Summer of Night

TWENTY-TWO

In those three weeks of rain and gloom, Mike learned who and what the Soldier was and how to fight it.

The death of Duane McBride had bothered Mike deeply, even though he hadn't considered himself a close friend the way Dale had. Mike realized that after he had flunked fourth grade-mostly because reading was so difficult for him, the letters in words seemed to rearrange themselves in random patterns even as he concentrated on making sense of them-after he had flunked, he'd come to think of himself as the total opposite of Duane McBride. Duane read and wrote more easily and fluently than any adult Mike had ever known with the possible exception of Father Cavanaugh, while Mike could barely sound his way through the newspaper he delivered every day. He'd never resented that difference-it wasn't Duane's fault that he was brilliant. Mike respected it with the same equanimity that he respected gifted athletes or born storytellers like Dale Stewart, but the abyss between two kids about the same age had been infinitely larger than the grade level that separated them. Mike had envied Duane McBride the infinite number of doors that were open to him: not doors of privilege-Mike knew that the McBrides were almost as poor as the O'Rourkes-but doors of perception and comprehension that Mike barely glimpsed through conversation with Father C. He suspected that Duane had lived in those lofty realms of thought, listening to the voices of men long dead rising from books the way he'd once said he listened to late-night radio shows in his basement.

Mike felt a terrible sense of ... not just loss, although loss there was, but of imbalance. It was as if he and Duane McBride had been on a seesaw together since they were tiny kids in Mrs. Blackwood's kindergarten, and now the corresponding weight was gone, the balance destroyed.

Only the stupid kid remained.

The rain did not keep the Soldier away. Nor the scrapings under the floor.

Mike wasn't a fool; he told his dad that some weird guy was watching the house. He even told him about the tunnels in the crawlspace.

Mr. O'Rourke was too fat to fit under the house these days, but he sent Mike back with a rope to plumb the depths of the tunnels and poison to sprinkle on various forms of bait, as if some giant possum had taken up residence there. Mike went back under the house with his heart in his throat, but there was no reason for the fear. The holes were gone.

His dad believed him about the weird guy in the army uniform-Mike had never lied to him as far as either one of them could remember-but he thought it was some teenage punk hanging around one of the girls. What could Mike say to that-it was something else, some thing that wanted Memo? Maybe it was some soldier that Peg or Mary had met in Peoria and who was hanging around. The older girls denied it-none of them knew any soldiers except for Buzz Whittaker, who had gone into the army eight months earlier. But Buzz Whittaker was stationed in Kaiserslautern, Germany, as his mother proudly told everyone, showing off his semiliterate letters and occasional color postcards.

It wasn't Buzz Whittaker. Mike knew Buzz, and the Soldier did not have his face. Strictly speaking, the Soldier didn't have a face at all.

Mike had heard a noise late on the Fourth-sensed it really-and had padded downstairs, bat in hand, expecting to find Memo curled in her fetal position on the bed, the lamp burning, with moths batting at the window, trying to reach the flame. He did, but the Soldier was also at the window, his face pressed against the glass.

Mike simply stood and stared.

It was raining hard outside, the inside window was closed except for a small gap at the bottom through which came the fresh smell of the moist fields across the road, but the Soldier had pressed up against the screen until it had bent inward to touch glass. Mike could see the campaign hat with water pouring from the brim, the wet khaki of the shirt illuminated by Memo's lamp only two feet away, the Sam Browne belt and brass buckles.

Water doesn't pour off a ghost's hat.

The Soldier's face was pressed against the window: not against the outside screen, but against the glass. Mouth agape, baseball bat hanging limply, Mike stepped between Memo and the apparition. He was less than three feet from the form at the window.

The last time Mike had seen the Soldier, his thought had been that the young man's face was shiny, greasy, less a face than a sketch of a face in soft wax. Now that soft wax face had flowed through the mesh of the screen and was flattening against the glass, flowing and widening against the glass like the fleshy pseudopod of some flesh-colored snail.

As Mike watched, the Soldier raised his hands and set them flat against the fine-mesh screen. His fingers and palms flowed through the screen like a candle melting in high speed. They re-formed against the glass and spread into waxy fingers, a shiny palm. The hand flowed out of the khaki sleeve like a slow-moving fountain of wax, the hand moving down the window glass. Mike raised his eyes to watch the face try to take shape, the eyes floating in the mess like raisins in a fleshy pudding. The hands slid lower.

Toward the opening.

Mike screamed then, shouting for his father, his mother. He stepped forward and slammed the baseball bat down on the top of the window sash, slamming the window shut just as ten melted streams of fingers were reaching the crack there. The arms and hands-melted more than a yard long by now-flowed sideways like fleshy tentacles, hunting for a gap-Mike heard his mother's voice, his father rising with a groan of bedsprings. Peg shouted down the stairs and Kathleen began crying. His father growled something and there came the sound of his bare feet in the hall.

The Soldier's fingers and face flowed away from the pane, back through the screen, re-forming into the simulacrum of a human form with the speed of a movie run in fast reverse. Mike shouted again, dropped the bat, and leaned forward to slam the window tighter, knocking the kerosene lamp off the table as he did so. The chimney shattered but the lamp landed on its base and Mike knelt to catch it before it spilled fuel all over the carpet and ignited it.

In that second, his father appeared at the door and the shape at the window disappeared, arms at its sides, going straight down as if it were standing on a freight elevator.

"What the hell!" shouted Jonathan O'Rourke. His wife rushed in to see to Memo, who lay there blinking wildly in the flickering light.

"Did you see him?" shouted Mike, lifting the lamp with its open flame. He held it dangerously near the ancient curtains. "Did you see him?"

His father glared at the broken lamp, the disarrayed table, the slammed window, and the ball bat on the floor. "Goddammit, this has gone far enough.'' He ripped the curtains aside so roughly that the rod came off and the entire assembly fell behind the table. The tall rectangle of window showed only night and rain dripping from the eaves. "There's no one out there, damn it."

Mike looked to his mother. "He was trying to get in."

His father pushed the window up. The fresh breeze was pleasant after the stink of kerosene and fear in the room. His father's heavy hand slapped the sill. "The damned latch is on the screen. How could he get in?" He stared at Mike as though his son was losing his mind. "Was this . . . this soldier trying to tear the screen off? I would've heard it!"

Now that the electric lights were on, Mike shut off the lamp and set it on the table with shaking hands. "No, he was coming through . . ."He stopped, hearing how lame it sounded.

His mother came over and touched his shoulders, felt his forehead. "You're hot, dear. You have a fever."

Mike did feel feverish. The room seemed to tilt and resettle around him and his heart would not slow down. He looked at his father as steadily as he could. "Dad, I heard something and came down. He was . . . leaning hard against the screen. It was bending in, almost ready to give way. I swear I'm not lying."

Mr. O'Rourke looked at his son a minute, turned without a word, and came back a minute later with his trousers pulled over his pajama bottoms and his work boots on. "Stay here," he said softly.

"Dad!" shouted Mike, grabbing him by the arm. He handed him the baseball bat.

Mike's mother patted Memo's hair, hushed the girls back upstairs, and changed Memo's pillowcases while they waited. There was a shadow of movement outside. Mike flinched away from the window. His father stood there, a flashlight in his hand, the bottom of the window almost to his chest. Mike blinked; he'd seen most of the Soldier's body, yet his father was much taller than the Soldier had been when Mike had seen him on Jubilee College Road. How was it that his dad seemed to be standing so much lower? Could the Soldier have been standing on something out there? That would explain the way he had descended vertically. . . .

His father disappeared, was gone another five minutes, and came in the kitchen door with a great stamping of his feet. Mike went out to meet him in the hallway.

His dad's pajama tops and trousers were soaked through, the boots smeared with mud. What little red hair he had left was now plastered over his ears. Beads of water glistened on his forehead and bald spot. He reached out a huge hand and pulled Mike into the kitchen. "There were no footprints," he said softly, obviously not wanting Mike's mother or sisters to overhear. "Everything's mud, Mike. It's been raining for days. But no footprints under the window. It's flowerbed for ten feet along that side of the house, but no footprints anywhere. And none in the yard."

Mike felt his eyes scalding the way they used to when he was little and had allowed himself to cry. His chest hurt. "I saw him" was all he could say through the constriction in his throat.

His dad looked at him for a long moment. "And you're the only one who's seen him. Outside Memo's window. That's the only place?"

"And once following me on County Six and the Jubilee Road," he said, instantly wishing he'd told his father earlier or not said anything now.

His dad's stare lengthened.

"He could've been on a ladder or something," Mike managed, hearing how desperate he sounded even to himself.

His father slowly shook his head. "No marks. Not a ladder. * Nothing." His big hand came forward, palm covering Mike's forehead. "You are hot."

Mike felt the shivering in him again and recognized the onset of flu. "But I didn't imagine the Soldier. I swear. I saw him."

Mr. O'Rourke had a broad, friendly face, heavy jowls, the remnants of a thousand childhood freckles that he had passed on to all of his children-much to the dismay of three of his four daughters. Now his jowls shook slightly as he nodded. "I believe you saw something. I also think you're getting sick from staying up nights to catch this Peeping Tom. ..."

Mike wanted to protest. This was no Peeping Tom. But he knew it was better to keep his mouth shut right now.

"... you get up to bed, let your mother take your temperature," his father was saying. "I'll move the cot downstairs to Memo's room and sleep in there for a while. I don't go on nights again at the brewery until a week from yesterday." He set the baseball bat aside, went to the locked pantry, fumbled the key from the crack over the sill, and brought out Memo's "squirrel gun"-a short-barreled shotgun with a pistol grip. "And if that . . . soldier . . . comes around again, he'll get more than a Louisville Slugger."

Mike wanted to say something but he felt actually dizzy from relief and the fever that he felt now as a pounding in his ears and a general lightheadedness. He hugged his father and turned away before tears came.

His mother stepped into the room, frowning but gentle as she hustled him upstairs to bed.

Mike was in bed for four days. At times the fever was so bad that he found himself awakening from dreams only to find that the awakening was a dream. He did not dream about the Soldier, or Duane McBride, or any of the things that had been haunting him: mostly he dreamt about St. Malachy's and saying Mass with Father Cavanaugh. Only in his fever dreams, it was he-Mike-who was the priest, and Father C. was a little kid in an oversized cassock and surplice who kept screwing up his responses despite the laminated card with printed lines lying right there on the altar step where the boy/man knelt. Mike dreamt that he was consecrating the Eucharist, lifting the Host high in the most sacred moment a Catholic could experience, much less actually perform. . . .

The strange part of the dream was that St. Malachy's was now a vast cavern and there was no congregation. Only dark shapes that moved just beyond the circle of light generated by the altar candles. And, in his dream, Mike knew that the altar boy Father C. was messing up his Latin responses because he was afraid of that dark and the things in it. But as long as the dream-priest Michael O'Brian O'Rourke was holding the Eucharist high, as long as he was whispering the sacred and magical words of the High Mass, he would be safe enough.

Beyond the cone of light, large things circled and waited.

Jim Harlen was thinking that this was the summer that wasn't. First he breaks his goddamn arm and busts his skull open and loses his memory of how he did it-the face is just a dream, only a nightmare-and then when he finally gets well enough to get out and about, one of the guys he knows gets killed in some dumbass farm accident and the others seemed to have retreated to their houses like turtles pulling in their dumbshit heads. And, of course, there was the rain. Weeks of rain.

The first few weeks he was home, his ma stayed home every night, rushed to get him things when he was hungry and thirsty, and sat and watched TV with him. It was almost like the old days, minus his dad, of course. Harlen had been nervous as hell when the Stewarts had invited his ma to go with them out to Dale's Uncle Henry's place-Ma had the habit of drinking too much, laughing too loud, and generally making a drunken asshole of herself-but the evening had turned out pretty well, actually. Harlen hadn't talked a whole lot, but he'd sort of enjoyed being with his buddies and listening, even when the McBride kid was talking about interstellar travel and time-space continuums and a bunch of stuff that Harlen had no fix on whatsoever. Still, it'd been a pretty good night . . . Duane McBride's getting killed excepted.

Harlen's accident and long stay in the hospital had given him a different outlook on death; it was something he'd heard and smelled and come close to ... the old guy in the next room who wasn't there the morning after all the nurses and doctors had rushed in there with a cart . . . and he had no intention of coming close to it again for another sixty or seventy years, thank you. McBride's death had rattled him, he admitted it to himself, but that kind of shit is what happened when you lived on a farm and screwed around with tractors and plows and shit like that.

Harlen's ma didn't spend every evening with him anymore. She snapped at him now when he didn't make his bed or pick up his breakfast dishes. He still complained of headaches, but the heavy cast had come off and even with the sling-which Harlen thought was sort of romantic, it should knock Michelle Staffney right out of her lacey pants if he got invited to her birthday party on the fourteenth-even with the sling, the lighter cast didn't create quite that much sympathy in his mother. Or perhaps she'd used up all the sympathy she could spare. Occasionally she'd be sweet and talk to him in that soft, slightly apologetic voice she'd used during the week or so after the accident, but more and more now she just snapped or reverted to the silence that had lain between them for so long.

Many weekend nights now, she wasn't there at all.

At first she'd paid Mona Shepard to come over and watch him. Actually it was Harlen who watched Mona, always trying to get a glimpse of the sixteen-year-old's tits or a shot up her skirt. Mona teased him sometimes . . . like leaving the bathroom door open a little bit when she was taking a leak and then shouting at him when he tiptoed up to it. But mostly she ignored him-Ma might as well have been home-and frequently she made him go to bed early so she could call one of her limpdick boyfriends over. Harlen hated the sounds he heard coming up from the living room; he hated his reaction to them. He wondered if O'Rourke was right and you went blind if you did it enough. Anyway, he'd threatened Mona that he was going to tell his ma all about the little panting sessions on the divan, so she stayed away. Ma was pissed that Mona was always busy and there was hardly anyone else to call this summer-the O'Rourke girls used to baby-sit, but they were too busy panting in the backseats of cars this summer.

So Harlen stayed home alone a lot.

Sometimes he went out, riding his bike-although he was forbidden by the doctor to do so until the second cast came off. It wasn't hard riding one-handed. Hell, he'd ridden no-handed enough times, and so had everybody else in that sissy Bike Patrol club they used to have. Only it was a little trickier with a cast.

He'd ridden down to the Free Show on the ninth of July, expecting to see a repeat of Somebody Up There Likes Me, a boxing movie that Mr. A.-M. had shown a few summers ago; everybody'd liked it so much that he brought it back every summer. Only instead of the movie, Harlen found Bandstand Park empty except for a couple of hick farm families who-like him-hadn't got the word that the thing'd been canceled for the third Saturday in a row because of rotten weather.

But the weather wasn't rotten. The almost nightly storms had held off this night, the sunlight was low and rich across long yards where the grass was growing as you watched it. Harlen hated the fact that the yards were so damned big around here, almost fields although they were all tidily mowed. There were almost no fences and it was hard to tell where one yard ran into the next. He wasn't sure why he hated it, but he knew that yards weren't supposed to be like that; they didn't look that way in the TV shows he liked . . . Naked City, for example. There weren't any yards at all in the Naked City. Eight million stories, but no damn yards.

Harlen had ridden his bike around town that night, oblivious of night falling until the bats came and started screeching against the sky. By habit, he'd stayed away from the school-it was one of the reasons he didn't go up to see Stewart and those dickheads more often-but he found that even pedaling down Main or Broad in the dark made him nervous.

He turned left on Church Street to avoid Mrs. Doubbet's place-not sure why he did it even as he did so-and pedaled fast through the dark stretches down there where the houses were smaller and the streetlights few and farther between. There were bright lights around O'Rourke's dinky little church and the priest place next to it, and Harlen tarried there on the corner a minute before turning up West End Drive, the narrow and poorly lighted lane that led up to his house and the old depot.

He was moving fast, pedaling hard, confident that nobody could catch him in the dark sections between pole lights-unless they stuck an arm in the spokes and sent you hurtling, then moved in on you-that no one could catch him. He shook his head as he pedaled, the moist air a breeze in his short hair, trying to get rid of the bad thoughts. Goddamn her. She won't be home until one or two, if then. I'll watch the late show again. No, dammit. Its the Creature Feature on Channel 19. Can't watch that.

Harlen decided he'd play the radio real loud, maybe get into Ma's stash of bottles in the bottom of the buffet again. He found if he measured them real carefully and filled them up to the mark with water when he was done, she'd never notice. She'd probably never notice anyway because she was always putting new bottles in there or slurping from the old ones when she was tipsy. He'd listen to the radio, playing the rock-and-roll stuff real loud, and have a few drinks mixed with Coke the way he liked it.

He passed the depot at full speed-the place had always given him the willies, even when he was little-and skidded around the broad corner onto Depot Street. He could see the long three blocks down the street-they'd be at least seven or eight city blocks in a real city, he knew, it was just here they were longer because they didn't have enough streets-all the way down the tunnel of branches and leaf-shadow and half-hidden lights and porches to where Stewart and old Grumpy-backer lived.

And the school.

He shook his head and wheeled into the drive, sliding to a stop by the garage and sticking his bike under the overhang.

Ma wasn't home; the Rambler was still gone. All the lights were on, just like he'd left them. Harlen started for the back door.

Something moved in front of the light in his room upstairs.

Harlen paused, one hand still on the doorknob. Ma was home. The goddamn car'd broken down again, or one of her new boyfriends had given her a lift because she'd had too much to drink. Christ, he was going to catch hell for being out of the house after dark. He'd tell her that Dale and his little Father-Knows-Best family had come by to take him to the Free Show. She'd never know that it'd been canceled.

The shadow moved in front of the light again.

What the hell's she doing poking around my room? With a sudden flush of guilt he thought of the new magazines he'd bought from Archie Kreck and hidden under the floorboard. She'd found and thrown out all his old ones while he was in the hospital, although she hadn't yelled at him about it for more than two weeks after he came home.

Blushing, cold with the thought of the confrontation-especially if she was tipsy-Harlen took three steps back toward the garage, trying to think of something. Maybe they're Mona's. Yeah, or one of her boyfriends'. She put them there. If she denies it, I'll tell Ma about the condom I found floating in the toilet the last time she was over to baby-sit.

He took a breath. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than nothing. He glanced up, trying to see if she was going through his closet.

It wasn't Ma.

The woman in his room crossed the lighted rectangle of window again. He caught a glimpse of a rotted-looking sweater, humped back, tendrils of white hair gleaming on a too-small head.

Harlen moved blindly away from the back door, backed into his bike. It fell and hit the garage door with a resounding racket.

The shadow eclipsed his light again. A face pressed against the window and looked down at him.

The face . . . looking at him . . . turning and looking at him.

Harlen fell to his knees, vomited on the gravel of the pavement, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and was up and on his bike, pedaling like mad, away from the house before the shadow even left the window. He did not look back as he roared down Depot Street, swerving wildly as if someone were shooting at him, trying to stay close to the few streetlights. C. J. Congden, Archie Kreck, and a few of their punk friends were sitting on the hoods of some cars parked op the dirt lawn of J.P.'s place and they screamed something nasty at him over the blare of their car radios.

Harlen didn't pause or look back. He skidded to a stop at the wide intersection of Depot and Broad. Old Central was straight ahead. Double-Butt's and Mrs. Duggan's place was to the right.

The face at the window. Holes where the eyes should be. Maggots under the tongue. Teeth glistening.

In my room!

Harlen hung over the handlebars, panting, trying not to throw up again. Down Depot Street a block, where the school lights still glowed through the elms there, the black silhouette of a truck turned left from Third and came his way.

The Rendering Truck. He could smell it.

Harlen pedaled north on Broad. The trees were huge here, overhanging even the thirty-foot-wide street, the shadows deep. But there were more porch lights and streetlights.

He could hear the truck approaching the intersection behind him, grinding up through gears. Harlen clattered up onto the sidewalk, bounced across tilted paving stones there, and swerved down a driveway. There were barns back here, garages, and endless yards all interconnected without fences. He thought he was passing Dr. Staffney's place when a dog ahead of him went wild, barking and tugging at a clothesline leash, teeth gleaming in the yellow light from the back porch.

Harlen swerved left, skidded into the cinder-paved alley that ran behind the barns and garages, continued north. He could hear the truck coming up Broad even over the wild sound of all the dogs going crazy on the block. He had no idea where he was going.

He'd think of something.

Dale Stewart dropped his flashlight and ran through the thigh-deep water, screaming for his mother, striking a wall in the darkness and bouncing backward, stunned, losing his balance. He fell into black iciness up to his neck and screamed again when something under the water nudged his bare arm. He struggled to his feet and waded ahead, not sure of which way he was going in the almost absolute darkness of the basement.

What if I'm heading back toward the back room? Back toward the sump-pump hole?

He didn't care. He couldn't stand there in the midnight blackness, water swirling around his legs like cold oil, and wait for the damned thing to find him. He imagined the Tubby-thing opening that dead mouth wider, those long exposed teeth sinking into his leg under the water.

Dale quit imagining and concentrated on running, crashing into something that might have been his dad's workbench in the second room or maybe the laundry bench in the back room. He spun to his left, went to all fours again in water suddenly warm as urine or blood, and then staggered forward, seeing-thinking that he saw-a rectangle of somewhat lesser darkness that might have been the door from the workroom to the furnace room.

He crashed into something hollow and echoing, cutting his forehead but not caring. The furnace! Go right, around it. Find the corridor past the coal bin. ... He shouted again, hearing his mother's answering screams mixing with his own cries in the echoing maze. There was the sound of something sliding through the water behind him and he turned to see it, could see nothing, staggered backward again, struck something harder than the furnace or hopper, and went face forward into the water . . . tasting the sewage-and-black-soil foulness of it mixing with the salt-sweetness of blood in his mouth.

Arms closed around him, hands forced him deeper and then lifted him.

Dale kicked and clawed and thrashed at the force. His face went under again and then was pulled against wet wool.

"Dale! Dale, stop it! Stop it! Calm down . . . it's Mom. Dale!" She did not slap him but the words had the same effect. He went limp, trying not to whimper but thinking of the dark water all around. It'll trap us both. It'll cut us off and pull us down.

His mother was helping him slosh through the corridor, the water somehow much shallower here. He could see the weak light now from the winding staircase. His mother hugged him tighter to her as his shaking began in earnest.

"It's all right," she said, although she was shaking too as they climbed the oversized stairs. "It's OK," she whispered as they went out-not into the kitchen but through the outside door-out into rich afternoon sunlight, staggering away from the house like two survivors of an accident trying to put distance between themselves and the wreckage.

They collapsed onto the lawn under the small apple tree, both of them wet and shaking, Dale blinking and half-blinded by the light. The heat and sunlight and color seemed unreal, a dream after the nightmare reality of the darkness and dead thing under the water. ... he shut his eyes and concentrated on not shaking.

Mr. Grumbacher had been mowing his yard on the riding mower, and Dale heard the engine die, heard the man shout-asking if anything was wrong-and then came the long strides across the grass. Dale tried to explain without sounding insane.

"Some . . . some . . . something under the w-w-water," he said, furious that his teeth were chattering so. "Someth-thing tried to g-gr-grab me." His mother was hugging him, reassuring him, making jokes, her voice on the verge of tears. Mr. Grumbacher looked down--he was tall and was wearing the same gray uniform he wore each day to drive the milk truck; it made him look official somehow-and then he was gone and Dale's mother hugged him again and told him it was all right, and then Mr. Grumbacher was back, Kevin standing in the door of their ranch house and looking curiously across the broad lawn at them sprawled under the apple tree, and there was a blanket around Dale's shoulders and his mother's, and then Mr. Grumbacher was going through then-door, down into the basement. . . .

"Don't!" screamed Dale in spite of himself. He tried to smile. "Please don't go down there."

Mr. Grumbacher glanced back at Kevin, still staring from the doorway. He motioned him back, tapped a long five-cell flashlight in his hand, and closed the screen door. The basement stairs descended from an enclosed little anteroom on the alley side of the kitchen; it kept the cold out in winter; they hung their extra coats on nails on the landing. It was waiting for them down there. Mr. Grumbacher wouldn't have a chance.

Dale shivered a moment and then got up, shrugging off the blanket. His mother grabbed his wrist but he squirmed out of her grip. "I've got to show him where it was ... got to warn him about . . ."

The screen door opened. Kevin's dad came out, his neatly pressed gray work pants wet to the knee, his work boots making squeegee sounds on the flagstone. He clicked off the long flashlight that was in his left hand; he was carrying something else in his right. Something long, and white, and wet.

"Is it dead?" asked his mother. It was a foolish question. The corpse was bloated to twice its normal size.

Mr. Grumbacher nodded. "Probably didn't drown," he said in that soft but decisive voice Dale had heard directed at Kevin so many times. "May have eaten poison or something. Maybe it came in with the back-wash when the drainpipes backed up."

"Is it one of Mrs. Moon's?" asked his mother, stepping closer. Dale could feel her body shivering now.

Mr. Grumbacher shrugged and laid the corpse on the grass near the driveway. Dale heard it squish slightly and a bit of water drained out from between sharp teeth. He stepped closer, prodding it with the toe of his sneaker.

"Dale!" said his mother.

He pulled his foot back. "This isn't wh-what I saw,"

he said, trying to keep from shivering, trying to keep from sounding wild. "It wasn't a cat. This is a c-cat." He prodded the bloated thing again.

Mr. Grumbacher showed one of his small, tight smiles. "It's the only thing down there other than a floating toolbox and some little junk. The power's back on. The pump's beginning to work."

Dale glanced at the house. The switch had been down . . .

off.

Kevin came down the hill and stood holding his elbows the way he did when he was a little nervous. He looked at Dale's pale face, soaked clothes, and wet hair, licked his lips as if he was going to say something sarcastic, caught the look from his father, and just nodded at Dale. He also poked at the dead cat with his sneaker. More water gurgled out.

"I think it is one of Mrs. Moon's," said Dale's mother, as if that settled things.

Mr. Grumbacher slapped Dale on the back. "Don't blame you for getting a little spooked. Stepping on Puss here in the dark, with a foot of water like that, well . . . it'd scare anyone, son."

Dale wanted to pull away and tell Grump-backer that he wasn't his son and that the dead cat wasn't what spooked him. Instead he managed to nod. He still tasted the bitter, sour flatness of the water he'd swallowed. Tubby's still down there.

"Let's go up and change clothes," his mom said at last. "We can talk about it later."

Dale nodded, took a step toward the screen door, and stopped. "Can we go in the front way?" he asked.

Jim Harlen pedaled through the dark, hearing the dogs going crazy up and down the block and listening hard for the sound of the Rendering Truck. It seemed to be staying at the intersection of Depot and Broad. Cutting me off.

The alley that he was racing blindly along went north and south between the barns, garages, and long yards behind the homes of Broad and Fifth. The yards were so deep, the houses so surrounded by shrubs and foliage, the alley itself so bedecked in foliage made thick by the recent monsoon rains, that Harlen knew that there must be a hundred dark places to hide up ahead: barn lofts, open garages, that patch of black trees, the Miller orchard to the left up ahead, the empty houses up on Catton Drive. . . .

Thai's just what they want me to do.

Harlen skidded his bike to a stop on the black cinders of the alley. The dogs stopped barking. Even the moisture in the air seemed to hang suspended, a slight fog misting the air between the distant back-porch lights and Harlen, waiting for his decision.

Harlen decided. His momma didn't raise no fools.

He cut across a backyard, pedaling hard through a vegetable garden, tires flinging mud behind him, leaving the dark protection of the alley and swishing right by a startled Labrador that swung around in such surprise that it almost hanged itself on its rope before remembering to bark.

Harlen ducked quickly, seeing the wire clothesline a second and a half before it decapitated him, leaned left to avoid the pole-almost dumping his bike because of his slinged left arm being off balance-caught himself, skidded down the Staffneys' long driveway-giving the black mass of their old barn a wide berth-and skidded to a halt on their front walk four feet from the gas pole-lamp they kept burning there.

Half a long block away, the dark shape of a truck with high sides revved its engine and began moving in Harlen's direction under the tunnel of branches spanning the street. It had no lights.

Jim Harlen leaped off his bike, jumped the five steps to land on the Staffneys' porch, and leaned on the doorbell.

The truck picked up speed. It was less than two hundred feet away, pulling to this side of the wide street. The Staffney house was sixty or seventy feet away from the curb, with elms, a long yard, and a bunch of flowerbeds separating it from the street, but Harlen wouldn't have been happy with anything less than tank traps and moats between him and the truck. He banged on the door with his good fist while ringing the bell with the elbow of his cast.

The door swung wide. Michelle Staffney was there in her nightgown, the light behind her shining through the thin cotton and creating a nimbus around her long red hair. Ordinarily, Jim Harlen would have lingered to enjoy the view, but now he pushed past her into the well-lighted entry hall.

"Jimmy, what do you . . . hey!" managed the redhead before he had pushed past her. She shut the door and scowled at him.

Harlen paused under the chandelier, looking around. He'd just been in Michelle's home three times-once each year during her July fourteenth birthday party that seemed to be such a big deal for her and her folks-but he remembered the big rooms, high ceilings, and tall windows. Way too many windows. Harlen was wondering if they had a bathroom or something on the first floor with no windows and lots of strong locks when Dr. Staffney said from the stairway, "Can we help you, young man?"

Harlen put on his best lost-waif-on-the-verge-of-tears face-it didn't require much acting, he found-and cried, "My mom's gone^and nobody's supposed to be home bat I came home from the Free Show-they didn't have it because of the rain I guess-and there was some strange lady on the second floor and people were chasing me and a truck was after me, and I wonder . . . could you help me? Please?"

Michelle Staffney stared at him with her pretty blue eyes wide and her head cocked to one side as if he'd come in and taken a leak on her floor. Dr. Staffney was standing there in his suit pants and vest and tie and stuff; he looked at Harlen, put on his glasses, took them off, and came down the staircase. "Say that again," he said.

Harlen said it again, sticking to the high points. Some strange woman was in his house. He didn't mention that she was dead and still moving around. Some guys in a truck had come after him. Never mind for now that it was the Rendering Truck. His mother had to go out on an important errand to Peoria. Probably to get laid, but no need to fill them in on that right now. He was frightened. No shit.

Mrs. Staffney came in from the dining room. Harlen had heard from C. J. Congden or Archie Kreck or one of those guys that if you wanted to see how a girl would look in a few years-bazooms and all-check out her mom. Michelle Staffney had a lot to look forward to.

Michelle's mom fussed around Harlen-she said that she remembered him from all the birthday parties, but Harlen knew that there'd been too many kids there and he'd just been invited because everyone else in the class had been-and she insisted that he come into the kitchen for a cup of cocoa while Dr. Staffney called the constable.

The doctor looked a little confused, if not downright skeptical, but he checked out the door-naturally the truck wasn't in sight, Harlen peeked out behind him-and then went to the phone to call Barney. Mrs. Staffney insisted that they lock all the doors while they waited. Harlen was all for that; he wouldn't have minded shutting all those big windows either, but as rich as these folks were, they didn't have air conditioning in the huge house, and it would probably get very warm very quickly without the screens open. Harlen contented himself with feeling secure while Mrs. S. bustled around the kitchen warming up some leftover pot roast for him-he'd said he hadn't had dinner, although he'd warmed up the spaghetti Ma had left in the Tupperware-and while Dr. S. questioned him for about the fourth time and while Michelle just stared at him with a wide-eyed look that could have meant anything from hero worship at his bravery in escaping to pure contempt for what an asshole he was being.

Harlen didn't really care at that moment.

The old lady in his room. Her face at the window, looking down. He'd thought at first that it was Old Double-Butt, but then something had told him that it was Mrs. Duggan. The other one. The dead one. The dream. The face at the window. Falling.

Harlen shivered and Mrs. S. brought him some cake. Dr. Staffney kept asking how frequently did his mother run these errands and leave him alone in the house? Was she aware that there were statutes about leaving children unattended?

Harlen tried to answer but it was difficult; he had a mouth full of cake and he didn't want to look gross in front of Michelle.

Barney arrived only about thirty-five minutes after he was called: probably a new town record, Harlen figured.

He told his story again, with a bit less sincere panic this time but in a more well-oiled manner. When he got to the part about the face in the window and the truck on the street, his voice quavered realistically enough. Actually, he was thinking about how close he had come to riding up the alley and hiding in one of those dark barns or empty houses on Catton Drive, wondering what might have been waiting there.

There were real tears in his eyes when he finished describing the situation to the constable, but he blinked them back. No way was he going to cry in front of Michelle Staffney. He just wished she hadn't run upstairs to get into a flannel robe when her mother was fixing the hot chocolate. As it was, the sexy bit of peekaboo when he came in was already mixing with the memory of pure terror and the physical surge from the adrenaline that had preceded it.

Constable Barney drove him home. Dr. Staffney came along and sat in the car with him while Barney searched the house. The place was just as Harlen had left it-lights blazing, door unlocked-but Barney had gone to the back ddor and knocked-knocked!-before going in. Harlen would have gone in low and fast with his revolver out and aimed, just like the cops on Naked City. Barney didn't even have a revolver, or at least not with him.

Harlen answered questions from Dr. S. about his ma's weekend travel habits while all the time he was waiting for a scream from inside the house.

Barney came out and waved them in. "No sign of any forcible entry," he said as they went up the back steps. Harlen realized that the constable was talking to the doctor, not him. "The place looks like it's been tossed about a bit. As if someone were looking for something." He turned to Harlen. "Is that the case, son, or is it always like this?"

Harlen looked around the kitchen and dining room with fresh eyes. The pans on the burner filled with old grease. The stack of dirty dishes in the sink, on the counter, even on the table. The stack of old magazines, boxes and crap on the floor. The overflowing garbage bags. The living room wasn't much better. Harlen knew that there was a couch under all those papers and TV dinner trays and clothes and stuff, but he could see why maybe the cop and doctor couldn't be sure.

He shrugged. "Ma's not the neatest person." He hated the way his voice sounded when he said that. As if he had to apologize to these two assholes.

"Do you see anything missing, Jimmy?" asked Barney as if he'd just remembered his name. Harlen hated being called Jimmy more than anything except being hit in the face. Except when Michelle said it tonight. He shook his head and walked from room to room in the small downstairs, unobtrusively trying to straighten a few things as he passed. "Uh-uh," he said. "I don't think there's anything missing. But I'm not sure." What the fuck would they steal? Ma's electric back warmer? Our old TV dinners? My nudie magazines? Harlen suddenly blushed at the thought of Barney or the FBI or somebody doing a real search and finding those under the loose floorboard of his closet.

"The old lady was upstairs, not down here," he said a bit more belligerently than he'd meant to.

"I looked upstairs," said the constable. He looked at Dr. S. "A lot of mess, but no sign of theft or overt vandalism."

The three of them went upstairs, Harlen feeling shiftier by the minute. He could imagine the prissy doctor telling his prissy wife and kid all about the mess he'd seen. He'd probably go home to wake Michelle up to tell her to keep away from this slob of a Harlen kid. She'd said Jimmy.

"Anything missing?" asked Barney from the hallway while Harlen peered into his ma's room, then his. Goddammit, at least she could've made her goddamn bed or picked up the fucking Kleenex or magazines or something. . . .

"Uh-uh," he said, hearing how stupid he sounded. The boy's a slob and retarded to boot, he imagined the well-dressed doctor telling Mrs. S. and Michelle at breakfast the next morning. "I don't think so," he added. Then, with real urgency in his voice, "Did you check the closets?"

"First thing," said Barney. "But we'll look again together."

Harlen hung back while the constable and the doctor peered in the closets. They're humoring me. Then, when they're gone, that rotting corpse is going to come lurching up out of somewhere and bite my heart out.

As if reading his mind, Barney said, "I'll wait until your mom gets home, son."

"So will I," said the doctor. He exchanged glances with the cop. "Jim, do you know when she might be back?"

"Uh-uh." Harlen bit his underlip. If he grunted those two syllables once more, he was going to find his dad's old revolver and blow his brains out right in front of these two. The gun. Didn't he leave it with Ma so she could protect herself? Gears started turning.

"You get into your PJs, son," said the constable. For the life of him, Harlen couldn't remember Barney's real name. "Do you have any coffee?"

"Some instant," said Harlen. He'd almost said Uh-huh. "On the counter. In the kitchen. Downstairs." Schmuck, we just all walked through the kitchen.

"You get ready for bed," the constable said again. He went downstairs with the doctor.

It was a small house. He could hear them easily enough. He and his ma couldn't fart without the other person hearing it; Harlen sometimes wondered if that's why his dad had taken off with the Bimbo. But tonight the house wasn't small enough. He went out on the small landing.

"Did you check under the beds . . . sir?" he called down.

Barney came to the foot of the stairs. "Sure did. And in the corners. No one's up there. No one's down here. Doc just looked around the yard. I'll check the garage in a minute. You don't have a basement, do you, son?"

"Uh-uh," said Harlen. Damn.

Barney nodded and went back in the kitchen. Harlen heard Michelle's dad say something about the health department.

Harlen went in without closing the door, kicked his tennis shoes in the corner, tossed his socks on the floor, snaked out of his jeans and t-shirt. Then he went over and picked up his socks and pants and tossed them into the closet, out of sight, without getting too close. She stood right over there. By the window. She went back and forth.

He sat on the edge of the bed. His alarm clock said 10:48. Early. These guys would be here another four or five hours if it was a typical Saturday night. Would they really stay? Harlen was going to run along behind the constable's car when they left if they didn't. No way was he staying here alone tonight.

Where the fuck does she keep the gun? It wasn't a big gun, but it was blue-steel and deadly looking. There'd been a white-and-blue box of shells. His dad had told him never to touch the gun or bullets; they'd used to be in Dad's drawer, but Ma had hidden it when he'd gone away with the Bimbo. Where? Probably illegal. Barney would find it and throw both of them in jail.

The back door banged. Harlen was pulling on his pajamas and he jumped at the sound. He heard their voices.

There were footsteps and Barney's voice came up the stairs much more loudly. "Care for some hot chocolate before you turn in, son?"

Harlen's stomach was gurgling from about a gallon of the stuff that Mrs. Staffney had forced on him. "Yeah!" he yelled back. "Be right down." He lifted his pillow to pull his pajama tops out from where he kept them there.

There was some sort of gray, snotty crap on them. Harlen frowned at his hands, wiped them on his pajama bottoms, pulled back the spread on his bed.

The sheet looked like it had been smeared with several gallons of something resembling a cross between snot and semen. The stuff glistened in the light from the desk lamp and overhead bulb. It was like the bed had been sandwich bread and someone had ladled on tons of gray jam-thick, slick mucousy stuff that caught the light, soaked the sheets, and was already drying into little curds and ridges. It smelled like someone had left a wet towel in a dirt hole to mildew for about three years, then had a bunch of dogs piss on it.

Harlen staggered back, dropped the pajama tops, and leaned against the doorframe. He felt like he was going to throw up. The wooden floor seemed to pitch like the deck of a small ship on a rough sea. Harlen went out to lean on the wobbly railing.

"Sir? Constable?"

"Yeah, son?" Barney was calling from the kitchen. Harlen could smell the instant coffee and milk heating.

Harlen looked back into the room, half expecting to see the sheets clean-or at least the kind of grimy clean they had been this morning-sort of like in the movies where guys have hallucinations or see mirages.

The gray mucus gleamed almost white in the light.

"Yes?" said Barney, coming to the bottom of the stairs. The man's forehead was wrinkled as if he cared. His dark eyes looked . . . what?

Worried? Caring maybe.

"Nothing," said Harlen. "I'll be right down for the cocoa." He went into the room, stripped the bed while trying not to touch the crap, tossed the whole mess and his pajamas-tops and bottoms-into the corner of the closet, found some pajamas in the bottom drawer of his dresser that were too little for him but clean, checked his ratty old robe, went in to wash his hands, and then went downstairs to join them. *

Even later, Jim Harlen couldn't say why he had chosen not to show the two men this hard evidence that someone or something had been in his home. Perhaps he knew at that moment that he would have to handle this himself. Or perhaps it was just that some things were too embarrassing to share . . . that showing them the bed would be too much like pulling the magazines out of their hiding place and bragging about them.

She was here. It was here.

The hot chocolate was pretty good. Dr. Staffney had cleaned off the kitchen table and the three men sat there and talked until about twelve-thirty, when Harlen's mother came through the back door.

Harlen went upstairs then, found an extra blanket in the closet and pulled it up over him without worrying about sheets. He went right to sleep, smiling slightly at the sound of angry voices from downstairs.

It was a lot like when Dad used to live there.