Pandemonium

She took another step back. “I just realized . . . I can see the lights on the top floors of the hospital from here.”

“Yeah?” Then, “Oh, right, we should cover the windows, they’ll see the flashlight bouncing around in here.”

I helped her take the dusty covers from the beds. We carried them downstairs, shook them out in the front yard, then went back in and covered the window in my room. We did the same in O’Connell’s room, even though we could see nothing out the window but darkness.

“Del,” she said softly.

I couldn’t see her face. She held the flashlight pointing at the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, then: “I’m sorry if you felt like I doubted you.”

That wasn’t what she was going to say.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I wouldn’t have believed me. Tomorrow we’ll go into town, find out about the Noon family.” I almost said, Find out about the plane crash.

“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” I said.

I crossed the hall to my room, using the edge of the door frame to guide me. I moved gingerly through the dark, trying to remember where I’d left comics on the floor, and found the bed with my shins. The sheet glowed faintly against the window. I stepped forward, pulled it down. A three-quarter moon was rising over the hospital. Several of the top windows of the building flickered a faint blue: television light.

The air coming through the hole in the window was frosty. I felt my way into the duffel, pulled out a cotton sweater, and something clattered onto the floor. I reached down, and my fingers found the wooden handle of the slingshot. I held on to it, moving it from hand to hand as I pulled on the sweater.

I lay down and the bed frame popped alarmingly, but didn’t collapse. I used the duffel for a pillow, my feet framing the moonlit window. Not enough light to read by, though. I should have taken the flashlight.

I’d found the farm and the House that Time Forgot. I’d found the boy on the rock. Tomorrow I’d pull answers from this town like teeth. And somehow, eventually, I’d figure out what to do with the body I’d stolen. The kid rested inside my head like a spent bullet. I stretched the slingshot, aiming the empty pouch between my feet, through the hole, straight at the moon’s villainous chin. Draw, O Coward!

I fired. The moon refused to go out.