him say that is better than not hearing him at all.”
“I love him,” said Victoria.
“Yes. Me too.”
At that moment, however, Mr. Boots finished his chili and came trotting up to them, messily licking his lips. He tried to nuzzle Victoria, but she screamed out, “Get away! Get away! These jeans are clean!”
Trevor poked his head out of the kitchen window. “Something wrong?”
Sissy smiled. “Nothing that a wet cloth can’t fix.”
Sissy opened her eyes. It was daylight. Her cheek was sticky where she had been lying against the leather seat of her Uncle Henry’s Hudson Hornet. She lay there for a while, listening to the monotonous whine of the automobile’s transmission and feeling the bumping and jiggling of the Hornet’s suspension.
She couldn’t think what she was doing here. It had been so long since she had visited Uncle Henry and Aunt Mattie that she wasn’t even sure that they were still alive. Yet they must be, if this was Uncle Henry’s car and Uncle Henry was driving it.
After a while she sat up. Sure enough, that was the back of Uncle Henry’s head in the driver’s seat, with his sunburned, prickly neck. That was Uncle Henry’s straw hat, with the red snakeskin band around it, and those were Uncle Henry’s red suspenders.
She looked out of the window. The prairie was gloomy and seemed to stretch for ever. In the far distance, she could see a farmhouse, and a white-painted Dutch barn. The sky was overcast and heavy with smudgy brown clouds. Or maybe they weren’t clouds at all. Maybe they were swarms of cicadas.
A strange song was playing on the car radio. It had an odd, irregular rhythm, as if it were being played backward.
“I saw you in the garden. I saw you turn away. I saw you smile and asked you why. but while you smiled I knew you lied. ”
“Where are we, Uncle Henry?” Her voice sounded as if she were speaking into a cardboard tube.
“West of the east and east of the west.”
“Yes, but where are we going?”
“Don’t you remember? It’s the stormy season. We have to run ahead of the storm, don’t we?”
She knelt up on her seat and looked up ahead, through the windshield. The sky was growing darker and darker, even though the clock on the instrument panel told her that it was only two in the afternoon. She could smell rain in the air.
They passed a sign that read ENTERING BORROWSVILLE, POP. 789, and at the same time, she caught sight of the huge figure of a man standing by the side of the road. He was still over a half mile away, so he must have been at least thirty feet tall.
She gave an involuntary jerk, like she did when she was falling asleep, but this was a jerk of sheer terror.
“Can we turn round? I don’t like giants.”
“Not this time, Sissy.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. This time we have to take a closer look at him. You can’t put it off any longer, no matter how frightened you are.”
“But it’s a giant, and I don’t like giants. Please can we turn around, please?”
“Not this time, Sissy.”
They drove nearer and nearer to the giant. Sissy was so frightened that she was breathing in little gasps. As they approached it, Uncle Henry drove slower and slower. He shifted the Hornet into neutral, so that it was rolling along on nothing but its own momentum. Gradually, it crept to a stop about thirty feet away from the giant’s huge black feet.
“Come on, Sissy. Let’s take a closer look.”
“Please, Uncle Henry. I’m so scared.”
“You have to do this. There’s no other way. You’re here for a very good reason, Sissy Sawyer, and you know it. So you have to overcome your fear, young lady, and do what’s necessary.”
Uncle Henry tugged on the parking brake and climbed out of the car. He came around to Sissy’s door and opened it. There was a warm wind blowing from the southwest, and his baggy pants were rippling.
“Come on, Sissy. He’s not going to hurt you.”
Reluctantly, Sissy took hold of Uncle Henry’s hand and stepped down onto the road. Some grit flew into her eye, and she had to blink furiously to get it out. Uncle Henry led her along by the side of the road, where blazing star and purple prairie clover were nodding in the wind.
They reached the giant’s feet. At first Sissy didn’t want to look up at him. His feet were black and his pants were black, all painted in shiny black varnish.
“Lift up your eyes, Sissy. You have to. Look him in the face.”
“Please, Uncle Henry, I’m too frightened. What if he recognizes me and comes chasing after me in my dreams?”
“He’s made of wood, Sissy. He can’t chase you anywhere.”
“Are you sure?”
“Surer than rabbits. Surer than all fall down.”
Very slowly, Sissy raised her head. The giant was wearing a black coat, with a dark red shirt underneath it. His arms were crossed over his chest, and in each of his hands he held a large triangular butcher knife, painted metallic silver.
It was when she saw his face that she really froze. It was painted bright red, with two narrow chisel cuts for eyes and a wider chisel cut for a mouth.
“Red Mask,” she whispered. “Oh God in heaven, it’s Red Mask.”
But Uncle Henry was shaking his head and smiling and saying something to her, although the wind made his voice sound very blurry.
“I can’t hear you. I don’t understand.”
Uncle Henry took hold of her arm and pointed to a large aluminum-sided building not far away with trucks and pickups parked outside it. A large sign on top of the roof said BORROWSVILLE MEAT PACKING CO.
“It’s an advertisement, that’s all. It’s never going to chase you.”
But a harsh voice said, “Trust your Uncle Henry, do you? Uncle Henry died years ago. What does he know about reality? You wait till the blood starts spraying like summer rain!”
There was a deep rumble of thunder, and rain began to fall, only a few silvery spots at first, but then harder and harder.
Run, Sissy! Run!
