But the kids had to be stopped, stopped soon, stopped today. The voice had told him so.

Henry took his new knife out of his pocket, looked at it, turned it this way and that, admiring the way the sun winked and slid off the chrome facing. Then Belch was grabbing his arm and hissing: 'Look that, Henry! Jeezly-old –crow! Look that!'

Henry looked and felt the clear light of understanding burst over him. A square section of the clearing was rising as if by magic, revealing a growing slice of darkness beneath. For just a moment he felt a jolt of terror as it occurred to him that this might be the owner of the voice . . . for surely It lived somewhere under the city. Then he heard the gritty squall of dirt in the hinges and understood. They hadn't been able to see the treehouse because there was none.

'By God, we was standin right on top of em,' Victor grunted, and as Ben's head and shoulders appeared in the square hatchway in the center of the clearing, he made as if to charge forward. Henry grabbed him and held him back.

'Ain't we gonna get em, Henry?' Victor asked as Ben boosted himself up. Both of them were puffing and blowing.

'We'll get em,' Henry said, never taking his eyes from the hated fat-boy. Another ball-kicker. I'll kick your balls so high up you can wear them for earrings, you fat fuck. Wait andsee if I don't. 'Don't worry.'

The fat-boy was helping the bitch out of the hole. She looked around doubtfully, and for a moment Henry believed she looked right at him. Then her eyes passed on. The two of them murmured together and then they pushed their way into the thick undergrowth and were gone.

'Come on,' Henry said, when the sound of snapping branches and rustling leaves had faded almost to inaudibility. 'We'll follow em. But keep back and keep quiet. I want em all together.'

The three of them crossed the clearing like soldiers on patrol, bent low, their eyes wide and moving. Belch paused to look down into the clubhouse and shook his head in admiring wonder. 'Sittin right over their heads, I was,' he said.

Henry motioned him forward impatiently.

They took the path, because it was quieter. They were halfway back to Kansas Street when the bitch and the fat-boy, holding hands (isn't that cute? Henry thought in a kind of ecstasy), emerged almost directly in front of them.

Luckily, their backs were to Henry's group, and neither of them looked around. Henry, Victor, and Belch froze, then drew into the shadows at the side of the path. Soon Ben and Beverly were just two shirts seen through a tangle of shrubs and bushes. The three of them began to pursue again . . . cautiously. Henry took the knife out again and

9

Henry Gets a Lift / 2.:30 A.M.

pressed the chrome button in the handle. The blade popped out. He looked at it dreamily in the moonlight. He liked the way the starlight ran along the blade. He had no idea exactly what time it was. He was drifting in and out of reality now.

A sound impinged on his consciousness and began to grow. It was a car engine. It drew closer. Henry's eyes widened in the dark. He held the knife more tightly, waiting for the car to pass by.

It didn't. It drew up at the curb beyond the seminary hedge and simply stopped there, engine idling. Grimacing (his belly was stiffening now; it had gone board-hard, and the blood seeping sluggishly between his fingers had the consistency of sap just before you took the taps out of the maples in late March or early April), he got on his knees and pushed aside the stiff hedge –branches. He could see headlights and the shape of a car. Cops? His hand squeezed the knife and relaxed, squeezed and relaxed, squeezed and relaxed.

I sent you a ride, Henry, the voice whispered. Sort of a taxi, if you can dig that. After all, we have to get you over there to the Town House pretty soon. The night's getting old.

The voice uttered one thin bonelike chuckle and fell silent. Now the only sounds were the crickets and the steady rumble of the idling car. Sounds like cherry-bomb mufflers, Henry thought distractedly.

He got awkwardly to his feet and worked his way back to the seminary walk. He peeked around at the car. Not a fuzzmobile: no bubbles on the roof, and the shape was all wrong. The shape was . . . old.

Henry heard that giggle again . . . or perhaps it was only the wind.

He emerged from the shadow of the hedge, crawled under the chain, got to his feet again, and began to walk toward the idling car, which existed in a black-and-white Polaroid-snapshot world of bright moonlight and impenetrable shadow. Henry was a mess: his shirt was black with blood, and it had soaked through his jeans almost to the knees. His face was a white blotch under an institutional crewcut.

He reached the intersection of the seminary path and the sidewalk and peered at the car, trying to make sense out of the hulk behind the wheel. But it was the car he recognized first — it was the one his father always swore he would own someday, a 1958 Plymouth Fury. It was red and white and Henry knew (hadn't his father told him often enough?) that the engine rumbling under the hood was a V-8 327. Available horsepower of 255, able to hit seventy from the git –go in just about nine seconds, gobbling hi-test through its four –barrel carb. I'mgonna get that car and then when I die they can bury me in it, Butch had been fond of saying . . . except, of course, he had never gotten the car and the state had buried him after Henry had been taken away, raving and screaming of monsters, to the funny farm.

If that's him inside I don't think I can take it, Henry thought, squeezing down on the knife, swaying drunkenly back and forth, looking at the shape behind the wheel.

Then the passenger door of the Fury swung open, the dome-light came on, and the driver turned to look at him. It was Belch Huggins. His face was a hanging ruin. One of his eyes was gone, and a rotted hole in one parchment cheek revealed blackened teeth. Perched on Belch's head was the New York Yankees baseball cap he had been wearing the day he died. It was turned around backward. Gray-green mold oozed along the bill.

'Belch!' Henry cried, and agony ripped its way up from his belly, making him cry out again, wordlessly.

Belch's dead lips stretched in a grin, splitting open in whitish-gray bloodless folds. He held one twisted hand out toward the open door in invitation.

Henry hesitated, then shuffled around the Fury's grille, allowing one hand to touch the V-shaped emblem there, just as he had always touched it when his father took him into the Bangor showroom when he was a kid to look at this same car. As he reached the passenger side, grayness overwhelmed him in a soft wave and he had to grab the open door to keep his feet. He stood there, head down, breathing in snuffling gasps. At last the world came back — partway, anyhow — and he was able to work his way around the door and fall into the seat. Pain skewered his guts again, and fresh blood squirted out into his hand. It felt like warm jelly. He put his head back and gritted his teeth, the cords on his neck standing out. At last the pain began to subside a little.

The door swung shut by itself. The domelight went out. Henry saw one of Belch's rotted hands close over the transmission lever and drop it into drive. The bunched white knots of Belch's knuckles glimmered through the decaying flesh of his fingers.

The Fury began to move down Kansas Street toward Up-Mile Hill.

'How you doin, Belch?' Henry heard himself say. It was stupid, of course — Belch couldn't be here, dead people couldn't drive cars — but it was all he could think of.

Belch didn't reply. His one sunken eye stared at the road. His teeth glared sickly at Henry through the hole in his cheek. Henry became vaguely aware that ole Belch smelled pretty ripe. Ole Belch smelled, in fact, like a bushel-basket of tomatoes that had gone bad and watery.