Free Black Light by Elizabeth Hand Page A

scrabbling over puffballs that sent up clouds of spores like minute bomb-bursts. I held my breath and lowered myself to within a foot of this seething world, watching as two shrews had a tug-of-war with an earthworm. After a minute they separated and ferociously attacked each other. I was so close I could see tiny droplets of blood spatter onto the forsythia and smell their faint foul musk.
    And still the shrews raced on, fighting and hunting and eating. To them, I had no more being than a tree or stone. I was entranced, and would have remained there for the entire afternoon, maybe, if Ali hadn’t pulled me away.
    “Enough with the fucking Wild Kingdom, Lit; it’s gonna rain. Come on, let’s go to Deer Park.”
    About halfway down we emerged onto a narrow ridge of stone, slick with moss. A scant yard in front of us the ridge sheared away, so that we gazed down upon the tops of red oaks and huge lichen-stained boulders. If you knew where to look, this was where you could catch your first glimpse of the ruinous beauty that was Bolerium. I edged back until I could wrap my arm around a tree—I was wearing knee-high lace-up Frye boots, well broken in but a bad choice for climbing. Ali walked fearlessly to the lip of rock and looked out.
    “I can’t see it,” she said, frowning.
    I squinted, trying to distinguish between the mansion’s granite walls and the gray trees that stood between us. “It’s too rainy,” I said at last, feeling a vague disappointment.
    Ali shook her head. “Uh-uh. It’s hiding. ”
    We turned and scrambled on down the path. When we finally burst out of the woods onto Kinnicutt Road, it was into a world gone gold and white, yellow leaves covering the tarmac and birches ghostly in the mist. Ali shivered in her leotard and pulled her flannel shirt over her head like a hood. I pulled Hillary’s jacket tight around me, wincing as a black BMW raced past and sent water splashing over us.
    “Asshole,” I shouted.
    If there was a wrong side to Kamensic, that’s where we were now: Kinnicutt Road, a chopped-up remnant of the Old Post Road that a hundred years earlier had linked Boston to the fractured villages strung across New England. Ten miles or so along, Kinnicutt fed into Route 684, the new interstate that connected the city with the north. But here it was a scumble of cracked asphalt, broken glass winking from a shoulder overgrown with nightshade and fox grapes and jewelweed. There were no houses along this stretch of Kinnicutt, no other roads; only a defiant tributary of the Muscanth River threading alongside the tarmac.
    Now it felt almost inutterably desolate. The air smelled faintly of diesel fuel. Ahead of us the road narrowed, unyielding to the woods that crowded to either side, and finally faded from sight. My dread intensified until I considered making up some excuse to head home—stomachache, homework, fever.
    But then the trees fell back, revealing a drab patch of sky. In another minute I could make out the parking lot and dull mass of cinder block that was the Deer Park Inn.
    “Hillary’s here,” remarked Ali. And yes, there was his Dodge Dart by the front door. That made me feel better, and the sight of Deer Park’s venerable sign: a huge Sweetheart of the Rodeo, suspended between two worm-riddled telephone poles. Years ago during a storm the sign had been cloven right down the middle. Now only half of the cowgirl remained, one eye, one arm holding a lariat, one foot in one frilled cowboy boot; and beneath her what remained of the bar’s legend:
RK INN
    NTRY
    TERN
    NCING
    LBILLY
    USIC
    We crossed a parking lot awash with cigarette butts and beer bottles. Once behind the squat building you found more ominous detritus: spent sets of works like crushed centipedes, crumpled cellophane envelopes, scorched spoons, empty matchbooks. Two bikers sat on the steps drinking Budweisers. They watched us pass, eyes glazed, but said nothing. Entering I felt the customary frisson of excitement