"Dad," said Stevie. "Can they come in? I told them you'd let them have Christmas Eve with us. That's what they miss the most."

Step could feel DeAnne put her arm through his and take hold of his hand.

"Of course they can come in," said Step. "We've been wanting to meet them."

It was one thing to say it, another thing to watch them walk up the stairs, one by one, and come on into the house. DeAnne, who had a better memory for names and faces, was picking them out from the newspaper photos. "Van," she said.

One of the boys smiled at her.

"Roddy. Peter? David. Jack. Scotty."

One by one they grinned at her and then looked at each other as if to say Hey, she knows us, she knows us.

"Sandy," she said.

Step closed the door.

"I wish," said Step. "I wish I could have seen you before."

"We tried, Dad," said Stevie. "I knew they could do it, I knew they had to show themselves to people or nobody'd ever believe me, but they just couldn't figure it out till I showed them how."

"We believed you, son," said Step. "We always knew you weren't lying to us."

"But you thought they were pretend, Dad," said Stevie. "And they're not pretend."

Then there was a moment's silence, and one of the boys, in a soft, faint voice, said, "Merry Christmas."

"Yes," said Step. "Yes, Merry Christmas. Please, come into the living room. That's where the tree is. We were just about to put out our presents and ha ve our ceremonies, and we'd love to have you with us."

The boys smiled. And Stevie-ah, Stevie smiled! Step had almost forgotten what a glorious smile he had. It had been so long.

Stevie led the way into the living room, the other boys trooping silently after him.

DeAnne still held to his arm. He heard her murmur, "Showed them how."

But he couldn't think about that. It was Christmas Eve, and Stevie had brought his friends home at last.

He and DeAnne followed the boys into the living room, and then she said, "I've got to get Robbie and Betsy and Zap," and she left him there.

"Sit down," he said. "Anywhere, except leave that soft rocking chair for Stevie's mom, she has to sit there and hold the baby." Then Step surveyed the room, seeing it now as if through their eyes. The Christmas tree, covered with a motley of decorations, most of them handmade: the tiny needlepoint pillows that DeAnne had made for that first Christmas, while she was pregnant with Stevie. The little puffball animals that she and Step had glued together for the first Christmas tree that Stevie ever saw, though of course he was only a baby then and hardly knew what he was seeing. Decorations older than Stevie, thought Step. He's never had a tree without them.

And not just the tree. The whole room was decorated with red and green tassels and little wooden villages and a stuffed Santa hippo beside a wicker sleigh and a large chimney-sweep nutcracker and anything else that Step and DeAnne hadn't been able to resist buying or making over the years.

DeAnne led Robbie and Betsy into the room. Betsy was shy with strangers, and she hung back a little, but Robbie forthrightly took her hand and led her to sit in front of the couch at Step's feet. DeAnne sat down in the rocking chair and propped a sleepy Zap up enough for him to see what was happening, even though there was no sign yet that his eyes were able to focus on anything for even as long as a second.

They began with a song-"Away in a Manger"-and as Step sang out, keeping the tempo up, he remembered all the nights for months, for years, that he had lain beside Stevie's bed and sung that song so he could sleep, so the fear would go away and Stevie could rest.

Then it was time for the stories. Step started by asking Robbie to tell them about the angel coming to Mary.

Then he asked Stevie to tell what Joseph did when he found out she was going to have a baby, and so on, Robbie and then Stevie, then DeAnne or Step taking a turn, telling a part of the Christmas story. The shepherds, the wise men, and then on to the Book of Mormon story about the day and night and day without darkness when Christ was born on the other side of the world. Then Step went on and told what Jesus lived for. About forgiveness for the bad things people do.

The boys had been listening, enthralled in the experience of being part of a Christmas Eve after all, their eyes sparkling in the treelight. Now, though, one of the boys spoke up. "Everything?"

Before Step could be sure what he was asking, Stevie answered, sharply, firmly. "No. Not killing."

DeAnne gave a tiny gasp and covered her mouth, blinking her eyes to keep from crying.

"Stevie's right," Step said. "In our church we believe that God doesn't forgive people who kill on purpose.

And in the New Testament, Jesus said that if anybody ever hurt a child, it would be better for him to tie a huge rock around his neck and jump into the sea and drown."

"Well it did hurt, Daddy," said Stevie. "They never told me anything."

"It was a secret," said one of the boys.

"I told him I'd never never tell so he wouldn't ..." The boy's voice trailed off, growing weak.

"Don't leave!" said Stevie. "You said if we did Christmas!"

"It's hard," said another of the boys.

Stevie turned to Step. "Dad, you got to call Mr. Douglas. If he sees them all, he'll have to believe it, won't he?"

"Yes," said Step.

"I knew he wouldn't believe just me telling him, because if you didn't believe me then why Should he?"

"We believed you, Stevie," said DeAnne, struggling not to cry. "We really did."

"I mean you didn't believe in them," he said. "I thought you could see them like I could, but then you couldn't, and not even Robbie except once for a second."

Step thought: Robbie saw, but I couldn't, and DeAnne couldn't.

"And I tried to figure out how to show them. They told me they were all buried under the house and so I—"

Again a gasp from DeAnne, and Step felt a wrenching in his gut. It wasn't just some disturbance in the fabric of the universe that Stevie had felt, it wasn't just some nameless evil somewhere in the city. It was here. It was under the house. The place from which spiders and crickets had fled. The place where the bodies of seven little boys had been concealed, where no one could find them no matter how hard they searched.

But someone had been under the house since they moved there, yes, more than once, more than once.

Bappy has been under this house. And Bappy lived here before us, before his son made him move out so he could rent the place to us. Bappy lived here when the first of the boys were taken, and Bappy has been here so often, ever since.

Stevie went on. "So I crawled under there and buried myself up but it didn't help, I still couldn't do it, and anyway you got mad at me for getting so dirty and going outside and so I didn't try that again."

My son was under there, Step thought. He wanted to scream the way he had screamed after the Fourth of July picnic. But he held it in.

"I didn't know what to do anymore," said Stevie, "and so I gave up, I thought nobody could ever see them.

But I couldn't just let him go on doing it, could 1, Dad? That wouldn't be right. They didn't like it, I knew that, even if they didn't tell me how much it hurt."

He looked at the other boys, and some of them looked away, perhaps ashamed.

"So I remembered what you said about how bad people hate the truth, it scares them, so I broke the rules and I went outside when he was doing the lights and I said, I know what you're doing, and he said, I don't know what you're talking about, and I said, They told me about you, and he said, Who told you? and I said, They told me about Boy, and I said, Mr. Douglas is a friend of mine, I met him, and he said so. And I said, You got to stop, and he said, I already did. He said, Boy don't do that no more. But I knew he was lying, because I could see that Boy wasn't like they told me, Boy wasn't somebody else, he was Boy, Boy was his own self, and then I ran to get back in the house but I wasn't fast enough."