Jonny nodded. "We'll have to start training him again." The train on the other side arrived. They left him.

Oskar lay where he was for a while, empty. Then a face came floating through the air in front of him. Some lady. She was holding her hand out to him.

"You poor dear. I saw the whole thing. You have to report them to the police, that was ..."

The police.

"... attempted murder. Come, I'll help ..."

Oskar ignored her hand and jumped to his feet. While he was limping toward the doors, up the stairs, he could still hear the lady's voice: "Are you sure you're alright?"

The cops.

Lacke winced when he walked into the courtyard and saw the patrol car parked in the corner. Two police officers were standing outside the car; one was writing something on a pad. He a.s.sumed they were after the same thing as him, but that their information source was not as good. The officers had not noticed his hesitation, so he kept going to the first entrance in the row of buildings, walked in.

None of the names on the wall told him anything, but he knew which one it was anyway. Ground floor, to the right. Next to the bas.e.m.e.nt door there was a bottle of T-Rod. He stopped, looked at it as if it could give him a clue as to what he should do next.

T-Rod is flammable. Virginia went up inflames.

But the thought stopped at that point and he only felt that dry, screaming rage again, continued up the stairs. A shift had occurred.

Now his mind was clear and his body clumsy. His feet slipped on the steps and he had to steady himself with the railing in order to maneuver himself up the stairs, while his brain clearly resonated: I go in. I find it. I drive something through its heart. Then I wait for the cops. cops.

In front of the door with no name plate he remained standing. And how the h.e.l.l am I going to get in. And how the h.e.l.l am I going to get in.

As a kind of joke he tossed out one arm and felt the door handle. And the door opened, revealing an empty apartment. No furniture, rugs, paintings. No clothes. He licked his lips.

It's gone. There's nothing for me here. . . .

There were two more bottles of T-Ro on the floor in the hall. He tried to decide what that meant. That this creature drank... no. That... Only means that someone has been here recently. Otherwise that bottle Only means that someone has been here recently. Otherwise that bottle back there would be gone. back there would be gone.

Yes.

He stepped in, stopped in the hall and listened. Heard nothing. Did a quick round of the apartment, saw there were blankets hanging in the windows in several rooms, understood why. Knew he was in the right place.

Finally he ended up standing in front of the bathroom door. Pushed the door handle down. Locked. But this lock was no problem; all he needed was a screwdriver or something like that.

Again he concentrated entirely on his movements. To perform the movements. He shouldn't think beyond that. No need to. If he started thinking he would hesitate and he wasn't going to hesitate. Therefore: movements.

He pulled out the kitchen drawers, found a kitchen knife. Walked to the bathroom. Inserted the blade into the handle and turned it, clockwise. The lock gave way; he opened the door. It was pitch black in there. He groped around for a light switch, found one. Turned it on.

G.o.d help us. d.a.m.ned if it isn't. . .

The knife fell out of Lacke's hand. The bathtub in front of his feet was half-filled with blood. On the bathroom floor were several large plastic jugs whose translucent plastic surfaces were smeared with red. The knife clattered against the tile floor like a little bell.

His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth as he leaned forward to . . . to what? To . . . investigate it... or something else, something more primal; the fascination of such quant.i.ties of blood ... to dip his hand into it, to- bathe his hands in blood.

He lowered his fingers against the still, dark surface and ... plunged in. His fingers appeared to be severed, disappeared, and with a gaping mouth he lowered his hand until it felt- He screamed, pulled back.

He quickly drew his hand out of the bathtub and drops of blood flew in an arc around him, landing on the ceiling, walls. In a reflex motion he put his hand over his mouth. Only realized what he had done when his tongue, lips registered the sweet stickiness. He spit, dried his hands on his pants. Put the other, clean hand over his mouth.

Someone's lying... down there.

Yes. What he had felt under his fingertips had been a belly. That had yielded under the pressure of his hand, before he pulled it out. In order to stave off the feeling of revulsion, he scanned the floor, found the knife, picked it up and squeezed the shaft.

What the h.e.l.l am I...

If he had been sober he would perhaps have left at this point. Left this dark pool that could be concealing just about anything under its once more still, polished mirror surface. A butchered body, for example. The stomach is maybe. .. it mayhe is just a stomach. The stomach is maybe. .. it mayhe is just a stomach.

But the intoxication made him merciless even to his own fear so when he saw the thin chain that led from the edge of the bathtub down into the dark liquid he stretched out his hand and pulled on it.

The plug was pulled out down there, there was a filtering, clucking sound from the pipes and a faint whirl formed on the surface. He kneeled in front of the bathtub, licked his lips. Felt the harsh taste on his tongue, spit on the floor.

The surface became gradually lower. A sharply delineated dark red edge became visible along its highest level.

It must have been here a long time.

After a minute the contours of a nose appeared at one end. At the other a set of toes that, as he watched, became two half feet. The vortex on the surface became narrower, stronger, positioned exactly between the feet.

He crept with his gaze along the child's body that was gradually being revealed on the bottom of the bath. A couple of hands, folded across the chest. Knee caps. A face. A m.u.f.fled slurp as the last of the blood drained out.

The body in front of his eyes was dark red, blotchy and slimy like a newborn. It had a navel, but no genitals. A boy or a girl? It didn't matter. When he looked closely at the face with its closed eyes he recognized it only too well.

When Oskar tried to run, his legs froze up. Refused.

During five desperate seconds he had really believed that he was going to die. That they were prepared to push him. Now his muscles were having a hard time getting past the idea. They gave out in the pa.s.sageway between the school and the gymnasium. He wanted to lie down. Tip back into those bushes, for example. The jacket and his lined pants would protect him from sharp twigs; the branches would provide gentle support. But he was in a hurry. The second hand; its staccato progress along the clock face. The school.

The red-brown sharp-edged brick facade of stone laid against stone. In his thoughts he swooped like a bird along the corridors, into the cla.s.srooms. Jonny was there. Tomas. Sat at their desks and smiled mockingly at him. He bent his head, checked his boots.

The shoelaces were dirty, one about to become untied. A metal hook toward the top had been bent open. He walked slightly pigeon-toed; the leather imitation on both shoes was slightly stretched at the heels, worn to a shine. Even so he was going to be wearing these boots all winter, most likely.

Cold in his wet pants. He lifted his head.

I won't let them win. I. Won't. Let. Them. Win.

Warmth streamed into his legs. The straight masonry lines of the brick facade dropped away, were rubbed out, disappeared as he started to run. His legs stretched out, the dirt squelched and sprayed up around his feet. The ground flowed out from under him and now it felt as if the Earth was turning too fast, he couldn't keep up.

His legs took him stumbling past the high-rises, the old Konsum store, the coconut factory, and with his speed in combination with old habits he rushed into the courtyard, past Eli's door, and straight to his own building.

He almost ran into a police officer who was heading the same way. The officer opened his arms, received him.

"Hey there! You're in quite a hurry."

His tongue stiffened. The officer let go of him, looked at him . . . with suspicion?

"Do you live here?"

Oskar nodded. He had never seen this police officer before. Admittedly he looked quite nice. No. He had a face that Oskar would normally normally think looked nice. The officer pinched his nose and said: think looked nice. The officer pinched his nose and said: "You see ... something's happened here. In the building next door. So now I'm going door to door around here asking if anyone's heard anything. Or seen anything."

"Which ... which building?"

The officer nodded his head toward Tommy's building and the immediate panic left Oskar.

"That one. Well, not in the building per se . .. more like, the bas.e.m.e.nt. You wouldn't have happened to hear or see anything unusual around there? The past few days?"

Oskar shook his head, his thoughts spinning so chaotically that he technically wasn't thinking anything at all, but he suspected his anxiety was shining from his eyes, fully visible to the officer. And the officer really did incline his head, scrutinizing him.

"How are you doing?"

". . . fine."

"There's nothing to be afraid of. It's all. . . over now. So there's nothing you need to be worried about or anything. Are your parents home?"

"No. My mom. No."

"OK. Well, I'm going to be walking around here for a while, so . . . you can always think a little about what you may have seen." The police officer held the door open for him. "After you."

"No, I was going to ..."

Oskar turned and did his best to walk naturally down the hill. Halfway down he turned and saw the police officer go into his building. They've taken Eli. They've taken Eli.

His jaws started to chatter, his teeth clicking an unclear Morse code message through his bones while he pulled open the door to Eli's building, continued on up the stairs. Would they have put that kind of tape on the door, sealed it off?

Say that I can come in.

The door was ajar.

If the police have been here, why did they leave the door open? That wasn't something they did, was it? He put his fingers on the handle, pulled the door open gently, crept into the hallway. It was dark in the apartment. One of his feet b.u.mped into something. A plastic bottle. At first he thought there was blood in the bottle, then he looked and saw it was lighter fluid.

Breathing.

Someone was breathing.

Moving.

The sound came from the corridor in the direction of the bathroom. Oskar walked toward it, one step at a time, folded his lips inward to stop his teeth from chattering and the shivering moved down toward his chin, his neck, the suggestion of an Adam's apple on his neck. He turned the corner, looked into the bathroom.

That's not a policeman.

A man in shabby clothes was kneeling next to the bathtub, his upper body leaning over the edge, outside Oskar's field of vision. He only saw a pair of dirty gray pants, ripped up shoes with the tips pointed down toward the tiled floor. The hem of a coat. The old guy! The old guy!

But he's... breathing.

Yes. Hissing inhalations and exhalations, almost like sighs, came from the bathroom and Oskar crept closer without consciously thinking about it. Little by little he saw more of the bathroom, and when he was almost level with the bathtub itself he saw what was happening.

Lacke couldn't do it.

The body at the bottom of the tub looked completely defenseless. It wasn't breathing. He had put his hand on its chest and registered the fact that its heart was beating but only with a few beats a minute. He had been expecting something . . . terrifying. Something in proportion to the horror he had experienced at the hospital. But this little b.l.o.o.d.y rag of a person didn't look as if it could ever get up again, much less hurt anyone. It was only a child. A wounded child.

Like seeing someone you love wasting away with cancer, and then being shown a cancer cell through a microscope. Nothing. That? That? That did this? That did this?

That little thing? Destroy my heart.

He let out a sob, his head falling forward until it hit the edge of the bathtub with a dull, echoing thud. He could. Not. Kill a child. A sleeping child. He simply couldn't. Even though . . . That's how it has managed to That's how it has managed to survive. It. It. Not a child. It. survive. It. It. Not a child. It.

It had attacked Virginia and ... it had killed Jocke. It. The creature lying in front of him. This creature who would do it again, to other people. This creature that was not a person. It wasn't even breathing, and even so its heart was beating ... like an animal in hibernation. Think about the Think about the others. others.

A poisonous snake living among people. You think you shouldn't kill it, simply because for the moment it appears defenseless?

But in the end that wasn't what helped him make up his mind. It was when he looked at the face again; the face covered in a thin film of blood, and he thought it looked like it was . . . smiling. Smiling at all the evil it had done. Enough. Enough.

He raised the kitchen knife above the creature, moved his legs back a little so he could put all his weight behind the thrust and- "AAAAHHH!".

Oskar screamed.

The old guy didn't flinch; he simply froze, turned his head toward Oskar and said slowly: "I have to do it. Do you understand?" Oskar recognized him. He was one of the drunks who lived in the apartment complex and said h.e.l.lo to him from time to time.

Why is he doing this?

But that was neither here nor there. The important thing was that the guy had a knife in his hands, a knife that was pointing directly at Eli's chest as he lay there in the bathtub naked, exposed.

"Don't do it."

The guy's head moved to the right, to the left, more as if he was looking for something on the floor than signaling refusal.

"No . . ."

He turned back to the tub, to the knife. Oskar wanted to explain. That the thing in the bathtub was his friend, that it was his... that he had a present for the thing in there, that. . . that it was Eli. that it was Eli.

"Wait."

The point of the knife lay against Eli's chest, pressed in so hard it almost punctured Eli's skin. Oskar didn't know exactly what he was doing when he shoved his hand into the pocket of his jacket and took out the Cube, showed it to the guy.

"Look!"

Lacke only saw it in the corner of his eye as a sudden burst of color in the midst of all the black, gray that surrounded him. Despite the bubble of determination that enveloped him he couldn't help turning his head toward it, to see what it was.

One of those Cubes in the boy's hand. Bright colors.

Looked completely sick in the current context. A parrot among crows. For a second he was hypnotized by the toy's vividness. Then he turned his gaze back to the bathtub, to the knife that was on its way down between the ribs.