Four days after the murder hits the front-page news, the manner and reasons for the stranger’s death remain a mystery to the people of Applegate. The police have no suspects, and the bizarreness of the crime ensures that reporters are still quick to trot it out on evenings when the news is slow, though few updates warrant reporting.
People have taken to locking their doors or moving about their houses to check for open windows or stray curtains at night. They take the time to warn their children to come home before it grows too dark, cautioning them about the perils of nightfall, and they frequently look over their shoulders, waiting to hear the tread of steps behind them, expecting to observe and question every shadow that moves across the street.
Teenagers find death easier to deal with than adults do, and the news passes easily enough from their minds. Classes give way to lunchtime, and the cafeteria seats are occupied. There are the sounds of boys and girls laughing and gossiping as they congregate in groups and friendship.
The tattooed boy shares in none of the revelries, instead retiring to a corner of the cafeteria alone. Chewing on a sandwich, he stares at the wall across from his seat. He wears another long sweater and has resumed his habit of tugging his sleeves down until they reach well below his knuckles. The sun is shining outside and the air-conditioning is marginal at best inside, but he is huddled, quivering, and with every breath, tendrils of cold air billow out of his mouth. His eyes are dull.
“Hey there, stranger,” a voice says. It comes from a pretty brunette his age who has a fresh face with a slight abundance of freckles and a penchant for friendliness. Her manner suggests that she is one of the more popular girls at Perry Hills High, and this means she is free to do as she pleases. Today what she pleases to do is to strike up the boy’s acquaintance. Rumors of the tattooed boy have spread, and ironically, the boy’s disinterest in his fellow students makes him more enigmatic and appealing in their eyes. “You must be this strange Tarquin fella some of the guys have been talking about. Wanna eat with us?”
“No,” says the boy, who has a penchant for surliness. The boy’s yellow-haired cousin enters the cafeteria. She looks up, sensing by some obscure instinct that something is about to happen, and glances toward where the boy sits.
“Why not?” insists the brunette, who is not accustomed to being rejected. She reaches out and tugs playfully at the boy’s hand, a show of coyness. “My name’s Andrea. Come on, I don’t bite.”
“I said no.” The boy tries to shake her hand off, but it is too late.
The dark-haired girl’s fingers snag against his shirtsleeve and the material rides up, revealing the strange tattoos that undulate and curl on their own like they are coming alive on his skin, staring up at them both like malignant eyes. The air grows dark and stifling, and the mist begins again, rising expectantly around the two teenagers.
The brunette stumbles back, eyes staring out of her lovely head, uncertain of what she has just seen.
“No!” the boy shouts, and his voice carries across the room. The rest of the cafeteria falls silent, heads turning. The boy yanks his sleeves back down, so hard the fabric nearly tears from the strength of his misery. And yet the fog doesn’t lift. It rolls over and around him so that, to his cousin’s eyes, the denseness of the shadow obscures him, the form behind him rising once more to mimic the shape of that brooding mask, that lady in black.
Neither the teaching assistant nor the rest of the students see this woman. Not even the tattooed boy seems to realize her closeness. His face is washed of all color, and he is clinging to the table before him, hunched over in pain.
Several things happen. Flocks of birds crash through the window. They are missing their heads.
They hit the walls hard: thud, thud, thud. They crash into plates and trays, into water fountains and people. Several smash into the lighting fixtures overhead before dropping down, suddenly motionless, and nearly missing a group of girls huddled in a corner.
The students begin to scream. The boy’s cousin claps a hand over her mouth, stunned by what she has just witnessed.
Without another word, the tattooed boy takes off—past the cafeteria doors and down the corridors, bursting out of the school’s main doors and barreling down the street, with the woman’s shadow fluttering after him.
“Tarquin!” His cousin follows him. She is quick enough to catch sight of him, with the strange darkness surrounding his head like a crown, before he disappears around the corner. “I’m going after him!” she calls out to other teachers who poke their heads out of their rooms, curious. She gestures back inside, where the screaming continues to drift out, where the dead birds still litter the floor.
“Take care of them, Jen!” she tells her friend who has come running up, eyes wide.
“What are you going to do?”The young woman does not answer her. Already, she is running. But boys are light of feet and quick of temper, and he is soon lost in the busy afternoon of cars and people. The teacher’s assistant pauses, looking this way and that, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. But the crowd flows past her, unyielding and unrepentant.
It is then that she sees the woman in white. I am standing at the corner of a busy intersection, my face hidden under a ruined cobweb of hair. The girl sees me like a man might see an oasis in a dried desert—disbelieving, certain that her senses play with her mind, convinced this is nothing more than a mistake, a puzzle of flesh.
I lift my hand and point at something in the far distance. The young woman takes a step forward, her own arm extending, reaching for this strange creature. She is convinced that she will be reassured if she touches this apparition and feels the sensation of skin and bones underneath her own. But in the space between moments I move, and she finds herself standing alone, with only people swarming past.
She turns in the direction I pointed and, because she can think of no other alternative, follows this road.
She stops again along a boulevard, her path lost. A pedestrian light turns green across the street. Once again she catches sight of the woman in white gliding through the rush of people, and I do little to blend in. I lift my head momentarily and the teaching assistant glimpses black hair streaming down past sightless eyes, before I am once more gone in the maze of briefcases and shopping bags.
The young woman makes her decision. She takes off after me, following the bread crumbs I am strewing in her path. Her pace quickens as her certainty grows, and she pauses only to call out apologies and excuses as she jostles against other men and women scurrying past.
She finally catches sight of the tattooed boy. He sits inside a white car. His eyes are half closed, and his head lolls against the seat. But the man closing the door beside him is not his father. It is a blond man with bright eyes and youthful features, and he is smiling.
“Wait!” The girl is frantic. Heads turn in her direction as she
fights against the flow of people walking past: an old man in a wheelchair, a dog walker with three German shepherds, two baby carriages. “Wait! Stop him! Tarquin!”
But the man starts the car and drives away, leaving her helpless by the curb. Inside the car, the teenager turns his head, puzzled.
“Did someone call me?” he asks, his voice slurred.“I didn’t hear anyone,” the Smiling Man says gently. “Go back to sleep.”