No one noticed them returning from the shadows under the oak.

Dale was growing tired of the party and was about ready to leave on his own when he saw Mike and Michelle Staffney coming around the side of the house.

Michelle's dad had been moving through the crowd for several minutes, asking kids if they'd seen his daughter. The doctor had a new Polaroid camera and wanted to take some pictures before the fireworks began.

At one point Dale had gone through the kitchen and down the hall to use the bathroom-the one part of the interior of the house open to kids on this night of nights-and he passed a book-lined little room where a television set was flickering unattended. The TV set showed a mob of people under red, white, and blue banners. Dale had paid just enough attention to world events since visiting Ashley-Montague's place on Tuesday to know that tonight was the next-to-last night of the Democratic Convention. Dale stepped into the room long enough to get the gist of what Huntley and Brinkley were saying: Senator Kennedy was on the verge of being nominated as the Democrats' candidate for president. As Dale watched, a sweating man in a crowd shouted into the microphone: "Wyoming casts all fifteen votes for the next President of the United States!"

The camera showed the number 763 superimposed. The crowd went insane. David Brinkley said, "Wyoming's put him over the top."

Dale had just gone back outside when Mike and Michelle came out of the shadows of the backyard, Michelle picking up a flotilla of her girlfriends and running into the house, Mike looking around wildly.

Dale went over to him. "Hey, you OK?" Mike didn't look OK. He was pale-even his lips were white-and there was a film of sweat on his brow and upper lip. His right hand was clenched in a fist and was shaking slightly.

"Where's Harlen?" was all that Mike replied.

Dale pointed to the cluster of kids where Harlen was holding forth on his terrible accident, telling all about how he'd been climbing on Old Central's roof on a dare when a gust of wind had sent him on a fifty-foot fall.

Mike strode over and roughly pulled Harlen from the group.

"Hey, what the shit ..."

"Give it to me," snapped Mike, using a tone that Dale had never heard from his friend before. He snapped his fingers in front of Harlen. "Hurry."

"Give what ..." began Jim, obviously ready to argue.

Mike slapped Harlen's sling hard enough to make the smaller boy wince. He snapped his fingers again. "Give it to me. Now."

Neither Dale nor anyone Dale knew-much less Jim Harlen-would have disobeyed Mike O'Rourke at that moment. Dale imagined an adult giving Mike whatever he wanted right then.

Harlen glanced around, slipped the small .38 revolver out of his sling, and handed it to Mike.

Mike glanced at it once to make sure that it was loaded, then he held it down at his side-almost casually, Dale thought, so that no one would look twice at his right hand and the pistol in it unless you knew that it was there. Then he left, moving toward the barn with long, quick strides.

Dale glanced at Harlen, who raised one eyebrow, then both boys hurried to catch up, moving through the throngs of kids running toward the front yard where Dr. Staffney was taking pictures with his magic camera while some friends were setting up the aerial display rockets.

Mike moved around the south side of the barn, into the shadows there. He stayed close to the wall, his right hand raised now, the short barrel catching the last bit of light from the overhead bulbs. He whirled when Dale and Harlen stepped into the shadows, then waved them back against the wall.

Mike reached the end of the barn, stepped around some bushes there, crouching to look under them, then spun around-raising the pistol toward the black alley. Dale glanced at Harlen, remembered Jim's story about fleeing down this very alley from the Rendering Truck. What had Mike seen?

They came around the back of the barn. A single pole light half a block away down the alley only seemed to accentuate the darkness here, the black masses of foliage, the black-against-black outlines of other sheds, garages, and outbuildings. Mike had the pistol raised, his body sideways as if ready to aim north down the alley, but his head was turned and he was looking at the wood on the back of the Staffneys' garage. Dale and Harlen moved closer to look with him.

It took a minute for Dale to see the irregular rows of splinters going to the small window twenty-some feet above. It looked as if a telephone lineman had used his spiked climbing boots to gouge footholds on the vertical wooden wall. Dale looked back at Mike. "Did you see someth-"

"Shhh." Mike waved him into silence and moved across the alley, closing on a tall raspberry bush on the opposite side.

Dale could smell raspberries in the darkness, as the fruit was crushed underfoot. Suddenly he smelled something else ... a rank animal smell.

Mike waved them back again and then raised the pistol, the muzzle aimed head-high at the dark bush, his right arm straight and steady now. Dale clearly heard the click as the hammer was pulled back.

There was a hint of white there-a pale sketch of a face between black branches-then a low growling, a rumbling deep in some large creature's chest.

"Jesus," Harlen whispered frantically, "shoot! Shoot!"

Mike held the aim, thumb still on the hammer, arm never wavering as the white face and a dark mass too large and too strangely shaped to be a human being separated itself from the raspberry bush and moved toward him.

Dale backed against the barn wood, his heart filling his throat, feeling Harlen scrabbling to run. Mike still did not shoot.

The growling rose to a crescendo; there was a dark scrabbling of claws on the cinders and gravel of the alley; teeth glinted in what faint light there was.

Mike planted his feet wide and waited while the thing advanced.

"Down, goddamn you dogs!" came a whiney voice from that pale circle of a face. The last word had been pronounced "dawgs."

"Cordie," said Mike. He lowered the weapon.

Dale could see now that the teeth and dark bodies on either side of Cordie belonged to two very large dogs-one a Doberman pinscher, the other some sort of variation on a German shepherd. Cordie held them on short leashes that looked like rawhide thongs.

"What are you doing here?" asked Mike, still looking up and down the ajley rather than at her.

"Could ask you the same thing," snapped Cordie Cooke. Dale heard the last word as "thang."

Mike ignored the question, if it was a question. "You see somebody back here? Somebody . . . strange?"

Cordie snorted what might have been a laugh and the two dogs looked up at her quickly, licking their chops, waiting to know if they should be happy with her. "Lotsa strange somebodies around here at night these days. Got anybody in particular in mind?"

Mike turned so he was speaking to Dale and Harlen as much as to the girl. "I was upstairs there." He gestured with the pistol toward the window above them. "I saw something outside the window. Somebody. Somebody very strange . . . strange."

Dale looked up at the black glass and thought with Michelle? He knew the priority of that thought was stupid, but it hurt him somehow to think it just the same. Harlen just frowned at the window and then back at Mike, not comprehending; Dale realized that Harlen hadn't seen Mike and Michelle come out of the shadows together.

"I jes got here," said Cordie. "Me an' Belzybub an' Lucifer come down to see who's at the snot's party this year."

Harlen moved closer and stared at the dogs. "Belzybub and Lucifer?" They growled him back several hasty steps.

''I thought you'd moved away,'' said Dale.''Thought your family'd moved." He'd almost said up and moved. Listening to Cordie talk was contagious.