right. You know that, too. You know how you’re different from other boys, don’t you? Yes, 
you’re crafty and you look good in a suit and you can make your muscles talk for you. But 
I know you better than you know yourself, Owen Crites. I know how cold you are on 
the inside. I know how you believe different things.” He felt her closing in on him as 
she moved toward him. “What exactly is this thing? Is this a toy? Is this something else? 
Is this something you talk to? Is this…is this…some kind of devil god? Do you worship 
graven images now?” She said it in a half-joking manner, and that was the worst of it. 
She wasn’t taking Dagon seriously. He could feel it in her tone.
  Owen felt as if his tongue had been cut out. He felt a heat rash along his neck. He 
looked from the statue to his mother and back again. Then, he grinned. “Don’t be 
ridiculous. You have such a small mind. You’re so quick to judge me when you yourself are 
the one with the cold heart. You set a trap for dad and now you punish him for that same 
trap. You can’t even love your only child. And your imagination — your paranoid 
imagination — finding some carved art in a koi pond, something that you claim you watched 
me bleed over, did you ever for a moment think that perhaps I hated myself so much that 
I wanted to slit my wrists? But something made me stop. Something kept me from hurting 
myself. But it wasn’t the thought of you, was it? It wasn’t the love of my mother that 
saved me, was it? It was the thought that maybe one day I’d have a moment just like this. 
A moment when dad is out of the house.
  A moment when you’re at your worst. And then, do you know what I am going to do with 
you?”
  “What are you talking about? Owen? Owen?”
  “Give me that,” he said, snatching it from her hand. “It’s mine. Not yours.”
  She stood before him, trembling.
  Owen cradled Dagon in his arms. He closed his eyes, and whispered a brief prayer.
  When he opened them, he said, “Here is something I hope you think about until the 
moment you die. I am going to be your dutiful son as long as your years continue. But the 
moment that I get an inkling that you are old and feeble, I will come to your bedside one 
night, and I will press my hands over your nose and mouth until you smother to death. And 
in those last moments, you will look on me and know that everything you were ever afraid 
of was true.”
  His mother pressed her hands to her lips, but was unable to speak.
  It was the power of Dagon, of course. It was there, in the room.
  The god was there with him.
  Dagon whispered within his blood, “You will die like the bitch that you are.”
  Or had Owen himself said it aloud, in a whisper, to his mother?
  2
  This is how it will happen, the voice came to him. You will tell her things. You will 
tell him things. He harbors a madness. He is breakable. Then, she will kill him. You will 
save her. She will kill him and you will have her.
  He slept that night with Dagon next to him in bed, and dreamed of the great realm 
beneath the sea, and he no longer felt his age, but felt as if he were again a child, and 
Jenna was with him, the Queen of the Deepest Fathom.
  3
  “Hello sweetie,” Mrs. M said. She had just finished the Sunday crossword puzzle, and 
looked up from the paper. “You all ready for four more days of this…this tempest?” The 
kitchen was like a brilliant day compared to the murky rain outdoors.
  Owen had come in through the back, his towel in his arms. “Up for a swim, Cathy?”
  Mrs. M shook her head. “Feeling a bit downtrodden from the rain. Ask Frank, he’d 
probably love a race with you.”
  “Mr. M’s around?”
  “He’s enjoying the summer here after all.”
  “That’s great. I would’ve thought with the rain…”
  Mrs. M didn’t seem to notice his comment. She crossed her legs, one over the other, and 
Owen thought for a moment that it was the most luxurious movement he had ever in his life 
seen. “You here for Jenna?”
  “I doubt she wants to see me.”
  “Owen,” Mrs. M said, setting the paper down on the kitchen table. She arched an 
eyebrow. “Something’s changed about you. What is it? Turn around.”
  Dutifully, he turned about and then back to face her again.
  “You’re different now. What’s that all about?” She said it with a sweet amazement. “Are 
you in love?”
  “No,” he said, too quickly.
  “Jenna’s in her room. She sleeps later and later. Go call her if you want.
  She should get up. It’s nearly ten. No one should sleep this late. Not at her age. Not 
in summer.” Then, Mrs. M leaned forward, her breasts dropping slightly out of her robe. 
“Between you, me, and the wall, Owen, I think she's really depressed over something. But 
I’m the last person she’ll confide in. I imagine it’s about a boy,” she whispered. “That 
McTeague character.”
  Then, she said, lightly, “I always thought there was something not right about him.”
  4
  “Oh. It’s you,” Jenna said. She was sitting up in her bed, the covers around her white 
cotton nightgown.
  “Hi,” he said from the doorway. The room smelled of sandalwood and vanilla.
  “It’s the rain. It does this to me,” she said, wiping her hair back from her face. “I 
hate storms.” She added, idly, almost as if he wasn’t listening, “It’s like my summer got 
stolen.”
  He remembered the love that he had nearly forgotten. He remembered why he loved Jenna 
so much. She was there for him, always. She had always been there for him.
  “Okay if I come in? You know, like I used to?”
  “Sure,” she said, drawing her knees up. Then, “What is it between you two?”
  He went into the bedroom, and sat down on the chair near her desk.
  “Who two?”
  “Don’t be coy,” she said unpleasantly. “Jimmy. Is it just sex?”
  “Oh. That.”
  “Yes. That.”
  “I don’t want to talk about it.”
  “I think you do.”
  “No, I really don’t.” And then, something within him opened up. It was like feeling a 
heat — a fire — in his chest, near his heart. It was Dagon.
  Dagon would inspire him. He felt that strength, suddenly, just when he thought he would 
falter. Without even trying, tears poured from his eyes.
  “Owen? Owen?” she asked, but he was nearly blind from the tears. She lifted the 
blanket, and patted a space next to her. “Come here. What’s wrong?
  Owen?”
  He bawled like a baby, and without knowing who — or what — had moved him, he found 
himself in her bed, her arms around him.
  “Aw, Owen, what’s wrong? What’s wrong my precious, precious, precious baby boy?” She 
held him close, and Dagon was there. He felt it. He was not alone.
  Dagon was there.