Prologue - The Green Man
The sun had set on Lost Grove, and the streets were deserted as the night’s chill wrapped around the town. The nearly full moon threw long shadows over the quaint homes, illuminated windows marking the occupants’ evening routines inside. In one particular home, a gingerbread-style structure with white shutters and a bright red door, the Horne family was settling in for the night. The mother was downstairs feeding her youngest, but most of the food ended up on his chin and clothes instead of in his mouth. Weary and regretful, she tried to cling to sanity. The father had retreated to his office for some respite from parenting duties.
Upstairs, the eldest daughter stepped into her room, phone in hand. Blue light glowed on her face, and golden lamps illuminated a cozy atmosphere. Smiling, she tucked the device between her shoulder and ear as she chatted with a friend. Her hands worked to draw the curtains partially closed, unaware of the eyes watching her or the gleeful squeak released when she stepped into view.
“There now, at last.” He released a contented sigh. His stomach flipped end over end, ecstatic at the sight of her. “I know this isn’t the one I’m meant to be watching, but I needed to check, I wanted to check, I had to. I had to. ‘No, you don’t have to do anything, Raymond.’ That’s what he always says. ‘You want to, but you don’t need to, you don’t have to,’ but sometimes I think I do. That’s why I had to stop here first. To check on her. I have to, that’s what he doesn’t understand. I’m not doing anything; I’m just looking, making sure. ‘Making sure of what?’ That’s what he would say. I say, making sure she’s happy, that she’s still happy, even after what I did, what I had to do because you made me. See, then, I had to because you said, ‘Raymond, you have to do this,’ then I did it. She looks happy,” he whispered to himself, his breath hitching in his throat.
Raymond LaRange crouched on a rooftop peak in the shadow of an elm, its gnarled branches casting spindly shadows over his face and body. Raymond had been a fixture here for years, and he knew how to blend into the trees like they were a part of him. He was so quiet that even the rustle of leaves underfoot didn’t betray him—but he didn’t need to make a sound to watch—a ghost haunting the backyards of Lost Grove.
From this vantage point on the neighbor’s roof, he could see straight into Antoinetta Horne’s bedroom—the cozy space she’d made her own with silk sheets and wispy curtains that billowed gently in the breeze on hot summer nights. Many nights, he’d watched her, but on those summer nights when she would lie on her bed playing with her phone or computer, he grew jealous of the breeze that got to caress her skin.
Raymond spent countless hours on the Millers’ roof, wishing to be the breeze or the friend she was laughing with. He knew this roof as he knew the forest paths, his feet traversing across the shingles like a dance. He spent more time on this roof than any other roof in town, though he knew he shouldn’t. Dr. Owens had forbade him. But what Dr. Owens didn’t know wouldn’t kill him, and Raymond knew how to keep a secret, even one of his own.
He wasn’t afraid of being heard by the Millers, he had ‘special talents’ that could help with that. But Raymond liked testing the boundaries of safety, performing stunts to see how far he could push the Millers. Even when he danced a jig, or that one frigid winter he pretended to be Santa Claus, the Millers were never roused to suspicion.
Did they not care about the potential danger on their roof? Were they hard of hearing or even deaf, like the wife of the man who owned the drugstore?
“You don’t tell, so I won’t tell. Just like her. She knows I took him. You tried to tell everyone, but they wouldn’t listen, Antoinetta. Poor Antoinetta. But you’re okay now. Are you? No, no, no. You laugh, you smile, you pretend. All the time. But you still look out the window. Sometimes, you look right at me, but you don’t see me. Not anymore. Because you’re looking for him, not me. You want to see him; you want me to bring him back to you, but I won’t. You’ll never see him again.”
He watched her tap her phone and toss it to the bed. Her hands moved to the hem of her shirt, and she raised her arms as she walked behind a curtain. Raymond shimmied down toward the gutters, his feet clinging to the shingles, closer to the elm,
closer to her window. The frigid night air snaked around his body and ruffled his clothing as he descended closer and closer to the elm outside her window. His heart raced faster with every inch, sending shivers down his spine, blood to his loins, and raising goosebumps on his covered flesh. Another fleeting glimpse of her passing toward her closet. Her slim, pale body protected by nothing but a thin tank top.
He leaped to the tree and crouched in the crook of the elm. He leaned into the trunk, its rough bark digging into his cheek. The clock in their family room chimed a tune, alerting him to the hour.
“It’s time to go now. I’m not supposed to be here. I have orders. I’ve been given my orders. ‘Do not fail me, Raymond.’ Fail, fail, when? Never. Under mother maybe, but not you. I have to go now, Antoinetta. Tonight, I visit someone else close to you. I’ve seen you together, with both of them, your friends. You have friends. You’re happy. Don’t worry, though. I won’t take her tonight. ‘Not tonight, Raymond, there’s a special time, and it’s very important, the time. Just look, just study, prepare yourself.’ Okay, I’m going.”
Raymond moved quickly back across the Millers’ roof, hands and feet in a blur as he crab-walked backward up the steep incline like a giant spider. At the peak, he tucked into a tight ball and spun himself across the apex before careening down the other side. He clung to the chimney and leaned over, his ear pressed against its sooty opening, listening intently for any sign of life from within.
“Did you hear me, Randy and Verna?”
Raymond carefully wrapped his arms around the edge of the chimney, feeling the sharp and cold brick between his fingers. He pulled himself over and descended slowly into the Millers’ yard below. His boots made no sound as they touched down on the moist grass, and he beelined for the back door, sneaking a peek at Randy and Verna in their kitchen washing dishes side by side.
Raymond suddenly took off like a silver bullet, his feet pounding the ground in a frenzied rhythm. He jumped the Millers’ fence with ease and sprinted across the Gradys’ yard, dodging flowerbeds and scurrying past their slumbering Labrador retriever. Then on through the Harrisons’, then the Matlocks’, then Mrs. Gorman’s, then the Alexander-Walkers’, swiftly across McKinley Avenue, around the corner of Grant Avenue, onto Lincoln, then Crowley Avenue, taking an abrupt right through Rich and Allison Godfrey’s front yard, along the property line butting up against Vince and Linda Hollinger’s land.
Raymond picked up speed as he pounded past the edge of their house, then sprang into the air and curled his arms around a thick, horizontal branch of the giant cedar tree in their backyard. He swung his body up and over and rotated gracefully before settling on the limb. He weaved through the branches like a gymnast until he was perched just across from the window of the second story of the house behind the Hollingers’.
“The light’s on, but you’re not there,” he whispered.
Raymond scanned the other windows facing the Hollingers’ backyard. A dull, flickering light from the living room was the only other sign of occupancy.
“Good, good, you stay there, both of you. But not you. Where are you? Your light is on and waiting for you to step into it. I wait, that’s what I do. I wait and wait and wait and wait and—oh!”
A shadow danced across the far wall of the bedroom, across two large bookcases filled with books and trinkets. Every few seconds, a thin, fleeting shadow would skitter across the room as if it were trying to decide whether or not it wanted to stay.
“And you’d like to play, wouldn’t you? I know you would. Come out from behind those shadows and play with me. Dance with me. Let me guide you with my eyes.”
Then she came into view as if summoned by his delicately whispered words, crossing her room in nothing but a bath towel and her damp, golden hair caressing her shoulders.
“Oh...oh...oh...I see. Oh dear, you did come to play, didn’t you?”
Digging into her dresser, she pulled out—
“Little shorts...socks...a shirt, and oh...yes, grab those tiny underwear. So soft, so clean, just like you.”
As if solely to taunt him, she walked back across her room and out of view. Only the flickering of her shadow played across
the back wall as she took her time dawdling with her clothes.
“Get back out here, young miss. I won’t play with shadows; no, I will not. That is a rule I shall not break. No shadows. Now
get—”
She walked back into view draped in an oversized, well-worn T-shirt of her father’s, her feet tucked into a pair of fuzzy
slippers. Making her way to the corner of the room, she slumped into the chair at her desk and pulled open the lid of her laptop; its bright light illuminated her delicate features.
“Why, hello, Zoe Andalusian.”
