not switch it on, not wanting to startle Jurgen, who was now awake. Jurgen delicately sidestepped up his arm and onto his shoulder, and Dubykky picked his way by starlight through the junk-strewn yard.
The shack’s door, made out of mortar-shell crates, hung on rubber strap hinges. The shack proper, under the tarpaper, comprised walls of pallets on end, buttressed by vertical and horizontal two-by-fours, the whole structure about ten feet square. Dubykky wondered that the wind had not already leveled it, yet when he grasped the door frame and gave it a shake, the structure barely shuddered, flimsy as it looked. He nudged in the door with his foot. It swung open easily, silent except for a clack when it struck a milk crate behind it. On his shoulder, Jurgen started, then moaned a low, dry, drowsy nhrr in complaint.
Dubykky ducked through the doorway, clicking on the flashlight but keeping it trained straight at his feet. The roof was on a slant, the highest end over the entrance, only inches above his head. There was just one small window, curtained with a yellow terrycloth rag, to his left. Seated in that corner, legs splayed out on the rough plank floor, was the boy. He turned his head slowly at Dubykky. His features were pools of black.
Dubykky shifted the light cone so that the faint edge illuminated the boy’s whole figure. A lumpish body, a chunky head, heavy eyebrows, wild brown hair, and a blank expression. Or almost blank. A little twitch of the eyebrows hinted interest. Even a measure of recognition. Perhaps the boy sensed something about Dubykky. In any case, it was not the way a human boy would react if an adult found him alone in a dark shack.
Lying in the boy’s lap was the book that Mildred had checked out to him, Every Child’s Omnibus of Wisdom.
“Speak the name,” Dubykky commanded. If the boy was indeed the type of creature that Dubykky suspected, the command compelled a reply.
And so it was. As Mildred had described, a series of sounds like m, t, g, n, and s came in response, a slow, harsh garble. They formed no recognizable word or name.
“Matthew Gans?” asked Dubykky.
“Matthew Gans,” the boy pronounced precisely.
Dubykky regretted that Mildred had spoken names to the boy, although he could not fault her for trying to do her job. It was only that the creature would absorb and repeat everything indiscriminately.
“Mitchell Garrison?” he asked again.
“Mitchell Garrison.”
“Matilda Gosse?”
“Matilda Gosse.”
“Manuel Gonzales?”
“Manuel Gonzales.”
The boy enunciated each name, reacting to none more than the others. How would Dubykky find out which, if any, was the right name? It was best, he decided, not to worry about it for now.
He shook his head in an exaggerated manner. “No. You are not Matthew Gans or Mitchell Garrison or Matilda Gosse or Manuel Gonzales,” he said. “You are Junior. Say ‘Junior.’”
“Junior,” echoed the boy.
Following a long pause, during which neither the man nor the boy made a sound, Dubykky went to his side and crouched. He set the flashlight on the narrow ledge under the window so that the light shone against the back wall and revealed him to the boy as much as the boy to him. Dubykky looked long into his eyes, which did not waver. The few times Junior blinked, he did so with unnatural slowness. Dubykky picked up and studied the hand that had so disturbed Mildred. It indeed had only three fingers and a thumb. There was no indication that it had been mangled, though. Where the pinkie should have been there was no hint of a stump. Not even a metacarpal to support a finger. The sensible, human conclusion would be that Junior had a birth defect.
Dubykky knew better. It was a sign. A crucial sign. The mark of four. Its presence provided final confirmation of what Dubykky had surmised. The creature seated before him was an echo of evil like all the other echoes he had encountered. Every one had the mark of four somewhere on the body. Reflexively, his hand went to his own mark, the perfect diamond of moles at the base of the neck.
The sight of Junior seated there moved Dubykky. Another echo, another monster on the loose, another confrontation, more death. He had seen so many of them. He was suddenly weary, wishing Junior could be a … departure. Somehow.
He shook his head to clear it. What was going on with him? It was not his place to feel such things, only to watch and support evil’s procedures. He forced a smile, expecting, and getting, no response from Junior.
“Do you know why you are here?” he asked gently, circumspectly, spreading his arms to indicate the world.
Junior slid his hands over the cover of Every Child’s Omnibus of Wisdom and lifted it straight up. Then he repeated the movement with one leaf after another until five stood vertical, and page six was exposed. He rested his hand by the illustration there. It showed three boys. One was dark-haired, his face rugged, his eyes slitted, and his mouth set in a wicked grin. He was shoving a second boy, who had yellow hair, rosy cheeks, and an expression halfway between a smile and astonishment. He was falling backwards over a third boy, pinched, meager, mouse-haired, and scared, who was on hands and knees. Below was a nursery rhyme:
This little boy is the good little boy.
He smiles on all he sees.
This little boy is the bad little boy.
He does but as he please.
This little boy is the fool of a boy.
He gets down on his knees
That the bad little boy
The good little boy
Shall sorely trick and tease.
Junior put his finger on the bad boy’s head.
“Yes.” Dubykky spoke slowly, kneeling. “But you’re not here about little boys.” He rested his forefinger under the T of the rhyme’s third line and drew it across as he read, “‘This little boy is the bad little boy.’ And so are some adults.”
“And so are some adults,” repeated Junior. He pronounced the words exactly but in a dead, flat tone.
Dubykky settled into a cross-legged position, a movement that made Jurgen spread his wings to keep balance. Junior’s eyes shifted to the bird and remained there until Dubykky reached over and turned the pages back to the very beginning of the book. He put his finger under the text’s first word, which began a short rhyme centered in a page-filling illustration: a broad meadow bordered by forest and split by a brook, rounded mountains in the background, in the sky a smiling sun shooting out thick golden rays.
“‘For every evil,’” he prompted, pointing. After a hesitation, Junior looked at the words and repeated them. Dubykky slid his finger to the second half of the line, “under the sun.” Junior repeated again. And so on:
There is a remedy or there is none.
If there is one, seek to find it;
If there is none, never mind it.
In this way, Dubykky led the boy through the entire
