Read a sample of John Connolly's latest novel, the unforgettable and utterly absorbing thriller The Children of Eve.
Chapter II
To the north now: cold, and bitter to boot because of the wind, but with an end to winter in sight at last. A thaw promised in the week ahead, and spring to advance gingerly in its wake, sidestepping puddles of foul water, all dark and oily, and mounds of compacted snow and ice, more black than white, that might linger until April, like the vestiges of some defeated army skulking in the aftermath of capitulation.
But that was to come. For the present, the dying season was making its final stand: a fresh freeze, with black ice on the minor roads, thin skeins of it on the water where the Nonesuch skirted the banks, and a mist obscuring the Scarborough marshes, as of the smoke of musket and cannon after a fusillade. Such stillness, broken only by a car driving along Black Point Road, its driver taking the curves carefully, the beams of the headlights lent solidity by the vapor, so that it would not have been so surprising had they shattered upon encountering some obstacle in their path. Two figures in the car, were anyone present to observe: a man and woman, the latter driving, the former snoring. They were both middle-aged and long married, for better or – periodically (whisper it) – worse. Music was playing, and the car was cooler than was comfortable; the woman was afraid of joining the man in sleep, and the nip kept her alert. They were almost home, though, and she drove by instinct, as though the car were not powered by an engine but pulled by horses familiar with the route, the scent of the stable in their nostrils.
‘Jesus!’
The woman slammed hard on the brakes. Had her companion not been wearing his seat belt, he might already have been bleeding.
‘What is it?’
Now he was wide awake, and about time too, in her opinion. He’d slept since Kittery, aided by three beers, a pizza, and exposure to the conversation of friends who’d interested her more than him.
‘A child,’ she said, ‘a little girl. She ran across the road in front of me.’
The woman opened the car door and stepped into the night.
‘What are you doing?’ her husband asked. ‘It’s freezing out there.’
‘I’m telling you, I saw a child.’
Reluctantly, he exited the car and watched as his wife crossed the road and peered into the gloom.
‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Honey, are you okay?’
But there was no reply and no movement.
‘I don’t want to say you imagined it—’ her husband began.
‘Then don’t.’
He closed his mouth, keeping any swearing to himself. Black Point Road was empty, with no other cars visible. Houses stood some way ahead and behind, but here it was marsh on both sides. He joined her as she moved onto the grass, and was alert enough to spot the depression she failed to notice, so fixed was her gaze on the landscape beyond, or what little of it could be discerned in the fog.
‘Careful!’
He grabbed her by the arm just as she began to slip, and the two of them nearly ended up on the ground. She stepped back onto the road. Behind them, the car beeped a warning about the open door on the driver’s side. If another vehicle did come along, it might well take off the door as it passed, and he’d be the one nominated to explain the damage to the insurance company. He recrossed and pushed the door mostly closed, but didn’t let it click. He’d once managed to lock a rental car with the motor running and the keys still inside – don’t ask – and his wife had never let him forget it, just as she’d never let him forget the time he went swimming with the keys of another rental car tied to the string on his swim shorts, which hadn’t ended well either. Add to that the occasion on which he’d lost the key of their own car while walking the dog, and you had an explanation for why the key was now kept on a lanyard, which he was under orders to wear around his neck if it wasn’t actually in the ignition.
When he looked back, she was using the flashlight on her cell phone to search the marsh, but she might as well have struck a match for all the good it was doing in the fog.
‘Hello?’ she said again, but he could hear from her tone that she was beginning to doubt herself. He was sure, or pretty sure, that she’d briefly nodded off – one of those microsleeps drivers were constantly being warned about – and the child was part of a dream. He went for pretty sure because, well, there were stories, incidents, call them what you will, about the area between Route 1 and Prouts Neck, many of them involving a child, or a child and her mother: glimpses, flashes, but no more. He generally ascribed them to Mainers wanting to put the frighteners on flatlanders like him and his wife. They and their three kids had been living in Scarborough for nine years, ever since the bank had offered her a promotion if she moved to Maine from Boston. They’d done their best to involve themselves in the life of the community, but rarely did a week go by without some old fart reminding them of their roots elsewhere or asking them how they were ‘settling in’, when their eldest daughter had already made it through middle and high school and was now studying at Bowdoin. Those coots could take a running jump with their stories as far as he was concerned, but there were others, men whom he trusted not to bullshit him, who’d mentioned catching sight of figures on Ferry Beach or Western Beach when the night was clear. A woman and a child, seen and then gone.
His wife stared at him, and he knew from experience, born of twenty-two years of marriage, that she was thinking the same thing.
‘Let her go,’ he said softly.
She killed the flashlight on her phone and put it away. Her husband thought she might be close to tears, so he hugged her.
‘I wonder who she is,’ she said. ‘I wonder why she stays here.’
‘I guess she must have her reasons.’
‘I guess she must.’
They got back in the car and resumed their journey. Neither glanced at the driveway they passed on the left, or the silhouette of the house barely visible at its end, a single lamp burning in one of its windows, and only when they were safely departed did the ghost of a child again begin walking in the direction of the light.
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