No response, and yet I had a sense that my visitor was still there. Somewhere.

'I hope I didn't offend you by turning on the light,' I said, and now I did feel slightly odd, standing on my cellar stairs and talking out loud, sermonizing to the spiders. 'I wanted to see you if I could.' I had no idea if that was true or not.

Suddenly - so suddenly I almost lost my balance and tumbled down the stairs - I whirled around, convinced the shroud-creature was behind me, that it had been the thing knocking, it it, no polite M. R. James ghost but a horror from around the rim of the universe.

There was nothing.

I turned around again, took two or three deep, steadying breaths, and then went the rest of the way down the cellar stairs. Beneath them was a perfectly serviceable canoe, complete with paddle. In the corner was the gas stove we'd replaced after buying the place; also the claw-foot tub Jo had wanted (over my objections) to turn into a planter. I found a trunk filled with vaguely recalled table-linen, a box of mildewy ca.s.sette tapes (groups like the Delfonics, Funkadelic, and. 38 Special), several cartons of old dishes. There was a life down here, but ultimately not a very interesting one. Unlike the life I'd sensed in Jo's studio, this one hadn't been cut short but evolved out of, shed like old skin, and that was all right. Was, in fact, the natural order of things.

There was a photo alb.u.m on a shelf of knickknacks and I took it down, both curious and wary. No bombsh.e.l.ls this time, however; nearly all the pix were landscape shots of Sara Laughs as it had been when we bought it. I found a picture of Jo in bellbottoms, though (her hair parted in the middle and white lipstick on her mouth), and one of Michael Noonan wearing a flowered shirt and muttonchop sideburns that made me cringe (the bachelor Mike in the photo was a Barry White kind of guy I didn't want to recognize and yet did).

I found Jo's old broken treadmill, a rake I'd want if I was still around here come fall, a s...o...b..ower I'd want even more if I was around come winter, and several cans of paint. What I didn't find was any plastic owls. My insulation-thumping friend had been right.

Upstairs the telephone started ringing.

I hurried to answer it, going out through the cellar door and then then reaching back in to flick off the lightswitch. This amused me and at the same time seemed like perfectly normal behavior . . . just as being careful not to step on sidewalk cracks had seemed like perfectly normal behavior to me when I was a kid. And even if it wasn't normal, what did it matter? I'd only been back at Sara for three days, but already I'd postulated Noonan's First Law of Eccentricity: when you're on your own, strange behavior really doesn't seem strange at all. reaching back in to flick off the lightswitch. This amused me and at the same time seemed like perfectly normal behavior . . . just as being careful not to step on sidewalk cracks had seemed like perfectly normal behavior to me when I was a kid. And even if it wasn't normal, what did it matter? I'd only been back at Sara for three days, but already I'd postulated Noonan's First Law of Eccentricity: when you're on your own, strange behavior really doesn't seem strange at all.

I snagged the cordless. 'h.e.l.lo?'

'Hi, Mike. It's Ward.'

'That was quick.'

'The file-room's just a short walk down the hall,' he said. 'Easy as pie. There's only one thing on Jo's calendar for the second week of November in 1993. It says 'S-Ks of Maine, Freep, 11 A.M.' That's on Tuesday the sixteenth. Does it help?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Thank you, Ward. It helps a lot.'

I broke the connection and put the phone back in its cradle. Yes, it helped. S-Ks of Maine was Soup Kitchens of Maine. Jo had been on their board of directors from 1992 until her death. Freep was Freeport. It must have been a board meeting. They had probably discussed plans for feeding the homeless on Thanksgiving . . . and then Jo had driven the seventy or so miles to the TR in order to take delivery of two plastic owls. It didn't answer all the questions, but aren't there always questions in the wake of a loved one's death? And no statute of limitations on when they come up.

The UFO voice spoke up then. While you're right here by the phone, it said, why not call Bonnie Amudson? Say hi, see how she's doing? While you're right here by the phone, it said, why not call Bonnie Amudson? Say hi, see how she's doing?

Jo had been on four different boards during the nineties, all of them doing charitable work. Her friend Bonnie had persuaded her onto the Soup Kitchens board when a seat fell vacant. They had gone to a lot of the meetings together. Not the one in November of 1993, presumably, and Bonnie could hardly be expected to remember that one particular meeting almost five years later . . . but if she'd saved her old minutes-of-the-meeting sheets . . .

Exactly what the f.u.c.k was I thinking of? Calling Bonnie, making nice, then asking her to check her December 1993 minutes? Was I going to ask her if the attendance report had my wife absent from the November meeting? Was I going to ask if maybe Jo had seemed different that last year of her life? And when Bonnie asked me why I wanted to know, what would I say?

Give me that, Jo had snarled in my dream of her. In the dream she hadn't looked like Jo at all, she'd looked like some other woman, maybe like the one in the Book of Proverbs, the strange woman whose lips were as honey but whose heart was full of gall and wormwood. A strange woman with fingers as cold as twigs after a frost. Give me that, it's my dust-catcher. Give me that, it's my dust-catcher.

I went to the cellar door and touched the k.n.o.b. I turned it . . . then let it go. I didn't want to look down there into the dark, didn't want to risk the chance that something might start thumping again. It was better to leave that door shut. What I wanted was something cold to drink. I went into the kitchen, reached for the fridge door, then stopped. The magnets were back in a circle again, but this time four letters and one number had been pulled into the center and lined up there. They spelled a single lower-case word: h.e.l.lo

There was something here. Even back in broad daylight I had no doubt of that. I'd asked if it was safe for me to be here and had received a mixed message . . . but that didn't matter. If I left Sara now, there was nowhere to go. I had a key to the house in Derry, but matters had to be resolved here. I knew that, too.

'h.e.l.lo,' I said, and opened the fridge to get a soda. 'Whoever or whatever you are, h.e.l.lo.'

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I woke in the early hours of the following morning convinced that there was someone in the north bedroom with me. I sat up against the pillows, rubbed my eyes, and saw a dark, shouldery shape standing between me and the window.

'Who are you?' I asked, thinking that it wouldn't reply in words; it would, instead, thump on the wall. Once for yes, twice for no - what's on your mind, Houdini? But the figure standing by the window made no reply at all. I groped up, found the string hanging from the light over the bed, and yanked it. My mouth was turned down in a grimace, my midsection tensed so tight it felt as if bullets would have bounced off.

'Oh s.h.i.t,' I said. 'f.u.c.k me til I cry.'

Dangling from a hanger I'd hooked over the curtain rod was my old suede jacket. I'd parked it there while unpacking and had then forgotten to store it away in the closet. I tried to laugh and couldn't. At three in the morning it just didn't seem that funny. I turned off the light and lay back down with my eyes open, waiting for Bunter's bell to ring or the childish sobbing to start. I was still listening when I fell asleep.

Seven hours or so later, as I was getting ready to go out to Jo's studio and see if the plastic owls were in the storage area, where I hadn't checked the day before, a late-model Ford rolled down my driveway and stopped nose to nose with my Chevy. I had gotten as far as the short path between the house and the studio, but now I came back. The day was hot and breathless, and I was wearing nothing but a pair of cut-off jeans and plastic flip-flops on my feet.

Jo always claimed that the Cleveland style of dressing divided itself naturally into two subgenres: Full Cleveland and Cleveland Casual. My visitor that Tuesday morning was wearing Cleveland Casual - you had your Hawaiian shirt with pineapples and monkeys, your tan slacks from Banana Republic, your white loafers. Socks are optional, but white footgear is a necessary part of the Cleveland look, as is at least one piece of gaudy gold jewelry. This fellow was totally okay in the latter department: he had a Rolex on one wrist and a gold-link chain around his neck. The tail of his shirt was out, and there was a suspicious lump at the back. It was either a gun or a beeper and looked too big to be a beeper. I glanced at the car again. Blackwall tires. And on the dashboard, oh look at this, a covered blue bubble. The better to creep up on you unsuspected, Gramma.

'Michael Noonan?' He was handsome in a way that would be attractive to certain women - the kind who cringe when anybody in their immediate vicinity raises his voice, the kind who rarely call the police when things go wrong at home because, on some miserable secret level, they believe they deserve things to go wrong at home. Wrong things that result in black eyes, dislocated elbows, the occasional cigarette burn on the b.o.o.by. These are women who more often than not call their husbands or lovers daddy, as in 'Can I bring you a beer, daddy?' or 'Did you have a hard day at work, daddy?'

'Yes, I'm Michael Noonan. How can I help you?'

This version of daddy turned, bent, and grabbed something from the litter of paperwork on the pa.s.senger side of the front seat. Beneath the dash, a two-way radio squawked once, briefly, and fell silent. He turned back to me with a long, buff-colored folder in one hand. Held it out. 'This is yours.'

When I didn't take it, he stepped forward and tried to poke it into one of my palms, which would presumably cause me to close my fingers in a kind of reflex. Instead I raised both hands to shoulder-level, as if he had just told me to put em up, Muggsy.

He looked at me patiently, his face as Irish as the Arlen brothers' but without the Arlen look of kindness, openness, and curiosity. What was there in place of those things was a species of sour amus.e.m.e.nt, as if he'd seen all of the world's p.i.s.sier behavior, most of it twice. One of his eyebrows had been split open a long time ago, and his cheeks had that reddish windburned look that indicates either ruddy good health or a deep interest in grain-alcohol products. He looked like he could knock you into the gutter and then sit on you to keep you there. I been good, daddy, get off me, don't be mean.

'Don't make this tough. You're gonna take service of this and we both know it, so don't make this tough.'

'Show me some ID first.'

He sighed, rolled his eyes, then reached into one of his shirt pockets. He brought out a leather folder and flipped it open. There was a badge and a photo ID. My new friend was George Footman, Deputy Sheriff, Castle County. The photo was flat and shadowless, like something an a.s.sault victim would see in a mugbook.

'Okay?' he asked. I took the buff-backed doc.u.ment when he held it out again. He stood there, broadcasting that sense of curdled amus.e.m.e.nt as I scanned it. I had been subpoenaed to appear in the Castle Rock office of Elmer Durgin, Attorney-at-Law, at ten o'clock on the morning of July 10, 1998 - Friday, in other words. Said Elmer Durgin had been appointed guardian ad litem of Kyra Elizabeth Devore, a minor child. He would take a deposition from me concerning any knowledge I might have of Kyra Elizabeth Devore in regard to her well-being. This deposition would be taken on behalf of Castle County Superior Court and Judge n.o.ble Rancourt. A stenographer would be present. I was a.s.sured that this was the court's depo, and nothing to do with either Plaintiff or Defendant.

Footman said, 'It's my job to remind you of the penalties should you fail - '

'Thanks, but let's just a.s.sume you told me all about those, okay? I'll be there.' I made shooing gestures at his car. I felt deeply disgusted . . . and I felt interfered interfered with. I had never been served with a process before, and I didn't care for it. with. I had never been served with a process before, and I didn't care for it.

He went back to his car, started to swing in, then stopped with one hairy arm hung over the top of the open door. His Rolex gleamed in the hazy sunlight.

'Let me give you a piece of advice,' he said, and that was enough to tell me anything else I needed to know about the guy. 'Don't f.u.c.k with Mr. Devore.'

'Or he'll squash me like a bug,' I said.

'Huh?'

'Your actual lines are, 'Let me give you a piece of advice - don't f.u.c.k with Mr. Devore or he'll squash you like a bug.''

I could see by his expression - half past perplexed, going on angry - that he had meant to say something very much like that. Obviously we'd seen the same movies, including all those in which Robert De Niro plays a psycho. Then his face cleared.

'Oh sure, you're the writer,' he said.

'That's what they tell me.'

'You can say stuff like that 'cause you're a writer.'

'Well, it's a free country, isn't it?'

'Ain't you a smarta.s.s, now.'

'How long have you been working for Max Devore, Deputy? And does the County Sheriffs office know you're moonlighting?'

'They know. It's not a problem. You're You're the one that might have the problem, Mr. Smarta.s.s Writer.' the one that might have the problem, Mr. Smarta.s.s Writer.'

I decided it was time to quit this before we descended to the kaka-p.o.o.pie stage of name-calling.

'Get out of my driveway, please, Deputy.'

He looked at me a moment longer, obviously searching for that perfect capper line and not finding it. He needed a Mr. Smarta.s.s Writer to help him, that was all. 'I'll be looking for you on Friday,' he said.

'Does that mean you're going to buy me lunch? Don't worry, I'm a fairly cheap date.'

His reddish cheeks darkened a degree further, and I could see what they were going to look like when he was sixty, if he didn't lay off the firewater in the meantime. He got back into his Ford and reversed up my driveway hard enough to make his tires holler. I stood where I was, watching him go. Once he was headed back out Lane Forty-two to the highway, I went into the house. It occurred to me that Deputy Footman's extracurricular job must pay well, if he could afford a Rolex. On the other hand, maybe it was a knockoff.

Settle down, Michael Settle down, Michael, Jo's voice advised. The red rag is gone now, no one's waving anything in front of you, so just settle - The red rag is gone now, no one's waving anything in front of you, so just settle - I shut her voice out. I didn't want to settle down; I wanted to settle up up. I had been interfered interfered with. with.

I walked over to the hall desk where Jo and I had always kept our pending doc.u.ments (and our desk calendars, now that I thought about it), and tacked the summons to the bulletin board by one corner of its buff-colored jacket. With that much accomplished, I raised my fist in front of my eyes, looked at the wedding ring on it for a moment, then slammed it against the wall beside the bookcase. I did it hard enough to make an entire row of paperbacks jump. I thought about Mattie Devore's baggy shorts and Kmart smock, then about her father-in-law paying four and a quarter million dollars for Warrington's. Writing a personal G.o.dd.a.m.ned check. I thought about Bill Dean saying that one way or another, that little girl was going to grow up in California.

I walked back and forth through the house, still simmering, and finally ended up in front of the fridge. The circle of magnets was the same, but the letters inside had changed. Instead of

h.e.l.lo

they now read

help r

'Helper?' I said, and as soon as I heard the word out loud, I understood. The letters on the fridge consisted of only a single alphabet (no, not even that, I saw; g g and and x x had been lost someplace), and I'd have to get more. If the front of my Kenmore was going to become a Ouija board, I'd need a good supply of letters. Especially vowels. In the meantime, I moved the had been lost someplace), and I'd have to get more. If the front of my Kenmore was going to become a Ouija board, I'd need a good supply of letters. Especially vowels. In the meantime, I moved the h h and the and the e e in front of the in front of the r r. Now the message read

lp her

I scattered the circle of fruit and vegetable magnets with my palm, spread the letters, and resumed pacing. I had made a decision not to get between Devore and his daughter-in-law, but I'd wound up between them anyway. A deputy in Cleveland clothing had shown up in my driveway, complicating a life that already had its problems . . . and scaring me a little in the bargain. But at least it was a fear of something I could see and understand. All at once I decided I wanted to do more with the summer than worry about ghosts, crying kids, and what my wife had been up to four or five years ago . . . if, in fact, she had been up to anything. I couldn't write books, but that didn't mean I had to pick scabs.

Help her. Help her.

I decided I would at least try.

'Harold Oblowski Literary Agency.'

'Come to Belize with me, Nola,' I said. 'I need you. We'll make beautiful love at midnight, when the full moon turns the beach to a bone.'

'h.e.l.lo, Mr. Noonan,' she said. No sense of humor had Nola. No sense of romance, either. In some ways that made her perfect for the Oblowski Agency. 'Would you like to speak to Harold?'

'If he's in.'

'He is. Please hold.'

One nice thing about being a best selling author - even one whose books only appear, as a general rule, on lists that go to fifteen - is that your agent almost always happens to be in. Another is if he's vacationing on Nantucket, he'll be in to you there. A third is that the time you spend on hold is usually quite short.

'Mike!' he cried. 'How's the lake? I thought about you all weekend!'

Yeah Yeah, I thought, and pigs will whistle. and pigs will whistle.

'Things are fine in general but s.h.i.tty in one particular, Harold. I need to talk to a lawyer. I thought first about calling Ward Hankins for a recommendation, but then I decided I wanted somebody a little more high-powered than Ward was likely to know. Someone with filed teeth and a taste for human flesh would be nice.'

This time Harold didn't bother with the long-pause routine. 'What's up, Mike? Are you in trouble?'

Thump once for yes, twice for no Thump once for yes, twice for no, I thought, and for one wild moment thought of actually doing just that. I remembered finishing Christy Brown's memoir, Down All the Days Down All the Days, and wondering what it would be like to write an entire book with the pen grasped between the toes of your left foot. Now I wondered what it would be like to go through eternity with no way to communicate but rapping on the cellar wall. And even then only certain people would be able to hear and understand you . . . and only those certain people at certain times.