I let him do it, and then I called the exec at his home in San Luis Obispo and told him he could have the painting for twenty-five hundred if he still wanted it. He did, and I shipped it UPS to the coast. And since then that voice of disappointed expectation-that cheated child’s voice that can never be satisfied with such a mild superlative as good-has fallen pretty much silent. And except for a few rumbles-like the sounds of those unseen creatures somewhere out in the foggy night-it has been pretty much silent ever since. Maybe you can tell me-why should the silencing of that childish, demanding voice seem so much like dying?
Around four o’clock Billy woke up-partially, at least-and looked around with bleary, uncomprehending eyes. «Are we still here?»
«Yeah, honey,» I said. «We are.»
He started to cry with a weak helplessness that was horrible. Amanda woke up and looked at us.
«Hey, kid,» she said, and pulled him gently to her. «Everything is going to look a little better come morning.
«No,» Billy said. «No it won’t. It won’t. It won’t.»
«Shh,» she said. Her eyes met mine over his head. «Shh, it’s past your bedtime.»
«I want my mother!»
«Yeah, you do,» Amanda said. «Of course you do.»
Billy squirmed around in her lap until he could look at me. Which he did for some time. And then slept again.
«Thanks,» I said. «He needed you.»
«He doesn’t even know me.»
«That doesn’t change it.»
«So what do you think?» she asked. Her green eyes held mine steadily. «What do you really think
«Ask me in the morning.»
«I’m asking you now.»
I opened my mouth to answer and then Ollie Weeks materialized out of the gloom like something from a horror tale. He had a flashlight with one of the ladies’ blouses over the lens, and he was pointing it toward the ceiling. It made strange shadows on his haggard face. «David,» be whispered.
Amanda looked at him, first startled, then scared again,
«Ollie, what is it?» I asked.
«David,» he whispered again. Then: «Come on. Please.»
«I don’t want to leave Billy, He just went to sleep.»
«I’ll be with him,» Amanda said. «You better go. Then, in a lower voice: «Jesus, this is never going to end.»
VIII. What Happened to the Soldiers. With Amanda. A Conversation with Dan Miller.
I went with Ollie. He was headed for the storage area. As we passed the cooler, he grabbed a beer.
«Ollie, what is it?»
«I want you to see it?»
He pushed through the double doors. They slipped shut behind us with a little backwash of air. It was cold. I didn’t like this place, not after what had happened to Norm. A part of my mind insisted on reminding me that there was still a small scrap of dead tentacle lying around someplace.
Ollie led the blouse drop from the lens of his light. He trained it overhead. At first I had an idea that someone had hung a couple of mannequins from one of the heating pipes below the ceiling. That they had hung them on piano wire or something, a kid’s Halloween trick.
Then I noticed the feet, dangling about seven inches off the cement floor. There were two piles of kicked-over cartons. I looked up at the faces and a scream began to rise in my throat because they were not the faces of department- store dummies. Both heads were cocked to the side, as if appreciating some horribly funny joke, a joke that had made them laugh until they turned purple.
Their shadows. Their shadows thrown long on the wall behind them. Their tongues. Their protruding tongues.
They were both wearing uniforms. They were the kids I had noticed earlier and had lost track of along the way, The army brats from —
The scream. I could hear it starting in my throat as a moan, rising like a police siren, and then Ollie gripped my arm just above the elbow. «Don’t scream, David. No one knows about this but you and me. And that’s how I want to keep it.»
Somehow I bit it back.
«Those army kids,» I managed.