The cops helped him shuck his drenched shoes and socks and put him down on the overstuffed horsehide sofa. Alan recovered himself with an effort of will and gave them his ID.

“I’m sorry, you must think I’m an absolute lunatic,” he said, shivering in his wet clothes.

“Sir,” the cop who’d taken the shovel from him said, “we see absolute lunatics every day. I think you’re just a little upset. We all go a little nuts from time to time.”

“Yeah,” Alan said. “Yeah. A little nuts. I had a long night last night. Family problems.”

The cops shifted their weight, showering the floor with raindrops that beaded on the finish.

“Are you going to be all right on your own? We can call someone if you’d like.”

“No,” Alan said, pasting on a weak smile. “No, that’s all right. I’ll be fine. I’m going to change into some dry clothes and clean up and, oh, I don’t know, get some sleep. I think I could use some sleep.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” the cop who’d taken the shovel said. He looked around at the bookcases. “You’ve read all of these?” he asked.

“Naw,” Alan said, falling into the rote response from his proprietorship of the bookstore. “What’s the point of a bunch of books you’ve already read?” The joke reminded him of better times and he smiled a genuine smile.

Though the stinging hot shower revived him somewhat, he kept quickening into panic at the thought of David creeping into his house in the night, stumping in on desiccated black child-legs, snaggled rictus under mummified lips.

He spooked at imagined noises and thudding rain and the dry creaking of the old house as he toweled off and dressed.

There was no phone in the mountain, no way to speak to his remaining brothers, the golems, his parents. He balled his fists and stood in the center of his bedroom, shaking with impotent worry.

David. None of them had liked David very much. Billy, the fortune-teller, had been born with a quiet wisdom, an eerie solemnity that had made him easy for the young Alan to care for. Carlos, the island, had crawled out of their mother’s womb and pulled himself to the cave mouth and up the face of their father, lying there for ten years, accreting until he was ready to push off on his own.

But Daniel, Daniel 

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