“Not now,” I said. “Come on.” I reached for her arm.
She stepped back, touching her head where the blood had dried. The words came in a rush. “I made Stanley take me up here when I found out about the bombs. He didn’t want to. He said it wasn’t safe.” Her eyes locked on mine. “I made him, Dek. I made him bring me up here.”
“Did Stanley hit you?”
“Stanley?” Her eyes flickered from me to the knot of men down the road and back to me. “Why would you think-”
“He’s got to be in this, Amanda.” Saying aloud for the first time what had been working at me since I realized Till didn’t know about the tunnels. “Did Stanley hit you?”
“I don’t know who hit me.”
Again I reached for her with my free hand. “No,” she screamed, taking two full steps back. “Can’t you understand? I made Stanley take me here. We were finding our way in the dark, to the kitchen toget my flashlight, when something hit me. Stanley must have been hit, too. It couldn’t have been Stanley.”
“We’ve got to find Till.” This time I got her arm. I started pulling her with my free hand, toward the street, toward the men and the fire trucks stopped a hundred yards down Chanticleer.
The new blast flared high into the air, showering sparks into the night. At first I thought it was from the house next door, but then my eyes registered the dark space between the two fires. It was another house, the one beyond the burning pile next door. Something clattered behind us. I turned to see one of Amanda’s front doors break away from its top hinge and fall to the ground.
“I made him, Dek,” Amanda shouted. “I made Stanley take me up here.”
I looked at her face, saw fear and panic, but saw the future, too. I saw the guilt that would haunt her for the rest of her life if Stanley died inside her house.
I grabbed the flashlight she was holding and shoved the Monet at her.
“Find Till,” I shouted, pointing at the cluster of men behind the fire engines. “Tell him the bomber is in a tunnel that leads from your basement. Tell him everything is going to go up. Tell him Stanley is in the house.”
“But where will you-”
“Do it,” I yelled.
She hesitated, nodding her head, but still frozen. I grabbed her shoulders and shook them hard. Then she ran, the Monet swinging under one arm, stumbling in a contorted, hobbled jog down Chanticleer toward the group of men huddled behind the two fire engines.
I ran back into the house.
Twenty-seven
Grotesque black shadows danced in pantomime on the walls of the foyer, dark reflections of the trees and the smoke and the flames in the new light of the second explosion. There was no noise. No sirens, no firemen yelling, no big engines racing up Chanticleer. They weren’t coming. They’d been held back, away from the explosions at the west end.
More debris had fallen in the foyer. The plaster dust was thicker now, making the foyer look like a barnacle-encrusted stateroom caught in the glare of an underwater shipwreck photograph. Jagged cracks ran up the walls. Soon, the walls would start falling.
I crossed the foyer in the strange new light, to the base of the stairs going up. The staircase canted downward, loose from the wall. A main support had given way. I looked up. The crack in the ceiling had grown to be a foot wide. Beyond it, a trace of orange peeked from the second-floor landing. New firelight, showing through the collapsing roof.
My shoes ground at the debris as I hurried into the central hall. The house was dead quiet now. Chillingly, the pops and groans of just a few minutes before had stopped, as if the house were holdingits breath for one last shudder, one final exhalation, before it let go and collapsed.
I moved down the hall, past the living room arch. Outside the dining room, my foot struck something that wasn’t plaster. I looked down, then bent to pick it up. It was an old Army flashlight, olive plastic, with its head set at a right angle to the body. The lens and the bulb were gone. My finger touched something damp. I turned the Army flashlight around and held it to the light coming from the foyer. It was blood, mixed with plaster and several short strands of dark hair. I threw it down. It had been used to strike Amanda.
I switched on the rechargeable flashlight and went into the dining room. The beam flickered and then died as I swept it around the empty room. I shut the light off, rapped it hard against my leg, and turned it on again. No beam. I dropped it on the floor. Without a charge, it was worthless.
Down the hall, to the library. Like the dining room’s, its windows were on the other side of the house from the fires. I made the circle around the walls, then crossed the carpet on a diagonal to make sure Stanley wasn’t trussed up in the middle. The room was empty.
I hurried down the central hall, toward the little corridor that led to the family room. And stopped at the turn. A pale sliver of green light ran up the wall ahead. The basement door was ajar. The greenish light was coming from down below.
I wanted to run then, run like a man on fire. It was Till’s job I was doing, hunting to save a man trapped in a collapsing house. I turned, started for the foyer. And saw Amanda, in the dark, in my mind, as she’d been outside her house, tormented by guilt, and pleading. I could give the basement a quick look from the top of the stairs, and then run to get Till. He could send his men into the basement of that collapsing house to find Stanley. I turned back.
But I wasn’t going anywhere near that green sliver of light without a knife.
There was a door to the kitchen off that short hall. I eased past the basement door, went into the kitchen. It was brighter now, from the second fire; the light coming in through the slats was strong enough to bathe everything in soft, ghostly illumination. I went to the knife block, found the big-handled carving knife. I’d never been in a knife fight, and I doubted I could cut a man, but it might give me enough courage to make it a step or two down the basement stairs. I went out to the short hall.
Ten feet from the basement door, I got down on my knees, crawled as silently as I could through the grit to the sliver of green light. I reached with the blade of the knife to ease open the basement door. A cold draft of air came up, dry, as if from a crypt. Dropping to my belly, I pushed forward and looked down. The base of the stairs was dark, barely visible in the soft green gloom. For a second, I let myself hope that the green light was coming in from outside, but then I remembered that the houses in Gateville didn’t have basement windows.
Someone was down there.
Head first, still on my belly, I pulled myself down one step, but I could see nothing. I was too high up. I pulled myself down another step. Still the walls blocked my view. I pushed back, got to my feet. I’d have to go down. At the third step, the staircase was open at the sides; no walls, just handrails. I could see there. But I’d be vulnerable. If somebody were waiting, a grab from either side would send me tumbling down onto the concrete.
Something crashed upstairs, shaking the whole house. A roof rafter or a ceiling joist had broken away. Down or out, I had to do it now.
I gripped the carving knife tight in my right hand, eased onto the first step, then stopped, partially hunched to slash at a first touch at my ankle. But nothing moved. I took a second step, then a third. Each time I stopped, tensed to cut at a hand coming out of the strange green glow. But only the faraway shiftings of the joistsand rafters, vague and restless, stirred the house. I took the rest of the steps down, and moved behind the stairs.
The green light came from an opening cut into the center of the south basement wall. The cutout was roughly chiseled and about two feet square. Rock-sized, irregular chunks of cement lay on the floor underneath, where they’d fallen when the hole was cut.