"What house is this?"
"Move closer," I said. "He can't hear us, and he can't see anything but his own reflection."
Cordwainer took a couple of paces along the back of the meadow and came to a halt. “I know those walls." Unwelcome recognition had begun to blossom in his face. "That front window is like the very one I crawled through as an ignorant boy." He spun to glare at me. "Oh, you are a treacherous, treacherous fiend, but I see your shabby plan. You have brought me to its likeness."
"Wait until you see who's inside," I said.
"This isunbearable. It isblasphemy. Within walls like those, my Great Fathers spoke to me. That building was myschool."
"And your teacher was Howard Dunstan. He's in the big room on this side. Go on, look in the window. Think of it as a test of your faith."
"My faith has been tested my whole life long," Cordwainer muttered. "And so has my patience, but never as sorely as this."
We came to within ten feet of the shining window. Across the shabby room, an expiring Boston fern and a fox strutting to the edge of a glass bell occupied a white mantel. Shiny weights whirled left-right, right-left beneath a brass clock that reported the hour as 11:31p.m.
“If anyone is there," Cordwainer said, "let him show his face."
On cue, Howard Dunstan strolled into sight, his face ravaged, his hair and beard white, but still recognizable as the subject of his studio portraits and the man who had driven his family down Wagon Road. He was speaking with the slow, unstoppable rhythm of a hypnotist. I knew who stood just out of sight. Howard's weary despair concealed a witty, calculating expectancy that had eluded me until this moment. His face was that of a being who had never spoken a straightforward word, committed a spontaneous deed, or revealed more than what was necessary—it was a face poisoned by isolation.
As if drawn by magnetic attraction, Cordwainer Hatch unwillingly moved forward.
I saw myself walk into the shining frame and the year 1935 from an afternoon on which Stewart Hatch had gestured across an overgrown field and more than hinted that his grandfather and Sylvester Milton had destroyed the building in front of us. Now I knew that Stewart had it all wrong: Cordwainer had already given me the real story. I also knew that two earlier versions of Ned Dunstan, aged three and eighteen, had minutes or seconds before momentarily flickered into view and disappeared again because they had come too early, and they had come alone. I looked dazed but irate enough to take care of myself. When I said something to Howard, he kept talking, and I tried to interrupt his flow by asking,What are we?
Howard shook his head and mouthed,We are what flew from the crack in the golden howl, then something I could not lip-read. Beside me, Cordwainer gasped. All the air seemed to leave his body. Howard moved down the room and out of sight. I thought:He knows we are out here, he's playing to both of his audiences, every last lousy flourish is in place —
Cordwainer took a quick backward step, stumbled around, and dove into the woods with surprising speed. I went after the bulky form dodging through the trees. He stopped running when he reached the maple grove. His face was an unreadable blur.
"Still think it's some kind of trick?" I asked.
"Did he say,We are the smoke from the cannon's mouth?" He might have been talking in his sleep.
“I think so, yes. I remember that."
Cordwainer made the phlegmy, guttural sound of someone attempting to expel a foreign substance from his lungs. “I was watching his lips. He said something about a golden bowl. Then he said,We arethe smoke front the cannon'smonth."
"Have you heard that before?"
"Oh, yes. I have, yes. I have heard it on a number of occasions." His voice was wet. "During my boyhood."
Heavy footsteps came toward us from the center of the woods. Cordwainer turned around with a stiff, grave immobility, as though his neck had fused to his spinal column. A dancing glimmer of light bobbed toward us out of the darkness. "Men from town," I said. "They're coming to burn him out. About a hundred and fifty years before this, the same thing happened in Providence."
"Howard Dunstan never lived in Providence."
"One of his ancestors built a place people called the Shunned House. Sylvan Dunstan moved it here brick by brick."
The light separated into three torches advancing through the trees. Cordwainer yanked me behind the shelter of a pair of maples.
•120
•Torchlight surrounded them with a uniform glow traveling through the forest like a spotlight. Occasionally, a cluster of leaves popped into brief flame. Cordwainer plunged deeper into the woods. He paid no attention to me—he no longer cared if I existed.
The man in the lead was Carpenter Hatch, older and heavier than when seen on Wagon Road. Apart from the torch in his hand and the vindictive expression on his face, he looked precisely like the affluent small-town stuffed shirt he had always intended to become. Three feet behind him and side by side marched a pair of men separated as much by mutual distaste as by social standing. The grim, balding man at least ten years older and nearly a foot taller than Carpenter Hatch had to be Sylvester Milton. Ferrety Pee Wee La Chapelle hustled along beside him.
Cordwainer and I moved behind an oak twenty feet in front of them. Breathing hard, he watched the man he had thought was his father march toward us, his torch upright and his face blazing with hatred. Milton's torch ignited another low-hanging cluster of leaves.
"Watch that, Mr. Milton," said La Chapelle.
"Shut up, Pee Wee," Milton said.
Cordwainer jumped into their path. The three men halted, confronted by what must have looked for at least a couple of seconds like the sudden appearance of a severed head.
Carpenter Hatch recovered from his shock and said, "Clear off. This business does not concern you."
"He's seen us," Milton said.
"Stop quaking, Sylvester, and take a good look at that old man," Hatch said. "He's a degenerate half-wit." In a ringing voice, he said, "Listen to me, old fellow. You no longer work for Mr. Dunstan. He is a wicked man and must be punished. I have fifty dollars in my pocket. That's a lot of money, I know, but it will be yours if you take off now and keep your mouth shut afterwards."
Cordwainer let out a howl and charged them. Milton and La Chapelle dropped their torches and ran. Carpenter Hatch glanced over his shoulder, jumped back, and hurled his torch at Cordwainer. Before Cordwainer snatched it out of the air, Carpenter was already in flight. I sprinted from cover, picked up the fallen torches, and stamped out the advancing flames. Cordwainer held his torch over his head, listening to the panicky sounds of their retreat. His shoulders rose and fell like pistons. I couldn't tell if he was sobbing or just breathing hard.
He spun around and hurtled toward the house. Over his head, leaves sputtered into flame.
When I ran out of the woods, Cordwainer was plunging up and down the side of the house, keening. Tears shone on his face. I came to within six feet of him, and his face went slack with shock, then flared in a kind of recognition. An anguished bellow erupted from the flap of his mouth."Do you know what he did to me?"