On the screen, to somber music, comes the title card of an old-time newsreel. WORST AIR CRASH IN HISTORY, it reads. What follows is crisp black-and-white footage of a city street that looks like a bomb hit it.

“The terrible aftermath of the worst air disaster in history!” the announcer intones. “In a Brooklyn street lies the shattered remnant of a jet transport that collided with another airliner in murky New York skies.” On the tail of the plane—or what remains of it—Holly can read UNIT. “The United Airlines aircraft plummeted into a brownstone residential section, killing six on the ground as well as eighty-four passengers and the crew.”

Now Holly sees firemen in old-fashioned helmets rushing through the wreckage. Some are carrying stretchers to which are strapped blanket-covered bodies.

“Normally,” the announcer continues, “this United flight and the Trans World Airlines flight it collided with would have been separated by miles, but the TWA plane—Flight 266, carrying forty-four passengers and crew—was far off course. It crashed on Staten Island.”

More covered bodies on more stretchers. A huge airplane wheel, the rubber shredded and still smoking. The camera pans the wreckage of 266, and Holly sees Christmas presents wrapped in gay paper scattered everywhere. The camera zooms in on one, to show a little Santa Claus attached to the bow. Santa is smoldering and blackened with soot.

“You can stop it there,” Dan says. Brad pokes his tablet and the big TV returns to bluescreen.

Dan turns to Holly.

“A hundred and thirty-four dead in all. And when did it happen? December sixteenth, 1960. Sixty years ago to this very day.”

Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same, and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard. The confluence of dates could be a coincidence, but can she say that about all that’s brought her here to this house in Portland, Maine? No. There’s a chain going all the way back to another monster named Brady Hartsfield. Brady, who allowed her to believe in the first place.

“There was one survivor,” Dan Bell says, startling her out of her reverie.

Holly points at the bluescreen, as if the newsreel were still playing there. “Someone survived that?”

“Only for a day,” Brad says. “The newspapers called him the Boy Who Fell from the Sky.”

“But it was someone else who coined the phrase,” Dan says. “Back then in the New York metro area, there were three or four independent TV stations as well as the networks. One of them was WLPT. Long gone now, of course, but if something was filmed or taped, chances are good that you can find it on the Internet. Prepare yourself for a shock, young lady.” He nods at Brad, who begins poking at his tablet again.

Holly learned at her mother’s knee (and with her father’s tacit approval) that overt displays of emotion weren’t just embarrassing and unpleasant but shameful. Even after years of work with Allie Winters, she usually keeps her feelings bottled up and tightly capped, even among friends. These are strangers, but when the next clip starts on the big screen, she screams. She can’t help it.

“That’s him! That’s Ondowsky!”

“I know,” Dan Bell says.

11

Only most people would say it wasn’t, and Holly knows this.

They’d say Oh yes, there’s a resemblance, just as there’s a resemblance between Mr. Bell and his grandson, or between John Lennon and his son Julian, or between me and Aunt Elizabeth. They’d say I bet it’s Chet Ondowsky’s grandfather. Gosh, the apple sure doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?

But Holly, like the old man in the wheelchair, knows.

The man holding the old-fashioned WLPT microphone is fuller in the face than Ondowsky, and the lines on that face suggest he’s ten, maybe even twenty years older. His crewcut is salt-and-pepper, and it comes to a slight widow’s peak that Ondowsky doesn’t have. He has the beginning of jowls, and Ondowsky doesn’t have those, either.

Behind him, some firefighters scurry about in the sooty snow, picking up packages and luggage, while others turn hoses on the remains of the United plane and two burning brownstones behind it. Just pulling away is a big old Cadillac of an ambulance with its lights flashing.

“This is Paul Freeman, reporting from the Brooklyn site of the worst air crash in American history,” the reporter says, puffing out white vapor with every word. “All were killed onboard this United Airlines jet except for one boy.” He points to the departing ambulance. “The boy, as yet unidentified, is in that ambulance. He is—” The reporter calling himself Paul Freeman pauses dramatically. “—The Boy Who Fell from the Sky! He was thrown from the rear section of the plane, still on fire, and landed in a snowbank. Horrified bystanders rolled him in the snow and put out the flames, but I saw him loaded into the ambulance, and I can tell you that his injuries looked severe. His clothes were almost entirely burned off, or melted into his skin.”

“Stop it there,” the old man commands. His grandson does so. Dan turns to Holly. His blue eyes are faded but still fierce. “Do you see it, Holly? Do you hear it? I’m sure to the viewing audience he just looked and sounded horrified, doing his job under difficult conditions, but—”

“He’s not horrified,” Holly said. She’s thinking of Ondowsky’s first report from the Macready School bombing. Now she sees that with clearer eyes. “He’s excited.”

“Yes,” Dan says, and nods. “Yes indeed. You understand. Good.”

“Thank God someone else does,” Brad says.

“The boy’s name was Stephen Baltz,” Dan says, “and this Paul Freeman saw the burned boy, perhaps heard his screams of pain—because witnesses said the boy was conscious, at least to begin with. And do you know what I think? What I have come to believe? That he was feeding.”

“Of course he was,” Holly says. Her lips feel numb. “On the boy’s pain and on the horror of the bystanders. On the death.”

“Yes. Get ready for the next one, Brad.” Dan sits back in his chair, looking tired. Holly doesn’t care. She needs to know the rest. She needs to know everything. The old fever is on her.

“When did you go looking for this? How did you find out?”

“I first saw the clip you just watched the evening of the crash, on The Huntley-Brinkley Report.” He sees her puzzlement and smiles a little. “You’re too young to remember Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. It’s now called NBC Nightly News.”

Brad says, “If an indie station arrived at some big news event first, and got good footage, they’d sell the report to one of the networks. That’s what must have happened with this, and how Grampa got to see it.”

“Freeman got there first,” Holly muses. “Are you saying… do you think Freeman caused those planes to crash?”

Dan Bell shakes his head so emphatically that the cobwebby remains of his hair fly. “No, just struck lucky. Or played the odds. Because there are always tragedies in big cities, aren’t there? Chances for a thing like him to feed. And who knows, a creature like him may be attuned to the approach of major disasters. Maybe he’s like a mosquito—they can smell blood from miles away, you know. How can we know, when we don’t even know what he is? Run the next one, Brad.”