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  When all about us have lost it, why are Ray and I still functional? Why, in a community of one hundred, are we the only ones with the guts— no, the psychic energy— to come outside? Granted, the sun burns hotter every day and nights are cold and dark and, OK, scary. Nobody with any sense wants to come out in this, but Ray and I are driven, and not just by our wants, I don’t think.

  We’re driven by need.

  I need to get back to Davy or to get Davy back, I’m not sure which, all I know is that to settle this, to talk it through, we need to stand so close that we can see inside each other’s heads.

  Ray won’t tell me what, exactly, pushed him to the edge where he balances so neatly, taut as a ropewalker. “Urgent business at home,” he told me the one time I asked. He wouldn’t specify, only, “Tell you about it after. Not here.” He was tendering the unspoken agreement.

  I signed and sealed it. “Not here.”

  OK then. We’ll keep at it until we beat the game, crack the code, uncover the plot or trap one of our keepers and shake the truth out of him. We’ll arm ourselves, fight to the death if we have to— whatever it takes to crack out of this weird existential jail.

  We meet at the tag end of most days, after the desert plunges into darkness but before the deep night chill drives us back inside. We scope out new areas. We speculate and collude, and for whatever reasons, the organizers of this— what, experiment in living? Psychological study? Sadistic peepshow?— let it play. The organizers or monitors or keepers, whatever they are, don’t interfere. Unless they don’t notice. Or they notice and don’t care. Unless this is part of their plan. Speculation feeds on itself and we worry the question to death: if there’s a plan, what, exactly, is the plan?

  Shrouded in the blankets from our narrow beds, Ray and I look like a couple of kids out playing ghost, so it’s not like we’re hard to spot. In the territory beyond the plaza, there are cameras in every block. Clearly they know we’re out here, but in the last three weeks nobody, armed or unarmed, has come out to stop us and no automated thing has rolled out to intercept and herd us back inside.

  After that first venture we cut holes in our blankets and made ponchos so we could come out in the dark without turning to ice and shattering on the spot. Fresh blankets appeared in our cubbies the day after we vandalized ours, but the makeshift ponchos stayed where we put them, along with the layers we’ve added since. Neatly folded replacements show up on our beds with creepy regularity. Are they trying to warn us or encourage us or reprogram us, organize us, or what?

  The cameras can follow us, but only up to a point. There’s an island of shadow on every street, the place where circles of light don’t quite meet, and Ray Powell and I take a different route to a new island of darkness every night. We meet regularly for tense, whispered exchanges and so far, nobody’s intervened, not our neighbors cowering in their houses and none of our handlers— if there are handlers— and nobody in the audience— if there is an audience.

  We talk in circles. Speculation and escape plans chase each other’s tails so fast that like time, everything blurs. Sometimes I think we’re contestants picked from some vast studio audience and called onstage, front and center, to star in some monstrous reality show. “Like, they’ll give us all cars and lifetime cash prizes if we win.” I hear my voice cracking, “You know, push the right button, take down the enemy, break out.”

  Ray says, “Unless they’re running us like rats in a maze.”

  “Or we’re stuck in a gigantic RPG.”

  “A what?”

  “Role-playing game.” Oh, Ray, how old are you? “You know, like giant kids with joysticks are operating us?”

  “You mean messing with our heads.”

  “Oh shit, Ray, what if they end this show or whatever by putting you and me in the plaza and we have to fight to the death?”

  Good old Ray grounds me. “We won’t.”

  “But what if…”

  “No. It’s an experiment. Either they study us and dissect us or it’s a psych thing where they evaluate us and write a report, and when they’re done, we go home…”

  “Changed.” I don’t know why this comes out as a groan.

  “We’re already changed.” This is how he brings me down. “We can sit here mizzling or we can plan.”

  So these nighttime encounters boil down to figuring out what comes next: mounting an escape or, worst-case scenario, getting a message out so no matter how this ends or what becomes of us, somebody will know.

  Until then, there’s this. We go out every night. Whatever our days are like in those sterile houses, Ray and I are free in the night-time world, at least for now, plying back and forth in the dark, exploring our changed lives, and like everything else, this operation runs on hope. Maybe tonight we’ll find one of our handlers or suppliers— whoever keeps this operation running— surprise the bastard at work. In the kitchens, which we have yet to find, or in an office chair in the blockhouse, fixed on banks of monitors. We’ll stalk him and nail him down and hold him until we get answers.

  We search, but the barren desert streets give me the sad, sick feeling that everything is automated here in the bland magic kingdom where days and nights run like clockwork, with everything supplied and everybody but us either scared to go out or drugged or what passes for happy, resolutely staying inside.

  Once we thought we saw a figure darker than the shadows whip around a corner in front of us. Neddy! I had to swallow my heart. I wanted it to be him, I wanted it not to be him because he’s just a kid, not tough enough to be all by himself out here in the cold. I’ve kept him at arm’s length because I have to keep him safe. He’s big for his age but he’s still my baby brother, and too damn young to be trapped in this awful, preternaturally clean place.

  Ray and I slipped around the corner after who or whatever we thought we saw, thinking to follow without him knowing we were following. We skulked along behind the fast-moving shadow, zigzagging all the way from the plaza to the rim, but when we came out of the shadows at the boundary where pavement gives way to the surrounding dune it was dead empty, same as it ever was.

  Again last night I thought I saw him; maybe it was guilt. I hissed, “Neddy!” and gulped it down so he wouldn’t hear. I can’t have him running around out here in the night; we don’t know what’s out here, or what it will do to us. I miss him. I’d give anything to see that grin, but after everything, he won’t want to see me. Sorry, Ned, I owe you an explanation, but first we have to get you home. Then I’ll sit my brother down and explain a lot of things, starting with why I won’t go back into that bleached cube where he and Father stay.

  I can’t talk to my brother there, it might jump-start Father and bring him back to life. As long as the old man is sedated or whatever it is that’s turned him to stone, Neddy will be safe.

  Tonight Ray and I haunt the shadows on yet another street leading away from the plaza, floating uneducated guesses and coming up empty one more time.

  Then Ray grabs my wrist. He doesn’t have to speak: Listen!

  We stop breathing. Ray cranes, trying to see beyond the next corner. I crack my jaws wide, desperate to hear.

  Nobody says, what was that?

  No one has to. The sound is unmistakable; it’s the plastic clunk of a cell phone, hitting cement and skittering to a stop. Startled, somebody rasps in a voice I almost recognize, “Shit!”

  13

  Davy

  Thursday night

  Ray Powell’s house is as fine as any plantation house on St. Helena’s or Pawleys’ Island. From the water, the Azalea Plantation looks so perfect that if you didn’t know, you’d think you’d landed on one of those high-end resort islands where everything runs smoothly and nothing goes wrong.

  It took generations of Powells to create this monument to the way things used to be. Ray’s great-great great-grandfathers built the house in the 1800s and prospered, leaving enough money for Ray to go up north to Charlottesville for college and law school at UVA like his
forefathers, mixing with all the other sons of the South’s first families. Like the other great-greats who settled here, the Powells are obligated.

  It’s a matter of noblesse oblige, the idea being that God put the Powells on Kraven island to be leaders— and to keep the main house at Azalea more or less as it was in 1898. That was the year Augustus Powell gave up planting for politics. On his way to the election that put him in the State House, he brought a Charleston tailor to Kraven to build him a handsome three-piece suit, trimmed his beard into a neat goatee and sold off all but the land between the inlet and the gardens around Azalea House.

  By the time Davy skins out of the water and up on Powell’s dock, he regrets leaving everything but his briefs on Earl’s dock. Red welts are rising on his naked flank: cannonball jellyfish, he thinks. It’s not so bad. Without Earl’s waterproof belt Velcroed to his waist, it would have been worse, so he may be wet and near naked, but he’s OK. As for Kraven island, it looks the same. So does Azalea House. Standing here in front of Ray Powell’s house with its generous porches and wide steps coming down to greet you, you’d never know there was anything wrong on Kraven island. The air’s just as sweet as it was yesterday— God, was it only yesterday?— but the island has gone silent. The gulls are gone. Even the insects and lizards inhabiting the marsh are still. One explosion too many, Davy thinks, because he’s strongly aware that on the other side of Kraven island, authorities from every island and hamlet are dragging the lake. As if his friends and neighbors— his lover!— turned into lemmings, rushing down to the lakefront in a body because they got up at dawn today for no known reason, thinking to hurl themselves in. Lemmings. As if.

  People like us don’t wander out of their houses, ditch their cars, partners, house pets, rowboats or whatever at the exact same hour, struck by the exact same death wish, simultaneously going out of their universal group mind and out of our lives. Impossible, Davy thinks, but who knew that everybody he cares about would up and vanish, every fucking one of them gone from here, WHAM! Gone soon after he sneaked out of Merrill’s bed and left. Oh shit, I should have left a note. As soon as he’s done at Ray’s he’ll go home and apologize.

  She’ll be all ruckled up and pissed off at me, like, “Where have you been all day? What took you so long?”

  If he’s so sure Merrill’s back home, more or less where he left her, why is he here on Ray Powell’s front walk, waiting to be told?

  Davy heads up the wide steps, thinking, Ray will know what happened. He always does. They’re closer than he was to his father, as in, a friend Pop’s age; they can hang out without family baggage getting in the way. Ray’ll find dry clothes for his creeped-out friend, standing out here barefoot and shivering in his briefs. His belly clenches. There will be food. So what if everybody else up and took off? He can always count on Ray.

  The front door stands open to let in the breeze. Ray would never take off without closing it, so he’s definitely home. The screen is latched, no problem, Ray’s always glad to see him, no matter how late it is, all he has to do is ring and Ray will come down from his third-floor office and open up. They can sit down over leftovers: whatever Ella made for his supper and Ray will explain everything. Davy comes to himself with a start. How long have I been standing here?

  He yells. “Ray!” He tries the bell.

  Here’s the problem: from here, Ray’s house doesn’t smell the same, which is even worse than the silence. Ella DeVine’s usually in there after supper, making biscuits before she leaves; she lives on Poynter and comes back at noon to fix his lunch. Shit, when did I eat? His naked belly contracts. Oh, there’ll be biscuits, yes, but what’s cooking, really? Nothing tonight. He can hear the bell ringing deep inside. He takes his finger off the button and pounds on the doorframe, yelling, “Ray, it’s me.” After too long, he follows with, “Are you deaf?” In the end, he has to punch a hole in the screen and undo the latch. Maybe Ray really did go deaf while he wasn’t looking, he thinks hopefully. It’s been a while. As soon as I clear the door he’ll jump up from the supper table and apologize, he tells himself, padding down the long, empty hall to the dining room, maybe he really is going deaf. Ray’s the one person on Kraven that he can count on, especially now.

  Better not walk in on Ray gasping, “Thank God you’re here.” Ray would be mortified, so he calls, extra loud, in case:

  “Ray? Yo, Ray, it’s me! Just so you know, I’m near naked.” Shivering in the twilight breeze, he notices the dreadful symmetry of the carpets on the polished floors in the long front hall, the sinister butterfly pattern on Ray’s wallpaper in the waning light.

  With nobody answering and nobody around to tell that he’s here, he stops outside the dining room door to collect himself. Try to sound casual, going in. “Yo, Ray.” If he’s here! “I’m not rightly dressed for dinner, but I’m fucking starved.”

  There’s nothing of Ray here except his half-eaten breakfast. While he was standing out there temporizing, the sun sank, and in this light, it’s hard to make out what Ray left on the plate. Reluctant to eat anything he can’t see, Davy picks up the Brookstone fire-starter Ella uses and lights a candle.

  Ray’s stuff has been sitting here for more than a while: abandoned coffee, half-drunk, and Ray gets up at five. Soft-boiled egg cracked open in the china egg cup, with the punctured yolk congealing on its spoon. There are eggy smears on the willowware plate, along with a biscuit minus a half-moon chunk where Ray took a bite. Davy stuffs it in his mouth, drinks the cold coffee and ravages Ray’s silver bread basket for more, feeling guilty and shitty for being here when everybody else is missing or abducted or they all ran away from whatever it was— unless they just took off for unknown reasons, but, hey.

  He doesn’t know what’s gone down or comes next. He just knows he has to be strong.

  He hisses through his teeth as he heads upstairs, a hopeful threnody that keeps him going, alone in a deserted house. Ray’s here, he has to be. Could be he got caught short and fell in the bathroom, good thing I’m here to help, and, on the landing, Right. Ray isn’t hurt. He’s fine. He’s up there in the attic right now, he got hung up in the Internet, looking for answers. He’s that kind of guy. Ray won’t quit until he figures it out.

  Davy knows in his heart that Ray is nowhere in the house, but he opens the door to the attic anyway. “Take off that damn headset and get down here, Ray Powell. Something awful just came down.”

  What comes down is silence except for claws skittering, probably squirrels. That and maybe ghosts of the dozens of escaped slaves Ray’s ancestors hid in the warren of attic rooms. Naturally the Powells had slaves, they were Carolina landowners, but that all changed well before the Civil War. Because the Powells are who they are, Ray’s great-great-greats established an underground railroad stop up there, where runaways stayed until it was safe to move them out by boat.

  If it was that hard sneaking those few souls off Kraven island back in the day, Davy thinks, how did a hundred-some people exit Kraven this morning and nobody knew it was happening until it was too late?

  Yes, he is hung up on it. How. The why.

  Don’t. Shaking off doubts like a dog tormented by horseflies, he shuts the door and heads down the hall to Ray’s room. Sticks his head in, saying politely, “Don’t freak, I’m near naked. Sorry about that,” he says to the silent bedroom because he’s had too much of silence. Louder. “I need clothes before the skeeters carry me off.” Louder still. “It’s no big deal. Just some old shit you don’t need and never wear?” and when nothing happens, pads on in, flexing his toes in the lush, blue-green wall-to-wall.

  There is no old shit in Ray’s thickly carpeted dressing room but there is a flashlight, so he can lose the candlestick and use this until the bulb dies, which it’s about to do. The shelves of freshly laundered shirts and neatly folded sweaters, shoe racks, tie racks, rows of jackets, suits, freshly ironed jeans and khakis reproach him. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Who scrubs his deck shoes, pairs them and lines e
verything up neatly on the built-in shoe racks? He sticks his head into Ray’s bathroom. It would almost be a relief to find him lying there, but there’s nothing and nobody to break the white surfaces: tile, white porcelain toilet and basin with a marble lip, period white tub with all four feet planted on its marble pedestal, perfect. Empty. Stop looking. Stop hoping. Get out of here. Grabbing a T-shirt and some pristine Dockers, he reaches for Ray’s oldest topsiders. The underwear? Too intimate, it would be like putting on another person’s private life. Embarrassed, he brushes his way out of the master suite and into the hall, erasing the prints his bare feet made on the thick rug. He drops Ray’s flashlight on the floor in the hall and at the clatter, hisses, “Shhhhh,” Shit, did I just apologize to that thing? Oh, yes he is getting weird, and weirder still is the raw scrabble of claws on bare wood. Roused by the noise, somebody or some big thing is coming down the attic stairs. Too big for squirrels, he thinks, raccoons or possums breeding in the sofas. If I can’t find Merrill and get her and Ray home, there’s gonna be God knows what-all nesting up there.

  If they don’t come back I’ll just.

  He doesn’t know, but the rest of the sentence comes to him unbidden. Die.

  Scrabble, THUMP. Whatever it is, the thing in the attic just threw itself at the door to the hall where Davy stands. OK, something is better than nobody. He opens the door and the critter launches itself.

  “Thank God it’s you,” he tells Ray’s red setter, what’s that dog’s name, Towser, Bowser? He doesn’t know. “Dude!” They hug for a nice minute with the dog’s forepaws planted on his shoulders while it licks and licks until they teeter and Davy lets it down on all fours. He squats on the floor and leans in, grateful for the setter’s warm head and its big, messy tongue lapping, lapping; the dog is just as happy to see him. Ray’s flashlight gives out, but it’s OK, he has the— dammit, what is this dog’s name?

  He stands. “OK, Dude, let’s go.”

  It’s that little bit lighter outside than in. It’s eerie, slinking through his adopted home town like a space alien or some kind of halfassed spy from a country we didn’t know we were at war with.