I am the only person who truly knows what happened in the forest. Jimmys story explained for me the mystery of the drowned Oscar Love and his miraculous reappearance several days later. Of course, it was the gelings, and all the evidence firmed my suspi of a failed attempt to steal the child. The dead body was that of a geling, an old friend of mine. I could picture the face of the in li had erased their names. My life there had bee imagining the day when I would begin my life in the upper world. As the decades passed, the cast of characters had shifted as, one by one, each became a geling, found a child, and took its place. In time, I had e to resent every one of them and to disregard eaew member of our tribe. I deliberately tried tet them all. Did I say a friend of mine had died? I had no friends.
While gladdened by the prospect of one less devil in the woods, I was oddly disturbed by Jimmys at of little Oscar Love, and I dreamt that night of a lonely boy like him in an old-fashioned parlor. A pair of finches dart about an ironwork cage. A samlistens. On the mantelpiece sits a row of leather-bound books gilded with Gothic letters spelling out fn tides. The parlor walls papered crimson, heavy dark curtains shutting out the sun, a curious sofa covered with a lattieedlework throw. The boy is alone in the room on a humid afternoo despite the heat, he wears woolen knickers and buttoned boots, a starched blue shirt, and a huge tie that looks like a Christmas bow. His long hair cascades in waves and curls, and he hunches over the piaranced by the keyboard, doggedly practig aude. From behind him es another child, the same hair and build, but naked and creeping on the balls of his feet. The piano player plays on, oblivious to the meher goblins steal out from behind the curtains, from uhe settee; out of the woodwork and aper, they advance like smoke. The finches scream and crash into the iron bars. The boy stops on a urns his head. I have seen him before. They attack as one, w together, this one c the boys nose and throat, aaking out the legs, a third pinning the boys arms behind his back. From beyond the closed door, a mans voice: "Was ist los?" A thumping knock, and the door swings open. The threshold frames a large man with eous whiskers. "Gustav?" The father cries out as several hobgoblins rush to restrain him while the others take his son. "Ich erkenne dich! Du willst nur meinen Sohn!"
I could still feel the anger in their eyes, the passion of their attack. Where is my father? A voice pierces the dream, calling "Henry, Henry," and I awaken to a damp pillowcase and twisted sheets. Stifling a yawn, I yelled downstairs that I was tired and that this had better be good. My mother shouted back through the door that there was a telephone call and that she was not my secretary. I threw on my bathrobe and headed downstairs.
"This is Henry Day," I grunted into the receiver.
She laughed. "Hi, Henry. This is Tess Wodehouse. I saw you out in the woods."
She could not imagihe reasons for my awkward silence.
"When we found the boy. The first one. I was with the ambulance."
"Right, the ess, Tess, how are you?"
"Jimmy Cummings said to give you a call. Would you like to meet somewhere later?"
We arrao meet after her shift, and she had me write down dires to her house. At the bottom of the page, I doodled the name: Gustav.
She answered the door and stepped straight out to the porch, the aftern