he two younger kids were standing by the kitchen with their arms around each other, looking to Laurie like an illustration from a Grimm's fairytale. Lissa was crying. Brian was keeping a stiff upper lip, at least so far, but he was pale and there were purple pouches under his eyes. 'He'll spank us,' Brian said to Trent. 'And he spanks hard, too.'

'Nope,' Trent said. They looked at him hopefully but dubiously. Lew had, after all, promised spankings; even Trent was not to be spared this painful indignity. 'But, Trent...' Lissa began.

'Listen to me,' Trent said, pulling a chair out from the table and sitting on it backward in front of the two little ones. 'Listen carefully, and don't you miss a single word. It's important, and none of us can screw up.'

They stared at him silently with their big green-blue eyes.

'As soon as school is out, I want you two to come right home... but only as far as the corner.

The corner of Maple and Walnut. Have you got that?'

'Ye-ess,' Lissa said hesitantly. 'But why, Trent?' 'Never mind,' Trent said. His own eyes — C also green-blue — C were sparkling, but Laurie thought it wasn't a good-humored sparkle; she thought, in fact, that there was something dangerous about it. 'Just be there. Stand by the mailbox. You have to be there by three o'clock, three-fifteen at the latest. Do you understand?'

'Yes,' Brian said, speaking for both of them. 'We got it.'

'Laurie and I will already be there, or we'll be there right after you get there.'

'How are we going to do that, Trent?' Laurie asked. 'We don't even get out of school until three o'clock, and I have band practice, and the bus takes...'

'We're not going to school today,' Trent said.

'No?' Laurie was nonplussed.

Lissa was horrified. 'Trent!' she said. 'You can't do that! That's... that's... hookey!'

'And about time, too,' Trent said grimly. 'Now you two get ready for school. Just remember: the corner of Maple and Walnut at three o'clock, three-fifteen at the absolute latest. And whatever you do, don't come all the way home.' He stared at Brian and Lissa so fiercely that they looked back with frightened dismay, drawing together for mutual comfort once again. Even Laurie was frightened. 'Wait for us, but don't you dare come back into this house,' he said. 'Not for anything.'

When the little kids were gone, Laurie seized his shirt and demanded to know what was going on.

'It has something to do with what's growing in the house, I know it does, and if you want me to play hookey and help you, you better tell me what it is, Trent Bradbury!' 'Mellow out, I'll tell you,' Trent said. He carefully removed his shirt from Laurie's tight grip. 'And quiet down. I don't want you to wake up Mom. She'll make us go to school, and that's no good.'

'Well, what is it? Tell me!'

'Come on downstairs,' Trent said. 'I want to show you something.'

He led her downstairs to the wine-cellar.

Trent wasn't completely sure Laurie would ride along with what he had in mind — C it seemed awfully... well, final... even to him — C but she did. If it had just been a matter of enduring a spanking from 'Daddy Lew,' he didn't think she would have, but Laurie had been as deeply affected by the sight of her mother lying senseless on the living-room floor as Trent had been by his stepfather's unfeeling reaction to it.

'Yeah,' Laurie said bleakly. 'I think we have to.' She was looking at the blinking numbers on the arm of the chair. They now read

07:49:21

The wine-cellar was no longer a wine-cellar at all. It stank of wine, true enough, and there were the piles of shattered green glass on the floor amid the twisted ruins of their father's wine-racks, but it now looked like a madman's version of the control-bridge on the Starship Enterprise. Dials whirled. Digital read-outs flickered, changed, flickered again. Lights blinked and flashed.

'Yeah,' Trent said. 'I think so, too. That son of a bitch, shouting at her like that!'

'Trent, don't.' 'He's a jerk! A bastard! A dickhead!'

But this was just a foul-mouthed version of whistling past the graveyard, and both of them knew it. Looking at the strange agglomeration of instruments and controls made Trent feel almost sick with doubt and unease. He was reminded of a book his dad had read him when he was a child, a Mercer Mayer story where a creature called a Stamp-Eating Trollusk had popped a little girl into an envelope and mailed her To Whom It May Concern. Wasn't that pretty much what he was proposing they do to Lew Evans?

'If we don't do something, he'll kill her,' Laurie said in a low voice. 'Huh?' Trent whipped his head around so fast it hurt his neck, but Laurie wasn't looking at him. She was looking at the red numbers of the countdown. They reflected backward off the lenses of the spectacles she wore on schooldays. She seemed almost hypnotized, unaware Trent was looking at her, perhaps even unaware that he was there. 'Not on purpose,' she said. 'He might even be sad. For a while, anyway. Because I think he does love her, sort of, and she loves him. You know — C sort of. But he'll make her worse and worse. She'll get sick all the time, and then... one day...' She broke off and looked at him, and something in her face scared Trent worse than anything in their strange, changing, sneaking house had been able to do. 'Tell me, Trent,' she said. Her hand grasped his arm. It was very cold. 'Tell me how we're going to do it.'

They went up to Lew's study together. Trent was prepared to ransack the place if that was what it took, but they found the key in the top drawer, tucked neatly into an envelope with the word study printed on it in Lew's small, neat, somehow hemorrhoidal printing. Trent pocketed it. They left the house together just as the shower on the second floor went on, meaning their mom was up.

They spent the day in the park. Although neither of them spoke of it, it was the longest day either of them had ever lived through. Twice they saw the beat-cop and hid in the public toilets until he was gone. This was no time to be caught playing truant and bundled off to school. At two-thirty, Trent gave Laurie a quarter and walked her to the phone booth on the east side of the park.

'Do I have to?' she asked. 'I hate to scare her, especially after last night.' 'Do you want her in the house when whatever happens, happens?' Trent asked. Laurie dropped the quarter into the telephone with no further protest.