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three friends were waiting.
    ‘You bring the tools?’ I asked Roland.
    He nodded, lifting an old tattered backpack.
    ‘I brought a hammer,’ Lynk said, stepping forward. He raised the tool and swung it through the air between us.
    I scowled. ‘What do we need a hammer for?’
    He bared his teeth. ‘In case it’s all rusted up.’
    ‘You never hammer seized bolts,’ I said. ‘Besides, they’d hear us for sure.’
    Lynk’s grin broadened. ‘Maybe I’ll bust some windows.’
    ‘Let’s go,’ said Roland.
    As we walked, I once again felt the urge to tell them about the rat. Again, however, something held me back. The rat hadn’t been outside. It hadn’t been in the garage. It had been in the house, and that made a difference. But it was more than that. I was afraid if I told the story I’d start crying. I still remembered vividly those black eyes, though they had changed, and now when I resurrected the scene I saw intelligence in them, an awareness. The creature, I was now convinced, had known the difference between life and death.
    We continued down the road until it began its sharp bend back up to the highway. Branching off from the corner was a narrow paved track crowded on either side by gnarled oaks. It led to the grounds of the Yacht Club. We slipped into the track, which opened out after a dozen paces. The driveway divided here, turning to the right and forming a broad circle that ran up to the red-and-white house that was the club proper. Straight ahead, beyond the ringed road and beyond the gravel parking lot, lay the yards, our destination.
    We crossed the gravel lot at a lithe run that took us over its milky-white puddles in soft bounds. Apart from the potholes, the lot was empty.
    The Yacht Club’s dry-docks and hangars waited like a graveyard. Reeking of rancid grease, its ground was mostly packed clay and crushed limestone, glittering with broken window panes and pieces of metal. Here and there twisted yellow grass lay pasted to the ground like oily hair.
    In three ragged rows the yachts stood high in their scaffolding like corpses laid out on pitched wooden pyres. The newer ones had locked doors and shaded windows. The old ones had been looted long ago.
    Between the yards and the main house rose a screen of red-needled pine trees and rampant elm and dogwood thickets. There was a watchman who lived in a cottage just beyond the last of the boats. Once in the yards, we had only him to worry about. Roland said the old man’s name was Gribbs, but I’d yet to see him. By late afternoon, and from our secret vantage point, we’d see a dim yellow light burning steadily behind the dusty window of the cottage, but he never seemed to venture outside.
    Crows roosted in the tall oaks that ran in a line behind the hangars, cawing endlessly at the barn swallows flitting like bats around the gaping hangar doorways. We came to the first line of boats and stopped. Roland moved a few yards forward, slipping into the shadow of a huge yacht. He cautiously edged around the boat for a clear view of Gribbs’s cottage, then he waved us forward.
    I darted in front of Lynk. Heart thumping, I passed Roland. Thick rusted cables were stretched tight over the uneven ground. I stepped high to clear them. Rail tracks ran the length of the yards, all the way down into the river. Black-cowled winches flanked the rusty rails. I jumped the tracks and made my way between two hangars. The grey, riveted walls were high, blocking out most of the morning’s light and leaving the air chill.
    At the back of the buildings a narrow trail ran down the length of the yards. To my right the trunks of the oaks crowded close. Somewhere in the branches above me the crows still complained, clattering their way through the leafless maze like monkeys. Beyond the trees I could see the black mud of a ploughed field, and the dark grey fringe of a forest following the river’s edge.
    The sixth boat I came to was called Mistress Flight. It was old,