"My mommy locked me in the dark closet," offered Holly. It seemed a pitiful offering compared to Crystal's, but to Holly it was a major one. "My mommy slapped me and locked me in the dark."

Crystal was unimpressed. "My mommy said she was going to hurt me real bad when she found me. She said it wouldn't do me any good to hide. B-Jay says she won't let her find me, but I know she's still looking for me, and my mommy always finds what she's looking for."

This thought made some of the children look around nervously. Hell, I wanted to look around myself; but I suppressed the urge. My guess had been right. These kids were good at frightening themselves. Hell, they were frightening me.

Kim-the one we called Kimmy-Winkles-spoke up then. I noticed she was holding Nic's hand very tightly in her lap. "I'm scared of strangers," she said. "Especially strange children. Especially Richard."

I didn't pursue that one. I didn't know who Richard was. We didn't have any Richards here in Family. Behind her, though, I noticed that Little Ivy was scribbling furiously on a notepad. She had a look of grim satisfaction. A lot of things were coming to the surface here. There would be a lot of follow-up.

"Foster," said Tommy quietly. "I don't want to go back to Foster. He held me down on the bed and hurt me. In the ass. I cried and he cried and he promised he wouldn't do it again. But he did."

Alec didn't move, but at the same time, I sensed that he had become more rigid, more attentive. I looked down at him in my lap. He was hugging Bear close to his chest in a miniature version of the same embrace I had him wrapped up in. Was he hiding inside himself again? I realized how tightly I was holding him and loosened my arms to give him more space. Maybe then, he could loosen his hold on Bear. I wondered if we were all crowding him too much. Maybe we needed to give him space to come to us? 1 didn't know. What if we did the wrong thing? I stroked his hair and kissed him gently on the top of his head.

"That's all so scary, those are the scariest things I ever heard of," I said, and I meant it. Nothing I could have made up could possibly be as scary as the things these children had been through. And I was sure we hadn't even scratched the surface. This was only what they were willing to admit.

"Okay," I said. "I want you to know it's all right to be scared. Sometimes scary things happen. There's nothing wrong with being frightened of scary things. But sometimes we carry around the fear long after the scary things have gone away. And you know what? We forget to scream. So, now, here's what we're going to do. When I tell you, but not before then, we're all going to scream and make all the noises we want to make when we get scared. We'll all make scared-to-death noises, okay? Everybody ready? Does everybody have something scary to think of? Okay; close your eyes if you want to and make all the scary noises you can."

A low moan. A sob. A high-pitched weeping. A shriek. A scream. A whimper.

A symphony. A cacophony. A chorus of mangled, anguished cries.

The sound was hideous. The emotions were exquisitely dark and furious, churning and swirling like a maelstrom. The fear came roiling round and round, all red and cold and fiery. It was an icy spike ramming up the spine and through the heart and into the base of the skull, and it came out as a moan, a scream, a gasp, a shriek-

It just kept on getting louder and louder, until I thought we would all go mad

And then, just as quickly, the uproar leveled off, hesitated, gathered for a moment more, and then-sated, satiated, spent, exhausted-it began to ebb. The shrieks and screams died away first, leaving only the crying; then as if terrified of its own sound, the crying too began to ebb, leaving only a few small whimpers here and there around the circle.

I looked around at them. They looked shocked, stunned, horrified, haggard.

And at the same time, they seemed more alive than before. As if some of the walls of impassiveness they hid behind had been shattered.

"I don't want to play this game anymore," Holly said. "This isn't fun."

"We're almost through," I reassured her. "And I promise you that the next part is much more fun than the last part."

The kids looked very nervous. I had to move fast.

"All right, listen. We're almost through now. There's just one more thing to do. I want you to close your eyes again and pretend again. But this time, I want you to pretend that you're the scariest thing in the world; that everybody in the world is scared of you, all the monsters and mean people and things in the dark are scared of you! Close your eyes and watch them run away from you; but you have to make the kind of noises that will scare away all the scary things, okay? Is everybody ready? Let's all be big and strong and mean and scare away all the bad monsters in the world, right now!"

This sound was the loudest of all-and the most joyous. Beethoven would have envied the spirit of this chorus. They were discordant and beautiful and hideously loud, and I loved every jangling decibel of their defiance.

"Get angry at the monsters!" I shouted. "Tell them what you think of them. Tell them to go to hell! Tell them to go fuck themselves!" I got a little carried away myself, but the kids didn't mind. They laughed and screamed and cheered and soon they were jumping up and down-and dissolving into laughter and happy tears and hugs and kisses and silly-sad smiles, and it was okay, and it was good, and for just a little while, they almost looked like normal children again.

They even looked happy.

We hugged and laughed and ended up all jumping naked in the pool and had the biggest water fight in the world and it was the best summer night of my life. And theirs too.

I was grinning like a crazy man, I was so pleased. It had worked. I had done good.

Of course, Betty-John gave me hell.

"Just what in God's name did you think you were doing?" she demanded. "Kimmy-Winkles is still having nightmares. Simone can't stop crying. Allie and Dave are afraid to go to bed alone. And trust me, you don't want to hear what little Jim Pauley did!

"You've turned half the kids into Weeping Willies and the other half are so jumpy, Birdie is thinking about sedating the whole camp for a week. Have you seen what's going on? The ones that aren't bursting into tears every two minutes are having such an attack of the sillies, it's got to be a psychotic reaction; everything we say to them, they burst out giggling, as if it's all some colossal joke. They're running around like deranged gargoyles, making faces and trying to scare the shit out of each other-including the ones who are still so skittish, they're back to wearing diapers. Jesus, Jim! Is this how you repay a favor? I was in there, fighting for your goddamn fences and you're out here, playing psychotic head games on the children. Most of them are so hoarse they can't talk; six of them have sore throats, and three are in the psych ward today for observation."

I listened to it all without comment.

There really wasn't anything else to do. This was something eIse Jason had taught me, taught all of us. When people give you a communication, you don't have to do anything with it. Just hear and acknowledge that you heard it. "Answer the question, acknowledge the statement, that's the basis of true communication. Don't do anything else. That isn't communication."