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knob turned easily in my hand.
I took a deep breath.
Not a sound from the bathroom other than the
hissing steam of the bathtub.
I only opened the door partway; who knew what
was going to leap out at me?
The room was white with steam. First I saw my
mother. She was still off in another world, wiping at
her face and asking for her baby. I could not see Aunt
Cricket anywhere, but the steam was clearing.
The bathtub was fizzing with popping bubbles —
at first I thought it was Sumter's Mr. Bubbles, but it
was only water. Boiling water.
Lying in the tub was Aunt Cricket, her head just
above the boiling water, her skin a mass of enormous
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red blisters which still grew and exploded as she con-
tinued to cook. She smiled at me and said, "Ah, noth-
ing like a hot bath to cure all of life's little miseries."
I could not even scream. I stood there in the door-
way and watched the skin fall from her bones and
muscles the way meat fell off the chicken bones when
Mama would boil them for broth.
I turned back to Julianne.
Her eyes were glazed over.
What could I say to her? What could I tell any of
them? Okay. I'm gonna take my uncle's car. The only way
to stop him is to go down there. I want you to stay here.
Maybe if everybody stays together, it will be okay. I don't
know what else he'll do. Was that going to do the trick?
Would that make it better? But I knew I had to stop
him from sacrificing Governor to his dark mother, if
for no other reason than that I was not going to let
him hurt my brother.
All I said to Julianne was, "Watch them for me."
"What are you gonna do?"
"Whatever it takes," I said, sounding strangely like
my father.
7
How deep does a child's imagination go? The rain
battered at our house, and I was sure Sumter had
called that rainstorm up; but over and above the
thunder and rain, I heard the sounds of music: a cal-
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liope playing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Was it
my imagination or his? My cousin and I had become
tied to each other through the warped passages of his
mind; he could speak in my head, and he could proj-
ect a movie of his own making on the world. What
would we find there, more corpses rising from
graves? More bunnies screaming? More demons to
torture us?
While my fear didn't exactly evaporate, I had only
one purpose: to make sure Governor didn't get hurt.
It was the only thing I saw before me, in spite of the
storm he'd conjured, in spite of my dead uncle and
aunt at the top of the stairs and my mother off in her
own fevered mind. Nothing else mattered, not even
the fact that I knew I might have to kill Sumter in
order to keep Governor from hurting.
Grammy insisted on going with me, and I felt that
was right. I grabbed Uncle Ralph's keys from the key
rack and ran out and got soaked again. I was afraid to
look out at the bluffs because of the dead children that
may or may not have been out there. I got behind the
wheel of the car and tried every key in the ignition
until I got the right one. I started the car, having to
stretch my leg down until I thought it would pop out of
its socket just trying to push the gas pedal. This wasn't
that much different than driving the family wagon up
and down the driveway at home. I wasn't really panick-
ing anymore, either. The way panic works is you have
about a minute or two of it, when you can't do any-
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thing right, and then you experience a calm because it
begins to sink in that you really can't do anything right,
so you just go ahead and do what needs to get done. In
life, Beau, you just do what needs doing and leave the rest, the
rest can wait. I could hear my father's voice from times
past, instructing me as to turning the wheel and when
to give it gas and how smoothly to brake. Daddy had
been sitting me on his lap from the time I was two, put-
ting his hands over mine on the wheel, and when I was
eight he taught me the rules of the road. So I let my
body take over, I went into automatic.
I brought the car around to the porch, skidding in
the gravel and mud. Julianne was helping Grammy
down, and I left the car idling and ran around to help
her in. Grammy could walk only just a little; she
leaned on our shoulders for support. When we got
her settled in the front seat, she reached in the
pocket of her apron for something, although I could-
n't tell what it was.
I said to Julianne, "You watch. The storm'll end.
You'll know things're just fine if it does. If . . . we make
it to him okay . . . I may need you, then. To help. But
only when the storm ends. Stay here and watch my
mama and sisters. When the storm ends, you'll know
we're okay." I didn't know if this was a lie or not. I
wanted it to be true. I wanted things to turn out just
fine. "But Julianne," I shivered, and her eyes seemed
to be wearying of this nightmare, "if it ends, come
down to the boathouse. We may need help."
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"And if it don't end . . . " she said, and did not fin-
ish the thought.
As I skidded the Chevy across the flooded lawn,
out to the road, I caught a glimpse of something in
Grammy's hands — something hard and silver — and
at first I thought it was a knife, but then I saw the bris-
tles, the stiff tacklike bristles of her brush. She held it
fast in her good hand.
As fast as the wipers sliced across the windshield,
the rain sprayed across it and blinded me. The sky
was lighter than it had been, though, and the occa-
sional flashes of lightning lit up the road ahead for at
least a few yards at a time.
"You hear the music?" Grammy asked.
"Uh-huh." We were being treated to another
round of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."
"What do you think it is?"
Up ahead, in my lights, there was a downed tele-
phone pole. A wire was spitting and sputtering
orange and white light from its tip. I swerved the car
up the side of a slight hill to get around this; we
came down with a whump! and skidded back onto
the road.
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