Free A Song of Shadows by John Connolly

as Green Heron Bay might not be immune to lunatics and child-stealers. The door was slightly recessed, but if Amanda lay on the very edge of her bed, she could just about see it. The top half was mostly glass, with a shade that could be pulled down, but Amanda rarely bothered with that.
    Now, through barely open eyes, she could see that a man was standing on the topmost step, peering in at her through the glass. His upper body was exposed, and Amanda had a gut feeling that he was naked from the waist down too. His face was cast in shadow, just like the dream girl’s, but Amanda could see that his skin was very pale, yet only as far as the base of his neck. From there it was curiously mottled all over – the torso, the upper arms, even extending over his stomach to where she knew his thing was hanging loose below – although there was a regularity to the pattern. It was, she thought, almost as though someone had pieced together a jigsaw puzzle of a man and placed it by her door, except that this one was moving. As she watched, the figure raised his left hand.
    And waved.
    In the dream that wasn’t quite a dream, Amanda understood that he wanted to be seen. He wished to get a reaction from her – why, she did not know – and it took all of her willpower not to rise up and scream for her mother. Instead she nuzzled into her pillow, still keeping one barely open eye on the man on the step, and she saw his hand flinch, then form a fist. For a moment she thought that he was about to thrust it through the glass, shattering it so that he could get at the bolt inside, but he merely lowered his head and moved away, and she felt rather than heard his footfalls on the wood of the steps. Even then she did not move, not until she was certain that he wasn’t playing some kind of trick on her. Then, and only then, did she climb from her bed and crawl carefully to the window. She shifted the drapes where they met, exposing the slightest triangle of sand and surf beyond the window.
    The man was walking into the sea. His back, his buttocks, and his legs, all were covered with the same patterning that she had seen on his torso and upper arms. Even though the water must have been very cold, he moved steadily into the darkness of it, step by step, the waves breaking against him, yet barely seeming to jostle his body. He was like a statue slowly sinking, a figure mired in the sand as the tide came in around him. The water reached his waist, then his chest, then his neck, but he did not try to swim into it. Instead, he was eventually immersed entirely, and then he was gone.
    This was no dream. The presence of the girl had confused her, the girl with the blond hair. She was not of this world. She belonged in another, but she drifted between both. The man, though, was part of this one.
    Only then did Amanda start to cry, and she did not stop until her mother appeared and took her in her arms.
    ‘I saw someone,’ said Amanda, turning away from the black sea, weeping into her mother’s breast. ‘I saw a Jigsaw Man.’

11
    C ory Bloom got the call just as she was heading home for the evening. It came from the dispatcher at the station house, Karen Heller, who was also just about to leave. Bloom kind of wished that Karen had just let Stynes or Corbin take care of it. In fact, Bloom couldn’t understand why Karen was bothering her with this in the first place.
    ‘You say there’s a man standing on the beach, near where the body was washed up?’ she said.
    ‘Uh, that’s right, Cory. Dan Rainey just called.’
    Dan had taken a proprietary interest in the whole matter of the drowned man. From what Bloom heard, he’d held court at the Brickhouse after the body was discovered, and hadn’t once needed to put his hand in his pocket to pay for a drink.
    ‘With respect, Karen, it’s still a free country. Also, the beach isn’t sealed off, and even if it was, we couldn’t do a whole lot to stop the tide from washing away any more