The giant knelt down and watched the gull's beak open and close. The bird's neck was twisted at an unnatural angle and in its single visible eye he saw himself reflected and distorted, his brow shrunken, his nose huge and bulging, his mouth tiny and lost in the folds of his chin. He hung suspended in the blackness of the bird's pupil, a pale moon pendent in a dark, starless sky, and his pain and that of the gull were one. A dry beech leaf fell from a branch above and performed joyful cartwheels across the grass, tumbling tip over stem as the wind carried it away, almost touching the gull's feathers as it passed. The bird, lost in its agony, paid it no heed. Above its head, the giant's hand hovered, the promise of mortality and mercy in its grasp.

"What's wrong with it?" said the boy. He had just turned six, and had been living on the island for almost a year. In all that time, he had yet to see a dying animal, until now.

"Its neck is broken," said the giant.

The wind rolling in off the Atlantic tousled his hair and flattened his jacket against his back. Within sight of where he squatted, the eastern shore of the island began its steep descent to the ocean. There were rocks down there, but no beach. The old painter, Giacomelli, kept a boat in the shelter of a glade close by the shore, although he used it only occasionally. In the summer, when the sea was calmer, he could sometimes be seen out on the water, a line trailing from the boat. The giant wasn't sure if Giacomelli, or Jack, as most islanders called him, ever caught anything, but then he guessed that catching things wasn't the point for Jack. The painter rarely even bothered to bait the hooks, and if a fish was foolish enough to impale itself on a barb, Jack would usually unhook it and cast it back into the sea, assuming he even noticed the tug on the line. Fishing was merely his alibi, an excuse to take the boat out on the waves. The old man was always making sketches while the line dangled unthreateningly, his hand working quickly with charcoals as he added another perspective to his seemingly endless series of representations of the landscape.

There weren't too many people living over on this side of the island. It was too exposed for some. Sheep sorrel, horseweed, and highbush blackberry colonized patches of waste or open ground, but mostly it was just trees, the island's forest petering out as it drew closer to the cliffs. In fact, this was maybe the closest thing to a concentration of houses over on the eastern shore, the boy and his mother in one, Jack in another, Bonnie Claeson just over the rise to the north, and a sprinkling of others within reasonable walking distance. The view was good, though, as long as one didn't mind looking at empty sea.

The boy's voice called him back.

"Can you help it? Can you make it better?"

"No," said the giant. He wondered how the bird had ended up here, lying in the middle of a patch of lawn with its neck broken. He thought he saw its open beak move feebly, and its tiny tongue flick at the grass. It might have been attacked by an animal or another bird, although there were no marks upon it. The giant looked around but could see no other signs of life. No gulls glided. There were no starlings, no chickadees. There was only this single, dying gull, alone of its kind.

The boy knelt down and stretched out a finger to prod the bird, but the giant's hand caught it before it could make contact, engulfing it in his palm.

"Don't do that," he said.

The boy looked at him. There was no pity in his face, thought the giant. There was only curiosity. But if there was not pity, then neither was there understanding. The boy was just too young to understand, and that was why the giant loved him.

"Why?" said the boy. "Why can't I touch it?"

"Because it is in pain, and you will only increase that pain by touching it."

The boy considered this.

"Can you make the pain go away?"

"Yes," said the giant.

"Then do it."

The giant reached down with both hands, placing his left hand like a shell above the body of the gull, and the thumb and forefinger of his right hand at either side of its neck.

"I think maybe you should look away," he told the boy.

The boy shook his head. Instead, his eyes were focused on the giant's hands and the soft, warm body of the bird enclosed within their ambit.

"I have to do this," said the giant. His thumb and forefinger moved in unison, gripping the bird's neck and simultaneously pulling and twisting. The gull's head was wrenched one hundred and eighty degrees, and its pain was brought to an end.

Instantly, the boy began to cry.

"What did you do?" he wailed. "What did you do?"

The giant rose and made as if to grip the boy's shoulder, but the boy backed away from him, fearful now of the power in those great hands.

"I put it out of its misery," said the giant. He was already realizing his mistake in euthanizing the bird while the boy was watching, but he had no experience in dealing with one so young. "It was the only thing that I could do."

"No, you killed it. You killed it!"

The giant's hand retreated.

"Yes," he said. "I did. It was in pain and it could not be saved. Sometimes, all that you can do is take away the pain."

But the boy was already running back to the house, back to his mother, and the wind carried his cries to the giant as he stood on their neatly trimmed lawn. Gently, he cupped the dead gull in his right hand and carried it away to the treeline, where he dug a small hole with the edge of a stone and covered the little thing in earth and leaves, placing the stone at last upon the mound. When he rose again, the boy's mother was walking toward him across the lawn, the boy clinging to her, shielded by her body.

"I didn't know you were out here," she said. She was trying to smile, both embarrassed and alarmed by her son's distress.

"I was passing," said the giant. "I thought I'd drop in, see how you were. Then I saw Danny crouching on the grass, and went over to see what was the matter. There was a gull, a dying gull. I--"

The boy interrupted.

"What did you do with it?"

His cheeks were streaked with the marks of his tears and his grubby-fingered efforts to wipe them away.

The giant looked down upon him. "I buried it," he said. "Over there. I marked the place with a stone."

The boy released his hold upon his mother and walked toward the trees, his eyes grave with suspicion, as if he were convinced that the giant had somehow spirited the bird away for his own dark ends. When his eyes found the stone he stood before the gull's resting place, his hands hanging loosely by his sides. With the tip of his right foot he tested the earth, half hoping to reveal a small swath of feathers, darkened with dirt now like a discarded wedding gown, but the giant had buried the bird deep and no trace of it was made visible to him.

"It couldn't be saved?" asked his mother.

"No," said the giant. "Its neck was broken."

She spotted the boy and saw what he was doing. "Danny, come away from there."

He walked back to her, still refusing to look the giant in the eye, until he was once again by his mother's side. Her arm gripped the shoulder of the boy, and she pulled him closer to her.

"There was nothing anybody could do, Danny. The bird was sick. Joe did the right thing."

Then, in a whisper to the giant, she added: "I wish he hadn't seen you kill it. You maybe should have waited until he was gone."

The giant reddened at the chastisement. "I'm sorry," he said.

The woman smiled to herself as she tried to comfort both boy and man simultaneously. He is so big, so strong, she thought, and yet he is made awkward and small by the sorrow of a little boy and his feelings for the boy's mother. This is a strange position in which to find myself, circling this huge man as he circles me, almost -- but not quite -- touching. It took him so long, so long...

"He's still young," she said reassuringly. "He'll learn, in time."

"Yes," said the giant. "I guess he will."

He grinned ruefully, briefly exposing the gaps between his teeth. Then, suddenly conscious that he was revealing them, he allowed the smile to die. He squatted down so that his face was level with that of the boy.

"Good-bye, Danny," he said.

The boy was still looking toward the grave of the gull and did not respond.

The giant turned to the woman. "Good-bye, Marianne. Are we still okay for dinner?"

"Sure," she said. "Bonnie's going to look after Danny for the evening."

He almost smiled again.

"Say good-bye to Officer Dupree, Danny," said the woman as the giant prepared to leave. "Say good-bye to Joe."

But the boy only turned his face away, burying himself in the folds of her skirt.

"I don't want you to go with him," he said. "And I don't want to stay with Bonnie."

"Hush," was all his mother could say.

And the giant named Joe Dupree strode toward his Explorer, dirt beneath his nails and the warmth of the bird still palpable on the palm of his hand. Had there been any strangers around to see his face, the sadness upon it would have given them pause. But to the natives on the island, the look upon the huge policeman's face would have seemed as familiar as the sound of breaking waves or the sight of dead fish upon the shore.

After all, he was not called Melancholy Joe for nothing.

* * *

He was born huge. His mother would often joke that, had Joe Dupree been a girl, he could almost have given birth to her. They had been forced to cut him out of her, and, well, that was that as far as Eloise Dupree having more children was concerned. She was almost forty by the time her son was born, and both she and her husband were content to remain a one-child family.

The boy grew and grew. For a time, they feared that he was suffering from acromegaly, the ailment of giants, and that their beloved son would be taken from them at an early age, his life span halved or even quartered by the disease. Old Doc Bruder, who was then not so old, sent them to a specialist, who conducted tests before reassuring them that their boy was not acromegalous. True, there were risks associated with his size later in life: cardiovascular disease, arthritis, respiratory problems. Some form of chemical intervention could be considered at a later stage, but he advised them to wait and see.

Joe Dupree continued to grow. He towered over his classmates in elementary school and in high school. Desks were too small, chairs too uncomfortable. He stood out from his peers like the seed of a great tree dropped in the wrong part of the forest, forced to survive amid alder and holly, its strangeness apparent to even the most casual of glances. Older boys baited him, treating him like a handicapped oddity. When he tried to strike back at them, they overwhelmed him with numbers and guile. Even the sporting arena offered him no comfort. He had bulk to go with his size, but it was without grace or skill. His was not an immensity and strength that could be put to use in any competition. He lacked the instincts necessary as much as the abilities. His great body was a burden on the football field and a liability in the wrestling circle. He seemed destined to spend his life either falling over or getting up again.

By the time he was eighteen, Joe Dupree had topped out at over seven feet, two inches and weighed over 360 pounds. His mass was a millstone in every way. He was intelligent, yet it was assumed by his peers that he was stupid because of how he looked. Instead of proving them wrong, he became what they perceived. He was the freak, the freak from the island (for it was his upbringing on the island that doomed him, as much as anything else; already he was an outsider to the kids from Portland, who thought little of the islanders to begin with, even those of normal size). He retreated into himself, and after high school took a job on the island driving for Covey Jaffe. It was only when the time of his father's retirement drew near that Dupree joined the Portland PD, his size almost an impediment to his acceptance until his family's history in the department was taken into account. When his father at last retired, it seemed natural that Joe Dupree should take over his role as the island's resident policeman, assisted by the existing roster of cops from the mainland.

Dupree's father had died three years earlier, six months after Eloise had passed away. His father had simply proved unable to live without her. There was no other possible reason for the sudden decline in his health, despite the opinions of doctors and specialists. They had been together for forty-seven years, living in a modest house on this most remote of the inhabited islands, a profoundly enamored couple secure in the center of a close community. Dupree missed them both deeply, his father in particular, for he was forced to travel the same paths, to drive the same roads, to greet the same people, to wear the same uniform as his old man once had. There was a link between the two generations that could not be sundered, and he strengthened it with every day that he worked.

In his darkest moments, Dupree would recall his childhood, and his old man telling him tales from legend and from the Bible: of Goliath, who stood over six cubits; of King Og of Bashan's bed, which was nine cubits long; of the giants of Greek myth, the sons of heaven and earth, who were slain by the Olympians and buried under the earth, their remains creating the mountains of the world; of the Titans, parents of the gods; of Agrius the Untamable, born fully mature and clad in the armor of battle, who waged war on the gods of Olympus after the Titans' defeat; and of Aurgelmir, of Norse myth, who was the first being, the father of the giants who followed, and whose body was used to make the very earth itself. Neither deities nor lesser spirits, the giants were beings out of time, and gods and men decreed that they should be destroyed.

Dupree understood his father's purpose: to make him feel special, part of some great heritage, a gift from the gods, maybe even from God himself. He told his son stories of Pecos Bill, of Paul Bunyan, of the army of giants raised by Frederick the Great. It was all part of his great effort to give his son some comfort. It had not worked, for the Bible contained no stories of laughing girls and mocking boys, and the giants of myth were felled by weapons and wars, not words and enforced isolation -- yet he loved his father for trying.

Dupree looked back at Marianne Elliot's house. Danny had already gone inside, but his mother was standing on the doorstep, watching the dark sea and the white plumes upon it, like shards of sunlight glimpsed through stormy skies. He tried to recall how often he had encountered her in this fashion. At first he had thought her hypnotized by the sea, as those who came to the island from away sometimes became, unfamiliar as they were with its rhythms. But once or twice he had caught her unawares and had been struck by the absence of peace in her face. Instead, her expression was one of concern, even fear. He wondered if she had lost someone to the sea yet still found herself somehow bound to it, like the widows of drowned fishermen unwilling to leave the side of the great grave that refuses to relinquish their loved ones to them. Then she seemed to realize that he was watching her, for she turned to him, raised her hand in farewell, and followed her son indoors.

Dupree started the Explorer's engine and drove toward the coast road, heading east along it. The road did not make a full circuit of the island. There were areas to the northwest, at Stepping Stone Hill, and southwest down by Hunger Cove, that were virtually inaccessible by car, but since nobody lived in those areas, the absence of roads was no great burden. Still, each spring Dupree would lead a group of volunteers over to Stepping Stone and Hunger and they would cut back the trees and brush that had begun to colonize the dirt trails leading down to the sea, just in case access was ever needed from the main road. It was a tiresome job, but far less irksome than having to build a new trail in a few years' time, or being forced to hack a way through in the event of an emergency.

About seven hundred people lived on the island year-round, a figure that tripled, at least, during the summer months. The island was large, five miles long and almost two miles wide, one of over 750 islands, islets, and exposed ridges scattered throughout the two-hundred-square-mile vastness of Casco Bay. It was bigger and more populous than its nearest rival, Great Chebeague, but its size meant that most people still lived in relative seclusion, apart from the community that had built up around the main ferry landing, known only as the Cove. The population increased during the summer, but not to the same extent as on the other Casco Bay islands nearer the mainland, like Peaks or Chebeague or Long Island, for Dutch lay much farther to the east, and was more exposed than the rest. In winter, only the old families remained. Their history was entwined with that of the island, and their names had echoed around its woods for hundreds of years: Amerling and Tooker, Houghton and Hall, Doughty and Dupree.

The heat was turned up high in the Explorer, for it was fiercely cold, even for January. There was talk of storms coming, and Thorson, the ferry captain, had posted a warning of possible suspension of the ferry services over the coming week. Already, Dupree had been forced to break up some heated arguments that had arisen at the ferry landing over accusations of excessive timidity on Thorson's part. It was hard for occasional visitors to the island to understand the importance of the ferry link to year-round residents. Casco Bay Ferries, which ran regular services to a number of the islands, did not do so to Dutch Island due to the distances involved and the relative paucity of passengers, although its mail boat did make daily stops. Thorson's family had been providers of the island's ferry service for over seventy years, taking kids over to high school, students to college, grandparents to visit grandchildren, workers to their offices, patients to the hospital, boyfriends to their girlfriends, children to aged parents who had been consigned to homes... the list was endless. If you needed to buy a new TV, you parked down in the lot by the ferry, climbed onboard with a hand trolley, headed over to Circuit City, then used a bus or a cab to get your new TV back to the dock in time for Thorson to help you bring it home again. That also counted for stoves, machine parts, new tires, medicines, ammunition, new clothes for the kids, toys for Christmas, and just about any other item that you cared to mention, apart from the general foodstuffs available in the Casco Bay Market. Thorson's ferry was mainly a people carrier. For larger purchases, like a new car or a piece of serious farm equipment, Covey Jaffe had a construction ferry that could be hired out, but without Thorson's ferry to take care of all the little day-to-day things, life on the island would go from occasionally difficult to damn near impossible. Whether or not to run the ferry in the face of a storm warning was Thorson's call, but Dupree figured he'd talk to the old man over the next day or two and maybe remind him that where the ferry was concerned, being overcautious was nearly as bad as being reckless.

Dupree made some casual calls along the way, checking on older residents, following up on complaints, handing out gentle warnings to errant teenagers, and examining the summer residences of the wealthy to make sure that the doors and windows remained intact and that nobody had taken it into his mind to redistribute some of their wealth to more deserving causes. It was the usual island routine, and he loved it. Despite the rotation schedule -- twenty-four hours on, twenty-four hours off, twenty-four hours on, followed by five days off -- Dupree worked almost as much unpaid overtime as he did scheduled hours. It was unavoidable when he lived on the island and could be approached after church or in the store, or even while he was tending his garden or fixing his roof. It was the way things ran on the island. Formalities were for funerals.

On his way back to town, Dupree paused by an old lookout tower, one of a chain of towers built during World War II across the islands of Casco Bay. The utility companies had taken to using some of them as storage facilities or as sites for their equipment, but not this one. Now the door to the tower was open, the chain that held it closed lying in a coil on its topmost step. The towers attracted the local kids like sugar drawing flies, since they offered sheltered and relatively remote sites in which to experiment with booze, drugs, and, frequently, one another. Dupree was convinced that the origins of a number of local unwanted pregnancies could be traced to the shady corners of these towers.

He parked the Explorer and took his big Maglite from beneath the seat, then headed through the short grass toward the steps to the tower. It was one of the smaller constructs built close to the shore, barely three stories high, and its usefulness as a lookout post was virtually negated by the growth of the surrounding trees. Still, Joe was curious to see that some of those trees had been crudely cut back, their branches broken at the ends.

The policeman paused at the base of the steps and listened. No noise came from within, but he felt uneasy. It was, he thought, becoming his natural state. Over these last few weeks, he had become increasingly uncomfortable as he conducted his patrols of the island that had been his home for almost forty years. It seemed to him that it was different, but when he had tried to explain it to Lockwood, the older cop had simply laughed it off.

"You been spending too long out here, Joe. You need to take a trip back to civilization once in a while. You're getting spooked."

Lockwood might have been right in advising Joe to spend more time away from the island, but he was wrong about the nature of his partner's unease. Others, like Larry Amerling the postmaster, had expressed to Joe a sense that all was not well on Dutch Island lately, although when they spoke about such things, they used the old name.

They called it Sanctuary.

There had been... incidents: repeated break-ins at the central lookout tower, involving the destruction of even the strongest lock and chain Dupree could find, and the surge in plant growth on the pathways leading to the Site (and in winter, mind, when all that usually grew was darkness and icicles). Nobody visited the old massacre location during the winter anyway, but if the paths became overgrown, then it would be a hell of a job revealing them again when spring came.

And then there was the accident one week before, the one that had killed Wayne Cady instantly and Sylvie Lauter a little more slowly. The accident bothered Dupree more than anything else. He had been behind Lockwood as the girl spoke her last words about lights and the dead, and Dupree recalled words once spoken by his own father.

"Sometimes, there's no grave deep enough to bury a bad death."

He looked to the south and thought that he could distinguish gaps in the trees: the circle of marsh and bog that marked the approach to the Site. He had not visited it in many months. Perhaps it was now time to return.

From inside the tower came a low, scraping noise. Dupree undid the clasp on his holster and laid his hand on the butt of his Smith & Wesson. He stood to one side of the doorway and called out a warning.

"Police. You want to come out of there right now, y'hear."

The sound came again. There were footsteps, and a voice, low and nasal, said:

"It's okay, Joe Dupree. It's okay, Joe Dupree. It's me, Joe Dupree. Me, Richie."

Joe stepped back as Richie Claeson appeared at the base of the tower's main staircase, sunlight shining through the single filthy window on that level casting a soft glow over his features.

"Richie, come on out now," said Joe. He felt the tension release from his shoulders.

What was I afraid of? Why did I have my hand on my gun?

Richie appeared in the doorway, grinning. Twenty-five, and with a mental age of maybe eight. He liked to roam the island, driving his mother to distraction, but nothing had ever happened to him, and, Joe suspected, nothing ever would. Richie probably knew the island better than almost anybody, and it held no terrors for him. During the warm summer months, he even occasionally slept out beneath the stars. Nobody bothered him much, except maybe the local smart-asses when they'd had a drink or two and were trying to impress their girls.

"Hello, Joe Dupree," said Richie. "How are you?"

"I'm good, thanks. Richie, I told you before about keeping out of these towers."

The grin on the face of the boy-man never faded.

"I know, Joe Dupree. Stay out of the towers. I know."

"Yeah, well if you know, then what were you doing in there?"

"It was open, Joe Dupree. The tower was open. I went in to take a look. I like looking."

Dupree knelt down and examined the chain. The padlock was open, but when he tested the lock by trying to close it, it wouldn't catch, instead sliding in and out of the hole with a soft click.

"And you didn't do this?"

"No, Joe Dupree. It was open. I went in to take a look."

He would have to come back out here with a new lock, Dupree figured. The kids would probably just break it again, but he had to make the effort. He closed the tower door, then wrapped the chain around the handle to give the impression that it was locked. It would have to do, for now.

"Come on, Richie. I'll give you a ride home."

He handed the Maglite to the handicapped man and watched with a smile as he shined the light upon the trees and the top of the tower.

"Light," said Richie. "I'm making lights, like the others."

Dupree stopped.

"What others, Richie?"

Richie looked at him, and grinned.

"The others, in the woods."

Copyright © 2004 by John Connolly