Odd Thomas: Deeply Odd Part 23

Into the hall, Boo first, then me, and then the seventeen with Verena in the lead. I turned right, toward the back stairs that I had climbed earlier.

From the crowd gathered on the cantilevered deck outside, cries of excitement rose, a swelling wave of sound that was partly a shriek of cold, savage delight and partly a wail of adulation, of veneration. Never before had I heard human voices devoted to such an expression, and in spite of its source, the roar was so inhuman that I shuddered as if I were as boneless as a sea medusa.

With a backward glance, I saw that several of the children were all but paralyzed by the deranged chorus. But Verena encouraged them, and pulled them, and with the urging of some of the more stalwart, the reluctant ones came along.

Before I was halfway to the stairs, the volume of the demented crowd subsided but swelled again, louder, louder and markedly more belligerent, more infernal, and more eerily ecstatic than it had been the first time.

The pandemonium inspired in me two feelings that I didn't recall having previously been afflicted by simultaneously, stark terror and sorrow, terror at the prospect of falling into the hands of such people, sorrow at the realization of what they had lost-or thrown away-in their enthusiasm for the thrill of license, for the rewards of absolute corruption, and for the comfort of being in bondage to a master who would, for all their days in this world, provide for them anything they wanted, without admonition or rebuke.

As Boo pa.s.sed through the stairwell door and as I opened it after him, the cacophony briefly subsided only to increase a third time, crescendoing to a Bedlam pitch. But then, as if an orchestra conductor had slashed his baton down to command a full stop, the roar abruptly became a silence.

Two seconds later, when Verena reached me at the stairwell door, the gong was struck. I could not conceive of its size, because the note was so low and so powerful that it echoed bong-ong-ong-ong-ong through my bones as if it would disjoint me, and the building around me rattled and s.h.i.+mmied as it would have done in an earthquake.

At the farther end of the third-floor hallway, one of the modern ceiling lights morphed into a chain-hung lamp with a conical shade. Over there, too, a smooth gray blandness spread across the plastered ceiling, across the wallpaper, across the wooden floor and carpet runner, creeping toward us.

Boo waited on the landing. I urged Verena to follow the dog, and promised to provide protection at the end of the procession. "Hurry, girl. Hurry!"

As the children hustled past me into the stairwell, I watched what they could not see behind them: another of the nine low-profile ceiling fixtures transforming into a crude hanging lamp, and then a third, the grayness seeping rapidly toward me.

The last of the children entered the stairs as the sixth hanging lamp appeared, and I would have followed them if a door hadn't opened at the farther end of the hallway, perhaps the door to another set of stairs. The figure who stepped through that door was at too great a distance for me to see his face in fine detail, but by his height and weight and body type, by the way that he moved, I at once recognized myself, the Other Odd. When he drew nearer, I would surely see that he was my twin but for one detail: If Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k could be believed, the lesser demon known as a senoculus would have three eyes cl.u.s.tered on each side of its head.

Although the cultists wanted the seventeen captives for the cruel sacrifices they had gathered here to celebrate, the senoculus wanted only me. If I followed the children, I would draw this thing to them; and I couldn't guess what would happen then. I couldn't risk that instead of providing them with protection, I would bring upon them their destruction with mine.

I stood my ground in the open stairwell door, watching the hallway in my world morph into a hallway in Elsewhere, the senoculus approaching just behind the transformation.

By the power of its will, the demon was causing that in-between realm to emerge and my reality to recede. In the stable in Elsewhere with its collection of heads, when I wanted to leave, I had brought my world to the fore and caused this one to submerge by a similar act of will.

In spite of my gift and the weird life that I live, I am not an expert in the occult. I have always thought it wise not to study that subject, for the same reason that it isn't wise to make a party game of a Ouija board. Don't knock on a door if you don't know what might open it.

Nevertheless, I thought I understood enough about the way of such things to safely a.s.sume that the senoculus was native to the lightless wasteland and could also prowl the in-between world that I named Elsewhere. But it could not come at will into the world of the living, my world, unless conjured either by true believers and kept restrained in a pentagram by proper rituals, or unless it was drawn to take residence in one of the living by whatever action or weakness might be an invitation to possession.

Likewise, I was native to this world of ours and could, when I encountered a way station, move about in Elsewhere. But I could not go from Elsewhere into the wasteland. I was not Orpheus, the figure of Greek legend, who was able to enter h.e.l.l to try to rescue his beloved wife, Eurydice. Anyway, Stormy Llewellyn was not in h.e.l.l; I had no need to rescue her.

And so this entire residence was a way station. With acts of will, both I and the senoculus could make it emerge from beneath-or submerge below-the world of the living, to which I currently belonged, though perhaps not for much longer. In a contest between me and this creature, I suspected that its ability to summon Elsewhere around us was much more powerful than my ability to make that realm recede. We fry-cooks can be a stubborn bunch, but demons have a reputation for obstinacy that way exceeds ours.

The seventh ceiling light remade itself into a chain-hung lamp, and my pursuer drew close enough in the sullen light for me to see his wealth of eyes, my face grotesquely ornamented, and I recalled both the cold, soft feel of this thing and its inhuman strength.

The only advice that Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k had had for me regarding the senoculus was Run, Mr. Thomas. Run. Even if he was not my guardian angel, which he had denied being, he was playing for the right team, and his advice should no doubt be heeded.

I intended to delay as long as necessary before stepping out of the hall and slamming the door. I hoped that good Boo would have led Verena and the other captives all the way down to the mudroom before I followed them. Although the senoculus apparently wanted me above all others, there was every reason to suppose that if it saw the children or smelled them-all that delicious innocence-it would be compelled to fall upon them.

In our previous encounter, this thing had not pa.s.sed through walls as a spirit could, and it had not floated along swiftly above the floor as Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k had done. I a.s.sumed that in Elsewhere, if not in its native wasteland, its means of getting from Point A to Point B were no more sophisticated than mine, an a.s.sumption that, if wrong, might lead to a hideous, cold kiss and to something worse than possession.

The eighth of nine ceiling lights metamorphosed into a lamp on a chain, the gray of faux concrete crawled closer, and the senoculus spoke in my voice as he strode forward. "Give me your breath, piglet. I want it now."

I crossed the threshold, slammed the door, and descended only ten steps, two at a time, before I heard the door crash into the upper-landing wall behind me.

Even if the kids were out of the stairwell, they surely had not already left the mudroom. If I managed to plunge to the bottom of the stairs without being snared by the senoculus, I would bring it with me, and it would be upon those innocents before all of them could escape the house, where-according to my theory-it could not pursue them.

I hit the landing and flew pell-mell off it as the walls turned gray around me. The stairs were treacherous at high speed, my balance never that of a circus aerialist, and I caromed off the walls as I dove into that waterless well.

From behind me, with an intimacy that made the skin crawl on the nape of my neck, the thing said, "Let me suck your tongue, piglet."

Thirty-four.

QUICK THROUGH THE DOOR AT THE LANDING, OUT OF the stairwell, onto the second floor, I heeded the advice of baseball great Satchel Paige, who said about life in general, "Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you." I ran as I had never run while on my high-school baseball team, because in baseball, happily, no rule allows the opposing team to bring in a supernatural soul-stealer to chase down the runner between bases.

A short hall led to a pair of open French doors and a wider hall beyond. There were rooms behind closed doors to the right and open archways to the left, beyond which lay an enormous chamber lined with leatherbound books and furnished as a grand drawing room that offered numerous elegant seating areas on richly patterned Persian carpets. In the farther wall were sets of French doors standing open to the deep deck on which the crowd of cultists, their backs to me, waited for the Kens to appear with the children on the terrace below.

Ahead of me, on the right, elevator doors opened. A man sporting Oscar the Grouch eyebrows and a Snidely Whiplash mustache, with a chin beard unsuitable for any cartoon character or Muppet, appeared with a bottle of champagne in each hand, the wire coiffes having already been removed and the corks popped, a thin vapor rising from the open necks. His expression told me that six-eyed death was on my heels, that Satchel Paige was a man of deep insight, as usual.

I threw myself against the wall on my right, gracelessly slid-dropped-rolled-scrambled past the guy with all the facial hair, who found himself in the direct path of the senoculus. In that instant, my theory that the demon must be interested only in me proved to be woefully wrong. The thing leaped upon him, driving him to the floor, champagne bottles rolling away in gouts of foam and sparkling pale-gold wine. With savage violence, the senoculus slammed a knee into its victim's crotch, then a second time even more violently, which seemed to be bad sportsmans.h.i.+p even for a demon. It seized the man's throat and pressed down upon him, lowering its face toward his.

Having slid-dropped-rolled-scrambled to the elevator just as the senoculus took down the party guy, I was alarmed to see the doors already sliding shut. The demon probably wouldn't be distracted more than a few seconds by this appetizer, not long enough for me to get out of sight into a stairwell. I thrust one arm between the doors and had the disturbing thought that it would be amputated below the elbow when they proved to be as sharp as guillotine blades. I knew I should never have watched that Wes Craven movie. Instead, the electric eye triggered the safety mechanism, the doors glided open. I rolled into the elevator, thrust to my feet, pressed the 1 on the floor-selection panel, then pressed the CLOSE DOOR b.u.t.ton.

On the floor beyond the doors, the guy on his back was trying to scream, probably not because of the spilled champagne, but the hand of the demon at his throat choked off his cry, so that he was able to make, inappropriate to the moment, a sound more like Donald Duck in a fit of pique. In addition to having six eyes in cl.u.s.ters of three, the senoculus proved to be somewhat less than my identical twin when it opened its mouth and a long forked tongue fluttered out. It licked teasingly at the lips of the luckless guy who had only wanted to have a little bubbly while he watched children being tortured and murdered.

Making urgent sounds as if I needed to go to the bathroom, which fortunately I did not, I pressed the CLOSE DOOR b.u.t.ton again. Again.

Past the struggling pair, beyond the open archways, everything changed in the grand drawing room, carpets and furniture and books vanis.h.i.+ng left to right as a bland gray wave remade the building in my world into a building in Elsewhere. The chamber wasn't entirely empty. I saw pallets on which were stacked what appeared to be gold bars, hundreds of them, which suggested that the cult used that room in Elsewhere as a secret vault and that they knew something about the future of the U.S. monetary system that might be of interest to The Wall Street Journal. The crowd on the deck, waiting impatiently for the spectacle on the terrace, had vanished, apparently remaining on the deck in the world they shared with me. Mr. Champagne, already in the clutches of the senoculus, had the misfortune to be trapped here, which suddenly made me wonder why I was still trapped in this realm, why I had not remained in the building in my world when the senoculus willed us into Elsewhere.

The demon forced its mouth onto the open mouth of Mr. Champagne, which must have been an unpleasant kiss for both of them, complicated as it was by the forked tongue and the elaborate and now disarranged mustache.

Although I had done nothing-nothing-to the elevator, it seemed to be holding a grudge against me, like a really p.i.s.sed-off machine in one of those movies about killer cars, which I had mocked earlier but now regretted mocking.

CLOSE DOOR, CLOSE DOOR, CLOSE DOOR, CLOSE DOOR.

My thumb was wearing out.

The dying man thrashed helplessly under his a.s.sailant. His eyes bulged in their sockets. His meaty face flushed red, and then purple, and then began to fade to gray as his thras.h.i.+ng subsided. Throughout this good-bye kiss, the senoculus made a series of greedy, disgusting noises that might have been like the groans of pleasure issuing from a menage trois that included Hannibal Lecter, the nest queen from Aliens, and Gumby.

I drew one Glock. Bullets didn't faze this thing. I drew the other Glock. Forget Clint Eastwood. Two-Gun Odd is in town. Yeah, right. I holstered both weapons.

The doors began to close, and I was so grateful that I wanted to kiss them, except that the very idea of a kiss had been rendered icky for the foreseeable future.

Crouched atop its victim, the senoculus raised its mouth from the dead man's face. A little cloud of vapor, reminiscent of that which had been wafting from the open champagne bottles, floated in its open mouth, enwrapping its hideous tongue. When thin ribbons of that mist began to slip away between the demon's lips, it abruptly sucked them back, closed its mouth, and swallowed. As it looked at me through the gap between the closing doors, its six eyes were clouded, perhaps with ecstasy, but suddenly they cleared, and the thing threw itself at the doors-too late.

With a sigh and hiss indicating that it was moved from below by a hydraulic ram rather than by hoist cables and counterweights, the elevator started down. Relieved, I closed my eyes, savoring the motion and the sound of descent.

Elisha Graves Otis, who had built the first fully safe elevator in the United States, in a five-story department store in New York City, had probably not lingered in our world when he died in 1861. But if one day his spirit came around to seek my a.s.sistance, I would knock myself out to help him cross over to the Other Side.

Maybe the car traveled half the way to the ground floor before coming to a halt.

When I opened my eyes, I stood in the center of a smooth gray cube. The position indicator, now just a flat gray shape above the doors, lacked numbers. The car-station panel beside the doors still offered floor-selection b.u.t.tons, but none of them had a number on it. I was not in an elevator any longer, but in the half-formed idea of an elevator, in Elsewhere.

Nevertheless, I pressed what had been the ground-floor b.u.t.ton. Pressed and pressed it. But it had no give to it, no action. None of the other b.u.t.tons functioned, either.

The idea of stairs is a lot more useful than the idea of an elevator. As I had proved more than once, you can get from here to there on the idea of stairs, but the idea of an elevator is about as useful as the idea of an ice-cream sundae.

Overhead, the light-diffuser panels were gone, as were the fluorescent tubes that had once been behind them. The ceiling was smooth and gray, unmarked even by the outline of the top-exit door that had once been in the center of that s.p.a.ce.

A kind of claustrophobia overcame me, made worse by worry for the children. Boo would guide them, yes, but Boo's bite had no effect on living people, and the dead do not bark any more than they talk. I had left the kids with no protection other than words- I am not yours, you may not touch me-words that had seemed to mean something when I'd said them, but which I realized now were no more useful to them than was a would-be protector of the innocent who allowed himself to be trapped in the idea of an elevator.

At that moment, I knew one of the seventeen would die, perhaps more than one, perhaps all of them. If I succeeded to any degree this night, it would be but a partial success-with an intolerable element of failure, as on that awful day at the mall in Pico Mundo. The more certain I became of this, the smaller the elevator seemed to be and the more intensely claustrophobia wrapped its suffocating fabric around me.

I pressed on the walls and pried at the doors, to no avail. I almost shouted, though if anyone remained in this particular piece of Elsewhere, it would be the senoculus, which already knew where I was and which would not answer my shout with kind a.s.sistance. When I realized that I was circling the gray cube as if I were a frightened rat in a cage, I halted, leaned against a wall, clasped my head in my hands and tried to deny the claustrophobia and the fear for the children that exacerbated it, tried to clear my mind and think.

Three realities. The world into which I was born. The blasted black wasteland. Elsewhere.

Think.

Our world, a material realm, allowed us to apply the laws of physics and thermodynamics and other knowledge to shape tools, build machines, and use all the riches of nature to provide ourselves with the comforts of civilization, one of which was the leisure to ponder the meaning of our existence. I knew the systems and rules of our world, more or less how it worked and mostly why.

The world of the wasteland, a spiritual realm, call it h.e.l.l or what you will, was dark and mean, without grace, populated by spirits that thrived on hatred and pain, that were denied meaning-or had denied it to themselves-that wanted nothing but the destruction of our world, which they might one day achieve through their surrogates among us, and the destruction of themselves, which they would never achieve. If I thought about all of this long enough, I would be able to imagine in pretty accurate detail the systems and rules of their world, how it worked and mostly why.

There is, of course, yet another world than these three, the one to which Stormy Llewellyn had gone, but I didn't need to know the systems and rules of that place, because visionaries and theologians have spent millennia pondering them, and I'd probably be given an orientation booklet when and if I ever arrived there.

So then, Elsewhere ...

Elsewhere was neither largely material nor largely spiritual, but an in-between emptiness, not a world in full, merely an unmapped archipelago of reefs, atolls, and islands of which certain people in our world could make wicked use, into which denizens of the wasteland could venture. In this realm, willpower could shape reality to some extent, but at the same time, both those from my world and those from the wasteland had to move about as if walls and doors and stairways mattered. I did not think that any amount of time would be long enough for me to imagine the systems and rules of this eerie place, because it was ... essentially so formless. No, not that. Because it was ...

A hard metallic shriek and a cracking-buckling noise drew my attention to the ceiling. Even if I had wanted to live in denial, I couldn't have done so, because as the clamor grew louder, a top-exit panel appeared in the smooth gray ceiling. The idea of an exit. It had been thought into existence not by me but by the senoculus, which was even now, on the second floor, prying open the sliding doors to the shaft, intending to descend by a service ladder. This square on the car ceiling wasn't the idea of an exit, really, but the idea of an entrance, a trapdoor by which the demon could get at me.

For a moment, I couldn't understand why it would come after me so indirectly if, with its stronger willpower, it could disable the elevator and halt me between floors. But then I understood that the elevator was at this impa.s.se because our conflicted wills had come to a draw. I wanted the elevator car to descend to the ground floor, from which I might escape into my world, where my enemy could not follow me, and the senoculus wanted the car to return to the second floor, where it could steal everything from me with a kiss, as it had taken life and soul from Mr. Champagne. Its willpower and mine were equally matched.

The senoculus could not will the shaft doors above to open because I was willing them to remain closed, which required it to resort to physical effort. My head hurt.

Suddenly I realized that although this plain-gray cube had none of the fluorescent tubes of the car in the real elevator, in the real building, in my world, it nonetheless had light. The idea of light, all around, without source. The car should be dark. And it would be black as night just as soon as the demon wanted it that way.

With a last bang and clatter, the busy senoculus apparently succeeded in tearing open the shaft doors on the second floor, because bits of debris ticked against the roof of the car.

Darkness enveloped me. The claustrophobia, having abated slightly, surged back full force.

In the elevator in my world, the rungs of the service ladder would be set in the concrete wall of the shaft. Here in Elsewhere, the idea of rungs existed in the idea of a concrete shaft. But the senoculus could climb down to the roof of the car as easily on the idea as on the reality.

Thirty-five.

EARLIER I ADMITTED THAT, WHEN I WAS IN HIGH school, lingering spirits distracted me from science studies and math, for which I had no great talent, anyway. English and writing were my strengths, and baseball, and frying anything that might taste good, though that last came naturally and didn't require me to take a cla.s.s.

The rules of Elsewhere might not have been either a problem of science or math, but figuring them out seemed as daunting to me as mastering trigonometry. I guess that's what froze my mind there in the idea of an elevator, that and anguish at the thought of the kids not making it out of that building alive. Although I'm pretty much a positive guy, especially considering that I'm always slogging through one c.r.a.p storm or another, I must admit that my anguish almost segued into despair when darkness fell around me and I knew that the Other Odd, with its look-how-scary-I-am six eyes and its stupid forked tongue, was about to descend the service ladder to pop open this can and spoon me out of it.

Then enlightenment. Suddenly I understood that the idea of light in the car had been my idea, not a kindness extended to me by the senoculus. And the light had gone out because I had realized that the car should be dark.

The instant I reconsidered that hasty thought, the idea of light returned, all around me, issuing from no discernible source.

If the senoculus and I were equally matched in willpower, with the demon insisting that the elevator return to the second floor and me insisting that it continue down to the ground floor, the stalemate did not necessarily mean that the issue must be decided by a physical confrontation. I had no illusions that I would win in hand-to-hand combat against an undying adversary with supernatural strength. Not even Mr. Schwarzenegger could have hoped to win such a battle in the days before he became a governor and went to seed.

I had supposed that the rules of Elsewhere were impossible to imagine because the place was so formless, independent of the laws of physics and thermodynamics and other systems of my material world. Now, however, my anguish over the children brought me not to despair but to desperation, which is energized despair that compels vigorous action. In my desperation, I grasped a most important possibility: If the senoculus and I were equally matched in willpower, the contest might be decided by which of us was more clever.

Cleverness requires imagination. Evil is not imaginative. It inspires the same transgressions over and over again, with such infinitesimal variation that only the weak-minded are not quickly bored by that way of living. It seeks to destroy, and destruction takes no imagination. Creation takes true imagination, the making of something new and wondrous, whether it's a song or an iPad, a novel or a new cooking surface more durable than Teflon, a new flavor of ice-cream or s.p.a.cecraft that can travel to the moon. The vibrant imagination of a fry-cook with free will should easily trump the weak imagination of a demon anytime, anywhere.

Instead of willing the elevator car to descend the shaft and being resisted by the senoculus willing it to return to the second floor, I imagined the hydraulic ram that raised and lowered the car in the shaft, and once the idea of the ram was clearly in mind, I imagined it suddenly failing, dropping the car in an instant to the ground floor.

Wham! It is a good thing that the fall was only half a story, for otherwise I might have been knocked unconscious or badly injured. But I was only thrown off my feet, and I sprang up at once. The doors flew open before me, as I had imagined they would, and I stepped out of the car, into a hallway.

I remained in Elsewhere, in a smooth gray empty building, but the layout should be the same as in the real building in my world. I was well aware that the senoculus, that kissing fool, would already be sprinting madly for the entrance to the stairs on the second floor; therefore, I ran faster than I had ever run before. I sought the vacant dining room and found it, sought the vacant kitchen and found it, raced to one of the French doors that faced onto the rear terrace, and opened it. I saw that my reasoning had been correct: My world lay beyond the back door; the building still shared a boundary with the wasteland only on the lake side, where sorcery of some kind had invited the one whom they venerated.

Discovering the true and hidden nature of the world had nearly broken me. I hoped with all my heart that whatever more there might be for me to learn, further lessons could be postponed until I had gotten that dinner of cheese meatloaf, steak fries, and coleslaw, and until I felt confident that I had completed this first semester with my sanity intact.

I hurried across the terrace and about twenty feet into the yard before stopping and turning to look back at the house, lodge, witch's cradle, whatever. Through the windows, I saw not the grayness of Elsewhere, but the warmly lighted house as it had been when I first approached it. n.o.body was in the kitchen or visible in other rooms, so they must all be out on the second-floor deck, still waiting for the two Kens to appear with the seventeen sacrifices, although the gong had rung minutes earlier.

Boo and the kids were nowhere to be seen, which must mean they were in the process of making good their escape, if not already off the property.

I resorted to psychic magnetism, picturing Verena Stanhope in my mind's eye, her ponytail and celadon eyes, and at first I felt nothing, nothing. Nothing. Before I could panic, I realized that perhaps my gift might be failing me because I was demanding to feel something. As crazy as most of us Californians are, it's nevertheless sometimes true that you have to switch off the motor and go with the flow.

Although the shredding clouds were on the move, it seemed to be the moon that glided into sight, a great round silver s.h.i.+p on a dark but sparkling sea. The moon is very calming, except perhaps for werewolves, and I basked in its light as I took three deep breaths and slowly blew them out.

Suddenly I began to move in the direction that I felt the children might have gone-which turned out to be toward the satanic church where the fourteen ram skulls peered down from high pedestals. I halted after fifty feet, stunned by the prospect that Boo might have led them into that place.

A fourth deep breath, drawn rapidly and blown out hard, cleared my perception, and I realized that they must have followed a route past the church and into the woods beyond. I should stop worrying. In countless true stories, dogs that were lost while on vacation with their families, or that were stolen and taken great distances, found their way home across hundreds of miles of unfamiliar territory. A ghost dog probably had bags and bags of tricks that even the best of living dogs didn't know. Boo must be aware of Mrs. Edie Fischer, because he had been there at the Salvation Army thrift shop when she had been parked at the curb, waiting for me to return. And if Boo had known where to find me precisely when I needed him to lead the children safely away, he would surely know where to find Mrs. Fischer in her superstretch limousine. If for any reason my ghost dog became lost, Mr. Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k would probably drop in and show him the way.

If I'm insane, a Freudian psychiatrist will be of no help to me whatsoever. By the time we were halfway through a.n.a.lysis, he would be in an asylum.

Because I had not pa.s.sed through this part of the yard on my approach to the house, I hadn't until now seen the circular gazebo, which stood about ten yards to my left. I hurried to it, plucking the Talkabout from my utility belt.

All white, about twelve feet in diameter, graced by elaborate lattice-work, and with gingerbread around the eaves of the fanciful scalloped roof, it seemed almost to be a mirage, a glimpse of a magical place in Fairyland. Occasionally, with so much to corrupt and destroy, being a committed satanist must get overwhelming, must start to feel, you know, like a job, and not an easy one. Some days, they probably want to take a break from the killing and conjuring and endless scheming against the forces of good, take a break and chill out in a less dour atmosphere. Nothing will lighten the spirit more than to spend some time in a whimsical gazebo on a sunny day, with the scent of spring lilacs in the air, birds chirruping all around, while you compose an amusing hate poem and nibble on human sweetbreads.

In the shelter of the gazebo, crouched below the railing that capped its lattice wall, I switched on the Talkabout, made sure the volume was turned low, and said, "Are you there, Mrs. Fischer? Over."

After a mild crackle of static, she said, "Where else would I want to be, dear? Over."

"I was just afraid maybe you were out of range. Be ready, the kids are on their way to you. Over."