themes are not magic and wonder but weirdness and menace, a celebration not of life but of death.
As Disneyland is divided into territories—Main Street USA, Tomorrowland, Adventureland, Fantasyland—Wyvern is composed of many attractions. These three thousand small houses and associated buildings, among which I now stood, constitute the “land” that I call Dead Town. If ghosts walked in any neighborhood of Fort Wyvern, this would be the place where they would choose to do their haunting.
No sound was louder than the moon pulling the clouds around itself once more.
5
As though I had crossed into the land of the dead without having the good manners to die first, I slowly drifted spirit-silent along the starlit street, seeking some sign of Orson. So profoundly hushed and lonely was the night, so preternaturally still, I
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