Harlen smiled slightly. That would get his mother's attention. He shinnied up the last few feet of drainpipe, found the second-story ledge with his right knee, and rested there, his cheek against brick. The wind tugged at his t-shirt. Ahead of him, he could see light shining up through elm leaves from the streetlight at the corner of School Street and Third Avenue. He was very high.

Harlen wasn't afraid of heights. He'd beaten O'Rourke and Stewart and all the rest of them when they were climbing the big oak tree behind Congden's garden last fall. He'd climbed so high, in fact, that the other guys had shouted at him to come down, but he'd insisted on stepping up one last branch ... a branch so thin it didn't seem solid enough to hold a pigeon without breaking . . . and peering out from the top of the oak to the ocean of treetops that was Elm Haven. This was kid's stuff compared to that.

But Harlen glanced down and wished he hadn't. Except for the drainpipe and corner molding, there was nothing between him and the metal dumpster and concrete sidewalk twenty-five feet down.

He closed his eyes, concentrated on finding his balance on the narrow ledge, and opened them to look up at the window.

It wasn't two feet away ... it was more like four. He'd have to let go of the goddamned pipe to get over to it.

And the glow was gone. He was almost sure. Harlen had this sudden image of Old Double-Butt coming around the corner of the school, looking up at him in the dark, and shouting, "Jim Harlen! You get down here at once!"

And then what? Was she going to flunk him out of the sixth grade he'd just graduated from? Revoke his summer?

Harlen smiled, took a breath, put all his weight on his knees, and inched along the ledge, spread-eagled against the brick wall, nothing but friction and four inches of ledge holding him up.

His right hand found the window ledge, and his fingers grasped the weird molding below the sill. He was steady. He was OK.

Harlen stayed in that position for a moment, head bowed, cheek against brick. All he had to do was lift his head to look in the room.

At that second, part of his mind told him not to. Leave it alone. Go to the Free Show. Get home before Mom gets back.

The wind rustled leaves below him and tossed more grit in his eyes. Harlen glanced back at the drainpipe. No problem getting back; shinnying down would be a lot easier than getting up. Harlen thought of Gerry Daysinger or one of the other guys calling him a pussy.

They don't have to know I was up here.

Then why'd you climb up here, asshole?

Harlen thought of telling O'Rourke and the others-of embroidering the story a little bit if it was just Old Double-Butt picking up her goddamned favorite chalk or something. He imagined the shock those pansies would show when he told them about his climb, about seeing Old Double-Butt and Roon doing it on her desk, right there in the classroom. . . .

Harlen lifted his head and peered in the window.

Mrs. Doubbet was not at her desk at the far end of the room, but was sitting at the small worktable at this end of the classroom-not three feet from Harlen. There were no lights on, but a pale phosphorescence filled the room with the sick light of rotting wood in a dark forest.

Mrs. Doubbet was not alone. The phosphorescence emanated from the shape next to her. This figure also sat at the small table, less than an arm's length from where Harlen pressed his face to the glass. He recognized her at once.

Mrs. Duggan, Mrs. Doubbet's ex-teaching partner, had always been thin. During the months when the cancer had ravaged her until she quit teaching just before Christmas, she had grown even thinner. Harlen remembered how her arms had seemed to be little more than bones wrapped in speckled flesh. No one in the class had seen Mrs. Duggan during the last weeks before her death in February-or at the funeral-but Sandy Whittaker's mom had visited her at home and in the funeral home, and had told Sandy that the old lady had wasted away to nothing but skin and bones at the end.

Harlen recognized her at once.

He glanced once at Old Double-Butt-she was bent forward, smiling broadly, totally intent on her partner at the table-and then his gaze returned to Mrs. Duggan.

Sandy had said that Mrs. Duggan had been buried in her finest silk dress-the green one she had worn to the Christmas party on her last day of teaching. She was wearing the dress now. It had rotted through in several places, and the phosphorescence shone through.

The old lady's hair was still carefully combed back, held in place by tortoiseshell barrettes Harlen had noticed in class, but much of it had come out in patches, and areas of bare scalp glowed whitely. There were holes in the scalp, just as there had been holes in the silk dress.

From three feet away, Harlen could see Mrs. Duggan's hand on the table-the long fingers, the loose gold ring, the soft gleam of bone.

Mrs. Doubbet leaned closer to the corpse of her friend and said something. She looked puzzled, then glanced toward the window where Harlen crouched, his knees pressed against the ledge.

He realized in that last instant that he must be visible-that the glow would illuminate his face against the pane as easily as it illuminated the exposed tendons gleaming like spaghetti strands through the cracks in Mrs. Duggan's wrist, as easily as it outlined the dark colonies of mold under the translucent flesh. What was left of the flesh.

From the corner of his eye, Harlen realized that Old Double-Butt had turned to look at him, but he did not avert his gaze from the back of Mrs. Duggan's neck as the parchment-skin there folded and vertebrae visibly shifted like white stones moving beneath rotted cloth.

Mrs. Duggan turned and looked at him. From two feet away, the phosphorescent glare burned through the dark pool of deliquescence where her left eye had been. Teeth gleamed in a lipless smile as she leaned over as if to give Harlen a kiss through the windowpane. No breath fogged the glass.

Harlen stood and turned to run, not remembering that he was on a thin ledge twenty-five feet above stone and concrete. He would have run even if he had remembered.

He did not cry out as he fell.

EIGHT

Mike loved the ritual of the Mass. On this Sunday-as on all Sundays except special holy days-he helped Father Cavanaugh serve the regular seven-thirty Mass and then stayed to be head altar boy for the ten o'clock High Mass. The earlier service was the crowded one, of course, since most of the Catholics around Elm Haven put themselves through the extra half-hour of High Mass only when they had to.

Mike always kept a pair of brown oxfords in the room that Father Cavanaugh called the chancel; old Father Harrison hadn't minded his altar boys' tennis shoes showing under the surplice, but Father C. said that helping to prepare the Eucharist demanded that more respect be shown. Mike's dad had grumbled at the expense. Mike had never had a new pair of dress shoes before-his dad said that it was hard enough keeping the four girls in clothes-but in the end, his father couldn't argue with showing respect to God. Mike wore the oxfords no place except St. Malachy's, and then only when he was serving Mass.

Mike loved every aspect of the church service, and loved it more the more he did it. When he'd started as an altar boy almost four years earlier, Father Harrison had demanded little from the few boys willing to serve except that they show up on time. Like the others, Mike had walked through the motions and mumbled the Latin responses, not really paying attention to the translations on the laminated card on the step where he knelt, not really thinking about the miracle that was on the verge of occurring when he carried the small bottles of wine and water to the priest in the preparation for Communion. It had been a duty he agreed to because he was Catholic and this is what a good Catholic boy did . . . although the other Catholic boys around Elm Haven seemed to have excuses for not doing it.