tempt him into going.
Almost.
But the bottom line was that he was afraid. Afraid of what might happen, afraid of what he might learn, afraid of what he might remember. If it was God calling him in on this, He'd have to either inject some courage into these old bones or give him another sign of some kind and let him know how important this was and why.
Otherwise, he was staying home.
Norton sighed. Deep down, though, he didn't really believe it was God trying to recruit him. It was interesting to think about, and it was the argument he tried to use on himself, but if God was really trying to get in touch with him, He would have made it a more pleasant experience. He would have used an angel or a bright white light, not the nude ghost of Norton's dead wife.
And the message would not have been so ambiguous. It would have been more direct.
If anything, this was a recruitment call not from God but from . . . the other guy.
The devil.
Satan.
There was a knock on the door and Joe Reynolds, the lead custodian, poked his head in the room. 'You almost through in here, Mr. Johnson? I need to clean the floors.'
Norton tossed a stack of papers and the teacher's edition of the twelfth-grade government textbook into his briefcase. 'Just leaving, Joe. Don't mean to hold you up.'
'Don't apologize, Mr. Johnson. I think the kids of this town would be a hell of a lot better off if all our teachers were as conscientious as you.'
Norton smiled at him. 'I think you're right.'
He walked home the same way he'd walked to work this morning, through the field and over to Fifth Street, but there seemed something different this afternoon and he could not quite put his finger on what it was.
It was chilly once again, and there were red and yellow leaves on the sidewalks and the streets. The sun was not down, but it was low, and the neighborhoods through which he passed were shrouded in shadow. He put down his briefcase, buttoned up his coat against the cold. Fall was here, not officially but in spirit, and that cheered him up. No matter what else was going on, no matter how horrible his life became, there were still things to look forward to, still things to enjoy.
There was a lot to be said for simple pleasures.
At the next intersection, he turned right, onto Clover.
Before him, there was a trail of burnt toast on the sidewalk, and he stopped in his tracks, staring at the line of blackened squares stretching out before him.
It came back to him. Not thoughts but feelings. Not images but ambiance.
A cool breeze brushed his cheek.
The burnt toast trail led down the block for as far as he could see, and though he was aware that it could have been placed there by some child as part of a game, he knew that was not the case. It would have taken hours to burn so many pieces of toast, even in the largest toaster, and there was no real point to it. That was too much effort, too much thought, too much work for such a bizarre and meaningless effect.
This was what it had been like in Oakdale, he realized.
These were the sorts of things that had happened at home. It had been a world of sudden strangeness, of incongruous juxtapositions, a world in which the irrational was an everyday occurrence.
He stared at the sidewalk in front of him.
No child had done this.
The trail had been meant for him.
It was a sign.
Return.
The breeze was still blowing, but the coldness he felt had nothing to do with the weather. It came from within, and while he could not remember specifics of his life in Oakdale, he had a clearer sense of the overall picture, and he was even more frightened of it than he had been before.
Something was trying to communicate with him, and despite the trepidation he felt, he walked forward, down the sidewalk, following the toast.
The trail led to an empty house in the center of Sterling Avenue, two blocks away. Across the street, a mother standing on her front porch called her bundled daughters in for dinner while their friends continued to play hopscotch on the sidewalk. Several neighbors on both sides of the tree-lined drive waved and called out to each other as they walked their dogs.
No one seemed to notice the unwavering line of burnt bread, and he gathered his courage, took a deep breath, and followed it up the walk and into the open house.
Inside, the rooms were devoid of furniture. The toast trail ended at the porch steps, but there were piles of what looked like strawberry jam in the entry way, the front room, the hall, and the kitchen. Those were all the rooms he could see from the doorway, and he assumed the pattern continued through the bedroom and bathrooms.
He stepped slowly over the threshold, looking around.
There was no movement, no sign of people or ghosts or beings of any sort, but the atmosphere was charged with tension and he had the feeling that he could be jumped at any time. The smart thing to do would be to turn back, leave, retreat, but he had to know why he'd been led here and he pressed on.
The girl was waiting for him in the empty back bedroom.
She could not have been more than ten or eleven, and she was wearing a dirty white shift that hung loosely on her thin frame and threatened with every movement to slip off her shoulders. Her filthy hair hung over her forehead in a way that seemed sensuous; not a parody of the posturing of an older girl, but a casually unforced naturalness that was sexy despite her age.
She was standing in front of a window, with the light from the house next door behind her, and he was aware that he could see her legs, backlit through the thin material of the shift, and his eyes were drawn to the meeting place of her thighs.
What the hell was wrong with him? This girl was young enough to be his granddaughter.
Granddaughter?
Great-granddaughter.
The girl smiled at him, and there was something so evil in that smile, something so unnatural and corrupt, that he turned without thinking and ran. It was an instinctive animal reaction. He was absolutely terrified, utterly panic-stricken, and he sped out of the room, down the hall, running faster than he ever had in his life.
In the hall, in the front room, in the entryway, he saw bugs working their way out of the strawberry jam as he leaped over or hurriedly skirted the piles, hundreds of black bodies squirming in the thick red substance, trying to escape.
He jumped off the steps, landing on the cement walkway and scattering the squares of burnt toast. His heart was pounding so furiously and painfully that he thought he might be having a heart attack, but he kept running and did not stop until he was two houses away and almost completely out of breath.
In his mind, he still saw that dirty, sexy little girl, smiling evilly at him. He could not get the image out of his head, and it made him want to keep running, to get as far away from here as quickly as possible, but both his lungs and legs were rebelling, and no matter how frightened he was, he knew he had to rest for a few moments or he wouldn't be getting out of this neighborhood at all.
Across the street, a dog-walking couple was staring at him and frowning, curious, no doubt, as to why an old man had run like hell from an empty house in which he was not supposed to be, and he looked over at them, grimaced, and waved. They turned away, embarrassed, and kept walking.
Norton bent over, resting his hands on his knees and trying to catch his breath. The sun was now almost down, and the shadows had darkened into dusk. He did not want to be on the street when night fell, but he could not afford to push himself any more than he already had.
He exhaled deeply, inhaled just as deeply, attempting to regulate and control his breathing.
Jesus, he was in bad shape.
A few minutes later, he straightened, stood. His heart continued to pound, but his breathing had calmed
