"Others? What others?" Lou asked.

"The other dead."

Gordy threw up his arms. "Great! We're in a creepy old mansion with a bunch of dead people in the basement and one scary old dude who wants to eat us. This just gets better and better!"

"Boy," Wes barked, "you're *bout to get a good dose of my foot up your keister. " He lifted himself off the chaise lounge and was almost winded by the effort. "What are the chances we just stumbled on the place they wanted us to go?"

"Slim to none," I said.

"That brochure about this place you found at the convenience store, how'd you come across it?"

I thought about it. "The wind... It just caught my eye."

He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. "That weren't no wind. Dollars to donuts it was one of your dead friends giving us a nudge in the right direction."

"Well," Gordy said. "They got us here, let's just call them upstairs and get this thing over with."

"How do you propose we do that?" Wes asked.

Gordy shrugged. "I don't know, seance maybe?"

Wes hesitated and then smiled. "That just might work."

April let out a deafening scream. She sat up straight in bed and started bawling. "Mommy," she cried.

Mimic hastily backed away. She shrieked like an injured animal.

Lou ran to April's side. She began by encouraging April to lie down and then resorted to physically trying to force her.

"I kissed him on the cheek," April cried hysterically. "That's when he decided to eat me."

While Lou wrestled with her, the rest of us stood frozen in time and listened to her horrific story.

"Mommy let me go to a party with him. I picked wild flowers outside while he sharpened his knives in the kitchen. He called me inside and grabbed me. I told him I would tell mommy that he was a mean man. "

Tyrone held tight onto his knife handle. "Tell her to shut up," he demanded.

"He choked me. I kicked and screamed and scratched."

"Shut her up!" Tyrone pleaded this time.

"It took him nine days to eat me."

Tyrone raised the knife and repeatedly stabbed the vacant side of the bed. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut Up!"

The Throwaways huddled closer and closer together until they were almost one jumbled mass.

April sucked in a long breath of air and then collapsed into a blubbering mess.

I had had enough of Tyrone's act. Without considering the consequences, I barreled into him and knocked him to the floor. Thankfully, the knife went flying out of his hand. I raised my fist, prepared to pummel him within an inch of his life, when I saw the expression on his face. It was calm. He wasn't fighting back. He wasn't screaming or thrashing about. He was waiting for me to hit him. I let him go and stood up.

"What is going on here?" Lou asked sounding as stressed as I felt. She had an arm draped over April's shoulder.

"This is crazy town," Gordy added. "The heart of it!"

My hands began to shake. "It's this room," I whispered.

"Speak up," Wes demanded.

"The room feels different," I said.

Wes looked around and then crossed his arms. "Got colder, that's for damn sure."

Tyrone found his knife and picked it up. "He's here."

I shook my head. "No. It doesn't feel like him." I spun around to face Tyrone and in doing so happened to glance at the dark corner of the room. There, almost blending in with the black shadows stood the little girl from the basement. My heart raced. I tried to tell the others, but I couldn't speak.

"It took him nine days," she said. At least I think she did. I saw her lips move, and I heard her voice, but no one else reacted. "Nine days," she said just before she vanished into the darkness. The coldness was gone.

My legs began to wobble, and I struggled to keep my feet. I bent over and placed my hands on my knees, breathing deeply.

"What's wrong with you, son?" Wes asked.

"We've got nine days." I straightened up, shivered, and rubbed my hands together.

"For what?" Tyrone asked. He was stoic and detached.

"I'm not sure," I answered.

"Nine days?" Gordy yelped. "I'm not particularly interested in sticking around here for another nine minutes. I say we get on our giddy up and put some serious miles between us and this freakfest."

"Can't," I said.

"Oh man!" Gordy stomped his foot. "No one ever listens to me!"

"Because you're a moron," April said.

None of us noticed that she had spoken at first. Her voice was weak, but it was actually April speaking this time, not whatever it had been before. As if we were all connected to the same thought, everyone in the room did a delayed double take.

Lou rubbed her back. "Are you okay?"

April weakly shook her head. "No, not even close." She winced. "I feel like my insides have been shredded."

Mimic giggled. She brought her hands to her face and swayed back and forth. She was clearly happy to see April back to her old self... almost.

April turned to the Throwaway and recoiled. "What... June?"

Mimic smiled softly. "Does it please you?"

April scooted across the bed to get away from Mimic.

"June?" I looked to Lou to see if the name meant anything to her. She looked as confused as I was.

"No," April said staring dumfounded at Mimic. "That's impossible."

"It is what you wanted," Mimic said.

April was too shocked to respond.

"Who's June?" I asked.

Mimic looked at me and smiled. "I am."

"No!" April barked. "No, no, no!"

"April," Lou said loudly, but gently. "Calm down. It's okay."

April looked at her in irritated awe. "Don't tell me it's okay. Don't tell me that." She pointed at Mimic and screamed. "You are dead... June is dead... My sister is dead!" She buried her face in the pillow and started to wail.

EIGHT.

April cried herself to sleep. The rest of us tried to collect ourselves. We were all on pins and needles. All of us except the Throwaways. They were eerily calm. Even Mimic. We had to pry her away from April's bedside. She told us several times that she needed to stay by her sister's side, but at my prodding Tall Boy talked to her and convinced her to join the other Throwaways.

The questions came fast and furious among us non-Throwaways. First, Wes wanted me to explain what I meant when I said we had only nine days. I had to tell him on several occasions that I didn't know. For some reason, he felt that if he asked me the question in a slightly different way over and over again, I would finally be able to give him the answer he wanted. All it really accomplished was making me more and more irritated with him and making him more and more frustrated with me.

We were at each other's throats. Something was under our skin and I had a feeling it had very little to do with us.

Wes shook his head. "Let's just settle down a bit here and go over what we know."

"We know it don't make a lick of sense to stick around here," Gordy said.

"Stop your grousing," Wes said. "It ain't helping."

Lou took a deep breath and composed herself. She was in better control of her emotions than the rest of us. "We know it took him... whoever he is... nine days to eat her... whoever she is."

"He is Albert," I said. "The Flish, and she is Grace."

Wes looked puzzled. "Albert... the Flish and Grace. Why is that familiar?"

"Must be an old guy thing because it doesn't mean a thing to me," Gordy said.

I looked at Ajax. "What do you know?"

He sat back on his haunches and grunted. Nothing.

I shifted my gaze to Ariabod. "You?"

He signed and Lou interpreted. "Fish gets in."

"What do you mean by that?"

Lou watched him sign again. "He said he means what he said."

Ajax joined the conversation with some signing of his own.

Lou hesitated before she interpreted. "Ajax says he means fish haunts from within." She added her own interpretation. "I think they're saying the Flish possesses people."

"Possess?" Gordy asked. "Like in the movies when a ghost takes over a person."

"Not a ghost," Lou said.

Gordy waited for Lou to expound on her statement, but she remained silent. He sighed and shook his head. "What is it if it isn't a ghost?"

She still hesitated.

"Answer him," I insisted.

She readied herself and said, "The devil."

There was a burst of silence. That's the only way to describe it. It practically blasted the room apart.

"The devil," Gordy finally said. "Evil guy? Horns? Pitch fork? That's what you're saying, right?"

She shook her head. "I'm not saying it. Ariabod is."

"No," Gordy snapped. "He said the fish gets in. You took that and brought the devil into it."

She began to lose her cool. She gritted her teeth and said, "I'm just trying to make sense of all this, that's all."

"Okay," I said. "This isn't working. We can't keep jumping down each others' throats."

Wes chuckled. "That's easier said than done, Oz. I'll be honest with you, I got a knot in my gut that is irksome as hell."

I nodded. "Me too."

Lou grimaced. "No knot, but you all are definitely irritating me."

Gordy shrugged. "Not sure what irksome means, but like my old man used to say, I feel like I'm wired for a fight."

"So what do we do?" Lou asked.