"Are you all right, Memo?" Sometimes she seemed to understand and blinked her answers-one blink for yes, two for no. More often these days, there was no response.

One blink. Yes, Mike felt his heart resume its wild pounding. It had been a long time since Memo'd talked to him . . . even in this crude code.

He felt his mouth go completely dry. He uncleaved his tongue from the roof of his mouth and forced the words. "Did you feel that?"

One blink.

"Was something here?"

One blink.

"Was it ... real?"

One blink.

Mike took a deep breath. It was like talking to a mummy except for the blinks, and even those seemed illusory in the half-light. He would have given anything he had or would ever earn in his lifetime if Memo could've talked to him at that second. Even if just for a minute.

He cleared a throat suddenly filled with emotion. "Was it something bad?"

One blink.

"Was it like ... a ghost?"

Two blinks. No.

Mike looked into her stare. Between answers, she did not blink at all. It was like interviewing a corpse.

Mike shook his head to get rid of the traitorous thought.

"Was it ... was it Death?"

One blink. Yes.

When she had answered him, her eyes closed, Mike leaned forward to make sure she was still breathing, and then touched her cheek with his palm again. "It's all right, Memo," he whispered next to her ear. "I'm here. It won't come back tonight. Go to sleep."

He crouched next to her until her choppy, ragged breathing seemed to slow and regulate somewhat. Then he got Grandpa's chair and dragged it close to the bed-even though the rocker would have been infinitely easier to move, he wanted Grandpa's chair-and then he sat in it, the baseball bat still on his shoulder, the chair and him between Memo and the window.

Earlier that evening, a block and a half west of Mike's house, Lawrence and Dale made ready for bed.

They had watched Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges at nine-thirty-their one exception to the nine p.m. bedtime rule-and then gone upstairs, Dale first to enter the darkened room and feel around for the light cord. Even though it was ten o'clock, a faint glow of the near-solstice twilight still came through the windows.

Lying in twin beds separated by only eighteen inches, Dale and his little brother lay whispering for a few moments.

"How come you aren't scared of the dark?" Lawrence asked quietly. He was lying with his panda bear in the crook of his arm. The bear, whom Lawrence insisted on calling Teddy despite Dale's insistence that it was a panda and not a teddy bear, had been won at the monkey-race attraction at Chicago's Riverview Park years before and looked the worse for wear: one eye loose, the left ear almost chewed through, the fur balding around the middle where it had been rubbed off by six years of hugs, and the black string of the mouth unraveling to give Teddy a lopsided, smirking appearance. "Scared of the dark?" said Dale. "It's not dark in here. The night-light's on."

"You know what I mean."

Dale knew what his brother meant. And he knew how hard it was for Lawrence to admit his fear. During the day, the eight-year-old was afraid of nothing. At night he usually asked for Dale to hold his hand so he could get to sleep. "I don't know," said Dale. "I'm older. You're not afraid of the dark when you're older."

Lawrence lay in silence for a minute. Downstairs, their mother's footsteps were barely audible going from the kitchen through the dining room. The footsteps stopped as they reached the carpet of the living room. Their dad was not home from his sales trip yet. "But you used to be scared," said Lawrence, not quite making it a question.

Not as chicken as you, scaredy-cat was the first reply that came to Dale. But it wasn't the time for teasing. "Yeah," he whispered. "A little bit. Sometimes."

"Of the dark?"

"Yeah."

"Of coming in to find the light cord?"

"When I was little in the apartment in Chicago, my room-our room-didn't have a light cord. It had a switch on the wall."

Lawrence raised Teddy to his cheek. "I wished we lived there now."

"Naw," whispered Dale, putting his hands behind his head and watching the leaf shadows move on the ceiling. "This house is a million times neater. And Elm Haven's a lot more fun than Chicago. We had to go to Garfield Park when we wanted to play, and some grown-up had to go with us."

"I sort of remember," whispered Lawrence, who was only four when they moved. The insistency came back into his voice. "But you were afraid of the dark?"

"Yeah." Dale actually couldn't remember being afraid of the dark in their apartment, but he didn't want Lawrence to feel like a total sissy.

"And of the closet?"

"We had a real closet then," said Dale. He glanced over at the corner closet made of yellow-painted pine.

"But you were afraid of it?"

"I don't know. I don't remember. Why are you afraid of this one?"

Lawrence didn't answer at once. He seemed to hunker deeper in the bedclothes. "Something makes noises in it," he whispered after a while.

"This old house has mice, stupid. You know Mom and Dad are always setting traps." It was Dale's job to dump the traps and he hated it. Frequently at night he could hear the scurrying in the walls even up here on the second floor.

"It's not mice." There was no doubt in Lawrence's voice, although he sounded sleepy.

"How do you know?" Despite himself, Dale felt a chill at what his brother had just said. "How do you know it's not mice? What you think it is, some sort of monster?"

"Not mice," whispered Lawrence, on the verge of sleep. "Same thing that's under the bed sometimes."

"There's nothing under the bed," snapped Dale, tired of the conversation. "Except dustballs."

Instead of continuing the conversation, Lawrence extended his hand across the short space between the beds. "Please?" His voice was dreamy, slurred with sleep. Lawrence's sleeve was halfway up his forearm because his favorite Roy Rogers pajamas were too small for him but he refused to wear anything else.

Sometimes Dale refused to hold his brother's hand-after all, they were both way too old for that-but this night it was all right. Dale realized that he needed the reassurance himself.

"G'night," he whispered, expecting no answer. "Pleasant dreams."

"Glad you're not afraid of stuff," Lawrence whispered back. His voice was from another place, filtered by the veil of sleep.

Dale lay with his left hand holding Lawrence's, feeling how small his brother's fingers still seemed. When he closed his eyes, he saw the muzzle of C. J. Congden's .22 pointed at his face and he lurched awake, his heart pounding.

Dale knew that there were still darknesses he was afraid of. Only these were real fears, real threats. During the coming weeks he'd have to be extra careful to stay away from C. J.

and Archie.

At that moment, Dale realized that the game they'd been playing hunting for Tubby Cooke and following Roon and the others around was finished. At least as far as he was concerned it was over. It was silly and it was going to get someone hurt.

There weren't any mysteries in Elm Haven-no Nancy Drew or Joe Hardy adventures with secret passages and clever clues-just a bunch of assholes like C. J. and his old man who could really hurt you if you got in their way. Jim Harlen had probably already broken his arm and stuff because of their stupid sneaking around. Dale had gotten the feeling that afternoon that Mike and Kevin were tired of the whole thing too.

Much later, Lawrence sighed and rolled over in his sleep, still clutching Teddy but releasing Dale's hand. Dale rolled over on his right side, beginning to drift off. Beyond the screens on the two windows, leaves rustled on the big oak and crickets played their mindless tunes in the grass. The last of the evening glow was long gone from the window, but a few fireflies sent signals against the blackness of branches.