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“Tad?”

It should have sounded pathetic at best, crazy at worst: an old man speaking his long-dead son’s name in the empty courtyard of an absurdly oversized house on a Florida key. It didn’t, so I said it again.

“Tad, are you there?”

Nothing. Only the snake pole, which was undeniably real.

“Can you help me?”

There was that ramshackle gazebo at the end of Greg’s boardwalk. I went out there with the snake pole over my shoulder, the way an old-time soldier might carry his rifle… and while the pole had no bayonet, it did have that wicked hook at the end. On the gazebo’s floor were a few mold-streaked lifejackets that didn’t look like they’d save anyone’s life and an ancient boogie board decorated with a scattering of raccoon shit. I sat on the bench. It creaked beneath my weight. I didn’t have to be Hercule Poirot to know Greg didn’t spend much time out here by the beach; he had a Gulf Coast house worth six or eight million dollars, and this outpost looked like a forgotten privy somewhere in the wilds of Bossier Parish, Louisiana. But I hadn’t come here to appreciate the architecture. I had come here to think.

Oh, but that was bullshit. I had come here to try and summon my dead son.

There were methods of summoning, assuming the dead hadn’t drifted away to wherever they go when they lose interest in this world; I had looked some up on the Internet before coming out here. You could use a Ouija board, which I didn’t have. You could use a mirror or candles, both of which I did… but after what I’d seen on my cell phone’s screen last night, I didn’t dare try it. There were spirits in Greg’s house, but the ones I was sure of weren’t friendly. So in the end I’d come out here to this uncared-for gazebo empty-handed. I sat and looked out at a beach unmarked by a single track and a Gulf unmarked by a single sail. In February or March, both the beach and the water would have been packed. In August there was only me.

Until I felt him.

Or someone.

Or just wishful thinking.

“Tad?”

Nothing.

“If you’re there, kiddo, I could use a little help.”

But he wasn’t a kiddo, not anymore. Four decades had passed since Tad Trenton died in that hot car with the rabid St. Bernard patrolling the dooryard of a farmhouse as deserted as the north end of Rattlesnake Key. The dead could age. I had never considered the possibility, but knew it now.

But only if they wanted to. Allowed themselves to. It was apparently possible to both grow and not grow, a paradox that had produced the gruesome hybrids I’d seen in the guest room’s double bed: man-things with the bloated heads of poisoned children.

“You don’t owe me anything. I came too late. I know that. I admit that. Only…” I stopped. You’d think a man could say anything when he’s alone, wouldn’t you? Only I wasn’t entirely sure I was. Nor was I sure what I wanted to say until I said it.

“I mourned you, Tad, but I let you go. In time, Donna did, too. That’s not wrong, is it? Forgetting is what would be wrong. Holding on too tightly… I think that makes monsters.”

I had the snake pole across my lap. “If you left this for me, I really could use a little help.”

I waited. There was nothing. There was also something, either a presence or the hope of an old man who had been scared half to death and forced to remember old hurts. Every snake that ever bit him.

Then the thoughts came back, driving away whatever delicate thing might have come to visit me.

Dress us, roll us, see us. See us, dress us, roll us!

The kids wanted me. The kids who wanted to be my kids. And they were also my thoughts, that was the horror of it. Having your own mind turned against you is a gilt-edged invitation to insanity.

What interrupted them—partially, at least—was the honking of a horn. I turned and saw someone waving to me. Just a silhouette at the edge of the courtyard, but the shapes of the spindly legs beneath the baggy shorts were enough to tell me who my company was. I waved back, propped the snake pole against the gazebo’s railing, and headed back along the boardwalk. Andy Pelley met me halfway.

“Good morning, Mr. Trenton.”

“Vic, remember?”

“Vic, Vic, right. I was out this way and thought I’d drop by.”

Bullshit you were, I thought. And I thought roll us, dress us, see us, we’re waiting for you.

“What can I do for you?”

“I thought I’d fill you in on the autopsy.”