Summer of Night

SIXTEEN

It did not rain on Sunday night, nor on Monday, although the day was gray and thick with humidity. Duane's father had set Wednesday for Uncle Art's cremation in Peoria and there were details to be taken care of, people to notify. At least three people-an old army buddy of Uncle Art's, a cousin he had known well, and an ex-wife-insisted on coming, so there was to be a short memorial service after all. The Old Man arranged it for three o'clock in Peoria at the only mortuary which did cremations.

The Old Man tried to call J. P. Congden through much of Monday, but the man was never home. Duane stood in the doorway and eavesdropped that afternoon when Constable Barney drove up with a complaint.

"Well, Darren," Barney had said to the Old Man, "J. P.'s telling everybody that you killed his dog.''

The Old Man had shown his teeth. "The goddamn dog was attacking my boy. It was a big stupid Doberman with a microscopic little brain about the size of Congden's dick."

Barney shuffled his hat in his hands, running his fingers along the slick sweatband. "J. P. says that the dog was inside his house. That he found its body in the house. That somebody broke in and killed it."

The Old Man spat in the dust. "Goddamn it, you know that's as much of a lie as most of J. P. Congden's traffic arrests. That dog was inside when we knocked. Then when my boy and I came back around the shed after looking at Art's Cadillac . . . which by all rights shouldn't be there, you know. It's illegal for a third party to buy a wrecked vehicle before the accident's completely investigated. Anyway, the dog jumped 'Duane after we went into the backyard, which means that piss-ant Congden let it out knowing that it would attack us."

Barney looked the Old Man in the eye. "You don't have any evidence of that, do you?"

The Old Man laughed. "Why did he send you after me? Does Congden have evidence that I was the one who killed that Doberman?"

"He said that the neighbors saw you."

"Bullshit. Mrs. Dumont lives next to Congden and she's blind. The only other folks on that block that'd know me is Miz Jensen, and she's up in Oak Hill with her boy, Jimmy. Besides, I had a legal right to be on that property. Congden illegally impounded my brother's car and then tore the doors off it so the true nature of his accident wouldn't be revealed.''

Barney set his hat on his head and tugged at the bill of it. "What are you talking about, Darren?"

"I'm talking about two missing doors on the driver's side of that Cadillac that hold evidence of the accident. Red paint. Red paint like the paint on the truck that tried to run my boy down a week ago today."

Barney removed a notebook from his pocket, wrote in it with a stubby pencil, and looked up. "Did you notify Sheriff Conway?"

"You're goddamned right I called him," said the Old Man. He was agitated, rubbing his cheeks. He had shaved that morning and the absence of stubble there seemed to disconcert him. "He said he'd 'look into it.' I told him he'd damn well better look into it, that I was going to file charges against him as well as Congden if they didn't carry out a thorough investigation."

"So you think there was a second vehicle?"

The Old Man glanced back at Duane standing in the doorway. "I know that my brother didn't drive that Cadillac into the bridge at seventy miles an hour on his own," he said to Constable Barney. "Art was a damned fool about obeying speed limits, even out on shitty roads like Jubilee College Road. No, somebody ran him off the road."

Barney walked back to his car. "I'll call Conway and tell him I'm checking into it as well."

Behind the screen door, Duane blinked. The town constable had no part in investigating deaths on county highways. What he was doing was a favor, pure and simple.

"Meanwhile," said the constable, "I'll tell our justice of the peace that his neighbors must have been mistaken. Perhaps the'dog died of natural causes. The mean sonofabitch has gone after me a few times." He extended his hand to the Old Man. "I'm damned sorry about Art, Darren."

Surprised, the Old Man shook the constable's hand. Duane stepped out and stood next to his father while they watched the car recede down the long drive. Duane thought that if he turned to look at his father right then, he would find tears in the Old Man's eyes for the first time since the accident. He did not turn to look.

That evening they went to Uncle Art's home to get a suit to take into the Peoria mortuary the next morning.

"Damn fool thing," muttered the Old Man as they drove the four miles in the pickup. "They're not going to show him off, just incinerate him and the coffin. Art might as well be nude for all it matters to him or us."

Duane recognized the grumbling as the sign of another day without alcohol as much as grief or general bad temper. The Old Man was nearing a record for the past couple of years.

This trip was what Duane had been waiting for. He hadn't wanted to make a big deal out of searching for signs of whatever book Uncle Art had found and was bringing over to share when he was killed, but he knew the Old Man would have to go over there before the funeral.

It was dark when they arrived. Uncle Art lived in a small white farmhouse set back several hundred yards from the road. He leased the house from the family who still farmed the surrounding fields-set in beans this summer-and only the vegetable garden behind the house was Uncle Art's handiwork. The Old Man looked at the garden a moment before they went in the back door, and Duane knew that he was thinking about how they'd have to come over and tend it. In a few weeks they'd be eating the tomatoes that Uncle Art loved so much.

The house wasn't locked. Duane blinked and adjusted his glasses as he entered, feeling the grief and sense of loss strike him anew. He realized that it was the scent of Uncle Art's pipe tobacco in the still, trapped air. In that second Duane realized how temporary life was, how fleeting any person's presence was: a few books, the scent of tobacco that a person would never enjoy again, a few clothes that would be used by others, the inevitable snapshots, legal papers, and correspondence that would mean so much less to someone else. A human being on this world, Duane realized with a shock of recognition approaching vertigo, made no more permanent impression than does a hand thrust in water. Remove the hand, and water rushes in to fill the void as if nothing had ever been there.

"I'll be just a minute," said the Old Man, almost whispering for a reason neither understood but both obeyed. "You can stay in here." They had walked through the kitchen into the darker "study."

Duane snapped on a light and nodded. The Old Man disappeared into the bedroom. Duane heard the closet door being opened.

Uncle Art's house was small: only a kitchen, a "study" converted from the unused dining room, a living room barely big enough to hold a BarcaLounger, many bookshelves, two armchairs on either side of a table with a chessboard-Duane recognized the game he and Uncle Art had been playing three weekends earlier-and a large console television set. The small bedroom was the last room. The front door opened onto a small cement porch that looked out on about two acres of yard. No visitors ever entered or left by the front door, but Duane knew that Uncle Art had enjoyed sitting on the front porch in the evening, smoking his pipe and looking out north over the fields. One could hear traffic on Jubilee College Road easily enough, but the cars were not visible because of the hillside.

Duane shook himself out of his reverie and tried to concentrate. Uncle Art once had mentioned that he kept a journal-had kept one every year since 1941. Duane thought that whatever book he had mentioned on the phone was gone-taken by Congden or whoever-but there might be some mention of it.

He clicked on the lamp on Art's cluttered desk. The dining room had been the biggest room in the house, and the'' study'' was floor-to-ceiling bookcases holding mostly hardcover editions and more low shelves in the center of the room on either side of the huge door Art had used as his desk.

The desk held bills, the telephone, stacks of correspondence which Duane only flicked through, clippings of chess columns from Chicago and New York papers, magazines, cartoons from The New Yorker, a framed photograph of Art's second wife, another frame holding a drawing by da Vinci of a helicopter-like machine, a jar of marbles, another jar of red licorice--Duane had raided that jar for as long as he could remember-and scraps of paper holding old shopping lists, lists of fellow union members from the Caterpillar plant, lists of Nobel Prize winners, and a myriad of other things. No journal.

The desk had no drawers. Duane looked around the room. He could hear the Old Man going through drawers in the bedroom, probably finding underwear and socks. It would only take another minute.

Where would Uncle Art keep a journal? Duane wondered if it was in the bedroom. No, Art wouldn't write in bed. He'd fill his daily entry here, at his work desk. Only there was no book here. No drawers.

Books. Duane sat in the old captain's chair, feeling how the varnish had been worn away by his uncle's arms. He would write in the journal every day. Probably every evening, sitting here. Duane extended his left hand. Uncle Art was left-handed.

One of the low bookshelves near the left trestle-base of the big door of a desk was within reach. It was actually a double shelf, with books facing outward and others-more than a dozen untitled volumes-facing inward, almost invisible in the darkness under the desk. Duane pulled one of the books out: leatherbound; heavy, quality paper; about five hundred pages. There was no printing within, only a tight script written with an old-fashioned pen. The script filled each page and was not only illegible, it was unreadable. Literally.

Duane spread the volume open and leaned closer under the lamp, adjusting his glasses as he did so. The entries were not in English. The tightly scrawled pages looked as if they had been written in some hybrid of Hindi or Arabic, a solid wall of scribbles, loops, arabesques, and squiggles. There were no separate words; the lines were one inseparable, indecipherable tangle of unknown symbols. But at the top of each column of text there were numbers, and these were uncoded. Duane looked at the top of this page and read 19.3.57.

Duane knew that Uncle Art had often said that Europe's-and most of the world's-way of writing the date with the day, then the month, then the year, made more sense than the American way. "Littlest to biggest," he'd said to his nephew when Duane was six. "Makes a hell of a lot more sense that way." Duane had always agreed. He was looking at his uncle's journal entry for March 19, 1957.

He set the book back, pulled out the one set farthest to the left. The one easiest to reach. The first page of scribbles read 1.1.60. The last page, unfinished, lay under a heading of 11.6.60. Uncle Art had not made an-entry on Sunday morning, but he had written in his journal on Saturday evening.

"All set?" The Old Man was standing in the doorway, holding a suit still in the dry cleaner's cellophane, with Uncle Art's old gym bag in the other hand. He stepped into the circle of light near the desk and nodded at the book which Duane had instinctively closed. "Is that what Art was bringing you?"

Duane hesitated only a second. "I think so."

"Bring it along then." The Old Man went out through the kitchen.

Duane turned out the light, stood thinking about the other eighteen years of personal thoughts held in the volumes under the desk, and wondered if he was doing the wrong thing. Obviously the journals were in some sort of personal code. But Duane was good at breaking codes. If he broke this code, he would be reading things that Uncle Art had not meant for his eyes, or any eyes, to see.

But he wanted me to know what he found. He sounded excited about it. Serious, but excited. And perhaps a little scared.

Duane took a breath and lifted the heavy book, sensing his uncle's presence all around him now in the smell of tobacco, the familiar mustiness of the hundreds and hundreds of books, the scent of leather on the cover, even the slight, pleasant scent of his uncle's perspiration-the clean smell of a work-ingman's sweat.

It was very dark in the room now. The sense of Uncle Art's presence was a bit unnerving, as if the ghost of the man were standing there behind Duane, urging him to take the book, urging him to sit down there now, turn on the light, and read it with the spirit leaning over him. Duane half expected a cold touch of a hand on his neck.

Walking, not hurrying, Duane went out through the kitchen to join his father in the truck.

Dale and Lawrence had played ball all day despite the threatening clouds and cloying humidity, and by dinnertime they were saturated with dirt that had turned to mud where their sweat had run in rivulets. Their mother saw them coming out the kitchen window and made them stand in the back stairway and strip to their Jockey shorts before she'd let them enter. Dale got the job of carrying the clothes down to the back room of the basement where the washing machine sat.

Dale hated the basement. It was the one part of their big old house that made him nervous. It was OK in the summer when he almost never had to come down here, but in the winter it was his job to come down every evening after dinner and shovel coal into the hopper.

The stairs to the basement were each at least two feet high, made for someone with a greater-than-human stride. The huge concrete stairs wound to the left as they went down between the outside and kitchen walls, and the effect was that the basement seemed much farther down than it should be. Dungeon stairs, Lawrence called them.

The naked bulb at the top of the stairs shed almost no light down here where the corridor ran back to the furnace. There was another light beyond the furnace, but it had to be turned on by a hanging cord, as did the one in the coal bin. Dale glanced to his right at the opening to the coal bin as he passed it. It was not a door, really, just a four-foot opening in the wall, stepping up to the higher level of the bin. From floor to ceiling, it was only five feet in the little room and Dale knew how hard it was for his father to crouch in there and shovel coal. The hopper, door now closed, angled from the corridor to the bin so that one shoveled down into its waiting maw. Behind the hopper, seeming to fill the end of the short corridor where Dale now stood, was the ancient furnace itself: a huge and scabrous hulk of metal with its tentacles of pipe running every which direction.

What Dale hated most about the coal bin on those winter nights when he had to shovel down here wasn't the work-although he had calluses on his hands through the winter-or the coal-dust taste that lingered in the back of his mouth even after he brushed his teeth; no, it was the crawlspace at the back of the bin.

The far wall ran about three feet from the cement floor and ended just a couple of feet below the ceiling, revealing a dirt and stone floor, waterpipes, and a glimpse of cobwebs. Dale knew that the space ran under much of the room that his father used as an office when he was home and continued on under the huge front porch. He could hear mice and larger rodents scurrying in there when he was shoveling coal, and one cold night he had turned quickly to see small, red eyes staring out at him.

Dale's parents often complimented him on how diligently he filled the hopper, how quickly he worked. For Dale, those twenty or so minutes every winter night were the worst part of his day, and he was willing to work at breakneck speed just to get the damned hopper filled and to get out. He loved it when the coal bin had just been filled and he had only to stand near the hopper and shovel. Later in the month, when the coal was reduced to a low heap in the far corner, he had to walk the width of the bin, lift the load, carry it nine feet across the room, and dump it in, with his back to the crawlspace.

Not shoveling coal was one of the reasons Dale loved summer. One glance now told him that there was only a tiny heap of black anthracite in the far corner. Light from the top of the stairs barely cast a glow in the bin; the crawlspace was utter blackness.

Dale found the first light cord, blinked in the sudden glare, went around the mass of furnace into the second room-used for nothing but holding the furnace, passed through the third room where his dad had a workbench with only a smattering of tools, and curved right again into the far room where his mother kept the washer and dryer.

His father had said that it was a bitch to get those machines down here, and that if and when they moved, the washer and dryer stayed. Dale believed him; he remembered his dad, the delivery guys from Sears, Mr. Somerset, and two other neighbor men wrestling with those machines for well over an hour. This back room had no windows-none of the basement rooms did-and the light cord dangled in the center. Near the south wall, a circular pit with a three-foot diameter seemed to drop into darkness. It was the huge sump pump that kept water out of a downstairs set too deep for the local water table. Still, the basement had flooded four times in the four and half years they'd lived here, and Dale's dad once had to wade back here in water over two feet deep to fix the pump.

Dale tossed the filthy clothes onto the top of the washing machine, tugged the light out as he passed, and moved quickly-back room to workroom, workroom to furnace room, furnace room to corridor-not looking into the coal bin this time-then the ten giant steps up and around to the top step. It was so cool and damp in the basement that it came as a shock to feel the clammy air through the back screen door and to see the soft twilight above Grumbacher's house to the west.

Dale padded quickly through the kitchen, embarrassed to be wearing just his underpants. Lawrence was already splashing in the tub and making submarine attack noises. Luckily, Dale's mom was out on the front porch, so he half-skated down the hallway in his bare feet, ran up the stairs, circled the landing, and went into his room to get his robe before his mom came back in. He lay on his bed with the little reading lamp on, skimming through an old copy of Astounding Science Fiction until it was his turn to take a bath.

Once alone downstairs, in his quiet and lighted corner of the basement, it took Duane McBride less than five minutes to crack the code.

Uncle Art's journal looked as if it had been kept in Hindi, but it was simple English. There weren't even any transpositions. Of course, it helped that Duane had shared his uncle's fascination with Leonardo da Vinci.

The Renaissance genius had kept his own diary in a simple code: writing reversed so that it could be read in a mirror. Duane brought a hand mirror over to his worktable and there was the entry in English, running from right to left. Uncle Art had ran the words together so that the code would not be too obvious; he'd also connected the letters at the top, which gave the line of print its oddly Arabic or Vedic look. Instead of periods, he'd used a symbol which looked like a reversed capital F with two dots before it. A reversed F with one dot was a comma.

Duane saw that the page and passage he'd opened to dealt with problems at work, a union foreman who was under suspicion of skimming union funds, and a dialogue reproducing a political argument between Art and his brother. Duane glanced at the passage, remembered the argument in question-the Old Man had been quite drank and calling for the violent overthrow of the government-and then he hurried on to the final entry:

11.6.60

Found the passage on the bell Duane's been hunting for! It was in the Apocrypha: Additions to the Book of the Law by Aleister Crowley. I should have realized that it would be Crowley, that self-appointed mage of our age, who would know something about all this.

Spent a couple of hours tonight out on the porch, thinking. At first I was going to keep this to myself, but little Duane's worked hard on researching this local mystery, and I decided that he has a right to know. Tomorrow I'll take the book over and share the whole section on "familiars" with him. The Borgia section makes for weird reading.

A couple of the pertinent sections:

"Where the Medicis favored the traditional animal familiars for their bridge to the World of Magick, it is said that the Borgia family during those most productive centuries of the Renaissance (from the point of view of practicing the Art) chose an inanimate object as their talisman.

"Legend had it that the great Stele of Revealing, the iron Egyptian obelisk in the Shrine of Osiris, had been stolen from its rightful place in the Fifth or Sixth Century (Christian Reckoning) and had long been the source of power for the Borja family of Valencia, Spain.

"In 1455, when a member of that ancient family of sorcerers became pope, a great irony since his political rise had occurred due to the Dark Powers in this pre-Christian symbol, his first act was to commission the construction of a great bell. There is little doubt that this bell - brought to Rome about the time of this Borja pope's death-was the Stele of Revealing, melted down and recast into a more palatable form for the masses of Christians awaiting its arrival.

"This bell was said to be much more than another magical object of the form found in almost every Moorish or Spanish royal household in those days: the Borjas looked upon it as the 'All devourer, AH begetter.' In the Egyptian, the Stele of Revealing was known as the 'crown of death' and its transmogrification had been foretold in the Book of the Abyss.

"And unlike organic familiars, which act merely as medium, the Stele, even in its incarnation as a bell, demanded its own sacrifice. Legend says that Don Alonso y Borja offered a newly born granddaughter to the bell before going to Rome for the Conclave of 1455 which-against all odds-elected him Pope. But Don Alonso, now known as Pope Calixtus III, either lacked the stomach to continue the schedule of sacrifices or believed that the Stele's power had been profitably spent by his mere accession to power. For whatever reason, the sacrifices were discontinued. Pope Calixtus died. The bell was installed in the palace tower of Don Alonso's nephew, Ro-drigo y Borja, Cardinal of Rome, successor to the Archbishopry of Valencia, and the first true heir to the Borgia dynasty.

"But, legend tells, the Stele, or bell as it was now disguised, had not finished with its own demands."

After his bath, Dale Stewart went up to his bedroom. Lawrence was in his own bed. Or rather, he was on it, sitting cross-legged in the center of the bed. There was something odd about his expression.

"What's the matter?" said Dale.

Lawrence was so pale that his freckles stood out. "I . . . I don't know. I came in to turn the light on and . . . well, I heard something."

Dale shook his head. He remembered the time a couple of ^ears v>e£ore *nHew tke-y' d beew alowe watching TV while, tivek mother went shopping. It was a winter afternoon and they'd watched The Mummy's Revenge on the Saturday afternoon Creature Feature. As soon as it was over, Lawrence had "heard" something in the kitchen ... the same slow, sliding step that the lame mummy had made in the movie. Dale had joined his little brother in panic then; they'd loosened the storm window and jumped into the front yard as the "steps" came closer. Their mother had come home to find them standing on the front porch in their socks and t-shirts, shivering.

Well, Dale was eleven now, not eight. "What'd you hear?" he asked.

Lawrence looked around. "I dunno. I didn't exactly hear it... I sort of felt it. Like someone else was in the room."

Dale sighed. He tossed some dirty socks in the hamper and tugged off the overhead light.

The closet door was open a bit. Dale pushed it shut as he walked toward his own bed.

The door did not click shut.

Thinking a slipper or something was in the way, Dale paused and pushed harder.

The door pushed back. Something inside the closet was pushing to get out.

In his basement, Duane mopped his face with a bandanna. It was usually cool down here even on the hottest days of summer, but he found that he was sweating freely. The book lay open on his "study desk" made out of a door on trestles. Duane had been copying pertinent information into his notebook as quickly as he could, but now he laid aside his pencil and just read.

His uncle's backward script almost made sense without the mirror now, but Duane still held the book up to the glass:

The Stele of Revealing, now cast in its disguise as a beil, had been partially activated by the sacrifice of the first Borgia pope's granddaughter. But according to the Book of Ottaviano, the Borgias feared the Stele's power and were not prepared for the Apocalypse which, according to legend and lore, went with the Stele's full awakening. As recorded in The Book of the Law, the Stele of Revealing offered great power to those who served it. But at the same time, when the proper sacrifices were completed, the talisman became the Knell of the Final Days: a harbinger of the final Apocalypse which would follow that Quickening of the Stele by sixty years, six months, and six days.

Rodrigo, the next pope of the Borgia dynasty, had the Bell taken to the tower he had added to the Vatican complex. There, in the Torre Borgia, Alexander-as Rodrigo Borgia called himself as pope-was said to have kept the Stele from its Quickening by the mystical murals of a half-deranged dwarf of an artist named Pinturicchio. These "grotesques"-designs taken from the grottos beneath Rome-served to contain the Stele's evil while allowing the family to benefit from the talisman's power. Or so Pope Alexander thought. In both The Book of the Law and Ottaviano's secret books, there are hints that the Stele began to dominate the lives of the Borgias. Years later, Alexander had the Bell moved to the massive and impenetrable Castel Sant' Angelo, but even burying the artifact in that sepulcher of stone and bones did not lessen the thing's power over the human beings who had attempted to control it. Ottaviano's shortened account tells of the madness that gripped both the Borgias and Rome during those decades: the murders and intrigues terrible even by the brutal standards of the day, accounts of demons roving the catacombs beneath Rome, of things less than human moving through Castel Sant' Angelo and the streets of the city, and tales of the domination of the Stele of Revealing as it worked towards its own quickening.

From this point, after the terrible death of Ottaviano, the legend of the Stele moves into darkness. The destruction of the House of Borgia is record. It is said that a generation later, when the first Medici pope ascended to the Throne of Saint Peter's, his first papal command was to have the Bell removed from Rome, melted down, and the accursed metal buried in sanctified ground far from the Vatican.

Today, no clue to the whereabouts or fate of the Stele of Revealing has survived. The legend of the Stele's power as "AH devourer, all begetter" continues in necromancy to this day.

Duane set Uncle Art's book aside. He could hear the Old Man fumbling around upstairs in the kitchen. Then there was a mumbling, the slam of the screen door, and Duane heard the pickup start with a grind and move down the driveway. The Old Man's fast from booze was over. Duane hadn't heard whether the Old Man was heading toward Carl's or the Black Tree, but he knew that it would be hours before his father would return.

Duane sat in the circle of lamp light a few minutes, looking at the book and the notes he had taken. Then he went up to lock the screen door.

The closet door was slowly opening.

Dale leaned into it, stopped the slow opening with a four-inch gap showing into darkness, and turned to look at Lawrence. His brother was staring at him with wide eyes.

"Help," whispered Dale. There was renewed effort from the other side and the door opened another inch as Dale's socks slid on the bare wood floor.

"Mom!" screamed Lawrence as he jumped from his bed and ran to Dale's side. Together the two boys put their shoulders against the door, forcing it two inches closer to being shut. "Mom!" They were shouting in unison now.

The door stopped, pressure built on the yellow-painted boards, and it began opening again.

Dale and Lawrence stared at each other, their cheeks against the rough boards, feeling the terrible force being transmitted through the wood.

The door opened another three inches. There was no noise of any sort from the interior of the closet; here on the outside, though, both boys were puffing and gasping, Dale's socks and Lawrence's bare feet scrabbling on the floor.

The door opened another few inches. There was a gap a foot wide now, and from it a cold breeze seemed to be blowing.

"Jesus . . . can't. . . hold it," gasped Dale. His left thigh was braced against their old dresser, but he couldn't get enough leverage to move the door back. Whatever was in there had at least the strength of a grown-up.

The door opened another two inches.

"Mom!" screamed Lawrence. "Mom, help! Mom!"

There was some sort of reply from the front porch, but Dale realized that they could never hold the door long enough for their mother to arrive. "Run!" he gasped.

Lawrence looked at him, his terrified face only inches away, and let go. He ran, but not out of the room. With two steps and a huge bound, Lawrence leaped for his bed.

Without Lawrence's help, Dale couldn't hold the door. The pressure was unrelenting. He went with it, jumping onto the top of the four-foot-high dresser, pulling his legs up. The dresser lamp and some books crashed to the floor.

The door smashed open against Dale's knees. Lawrence screamed.

Dale heard his mother's footsteps on the stairs, her voice calling a question, but before he could open his own mouth to shout back a response, there was a wave of cold air as if they had opened a door to a meat locker, and then something came out of the closet.

It was very low and long-at least four feet long-and as insubstantial as a shadow, but much darker. It was a blackness, sliding along the floor like some frenzied insect that had just been freed from a jar. Dale could see leglike filaments whipping wildly. He lifted his feet onto the dresser top. A framed photograph crashed to the floor.

"Mom!" He and Lawrence had screamed in unison again.

The black thing moved across the floor in a blur. Dale thought that it was like a cockroach, if cockroaches were four feet long, a few inches high, and made out of black smoke. Dark appendages whipped and scrabbled on floorboards.

"Mom!"

The thing rushed under Lawrence's bed.

Lawrence made no noise as he leaped to Dale's bed, on his feet now, bouncing like a trampoline acrobat.

Their mother stood in the doorway, looking from one screaming boy to another.

"It's a thing . . . from the closet . . . went under . . ."

"Under the bed . . . black thing . . . bigl"

Their mom ran to the hall closet, returned with a broom. "Out," she said. She tugged on the overhead light.

Dale hesitated only a second before hopping down, getting behind his mother, running to the doorway. Lawrence bounced from Dale's bed to his bed to the doorway. Both boys skidded into the hallway and went crashing into the banister. Dale peeked in the room.

His mom was down on all fours, lifting the dust ruffle under Lawrence's bed.

"Mom! No!" shouted Dale and rushed in to try to pull her back.

She dropped the broom and took her oldest son by the upper arms. "Dale . . . Dale . . . now stop. Stop. There's nothing there. Look."

Between gasps quickly turning to sobs, Dale peeked. There was nothing under the bed.

"It probably went under Dale's," said Lawrence from the doorway.

With Dale still clinging, their mom went around and lifted the dust ruffles from Dale's bed. Dale's heart almost stopped when she went down on all fours, the broom in front of her.

"See," she said, rising and brushing at her skirt and knees. "There's nothing there. Now what do you think you saw?"

Both boys gabbled at once. Dale listened to his own voice and realized what their description sounded like: something big, black, shadowy, low. It had pushed the closet door open and run under the bed like a giant bug.

Uh-huh.

"Maybe it's back in the closet," suggested Lawrence, barely holding back tears and gasping for breath.

Their mother looked at them a long second but went over and pushed the closet door wider. Dale cringed back toward the doorway to the hall as his mom shifted clothes on the rack, kicked tennis shoes aside, and glanced around the edges of the doorframe. The closet was not deep. It was empty.

She folded her arms and waited. The boys stayed in the doorway, glancing over their shoulders at the landing and the dark openings to their parents' room and the extra room as if the shadow would come scrabbling across the hardwood floors after them.

"You guys have been scaring each other, haven't you?" she asked.

Both boys denied it and began babbling, describing the thing again, Dale showing how they had tried to hold the closet door. shut.

"And this bug pushed it open?" Their mom had a slight smile.

Dale sighed. Lawrence looked up at him as if to say, Somehow it's still under my bed. We just can't see it.

"Mom," said Dale as calmly as he could, his voice conversational, reasonable, "can we sleep in your room tonight? In our sleeping bags?"

She hesitated a second. Dale guessed that she was remembering the time they locked themselves out because of the "mummy'' ... or perhaps the time last summer when they'd sat out in the fields near the ball diamond at night trying to telepathically contact alien spaceships . . . and had come home terrified when a plane's lights had gone over.

"All right," she said. "You get your sleeping bags and the foldup cot. I have to go out and tell Mrs. Somerset that my big boys interrupted our conversation with screams because of a shadowy bug."

She went downstairs with both her sons within arm's length. They waited until she came back inside before they went upstairs again, having her wait at the doorway to the extra room while they scrounged around for the sleeping bags and the cot.

She refused to leave even the hall light on all night. Both boys held their breath when she went into their room to tug off the overhead light, but she returned all right, leaving the broom by the headboard like a weapon. Dale thought of the pump-action shotgun his father kept in the closet next to his own Savage over-and-under there. The shells were in the bottom drawer of the cedar chest.

Dale had his cot so close to the edge of the bed that there was no gap there at all. Long after their mother had fallen asleep, Dale could feel his brother's wakefulness, intense and watchful as his own.

When Lawrence's hand crept out from under the blankets onto Dale's cot, Dale didn't push it away. He made sure it was indeed his brother's hand and wrist . . . not something from the darkness below the bed . . . and then he held it tightly until he finally fell asleep.