Page 23 of The Forest of Lost Souls

“Where? I don’t see any.”

“Birds but not birds. Like birds but with people faces. Mean faces.” He seems to be overcome by awe rather than fear.“Look at their eyes.”

“Morgan, it’s the spice. In the dabs. What? Mescaline or LSD?”

Closing his eyes, covering them with his hands, the boy speaks in a voice so deadpan that, in these circumstances, it’s eerie, as he might sound if they were, in fair weather, having a discussion about how best to avoid being struck by lightning the next time they were outdoors in a thunderstorm. “The best thing is to keepyour eyes covered. If they can’t see your eyes, they can’t tear them out. You’re safe if you just keep your eyes covered until they go away.”

Vida has never until now been in the presence of someone spaced out and hallucinating. However, intuition tells her to respond to his delusion as if it were real rather than try to argue him out of it, offer sympathy rather than argument, mercy and comfort rather than disparagement.

“I’m here for you,” she tells him. “If I can’t see these things, then they can’t see me. If they can’t see me, they can’t peck out my eyes. That’s how it works.”

Morgan stands there like the searcher blinding himself while other children scurry away for a game of hide-and-seek. “Maybe it works that way, maybe, but be careful.”

“That’s how it works,” she insists. “I’m safe. What do you need, Morgan? What can I do for you?”

“If I don’t lie down, it’ll get worse. If I lie down long enough, they’ll go away. Everything always goes away.”

Leading him to a bed is not a good idea. “I’ll get you to the sofa in the living room.”

She snatches up the dish towel from the breakfast table. With her other hand, she grips his left forearm without pulling his hand from his eyes, and she gently leads him. The drug seems to have cast a gerontic spell over the boy; he shuffles along like an old man.

When he is lying on the sofa, she kneels on the floor beside him. “Keep your eyes closed, but take your hands away from them. I have a cloth to lay over your eyes and keep you safe. That’ll be more comfortable.”

“They’re still here,” he says. “I can hear their wings.”

When Morgan moves his hands and lowers his arms to his sides, Vida places the folded dish towel across his eyes and brow.

“It’s cool,” he says.

“Yeah, it’s still damp with champagne.”

“Are you goin’ now? Don’t go.”

“I’ll stay a little while.”

“Now they’re talkin’. You hear them?”

“No.”

“I don’t like when they start whisperin’, the things they say. That makes me dizzier.”

“Then don’t listen. Listen only to me. We’ll talk together until they stop whispering.”

Although he shuffled like a fragile old man as she led him to the sofa, he now seems like a small child. She holds his hand in both of hers.

In his current condition, Morgan’s memory of what has occurred between them is sure to be full of holes. Vida takes a chance when she mentions the name of the boy who, according to Anna Lagare, had also thrown bottles at José Nochelobo. “So who’s Damon Orbach?”

Morgan frowns. “How do you know Damon?”

“I don’t. When you said Horace and Katherine Bead own all kinds of shit, you said ‘just like Damon Orbach.’”

“Why would I say that?”

“How would I know, baby? You said what you said.”

“Damon doesn’t own nothin’. His dad, Perry, he’s the big bear in the county. It might all be Damon’s one day, except his old man is such a hard-ass he’ll never die.”

“So Damon’s a friend of yours, huh?”

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