Pistol in hand, I went to the door, which was the only exit from the room, because going out the window would put us in the hands of those apostles of evil on the second-floor deck. I listened, heard nothing over the excited babble of the crowd below, opened the door, stuck my head out, and found the hall deserted.
When I turned, the girl with the ponytail beckoned me. Her brow was furrowed, and she shifted weight back and forth from one foot to the other, as if something excited her.
Leaving the door ajar, I said, “Come on, come on, let’s go.”
Because she was at an end of the line, she led the other kids across the room. But just short of me, she stopped and reached back as far as she could with her left arm, to keep the maximum distance between her and the second child in the procession.
She whispered, “I have to tell you something.”
Ken #1 had said a gong would sound, summoning them to escort the sacrifices to the terrace. I expected to hear it at any moment.
“Tell me later,” I said.
“No,” the girl said adamantly, although still whispering. “It’s really important. I can see him, too.”
“See who?”
She craned her head forward, and I lowered mine, and in an even fainter whisper that those behind her could not hear, she said, “The others don’t see him, but I do. The dog. I see the dog and how you let him lick your hand.”
Thirty-three
IN MY ALMOST TWENTY-TWO YEARS, I HAD ENCOUNTERED only one other who could see spirits, the English boy whom I mentioned earlier. I had known him less than a day before he had been crushed to death between a stone wall and a runaway truck.
Risking the gong, certain now that the moment for which Boo lingered in this world would soon come, I closed the door, dropped on one knee before the girl, and matched her whisper.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Verena. Verena Stanhope.”
“You see people, too, people no one else sees.”
Her eyes searched mine, and it seemed to me that the gray-green shade of them darkened just before she said, “Dead people, you mean.”
“I see them, too, Verena.”
Her eyes were celadon saucers but bottomless, of such great depth that she could take in the knowledge of whole worlds and have room in that gaze for still more.
I said, “You’re not afraid of the dead people.”
“No. They’re just … sad mostly.”
“You’re a strong girl, I know. It’s made you stronger.”
She looked away from me, as though praise embarrassed her, but then she met my eyes again. “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 animal ghost before.”
“I suspect he’s been hanging around me these past few months just for this night. What this means, I think, is that something will happen to keep me from leading you out of this place, and the dog will 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 my arm with her free hand.
“You’ve been given a gift, 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 with which she gripped me.
“We have to go,” I said. “Lead the other kids behind me. And if something happens … follow the dog. Wherever 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 knew what she must be thinking, the very thing that 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 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.