Free 999 by Al Sarrantonio

steadily; he must have been squatting there for a long time. His khaki shorts and T-shirt were covered in burrs. His soft brown, wavy hair, grown unevenly past his ears, looked tangled. He said, swallowing, “I—saw something. Last night.”
    Yes? What? They waited.
    “I don’t know. I saw it but I—can’t be sure. I mean, if I saw—what it was. Or …” Graeme’s voice trailed off miserably. It was clear that something had frightened him badly and that he didn’t know how to speak of it. He didn’t want to risk being laughed at and yet—
    Yes? What? Graeme, come on .
    “It was a—man, I think. Walking along the drive over there. About two o’clock. I couldn’t sleep and I came downstairs and I—saw something out the window.” Graeme spoke slowly, painfully. He drew his forearm carelessly across his mouth, wiping it. “I came outside onto the terrace. I saw him—it—in the moonlight.”
    Stephen said, “Someone trespassing on our property?”
    Rosalind said, making a joke of it, “You’re sure it wasn’t one of us?” That look in Graeme’s eyes spooked her.
    Graeme said, choosing his words carefully, “It was a, a thing like a man—a man with no face.” He grinned suddenly. “A thing-with-no-face.”
    Quickly Stephen said, as if he hadn’t entirely heard, “A hunter, probably. Trespassing on our property. Someone who lives nearby.”
    Graeme vehemently shook his head “No. He—it—didn’t have any gun. It was just—walking. But not walking like a normal man. Along the drive there, and into the grass—in that direction. Like it knew where it was going, it wasn’t in any hurry. A thing-without-a-face.”
    “How could it be without a face?” Stephen asked skeptically. “Anything in nature, any living thing, has to have a face . You must have been asleep and dreaming.”
    “I wasn’t dreaming!” Graeme said agitatedly. “I know what’s real, and the thing-without-a-face was real.”
    Stephen laughed nervously, derisively. He’d begun to back off, pushing the air with the palms of his hands in a dismissive gesture; the thin scratch on his forehead glistened with blood. “How could mere be a thing-without-a-face! You dreamt it.”
    Rosalind said suddenly, stricken, “No. I dreamt it. I saw it—him—too. A man, a thing like a man, without a face—standing over my bed.” She covered her eyes with her fingers, remembering, as her brothers stared at her in horror.
    Over my bed, in the night; in the moonlight; the shape of a man, a man’s head, yet where the face would be—raw blank featureless skin .
    4. Other People
    Our days at Cross Hill were tense and unpredictable as the sky over Contracoeur. Because of the mountains and the incessant winds that blew across chilly Lake Noir, the sky was forever changing: one minute a clear, pellucid blue like washed glass, the next mottled and roiling with clouds the color of bruised plums. Before an electrical storm, depending upon the direction and velocity of the wind, the temperature could drop as much as twenty-five degrees within a few minutes. Sometimes—this particularly disoriented the younger children—twilight began abruptly at midday, the sun buried in tattered clouds. There were thunderstorms so powerful the earth and sky seemed locked in convulsions; lightning raked the sky, revealed its depths cavernous and sinister as the cellar of Cross Hill (which was officially off-limits for exploration). The moss-rotted roofs and ill-fitting windows of the old house leaked; puddles formed on the once-elegant marble and parquet floors; Mother wept, and cursed our father’s enemies—“How can they be so cruel, so vindictive? If only they knew how unhappy we are!” Mother persisted in believing that, if Father’s enemies, some of whom were his ex-colleagues and friends, knew how miserable we were in this terrible place, they would take pity on us and exonerate Roderick Matheson completely, and welcome him back to the capital, where he