From a Buick 8(110)

'Now pull, goddammit,' Huddie growled at Arky and Eddie and Steff Colucci. The Buick's purple light was flashing in his eyes. 'Pull your guts out.'

They might not have gone quite that far, but they pulled hard and we tumbled out the door like a cork coming out of a bottle, landing in a pigpile with Huddie on the bottom. Ned was panting, his face turned sideways against my neck, the skin of his cheek and forehead burning against me like embers. I could feel the wetness of his tears.

'Ow, Sarge, Christ, get your elbow outta my nose!' Huddie yelled in a muffled, furious voice.

'Shut the door!' Steff cried. 'Hurry, before something bad gets out!'

There was nothing but a few harmless bugs with green backs, but she was right, just the same. Because the light was bad enough. That flashing, stuttery purple light.

We were still tangled together on the pavement, arms pinned by knees, feet caught under torsos, Eddie now somehow tangled in the rope as well as Ned, yelling at Arky that it was around his neck, it was choking him, and Steff kneeling beside him, trying to get her fingers under one of the bright yellow loops while Ned gasped and flailed against me. There was no one to shut the door but it did slam shut and I craned my head at an angle only raw panic would permit, suddenly sure it was one of them, it had come through unseen and now it was out and maybe wanting a little payback for the one that had been slaughtered all those years ago. And I saw it, a shadow against the shed's white-painted side. Then it shifted and the shadow's owner came forward and I could see the curves of a woman's breast and hip in the dim light.

'Halfway home and I get this feeling,' Shirley said in an unsteady voice. 'This really bad feeling. I decided the cats could wait a little longer. Stop thrashing, Ned, you're making everything worse.'

Ned stilled at once. She bent down and with a single deft gesture freed Eddie from the loop around his neck. 'There, ya baby,' she said, and then her legs gave out. Shirley Pasternak sprawled on the hottop and began to cry.

We got Ned into the barracks and flushed his eyes in the kitchen. The skin around them was puffed and red, the whites badly bloodshot, but he said his vision was basically okay. When Huddie held up two fingers, that was what the kid reported. Ditto four.

'I'm sorry,' he said in a thick, clogged voice. 'I don't know why I did that. I mean, I do, I meant to, but not now . . . not tonight ? '

'Shhh,' Shirley said. She cupped more water from the tap and bathed his eyes with it. 'Don't talk.'

But he wouldn't be stopped. 'I meant to go home. To think about it, just like I said.' His swelled, horribly bloodshot eyes peered at me, then they were gone as Shirley brought up another palm filled with warm water. 'Next thing I knew I was back here again, and all I can remember thinking is "I've got to do it tonight, I've got to finish it once and for all." Then . . .'

Except he didn't know what had happened then; the rest was all a blur to him. He didn't come right out and say that, but he didn't need to. I didn't even have to see it in his bloodshot bewildered eyes. I had seen him, sitting behind the Roadmaster's steering wheel with the gas can in his lap, looking pale and stoned and lost.

'It took hold of you,' I said. 'It's always had some kind of pull, it's just never had anyone to use it on the way it could on you. When it called you, though, the rest of us heard, too. In our own ways. In any case, it's not your fault, Ned. If there's fault, it's mine.'

He straightened up from the sink, groped, took hold of my forearms. His face was dripping and his hair was plastered to his forehead. In truth he looked rather funny. Like a slapstick baptism.

Steff, who'd been watching the shed from the back door of the barracks, came over to us. 'It's dying down again. Already.'

I nodded. 'It missed its chance. Maybe its last chance.'

'To do mischief,' Ned said. 'That's what it wanted. I heard it in my head. Or, I don't know, maybe I just made that part up.'

'If you did,' I said, 'then I did, too. But there might have been more to tonight than just mischief.'

Before I could say any more, Huddie came out of the bathroom with a first-aid kit. He set it down on the counter, opened it, and took out ajar of salve. 'Put this all around your eyes, Ned. If some gets in them, don't worry. You won't hardly notice.'

We stood there, watching him put the salve around his eyes in circles that gleamed under the kitchen fluorescents. When he was done, Shirley asked him if it was any better. He nodded.

'Then come outside again,' I said. 'There's one other thing I need to tell you. I would have earlier, but the truth is I never thought of it except in passing until I actually saw you sitting in that goddam car. The shock must have kicked it loose.'

Shirley looked at me with her brow furrowed. She'd never been a mother but it was a mother's sternness I saw on her face right then. 'Not tonight,' she said. 'Can't you see this boy has had enough? One of you needs to take him home and make up some sort of story for his mother ? she always believed Curtis's, I expect she'll believe one of yours if you can manage to stay together on the details ? and then get him into bed.'

'I'm sorry, but I don't think this can wait,' I said.

She looked hard into my face and must have seen that I at least thought I was telling the truth, and so we all went back out to the smokers' bench, and as we watched the dying fireworks from the shed ? the second show of the night, although there wasn't much to this one, at least not now ? I told Ned one more story of the old days. I saw this one as you might see a scene from a play, two characters on a mostly bare stage, two characters beneath a single bright stagelight, two men sitting