HE DECIDED to have a beer in the kitchen before heading back to Jimmy and Annabeth's.

He hoped Michael wouldn't come running back down now that he'd heard Sean and the other cop leave,
- because Dave needed a few minutes' peace,
- - a little time to get his head right.


He wasn't entirely sure what had just transpired in the living room.

Sean and the other cop had been asking him questions as if he were a witness or a suspect,
- and the lack of a firm tone to their questioning had left Dave uncertain as to the real reason they'd dropped by.


And this uncertainty had left him with a bona fide motherfucker of a headache.

Whenever Dave was unsure of a situation,
- whenever the ground seemed to be shifting and slick beneath his feet,
- - his brain tended to split into two halves,
- - - as if cleaved by a carving knife.


This gave him a headache and occasionally something worse.


|||.


Because sometimes Dave was not Dave.


He was the Boy.


The Boy Who'd Escaped from Wolves.


But not merely that.


The Boy Who'd Escaped from Wolves and Grown Up.


And that was a very different creature than simply Dave Boyle.

|||.

The Boy Who'd Escaped from Wolves and Grown Up was an animal of the dusk that moved through wooded landscapes,
- silent and invisible.

It lived in a world that others never saw,
- never faced,
- - never knew or wanted to know existed-a world that ran like a dark current beside our own,
- - - a world of crickets and fireflies,
- - - - unseen except as a microsecond's flare in the corner of your eye,
- - - - - already vanished by the time your head turned toward it.

|||.


This is the world Dave lived in a lot of the time.

Not as Dave,
- but as the Boy.


And the Boy had not grown up well.

He'd gotten angrier,
- more paranoid,
- - capable of things that the real Dave could never so much as imagine.

Usually the Boy lived only in Dave's dream world,
- feral and darting past stands of thick trees,
- - giving up glimpses of himself only in flashes.

And as long as he stayed in the forest of Dave's dreams,
- he was harmless.


|||.

Since childhood,
- though,
- - Dave had suffered bouts of insomnia.

They could slip up on him after months and months of restful sleep,
- and suddenly he'd be back in that agitated,
- - jangling world of the constantly waking and the never quite asleep.

A few days of this,
- and Dave would begin to see things out of the corner of his eye-mice mostly,
- - zipping along floorboards and across desks,
- - - sometimes black flies darting around corners and into other rooms.


The air in front of his face would pop unexpectedly with minute balls of heat lightning.


People would turn rubbery.


And the Boy would lift his leg over the threshold of the dream forest and into the waking world.

Usually,
- Dave could control him,
- - but sometimes the Boy scared him.


The Boy yelled in his ears.


The Boy had a way of laughing at inappropriate times.


The Boy threatened to leer up through the mask that normally covered Dave's face and show himself to the people on the other side.

|||.


Dave hadn't slept much in three days.

He'd been lying awake every night watching his wife sleep,
- the Boy dancing through the sponge of his brain tissue,
- - bolts of lightning popping in the air before his eyes.


|||.

"I just need to get my head right,
- " he whispered,
- - and took a sip of beer.

I just need to get my head right and everything will turn out fine,
- he told himself as he heard Michael descend the stairs.

I just need to hold it together long enough for everything to slow down and then I'll catch a nice long sleep and the Boy will go back to his forest,
- people will stop looking rubbery,
- - the mice will go back in their holes,
- - - and the black flies will follow them.


|||.