It was a small room, not even as large as the cloakroom at school. The walls were lined with corkboard to ensure privacy. There was a switch by the door to turn on a red light outside so others in the hall would know when they should not interrupt. The room had no windows and was furnished with only a metal-legged table, three plastic chairs, and a file cabinet.

Jadie was sitting on a chair that had been pushed up to the table. She was bent over so far that her head touched the tabletop.

"This is proving a long night, isn't it?" I said and came over. Pulling out one of the other chairs, I sat down. "Are you tired?"

She nodded.

I was tired. The evening had been so emotionally exhausting that I found I had almost no feelings at all as I sat there. I felt a deep form of sympathy for Jadie, almost maternal in its strength, and I wanted to catch her up in my arms and protect her, but that was all I felt. Certainly, I had no inclination just then to carry on with what I'd been sent in to do.

"Have they told you what's going to happen next?" I asked. "Lindy says they're going to let your mom and dad go pretty soon, but they're thinking it would be better if you and your sisters didn't go home just at the moment. Just until this thing is sorted out. So the three of you are going to stay at a place in Red Circle. A foster home. Rather like Philip has got, with a special foster mom and dad to take care of you while you're there."

Jadie put her elbows on the table and propped up her head with her hands. She gave little indication of listening to me. Both of us, I think, were so far past exhaustion as to be numb.

"You'll still come to our class. We'll still see each other."

On the table beside Jadie lay two rag dolls, one dressed in man's clothing, the other in woman's. A girl doll lay a little farther along. Stretching across the table, Jadie reached for the girl doll. She held it up in front of her and stared at it.

"Jadie, it's not going to help at all if you don't talk to them."

"Did you tell them about Tashee?"

"You're expecting me to do all the work here, Jadie, and I can't. You tell them about Tashee. You're the one it happened to, not me. You're the one who knows."

"I can't."

"You can. And you must."

"I can't. There's spiders here. I seen 'em. They're going to hear. They're going to tell Miss Ellie what I done."

"That's over with, lovey. We're putting an end to it right now."

"It's not over with," she said mournfully. "The spiders are watching."

Exhaustion overtook my patience. I sighed in desperation. "Look, Jadie, what can I do? Would a can of Raid help? If I spray the place myself, will you talk to them?"

Close to tears, she looked at me. "No, please, you got to tell them for me."

When I finished with Jadie, one of the social workers came and took her into another room where Amber was. A small box of old, well-worn toys was provided, although both girls looked so tired as to be beyond play. I then went down to the room where Lindy and Delores were to discuss the difficulties we were going to encounter if Jadie failed to speak. About ten minutes later, we heard the sound of doors opening and closing. Voices filtered through to us from the corridor.

"That'll be Mr. and Mrs. Ekdahl leaving," said Delores, and she pushed back her chair. "I'd better go get the girls, so they can say good-bye."

I stepped cautiously out into the corridor after everyone had passed. Uneasy about being the one to cause so much trouble, knowing I was the one to destroy this family, and still not sure that I'd pointed the finger at the right people, I was reluctant to be seen; but at the same time, I was curious to see them. Both looked dazed. Mr. Ekdahl, small and wiry, his thinning hair rumpled, stood back as Amber came running down the corridor.

"Mommy! Mommy!" she screamed at full volume. "Take me with you! I wanna go home!" Mrs. Ekdahl, a bedraggled-looking figure in saggy clothes, clutched her young daughter to her.

There was nothing in their demeanor that set the Ekdahls apart from any other of millions of midwestern families. I think, as I stepped into the corridor, I was praying I'd see something to clinch the matter in my mind. I think I wanted to at least sense evil in them, if nothing else, and come away secure in the knowledge that somehow these people were guilty of what I was accusing. There had to be abuse. Even if the occult connection could never be proved, even if Jadie was found to be severely disturbed and capable of fantasizing the worst of what she spoke of, I did feel certain something terrible was at the root of it. But I stood in abject terror of accusing the wrong persons.

The crowd had clustered just before the electronically locked door, where Amber was clutching frantically at her mother's clothing and crying. No one noticing me, I slipped down to the room where Jadie and Amber had been. Jadie was still there, still sitting on the floor beside the box of toys, a decrepit-looking Barbie doll in her hands.

"Your parents are going now. Do you want to come say good-bye?"

"Look here at how long the hair is this doll's got," Jadie remarked. "I got Barbies at home, but none of mine gots hair like this."

"I said, your parents are going now."

"It don't got no clothes, though. I got some clothes. I wish I could have this Barbie."

"Jadie ..."

At last she lifted her head and looked up at me, her thick hair tumbling back over her shoulders. "You just tell 'em good-bye for me, okay?"

Taken aback, I regarded her. "You won't be seeing them for quite a while. Amber's gone to say good-bye. Don't you want to come, too?"

"No, I'm busy playing," she replied, the emotion in her voice unreadable. "You say good-bye for me."

At the far end of the corridor, Amber was being prized off her mother's leg. I stayed well back, embarrassed to be seen, frightened by what I'd done this evening. Finally, the door unlocked with an electronic buzz, and a policeman opened it to let the Ekdahls out into the front part of the station. The door closed automatically, giving a loud, long sigh, and then the lock snapped audibly back into place when it was completely shut. Amber, still sobbing, was carried by in the arms of a social worker.

In the silence that followed, Jadie appeared in the corridor. She scuttled past me and down to the door. Coming up against it, she tried to open it. Delores, who'd seen her go back, hurried after her. "They've already gone, sweetheart," she said.

Jadie jiggled the handle of the door.

"Oh, sweetheart, I am sorry. They've already gone."

Jadie tried it again. "I just wanted to see if the door was locked."

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Jadie didn't come to school the next morning, a result, I suspect, of the long night before. When she did show up the following day, she looked like a different child. Literally. Her mass of dark hair, which had always been loose and often uncombed, was now parted smartly on the side. The thicker section was pinioned back from her face with a wide white clip and the rest was done into long corkscrew curls. These had been gathered into two pigtails and tied with red bows. The effect was both quaint and peculiar. To complete the transformation, Jadie was wearing a garishly checked red-and-white dress with ruffled sleeves, which I doubted was hers.

"Whoooeeee!" Jeremiah cried, when he saw her. "Look at that girl, man! Ain't she a piece of cake?" And he ran after Jadie, smacking his lips.

"Get away," Jadie replied irritably.

"Jeremiah, sit down, please."

"Yeah, but look at them curls, man. Trying to drive a guy wild, that's what she's doing with them curls." He paused a moment in thought. "She's a foam fattal, that's what she is."

"Oh, just ignore him," Jadie replied in a thoroughly disgusted voice.

She seemed happier. Her posture was not quite so rigid; her movements were freer. She tolerated Jeremiah's attentions; she allowed Philip to work with her; she acknowledged Reuben and Brucie's existence for the first time in ages. But during math, when she had gone to take her folder back and put it on the window ledge, I caught her pausing to gaze out the window toward her house.

"Do you miss being home?" I asked softly, touching her shoulders.

"Amber does."

"What about you?"

She chewed her lip a moment and then slowly nodded. "Yeah, I do. I miss my mom, mostly. I miss her kissing me at night. I miss my Barbie dolls. I don't hardly got any of my own toys, and I keep wondering what's happening to them. Mostly, I miss things being the way they were."

At lunchtime, Jadie joined the others in the cafeteria, the first time she'd ever eaten lunch at school. After seeing the children down to the lunchroom, I headed back to my room to collect my sack lunch before going to the teachers' lounge. However, just before the bell had rung, I'd been using some homemade modeling dough with Brucie and could now feel the salt from it on my hands. So, I detoured into the girls' rest room to wash them before collecting my lunch.

There were several younger children in there, using the toilets and washing their hands, and they finished quickly at the appearance of a teacher, leaving me alone. However, when the last of them had gone out the door, I had the sense I was still not entirely by myself. Turning my head, I looked around. There, just inside the door, stood Amber.

Like Jadie, she had been considerably tidied up. Her hair had never been as ungovernable as Jadie's, but she'd still always looked a little wild. Now, however, her long blond hair had been brushed carefully and the sections around her face had been pulled back and tied with a bow. Like Jadie, she wore a slightly out-of-date outfit suggestive of donation clothes.

"Hi," I said.

"What you done to my mommy and daddy?"

"I haven't done anything to them," I said, not sure that was completely true.

"Then how come we can't go home?"

"If things all come out fine, I'm sure you will be able to go home again. But the people from the police and Social Services need a little time to make sure things are fine."

Amber cocked her head slightly. "You're listening to what Jadie tells you," she said, her voice soft, almost hoarse.

"We only want to make sure everything is all right for you girls."

"Jadie can't help the way she is. She got borned wrong and she don't know what she's saying. She can't help it; it's not her fault, but you shouldn't oughta be listening to her."

At recess in the afternoon, Jadie came to stand with me. It was a cold, gray December day with a bitter wind sifting snow off the tops of the heaps where it had been cleared back from the playground. I took shelter in the lee of the building to watch the children. Jadie stood next to me.

"I'm not going to be able to talk to you anymore," she said, after several moments had elapsed in silence.

"Why's that?"

"'Cause me and Amber are coming by taxi now. I won't be able to stay after school, like I done before. You'll have to take me down to my ride now, just like you do with the boys." There was a note of pride in her voice. I think she enjoyed being like the others.

"If you want to talk, we'll always find time for it, somehow."

Jadie leaned closer as the wind gusted. Snow eddied around our boots. "Have you told them about Tashee yet?" she asked quietly.

"Have you?"

A pause, then she shook her head. "They won't believe me, if I tell 'em. You tell 'em, okay? You're grown up. They'll believe what you say."

I looked down at her. "I've told them what I know, but that's the best I can do. It didn't happen to me."

"They brought them dolls out. They got holes in them, them dolls. Did you know that? You know, poop holes. And they got hair under their arms. Yeeuch," Jadie said, smiling and making a face. "The man one's got a dicky. And so does the little boy."

I nodded. "That's to make it easier for you to let them know what's happened."

"Amber, she don't want to touch them. They make her scared. They're like the dolls J.R. makes. His dolls got dickies on them too and they're big and hard. Amber gets nightmares about them dolls."

"Have you said this to the social worker?"

Jadie didn't answer.

"You have to talk to them, Jadie. I'm not kidding. I can back up what you're saying, but I can't be the one who says it all, because I wasn't there. When I tell it, I might tell it wrong, and it's very important that we don't get anything about this wrong. We need it all to be true."

She pressed against me as the wind blew.

"I mean it, Jadie. You have got to talk to them. You need to tell them in your own words what's going on. It's not going to be good enough, coming from me, if you don't talk, too."

"Amber don't like you anymore," she muttered in response.

"I know."

"She hates you."

"Yes, I can pretty well imagine."

"I said you was doing good, that you were going to get us out of this. I said she ought to like you, 'cause you were God. But she said no. She said you ain't."

"She's right, there."

Jadie shrugged good-naturedly.

"I'm not God. The time's long since come for you to stop thinking I am."

"I don't care."

"And it's all right for Amber to feel angry with me," I said. "A lot of frightening things have happened very suddenly."

Jadie tilted her head slightly, making the sausage-shaped curls tumble down over her shoulder. "Tashee still likes you, though."

"She does?"

"Tashee says Amber don't know. Amber's too little, but I got to take care of her. I got to take care of Sapphire, too, 'cause she's littlest of all." A pause. "I don't think Sapphire hates you. She's too small to understand anything."

Concerned, I looked at her. "How does Tashee tell you these things?"

Jadie shrugged. "She just does. See, what I think happened is that when Tashee died, her ghost got inside me, so I could talk for her. I listen and then I think about her, and that way I can hear her. I think what she wants and how I can make her happy and then that's what I try to do."

My heart sank.