43

FINCH DREAMED OF THE python, the earth dragon of Delphi, which was tightening around his thighs and stomach. He was aware that he was sweating and hoped the sweat would make it easier for him to slide out of its death grip. Just as the pressure became unbearable, a sound from upstairs woke him, and he struggled to place himself. He was in his home, his bed. But even now, in his wakened state, the snake was tightening its hold, and it took him a moment to realize that this was not a snake at all, but his top sheet in which he had become tangled. His struggle to free himself from the twisted sheet had succeeded only in making its snakelike grip tighter.

Panic seized him now, and it took everything he had to keep from crying out. His limited range of motion was no match for the monster who held him so tightly. With no Apollo to slay the beast, he had to rely on the logic that had once come so easily to him. He was trapped in a tourniquet that was cutting off his blood supply until he could no longer feel his right leg at all or catch the air to breathe. The more he pulled against it, the tighter it snaked around and gripped him.

He fought for calm, forcing himself to think strategically, breaking down the steps he needed to take to save himself. “Surrender” was the word that came to mind. Surrender was counter to his body’s natural response, but it was what was needed here. With all his will, he stopped pulling away and moved toward the beast until, feeling his surrender, it loosened his grip on him and his sweat-covered body slipped free. As soon as he was out of its killing grip, he heaved the beast onto the floor, and in its flight it resumed the ghostly form of the top sheet it was and floated innocently to the floor as if it had no idea what it had been to him only moments before.

He wanted to call out for his wife, for Maureen. He could hear that she was home, in the room upstairs. But they hardly spoke now. He could feel his heart slamming his chest wall, could feel it in his leg as the blood rushed back to the appendage. The bottom sheet was wet, and for a moment he wondered if he had wet the bed himself, as a helpless child might do, and he felt the shame of it, but no, it was his sweat that had pooled on the base sheet in an effort to cool his burning body. He had never been so hot. It was unbearable.

The window was open. He could smell the sea air from the harbor. Across Turner Street he could see Chanticleer, the rooster, near the gates of the Gables, having escaped the enclosure that old Hepzibah had built to keep him inside. His eyes filled with tears, grateful that the rooster had been able to escape his shackles, so much did he identify with the wiry old bird of Hawthorne’s story that he failed to realize for a moment that it was not the fictional rooster of his imaginings at all but Dusty the cat.

By the time the realization hit him, Finch had climbed out of his bed and was making his way down the hall toward the kitchen and his escape. Behind him the alarm began to sound. Not stopping for his walker, for the first time he used the railing that had so recently been installed. His shaky hands groped their way laboriously not to the front door-which was much closer to his room-for it wasn’t the street he sought, or even the Gables, but something else. Slowly, methodically, he moved down the long hall toward the kitchen with its back entrance that was so much closer to the cool ocean below.

The sound of the alarm faded behind him with every step down the tilted hallway until he could no longer hear it, the rhythmical sound of the gentle harbor waves, real or imagined, muting its incessant whine. He didn’t think of the pain in his legs or of his skin that burned with every brush against rail or wall, but only of the seawater that had the properties to cool and heal, water as salty as blood, a replacement perhaps for his own blood, which betrayed him with every searing step.

He crossed the high threshold to the kitchen. Seven more steps and his hand was on the door. With all the strength he had, he turned the handle, expecting to have to pop the dead bolt, knowing the difficulty of the task. He had tried before, but his fingers worked their own will and not his these days, and he had failed. Tonight, to his good fortune, he realized that the dead bolt was not set, that the only lock was the flimsy one on the door handle. The door opened easily. In one freeing step his bare foot found the deck.

With no rail to grip for support, he crossed the deck painstakingly, finding first a chair, then a table on which to lean, moving from one piece of furniture to another, a zigzag path of navigation to the three stairs that held him above the earth and sea. It might as easily have been a hundred. For a moment he almost turned back, but the sea, which had never called him before, was calling to him now. The harbor spread its cool darkness beyond the small patch of earth below. He could see the jeweled lights around its perimeter. With his last reserve of strength, he gripped the handrail and lowered himself ever so slowly to the earth below.

The beach reeds burned his bare legs. The rocks cut his feet. He could feel their sting, but he could also feel the cool of the sand, and he moved deeper into its coolness until the water found his ankles, his calves. With each step he took, the phosphorescence sparkled and glimmered its healing miracle around him, creating a Masaccio-like halo around him as he moved.

He could feel the water, the cold release of it, as the silt from the mudflats surrounded his feet, holding him steady while the gentle ocean swell moved higher on his bare legs, first to his thighs and then upward to his waist. He sighed at the blessed coolness of its caress.

44

THE SOUND OF FINCH’S alarm woke Hawk first, then Zee. She grabbed her robe and ran downstairs to Finch’s bedroom, but he was not there, nor was he in the den, or even in Zee’s childhood room. She glanced immediately at the front door, which was very close to his room, but it was secure. She told herself to relax, that she’d find him. Then she felt the cross breeze blowing up from the harbor at the rear of the house. Dread filling her, she turned and ran down the hall toward the kitchen. The back door was open.

“He’s outside!” Zee yelled at Hawk.

“What?”

“Finch is outside!” She motioned to the kitchen door.

THEY LOOKED FOR HIM ON the street. Then, because Zee determined it would be the first place Finch would go, Hawk scaled the fence to the House of the Seven Gables and looked around the grounds.

When he wasn’t at the Gables, Hawk ran down Derby Street, looking in every doorway and alley, though he doubted that Finch could make it very far, being so unsteady on his feet. Hawk was dialing the Salem police on his cell when he heard Zee yelling to him.

He found her at the water’s edge, wading in to where Finch was stuck, his feet planted in the mudflats, the harbor water soaking his thin pajama top.

They pulled him out together, bundled him in blankets, and drove him to the emergency room at Salem hospital. He wasn’t hurt, not even slightly hypothermic-he hadn’t been in the water that long. But the hospital wanted to keep him overnight, just to make sure.

HOURS PAST MIDNIGHT HAWK DROVE Zee back to the house. When they pulled into the driveway, she started to cry. Her sobs were huge and wrenching, and he held her for a long time, telling her over and over that everything was going to be all right.

He said it once more after she was calm enough to speak. “It’s going to be all right,” he said.

She turned to him, her face puffy and red from crying.

“That’s just it,” she said. “It isn’t.”