Page 11 of The Shape of Night

I really should get him neutered.

I walk back into the house and am just locking the door when I hear a faint meow. It comes from upstairs.

So he’s been inside the house all this time. Has he gotten himself shut into a room somewhere? I climb to the second floor and open the doors to the unused bedrooms. No Hannibal.

I hear another meow, still from above. He’s up in the turret.

I open the door to the turret staircase and flip on the wall switch. I’m halfway up the stairs when the lone lightbulb suddenly gives apopand goes out, plunging me into darkness. I should not have drunk that fourth glass of wine; now I have to steady myself on the railing as I climb. I feel as if the darkness is liquid and I’m dragging the weight of my body through water, struggling to surface. When at last I reach the turret, I grope along the wall for the light switch and flip it on.

“There you are, you bad boy.”

A smug-looking Hannibal sits among the jumble of carpenter’s tools with a freshly killed mouse at his feet.

“Well, come on. If you want dinner.”

He appears utterly disinterested in following me downstairs; in fact, he’s not looking at me at all, but is staring steadily at the window that faces the widow’s walk. Why isn’t he hungry? Is he actuallyeatingthe mice he catches? I shudder at the thought of him hopping into bed with me, his belly full of rodents.

“Comeon,” I plead. “I’ve got tuna for you.”

He merely glances at me, then his gaze returns to the window.

“That’s it. It’s time to go.” I reach down to pick him up and am shocked when he gives a ferocious hiss and lashes out with his claws. I jerk away, my arm stinging. I’ve owned Hannibal since he was a kitten and he’s never attacked me before. Does he think I’m trying to steal his mouse? But he’s not even looking at me; his gaze is still fixed on the window, staring at something I cannot see.

I look down at the claw marks he raked across my skin, where parallel tracks of blood are now oozing. “That’s it. No dinner foryou.” I turn off the light switch and am about to feel my way back down the dark staircase when I hear his feral growl. The sound makes every hair on the back of my neck suddenly stand up.

In the darkness I see the unearthly glow of Hannibal’s eyes.

But I also see something else: a shadow that thickens and congeals near the window. I cannot move, cannot make a sound; fear roots me in place as the shadow slowly assumes a form that is so solid I can no longer see through it to the window beyond. The smell of the sea floods my nostrils, a scent so powerful it’s as if a wave has just washed over me.

A man looms in the window, his shoulders framed by moonlight. He stares out to sea, his back turned to me as if he’s not even aware I am in the room. He stands straight and tall, his hair a mass of thick black waves, his long dark coat molded to broad shoulders and a narrow waist. Surely this is a trick of the moonlight; men do not suddenly materialize. He cannot be standing here. But Hannibal’s eyes are aglow as he too stares at this figment of my imagination. If there is nothing there, what is my cat looking at?

Frantically I reach for the light switch, but I feel only bare wall. Where is it, where is it?

The figure turns from the window.

I freeze, my hand pressed to the wall, my heart banging. For a moment he stands with his face silhouetted in profile and I see a sharp nose, a jutting chin. Then he faces me, and even though his eyes are only a faint shimmer, I know he is looking straight at me. The voice I hear seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

“Do not be afraid,” he says.

Slowly I lower my hand to my side. No longer am I frantic to find the light switch; I am focused only on him, on a man who cannot possibly be standing before me. He approaches so silently that all I can hear is the whoosh of my own blood through my ears. Even as he draws closer I cannot move. My limbs have gone numb; I feel as if I am floating, my own body dissolving into shadow. As if I am the phantom, adrift in a world not my own.

“Under my roof, no harm will come to you.”

The touch of his hand on my face is as warm as my own flesh, and just as alive. I take in a shuddering breath and inhale the briny scent of the ocean.It is his scent.

But even as I savor his touch, I feel his hand dissolving. The faint glimmer of moonlight shines through him. He gives me one last lingering look and he turns and walks away. Already he’s faded to barely a wisp of shadow, as insubstantial as dust. At the closed door to the widow’s walk he doesn’t pause but passes straight through wood and glass to the balcony outside, onto the edge of the deck where there are no boards, where there is now only a gaping hole. He doesn’t stumble, doesn’t plummet, but strides across empty air. Across time.

I blink, and he is gone.

So is the smell of the ocean.

With a gasp I reach out to the wall and this time I find the switch. In the sudden glare I see the power saw and carpenter’s tools and the stack of planks. Hannibal is sitting right where he’d been, and he’s serenely licking his paws. The dead mouse is gone.

I cross to the window and stare out at the balcony.

No one is there.

Seven

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