Stephen knew his parents would not approve of the music he and Jason were listening to in Stephen's bedroom, but he realized that he didn't care. That had not always been the case. There was a time—very recently, in fact, although it seemed like ages ago—when their approval had meant something to him, and the mere knowledge of their disapproval would have been enough to make him think twice about lying there on his bed listening to Ozzy Osbourne's shrieking voice.
But now Stephen found himself feeling a certain amount of resentment toward Carmen and Al, enough to make him careless of what they might think.
Al's transfer had gone through and he'd been home for the better part of a week now, so there were two people around all the time who didn't believe him, who didn't even seem to trust him. He resented them for that disbelief, as well as for their eagerness to blame him for every little thing that went wrong in the house; they blamed him when the other kids got scared, and they blamed him whenever something in the house disappeared or was misplaced. He wondered what he'd be blamed for next.
But he didn't care. If they didn't care about what he thought, he would no longer care about what they thought.
"So, who would you rather sleep with," Jason said, "Madonna or Joan Jett?" He was lying on Michael's bed in the same position in which Stephen was lying on his own: face up, ankles crossed, hands locked behind his head with elbows jutting out at each side.
The day was coming to an end outside and the fading light of early evening shone through the windows. In spite of that, every light in the room was on. Stephen did that everywhere he went in the house now; he didn't like to be in any room that was not well lit.
"I don't know," Stephen said thoughtfully. "Which one's worth the most money?"
"What difference does that make? They're both hot."
"Yeah, but after I've had 'em, they'll be so grateful, they'll wanna shower me with expensive gifts and lotsa cash, so I want the one that's got the most." Concealed laughter was hidden in Stephen's voice.
Jason tossed his head back and laughed, then said, "You're so fulla shit, your ears stink!" Then he laughed some more before adding, "Madonna's got bigger boobs."
"Think so?"
"Oh yeah, yeah, I know so. Show you." He sat up and leaned down to get a brown paper bag on the floor beside the bed. It was full of rock magazines he'd brought over with him that he and Stephen hadn't looked through yet. He dumped the bag on the bed and began searching through the stack for the one he wanted.
Stephen liked Jason for a number of reasons, among them the fact that, unlike the only people he'd been able to hang around with back in Hurleyville, he was cool. Back home, being in all those damned special-education classes had kept him from being accepted by the popular kids at school; he'd ended up spending his time with the other boneheads in those classes while the kids he really wanted to be with had spent their time picking on him, laughing at him, and calling him names.
Well, maybe Jason wasn't what they would consider cool, but he was a good friend to Stephen and he had lots of cool things, like all those rock magazines he bought every month, a great collection of tapes, a boom box to play them on and—or so he claimed—a bunch of pornography (although Stephen had seen very little of it because, understandably, Jason had to be careful about flashing it around). He liked some of the same music Stephen liked—pop music, mostly— but had introduced him to a lot of stuff Stephen hadn't listened to in the past...because he knew how much his parents disliked it.
But what Stephen liked most was that Jason believed him when he talked about the things that had been happening. Not only did he believe Stephen, he accepted the stories to be true as nonchalantly as one might accept a newspaper headline to be true. He hadn't shown a flicker of doubt.
"Yeah, yeah, here it is," Jason said, holding one of the magazines open—it was a back issue of Rock Scene—as he got up and went to Stephen's bed.
Stephen sat up and looked at the picture Jason indicated: a shot of Joan Jett onstage at a concert wearing a very tiny black bikini.
"See?" Jason said. "Great bod, but flat as a board."
"Yeah, but how much money does she have?" Stephen said, and they both laughed, until—
Jason's laughter stopped as if he'd choked on it.
Stephen looked up to see Jason's eyes opening wider than seemed possible as they stared to Jason's right. His mouth opened and closed several times, but he made no sound, just dropped the magazine onto Stephen's lap as his face lost some of its color.
Following the direction of Jason's eyes, Stephen's gaze fell on the French doors and on the old man who stood beyond them.
Stephen kicked his legs and tumbled clumsily off the bed until he was on his feet, then spun around toward the French doors.
Both boys stood frozen in place for a long moment, staring.
The man's skin was white. It wasn't clown-white or sheet-white or even merely pale; it was the white of skin that had been drained of blood, of life, a sick, milky, splotchy white. The skin was wrinkled beyond the effects of old age, unnaturally wrinkled and flabby, as if nothing lay between it and the bones beneath. What was left of his white hair was stringy and hung in thin patches to varying lengths. He wore a dark suit that appeared old in both style and condition; it looked ragged and tattered, even dirty. The white hands that dangled from the sleeves were gnarled, and long thick nails curved downward over the fingertips.
The old man did not move, just faced the boys. He would have been staring at them had there been anything besides empty, glassy white orbs in his eyesockets.
Jason ran first, but Stephen wasn't far behind him. They quickened their pace as they rushed past the French doors, then thumped loudly up the stairs, leaving the music playing in the room behind them.
They were halfway down the hall when Carmen stepped out of the dining room and snapped, "Why do you always have to run up those damned stairs! How many times have I told you—" She stopped when she got a good look at their faces and saw that they were gasping from fear rather than exertion.
Stephen pointed back down the hall and said, "There was a-a...w-we saw a-a-a man..."
"Oh God, Stephen, not again." For a moment, she sounded very weary, as if Stephen had told her she was going to have to take another in an exhausting series of long, uphill runs. Then she sounded angry. "Dammit, Stephen, this is getting really old, and I'm—"
"No, we did!" Jason insisted. "There was an old man down there, just st-standing there and staring at us!"
She just looked at them, from Stephen to Jason and back again, silent and stern. Then she said, "It's a good thing Al's not here, Stephen."
"Where is he?"
"At the grocery store. He's really getting sick of this business of you seeing people in your room. And so am I. You're liable to get your butt grounded if you keep—"
"But it's not just me!" Stephen insisted, frustrated.
"No, Mrs. Snedeker, it's not," Jason added. "I saw the guy, too. I saw the guy first!”
Carmen's shoulders sagged as she let out a long sigh. "Okay, let's go." She led the way down the stairs.
As the boys followed, Stephen muttered, "Here we go again. Nothing there...makin' it up...stop lying..." Then he looked at Jason and rolled his eyes.
Carmen faced the boys at the foot of the stairs, unable to keep herself from wincing at the sounds coming from Jason's boom box on the nightstand between the beds. "Okay, where were you? What were you doing?"
"We were on the beds," Stephen said.
"And this, um...music was playing?"
They nodded. "We were lookin' at rock magazines," Jason said.
Carmen glanced distastefully at the magazine on the bed, open to a mostly naked, angry-looking woman. She pushed the magazine aside, and sat on Stephen's bed.
"Okay," she said, "go upstairs. Go outside if you want, I don't care. Just go."
Stephen asked, "What're you gonna—"
"Just go." She sounded irritable enough for them to know better than to stick around asking questions.
When they were gone, Carmen stared at the French doors.
"Okay, Carm," she breathed, the words barely audible, "what the hell're you doin'?"
Although it was difficult to think with the rancid sounds pounding out of the speakers behind her, she decided she was calling Stephen's bluff. She'd sit on that bed and watch and wait and see what she could see. The conditions were exactly the same as those under which the boys claimed to have seen this old man. She was giving herself a chance to see him, too, that was all.
Her inner voice spoke up then, shattering her sense of self-satisfaction, of self-security.
Giving yourself a chance to see him? it whispered. Don't you mean you're giving it a chance to finally show itself? Don't you mean you're looking for whatever it is that's been moving things...taking things...talking to you in a familiar voice from an empty room? Of course that's what you're doing...whether you admit it or not....
Carmen shook her head sharply, as if to rid it of the gnawing voice.
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, chin on her knuckles, and continued to stare at the French doors, waiting.
The music was truly awful and, as she listened to the lyrics, she decided she'd have to have a word with Stephen about what music did and did not get played under this roof.
As she waited, Carmen thought. No matter how she tried to hold her wandering thoughts in check, they went back to her inner voice, to the things that had been happening to her in the house...and for a moment, she thought she heard the sound of cautious movement from some other part of the basement.
She sat up straight, her hands clutching together between her knees as she listened.
Silence, except for the awful music.
Then the song—if it could be called that—ended and, a moment later, another began.
Was that more movement Carmen had heard in the brief silence? Was it moving closer? Or was it just—
Your imagination? her inner voice muttered.
She suddenly felt as if her skin were shriveling around her bones.
The hair at the base of her skull bristled.
Although Carmen tried to listen for the sounds she'd thought she'd heard deeper in the basement—she tried to listen hard— she could not bring herself to stay there a moment longer and bolted from the bed.
Halfway up the stairs, she tried to slow her hurried pace and calm her rapid breathing. Once she was in the hall, she had returned to what she hoped was her normal appearance; although inside, she still felt icy, unsteady and afraid...but afraid of what?
"Where've you been?" Al asked from the kitchen.
His voice startled her. She hadn't heard him come in. She wasn't even sure how long she'd been down there and, as a result, had a silly, almost girlish feeling of guilt, as if she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't.
"Downstairs." She went in the kitchen and found him loading the refrigerator with the groceries he'd gone to get.
"What's the matter with Stephen and Jason? I found them sitting on the front steps looking...I don't know, like they got into trouble, or something."
"Oh really? Well, they came running up the stairs earlier saying they'd seen a ghost. Another ghost, I should say."
"Oh shit." Al opened a bottle, closed the refrigerator and took a couple gulps. When he looked at Carmen, his face was dark; he was wearing his half-angry-half-fed-up expression. "Well, that's it," he said, leaving the kitchen. "That's the last of it." He went out the front door and said firmly, "Okay, Jason, I think it's time for you to go home for tonight."
The boys' heads snapped up to look at him.
Stephen said, "But his parents are—"
"I'm sorry, but Jason's gonna have to go home."
"Can I get my stuff out of Stephen's room?"
"Sure."
Carmen stood at the top of the stairs while Al went down with the boys and waited as Jason got his things together, said goodbye and left. Then Al pointed a finger at Stephen and said, "No more ghosts. You understand me? We've had enough. No more voices, no more people in your room, that's it, it's finished. One more word about any of that stuff and you're gonna be sorry. And we'll start with you staying down here for the rest of the night. No TV, no music—and no more of that crap I heard playing down here a little while ago, you got it? I don't want that trash in this house. You can go from here to the bathroom and back. That's it. I don't wanna hear another word out of you till tomorrow. And turn off some of these damned lights! Every light in the room is on! You start running up the bill and you can pay for it."
Al started up the stairs and Carmen expected Stephen to say something, to protest, to call up to him. The room downstairs was silent, though. Al took another swallow of beer as he walked by her.
"Don't you think that was a little too much, Al?"
"Why too much? You mean you're not getting sick of it? What else're we gonna do, encourage him? Next time, he gets something worse. He gets grounded, or he can't watch the television or use the phone or...or something. I've had all I can take of this Twilight Zone shit."
Then Al went into the living room and turned on the television.
Stephanie was in the back yard with Peter and Michael was down the street playing with a friend; it was time to call them in. But first, she wanted to have a word with Stephen. She felt somewhat responsible for the tongue-lashing he'd gotten because she'd told Al about what he and Jason had "seen."
Of course, she hadn't—and wouldn't—tell Al about her little experiment afterward, about how she sat in the room waiting to see what she could see.
Downstairs, she found Stephen lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling with his hands locked behind his head. She sat on the edge of his bed and said, "Sorry about the outburst, but I think—"
"I don't give a shit what you think!" Stephen said through clenched teeth without looking at her.
Carmen gasped and stood up. "Don't you ever talk to me that way again or I'll slap your mouth halfway around your head, young man!"
Very quietly, jaw still locked, he said. "You don't care what I think; I don't care what you think. You don't wanna hear what I have to say, I don't wanna hear what you have to say."
Carmen's voice trembled when she spoke again. "Whatever's wrong with you had better be gone by morning, Stephen. I mean it, that kind of behavior just doesn't cut it around here, so you'd better get over feeling sorry for yourself, or whatever the hell your doing, right now. You might be a teenager, but you're still not too old to get your ass whipped!"
She spun around and stomped upstairs to bring the other kids inside.
When she was gone, Stephen undressed for bed. He still hadn't turned the lights off in his room. The darkness outside the window was now complete; no sunlight remained. Turning those lights off would let some of that darkness inside, and Stephen did not want to do that.
Instead, he got into bed with the room fully lit; even the bedside lamps were on.
He turned onto his side and tried to relax, although he knew he would be unable to sleep for a while. He was too upset, so upset, in fact, that he was experiencing feelings he'd never known before. He wanted to...break something, to pick something up and just smash it against the wall with all his might. His frustration was a viscous congestion in his chest that seemed to seep between his ribs and press against muscle and flesh.
He closed his eyes tightly, blocking out the light, and pressed his head into the pillow.
"Stephen?"
His eyes snapped open.
"Stephen? Are you ready?" the voice asked, ever so quietly.
He didn't move for a long while, just waited for it to continue. When it didn't, he opened his mouth, took a moment to ask himself if he was sure he wanted to do this, then said, "Yes."
"That's my boy."
"If...only if you'll leave me alone. I'll, um..." He sat up a little. "...I'll do whatever you want if you'll just leave me alone. Deal?"
That familiar chuckle, like ice cubes clattering over glass. "Very good. Very good. It's a deal, my boy."
"It's a deal? So...you'll leave me alone?"
"You will have to hold up your end of the bargain first. You will have to do whatever I want, just as you said. Then...we'll see."
Stephen realized someone was coming down the stairs and quickly dropped back onto the mattress.
"You talkin' to somebody?" Michael asked.
"Uh-uh." Stephen covered half his face with the sheet, afraid the lie would show.
"I thought I heard you talkin' down here."
"I said no."
"Okay, okay. Mom and Dad say I'm supposed to make sure the lights are off down here. Most of 'em, anyway."
Stephen thought about that a moment, pictured the room dimmer, even completely dark. For the first time since the move, the idea of darkness was not as frightening, even a little comforting.
"Yeah," he said. "Go ahead. Leave one of 'em on, though."
"You okay, Stephen?"
He suddenly found Michael annoying. He wanted to think, to go over what had just happened, but his brother wouldn't shut up. As he turned over on his belly and pulled the sheet up further, he growled, "Yes, I'm okay, dammit, what's the matter with you?"
When Michael spoke again, he sounded hurt. "N-nothing. Just asked." His footsteps started up the stairs. "I'll be back in a little while."
But Stephen did not respond. He lay in bed, wide awake, thinking about what he had done, wondering what kind of deal he had just made...and with whom.