And somewhere directly in her mind: Elena? Elena? You’re all right, aren’t you, Elena? I don’t care whether you’re playing a joke on me. But you’re really all right, aren’t you? Just tell me that, love.
Elena wasn’t able to answer at all.
Dimly, fragments of sound came to her ears: “Bonnie…on top of her and…pack ourselves back on either side.”
And dull feelings stirred her sense of touch: a small body, almost weightless, like a thick blanket, pressing down on her. Someone sobbing, tears dripping on her neck from above. And warmth on either side.
I’m asleep with the other kittens, she thought, dozing. Maybe we’ll have a nice dream.
“I wish we could know how they’re doing,” Meredith said, on a pause from one of her pacing bouts.
“I wish they knew how we’re doing,” Matt said wearily as he taped another note card amulet onto a window. And another.
“Do you know, my dears, I kept hearing a child crying last night in my dreams,” Mrs. Flowers said slowly.
Meredith turned, startled. “So did I! Right out on the front porch, it sounded like.
But I was too tired to get up.”
“It might mean something — or nothing at all.” Mrs. Flowers frowned. She was boiling tap water for tea. The electricity was sporadic. Matt and Saber had driven back to the boardinghouse earlier that day so that Matt could gather Mrs. Flowers’s most important instruments — her herbs for teas, compresses, and poultices. He hadn’t had the heart to tell her about the state of the boardinghouse, or what those maggot malach had done to it. He’d had to find a loose board from the garage to get from the hall to the kitchen. There was no third floor anymore and very little second.
At least he hadn’t run into Shinichi.
“What I’m saying is that maybe there’s some real kid out there,” Meredith said.
“At night alone? Sounds like a Shinichi zombie,” Matt said.
“Maybe. But maybe not. Mrs. Flowers, do you have any idea of when you hear the crying? Early in the night or late?”
“Let me think, dear. It seems to me that I hear it whenever I wake up — and old people wake up quite frequently.”
“I usually hear it toward the morning — but I usually sleep without dreaming for the first few hours and wake up early.”
Mrs. Flowers turned to Matt. “What about you, Matt, dear? Do you ever hear a sound like crying?”
Matt, who deliberately overworked himself these days to try to get a solid six hours of sleep at night, said, “I’ve heard the wind kind of moaning and sobbing around midnight, I guess.”
“It sounds as if we have an all-night ghost, my dears,” Mrs. Flowers said calmly and poured them each a mug of tea.
Matt saw Meredith glance at him uneasily — but Meredith didn’t know Mrs.
Flowers as well as he did.
“You don’t really think it’s a ghost,” he said now.
“No, I don’t. Mama hasn’t said a word about it, and then it’s your house, Matt, dear. No gruesome murders or hideous secrets in its past, I should think. Let me see…” She shut her eyes and let Matt and Meredith go on with their tea. Then she opened her eyes and gave them a puzzled smile.
“Mama says ‘search the house for your ghost. Then listen well to what it has to say.’”
“Okay,” Matt said poker-faced. “Since it’s my house, I guess I’d better search for it. But when? Should I set an alarm?”
“I think the best way would be to arrange a watch rota,” Mrs. Flowers said.
“Okay,” Meredith agreed promptly. “I’ll take the middle watch, from midnight to four; Matt can have the first one; and Mrs. Flowers, you can have the earlymorning one, and get a nap in the afternoon if you want.”
Matt felt uneasy. “Why don’t we just break it up into two watches and the two of you can share one? I’ll take the other.”
“Because, dear Matt,” Meredith said, “we don’t want to be treated like ‘ladies.’ And don’t argue”—she hefted the fighting stave—“because I’m the one with the heavy equipment.”
Something was shaking the room. Shaking Matt with it. Still half-asleep, he put his hand under his pillow and pulled out the revolver. A hand grabbed it and he heard a voice.
“Matt! It’s me, Meredith! Wake up, will you?”
Groggily, Matt reached for the lamp switch. Again, strong, slim cold fingers prevented him from doing what he wanted.
“No light,” Meredith whispered. “It’s very faint, but if you come with me quietly, you can hear it. The crying.”
That woke Matt up the rest of the way. “Right now?”
“Right now.”
Doing his best to walk quietly through the dark halls, Matt followed Meredith to the downstairs living room.
“Sh!” Meredith warned. “Listen.”
Matt listened. He could hear some sobbing all right, and maybe some words, but they didn’t sound all that ghostly to him. He put his ear to the wall and listened. The crying was louder.
“Do we have a flashlight?” Matt asked.
“I have two, my dears. But this is a very dangerous time of night.” Mrs. Flowers was a shadow against darkness.
“Please give the flashlights to us,” said Matt. “I don’t think our ghost is very supernatural. What time is it, anyway?”
“About twelve forty A.M.,” Meredith answered. “But why do you think it isn’t supernatural?”
“Because I think it’s living in our basement,” Matt said. “I think it’s Cole Reece.
The kid who ate his guinea pig.”
Ten minutes later, with the stave, two flashlights, and Saber, they had caught their ghost.
“I didn’t mean anything bad,” Cole sobbed, when they had lured him upstairs with promises of candy and “magic” tea that would let him sleep.
“I didn’t hurt anything, honest,” he choked, wolfing down Hershey bar after Hershey bar from their emergency rations. “I’m scared that he’s onto me. Because after you hit me with that sticky note, I haven’t been able to hear him in my head anymore. And then you came here”—he gestured around Matt’s house—“and you had amulets and I figured it would be better to stay inside them. Or it could be my Last Midnight too.”
He was babbling. But something about the last words made Matt say, “What do you mean…‘your Last Midnight too’?”