Roger nodded. “Not just Bootsie. Remember what Mr. Patel said about other dogs being killed?” He stroked his chin again. “I wonder if the blood was drained from their bodies?”

Desite the heat and humidity that was wrapped around us like a blanket, a shiver went down my spine, as if someone had just poured cold water on my back. I didn’t want to think any more about this. I wanted to get up and walk away, walk right back into my own everyday life.

The sky was even darker now, and although it was still morning it was almost like twilight. Out in the street, a few of the automatic lights that come on after dark were flickering, as if trying to decide if it was really night already. Then I saw something move out of the corner of my eye.

“What’s that?” I said, quickly turning my head.

Roger turned to look with me. “What, Maddy? I didn’t see nothin’.”

I got up and walked toward the building, toward a window with one pane of glass that looked even older than the others. What I’d seen had not been in front of the building, but almost inside it. I say almost because it looked like a reflection, an image in the bull’s-eye pane of glass.

Old windows are strange. They aren’t thin and smooth and even like the glass that’s been used for the last hundred years. They ripple and distort what they reflect, twisting your vision toward a dimension other than ordinary height and width.

Roger was looking over my shoulder.

“You see that?” I said, reaching my hand toward the pane of glass.

“Jus’ a reflection,” he said, his voice puzzled.

But it was more than just a reflection of us and the garden in which we stood. The garden in the window was different. The trees and hedges in it were not exactly the same as those behind us. Plus there were people in period clothing strolling in the garden among the late-summer roses. Men wearing beaverskin top hats and carrying canes. Women in long dresses holding parasols over their heads. Had we walked into a set where they were making a film about Providence three centuries ago? I quickly turned to look back into the garden, and Roger turned with me.

“What?” he said.

There was no one behind us. Aside from Roger and me, the terraced garden was completely empty. Was I going crazy? I looked into the window again. This time what I saw rising up behind us made my blood run cold, and I stifled a scream.

13

UNDER THE STREET

WHAT DID I see reflected in the window?