“Who are you?” he asked.
The boy squirmed, tried to free himself.
“Where are you from?” Salsbury demanded, gripping him so tightly that he gasped.
The boy kicked him in the shin. Hard.
For an instant Salsbury’s whole world was reduced to a bright bolt of pain that shot from his ankle to his thigh, coruscated in his bones. Howling, wincing, he almost fell.
‘Wrenching loose, the boy ran toward the sink, away from the table, intent on getting around Salsbury.
Salsbury stumbled after him, cursing. He grabbed at the boy’s shirt, hooked it with his fingers, lost hold of it in the same second, tripped and fell.
If the little bastard gets away.
“Bob!” Panic. “Stop him.” Hysteria. “Kill him. For God’s sake, kill him!”
The canary cage was on the lawn by the kitchen window.
Rya heard Buster chattering-and then she heard someone shouting in the house.
Tat-tat-tat-tat…
Salsbury got up.
Sick. Scared.
The naked woman wept.
Crazily, he thought of the refrain from the rhyme that went with a child’s game that he had once played: all fall down.. all fall down. . . all fall down…
Thorp blocked the door.
The boy tried to dodge him.
“Kill him”
Thorp caught the intruder and drove him backwards, knocked him against the electric range with devastating force, clutched him by the throat, and pounded his head into the stainless steel brightwork that ringed the four burners. A frying pan fell to the floor with a clang! As if he were a machine, an automaton, Thorp hammered the boy’s head against the metal edge until he felt the skull give way. When blood sprayed across the wall behind the range and streamed from the boy’s nostrils, the big man let go, stepped back as the body crumpled at his feet.
Jeremy was crying.
“Stop that,” Salsbury said sharply.
The boy stopped, reluctantly.
On his way to the bloodied child, Salsbury saw a girl in the open door. She was staring at the blood, and she seemed mesmerized by the sight. He started toward her.
She looked up, dazed.
“I am the key.”
She turned and fled.
Salsbury ran to the door-but when he got there, she was already gone around the corner of the house, out of sight.
PART TWO: Terror
1
Friday, August 26, 1977
9:45 A.M.
RYA SAT IN THE FRONT SEAT of the station wagon between Paul and Jenny, silent and unmoving, gripped by what appeared to be fear and by anger as well. Her hands were curled into solid little fists in her lap. Beneath her summer tan she was ashen. Fine beads of perspiration were strung along her hairline. She pressed her lips together like, the halves of a vise, partly to keep them from trembling, partly as a sign of her extreme anger, frustration, and determination to prove herself right.
Although she had never lied to him about anything serious, Paul couldn’t believe the story she had told them minutes ago. She had seen something odd at the Thorp house. He was fairly certain of that. However, she had surely misinterpreted what she had seen. When she burst in upon Sam, Jenny, and him at the store, her tears and horror had been genuine; of that there was absolutely no doubt. But Mark dead? Unthinkable. Beaten to death by Bob Thorp, the chief of police? Ridiculous. If she wasn’t lying-well, then she was at least terribly confused.
“It’s t-t-true, Daddy. It’s true! I swear to Cod it’s true. They they k-k-killed him. They did. Mr. Thorp did. The other man t-told Mr. Thorp to k-kill, and he did. He kept b-b-banging Mark’s head. . . his head.. . banging it against the stove. It was awful. B-banging it . . . over and over again . . . and all the blood. . . Oh, God, Daddy, it’s crazy but it’s true!”
It was crazy.
And it couldn’t be true.
Yet when she first came into the store-breathing hard, half-choking and half-crying, babbling as if she were in a fever, so unlike herself-he felt an icy hand on the back of his neck. As she told her improbable story, the glacial fingers lingered. And they were still there.