The house had a still, hot air that scared him. It was as if gunpowder had been spilled in every corner, and people he could not see were standing by to light unseen fuses. He imagined the clock in the wine-cellar ticking relentlessly away, now reading 00:19:06
What if Lew was late?
No time to worry about that now.
Trent raced up to the third floor through the still, combustible air. He imagined he could feel the house stirring now, coming alive as the countdown neared its conclusion. He tried to tell himself that imagination was all it was, but part of him knew better.
He went into Lew’s study, opened two or three file-cabinets and desk drawers at random, and threw the papers he found all over the floor. This took only a few moments, but he was just finishing when he heard the Porsche coming up the street. Its engine wasn’t snarling today; Lew had wound it up to a scream.
Trent stepped out of the office and into the shadows of the third-floor hallway, where they had drilled the first holes what seemed like a century ago. He rammed his hand into his pocket for the key, and his pocket was empty except for an old, crumpled lunch-ticket.
I must have lost it running up the street. It must have bounced right out of my pocket.
He stood there, sweating and frozen, as the Porsche squealed into the driveway. Its engine cut out. The driver’s door opened and slammed shut. Lew’s footsteps ran for the back door. Thunder crumped like an artillery shell in the sky, a stroke of bright lightning forked through the gloom, and, somewhere deep in the house, a powerful motor turned over, uttered a low, muffled bark, and then began to hum.
Jesus, oh dear Jesus, what do I do? What CAN I do? He’s bigger than me! If I try to hit him over the head, he’ll —
He had slipped his left hand into his other pocket, and his thoughts broke off as it touched the old-fashioned metal teeth of the key. At some point during the long afternoon in the park, he must have transferred it from one pocket to the other without even being aware of it.
Gasping, heart galloping in his stomach and throat as well as in his chest, Trent faded back down the hall to the luggage-closet, stepped inside, and pulled the accordion-style doors most of the way shut in front of him.
Lew was galumphing up the stairs, bawling his wife’s name over and over at the top of his voice. Trent saw him appear, hair standing up in spikes (he must have been running a hand
through it as he drove), his tie askew, big drops of sweat standing out on his broad, intelligent forehead, eyes squinted down to furious little slits.
‘Catherine!’ he bawled, and ran down the hall into the office.
Before he could even get all the way in, Trent was out of the luggage-closet and running soundlessly back down the hall. He would have just one chance. If he missed the keyhole . . . if the tumblers failed to turn at the first twist of the key . . .
If either of those things happens, I’ll fight with him, he had time to think. I can’t send him alone, I’ll make damn sure to take him with me.
He grabbed the door and banged it shut so hard that a little film of dust shot out of the cracks between the hinges. He caught one glimpse of Lew’s startled face. Then the key was in the lock.
He twisted it, and the bolt shot across an instant before Lew struck the door.
‘Hey!’ Lew shouted. ‘Hey, you little bastard, what are you doing? Where’s Catherine? Let me out of here!’
The knob twisted fruitlessly back and forth. Then it stopped, and Lew rained a fusillade of blows on the door.
‘ Let me out of here right now Trent Bradbury before you get the worst beating of your goddamned life!’
Trent backed slowly across, the hall. When his shoulders struck the far wall, he gasped. The key to the study, which he had removed from the keyhole without even thinking about it, dropped from his fingers and thumped to the faded hall-runner between his feet. Now that it was done, reaction set in. The world began to look wavery, as if he were under water, and he had to fight to keep from fainting himself. Only now, with Lew locked in, his mother sent off on a wild-goose chase, and the other kids safely tucked away behind Mrs. Redland’s overgrown yew hedge, did he realize that he had never really expected it would work at all. If ‘Daddy Lew’ was surprised to find himself locked in, Trent Bradbury was absolutely amazed.
The doorknob of the study twisted back and forth in short sharp half-circles.
‘LET ME OUT, GODDAMMIT!’
‘I’ll let you out at quarter of four, Lew,’ Trent said in an uneven, trembling voice, and then a little giggle escaped him. ‘If you’re still here at quarter of four, that is.’
Then, from downstairs: ‘Trent? Trent, are you all right?’
Dear God, that was Laurie.
‘Are you, Trent?’
And Lissa!
‘Hey, Trent! Y’okay?’
And Brian.
Trent looked at his watch and was horrified to see it was 3:31 . . . going on 3:32. And suppose his watch was slow?
‘Get out!’ he screamed at them, plunging down the hallway toward the stairs. ‘Get out of this house!’
The third-floor hallway seemed to stretch out before him like taffy; the faster he ran, the farther it seemed to stretch ahead of him. Lew rained blows on the door and curses on the air; thunder boomed; and, from deep within the house came the ever-more-urgent sound of machines waking to life.
He reached the stairwell at last and hurried down, his upper body so far out in front of his legs that he almost fell. Then he was whirling around the newel post and hurtling down the flight of
stairs between the second floor and the first, toward where his brother and two sisters waited, looking up at him.
‘Out!’ he screamed, grabbing them, shoving them toward the open door and the stormy blackness outside. ‘Quick!’
‘Trent, what’s happening?’ Brian asked. ‘What’s happening to the house? It’s shaking!’
It was, too — a deep vibration that rose up through the floor and rattled Trent’s eyeballs in their sockets. Plaster-dust began to sift down into his hair.
‘No time! Out! Fast! Laurie, help me!’
Trent swept Brian into his arms. Laurie grabbed Lissa under the arms of her dress and stumbled out the door with her.
Thunder bammed. Lightning twisted across the sky. The wind that had been gasping earlier now began to roar like a dragon.
Trent heard an earthquake building under the house. As he ran out through the door with Brian, he saw electric-blue light, so bright it left afterimages on his eyes for almost an hour (he reflected later he was lucky not to have been blinded), shoot out through the narrow cellar windows. It cut across the lawn in rays that looked almost solid. He heard the glass break. And, just as he passed through the door, he felt the house rising under his feet.
He jumped down the front steps and grabbed Laurie’s arm. They stumble-staggered down the walk to the street, which was now as black as night with the coming of the storm.
There they turned back and watched it happen.
The house on Maple Street seemed to gather itself. It no longer looked straight and solid; it seemed to jitter, like a comic-strip picture of a man on a pogo-stick. Huge cracks ran out from it, not only in the cement walk but in the earth surrounding it. The lawn pulled apart in huge pie-shaped turves of grass. Roots strained blackly upward below the green, and the whole front yard seemed to become bubble-shaped, as if it were straining to hold the house before which it had spread so long.
Trent cast his eyes up to the third floor, where the light in Lew’s study still shone. Trent thought the sound of breaking glass had come — was still coming — from up there, then dismissed the idea as imagination — how could he hear anything in all that racket? It was only a year later that Laurie told him she was quite sure she had heard their stepfather screaming from up there.
The foundation of the house first crumbled, then cracked, and then sundered with a croak of exploding mortar. Brilliant cold blue fire lanced out. The children covered their eyes and staggered back. The engines screamed. The earth pulled up and up in a last agonized holding action . . . and then let go. Suddenly the house was a foot above the ground, resting on a pad of bright blue fire.