“I thought you — ”
  “You thought wrong.”
  “I’ve been waiting for you. At the boat. Every night, I watch you leave the restaurant 
and walk home. Every night I wish you’d come to me.”
  “You disgust me.”
  “Stop it. I know that’s not true.” Jimmy’s shoulders began heaving. The sound of the 
rain became thunderous and sheets and blocks of it seemed to dump right down around them. 
“God. God!” Jimmy cried out, his arms going up to the sky like some clown, like some 
revival preacher clown; the rain pouring against his face. A thunderclap hid the sound of 
his bleating. “If only you knew! If only you could grow up inside me! Knowing how I’ve 
been pushed and pulled, first my father forcing me into tennis and basketball and soccer 
since I was six years old, the camps I’ve gone to every summer, and these schools I go 
to, and what it all means when inside…inside Owen…you know something about yourself 
that’s like a doorway into a different world.
  Something that’s like…I don’t know…like a doorway out of this torture place and into 
this garden. When I was nine I had this garden that I helped create.
  It had vegetables and flowers in it, nothing pretty and nothing special, but it was 
mine. My dad dug it up in the middle of the night.
  He dug it up and told me that no son of his was going to be a goddamn gardener. That’s 
what this feels like. Like someone is trying to dig up the garden I need to grow. And you 
know you need to go to that garden but every single human being from your mother to your 
father to your coaches to your teachers to your friends to even strangers — every single 
human being — wants you to keep away from the one garden where you know you can just 
help things grow and where you’ll feel calm for once in your life…where you will feel 
that what you have known inside your body, inside your heart, inside your mind, is the 
way God and nature and whatever it is that moves things within any human being — meant 
for you to be.”
  Owen nearly gasped when Jimmy had finished.
  “Jim, Christ, I know,” Owen said, feeling as if he’d rehearsed the lines.
  He attempted a feeble smile. Part of him felt removed from within his body.
  He was watching himself — Owen — react, seem gentle, seem kind. “It’s just like that.” 
Then, he looked around at the tourists coming off the ferry, their black and clear and 
red and green umbrellas all blossoming above their heads, and there, beyond the Crab 
Shack were six of the island guys he’d grown up with; and when he looked through the 
thick rain, he saw other people he had known all his life.
  “Look, we can’t do this here,” Owen said. “Get in the truck.”
  10
  Owen drove in silence through a rain-shattered world — and followed the slick black 
island roads until they were nearly to the Great Salt Pond.
  Jimmy seemed content with the quiet of the drive. When Owen glanced over, he noticed 
that Jimmy pressed his forehead against the window beside him, reminding him somehow of a 
puppy. Finally, they came to the end of road-
  break that looked out over the enormous pond. When he’d turned off the ignition, Owen 
reached over and took Jimmy’s hand in his.
  “I know. It’s difficult,” Jimmy said. “I’m not like this either. Not really.
  There are things I want out of life. Things that have nothing to do with this.
  But right now, Christ, right now, this is it.”
  “Other people can do this kind of thing, but I can’t. It wouldn’t be right.”
  “No, it wouldn’t be. But we can go somewhere where it’ll all be all right.”
  “Where?” Owen laughed. “Where would it be right? My god. Where?”
  Jimmy recoiled as if he’d been slapped. “Out to sea. In the boat.”
  “For how long, Jimmy? How long before your dad cuts you off, or before we move on? How 
long before you need to go off to your Ivy League school and then marry and meanwhile, I 
live in some kind of shame on this island. I’m not like you. I’m not like the kind of men 
who do this with other men. I’m just…Just.”
  “Just?”
  “Just not sure what I feel right now.”
  It was easy to lie once Owen knew what he would do with Jimmy. How he would destroy 
him. How it would go easy once everything was in place.
  “Oh, baby,” Jimmy moaned, leaning over, into him, pressing his scalp against Owen’s 
neck. Owen felt wetness along his throat. “You don’t know how long I’ve hoped you’d say 
it.”
  “We don’t need Jenna do we? Or girls like her,” Owen whispered.
  “God, if I could, I’d kill her.”
  “Who? Kill?”
  “I didn’t mean that,” Owen said, and kissed him on the top of his head.
  The rain beat down in great sheets around the truck, and the great clouds roiled, and 
Owen knew that he had him now.
  He had Jimmy right where he wanted him.
  Where Dagon wanted him.
  
  
  Chapter Eight
  Dagon 
  1
  “Owen?” his mother asked, holding it in her hand. The statue. It had always seemed 
enormous to him, but in her hand, it was only a foot in length.
  The base was cracked, some of its teeth had fallen out, and all it was, after all, in 
her hand, was something that someone had carved and had left behind.
  “Where’d you get that?”
  “Where you left it,” she said. She hefted it in her hand. “Where did it come from?”
  “I…I found it.”
  “You found it?”
  “Yeah, I did. It’s mine.” He held his hand out.
  “Did you buy it?”
  “That’s none of your business,” he said. “That’s mine.”
  “Why did you put it in the fish pond?”
  “It’s an ornament. It looked nice there. Give it back.”
  “It’s terrible looking. It’s eyes. The skin on it. Who- ever made that thing was sick. 
I think some kind of animal was used. It smells, too.”
  “Mother.”
  “Don’t mother me. You may be a young man, but you have a thing or two to learn. I know 
you, Owen. I know how you think. I saw you that morning.”
  “What are you talking about?”
  “I saw you. You cut your arm and let it bleed on this…this thing.”
  “That’s crazy. Why would I do something crazy like that? Like — what — like cut myself? 
And what — did you say — bleed?”
  “It’s some kind of awful thing, isn’t it? This thing. It’s some awful thing for you. 
The way your mind works.” She looked at the small statue in her hand, and then back at 
his face. She squinted as if trying to see him more clearly. “You’ve never been quite