“Actually, yes. I think the bad guys’re gone, at least for the time being.”

“What makes you think that?”

Steve, who has absolutely no intention of bringing up his brief career as a boardwalk fortune-teller, says it’s just a hunch. He sees Collie Entragian thinking it over, and knows the cop is going to agree even before he opens his mouth. Nothing psychic about it, either. Three people have been killed on Poplar Street this afternoon (not to mention Hannibal the Frisbee-stealing dog), more have been wounded, a house is burning flat without a single goddam fire-engine to attend it, there are crazy people running in the streets-homicidal maniacs-and the guy would have to be insane to want to go creeping alone through the woods between here and the next block.

“What about him?” Cynthia asks, jerking a thumb at Gary.

Collie grimaces. “Shape he’s in, I wouldn’t go to the movies with him, let alone into the woods with shit like this going down. But if you’re serious, Mr… Ames, is it?”

“Make it Steve. And I’m serious.”

“Okay. Let’s see if Old Doc’s got a gun or two kicking around his basement. I bet he does.”

They start back across the living room, bent low. Cynthia turns to follow them, then movement catches her eye. She turns back and her mouth drops open. Revulsion follows surprise, and she has to put a hand to her mouth to stifle the cry that wants to come out. She thinks of calling the men back, then doesn’t. What would it change?

A buzzard-it might be a buzzard, although it looks like nothing she’s ever seen in a book or a movie-has come cruising out of the billowing smoke from the Hobart house and landed in the street next to Mary Jackson. It’s a huge unnatural awkwardness with an ugly, peeled head. It walks around the corpse, looking for all the world like a diner reconnoitering the buffet before actually grabbing a plate, and then it darts its head forward and pulls off most of the woman’s nose.

Cynthia closes her eyes and tries to tell herself this is a dream, just a dream. It would be nice if she could believe it.

From Audrey Wyler’s journal: June 10, 1995

Scared tonight. So scared. It’s been quiet lately-with Seth, I mean-but now all that’s changed.

At first neither of us knew what was wrong-Herb as mystified as I was. We went out for ice cream at Milly’s on The Square, part of our regular Saturday ritual if Seth is being “good” (which means if Seth is being Seth), and he was fine. Then, when we turned into the driveway, he started the sniffing thing he does sometimes-kind of raises his nose in the air and sniffs like a dog. I hate seeing him do that and so does Herb. The way farmers hate to hear tornado warnings on the radio, I suppose. I’ve read that the parents of epileptics learn to look for similar signs before seizures… obsessive head-scratching, swearing, even nose-picking. With Seth it’s that sniffing thing. But it’s not epileptic seizures. I only wish it was.

Herb asked him what was wrong as soon as he saw him doing it and got zilch, not even the usual vocalizing stuff he does. Same when I tried. No words; no gabble, even. Just more sniffing. And once he was in the house, that stalking thing-walking from place to place as if his legs won’t bend. He went out back to the sandbox, he went upstairs to his room, he went downcellar, all in that ominous silence. Herb followed him for a while, asking what was wrong, then gave up. While I was emptying the dishwasher, Herb came in waving a religious tract he found sticking out of the milkbox around at the side door amp; yelling “Hallelujah! Tes, Jesus!” He is a dear man, always trying to cheer me up, although I know he isn’t doing all that well himself. His skin has gotten very pale, and I’m scared by all the weight he’s lost, mostly since January or so. It must be at least 20 lbs and might be as much as 30, but whenever I ask him about it, he just laughs it off.

Anyway, the tract was typical Baptist bullshit. Had a picture on the front of a man in agony, with his tongue sticking out and sweat running down his face and his eyes rolled up. IMAGINE A MILLION YEARS WITHOUT ONE DRINK OF WATER! it says over the face. And under it, WELCOME TO HELL! I checked on the back and sure enough, Zion’s Covenant Baptist Church. That bunch from Elder. “Look,” Herb says, “it’s my dad before he combs his hair in the morning.”

I wanted to laugh-I know it makes him happy when he can make me laugh-but I just couldn’t. I could feel Seth all around us, almost crackling on our skin. The way you can sometimes feel a storm building up, you know.

Just then he walked in-stalked in-with that horrible frown he gets on his face when something happens that doesn’t fit into his general plan of life. Except it isn’t him, it isn’t. Seth is the sweetest, kindest, most accepting child I can imagine. But he has this other personality that we see more and more. The stiff-legged one. The one that sniffs the air like a dog.

Herb asked him what was wrong, what was on his mind, and then all at once he-Herb, I mean-reached up and grabbed his own lower lip. Pulled it out like a windowshade and started twisting it. Until it bled. And all the time his poor eyes were watering with pain and bugging out with fear and Seth was staring at him with that hateful frown he gets, the one that says: “I’ll do anything I please, you can’t stop me.” And maybe we can’t, but I think that-sometimes, at least-Seth can.

“Stop making him do that!” I shouted at him. “You just stop it right now!”

When the other one, the not-Seth, gets really mad, his eyes seem to go from brown to black. He turned that look on me then, and all at once my hand came up and I slapped myself across the face. So hard my eye watered on that side.

“Make him stop, Seth,” I said. “It’s not fair. Whatever is wrong, we’re not responsible for it.

We don’t even know what it is.”

Nothing at first. Just more of the black look. My hand went up again, and then the hateful way he was looking at me changed a little. Not much, but enough. My hand went down and Seth turned and looked up into the open cabinet over the sink where we keep the glasses. My mother’s are on the top shelf, nice Waterford crystal that I only take down for the holidays. They were up there, anyway. They burst when Seth looked at them, one after the other, like ducks in a shooting gallery. When they were gone, the eleven of them that were left, he looked at me with that mean, gloating smi le he gets sometimes when you cross him and he hurts you for it. His eyes so black and somehow old in his child’s face.

I started to cry. Couldn’t help it. Called him a bad boy amp; told him to go away. The smile slipped, at that. He doesn’t like to be told anything, but that least of all. I thought he might make me hurt myself again, but then Herb stepped in front of me and told, him the same thing, to go away and calm down and then come back and maybe we could help him fix whatever was wrong.

Seth went off, and I could tell even before he got across the living room to the stairs that the other one was either gone or going. He wasn’t walking in that horrible stiff way anymore. (Herb calls it “Seth’s Rooty the Robot walk”.) Then, later, we could hear him crying in his room-Herb helped me clean up the glasses, me bawling like a fool the whole time. He didn’t try to comfort me or jolly me out of it with any of his jokes, either. Sometimes he can be very wise. When it was done (neither of us got a single cut, sort of a miracle), he said the obvious, that Seth had lost something. I said no shit Sherlock, what was your first clue? Then felt bad and hugged him and said I was sorry, I didn’t mean to be a bitch. Herb said he knew that, then turned over the stupid Baptist tract and wrote on the back on it: “What are we going to do?”