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"I see them, too, Verena"

Her eyes were celadon saucers but bottoe of whole worlds and have rooaze for still more

I said, "You’re not afraid of the dead people"

"No They’re just … sad er"

She looked away froh praise eain "Mister, I sure have a lot of stuff to ask you"

"That will have to wait, Verena"

She nodded and glanced at Boo, who had joined our huddle "I’ve never seen an ani around ht What thiswill happen to keepwill be your guide"

My words alarmed her "No, we need you"

"Maybe not if you have Boo That’s his name"

"No, you," she said, and clutched ift, Verena, and it will never fail you You can fail the gift, but not the other way around You understand?"

After a hesitation, she nodded

I said, "You have to do what you have to do, always and without complaint I know you can I know you will"

Boo licked the hand hich she gripped o," I said "Lead the other kids behindWherever he takes you, don’t be afraid He won’t fail you"

The girl let go of my arm and quickly kissed my cheek before I could stand up

I knehat shethat she had earlier said to the others to calm them: If he has to, he’ll die for us

"I will, if it comes to that," I assured her, and saw that she understood the promise

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 cliathered on the cantilevered deck outside, cries of excite 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 lance, I saw that several of the children were all but paralyzed by the deranged chorus But Verena encouraged the of so

Before I was halfway to the stairs, the voluain, louder, louder and erent, more infernal, and more eerily ecstatic than it had been the first tis 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 throay--in their enthusiasm for the thrill of license, for the rewards of absolute corruption, and for the coe to a master ould, for all their days in this world, provide for the they wanted, without adh the stairwell door and as I opened it after him, the cacophony briefly subsided only to increase a third ti 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 reachedwas 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 througharound me rattled and shimmied as it would have done in an earthquake

At the farther end of the third-floor hallway, one of thelaray 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 the fixtures transforrayness seeping rapidly toward me