concrete, reluctant to touch them even with one of my shoes.
Standing in the next length of sloping tunnel, I turned to examine this
peculiar find.
When I cranked up the flame on the lighter, I discovered that before me
lay not mushrooms but a collection of skulls. The fragile skulls of
birds. The elongated skulls of lizards. The larger skulls of what
might have been cats, dogs, raccoons, porcupines, rabbits, squirrels.
.
Not a scrap of flesh adhered to any of these death’s-heads, as if they
had been boiled clean: white and yellow-white in the butane light,
scores of them, perhaps a hundred. No leg bones, no rib cages, just
skulls. They were arranged neatly side by side in three rows-two on
the bottom step and one on the second from the bottom-facing out, as
though, even with their empty eye sockets, they were here to bear
witness to something.
I had no idea what to make of this. I saw no satanic markings on the
culvert walls, no indications of macabre ceremonies of any kind, yet
the display had an undeniably symbolic purpose. The extent of the
collection indicated obsession, and the cruelty implicit in so much
killing and decapitation was chilling.
Recalling the fascination with death that had gripped me and Bobby
Halloway when we were thirteen, I wondered if some kid, far weirder
than we ever were, had done this grisly work. Criminologists claim
that by the age of three or four, most serial killers begin torturing
and killing insects, progressing to small animals during childhood and
adolescence, and finally graduating to people. Maybe in these
catacombs, a particularly vicious young murderer was practicing for his
life’s work.
In the middle of the third and highest row of these bony visages rested
a gleaming skull that was markedly different from all the others. It
appeared to be human. Small but human. Like the skull of an infant.
“Dear God.”
My voice whispered back to me along the concrete walls.
More than ever, I felt as though I were in a dreaniscape, where even
such things as concrete and bone were no more solid than smoke.
Nevertheless, I did not reach out to touch the small human skull-or any
of the others, for that matter. However unreal they might seem, I knew
that they would be cold, slick, and too solid to the touch.
Anxious to avoid encountering whoever had acquired this grim
collection, I continued downward through the drain.
I expected the cat with the enigmatic eyes to reappear, pale paws
meeting concrete with feather-on-feather silence, but either it
remained out of sight ahead of me or it had detoured into one of the
tributary lines.
Sections of sloped concrete pipe alternated with more spillways, and
just as I was beginning to worry that the lighter didn’t contain enough
fuel to see me to safety, a circle of dim gray light appeared and
gradually brightened ahead. I hurried toward it and found that no
grate barred the lower end of the tunnel, which led into an open
drainage channel of mortar-set river rock.
I was in familiar territory at last, the northern flats of town. A
couple of blocks from the sea. Half a block from the high school.
After the dank culvert, the night air smelled not merely fresh but
sweet. The high points of the polished sky glittered diamondwhite.
According to the digital light board on the Wells Fargo Bank building,
the time was 7:56 P.m., which meant that my father had been dead less
than three hours, though days seemed to have passed since I’d lost
him.
The same sign set the temperature at sixty degrees, but the night
seemed colder to me.
Around the corner from the bank and down the block, the Tidy Time
Laundromat was flooded with fluorescent light. Currently no customers
were doing their laundry.
With the dollar bill ready in my hand, with my eyes squinted to slits,
I went inside, into the flowery fragrance of soap powders and the
chemical keenness of bleach, my head lowered to maximize the protection
provided by the bill of my cap. I ran straight to the change machine,
fed it, snatched up the four quarters that it spat into the tray, and