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Dale threw himself under the bed, reaching into the darkness, groping for his brother even as he felt his hands and forearms go numb in the terrible chill, even as the blackness folded on itself, tendrils pulling in like a movie of some ebony blossom folding up for night, run at high speed . . . and then there was only the perfect circle of darkness-a hole! Dale could feel emptiness where the solid floor should be!-and then he tugged his hands back as that circle contracted all too quickly, snapping shut like a steel trap that would have taken Dale's fingers off in an instant. . . .

"What?" cried Mike, exploding into the room with his bag in one hand and the long-barreled squirrel gun in the other.

Dale was on his feet, sobbing but trying not to, pointing and babbling.

Mike dropped to his knees, rattled the barrel of the small shotgun across the solid floorboards. Dale dropped to his knees and elbows and pounded that floor with his fists. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" There was nothing down there but boards and dust bunnies and Lawrence's dropped Uncle Scrooge comic.

A scream echoed up from the basement.

"Lawrence!" shouted Dale, running for the landing.

"Just a second! Just a second!" shouted Mike, holding him back until he could retrieve Dale's duffel bag and the radio. "Put the damn Savage together."

"We can't wait. . .Lawrence. . ." gasped Dale between sobs, tugging to get free. Another scream echoed from the basement, farther away this time.

Mike dropped the squirrel gun on the bed and shook Dale with both hands. "Assemble ... the ... Savage! They want you to go down there with no weapon. They want you to panic. Think!"

Dale was shaking as he put the shotgun together, locking the barrel in the stock. Mike stuck two loaded squirt guns in his belt, tossed the box of .410 shells to Dale, slung the walkie-talkie over his shoulder, and said, "OK, let's go down there."

The screams had stopped.

They pounded down the stairs, through the dark hall, across the kitchen, and through the inner door to the basement stairs.

THIRTY-SEVEN

"You want us over there?" asked Kevin over the walkie-talkie. Both he and Harlen Were dressed and ready in Kev's bedroom.

"No, stay where you are unless we call you," radioed Mike from the top of the stairs. "We'll push the transmit button twice if we need you." "Gotcha."

Just as Mike signed off, the lights in the Stewart house went off. He pulled his flashlight from his duffel bag and left the bag on the step to the kitchen. Dale reached for the flashlight his dad kept on a two-by-four cross brace near the head of the stairs. The kitchen and house beyond through the open door to the inside were dark; the basement was beyond darkness.

There was a scrabbling, slipping sound. Dale slid the .410 shell in, left the .22 barrel empty, and clicked the gun shut. He slid the barrel-select to shotgun. His flashlight beam played on the cinderblocks at the curve of the steps near the bottom. More scrabbling sounds came from around the corner.

"Let's go," he said, holding the flashlight with one hand and the shotgun steady with the other. Mike followed with the squirrel gun and his own flashlight.

They jumped down the last two giant steps, smelling the moist after-flood stink of the place. Ahead of them, the furnace and the hopper sent out pipes like a gorgon's hair. The slipping, rock-sliding noise came from their right, through the small doorway in the cinderblock wall. In the coal bin. Dale went in fast, the flashlight beam swinging left to right and then back again: the hopper, walls, the small heap of coal left from the winter, the north wall with its panel to the outside and the coal chute shoved in one corner, cobwebs along the near wall, back to the open space.

There was a faint glow in the crawlspace under the front of the house and the porch: not a light, not that bright, but a pale, phosphorescent gleam rather like the xadium dials on Kevin's watch. Dale stepped closer and played his flashlight into the low, cobwebby space.

Twenty-five feet in, where the crawlspace normally ended in rough stone and cinderblock at the south end of the porch, the flashlight glinted on the ribbed walls of a hole eighteen inches across, perfectly round, and still emitting the putrid green glow they had seen from the coal bin.

Dale shoved his stuff on the ledge and wriggled into the crawlspace, ignoring the cobwebs in his face as he began moving across the moist soil toward the tunnel.

Mike grabbed his ankles.

"Let me go. I'm going after him.''

Mike didn't argue, he pulled Dale forcibly backward until his pajama tops scraped over the cinderblock ledge.

"Lemme go!" shouted Dale, trying to free himself. "I'm going after him."

Mike grabbed his friend's face and silenced him, pressing him back against cold stone. "We'll all go after him. But that's what they expect you to do ... go down this tunnel. Or go straight to where they're taking him."

"Where's that?" gasped Dale, shaking his head, still feeling the imprint of Mike's strong fingers on his jaw.

"Draw a line," said Mike, pointing in the direction of the tunnel.

Dale turned dull eyes toward the darkness there. Southwest. Across the schoolyard . . . "Old Central," he said. He shook his head again. "Lawrence might still be alive."

"Maybe. They haven't taken anyone before that we know of ... just killed them. Maybe they do want him alive. Probably to get us to go after him." He keyed the transmit button. "Kev, Harlen, get all your stuff and meet us outside at the gas pump in about three minutes. We're going to get dressed and we'll be right there."

Dale flung himself around so that the flashlight beam illuminated the tunnel again. "OK, OK, but I'm going after him. We'll go to the school."

"Yeah," said Mike, leading the jog up the stairs, illuminating the dark hall and stairway with his flashlight, "you and Harlen find a way into the school while Kevin does his thing. I'm going to follow the tunnel."

They reached the bedroom and Dale tugged on jeans and sneakers and a sweatshirt, forgoing niceties such as underwear and socks. "You said they'd expect us to go to the school or follow down the tunnel."

"One or the other," answered Mike. "Maybe not both." "Why should you go.in the tunnel? He's my brother." "Yeah," said Mike. He took a tired breath. "But I've got more experience with these things."

Mr. Ashley-Montague had a couple of more drinks in the back of the limousine while the cartoons and short subject were on the screen, but he came out when the motion picture started. It was a new release, quite popular in his Peoria theaters: Roger Corman' s House of Usher. It starred the inevitably hammy Vincent Price as Roderick Usher, but the horror film was much better than most of its kind. Mr. Ashley-Montague especially liked the predominant use of reds and blacks and the ominous lighting that seemed to throw each stone of the old Usher mansion into sharp relief.

The first reel was over when the storm came up. Mr. Ashley-Montague was leaning against the rail of the bandstand when the branches far above began to whip back and forth, loose papers blew across the park grass, and the few spectators either huddled under blankets or began leaving for the shelter of cars and homes. The millionaire looked over the roof of the Parkside Cafe and was alarmed at how low and fast-moving the black clouds seemed when they were silhouetted by the silent lightning. It was what his mother always called "a witch's storm," the kind more often seen in early spring and late autumn than in the belly of summer.

On the screen, Vincent Price as Roderick Usher and the young gentleman caller carried the massiye coffin holding Usher's sister into the cobwebbed vaults of the family crypt. Mr. Ashley-Montague knew that the girl was only suffering from the family catalepsy, the audience knew, Poe had known it ... why didn't Usher know it? Perhaps he does, thought Mr. Ashley-Montague. Perhaps he is a willing participant in the act of burying his sister alive.