The most dreamlike moment came at the start of the third hour, when five new adults appeared, though the doorbell had not rung. I wondered at once if they were parents of the nine, not because they particularly resembled those children, but because they shared that glow of health and quiet beauty that so distinguished the youngsters, and they were in their late twenties or thirties, the right age to be the parents. No names were offered, none were asked, and the five newcomers spread out through the house, each sitting down to converse with a group of children.
I remembered no more of these new conversations than I did of the previous ones, but I often found myself smiling. None of these five adults made an effort to speak to me. They changed groups from time to time, as if all of them wanted to be sure to speak with all of our seventeen, and when I passed one of them in a room or hallway, I felt the urge to introduce myself, to ask about them. But though I am not by nature shy, I found myself reluctant to intrude. Strangest of all, when I made eye contact with one of them, I looked away, and felt that I shouldn’t ask them to see what my eyes had seen, whatever that might mean.
Later in the evening, I noticed that the hieroglyphics had been removed from the brows of the seventeen. I hadn’t seen it being done.
As I made that realization, Verena Stanhope came to me to say that the questions she’d had for me had been answered. She thanked me, and I thanked her for being so brave when it counted the most. She took my hand, and on contact I smiled at what I saw of her in the years to come. “You’ll have a beautiful life,” I told her.
Still later, I found myself sitting on a sofa, my wallet open in my hands to the card from Gypsy Mummy. I didn’t know how long I had been sitting there, but when I raised my head, the mysterious five adults and nine children seemed to have gone. Our hosts and Mrs. Fischer were ushering the children from the living room to the foyer.
I asked, “What’s happening?”
Mrs. Fischer said, “They’re taking the children home.”
“Home where?”
“Each to his or her own home—except for the four who lost their parents. Those will be taken to their grandparents.”
The husband of our hostess opened the door, and his wife led the three Payton kids down the front walk to a car parked at the curb.
I stepped onto the front porch to watch a young couple, whose car it must have been, as they greeted Jessie, Jasmine, and Jordan, and got them aboard.
As Mrs. Fischer joined me on the porch, I said, “You mean they will be driven back to Barstow.”
“Yes, dear. They’ll be let off at their front walk and watched until their parents open the door to them.”
“Do the parents know they’re coming?”
“They’ll all go home by surprise. Let off at the street but watched until they’re safe, so no one will know who delivered them.”
The couple with the car were not among the five adults whose eyes I had been unable to meet for longer than two seconds. I asked who they were.
“Good people,” Mrs. Fischer said.
That car pulled away, and a moment later another arrived. Our hostess had by then returned to escort a little boy to his ride.
Soon all seventeen were gone, Verena Stanhope in the company of Boo. The ghost dog gave my hand one last lick before departing. Now there were only Mrs. Fischer and the couple whose house this was, and the three dogs, who seemed remarkably bright-eyed considering all the petting they had received and all the comfort they had given.
Our host and hostess wanted to hug Mrs. Fischer, and then they wanted to hug me, and I found I wanted to hug them, though if I had known their names, I had forgotten them.
As we drove away in the limousine, I asked, “What about the police?”
“Tomorrow,” Mrs. Fischer said, “the authorities in the various jurisdictions will receive phone calls regarding the location of the property where that foul group of people held their sick games. What they find there will no doubt astonish them.”
“What will the children say?”
“That they were driven somewhere and then held in a room for a while, after which some nice people came and untied them and took them home.”
“Your limousine is very identifiable, ma’am. And my face was once in the newspapers a lot.”
“The children won’t remember you or me, Oddie. They won’t recall things that might have been said to them by their disgusting captors or what terrible things they were afraid might happen to them. They have been given the gift of forgetfulness.”
“Was it in the cookies, the hot chocolate?”
“Good heavens, dear, nothing as crude as drugs. And before you say hypnosis, not that either.”