right, Lee, we get your point,” Mr. Mallory said. “You don’t want her here. But I think you’re outnumbered — am I right, Chip?”
Chip nodded. “Yep. Can’t throw her out now, can we?”
“ I want to sleep in the car,” Lee cut in suddenly. “I don’t want to sleep next door to her. She probably snores or sleepwalks or something. I bet she’ll steal half my clothes. Chip can sleep next door to her and dream about marrying a shanty girl.”
There was a moment of silence. Mrs. Mallory glared at her daughter but seemed at a loss for words.
“You’re being a trial, Lee,” their father said. “I’m putting you on notice, right now. Not a word more from you!” He paused, fixing her with a stern look, then continued. “Okay, this is the final arrangement. Lee in the car, and the girl in Lee’s room. Let’s get it done now. C’mon, Chip, you can help.”
The two men started down the hall.
Mrs. Mallory squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Don’t worry,” she told her. “We have no plans to adopt the poor creature. But we’ll sort this out better in the morning.”
5
The Invitation
Chip’s room was dark and stuffy. The cabin floorboards crackled. A mouse or a rat seemed to be busy in the rafters above his head. He rolled over inside his sleeping bag and listened. He was awake again, and his illuminated watch, which he had placed on a chair next to his cot, told him it was three a.m.
A very bad time of night, as his grandfather used to insist to him. The old man — he had been dead for a good seven years — had always said that midnight in a creepy house was nothing compared with three in the morning anywhere. At that time of night, as Grandpa Wilson told it, life was at its lowest ebb. “The gates of the other world are wide open then,” the old man explained. “You can sense it. Nothing wants you to be alive; everything conspires to drag you down into that terrible blackness.”
Outside, someone fired a gun. Pow, pow, pow — three shots, just like that. Then a dog barked. He sat up straight on his cot. He listened.
Through the thin walls he could hear May Bates turning on her cot and whimpering. The shots had disturbed her, but perhaps she hadn’t wakened.
There was silence for a while, then more scurrying above his head. And outside, some noises in the bushes. He climbed out of his bed and pressed his face against the window. Nothing moved among the shadows.
No one else in the house seemed to be awake; no one stirred. Perhaps it was all just his imagination.
He climbed back inside his sleeping bag and tried to think of more pleasant things. Mr. Bascombe’s parrot! That was pretty interesting. The parrot with the odd name. Captain Howdy, that was it. Where had he heard that name, Captain Howdy?
Suddenly, he remembered. It was the name the devil first uses to contact the girl in The Exorcist!
My God! He thought. What a name to give a parrot! Mr. Bascombe must be weird, too.
Chip lay on his back and felt himself drifting away at last. He could sense light filtering into the room, reflected off the leaves outside and the flyblown ceiling. But he was deserting the light, losing it, sinking slowly down and down into a blackness that wrapped around him ever tighter. After a while he resisted no more; he was asleep.
All at once he was in a swamp — a bleak land of smooth, stagnant water, greenish-hued and slimy to the touch. Trunks of dead cedars rose all around him, like the pillars of a temple. He lay on a bumpy, near-solid but oozing patch of turf, holding his new cellphone at arm’s length and shaking it like a rattle or a box of dice. He knew it wouldn’t work — it needed recharging. How would he ever get out of here? He had an exam he couldn’t afford to miss, but he hadn’t studied for it. He was frantic. He would fail all his courses, get kicked out of school. Then a snake, only a few inches long and completely transparent, crawled up on a lily pad and a voice said from somewhere, “Have some animal crackers!” Suddenly he was walking to class, his clothes completely soaked, and people were pointing at him and laughing. A strange girl, dark-haired and very beautiful, came up and comforted him. “It’s all right,” she said. “The white horse is in the Coliseum.” He was swallowed up in, absorbed by, a huge thundercloud, and a loud voice commanded,
“Wake up, Chip! It’s pouring out there! We want to get out of here as soon as possible.”
He opened his eyes, surprised by the near darkness, the roaring storm outside, the unfamiliar, dirty room, his moth-er’s anxious face.
“Yeah, yeah.” He yawned, stretched his arms, groaned, and sat up.
“Your father needs help with the packing.”
Chip crawled out of bed, staggered to the bedroom window, and pressed his face against the glass. Rain pelted down on the rough bush; small trees bent in a fierce wind. Lightning flashed above, the rain-darkened leaves glittered, an old metal barrel flashed beside the rear wall of the cabin.
Rubbing his eyes, struggling to get focus, Chip made his way to the front. A wild scene confronted him. The sky was a ragged darkness, the lake half-hidden by thick sheets of water. A stream rushed down the driveway and along the path that led to the house. Rain beat against the SUV, dousing his father, who huddled there, grabbing again and again at a loose-flapping rope. Bent against the wind, he finally secured it, opened one door to climb up, and began to tie the rope to the roof rack. Lightning flashed, followed by a huge volley of thunder. The screen door banged on its hinges.
Chip started to run out to help his dad, then realized he was wearing only a T-shirt and underwear. He scrambled back into his bedroom. May Bates stood in the hallway and stared at him. Lee ambled out of the kitchen. Wrapped in her nightgown, but shivering, she stood rubbing her wet hair with a big towel.
“What a morning!” she said pleasantly to her brother, but she wasn’t smiling. “I nearly drowned getting in here. This towel isn’t clean, either.”
Chip pulled on his jeans and headed back out the door. His father spotted him and waved from the car. “Don’t bother!” he shouted. “I’ve got it under control. Just gather up our stuff. I’m going to pull up closer to the cabin.”
His father hopped down and slipped into the front of the SUV. The engine started up, the headlights snapped on, the windshield wipers moved. Mr. Mallory pulled the car forward up the muddy track, stopped, and began to back toward the front door.
Another set of headlights appeared, flashing through the rain at the point where the driveway ran into the lake road. A vehicle was approaching the cabin.
Mrs. Mallory saw it first and murmured, half aloud, “Oh no, not more trouble!” Lee groaned and headed for the kitchen; May shrank away into her bedroom.
Chip squeezed his mother’s hand. “It’s not a red car,” he reassured her. “More like a fairly huge pickup.”
They watched at the doorway as Mr. Mallory backed slowly toward them in the SUV. The thunder roared again and lightning lit up the scene. The second vehicle approached the cottage, swung round in an arc toward the cabin, and pulled up, nose to nose with their own car.
Mr. Mallory climbed out of the SUV.
Chip
