They
frightened, as if he had not intended to say that much.George felt suddenly sick. What if these things, these shape-changers, weren’t just legend. What could they be living on now? They wouldn’t be able to sneak into someone’s house and counterfeit a refrigerator.
But there was all that roadkill, enough dead animals along Mingo alone each year to keep someone going, if that someone wasn’t too fastidious.
And what would be easier to mimic than an old, flattened box?
He wanted to laugh at himself, but the laughter wouldn’t come. This was such a stupid fantasy, built out of nothing but a boy’s imagination and a box that didn’t behave the way it ought to.
Instead, he only felt sicker, and more frightened. Now he could recall the one thing the old man had said about the creatures and their fear of discovery.
“They do not permit it,” he’d said, as his eyes widened in that strange flicker of fear. “They do not permit it.”
Finally he just couldn’t sit there anymore. He picked up the phone and mumbled something to his manager about feeling sick, grabbed his car keys and headed for the parking lot. Several of the others on the engineering staff looked at him oddly as he passed their desks; the secretary even stopped him and asked him if he felt all right. He mumbled something at her that didn’t change her look of concern, and assured her that he was going straight home.
He told himself that he was going to do just that. He even had his turn-signal on for a right-hand turn, fully intending to take the on-ramp at Pine and take the freeway home.
But instead he found himself turning left, where the roadkill was still lying.
He saw it as he came up over the rise; and the box was lying on top of it once again.
Suddenly desperate to prove to himself that this entire fantasy he’d created around a dead ’possum and a piece of cardboard