LITMIR.BIZ

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twice, across the kitchen floor. “I knew there was something nasty about them. We should call the police right away.”

      “Oh no, please!” the girl begged. “The police will just get angry. The police hate us, too. And Uncle Earl will kill me. He’ll think I told them about him.”

      “Told them what?” Mrs. Mallory asked. Awaiting the girl’s answer, her face seemed to cloud over. Chip could read his mother’s thoughts perfectly : I hope this isn’t too shocking, she was thinking. I hope we’re not getting in too deep.

      “My uncle was… after me,” she said. “I don’t have no dad and my mother don’t do much except watch TV. I took my bike and my dog and I tried to run away. I was going to see Mr. Bascombe. He’s always been good to me. Then I ran into them hill farmers.”

      Mr. Mallory flopped down into a chair. “My God!” he said. “This is turning out to be some vacation.”

      “I don’t want to be mean or anything,” Lee said, “but you live in what they call the ‘shanties,’ don’t you?”

      “It’s just a house I live in,” May told her. “It’s a house for shelter.”

      “Of course it is, May,” their mother said. “But it doesn’t sound as if you should go back there. If you’ll just excuse us a minute, I want to have a word with my husband.”

      Chip knew, they all knew, exactly what that “word” would be. Mr. Mallory shrugged his shoulders, and, with an expression of rather grim resignation, dragged himself to his feet and ushered his wife down the hall toward the other end of the cottage.

      Lee yawned, stretched her arms, and quickly strode after them. Chip stood there awkwardly for a few minutes.

      “Excuse me,” he sighed, then, nodding politely to the girl, he followed his sister, leaving May Bates alone in the kitchen.

      He found his parents huddling with Lee in the hall beside the toilet.

      “You’re not offering her my room, I hope.” Lee insisted. “I don’t even see why she has to stay.”

      “You’re going to be in big trouble with me if you go on that way,” her mother warned.

      Lee sulked and shook her head. “I don’t see why Dad can’t drive her to the police station. She’s nuts. She thinks everybody’s after her.”

      “All right, Lee, we get your point,” Mr. Mallory said. “You don’t want her here. But I think you’re outnumbered — am I right, Chip?”

      Chip nodded. “Yep. Can’t throw her out now, can we?”

      “ I want to sleep in the car,” Lee cut in suddenly. “I don’t want to sleep next door to her. She probably snores or sleepwalks or something. I bet she’ll steal half my clothes. Chip can sleep next door to her and dream about marrying a shanty girl.”

      There was a moment of silence. Mrs. Mallory glared at her daughter but seemed at a loss for words.

      “You’re being a trial, Lee,” their father said. “I’m putting you on notice, right now. Not a word more from you!” He paused, fixing her with a stern look, then continued. “Okay, this is the final arrangement. Lee in the car, and the girl in Lee’s room. Let’s get it done now. C’mon, Chip, you can help.”

      The two men started down the hall.

      Mrs. Mallory squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Don’t worry,” she told her. “We have no plans to adopt the poor creature. But we’ll sort this out better in the morning.”

      5

      The Invitation

      Chip’s room was dark and stuffy. The cabin floorboards crackled. A mouse or a rat seemed to be busy in the rafters above his head. He rolled over inside his sleeping bag and listened. He was awake again, and his illuminated watch, which he had placed on a chair next to his cot, told him it was three a.m.

      A very bad time of night, as his grandfather used to insist to him. The old man — he had been dead for a good seven years — had always said that midnight in a creepy house was nothing compared with three in the morning anywhere. At that time of night, as Grandpa Wilson told it, life was at its lowest ebb. “The gates of the other world are wide open then,” the old man explained. “You can sense it. Nothing wants you to be alive; everything conspires to drag you down into that terrible blackness.”

      Outside, someone fired a gun. Pow, pow, pow — three shots, just like that. Then a dog barked. He sat up straight on his cot. He listened.

      Through the thin walls he could hear May Bates turning on her cot and whimpering. The shots had disturbed her, but perhaps she hadn’t wakened.

      There was silence for a while, then more scurrying above his head. And outside, some noises in the bushes. He climbed out of his bed and pressed his face against the window. Nothing moved among the shadows.

      No one else in the house seemed to be awake; no one stirred. Perhaps it was all just his imagination.

      He climbed back inside his sleeping bag and tried to think of more pleasant things. Mr. Bascombe’s parrot! That was pretty interesting. The parrot with the odd name. Captain Howdy, that was it. Where had he heard that name, Captain Howdy?

      Suddenly, he remembered. It was the name the devil first uses to contact the girl in The Exorcist!

      My God! He thought. What a name to give a parrot! Mr. Bascombe must be weird, too.

      Chip lay on his back and felt himself drifting away at last. He could sense light filtering into the room, reflected off the leaves outside and the flyblown ceiling. But he was deserting the light, losing it, sinking slowly down and down into a blackness that wrapped around him ever tighter. After a while he resisted no more; he was asleep.

      All at once he was in a swamp — a bleak land of smooth, stagnant water, greenish-hued and slimy to the touch. Trunks of dead cedars rose all around him, like the pillars of a temple. He lay on a bumpy, near-solid but oozing patch of turf, holding his new cellphone at arm’s length and shaking it like a rattle or a box of dice. He knew it wouldn’t work — it needed recharging. How would he ever get out of here? He had an exam he couldn’t afford to miss, but he hadn’t studied for it. He was frantic. He would fail all his courses, get kicked out of school. Then a snake, only a few inches long and completely transparent, crawled up on a lily pad and a voice said from somewhere, “Have some animal crackers!” Suddenly he was walking to class, his clothes completely soaked, and people were pointing at him and laughing. A strange girl, dark-haired and very beautiful, came up and comforted him. “It’s all right,” she said. “The white horse is in the Coliseum.” He was swallowed up in, absorbed by, a huge thundercloud, and a loud voice commanded,

      “Wake up, Chip! It’s pouring out there! We want to get out of here as soon as possible.”

      He opened his eyes, surprised by the near darkness, the roaring storm outside, the unfamiliar, dirty room, his moth-er’s anxious face.

      “Yeah, yeah.” He yawned, stretched his arms, groaned, and sat up.

      “Your father needs help with the packing.”

      Chip crawled out of bed, staggered to the bedroom window, and pressed his face against the glass. Rain pelted down on the rough bush; small trees bent in a fierce wind. Lightning flashed above, the rain-darkened leaves glittered, an old metal barrel flashed beside the rear wall of the cabin.

      Rubbing his eyes, struggling to get focus, Chip made his way to the front. A wild scene confronted him. The sky was a ragged darkness, the lake half-hidden by thick sheets of water. A stream rushed down the driveway and along the path that led to the house. Rain beat against the SUV, dousing his father, who huddled there, grabbing again and again at a loose-flapping rope. Bent against the wind, he finally secured it, opened one door to climb up, and began to tie the rope to the roof rack. Lightning flashed, followed

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