“It must have been a carryover hallucination from the dream,” she told Perry. “Hypnogogic imagery. That happens to people. But I was scared, and covered my eyes. I thought I heard it buzzing. God, I must have been still half asleep—and then I knew it was gone. I just sensed it. I uncovered my eyes, and sure enough, the hallucination was gone. It really shook me up. I got up, then; I wanted to get some air. And I saw the front door was open. I don’t know how that happened; I should have asked Sandra, maybe she got up and went out first, for some reason. I went out on the front porch, and I saw the broken glass on the lawn. I went into the yard and looked up, and Tetty’s window was broken. I got Sandra up and we ran upstairs. The door was still locked from the outside; that padlock, she puts it on to keep her in if she breaks loose. She unlocked it and we found Tetty. And the windows were still locked.”

  “Christ.” He tapped the rim of his cup until he could see from the look on Aunt June’s face that it annoyed her. He stopped, said, “I’ll bet Tetty managed it herself, somehow. I figure she wanted to shake everyone up. Especially Sandra. Maybe she threw something through the window from the bed. Okay, you didn’t find anything on the porch or the lawn, but someone might have picked it up. You might have missed it. And then she gouged her eye out with something, in a fit of—you know. Rage.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s a pretty good theory but—” She broke off and looked at the ceiling. “Did you hear a buzzing sound just now?”

  Perry stiffened. “What?’

  “It was behind my head.” She turned in her seat, looked toward the kitchen sink. Perry heard it now. And it got louder. Louder than a fly. And the sound seemed to travel, coming from first one end of the room, then another, like the balance shifting on stereo speakers. But they could see nothing flying past.

  “Must be something in the walls,” Perry said. Not believing it. The buzzing circled once more—and then it was gone. To be replaced by another noise: a rattling at the living-room windows. Perry stood, wincing; the room spun a little; his headache throbbed. He walked stiffly into the living room. There was a piece of dusty, transparent plastic stretched over the living-room window on the outside, probably left over from the previous winter; a feeble attempt at insulation. The dawn light made the window a vertical rectangle of ashen gray—except for the blot of black in the upper right corner. Something vaguely oval, like a cat with its legs tucked under it seen from beneath. Probably just a patch of some kind. So why was he staring at it? It moved, just a little. The plastic creased under the oval blot, as if it were gripping the surface more tightly. He heard the buzzing again, from the windowsill. He stared at the sill, which held a photograph of Tetty with her mother, and the small ceramic figures of Prince Charles and Lady Diana posing together in wedding regalia. Only, Sandra had stuck a little skirt in tinfoil on Prince Charles, to make fun. The figures began to move …

  … to shiver, rattling, moving across the sill on the ceramic base, as if dancing together; moving faster, and faster, sliding toward the photograph. The framed photo began to slide, too; the photo and the ceramics clapped together with a crunch; the figures shattered, Lady Diana’s head falling to one side, Charles’s head to the other, rolling away like marbles. The glass over the photo was cracked; it lay on its back. The buzzing had accompanied this sliding, cracking; it had taken two seconds. Now the buzzing receded … Gone. The blot against the corner of the window was gone, too. “I’m drunk,” Perry said to himself, aloud, and then again, with less conviction, “I am. I’m drunk.” He was aware that Aunt June had come up behind him. She was staring at the window. “So,” he began, swallowing. “Did you see it? The things breaking?”

  “No. I heard it, though. The semi-trucks.”

  “What?”

  “Big semi-trucks. They barrel through here, Sandra told me. Right in front of the house, one or two a night. Some kind of shortcut some of them take. Makes vibrations that rattle things around. Must’ve made these things fall.”

  The sound of a car pulling up in front of the house. They both looked toward the front door. A car door slammed with a hollow metallic sound. Boot steps on the walk. A creaking as someone moved the broken screen door so he could bang on the inner one. Aunt June, moving slowly, opened the door.

  It was the big, red-faced, sad-eyed sheriff, framed against the blue-gray dawn light. “’Morning,” he said, sounding western.

  “No, it isn’t really,” said Aunt June. “Not a good one.”

  “I didn’t say good morning,” he said, without a trace of humor. “We have us another little problem.”

  “What’s that?” Perry asked, standing just behind Aunt June. The sheriff glanced at him.

  “Now who’s this?”

  “My nephew Perry.”

  “I’ll want to talk to him, later. What happened, your nephew asks me. Well, a little girl has been drowned in Chemeka Lake. Just a few hours ago, we think. Marks on her make us think someone drowned her. Held her under. Thing is, her brother claims he saw Tetty talking to her, at the back door, though what that little girl—just a first-grader—what she’d be doing up at that hour …”

  Perry wasn’t listening, now. He was staring at the front window, at the plastic over the window, where he’d thought he’d seen something clinging, a few minutes before. An outline had been impressed into the plastic there. As if someone had pressed their face against it, until the plastic took the impression of their features. It was a doll-sized face, and blurred. But recognizable.

  4

  Wendy Marsteller, shivering a little in the morning chill, stepped off the condo’s porch and walked across the unfinished lawn to the new white sidewalk, wearing her bathrobe over a slip and bare feet. She held her two month-old baby, Billy, tightly against her small chest to keep him warm and to stifle his yowlings. He’d awakened her a few minutes before, at six-thirty, yelling for his bottle. He began to demand it once more, with an amazingly loud cry for such a small creature, and his howling mingled in something like harmony with the siren of the ambulance, pulling away from the curb down the street. The ambulance’s approach had brought Wendy to the sidewalk; nothing much happened in the Chemeka Village housing project, and Wendy was grateful for any break in the monotony.

  Two blocks down, the cluster of people at the lake’s edge began to break up; two of them stood together on a concrete abutment looking at the lake. Now and then they gestured toward the cold, knife-blue expanse of water. The lake was glassy-still that morning; the far bank sparkled where the sunlight reached through the thinner stands of pine. Nearer, the lake was still in shadow. A fish eagle wheeled over the lake’s middle, about five hundred yards away. The pines and Joshua trees around the housing project looked more blue than green in the morning light. Wendy could see the blackened lump on the far bank where they’d had their lake party the night before.

  Evan had been angry when she’d come home a little tipsy; he’d said it was stupid to take Billy outdoors, late at night. But he’d gone to visit his brother after dinner and they’d probably gotten wrecked on his brother Danny’s homegrown pot—and she’d been left all alone. And a person gets tired of TV. She smiled, thinking that it was more entertaining watching Lois throw herself at that new guy Perry than watching fake romance on TV. “Lois is a bad girl, Billy, don’t you think so?” she asked the baby absently as she started back to the house. The baby had ceased crying and responded by making that funny piggish sound he sometimes made, making her think of the piglet baby in Alice in Wonderland. “My little piglet,” she said, glancing once more at the place where the ambulance had been.

  She stopped, staring. Now that the crowd was gone, she could see Mr. and Mrs. Stiggins on their front lawn; she knew it was them because Mr. Stiggins was so tall, and long-necked, and his wife so short and round. At first she thought they were arguing, then she saw him take her in his arms, and Wendy realized he was comforting her. Mrs. Stiggins sagged; she seemed to have lost the strength of her legs.

  “It must have been one of her kids got drowned in the lake, in that ambulance, Billy,” Wendy murmured. “I wonder, was it that boy Conway, or maybe his little sister Ella. Gee, that’s awful—they had that problem with Conway getting poisoned by what’s-her-name a few months ago and now this. What do you think of that, Billy?” He began to whimper. “Okay, okay, I’ll get your bottle.”

  She was glad to get into the warmth of the house; it was cold outside in just a bathrobe and slip. “But it’s going to be too damn hot everywhere later today, Billy. Oh, your bottle’s nice and warm now.” She yawned, felt a pang of weariness, the throb of an oncoming headache. Her drinking catching up to her. “Stayed up too late, Billy. And then you wake me at six-thirty. Why can’t babies eat three square meals a day like everyone else?” The baby coughed at the same time he drank, and some of the milk found its way into his lungs. He began to sputter, to yowl and gag. In an outburst of irritability she shook him, harder than she should have, making his head wobble on his neck; he looked shocked for a moment, then began to howl twice as loud as before. “Oh dammit, I’m sorry, Billy.” She hugged him, patting his back until he quieted. “Mommy’s got what they call premenstrual tension. I read about it in Woman’s Day. I’m not myself. You forgive me?” She kissed him and was rewarded with a gurgle. “Here, finish your bottle, my little piglet.” She was hungry herself, and wished he’d finish so she could eat. He took his damn time about it, until her arm ached from holding the bottle. At last, she got him fed and back to sleep in his plastic bed basket.

  “I’ll never get back to sleep now,” she told herself. In some ways, Evan had it a little harder; he had to be out of the house by six to get to work on time, commuting an hour to get to the lumber processing site. But then, she reflected, making herself a bowl of Malt-o-Meal, he uses that as an excuse to give me hell for everything. How hard he works, how he didn’t want the job. Well, he didn’t have to take it. It was simply a matter of exchange; her dad had offered to arrange the condo for them in exchange for Evan’s taking on the forest maintenance engineer apprenticeship. Evan had wanted to study architecture. He should have thought of that before he got me pregnant, Wendy thought. Saying he was sure it would be safe, talking her into it, and then refusing to consider an abortion. Wendy had just turned eighteen three months before. She’d had to leave school. Both sets of parents had insisted they get married. “Too young,” Wendy muttered, turning on the radio. She sang falsetto on the choruses of a Beyoncé song till she glanced at the clock, realized it was time for an early morning talk show. She turned off the radio, turned on the TV, and melted into the programming. It was two hours before she came up for air: someone was knocking on the back door. She hoped it was Lois.

  It was. “Hi, kiddo,” Lois said, a little breathlessly. She’d just come to the end of a morning jog; she wore jogging shorts and a Nike ski equipment T-shirt. “You like my new jogging shoes? That’s leather, on the side.”

  “How can you get up and jog after drinking so much last night and staying out until four with that guy?” Wendy asked, pouring Lois a glass of Tang.

  “That’s one reason I’m jogging. Makes me feel better. Sweats out the hangover. I am tired, though…and you know what?” She scratched a nipple through the Nike shirt. “I got a mosquito bite on a nipple and it itches like a bitch.”

  Wendy giggled. “I can’t be-lieve you! Mosquito bites on your ni-pples!” Lois cracked up, then covered her eyes, pretending shame. “I know. It’s terrible.”

  “You should be ashamed. For having fun when I can’t.”

  Lois looked up. “Hey, did I leave my purse over here the other day? Not the big canvas one, the little black plastic one.”

  “Yeah, here it is. Watch, you’ll forget it again.” They sat on the brown vinyl living room couch; out of habit they kept their eyes on the TV’s perpetual dance of brightly colored banalities, never taking it in consciously.

  “I couldn’t sleep very well,” Lois confided. “I kept thinking about Perry.”

  “He’s really cute,” Wendy said obligingly, knowing it was an exaggeration. “And he plays that thing—what is it?”

  “Mandolin.”

  “I like the way he plays.”

  “So do I,” Lois said. “He plays real nice.”

  “Lo-is you’re ter-rible!”

  They laughed, and then Wendy lowered her voice to ask, “No, seriously, did you guys really make it?” Lois nodded. “Was it good for real?”

  “Yeah. And not because he studied the Kama Sutra or something. Because we really like each other and he’s a tender guy. Only I know I shouldn’t have practically dragged him into the sleeping bag like that. It was our first date, for God’s sake, where is Modern Woman’s sense of decorum? But, uh—no seriously—I knew he might leave town soon and I knew after I talked to him for five minutes we were going to, eventually, so I figured—”

  “Say no more! All is understood! I hear your confession and give you ten thousand Hail Marys. Oh God, I’ve got to take some Motrin or something. You want some?”

  “Yeah, okay.” After Wendy returned from the kitchen with the Motrin and more Tang, Lois went on, “I’m scared he’s going to go back to San Diego and forget about me. But he says he has friends in Portland, and I’m going to go to school there, so maybe—I don’t know—I wonder how I can feel so strongly about a guy I hardly know. But I do.”

  “It happens that way.” Wendy suddenly felt sad, thinking that she’d never really felt anything that strong about Evan. Lois’s new romance made her feel a little envious. She changed the subject. “What happened down the street at the Stigginses’ place, do you know? I saw an ambulance and—”

  “You didn’t hear?” Lois lowered her voice. “That little girl Ella was drowned. Or strangled and thrown in the water. They think she was murdered, I heard. And her big brother says he saw—oh God. I guess I’m blurry in the head today … I just realized that it’s that girl that Perry’s aunt is taking care of or analyzing or something. She’s supposed to be the one who killed Ella. God, it must be weird for Perry. And that’ll probably mean he leaves sooner …”

  “That girl Tetty? Yeah, she’s crazy. I never knew her much.”

  “She never seemed crazy to me. Just shy. But—she shot the sheriff.” Both girls grinned at that. “Oh shit, what are we smiling about! That poor little girl.” Dutifully, Lois and Wendy dropped their smiles, gazed sadly at the TV, looking at the flow of images the way people used to watch the clouds pass or a stream rush. The baby began to mewl, then gave out great gulping wet howls.

  “Oh God,” Wendy said, getting up. “He needs to be changed.” After a few minutes she returned from the extra bedroom they used as a nursery, carrying Billy, who was raptly ogling the wallpaper, the floor, everything but what moved, his pale blue eyes always slightly crossed. She held him on her lap, bouncing him a little to keep him occupied, and sighed.

  “You look fed up or something,” Lois said.

  “Oh God, it’s nothing new. I just keep thinking, What am I doing here, with Evan and a baby and nothing to make me feel like I’m—I don’t know how to explain. I mean, I love Billy.” She kissed the baby as if to confirm this. “But you’ve got to have something for yourself in your life. And I’m just eighteen and everyone else is going to go to college or making a career somewhere—”

  “Having a baby doesn’t end everything. It’s just a setback. Lots of career women have children.”

  “Yeah but …” Wendy was not in the mood to be consoled. “But then there’s Evan. I don’t think he’d ever let me do anything else. He feels so martyred all the time. Like I talked him into getting married.” She covered Billy’s ears to whisper, “I wanted an abortion. Evan acts like it’s my fault he had to work and study forest maintenance and lumber processing because it was my dad who owns the housing project and who got him the apprenticeship. I mean, if you ask me, that’s not a bad deal, a house and a job just like that. Most people would be grateful. And lately he won’t even help me take care of the baby.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding. He claims that working all day and then having to study forest maintenance, he’s too tired to do it. But he doesn’t study much. He gets stoned with his brother and their friends and plays video games at that stupid bar. And then I’m alone and bored all night. I bet you’re sorry you asked why I looked depressed.”

  Wendy had forgotten that Lois hadn’t actually asked. “No, Wendy, hey come on, I’m your friend. Listen, I think you should stand up to Evan and make him take care of the baby. You do lots of work too, around the house. You should go to the community college part-time this fall. You can get a baby-sitter.”

  “Maybe. I doubt if he’d—” She shrugged.

  “Hey, lighten up. I got to go take a shower, I smell like the girl’s locker room at the Olympics. I’ll call you later. You think about what I said.”

  “Bye.” Wendy remained sitting, gazing blankly at the TV, as Lois left. Gradually she began to get caught up in the soap opera dialogue as Billy went to sleep on her lap. The last soap finished at eleven-thirty. She roused herself, blinking, looking around. She spotted Lois’s black plastic purse on a kitchen chair. Wendy chuckled. “She’s so absentminded. Forgot it again.”

  Rather than spend the rest of the afternoon alone except for Billy—and the TV—she decided to take the purse over to Lois’s. That was a mile away, too far to carry the baby in her arms, so she’d need the backpack frame with its baby carrier harness. She stood, stretched. Where was the damn thing? Oh. The basement. She made a face. She didn’t like going down in basements. Evan insisted on storing the harness there because “it’s always underfoot when it’s upstairs.” As if the harness crawled by itself just to get in his way.