Lost Boys

14: Christmas Eve

This is what Stevie bought with his Christmas money: For Robbie, a Go-Bot, since Robbie was called Robot sometimes and he liked vehicles and the Go-Bot turned from one into the other whenever you wanted.

For Betsy, two blue ribbon bow clips for her hair, because she was so proud of how long it was but it always got into her eyes. For Zap, a cassette tape of songs for Mormon children, sold by Dolores LeSueur's daughter, Janet, the Bright Music distributor in Steuben, on the day when she came over to the house to make a combined sales call and visiting- teaching visit for the Relief Society.

For Jack, a Hot Wheels race car because he was so fast. For Scotty, a deck of cards because he bragged about what a good poker player he was. For David, a small fake-ceramic dog because he liked dogs. For Roddy, a harmonica because he liked songs. For Peter, a ball of string because he liked kites. For Van, a Star Wars button because it was his favorite movie. For Sandy, a squirt gun because he was such a good aim.

Stevie had saved his allowances and added it to the twenty dollars of Christmas money Step and DeAnne doled out to each of the kids, so he had enough-barely. DeAnne had Stevie with her, and Zap in a stroller, while Step had Betsy and Robbie, so that the two pairs of kids could buy presents for the others and for the parent they were not with; later, they would meet in the food court of the mall, have sweet rolls, and then redivide the kids so they could finish the shopping. So it was DeAnne who first realized who it was Stevie was shopping for.

She made an attempt to deflect him from his purchases, but it came to nothing.

"Stevie," she said, "we don't allow our kids to buy presents for friends, just for family."

Stevie looked at her and said, "Nobody else is going to buy presents for them."

She didn't have the heart to forbid him then, even though she thought it was foolish of her to let him carry it this far. Well, she thought, at least he's never required us to set a place at table for his imaginary friends, the way some kids do. We'd have to rent a banquet hall every night if we did.

When the shopping was done and they were all walk ing out to the cars in the cold night air, Stevie spoke up. "Mom and Dad."

"Yes, Stevie."

"I didn't buy presents for the two of you, but that's OK, because I'm doing something else."

"That's fine, Stevie. We don't really need anything except for our family to be together and to be happy and kind," said DeAnne.

Stevie said no more about it.

But that night, alone in their room, DeAnne and Step talked about the problem of his presents for his imaginary friends. "What are we supposed to do with them?" asked Step. "Handle it like letters to Santa Claus or something? He leaves them under the tree and the next morning we have little faked-up presents sup posedly from his friends?"

"We can't do that," said DeAnne. "We can't encourage him to believe even more than he does."

"I don't know," said Step. "Maybe he has his own way of giving things to them or something."

"All we can do is play it by ear."

Christmas was going to be on Sunday this year, which was always something of a pain because it meant that there'd be a conflict between the American custom of present-opening on Christmas morning and the Church requirement of going to sacrament meeting. It was a relief when they found out that the Steuben wards had a tradition of holding a single combined sacrament meeting at ten A.M. and then canceling Sunday school and all the other meetings so everybody was home well before noon. That way even if the present-opening had to be split in half, the kids would have all their stocking presents-the only ones from Santa under the tree-and a few of the family presents before they went to church. The edge would have been taken off their anxiousness.

But the special Christmas sacrament meeting meant a serious choir program. The choir leader of the 2nd Ward apparently regarded herself as the queen of music in the western hemisphere, and Mary Anne Lowe found herself quickly outmaneuvered as a combined choir was formed exclusively under the direction of the

2nd Ward choir leader. DeAnne toyed with the idea of boycotting the choir out of loyalty to Mary Anne, but Mary Anne just laughed at her. "It's Christmas," she said. "What do I care who's the boss of things? I just want to sing and have us sound great so that it really feels like Christmas to the rest of the ward." So the last few weeks in December were a flurry of ward and stake and Relief Society and quorum Christmas parties and socials and programs, with choir practices shoehorned in wherever possible. Step attended as many practices as he could, alternating with DeAnne so that they didn't have to take the kids outside very much. The weather was turning bitterly cold, and there was talk that a cold front would be coming through Christmas Eve that would make Steubenites think their town had been swapped with Duluth in the night.

In the meantime, Step was working at a frenzied pace to finish debugging the PC Hacker Snack, which was really shaping up as a terrific program. He had to get it done before New Year's, so that they'd get the completion check to them that this year the IRS would not come in and strip their checking accounts while all the Christmas shopping checks credit card; the IRS had never once kept a single promise in their sorry history of dealing with them over back taxes, and they didn't really expect anything different this year, either.

The Sunday before Christmas was a disaster at Church, because Dolores LeSueur found out that the two bishoprics had decided to do something new for the Christmas program this year. In past years, Dolores's husband, Jacob (not Jake, not Cubby, no matter how long you had known him before he married Dolores), had always read the entire text of "The Other Wise Man," which Dolores had been told in a dream was not fiction at all, but a true story which was originally in the Gospel of John but was removed by wicked scribes working for the sun-worshiping Emperor Constantine in the fourth century A.D. This year, the bishoprics had decided to have a short talk by Emil Houdon, who had visited the Holy Land in the summer despite the hot weather and the fighting in Lebanon. Emil had promised to tell a couple of inspirational anecdotes and quit talking after ten minutes, and everybody who knew what was being planned thought this would be the best Christmas Sunday in a long time. Sister LeSueur, however, knew that it was a sign that both wards were on the high road to apostasy, and she caused such a fuss that by the time the 1st Ward had wrapped up its meetings at noon on Sunday the eighteenth, it was decided that the entire program, including the choir numbers, would be replaced by the reading of "The Other Wise Man."

Then the 2nd Ward choir leader found out that she had been preempted, and she raised such a stink that by four P.M., when the 2nd Ward meetings were finished, the choir program had been restored and the special Christmas sacrament meeting would now run to about two hours, if all went smoothly. The bishopric members went home knowing they had been utterly defeated, but grateful that at least this brouhaha had been settled without Dolores calling one of the General Authorities in Salt Lake City.

Through all of this, Step and DeAnne watched with a mixture of disgust and despair. "And to think that when I was a child, I wondered how the true Church of Christ could ever have been lost from the earth," said DeAnne.

"Oh, this is small potatoes," said Step. "People have been killed over the question of what date they should celebrate Easter."

"Yes, but we're supposed to know better," said DeAnne.

"We do," said Step. "After all these years, no one has yet arranged for a public stoning of Dolores LeSueur.

The Steuben wards are populated by true Saints."

DeAnne went. to choir practice that evening and shared a music book with Dolores LeSueur. They got along fine with the singing, but at the end of the choir practice, after the closing prayer, as people were gathering their coats and purses and, in a few cases, children, Dolores put her hand on DeAnne's arm and said,

"Sister Fletcher, I've been praying and praying about your little boy, and I want you to know that the Lord truly loves him."

"I know that," said DeAnne.

"I cannot share with you all the sacred things that I have seen in vision about your little boy, but I can say that it must surely be a blessing to you to know that his spirit is so righteous and perfect that he will be caught up into the celestial kingdom without having to taste of sin and temptation."

DeAnne realized that Sister LeSueur was assuming that Zap was retarded, and therefore had the same promise as children who died unbaptized before the age of accountability, that they would be exalted. It was really annoying to have her assume what even the doctors did not dare to predict-that Zap was going to be mentally impaired. And what made it downright infuriating was the sweet, beatific smile on Dolores's face when DeAnne knew perfectly well that this woman had browbeaten and backbitten her way through two bishoprics that morning and that because of her, she and her family were going to have to sit through a two-hour sacrament meeting on the coldest Christmas morning in Steuben's history.

So DeAnne placed her hand firmly on top of Dolores's, pinning her there, and moved her face in very close to Dolores's face. Then, in a quiet but extremely intense voice, DeAnne said, "My son Jeremy is a child of God like any other, and he will have to pass through the same trials and choices in this life as any other. If he gets to the celestial kingdom, it will be because he chose righteousness. Furthermore, Sister LeSueur, if you ever again speak to me or anyone else on this planet about any vision or inspiration you think you have had about my family I promise you that when we are both dead and you are standing before the judgment bar of God, I will leap to my feet and tell the Lord all about your horrible, selfish behavior this morning as you bullied the bishoprics into letting your husband read that wretched story for the fifteenth year in a row, and I assure you that if God is just, he will send you straight to hell."

Through about the last half of this, Sister LeSueur had been trying to withdraw her hand from DeAnne's arm, but since DeAnne had her pinned, Sister LeSueur could only turn her head away like a child refusing to listen to a stern parent. When DeAnne finally released her, Sister LeSueur staggered a couple of steps away and then turned back and spat out the words, "I forgive you, Sister Fletcher! And I will pray for you!" The words themselves were, by habit, a blessing; but her tone was so loud and nasty and hateful that everyone still remaining in the chapel turned and looked at her. DeAnne couldn't have composed a better picture if she had choreographed it: DeAnne herself, standing calmly with a rather surprised look on her face, and Dolores LeSueur, leaning toward her, her face a mask of fury, her mouth open with her lip in a sneering curl, her eyes glaring, and her face so red that it actually showed pink through her makeup.

The vignette remained only for a moment. Then DeAnne said, "Thank you, Sister LeSueur." Dolores recovered her composure and turned to float out of the building, but from the way people averted their gaze, DeAnne could see that if anyone in this group, at least, had any delusions about Sister LeSueur's sincerity and balanced temperament, those delusions were now destroyed. "I'll regard it as my Christmas present to the ward," DeAnne told Step later.

On Wednesday night, Step was pounding away at the vanity-board subroutine in Hacker Snack, which was causing the program to hang about a quarter of the time for no discernible reason. He was aware, in the back of his mind, that DeAnne was getting the kids to bed and having a little trouble doing it, partly because tomorrow was not a school day and Stevie and Robbie didn't seem to think that they should have any bedtime at all.

Finally, Step heard DeAnne telling Stevie, "I've asked you three times to turn off the computer and go to bed, Stevie, and you always say yes and then I come back a half- hour later and you haven't budged. Now just because there's no school tomorrow doesn't mean that our one-hour rule about computer games is over."

The tone of her voice was really agitated, and Step was already upset at the program because he couldn't seem to find an error anywhere, so he got up from his desk and rushed out into the hall to use the full power of the wrathful male voice to get some obedience. He and DeAnne had long since learned that while the children tuned out her voice quite easily, Step seemed to get the same results one would expect from the voice of God.

He strode into the family room, stood behind Stevie's chair, and said, "Your mother shouldn't have to ask you three times to do anything, Stevie."

While he said this, though, Step could see that there was a new game on the screen, one he couldn't remember seeing before. A train was speeding along a track, with the scenery passing behind it very rapidly.

The animation was every bit as fast, the graphics just as realistic as in the impossible pirate game, and, just as in the pirate game, there were characters swarming over the train. Now he remembered that between DeAnne's bedtime calls, he had heard Stevie calling out the names of his friends and saying things like, "You can do it.

You've got to do it!" But the game itself didn't really look all that fun-the kids were just running along the top, jumping from car to car, with no enemies or obstacles or anything. Just each other. Beautiful graphics, but pointless.

Stevie was reaching his hand behind the machine to turn it off.

"Stop!" cried Step. "Don't move your hand. Don't turn off the machine. Just stand up, right now, and go to your bedroom. I'll shut everything down in here."

Stevie held his pose there for a moment. Step could see that he was deciding whether to obey or not. Step could have reached down and physically coerced him, but he did not. It had to be Stevie's choice, and after that moment of hesitation, Stevie left the room, leaving the computer on.

"I wish I could just borrow your voice at bedtime," said DeAnne. "I yell at them and bellow at them till I feel like some kind of fishwife, and you come in and say three sentences and they go."

Step was barely listening as he slid into Stevie's chair, trying to resume the play of the game. But somehow the people had all disappeared from the screen. There was just a train speeding along the track. As Step moved the joystick to see what would happen, the background stopped, too, so there was just a train and nothing else.

And then the track disappeared, and the wheels stopped turning.

Then the screen turned blue. Blank.

"Step, why did you make him leave it on if you were just going to turn it off."

Step reached for the keyboard, typed "list." He pressed the return key, hoping that some part of this program's extraordinary code might remain in memory for him to examine. But nothing happened. Not even an error message. The cursor just went to the left margin of the next line. Step typed some more, hit the return key a lot of times. The screen started scrolling, but that was all. "There's no program," said Step.

"What do you mean?"

"The Atari's in memo-pad mode. It's dead."

"Well, you're typing."

"That's all it'll do. You can't run a program from memo-pad mode."

"Can't you boot it up again?" asked DeAnne.

Step popped open the disk drive. No disk. He popped open the cartridge bay. No cartridges. "There never was a program here."

"What are you talking about?" said DeAnne. "There are disks all over around here."

"Have you ever seen that train game before?"

"No," said DeAnne.

"Well, I haven't bought any games since Stevie's birthday. And we sure never saw that train game at Eight Bits Inc. before I left. I've been all through these disks looking for the pirate ship game, and I sure didn't see any train-game disks."

"Stevie's eight years old, Step. He didn't program it himself."

"DeAnne, nobody programmed it. Don't you understand? There was no program in this machine."

DeAnne stood there, staring at the blue screen. "I wish you hadn't turned it off," she said. "I wish I could have looked at them longer."

"Who?" asked Step.

"The boys. The lost boys. His friends."

They both looked at the screen for a while longer, and then Step sighed and stood up. "I don't know," he said.

"Don't know what?"

"What to do. What to think. Anything."

On Thursday, Zap got sick. It was the first time he had ever been ill, apart from his neural condition, and DeAnne and Step weren't quite sure how to handle it. For one thing, even at almost five months of age, Zap still couldn't consistently turn his head at will. If he was lying on his back when he threw up, there was a risk that he wouldn't be able to turn his head to empty his mouth, and he'd choke on it, drown in it. But if he was lying on his stomach, then his face would be in it and it would get in his nose and eyes and he still might end up breathing it in. He wasn't crying, though, and he didn't seem to have much fever, if any. DeAnne called the doctor anyway, and he told her over the phone to do exactly what she was already doing. So she just kept holding him and rocking him, waiting for him to throw up again, or not to throw up for long enough that she could feel safe in laying him back in bed. "No formula for a while," she told Step. "But maybe he can keep down my milk."

This began shortly after lunch, and continued through the afternoon. Step gave up on working, of course, and played with Robbie and Betsy between helping DeAnne and working on dinner and answering the phone and all the other things that kept coming up. Step couldn't understand how DeAnne could live with this, never able to concentrate on something, to follow through on it without interruption.

Stevie, of course, wasn't part of the little-kid games, but that was no surprise anymore. The surprise was when Step passed through the family room on the way to answer the doorbell and realized that Stevie wasn't playing computer games, either. Must still be in his room, wrapping presents, Step thought. He had borrowed the tape and scissors earlier in the day.

It was Bappy at the door. He had a kind of sheepish grin. "I don't mean to be a bother," he said, "but I'm just a sentimental old fool and I was driving by a couple nights ago and I saw y'all didn't have no Christmas lights up."

"We haven't had time," said Step.

"Well, time is all I got these days, and I still got the lights we put up on this house last year and the year before. I bet all the old nails and such are still right where I put 'em. Y'all won't mind if I haul my ladder out and tread your roof awhile? It doesn't add that much to the electric, specially seeing as how there's only a few days till Christmas."

"No, that's fine," said Step. "That'll be nice. Where will I plug them in?"

"There's an outlet out back, by the utility room door. I just run me a long extension cord up over the house.

Brought the same one I used last year, so I know it works."

"That's great. Thanks," said Step.

Bappy nodded and waved, even though he was standing right there by the door, and then he was off for his pickup truck and Step closed the front door.

Just as Step was heading for the kitchen to check the meatloaf he had made, Zap started throwing up again, proving that DeAnne's milk wasn't going to stay down any better than the formula had. And now Zap was getting fussy instead of just being complacent after he vomited. DeAnne checked his temperature again with the plastic forehead strip, and it was over a hundred. "I've got to take him to the doctor," she said. "If he was a normal kid I'd wait, but he's so weak." So once they got Zap cleaned up again, Step found the phone number and called Dr. Greenwald's office and the answering service relayed the message and a couple of minutes later he called back. DeAnne talked to him and then said, "He's going to go back to the office just to see Zap. Isn't that sweet of him?"

"What if he throws up while you're driving him there?" asked Step.

"I didn't think of that," said DeAnne.

"Do you think Mary Anne would come over and watch the kids while I drove you down?"

"She will if she can," said DeAnne.

She could, and since she didn't live far away, she would be there in only a few minutes.

Step remembered the meatloaf. "I can't believe the timer hasn't rung yet," he said.

"Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the timer was never set."

"Oh, no, it must be burnt to a crisp by now," said Step.

"I don't think so," said DeAnne. "The oven isn't on."

"I didn't turn the oven on?"

Sure enough, the meatloaf was dead raw.

"Well, we can't eat that," said DeAnne.

"We can cook it now, can't we? Mary Anne can serve it to the kids when it comes out."

"No, Step," said DeAnne. "You can't serve meatloaf that's been sitting around this long at room temperature."

"You can't tell me the meat would go bad this fast."

"Not the meat," said DeAnne. "The eggs."

"I forgot the eggs," said Step.

"If I weren't here, Step, the kids would have salmonella all the time."

"Probably. So what about supper?"

"Throw some bowls and cold cereal on the table and call the kids in to eat," said DeAnne. "It's the last resort of the mother in a hurry but hey, that's me."

Robbie and Betsy came right in. "Stevie!" Step called again. "Come on in to supper now!" Knowing he would be obeyed, Step headed outside to open the car door for DeAnne. Just as DeAnne was settling in with Zap in her arms, Mary Anne pulled up into the driveway behind the Renault. Step waved her back, and she put her hands to the sides of her face to show her embarrassment. Then she put her car in reverse and parked out on the street just ahead of Bappy's pickup truck. It was getting dark, and it occurred to Step that if Bappy wasn't done with the lights, he probably ought to quit for the night. It wasn't safe to be wandering around on the roof in the dark.

Mary Anne came running up the driveway. "How's little Zap doing?" she asked.

"He's probably not even that sick," said DeAnne. "But we just have to be sure."

"If the doctor calls wondering where we are, tell him we're on the way" said Step. "The kids are in the middle of coating the inside of the kitchen with a layer of cornflakes, so enter at your own risk." As Mary Anne jogged up the two steps and into the house, Step called after her, "And lock the deadbolts!"

"I always do!" she called back.

Dr. Greenwald didn't seem to mind that they had taken so long getting to his office, and after poking and probing and listening, he reassured them that it was nothing all that serious. They apolo gized for wasting his time, but he assured them that they had been right to be concerned. "With a baby this fragile," he said,

"everything is serious."

When they got back home, the house was completely rimmed with white lights. "It looks like gingerbread," said DeAnne.

"For an impressively ugly ho use, it lights up real nice," said Step.

When they got inside, however, chaos reigned. Betsy and Bobbie were standing on chairs in the kitchen, and the second DeAnne and Step got in the door they started screaming, "Spiders! Daddy longlegs!"

There weren't any spiders in the kitchen that Step could see. He held the baby while DeAnne took off her coat. "Where's Mary Anne?" asked DeAnne.

"Is that you at the door!" shouted Mary Anne from back somewhere deep in the house.

"Yes it is!" called DeAnne. "Where are you?"

"In the land of the monster spiders!" shouted Mary Anne. "I could sure use some help and another roll of paper towels!"

"You take care of Zap and the kids," said Step to DeAnne, "and I'll see what's going on in the bathroom."

He ducked into the laundry room to get another roll of paper towels.

"You don't suppose we're having another invasion of insects, do you?" asked DeAnne.

"Nope," said Step. "Spiders are arachnids."

In the bathroom, it looked as though someone had tried to resurface the entire room in wet paper towels, and then reconsidered and spattered ink on it. But the ink turned out to be daddy longlegs spiders, and the wet paper towels were Mary Anne's strategy for immobilizing as many spiders as possible while stomping the ones that weren't pinned down under the wet towels.

Apparently Mary Anne had kept her cool quite well while she was the only adult present. But as soon as Step came into the room and she tried to explain what was happening, she began to shudder and shiver, then screeched as a daddy longlegs crawled up onto her ankle. She stamped and stamped until it fell off; Step gripped her by the shoulders and guided her out the door into the hall. "You stand there and keep watch to make sure none of them get out. Remember to look up and check the ceilings."

Outside the bathroom, she was able to calm down as Step methodically slaughtered spiders. "They were coming up out of the drain in the bathtub," said Mary Anne. Step glanced into the tub and sure enough, it had been plugged with wet paper towels. "Betsy was on her little potty when she started yelling 'pido, pido,' and I finally realized that it wasn't some cute bathroom word like peepee, she was saying spider."

"You did great," said Step. "You kept it under control. You won't believe it, but this happens like about once a season. First crickets, then june bugs, then gnats on the night that Zap was born. I think we're going through the ten plagues of Egypt."

"Spiders are the horriblest things. I can't stand the way their little legs go up and down so delicately, like monster ballet dancers."

"Oh, keep talking, I can't wait to see what inhabits my dreams tonight."

"You're looking at them, my talking can hardly be any worse than that," said Mary Anne.

"Yeah, but now I'm not looking at spiders, I'm looking at monster ballet dancers. Disney missed a bet with Fantasia."

Finally the spiders were cleaned up and all the paper towels were clotted in the bottom of a garbage bag.

When Step came back into the kitchen from taking the bag outside, Mary Anne was standing by the table talking to DeAnne.

"Well, you're a hero, Mary Anne."

"Any time," said Mary Anne. "Only next time we can skip the spider part." She started for the door into the laundry room, then stopped. "Oh, your mom called, DeAnne. Nothing's wrong, don't worry, she just wanted your pie crust recipe."

"My mother wants to make pies?"

"Oh, doesn't she ever?"

"My dad's the piemaker in my family," said DeAnne. "But miracles happen every day, right?" Step dialed the wall phone for her, then handed her the receiver so she didn't have to get up while nursing Zap.

They said their good-byes to Mary Anne. Then came the mess of getting Robbie and Betsy to bed. Stevie was already lying in his bed, and Step made Robbie get under the covers quietly so as not to waken his big brother.

Only after Step was already in bed beside DeAnne did he realize that the Christmas lights were still on outside.

"Oh, just leave them," said DeAnne.

"Just as you wouldn't allow your family to eat that meat loaf, I will not permit my family to sleep in a house that has some weird extension cord arrangement connected up outside."

He put on a bathrobe, and then, remembering how cold it was outside, a coat over that. Out back Step found the plug and pulled it, then walked around front to make sure the lights were off. By now he was quite cold, and he rushed back into the house, locked up, took off his coat, and then moved through the house checking that all the doors were locked and glancing in to make sure the kids were covered.

The routine was so set that it wasn't till he was already walk ing into his and DeAnne's room that he realized that he hadn't seen Stevie in his bed. Robbie was there, but Stevie's sheets were pulled back and the bed was empty. Was he up going to the bathroom? He hadn't been in the kids' bathroom or anywhere else in the house-could he, for some reason, be in the master bathroom?

Step walked around the bed and checked in the bathroom. No Stevie. This was impossible. Unless Stevie was playing a trick, hiding in the closet or something, there was nowhere that he could be. Step headed back to the boys' room to check the closet before he pushed the panic button, but then he had to stop cold in the doorway. There was Stevie. Right there on the top bunk. The covers were all the way down, as Step remembered, but Stevie was there. He was curled up and looked like he was completely asleep.

I am way too tired, thought Step. When I actually looked into the room I didn't see anything wrong, did I?

It was only afterward that I thought I hadn't seen him, but of course he was there all along.

Step went back to bed, where DeAnne was already snoring, and soon he was asleep, too. If he had any spider dreams, he didn't remember in the morning.

The next couple of days were a flurry of activity, but that was to be expected. Everybody got up at different times and it seemed like half the ward was either coming by or calling up and insisting that DeAnne or Step or both needed to do this or that in preparation for Christmas. In the afternoon of Christmas Eve, as DeAnne was helping Elizabeth wrap a present in the living room, she thought of something and called out to Step, who was in the kitchen putting away the groceries. "It just occurred to me that I honestly can't remember seeing Stevie eat anything for the past few days."

"I haven't seen anybody eat anything for the past few days," Step called back. "I don't think anybody has eaten in the presence of anybody else since school let out for the holidays."

"No, I'm serious," said DeAnne. "And he hasn't been playing computer games or anything, he's mostly been in his room. Do you think he might be sick?"

"I'll check on him when I'm done with the groceries," said Step.

That took only a few more minutes, and then Step headed on down the hall and turned left into the boys'

room. Robbie was on the floor, wrapping a present. "Get out get out!" he screamed at Step.

"Sorry," said Step. He immediately turned and stepped back into the hall, drawing the door almost closed behind him.

"You ruined the surprise!" Robbie shouted.

"No, I didn't," answered Step. "I didn't see anything. I was just coming back to see if Stevie was all right."

"I'm fine," answered Stevie.

"He's fine!" shouted Robbie.

"I can hear your brother quite well without your relay service, thanks just the same, Robbie," said Step.

"Stevie, your mother's worried that you haven't been eating much lately."

"I'm not hungry"

"You've got to eat something."

"Yes," said Stevie.

"Will you come to supper tonight?"

Stevie didn't say anything for a moment. "I guess," he said.

"Stevie, is something wrong?"

Another pause. "Nope."

Step went back to the living room, where DeAnne was still wrapping presents with Betsy, who periodically inserted a hand or a finger or, sometimes, her face into whatever DeAnne was doing. As a result, DeAnne had stuck about a dozen small pieces of tape all over Betsy's face, and they were protruding everywhere like a peeling sunburn. "Ooh, Betsy, you look so pretty."

"I heard you calling to Stevie," said DeAnne.

"Robbie wouldn't let me in the room. He was wrapping presents."

"He already wrapped yours."

"He's wrapping Zap's. But he didn't want to ruin the surprise."

"Didn't he buy it with you standing right there?"

"You know Robbie," said Step. "If you wreck one of his surprises, you might as well cut off your own head and save yourself a lot of suffering."

Step finally had a break about four o'clock and slipped into his office to catch a few minutes' work on the program. He was this close to finishing it, and if he could have it done, ready to fedex it to Agamemnon, then he- would have so much more relaxed a Christmas. It was just ticky stuff now anyway, but it meant changing a line or two, then compiling it, then running it and seeing what it looked like, then tweaking it again and compiling it again ... It ate up the clock without making that much visible progress.

"Step, can't you come to supper on Christmas Eve?"

Step turned around to see DeAnne standing in the doorway of his office.

"And Stevie won't come either. I didn't prepare a banquet but even self-employed people are allowed to have Christmas Eve off."

"I'm so close, DeAnne."

"All right, suit yourself," she said, and she closed the door.

Step sighed and got up from the chair. When he reached the hall he heard her saying to Stevie, "Go ahead, apparently males in this family don't eat anymore."

"DeAnne," said Step. "It's bad enough when you sound like your mother, but now you're sounding like mine."

She looked annoyed for a moment, but then decided to take it as a joke. "That's fine with me," she said. "I like your mother. And she likes me. In fact, she likes me better than you."

"Better than I like you? Or better than she likes me?"

"Both," she said.

"Impossible." He was now at the end of the hall and he nuzzled her and held her close and whispered in her ear, "Let's forget these kids and go make us another baby."

"It's too soon," she said. "I haven't forgotten how much it hurts."

They both remembered Zap's troubles and her words took on a second meaning, and now when he kissed her it wasn't romantic, it was tender, consoling.

Then he opened the door to the boys' room. Stevie was lying on his back in bed, staring up at the ceiling.

"Come on in to dinner, Stevie."

"I'm not hungry, Dad," he said.

"I didn't ask if you wanted to eat," said Step. "It's Christmas Eve and we need to be together."

"I think he's sick," said DeAnne. "Maybe he's got whatever Zap had a couple of days ago." She pushed past Step into the room, heading for Stevie. And then, to Step's amazement-and DeAnne's too, of course-Stevie sat bolt upright and shied away from the edge of the bunk, looking fearful. "Don't touch me!" he said.

"Well, I've got to touch you," said DeAnne. "I've got to see if you have a fever."

"I just want to be alone in here for another little while," he said.

"Stevie," said DeAnne. "Just let me see if your forehead's warm."

"I'm fine," he said.

"DeAnne," said Step. "Please, let's not make a quarrel of it on Christmas Eve."

"But if he's not well I can't just leave him in here ..."

"He looks fine," said Step, ushering her out of the room.

"Suddenly you're the miracle doctor who can diagnose people across a room?"

As soon as they were out the door, Step pulled it shut and said, "DeAnne, didn't you see the look on his face? He was absolutely terrified."

"I know, Step. That's all the more reason to think he might have a fever. He didn't seem rational."

"His face wasn't white or flushed, and he always gets one or the other when he's sick. He's really upset, but listen to what he said. He wants to be alone."

"On Christmas Eve, and that's sad." Then she realized what Step was thinking. "You mean-without his imaginary friends."

"Have you seen him playing with the Atari in the last couple of days? At all?"

"You mean he might be going through some kind of withdrawal?"

"I don't know, but it's a sure thing he's really edgy right now, so let's go in and eat and then I'll come back in and talk to him, or you can, and we'll see if we can calm him down. He's not going to want to miss the ceremonies, right? He's the one who remembers things best, he always likes to tell the stories. He'll come around, if we don't make an issue of it right now."

DeAnne sighed. "Whenever you get so patient and understand ing with the children it makes me feel like I must usually be a shrew."

"So what do you feel like when I yell at them?" asked Step.

"Vindicated."

After supper, Step brushed his teeth and then went to Stevie's room to try to persuade him to eat something.

Stevie wasn't in his bed; DeAnne must have talked him into the kitchen.

Step meant to join the rest of the family, but he paused by his office door and thought, If Stevie's eating that'll take a while and so I've got a few minutes and that might be time enough to finish. He resumed where he had left off.

He didn't know how long he had been working when there came a knock on his door. He turned around.

DeAnne was standing there, leaning on the doorknob. She looked a little wobbly, as if she might need to sit down. "What is it?" he asked, concerned.

"Step, Stevie has his friends at the door. He wants to invite them in for Christmas Eve."

Step's heart sank. Stevie wasn't coming out of it after all. He'd tried but then he couldn't let go of this fantasy world. Maybe because the evil hadn't gone out of Steuben yet. Maybe he couldn't let go until they caught the serial killer. Or until the family moved again.

"Maybe when I finish this program we should move," he said. "Get Stevie away from here for good."

"No, Step," DeAnne answered. "I mean his friends are at the door."

Now it sank in. Why she looked so weak.

Had the power of Stevie's imagination finally overpowered DeAnne? No, that couldn't be, she was far too strong.

He stood up, meaning to put an arm around her, steady her. But the moment she saw he was standing up, she moved away from the door, and when she walked he could see that she was steadier than he had thought.

He followed her. It wasn't the front door, apparently, because she didn't go to the living room, she went into the family room. The back door was standing half open, even though the air was bitterly cold and the room was getting very badly chilled. She stood well back from the door, looking through it. Step walked straight to the door and opened it wider.

There in the back yard stood Stevie. Grouped behind him were seven boys, ranging in age from perhaps five to ten or so. A couple of them were dressed for the cold, but the others were in t-shirts and shorts, and one of them was wearing a tank top.

"Dad," said Stevie. "Can they come in? I told them you'd let them have Christmas Eve with us. That's what they miss the most."

Step could feel DeAnne put her arm through his and take hold of his hand.

"Of course they can come in," said Step. "We've been wanting to meet them."

It was one thing to say it, another thing to watch them walk up the stairs, one by one, and come on into the house. DeAnne, who had a better memory for names and faces, was picking them out from the newspaper photos. "Van," she said.

One of the boys smiled at her.

"Roddy. Peter? David. Jack. Scotty."

One by one they grinned at her and then looked at each other as if to say Hey, she knows us, she knows us.

"Sandy," she said.

Step closed the door.

"I wish," said Step. "I wish I could have seen you before."

"We tried, Dad," said Stevie. "I knew they could do it, I knew they had to show themselves to people or nobody'd ever believe me, but they just couldn't figure it out till I showed them how."

"We believed you, son," said Step. "We always knew you weren't lying to us."

"But you thought they were pretend, Dad," said Stevie. "And they're not pretend."

Then there was a moment's silence, and one of the boys, in a soft, faint voice, said, "Merry Christmas."

"Yes," said Step. "Yes, Merry Christmas. Please, come into the living room. That's where the tree is. We were just about to put out our presents and ha ve our ceremonies, and we'd love to have you with us."

The boys smiled. And Stevie-ah, Stevie smiled! Step had almost forgotten what a glorious smile he had. It had been so long.

Stevie led the way into the living room, the other boys trooping silently after him.

DeAnne still held to his arm. He heard her murmur, "Showed them how."

But he couldn't think about that. It was Christmas Eve, and Stevie had brought his friends home at last.

He and DeAnne followed the boys into the living room, and then she said, "I've got to get Robbie and Betsy and Zap," and she left him there.

"Sit down," he said. "Anywhere, except leave that soft rocking chair for Stevie's mom, she has to sit there and hold the baby." Then Step surveyed the room, seeing it now as if through their eyes. The Christmas tree, covered with a motley of decorations, most of them handmade: the tiny needlepoint pillows that DeAnne had made for that first Christmas, while she was pregnant with Stevie. The little puffball animals that she and Step had glued together for the first Christmas tree that Stevie ever saw, though of course he was only a baby then and hardly knew what he was seeing. Decorations older than Stevie, thought Step. He's never had a tree without them.

And not just the tree. The whole room was decorated with red and green tassels and little wooden villages and a stuffed Santa hippo beside a wicker sleigh and a large chimney-sweep nutcracker and anything else that Step and DeAnne hadn't been able to resist buying or making over the years.

DeAnne led Robbie and Betsy into the room. Betsy was shy with strangers, and she hung back a little, but Robbie forthrightly took her hand and led her to sit in front of the couch at Step's feet. DeAnne sat down in the rocking chair and propped a sleepy Zap up enough for him to see what was happening, even though there was no sign yet that his eyes were able to focus on anything for even as long as a second.

They began with a song-"Away in a Manger"-and as Step sang out, keeping the tempo up, he remembered all the nights for months, for years, that he had lain beside Stevie's bed and sung that song so he could sleep, so the fear would go away and Stevie could rest.

Then it was time for the stories. Step started by asking Robbie to tell them about the angel coming to Mary.

Then he asked Stevie to tell what Joseph did when he found out she was going to have a baby, and so on, Robbie and then Stevie, then DeAnne or Step taking a turn, telling a part of the Christmas story. The shepherds, the wise men, and then on to the Book of Mormon story about the day and night and day without darkness when Christ was born on the other side of the world. Then Step went on and told what Jesus lived for. About forgiveness for the bad things people do.

The boys had been listening, enthralled in the experience of being part of a Christmas Eve after all, their eyes sparkling in the treelight. Now, though, one of the boys spoke up. "Everything?"

Before Step could be sure what he was asking, Stevie answered, sharply, firmly. "No. Not killing."

DeAnne gave a tiny gasp and covered her mouth, blinking her eyes to keep from crying.

"Stevie's right," Step said. "In our church we believe that God doesn't forgive people who kill on purpose.

And in the New Testament, Jesus said that if anybody ever hurt a child, it would be better for him to tie a huge rock around his neck and jump into the sea and drown."

"Well it did hurt, Daddy," said Stevie. "They never told me anything."

"It was a secret," said one of the boys.

"I told him I'd never never tell so he wouldn't ..." The boy's voice trailed off, growing weak.

"Don't leave!" said Stevie. "You said if we did Christmas!"

"It's hard," said another of the boys.

Stevie turned to Step. "Dad, you got to call Mr. Douglas. If he sees them all, he'll have to believe it, won't he?"

"Yes," said Step.

"I knew he wouldn't believe just me telling him, because if you didn't believe me then why Should he?"

"We believed you, Stevie," said DeAnne, struggling not to cry. "We really did."

"I mean you didn't believe in them," he said. "I thought you could see them like I could, but then you couldn't, and not even Robbie except once for a second."

Step thought: Robbie saw, but I couldn't, and DeAnne couldn't.

"And I tried to figure out how to show them. They told me they were all buried under the house and so I—"

Again a gasp from DeAnne, and Step felt a wrenching in his gut. It wasn't just some disturbance in the fabric of the universe that Stevie had felt, it wasn't just some nameless evil somewhere in the city. It was here. It was under the house. The place from which spiders and crickets had fled. The place where the bodies of seven little boys had been concealed, where no one could find them no matter how hard they searched.

But someone had been under the house since they moved there, yes, more than once, more than once.

Bappy has been under this house. And Bappy lived here before us, before his son made him move out so he could rent the place to us. Bappy lived here when the first of the boys were taken, and Bappy has been here so often, ever since.

Stevie went on. "So I crawled under there and buried myself up but it didn't help, I still couldn't do it, and anyway you got mad at me for getting so dirty and going outside and so I didn't try that again."

My son was under there, Step thought. He wanted to scream the way he had screamed after the Fourth of July picnic. But he held it in.

"I didn't know what to do anymore," said Stevie, "and so I gave up, I thought nobody could ever see them.

But I couldn't just let him go on doing it, could 1, Dad? That wouldn't be right. They didn't like it, I knew that, even if they didn't tell me how much it hurt."

He looked at the other boys, and some of them looked away, perhaps ashamed.

"So I remembered what you said about how bad people hate the truth, it scares them, so I broke the rules and I went outside when he was doing the lights and I said, I know what you're doing, and he said, I don't know what you're talking about, and I said, They told me about you, and he said, Who told you? and I said, They told me about Boy, and I said, Mr. Douglas is a friend of mine, I met him, and he said so. And I said, You got to stop, and he said, I already did. He said, Boy don't do that no more. But I knew he was lying, because I could see that Boy wasn't like they told me, Boy wasn't somebody else, he was Boy, Boy was his own self, and then I ran to get back in the house but I wasn't fast enough."

DeAnne was crying now, her face covered in her hands, and Step could feel tears on his own cheeks, because now he knew, beyond all doubt, beyond all hope, that there were eight lost boys, not seven, sharing Christmas in their house tonight. Eight lost boys, not seven, buried in the crawlspace.

"And I thought I wrecked everything," said Stevie. "But then I knew that I didn't at all. Because I did know how to make you see me. It was really hard the first night and I think a couple of times you didn't see me when you were supposed to, but I got better and better at it and then I really could show them how because I was like them now, and so Daddy, here we are, and you got to call Mr. Douglas because Boy is still there and he's got to stop."

"Yes," said Step. "Will you stay, boys? Till Mr. Douglas comes?"

They didn't answer; they looked at each other, some of them, and others looked at the floor.

"They're afraid of seeing him again," said Stevie. "The old guy."

"Boy" whispered one of Stevie's friends.

"Boy," echoed several others.

"I know what we should do," said DeAnne. She was trying to sound cheerful, despite her tears. "You've all sat here and seen what our family does for Christmas Eve. Why don't you each tell the rest of us what your family does. You don't have to if you don't want to, but I'd really like to know, because I don't think any two families in the world do Christmas exactly alike. What about you, Jack?"

DeAnne led them in sharing tales of Christmases past as Step went to the kitchen and called the police station. "Call Mr. Douglas and tell him that Step Fletcher has to see him tonight. I know it's Christmas Eve, but tell him that the answers are all here but only if he comes now to see them with his own eyes."

Step worried for a moment that this policeman might be too fearful of offending someone, of losing his job or a promotion, to dare to call his boss on Christmas Eve.

"I promise you, my friend," said Step, "that if you make this call, you'll be giving Doug Douglas the best Christmas present he ever had."

"Easy for you to say," said the man. "But I'll give it a shot and see if he wants to talk to you."

It seemed less than a minute-yet such a long time-before the phone rang. Step picked it up so fast it barely had time to echo.

"What have you got on Christmas Eve, Mr. Fletcher?"

"I had the list before, Mr. Douglas, and that wasn't a fake, right? I told you the truth, right?"

"Right."

"Come now, come quickly. I have all the answers here. But no lights, no sirens. Because you'll frighten them and they might go."

"Them? Who?"

"The boys, Mr. Douglas." Step hung up, trusting that Douglas would have faith enough in him to come.

He got there before the boys had finished telling all their memories. He came in quietly, and when he saw them gathered there, Step could see the hope in his eyes, the wonderment that they were not dead after all. But then he saw Step's face, and Step knew that it was no secret that he had been grieving, and then Douglas began to understand. "Your boy really did see them," said Douglas.

"All along," said Step.

"But why is it that we can see them now?"

"Because Stevie showed them how. And he kept them here so you could see them."

Douglas walked slowly, carefully, to the center of the room. "Ah, boys. If only I could have found him sooner. If only I could have stopped him before ... But I can stop him now. Just tell me who it is."

So Stevie told it all again, and this time with more details. The deep place under the house. How he didn't really understand what had happened to his friends until he saw that place and then he made them tell him, and he made them tell him who it was, too. "Bappy" he said.

"Boy," said a couple of the others.

"Baptize Waters," said Step. "Our landlord's father. He used to live here. I wrote down his address and phone number for you while you were on the way."

"Boys," said Douglas. "I'll tell you something. I don't think you should ever see that man again. I don't think any children should ever have to see him again."

They nodded.

"So I promise you that if you stay right here in this room for just a little while longer, you won't ever see him again. And if you wait, I'd like to call your parents. I'd like your parents to have a chance to see you."

"They'll be mad," said one of the boys. "I didn't stay where I was supposed to."

"No," said Douglas. "I've talked to all of them and I can promise you that not one of them will be mad. Not one. Can you stay just that much longer?"

"It's hard," said one of the boys.

"Then I'll hurry."

Douglas left the room, went into the kitchen. Step could hear him phoning, speaking quie tly. Later he would learn how the phone calls went. We have found where the bodies are hidden, and your son is one of them. But there's also something else, a chance of something else, to say good-bye to your son, if you hurry.

Tell no one. Come quickly They didn't understand, of course, but they came. And soon they had spread out through the house, the grieving parents, the boys, shy at first, and softspoken, for none of them was as strong as Stevie.

And while they talked inside the house, the policemen worked beneath it and outside it, and the bodies were brought out one by one on pallets and were laid under the bright lights on the lawn. Bappy was brought to the house on Chinqua Penn, he and his son and his son's lawyer, furious at first about being dragged out here on Christmas Eve. But then they saw the bodies on the lawn, and the son turned to the father, and in a voice rising steadily to a shout, to a scream, he said, "You told me you stopped. You told me you were too old to want it anymore. But you didn't stop, you old son-of-a-bitch, you went on doing it only now you killed them!" Weeping in shame and rage and terrible memories of his own, the son shoved his father to the ground and then he kicked him until the police grabbed him and held him, and he stood there sobbing. "He said he stopped. I would have told you about him if I'd known he was still doing it, if I'd known he'd do this, I would have told you."

"So why didn't you tell us anyway?" asked Douglas.

For a moment he couldn't think of how to say it. And then he could. "He's my father."

"It wasn't me," said Bappy.

"Yes it was," said Douglas.

"It was Boy," said Bappy. "I never wanted to. What do you think I am, anyway? I'd never do anything like this. It's always that Boy."

All of it was on videotape. The son. The father. The grim- faced lawyer urging them both, far too late now, to be quiet, to say no more. All on tape, and so there was no need for any of the men outside the house to see or even know about what was happening inside.

As Bappy was led away, as the bodies were brought out of their hidden graves and under the police lights of that bitter cold Christmas Eve, one by one the boys inside the house no longer had the strength or the need to keep trying anymore, and they said good-bye, and they were gone. One moment there, the next moment not there. Then their parents left, weeping, clinging to each other, with just a whispered word or two from Douglas.

"Tell no one," he said. "You don't want your boy's name in the press. Just go home and thank God you had a chance to say good-bye. One small mercy in this whole cruel business." And the parents nodded and agreed and went home to the loneliest Christmas of their lives, the Christmas in which questions were answered at last, and love was remembered and wept for, and God was thanked and blamed for not having done more.

Inside the house, Stevie was the last to linger; he had been the strongest all along. Robbie and Betsy were both asleep, and Zap also was asleep in DeAnne's arms. So Stevie was alone with his parents at last, as he had been alone with them when their family was just beginning.

"Ah, Stevie," said Step. "Why did you face him by yourself? Why didn't you make us believe you? Why didn't you explain?"

"I was the one the y came to," said Stevie. "It was my job. Isn't that why we moved here?"

"Not to lose you," said DeAnne.

"I just did what you taught me," said Stevie. "I didn't mean to die. But I didn't know how to do it until then.

Did I do wrong?"

"Oh, Stevie," said DeAnne, "what you did was noble and good and brave. We knew that's the kind of man you would be, we knew it all along."

"We just thought we'd have a chance to know you longer," said Step. "We thought we'd die long before you. That's how the world is supposed to be."

"Nothing was how it was supposed to be," said Stevie. "Nothing was right, but now it's better, isn't it? I made it better, didn't I?"

"For all the mothers and fathers who won't have to grieve," said Step, "because you stopped that man before he found their sons, yes, you made it better."

"And you're not mad at me for breaking the rules?" asked Stevie.

"No, we're not," said DeAnne. "But we're sad."

"Stevie, will you forgive us?" said Step. "For not understand ing? For not knowing that what you said to us was true?"

"Sure," he said. "I could see them and you couldn't. I was only mad at you until I figured that out." Then Stevie sighed. "It's so hard, staying here like this."

"I don't want you to go," said DeAnne.

"It's so hard," he said again.

"I love you, Stephen Bolivar Fletcher," said Step. "I love you more than life. I'll miss you so much."

"I'll miss you too, Daddy. I'll miss you too, Mommy. Tell Bobbie and Betsy bye for me. And tell Zap about me when he's bigger, because I'm still his biggest brother."

"I love you," said DeAnne. She wanted to tell him what that meant. What he meant to her, how it felt to carry him for all those awful months of sickness and how it all was worth it when she held him in her arms, and more than worth it as she watched him grow and saw what a fine boy he was, so much better than she could have hoped for. She wanted to tell him of all her dreams for him, of all the children she wanted him to have, children lucky enough to have him for a father. She wanted to tell him how she had once dreamed of lying on her own deathbed, knowing that it would be all right to die because Stevie was sitting there beside her, holding her hand, and she dreamed that he said, Good-bye, Mother. And then: Be there waiting for me when I come.

"Good-bye, Mother," said Stevie. "Good-bye, Father."

"Good-bye, Door Man," whispered Step.

And DeAnne said, "Oh, Stevie, be there waiting for us when we come."