tires thumping over bad road. And there was nobody around for miles.
Pretty good place for a ghost story.
It hung in the air a long moment. I could feel the chips stacking up
along my side of the table.
For a second or two I thought I had it. Then Casey calmly cut me
Her voice was so ordinary-sounding you'd have thought I'd been reciting
as hopping list. But at least Steve was a little nervous.
"Jeez, isn't that enough?"
"Of course not. It only makes it better. Clan, I want to ask you
something. Do you really believe there's anybody in there?"
"There could be."
"I didn't ask you that. I asked you if you really believed there was.
The truth, Clan."
"I'm really not nuts about going in there, Case."
"You're hedging."
Ill
I could have lied to her. I could have said, sure, I'm about ninety
percent certain the devil's rolling around in there- but I didn't. I
couldn't. We'd both said a lot to each other just the night before. It
wasn't a great time to start lying.
"Okay. No, I don't think there is. But I want you to know... there
As limp as wilted lettuce.
Casey smiled. "See? Just as I said. The possibility makes it all the
nicer. It was a good try, Clan. Don't worry. If the cops show, we'll
cover for you."
"Great."
How she meant to do that I didn't know. Only that she'd read me like a
book. And knowing her, I couldn't entirely put it past her. Maybe she
had some disappearing act for me in that green bag she was holding in
her lap- holding very tightly. I wondered what was in there besides
the army shirt. It looked bulky.
I kept kicking myself. Maybe I'd played it badly. Maybe if I'd told
them sooner.
We were off to do something dumb again.
Maybe we'd done things just as stupid before but about this one I had a
very bad feeling. I could have said forget it, take me home. I could
have said I'd wait in the car. I considered both things, then rejected
them. It wasn't that I was proving anything, that I was worried about
Casey's reaction. I'd have lost a few points. But she'd have gotten
over it.
The problem wasn't that. The problem was that without me it would be
the three of them alone there. She'd do it anyway. And the way Kim
was giggling beside me again and the way Steve was driving they'd go
along no matter what I did. The three of those clowns alone in
there.
That thought bothered me.
If anything went wrong I wanted to be inside. I didn't want to depend
on Kim and Steve to keep her safe and healthy. Nor did I trust her to
take care of herself particularly. She was smart and she was strong,
but she took chances. Bad chances. I worried about her.
And there was another thing. Something that now, today, I'm pretty
ashamed to admit to.
You see, there was this idiot voice inside me, already creepy-crawling
through a dark house in the middle of the night. The voice snickered.
It was very cute, very wised-up and cynical.
Besides, it said, you never know.
It could be fun.
I knew of a safe place to put the car, off a narrow access road
through the woods about a quarter of a mile from the house. Nobody
would notice it there, at least not till early morning. By then we'd
be gone.
Even with the moonlight it was dark. It was one of the few places
around where the trees grew tall and spread wide, covering the sky,
black pine and birch and poplar. We parked beneath a stand of white
birch. When we cut the headlights the trees seemed to carry a glow as
though we'd irradiated them with light.
Beyond that it was black.
You could already hear the sea. A distant rumbling. There was no
wind. The trees were still. Just the dry scrape of crickets and the
faraway tumble and boom of ocean.
"Clan, you know this road, right?"
"Sure, Case."
"Any surprises?"
"Shouldn't be. No big storms this season."
"Then douse the flashlights."
"Why?" There was a tinge of whine to Steven's voice I didn't care
for.
"Try it."
I knew what she was after. There we were in the dark, with the smell
of damp earth and overheated car around us, listening to the mix of
strident arid scrapings and liquid thunder.
"See?"
"Spooky," said Kim.
"That's it."
For a while we just stood and listened, and then Steve said, "I guess
that's what we're here for," and the tone of it was more relaxed, and I
liked it better. I suppose it's a problem, being rich and spoiled.
Even if you grow up pretty decent the only things you have to fall back
on are the old, obnoxious habits, and they never make you look like
much. In times of stress they come flying back at you like ghosts of
squalling children.
We started off down the road, me in the lead, the two girls together
behind me and Steve bringing up the rear.
The road was rough and pitted, strewn with rocks and studded with
holes, more weathered than I'd thought it would be. If somebody
twisted an ankle, it was going to be a very short evening. So I went
slowly. For the first couple of yards all you could hear was the four
of us scraping along. Then the road got a little better and our
walking that much quieter.
It was eerie. Walking in front of everybody, I had the feeling of
great aloneness- we four in the empty night. And even we seemed
insubstantial. Just sounds of motion like the sea and the raspings of
insects. Kim stumbled and cursed and Casey laughed, but aside from
that nobody spoke a word. We were made of shoe leather and silence out
there, and that was all.
The road got bad again. But the trees broke apart overhead, so you
could see a little better. There was a dead branch ahead, and I kicked
it out of our way. It made a rustling, crackling sound in the bushes,
like a fire burning. Pebbles rolled along with it. On the dry road
they were hollow-sounding. The air was heavy with the scent of
evergreen.
Off to the left something moved in the brush. I stopped. The
footsteps behind me stopped too. A moment later I saw cattails waving
a few feet further on. We'd startled something. A raccoon, maybe.
Something roughly that size.
"What was that?" You could hear the thrill in Kim's voice.
"Coon. Possum. Grizzly maybe. It's hard to tell."
There was a moment's pause and then she laughed and called me a
bastard.
"Could be a rattlesnake. They grow 'em big around here. So watch your
step."
"Could be one of those cockroaches," said Steven. "The big ones. The
kind that carry off babies."
"We had them back in Boston," said Kim.
Then they were giggling back there for a while. There was a little
tussle going on. I turned around and saw him tickling her. She
started squealing. I looked at Casey.
"I don't think we've scared 'em yet. Do you?"
"Just wait."
We turned a bend in the road and then just ahead you could see where
the trees stopped and the clearing began, the long grass, weeds and