“For what?” She turned on her stooL facing him more directly.
“We don’t have enough ammunition for the guns “Both have full clips.”
“Besides, I want to get a shotgun.”
“Hatch! Even if he comes, and he probably won’t, it’s not going to be a
war. A man breaks into your house, it’s a matter of a shot or two, not
a pitched battle.”
Standing before her, he was stone-faced and adamant. “The right shotgun
is the best of all home-defensive weapons. You don’t have to be a good
shot. The spread gets him. I know just which one I want.
It’s a short-barreled, pistol-grip with’ She put one hand flat against
his chest in a “stop” gesture. “You’re scaring the crap out of me.”
“Good. If we’re scared, we’re likely to be more alert, less careless.”
“If you really think there’s danger, then we shouldn’t have Regina
here.”
“We can’t send her back to St. Thomas’s,” he said at once, as if he had
already considered that.
“Only until this is resolved.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Regina’s too sensitive, you know that, too
fragile, too quick to interpret everything as rejection. We might not
be able to make her understand-and then she might not give us a second
chance.”
“I’m sure she-”
“Besides, we’d have to tell the orphanage something.
If we concocted some lie-and I can’t imagine what it would be-they’d
know we were stalling them. They’d wonder why. Pretty soon they’d
start second-guessing their approval of us. And if we told them the
truth, started jabbering about psychic visions and telepathic bonds with
psycho killers, they’d write us off as a couple of nuts, never give her
back to us.”
He had thought it out.
Lindsey knew what he said was true.
He kissed her lightly again. “I’ll be back in an hour. Two at most.”
When he had gone, she stared at the gun for a while.
Then she angrily away from it and picked up her pencil. She tore off a
page from the big drawing tablet. The new page was blank. White and
clean. It stayed that way.
Nervously-chewing her lip, she looked at the window. No web. No
spider. Just the glass pane. Treetops and blue skies beyond.
She had never realized until now that a pristine blue sky could be The
two screened vents- in the garage attic were provided for ventilation.
The overhanging roof and the density of the screen mesh did not allow
much penetration–by the sun, but some wan light entered with the vague
currents of cool morning air.
Vassago was untroubled by the light, in part because his nest was formed
by piles of boxes and furniture that spared him a direct view of the
vents. The air smelled of dry wood, aging cardboard.
He was having difficulty getting to sleep, so he tried to relax by
imagining what a fine fire might be fueled by the contents of the garage
attic. His rich imagination made it easy to envision sheets of red
flames, spirals of orange and yellow, and the sharp pop of sap bubbles
exploding in burning rafters. Cardboard and packing paper and
combustible memorabilia disappearing in silent rising curls of smoke,
with a papery crackling like the manic applause of millions in some dark
and distant theater. Though the conflagration was in his mind, he had
to squint his eyes against the phantom light.
Yet the fantasy of fire did not end him-perhaps because the attic would
be filled merely with burning things, mere lifeless objects. Where was
the fun in that?
Eighteen had burned to death been trampled-made the Haunted House on the
night that Tod Ledderbeck had perished in the cavern of the Millipede.
There had been a fire.
He had escaped all suspicion in the rocket jockey’s death and the
disaster at the Haunted House, but he’d been shaken by the repercussions
of his night of games. The deaths at Fantasy World were at the top of
the news for at least two weeks, and were the primary topic of
conversation around school for maybe a month. The park closed
temporarily, reopened to poor business, closed again for refurbishing,
reopened to continued low attendance, and eventually succumbed two years