and Roy were friends. Would she lose interest when she discovered he was no longer Roy’s buddy? He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t want to risk losing her.
Later, he read the psychology books that Mrs. Larkin had chosen for him. He finished both volumes by two in the morning. For a while he sat in bed, staring and thinking. Then, mentally exhausted, he slept without nightmares-and without a single thought for the monsters in the attic.
Friday morning, before Weezy woke, he went to the library, returned the psychology books, and checked out three more.
“Is the science-fiction novel good?” Mrs. Larkin asked.
“Haven’t started it yet,” Colin said. “Maybe tonight.”
From the library he went down to the harbor. He didn’t want to go home while Weezy was still there; he wasn’t ready to endure another interrogation. He ate breakfast at the counter in a waterfront coffee shop. Later, he strolled to the southern end of the boardwalk, leaned against the railing, and watched the dozens of crabs that were sunning on the rocks a few feet below.
At eleven o‘clock he went home. He let himself into the house with the spare key that was kept in the redwood planter near the front door. Weezy was long gone; the coffee in the pot was cold.
He got a Pepsi from the refrigerator and went upstairs with the three psychology books. In his room, sitting on the bed, he took only one swallow of the soda and read only one paragraph of the first book before he sensed that he was not alone.
He heard a muffled, scraping sound.
Something was in the closet.
— Ridiculous.
— You imagined it.
He had read two books on psychology, and he knew that he was probably guilty of transference. That’s what the psychologists called it: transference. He couldn’t face up to the people and things he was really afraid of, couldn’t admit those fears to himself, so he transferred the anxiety to other things, to simple things-even simple- minded things-like werewolves and vampires and imaginary monsters that hid in the closet. That’s what he had been doing all of his life.
Yeah, maybe that’s true, he thought. But I’m sure I heard something move in the closet.
He leaned away from the headboard. He held his breath and listened intently.
Nothing. Silence.
The closet door was shut tight. He couldn’t remember if he had left it that way.
There! Again. A soft, scraping sound.
He slid silently off the bed and took a few steps toward the hall door, away from the closet.
The closet doorknob began to turn. The door eased open an inch.
Colin stopped. He desperately wanted to keep moving, but he was frozen in place as if a spell had been cast upon him. He felt as if he had been transformed into a specimen fly trapped in air that, through sorcery, had been turned to solid amber. From within that magic prison, he was watching a nightmare come to life; he stared at the closet, transfixed.
The door suddenly opened wide. There was no monster hiding among the clothes, no werewolf, no vampire, no hideous beast-god out of H. P. Lovecraft. Just Roy.
Roy looked surprised. He had started toward the bed, thinking his prey was there. Now he saw that Colin had anticipated him and was only a few steps from the open door that led to the second-floor hall. Roy stopped, and for an instant they stared at each other.
Then Roy grinned and raised his hands so that Colin could see what he held.
“No,” Colin said softly.
In Roy’s right hand: a cigarette lighter.
“No.”
In his left hand: a can of lighter fluid.
“No, no, no! Get out of here!”
Roy took a step toward him. Then another.
“No,” Colin said. But he couldn’t move.
Roy pointed the squeeze can and pressed on it. A jet of clear liquid arced through the air.
Colin ducked to the left, and the lighter fluid missed him, and he ran.
“Bastard!” Roy said.
Colin dashed through the open door and slammed it.
Even as the door was being drawn shut, Roy crashed into the other side.
Colin sprinted for the stairs.
Roy jerked open the door and rushed out of the bedroom. “Hey!”
Colin descended two steps at a time, but he had gone only halfway when he heard Roy thundering down after him. He plunged on. He jumped the last four steps, into the first-floor hall, and ran to the front door.
“Got ya!” Roy shouted triumphantly behind him. “Got ya, damnit!”
Before Colin could throw off the two locks on the door, he felt something cold and wet pouring down his back. He gasped in surprise and turned to Roy.
Roy squirted him again, drenched the front of his thin cotton shirt.
Colin shielded his eyes with his hands. He was just in time.
Flammable liquid splashed over his forehead, over his fingers, nose, and chin.
Roy laughed.
Colin couldn’t breathe. The fumes choked him.
“What a popper!”
Finally the can of lighter fluid was empty. Roy threw it aside, and it clattered along the hardwood floor of the hallway.
Coughing, wheezing, Colin took his hands from his face and tried to see what was happening. The fumes stung his eyes; he closed them again. Tears oozed from beneath his eyelids. Though darkness had always terrified him, it had never been so awful as it was now.
“You stinking bastard,” Roy said. “Now you’ll pay for turning on me. Now you’ll pay. You’re gonna burn.”
Gasping for breath, barely able to get any air at all, temporarily blinded, hysterical, Colin threw himself toward the sound of the other boy’s voice. He collided with Roy, clutched him, and held on.
Roy staggered backward and tried to shake loose, as if he were a cornered fox wrestling free of a determined terrier. He put his hands against Colin’s chin, tried to force his head up and back, then grabbed him by the throat and attempted to strangle him. But they were face to face, and much too close for Roy to get sufficient leverage to be effective.
“Do it now,” Colin wheezed through the acrid fumes that filled his nose and mouth and lungs. “Do it… and we’ll … bum together.”
Roy tried again to throw him off. In the process, he stumbled and fell.
Colin went down with him. He held tightly to Roy; his life depended on it.
Cursing, Roy punched him, pummeled his back, slapped him alongside the head, pulled his hair. He even twisted Colin’s ears until it seemed that they would come out by the roots.
Colin howled in pain and tried to fight back. But the moment he let go of Roy in order to hit him, Roy rolled away. Colin grabbed for him and missed.
Roy scrambled to his feet. He backed up against the wall.
Even through the veil of stinging tears brought on by the fumes, Colin could see that the lighter was still in Roy’s right hand.
Roy snapped the flint wheel with his thumb. It didn’t spark, but it surely would the next time or the time after that.
Frantic, Colin launched himself at the other boy, slammed into him, and knocked the lighter out of his hand. It flew through the open archway, into the living room, where it banged against a piece of furniture.
“You
