Ron knows his reaction is too slow, and waits for the sound of the blade ripping his skin, popping the lining of his stomach, biting into his spine.

Instead, at the last instant Christine is jerked sideways, tackled by Caleb, and Ron deflects the knife.

Now Christine is on the ground, under Caleb, eyes still closed, mouth still folded into a quivering, evil grimace.

Ron glances at the knife, now jutting from the arm of the couch only a few inches from his head. Then he rises, takes a deep breath to clear his head, and stoops to help Caleb restrain Christine.

"WAKE UP!" Caleb shouts, his face close to hers, his hands clamped on her wrists. "WAKE UP!"

And she does.

"What's going on?" Mrs. Zikry says.

Caleb doesn't say anything. He's staring at Christine and struggling to regain his breath.

Ron watches, utterly still.

Margie, stepping into the room, pipes up: "She tried to kill him, that's what's happening."

"She's a bad girl . . . " says the witch next to Margie.

"No," says Christine, "I didn't mean to."

"Don't just stand there," Margie says, nudging Ron. "We have to do something with her, or she's going to kill us all!"

"No!" says Christine, still pinned to the ground, tears filling her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Billy. I swear I wasn't trying to hurt him. I would never hurt him, I swear! You believe me, right?"

Caleb looks around, at a loss for words.

"Right? Ron? I'm sorry, I would never . . . "

"You had a knife, Christine," Caleb says finally. "We all saw what you tried to do."

"I wasn't me!" says Christine. "You have to believe me! It's whatever he put in my head! It makes them come."

"Makes who come, sweetie?" says Ron.

"Them!" she says. "The ghosts."

Caleb rolls off Christine, and they sit up, both shaking.

"Why do the ghosts want you to kill me?" Ron presses.

"They want to kill all of us," she says. "Because they think we'll stop them from waking the devil from where he sleeps in the dark.

And the director wants the end of the world. But Anna says . . . "

Christine leans against the couch now and her head drops into her shaking hands.

"What does Anna say?" Caleb asks.

"She says it's already too late."

And from just outside the window comes a low voice filled with poisonous mirth: "Five little blackbirds, baked in a pie. . . ."

Caleb spins around and slaps the curtains back from the window.

No one is there-only the black outlines of trees against the deep blue of twilight.

"It is too late," says Christine. "We should have run away. We should have left town during the daylight, when we had the chance.

Now they're all around us."

A pounding begins at the front door. Then there's a pounding at the wall of the room behind Christine, then on the wall next to Margie.

"Sweet Jesus Christ," she says.

Now there is pounding on every wall. The entire trailer is shaking.

The witch leans against the door frame, covering her ears and moaning. Finally, she steps over to the nearest wall and starts pounding back.

"Stop!" she screams. "Stop, stop, stop!"

"Do we have any weapons?" Ron asks.

"Only the knives in the kitchen," says Christine. "But they won't do us any good."

"Let's get one for each of us," Ron says. "I have a gun in the car," he adds. "But I doubt if they'll let me run out and get it."

And suddenly the pounding stops.

The five look at each other.

"Let's get those knives," says Ron.

"We ain't giving that girl a knife," says Margie. "I'll tell you that much. She's one of them, I don't know how much clearer it can be."

"I'm not one of them," says Christine, and she turns to Caleb. "Tell her, Billy!"

He looks at her for a moment, eyes veiled with conflicting emotion.

"Maybe we shouldn't give you one," he says finally, "just in case whatever they did to you comes back."

"It's only when I sleep," she says. Then, appealing to her mother: "Mom?"

The witch is scuttling back and forth, eyeing the walls warily. For a second, her mouth almost twitches into a smile.

"Christine is a bad girl," she says. "My Anna was always the sweet one."

Christine tries one more look at Caleb, but he won't meet her gaze.

She storms down the hall toward her room. A door slams shut.

Ron hands out the knives, one for each of them. "G.o.d be with us all," he says.

From Christine's room, a great hissing sound erupts.

Margie gives Caleb a look.

"I'll check on her," he says.

As he leaves, he hears Margie whispering to Ron: "I don't trust that witch none either. You shouldn'ta given her no weapon . . . "

Caleb tucks the knife into his belt and steps into Christine's room. She sits Indian-style on the floor in front of a bookshelf stereo.

"Anna," she says, "talk to me, please. What's going on? Anna?"

And the static forms a reply, deep as thunder.

"Who are you?" says Christine.

"What did you do with Anna?" she says.

At first, there's only the hiss of nothing, then:

.

The sound shakes everything in the room, knocks two pictures off the wall, and blows out the speakers. Only a soft, electric buzz remains.

From the living room, they hear Margie: "There's somebody out there!"

Christine and Caleb look at one another, then she gets up and starts to go down the hall. He grabs her arm and turns her toward him.

"I know you didn't mean to hurt Ron," he says. "Alright?"

"Billy," she says, "you've always been my favorite person of all, and if Ron helped you like you said, I would never hurt him. I would never hurt anyone. I thought you of all people would know that."

He can see the hurt in her eyes as she pulls away and disappears down the hall. He sighs, then follows.

In the living room, Ron is peering out the curtains. Margie and the witch seem to have taken up a defensive position behind the kitchen counter.

"The sheriff 's out there," Ron says. "And . . . what the h.e.l.l?"

Caleb and Christine look out. In the half-light they can see the sheriff with his brown hat and uniform, and next to him . . . Next to him stands an inhuman-looking, white-faced figure with large, strange eyes, wearing a black suit. In his hand: what appears to be a length of rope.

"Who's the other guy?" asks Ron.

"It's the director," says Caleb, but he doesn't know how he knows it.

The sheriff pulls out a megaphone.

"THERE'S TWO WAYS TO DO THIS," he says. "THE EASY WAY, OR THE FUN WAY."

And in the director's hands, a torch flares to life.

"WE WANT TO SEE ALL OF YOU OUT ON THE LAWN, NOW. YOU DON'T WANT TO COME OUT, THAT'S FINE. WE'LL BURN YOU OUT."

The director leans over and appears to say something to him.

The megaphone belches to life again. "UH . . . THIS IS JUST A TeTE-a-TeTE, THERE'S NO NEED TO BE AFRAID. THE FIGHT COMES LATER."

And the man with the torch, the director, starts walking toward them.

"What should we do?" Caleb asks. "Jump through the back window and make a break for the woods?"

"Uh, Billy," Christine says, staring out the back window, "look at this."

Out the back window, Caleb sees only an empty forest, at first. Then in the deep shadow he glimpses one white-gowned figure. Then another. Then another.

"We're surrounded."

"IF n.o.bODY COMES OUT BY THE TIME HE REACHES THE HOUSE, HE'S GONNA LIGHT IT UP."

"I'll go out," Christine says. "They already had me once. I'm not scared."

But her lips tremble as if with cold as she says the words.

"No," Caleb says. "I'll go."

"I'll go too," says Ron.

"Don't leave me in here!" says Margie, gesturing to the two Zikry women with her eyes.

"Believe me," says the witch, smiling, "you got bigger things to worry about than us."

For some reason, that makes everybody laugh, and the humor gives them all the courage they need.

Caleb steps over to Christine.

"I just wanted to let you know that I've missed you," he says softly, "and that you were always one of my favorite people too. It's just-"

"It's okay," she says, putting one shus.h.i.+ng finger gently on his lips.

"He's getting close," says Ron.

"Lock the door behind us," Caleb says. He kisses Christine on the cheek, turns, and steps out the screeching screen door behind Ron.

They both stop short at the top of the cement steps. The director stands only ten feet away-but he never should have been able to cover that distance in so little time. And beside him are two sleepwalkers that weren't there before. Each of them holds a pistol aimed at the sky, like a couple of duelers.