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  "You took it off while we were working," Doug told him.

  "Are you sure?" Barry asked, sounding hopeful. Doug shrugged. "Pretty sure. Kind of. Well, maybe…" Timmy thought for a moment. "You know, now that he mentioned it, I don't remember seeing it on your wrist after that. Did you take it off in the graveyard?"

  "I don't know. I can't remember. Sometimes I do, because my arms get sweaty and the band slips off. So, maybe."

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  "Well, if you did take it off, where would you have left it?" Barry sounded very close to tears. "On one of the tombstones, or maybe inside the shed."

  Timmy turned to Doug. "How's your ankle?"

  "It feels better. Burns a little, but I'm okay."

  "Good." Timmy was surprised. The fact that Doug hadn' t taken the opportunity to complain about his injury and make it out to be worse than it really was meant that he understood the gravity of the situation. "Okay, Barry, don 't worry. We'll help you look for it. It's got to be around there somewhere."

  "I hope so. Otherwise…"

  He trailed off, but they heard the fear in his voice.

  Timmy thought again of Barry's outburst during their attack on Catcher. Despite the fact that Barry had a scar on his calf from when the dog had latched onto him almost two years ago, what had happened today hadn't been Barry's fault. It had been his father' s. Barry 's body had plenty of scars and bruises, and only one of them was from the dog. Sometimes in the afternoon, Timmy' s mother watched talk shows (more often now that they ' d just installed the new cable television with nineteen channels); on the talk shows, they talked about abused kids and how they lashed out at others as a result. It was their way of dealing with it, of feeling powerful instead of helpless. Sometimes, they turned into school bullies. Other times, serial killers. Barry wasn 't either of those, but his actions that afternoon had definitely been a warning sign. They' d never discussed it, but Timmy and Doug both knew what Clark Smeltzer did behind closed doors. And what they didn 't know, they could guess.

  And Doug's momsomething was up with her, too. Timmy wasn' t sure what, but he had his suspicions, and they turned his stomach. Certainly, it was more than just ignoring her son. Indeed, he was pretty sure that when she was drunk, Carol Keiser paid too much attention to her son, the kind only hinted at in the stack of Penthouse Forum's that lay hidden inside the Dugout. There was a word for it, and that word was incest. He'd seen that on the talk shows as well.

  Monsters? They weren't monsters. And Catcher wasn' t a monster, either. For all they knew, Mr. Sawyer beat the dog. Trained him to be mean, to attack. It wasn 't like the dog's behavior was anything new. He' d been chasing them, chasing anyone who passed by the lane, for years, and Mr. Sawyer had been told about it repeatedly. He 'd done nothing, refusing to tie the dog up or install a pen or fence. Was that Catcher's fault? No, Catcher wasn't a monster. Neither were they.

  Adults were the real monsters. Maybe not his own parents, and maybe not Reverend Moore or some of the others, but still, there were a lot of them around. He saw them every time he watched the news (unlike most twelveyearolds, Timmy's mother had instilled in him an appreciation and interest in current events, and encouraged him to watch the evening news and read her weekly copies of Time magazine, which he did.) He saw them, too, in his comic books and Hardy Boys mysteries.

  Saw them when he looked into his two best friend's haunted eyes.

  "We better get going," Doug said. "It's getting late." They continued along the narrow, winding trail, ducking under tree limbs and pushing past thorns and vines until they reached the edge of Bowman' s Woods. Then they crossed Anson Road and made their way through the lower portion of the cemetery. Barry 's father was nowhere in sight, but there were signs he' d been there. The gravestones had been returned to their upright positions and fresh earth had filled in the holes. A careless cigarette butt, one of Clark Smeltzer ' s brand, lay nearby.

  "Looks like my old man's done for the day," Barry observed. "Hope he's not in the shed." Silently, Timmy and Doug both wished for the same thing.

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  The boys crossed the cemetery and cautiously approached the dilapidated yellow utility shed. It was deserted; there was no sign of Clark Smeltzer. The doors were shut, and Barry ' s father had the key to the padlock, so they went around to the back. There, half hidden by a pile of red clay leftover from the new graves (the same dirt Clark Smeltzer had used earlier to shore up the sinking tombstones) was a boarded up window. Unbeknownst to Barry's father, two of the boards were loose, and had been further loosened by the three boys with the help of a claw hammer and crowbar. In the woods beyond the shed, a twig snapped. Their heads swiveled toward the sound.

  "Just a squirrel," Timmy guessed.

  Turning back to the window, Barry pulled the boards away. The rusty nails screeched as they parted the wood. He pulled himself through and crawled inside. Timmy followed right behind him. Then they pulled Doug, who couldn ' t squeeze into the narrow space by himself, through the window as well. With a great effort, he clambered inside, gasping for breath and complaining about his injured foot. His friends disregarded it. Had his foot not been injured, Doug would have complained about his nonexistent asthma, or his back, or anything else that could be aggravated by the physical act of climbing. There were no lights inside the shed, and the only illumination came from the paltry light filtering through the missing boards, cracks in the wall, and a second dirty window. The tin roof sagged in places, and water leaked down onto the rotten timbers when it rained. Clark Smeltzer had twice petitioned the church board for a new, sturdier, prefabricated shed, but they 'd told him the funds weren't currently available. He' d grumbled about how maybe the congregation should start chipping in more when Sunday 's offering plates were passed around. Sure, it was God's money, but the church was God's house, and God' s house needed a new shed. They 'd smiled politely and moved on to other business.

  The floor was hardpacked dirt, pocked here and there with groundhog and rat holes. In the center of the floor lay a pile of lumber, mostly plywood and twobyfours, and several lengths of rusted pipe. The shed was crammed full of equipment: the small backhoe, riding mower, wagon, two push mowers (one relatively new and the other one in even worse shape than the shed), a grass catcher, winch, various shovels, rakes, pickaxes, hoes, and some canvas tarps. Several dozen stone markers were stacked in the corner, and the other corners held plastic flowers and wreaths, cheap plastic vases, and little flags for Veteran' s and Memorial Days.

  A few sparse clumps of mold clung to some of the walls and scrap wood. Because of the dirt floor, it always smelled damp and musty inside the shed, but as they stood there, letting their eyes adjust to the gloom, Timmy smelled something different the same stench he' d noticed earlier, coming from the hole Doug had slipped into.

  "Whew." Doug fanned his nose. "Which one of you farted?"

  "You smell that, too?" Barry asked. "I thought maybe a possum had crawled up your ass and died."

  "Eat me."

  "Something did die in here, though." Barry crept forward. "Smells horrible. Must be a rat or a groundhog or something. Probably lying underneath this wood." He stepped onto a piece of plywood that was covering the dirt floor and the board sagged under his weight. Barry jumped backward, clearly startled.

  "What's wrong?" Timmy asked.

  "The floorit ain't there!"

  Doug frowned. "Say what?"

  Barry bent over and grabbed the edge of the plywood sheet. "Give me a hand with this." Physically stronger than either of them, Barry clearly didn't need their help. Timmy thought that perhaps the real reason was that he was scared. And that scared Timmy. Page 50

  He gave his friend a hand while Doug hung back and watched.

  "Watch out for snakes," he cautioned.

  Ignoring him, they slowly lifted the plywood, and then heaved it forward, sending it crashing onto the rest of the woodpile.

  All three boys gasped at what was revealed.

  There wa
s a hole underneath, tunneling right through the center of the utility shed' s floor. Judging from the way the soil was scattered, it looked as if it had been dug from beneath the ground, as if something had burrowed upward. But this was no mole or other rodent. The hole was far too big for that, much bigger than even the hole Doug 's leg had slipped into earlier. The opening was large enough for a fullgrown man to easily fall inside. The stench wafted up from the chasm.

  "What the heck?" Timmy asked. "Did your dad do this?" Barry shook his head, perplexed. "No way. My old man would be pissed as shit if he saw this. I don't know what this is."

  "It stinks," Doug croaked, pinching his nose. "That's where the smell is coming from, all right. Just like that other hole earlier, out there in the graveyard." Timmy's eyes sparkled. "It's the caves you were talking about. Has to be! Another sinkhole opened up right here, and you and your dad didn' t know about it because it was underneath the woodpile."

  Barry looked doubtful. "You think?"

  "Sure I do. No animal dug this, and like you said, your dad wouldn't have, either. It's got to be a cave entrance."

  "But they're made out of rock, not dirt."

  "Not always," Timmy disagreed, even though he wasn't sure himself. He wasn' t about to let science get in the way of what could be their coolest summer adventure ever. "We

  've got to explore it, guys. Claim it before anyone else finds out. We could be on TV, man!"

  He searched the floor, found an old rusty nail, tossed it down into the hole, and listened.

  "We can't explore it now," Doug reminded him. "It's almost dinnertime. You know what your mom said."

  "Yeah," Barry added, "and we still haven't found my watch." In his excitement, Timmy had forgotten about both. Disappointed, he reluctantly conceded that they were right.

  "We'll come back tonight," he said. "Sneak out after our folks are asleep. Doug, you're staying for dinner, anyway. Might as well spend the night. We' ll wait till like one o 'clock, and then meet up here. We'll have to remember to get the flashlights and lantern from the Dugout, and maybe the map, too."

  "What do we need the map for?" Doug asked.

  "So we can outline this tunnel on the back of it. If we've got the surface mapped out, we ought to do the same for below."

  "Then we'll need some clothespins, too."

  Timmy frowned. "For what?"

  "To cover our noses with," Doug replied. "I'm not breathing in whatever that is if we go down there."

  Chuckling, Timmy turned to Barry. "You gonna be able to get out tonight?"

  "Yeah, I guess. If I don't get killed for losing my watch first."

  "Well, then let's find it before your father finds us." They covered the tunnel entrance back up, making sure the plywood concealed the entire opening, and then searched the rest of the shed for the missing watch. Doug' s suspicions proved to be correct. They found the silver watch hanging from the riding Page 51

  mower 's gearshift. Sighing with relief, Barry fastened it around his wrist.

  "All's well that ends well." He grinned.

  "Sure is," Doug agreed.

  They noticed that Timmy hadn't responded, and when they turned, they found him staring down at the plywood.

  Barry groaned. "Come on, man. Let it go for now. We'll see it tonight. And since you're so eager, you can go first."

  Timmy looked up at them, smiling. "Sounds like a plan." In truth, he'd have had it no other way. He was eager to be the first one to step inside the subterranean chamber.

  "I still don't think it's a sinkhole," Doug said. "It looks dug, not sunken. And that smellGod!"

  They crawled back out the window and fastened the boards back into place, tapping the rusty nails into the rotten wood with a rock. Over the sounds of pounding, they didn 't notice when another twig snapped in the nearby tree line.

  "Okay," Timmy said, "so we meet at the Dugout after our parents are asleep, and then we'll explore the underground. Lets say one o'clock in the morning." Doug and Barry agreed. Then they went their separate ways, Barry to his house and Timmy and Doug to the Graco home.

  On the way back, Timmy wondered what they'd find inside the tunnel, deep below the earth.

  After the boys had departed, a slender figure emerged from the shadows of the trees behind the shed. It had been watching them the entire time. Now that they were gone, it crept forward and investigated the loose boards around the window. Then it crawled inside the shed.

  Rustling sounds drifted out of the buildingwood sliding across wood. Then came a gasp of surprise.

  Minutes later, the figure reemerged into the sunlight. Blinking, it let its eyes adjust again. Then it ran across the cemetery as fast as it could. Its expression was one of satisfied determination.

  Chapter Seven

  "It' s gonna rain," Steve Laughman complained as they trudged across the field. The tall grass swished against their blue jeans. "The weatherman on Channel Eight was calling for it tonight."

  "Quit fucking whining," Ronny Nace said. "Christ, you're like a little girl, man."

  "They said there was a severe thunderstorm warning until six in the morning. Gonna rain buckets."

  "So? A little rain never hurt nobody."

  "We could catch pneumonia," Steve said. "I don't want to be sick in the summer."

  "Shut up."

  "Or maybe even a tornado could blow through. Wouldn't want to be out here if that happened."

  "If you don't shut the fuck up," Ronny warned, "I'll shut you up for good." Steve's open mouth snapped shut. He knew better than to cross his friend.

  "We finally got a chance to get even with those shitheads," Ronny said, "and you want to cancel all because of the weather."

  They continued walking through Luke Jones's pasture, cloaked in darkness and keeping a wary eye out for the farmer' s two bulls. Luckily, the cows were all lying down, Page 52

  clustered together on the far side of the field. Thick, obsidian clouds blanketed the night sky, blocking out the moon and stars, and even muting the floodlights on the paper mill ' s smokestacks and the blinking, red airplane warning lights on the distant radio tower. They lit their way with a flashlight stolen from a drawer in the kitchen of Steve 's house.

  "You know what's weird?" Jason Glatfelter asked. "Ever notice how people will run through the rain, instead of just walking? Like if they' re coming out of a store or something, and it 's raining, they'll run to their car instead of just walking like normal. Why do they do that? It ain't like they' re gonna get any less wet. Same amount of rain is gonna hit you either way."

  Ronny stepped over a groundhog hole. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "Think about it. Whether you walk or whether you run, you're still gonna get wet. So why run? In fact, I bet more raindrops hit you that way."

  "Dude," Ronny snorted, "you've been hitting the bong way too fucking much." They neared the fence line, and spotted the graveyard beyond it.

  "Well," Steve said, "I'll tell you guys one thing. If it starts raining, I'm running my ass home. I'll be in enough trouble if my mom finds out I snuck out. It' ll be ten times worse if I come home soaking wet."

  "Pussy." Sneering, Ronny flipped his long bangs out of his eyes. "We should have just left you at home."

  "Easy for you to say," Steve replied.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" There was an edge to Ronny's voice that hadn't been there a moment before.

  "Nothing." But secretly, Steve knew exactly what he'd meant. He' d wanted to say that it was easy for Ronny not to worry about his mother catching him sneaking out, because his mother worked the eleventosix shift at the shoe factory in Hanover and wouldn 't be home until seven the next morning; since Ronny' s dad had died from complications of Agent Orange five years before, there was nobody else there to worry about Ronny. This was what he ' d meant, but of course, he didn 't say it. The last two people that had mentioned Ronny's father were Andy Staub and Alan Crone, and Ronny had split both their lips and fractured Andy' s nose.


  On the other side of the pasture, a bullfrog croaked in the darkness, letting all know that it ruled the Jones pond. Nothing challenged in reply. Then the night was still again.

  "Fucking pussy," Ronny said again, apparently dissatisfied with Steve's silence.

  "Guess we shouldn't expect any less from a guy that listens to Hall and Oates."

  "I don't listen to Hall and Oates."

  Jason grinned. "And Michael Jackson. You gonna do the moonwalk, Steve?"

  "Screw you both."

  Jason began singing Jackson's "Thriller" in a screeching falsetto, disturbing a flock of crows that had roosted for the night. They took flight, squawking in irritation.

  "Go on home if you want to," Ronny said, nodding his head back across the field.

  "Fly like those birds.

  Jason and I will do it by ourselves. Those shitheads stole my bike and left it on the train tracks. It's payback time, man."

  "Don't forget," Steve reminded him, "I'm the one who found out about this in the first place. Wasn't for me, we wouldn't even know about it."

  Ronny and Jason didn' t reply. Secretly, Ronny knew that Steve was right, and that pissed him off, because he hated it when he was shown to be wrong about something. He was the leader, damn it, and they should listen to him without question. And Jason stayed silent because he knew better than to go against Ronny, even when it came to something as innocuous as agreeing with Steve in this case. Last time he 'd done that had been last Page 53

  Christmas, when the three had vandalized the widow Rudisill' s front yard nativity scene. Even though she ' d lived alone, her son came over every November and decorated the outside of her house for Christmas. He hung lights from the gutters and shrubbery and set up a small plywood nativity scene, complete with plastic lightup statues of Joseph, Mary, the Wise Men and the shepherds, several animals, and the baby Jesus himself, lying safe in a wooden manger stuffed with straw from Luke Jones 's farm. People would slow down in their cars as they drove by, stopping to gawk in appreciation at the displayuntil the three boys had put a stop to it once and for all. To this day, Jason couldn 't have told you why they did it or what sparked the idea. They' d been sitting around in their fort in the woods behind Ronny 's house, smoking weed and snickering over a crude cartoon in a Hustler magazine, when Ronny had suddenly suggested it. They' d waited until after dark and then raided the nativity, smashing Joseph and a plastic lamb, tossing Mary and one of the Wise Men out into the road, and stealing the baby Jesus, which they' d later hung from a tree along Route 116. During the rampage, right about the time Ronny was heaving the statue of Mary over his head, Jason had suggested that it was wrong, and that Mrs. Rudisill had never done anything to them, and that maybe they should stop. That little mutinous outburst had resulted in Jason being frozen out of the group for almost a month. Ronny and Steve were his only friends, and while it sometimes felt as if Ronny was the general and he and Steve were merely soldiers, he didn 't like being lonely, being an outcast. So now he said nothing. Like tonight, for example. Yes, Steve had been the one to overhear Graco and his buddies. He' d been out hunting squirrels with his old man 's Mossberg.22 (illegally and out of season, of course) in the woods bordering the graveyard when he' d come across Timmy Graco, Doug Keiser, and Barry Smeltzer. Steve had hid behind a tree and eavesdropped on their three adversaries, and after they