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  "Yeah," Robin managed.

  "Banana peels and melon rinds," Rob said again, suddenly aware that the words felt good rolling off his tongue. "Bo-no-no peels," he sang, to no particular melody, "and melon rinds." Then he felt his brother elbow him hard in the ribs. "Hey, that hurts!"

  Robin pointed urgently at the front of the Harrises' yard, "Looka that!"

  Rob looked. He saw only the line of shrubs that the landscapers had put in the week before. Granada's three streets boasted a half-dozen street lamps—the far half of the line of shrubs was bathed now in the light from one of them.

  "I don't see nothin'," Rob said, and he made a show of massaging his ribs.

  "Well, they hid or somethin'," Robin said. "They hid behind the shrubberies." He looked questioningly at his brother; another giggle burst from him, but it was short-lived and anxious. "Some kids, Rob. Three of 'em. And one was a girl, and they didn't have no clothes on!" He paused to relish what he was saying. "They didn't have no clothes on," he repeated wonderingly, as if in fascination. "And they were just standin' there—the three of 'em—just standin' there looking up at me." He turned quickly, ran to the tall walnut bookshelf he and his brother shared, got a pair of binoculars off one of the shelves.

  And the door burst open.

  Lorraine Graham, still wrapping a short, white terrycloth robe around herself, moved quickly to the window and drew the curtains closed. "What in the hell are you boys doing?"

  Rob, the twin still at the window, began to explain, "Robin said—"

  And Robin interrupted hurriedly, "We weren't doin' nothin', Mom. We were watchin' trash cans blow around, that's all." He put the binoculars away, confident she hadn't seen them. "Just watchin' trash cans blow around," he repeated.

  Lorraine Graham looked suspiciously at him. "Uh-huh," she said and nodded briskly to indicate their beds. "I'll give you five seconds!" she ordered. They obeyed instantly, and moments later she left the room.

  "I don't know," Robin said breathlessly from his bed, as if in answer to a question his brother hadn't asked. "I guess she was thirteen or fourteen. And you know"—he grinned and made cupping motions in the dark with his hands at his chest—"she had these great little boobs, like Mom has," which made his brother very uncomfortable because he wasn't sure he liked the idea that his mother had breasts at all, let alone that Robin would talk about them. "You'll see," Robin went on, still grinning, still awed by what he'd seen.

  Outside, Granada was quiet. The wind had died as quickly as it had come up.

  And those that watched were sleeping. In their way.

  Part Four

  NIGHT FIRES

  Chapter 11

  November 1

  Manny Kent hit the brake pedal. The old Chevy pulled hard to the right and came to a halt on the soft shoulder, its back end out in the middle of the narrow dirt road.

  "Friggin' brakes!" Manny hissed. "It was just like the friggin' battery, all the time leakin' acid, and the friggin' gas lines! Damned friggin' old hunka junk!"

  He turned, got Clyde's 30.30 from the back seat, a box of cartridges from the glove compartment! Then, because the Chevy's driver's door wouldn't open—the lock had broken closed several years before—he slid across the seat, opened the passenger door, and climbed out, cartridges in one hand, rifle in the other.

  He shivered, set the rifle against the car, buttoned the top button of his denim jacket. "Jesus!" he murmured. He blamed Sarah, his wife, for the fact that he was out here on this godawful, cold November day. It was her damned nagging, wasn't it, that had driven him from the house an hour before (because, he knew, if he'd stayed and tried to listen to her he'd sure as hell do something stupid, like let her have it—whammo!—right in the chops. And nothing good would come of that, only a couple days in John Hastings's lousy jail).

  He picked the rifle up and looked about. He thought briefly of getting back in the Chevy and letting his anger cool at The Playground (Penn Yann's only combination bar and pizza parlor), then decided, no, what he really wanted to do was some serious thinking. About himself. And Sarah. And their marriage. And whether it was worth all the grief it gave him. He knew it wasn't, that what he'd really come out here to think about, while his anger cooled, was the best way of telling Sarah that their marriage was on the shit pile.

  He tucked the butt of the rifle under his right arm—barrel pointing at the ground—and walked off the road, into the stunted grass and weeds, toward the Empire fence a hundred yards away. He realized at once that his anger had cooled tremendously in the last few minutes. He didn't know why exactly. Maybe it had something to do with being alone, with the gun, and the idea that, with a little luck—which was way overdue—he'd get that deer he'd missed a month ago, the day he and Clyde found what was left of the colored man. (He put the next thought out of his head immediately. He feared Clyde, and Clyde had warned him again and again about even mentioning the colored man's pure silver bracelet to anyone, let alone picking it up and trying to get a mortgage payment paid with it.) And so, when he passed within a couple of feet of the spot, he turned his head slightly, saw the "white rock" and quickened his pace.

  And soon found that he was running. Away from the white rock. And the pure silver bracelet tucked beneath it. And the murder that had been done there. And the ghost of the colored man, which had surely fallen into stride just behind him, and was surely grinning, and stretching out its long arms, reaching madly for him . . .

  As if in a panic, Manny tossed the gun over the Empire fence, failed to note where it had fallen, scaled the fence in seconds, jumped to the other side. And stood panting breathlessly, eyes on the white rock, fifty yards away, and on the fence that separated him from the thing—the ghost of the colored man—that guarded it.

  After a moment, Manny cursed. Jesus, it was okay to scare yourself. Lots of fun. But to go and throw your brother-in-law's 30.30 into the damned bushes as a result, and maybe to lose it—that was just plain dumb. He cursed again. He looked to his right, his left, tried to put himself mentally back in the same spot and in the same stance he'd been in moments before, when he'd tossed the rifle over the fence. Once more, he cursed. Because his memory failed him. Because the thickets were too dense—incredibly dense. And he pictured himself crawling around on his hands and knees for a week of Sundays looking for the goddamned

  He saw it then, just an arm's length away, barrel up, half-concealed in the thickets. He sighed, withdrew it from the thickets. And decided that the damned buck he'd seen a month ago was going to be his. He deserved it!

  He put the butt of the rifle under his arm; he walked quickly along the fence. Within minutes, he came upon a clearing in the thickets. "Yes, sir!" he muttered. "Yes sir!" he said aloud, and he stepped into the clearing.

  He stopped immediately so his eyes could adjust to the sudden dim light here, at the perimeter of the small stand of woods. He thought he was probably trespassing, that if he bothered to look he'd see a dozen posted signs to that effect. But heck, who was to know? And while he thought of this he watched, only a little puzzled, as the trunk of an oak nearby moved rhythmically, in and out, as if it were breathing, and he decided that a person's eyes played tricks on him when they were coming in from the light to the darkness. Like he just had. Then he saw that what he'd thought was part of the tree trunk was really a smooth, naked, dark back, and long, dark hair, and the side of a wonderfully rounded buttock.

  He froze. Something inside him—some little-used, self-protective sixth sense—froze him. And it told him that something wasn't quite right here, that the child he was seeing—the young girl, he realized now, as she turned to face him—wasn't playing hooky from school, and wasn't the child of some neighbor back in town, and didn't belong to someone in that new housing development just a couple stones' throws away. He thought, fleetingly, that it was her huge, pale blue eyes that told him all this, and the blank, expressionless line of her mouth, and her naked, exquisite, and impossible beauty . . .

  "Yes, si
r!" she said. "Yes sir!" she repeated.

  Manny Kent's mouth dropped open. He decided, on the instant, that only the devil himself could push his—Manny Kent's—whining scratchy voice up through that young girl's throat.

  "Yes, sir!" she said again.

  Manny brought the 30.30 up very slowly, mechanically, to a firing position. He aimed, his focus on the sight, not on his target, just as he'd been taught. And he realized that he hadn't loaded the rifle. He froze again.

  The child had vanished.

  Manny screamed—a high-pitched, shrill, animal-like scream that was repeated immediately, all around him.

  Something touched him softly, here and there—on his legs, his buttocks, his groin, as if caterpillars were launching themselves at him from the leaves overhead.

  Fifteen Years Earlier

  Paul Griffin moved south, off the path and into his fields.

  He stopped again. He watched quietly, reverently, He owed them that much. His curses, his anger had no place here, in their midst. This was their cathedral.

  And as he watched, and saw their faces turn occasionally, saw their eyes, expressionless, look in his direction, watched the firelight play on their smooth, dark skin, watched hands touch hands, and arms, and bellies—as if giving warmth and receiving it, as if re-experiencing and reveling in what they were—he knew that they were doing him a kindness, that he was privileged somehow. That few men, if any, had been allowed to see what he was seeing.

  Manny let go of the rifle. It dropped dully to the ground at his feet.

  "Ba-na-na peels and mel-on rinds," he heard, and the Manny Kent deep inside him—the Manny Kent climbing out of the Chevy, running from the ghost of the colored man, scaling the Empire fence—laughed hysterically.

  The small, soft hands at his throat cut the laughter off abruptly. He slumped to his knees.

  "Ba-na-na peels and mel-on rinds," he heard again. "Yes, sir!"

  Janice McIntyre lowered herself very slowly into the seat at the breakfast nook. Two weeks, she thought, because that was how long it had taken her to force herself back here. Two weeks, and now this little private place to be alone, to think, was hers again. She had begun to exorcise the ghost.

  She grinned self-critically. "Prepartum hallucinations," Miles had suggested, and she remembered laughing at him. "That's a new one on me, Miles." He'd shrugged, "Well, you never know, Janice." And that was true enough.

  She glanced over at the clock on the stove: 4:45. Miles would be home in a half hour, and he'd expect something in the way of a supper—a TV dinner, some quick tuna casserole. She sighed. Miles was going to have to wait, because staying put here, at this damned haunted breakfast nook, had top priority this afternoon.

  She sniffed the air tentatively, then quite conspicuously. She sighed again. Only the odor of Spic and Span, and a country autumn, and, beneath it all, the odor of her own nervous sweat. No woodsmoke. No burning hair (she grimaced).

  "Have you hit your head recently?" the doctor had asked.

  "No," she'd answered.

  "Because unusual odors, without a physical cause, are one of the symptoms of concussion," he'd told her.

  She thought now that she didn't remember hitting her head, anyway, at least not hard enough to cause a concussion. But then, that was often difficult to pin down, too, because—the doctor went on—even an apparently slight blow on the wrong part of the head can cause a lot of damage.

  She realized that she was grasping at straws. Prepartum hallucinations, concussion, hunger pangs, for Christ's sake! She had experienced what she had experienced and she was keeping herself seated here, at the breakfast nook, because she had to overcome it, because she had to put it behind her once and for all, because if she didn't

  Her peripheral vision told her that the woman was standing motionless in the kitchen doorway:

  "No," Janice whispered. "No! Please! Go away!" She closed her eyes tightly. "Please go away, please, please go away!"

  "Janice?"

  Janice's breathing halted momentarily. She turned her head. Trudy Wentis smiled quizzically at her.

  "Janice, I'm sorry, but I've been ringing your doorbell for the past fifteen minutes. I thought something might be wrong, so I came in. Your door was unlocked. Are you all right?"

  "Oh my God, Trudy, you have no idea—"

  Trudy Wentis crossed the room quickly and sat across from Janice at the breakfast nook. She felt sure she was intruding, and equally sure that Janice needed to talk to someone. (Theirs was a friendship which had been kindled a week earlier, when Miles left for a two-day business trip and asked Trudy if she could "sort of keep an eye on my wife, if you don't mind." And then he'd added that Janice was "pregnant and nervous. She doesn't like to be alone.")

  "Janice, would you like to talk about it?" Trudy said now.

  "There's nothing to talk about."

  "Okay." Soothingly.

  "Unless you want to talk about ghosts. Do you want to talk about ghosts, Trudy?"

  "Any ghost in particular?"

  A slight, sad smile appeared on Janice's face. "My own, if I keep this up—high blood pressure, ulcers . . ."

  In the still, cold November air, a scream settled over Granada from the small stand of woods a half mile off. Timmy Meade, just getting off his school bus, heard it—a hawk, he decided, because he felt sure that "country living" was turning him into a junior naturalist.

  Lorraine Graham, making her sons' beds, windows open to the country air, heard it and dismissed it immediately because it could only be what it appeared to be—the scream of someone in deep torment—and that, of course, was impossible here, in Granada.

  At the McIntyre house, the two women seated at the breakfast nook, absorbed in their conversation, heard nothing at all.

  Chapter 12

  November 2

  Norm Gellis couldn't sleep. It was, he felt sure, because of all the coffee Marge had pushed at him after dinner—"Oh, have some more, Norm; stay and talk with us. Mother doesn't visit that often, you know." He had very grudgingly assented, and now he thought he was paying the price.

  He listened to Marge snoring softly in her bed. "Damn you!" he whispered, and was on the verge of damning her mother, too (she had left shortly after supper), when a slight, barely audible tinkling noise drifted up to him from somewhere on the first floor. He pushed himself up on his elbows: "Marge?" he whispered anxiously. "I think somebody's in the house, Marge." There was a hint of excitement in his voice. "Wake up, Marge!" he said aloud. He listened. Marge continued snoring. "Bitch!"

  He sat up, paused, heard the tinkling noise again; he smiled. "I'm going downstairs, Marge." She continued snoring. "I'm going to get the .38 and go downstairs." The tempo and pitch of her snoring altered. "It's okay, Marge—go back to sleep." He stood and moved quickly and quietly into the bathroom, the smile stuck on his face all the while. He opened a cupboard beneath the sink, got down on one knee, felt inside the cupboard on a small ledge inside a narrow panel above the cupboard door. He heard the quick, brittle noise of glass breaking somewhere on the first floor. "Shit!" he murmured, still smiling. He got the .38 from its hiding place, went back to the bedroom. Miraculously, Marge was still asleep. He went to the top of the stairs, wondered if he should turn on the overhead light in the living room with the switch up here, in the hallway. He quickly decided, no, the element of surprise was very important now.

  Putting his weight on the extreme right-hand side of the steps, close to the wall—where the wood was least likely to creak—he started down. "Shit!" he whispered, spontaneously, gleefully.

  The ringing of the telephone woke Clyde Watkins almost immediately. In the two decades that he'd served as Penn Yann's Volunteer Fire Chief he had taught himself to sleep, as he put it, "with one ear and one eye open." He snatched the receiver up. "Yes?"

  "Clyde, it's me, Sarah."

  He rolled his eyes. "Christ, Sarah, have you got any idea what time it is?"

  "Three thirty, Clyde. That's why I c
alled." She hesitated. "Manny's been gone since yesterday afternoon, Clyde, and I'm worried about him."

  "He's probably sleepin' off a drunk somewhere, Sarah."

  "I don't think so, Clyde. I called The Playground and Itzy's and Bagnano's, too. He ain't been in none of 'em all night. Nobody's seen him, Clyde."

  "We got a liquor store in town, Sarah—"

  "I called there too, Clyde. And like I said, no one's seen him. And I'm real worried, Clyde. I was hopin' you'd have some idea where he might be. I thought he might be with you, as a matter of fact."

  Clyde sat up reluctantly. He shivered: Damn, it was cold! "He ain't with me, Sarah."

  "Can you go lookin' for him, Clyde?" she pleaded. "Can you do that for me?"

  "I was just about to, Sarah."

  "Thank you, Clyde. I knew you'd help."

  "Don't I always, Sarah?"

  "You want me to come with you, Clyde? Where you think yer gonna look? You'd tell me if he's got a girlfriend, wouldn'tcha, Clyde? You'd tell me that . . ."

  "He ain't got no girlfriend, Sarah. Who in hell'd want him?!"

  "That ain't nice, Clyde." But she knew the question was a good one. "I'm puttin' my coat on right this minute, Clyde. I'll be waitin' for ya."

  "Okay, Sarah." He sighed. "I'll be over directly." He hung up, shivered again. Unseasonably cold, tonight, he remembered the TV weatherman saying. Into the teens in some of the valley areas . . . By early morning the temperature should be on the rise again. He stood and put his jeans and flannel shirt on over thermal underwear. It was early morning, now, wasn't it?! he asked himself. And still it was colder than a witch's tit!