Right now, though, harmless things in the other half of the attic were making shapes that didn’t encourage sticking around. Gauzy moonlight turned some things — stacked boxes and trunks and suitcases and chairs and duffel bags and clothing bags and old wooden crates — into mysterious silhouettes. Others — like the artificial Christmas tree and the old horse-head rocker and a busted screen door and spider webs and open beams — wore shadows like spooky garments.
“I better go to bed,” Richie told his friend. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
A distant siren made him jump, and the boy laughed at how silly he was being even as he moved more quickly toward the stairwell. But the siren was getting louder, and he paused. No, not just one — it was sirens. Was there a fire somewhere near by?
That was when he heard the soft, high-pitched voice.
“Where are you going, Richie?”
He turned back, frozen there. He looked at the grinning, seated mummy.
Had his friend finally spoken to him?
Roy was dreaming about Helen and their honeymoon in Hawaii, but Richie had been in it too, building a sand castle while his parents in swimsuits watched him as they lapped up sunshine and the foamy tide rolled in as seagulls cawed. But then the seagulls cawing turned into the gathering sirens he’d managed for a while to incorporate into his dream, and he sat up in bed, sharply, alarmed. Moments later — in part because of how he’d reacted — Helen was sitting up, too, eyes wide, ears perked.
“That’s close,” she said.
“And getting closer.”
He threw back the covers. “I’ll see what’s going on.”
Leaving the guest room, he went across to the master bedroom and got into his robe and, sockless, stepped into his shoes. Then he unlocked the nightstand drawer, taking out a .38 revolver, which he loaded up from a box of bullets also in the drawer.
Helen, in the doorway slipping into her dressing gown, nodded to the gun and said, “Where did you get that? And those?”
“Blake loaned it to me. I asked him to. He gave me a box of ammo, too. Don’t be mad.”
As he slipped past her, she said, “I’m not mad, I’m relieved. Those sirens are coming our way!”
“I’ll go downstairs and grab a flashlight and see what the hell is going on. You check on Richie.”
She nodded, paused and said, “I wish you had another one of those,” pointing to the weapon, and went to see about their son.
Richie walked slowly back toward where the mummy sat near the aisle of the storage area. The sirens were screaming now and the window at that far end seemed to have been raised and made a pulsing red hole in the house. The shapes of the spooky storage area were almost glowing red now. Maybe there was a fire — and it was up here!
The sirens stopped.
Part of the boy was thrilled that his friend had spoken to him. But part of him was scared, more scared than he’d ever been before. He couldn’t help it. After all, his friend really did look like a skeleton in a fancy collar and a wispy dress.
Richie did not get right up close to his friend, the way he often had before, and didn’t sit down in front of him, either. Hearing his friend speak changed everything. Part of him had thought the mummy being his friend was make-believe. He hadn’t admitted it to himself, but part of him thought he was pretending.
So he kept about six feet away.
“Richie! I said, where are you going?”
His friend’s lips didn’t move. Well, of course not. His friend didn’t have lips. But the voice was coming from that direction.
And if his friend could speak, that would show his dad that a dead man didn’t have to stay dead just because he died a long time ago.
Right?
“It’s late,” Richie said, nervous. “I’m supposed to be in bed.”
“It is past your bedtime, Richie.”
And about half-way down that center aisle, a small and yet broad-shouldered figure jumped out from behind the boxes and crates. The pulsing light filling the window was at his back and outlined him in red, leaving the rest of him draped in black shadow. He was no bigger than a child of four or five, but his shoulders were broad, his arms long and held out as if about to hug. His feet looked real big. Were they bare?
“Who are you?” Richie asked.
“My name is Dennis.”
“You don’t belong here, Dennis. You musta sneaked in.”
“I did sneak in.”
Dennis moved a little closer, still in the aisle and its shadows, though.
“Are you a kid?” Richie asked.
“No. I never got to be one.”
“I don’t understand.”
Dennis moved a little closer.
“I never had what you had, Richie. A real home. Real parents. Isn’t that sad?”
“It is sad, but it’s not my business. How did you get in?”
A long arm flipped back toward the red-flushed window. “Through there. But I can’t go out that way now. The police are outside.”
“I thought it was firemen. I’m glad there’s no fire. But why are they outside?”
“Because they’re looking for a killer.”
“Why are they looking here?”
Dennis didn’t answer unless that smile was it. He moved closer. The light from the hanging bulb finally reached the front of him. His hair was black and frizzy and wild and long, his eyes big and black and bulging, his nose flat, his teeth crooked, his smile a grin worse than the mummy’s. He was in a loose black shirt that hung down over stubby legs in black shorts with his feet bare and big, his arms and hands and feet like a monkey’s. He looked squished.
“Richie, we’re two of a kind, you and I.”
Richie was backing up slowly. “I don’t think so.”
“I really have nothing against you,” Dennis said, and he sounded almost sorry. “Let me make this quick...”
And Dennis ran at Richie.
On the porch, coming out the front door, Roy almost collided with Cutter. A policewoman in plainclothes, who Roy would learn was Janet Hodges, was just behind the chief with a revolver in hand.
“He’s in the house,” Cutter said tightly. “There’s a ladder up to the window on the east side. And we’ve found four dead officers in your maintenance shed, stacked like cordwood. Dennis Lee is here and he’s gone kill-crazy.”
“Shit,” Roy said, the revolver in hand and pointing upward. “Both Helen and Richie are in there! I sent her to check on him.”
Roy took the lead as they ran inside and started up the stairway, fast.
“If he’s after Richie,” Roy said, “that attic connects directly to his bedroom.”
They found Helen in Richie’s room, trying to open the attic door, the child not in his bed, the covers stirred. Holding back hysteria, she said, “Something’s jammed up against this goddamn thing!”
Roy put his shoulder into the door and it gave a few inches, then wouldn’t budge any farther. They could hear the groan of the wood and something metallic on the other side.
Cutter put a hand on the father’s shoulder. “Keep at it. I’ll send a man in with a battering ram, and in the meantime, I’m going up that ladder.”
Roy nodded and tried again.
Cutter ran out.
A few minutes earlier, Dennis had charged at Richie and the boy backed up quickly into the work-out area. He looked frantically around at what he might use to defend himself or maybe put between him and his attacker. Then he kicked a barbell, right in the middle of its steel shaft, sending it rolling at the fierce little intruder. But the agile brute jumped it like a hurdle and came on ahead, terrible teeth bared, fists high and waving, like some attacking native in a Tarzan movie.