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Oh well, he thought, so she wasn’t there. At least she was there most of the time. He looked at his watch. He was a good ten minutes behind schedule. It wouldn’t surprise him, he thought, to find the business manager waiting at the school bus garage, a stopwatch in his hand and a smirk on his face. Well that’s just too bad, Tooey thought. I’m cartin’ people around, not baggage. He deliberately slowed down so he could relax the rest of the way.

  Bobby stopped to take Lisa’s hand before going any farther toward their house. It was an instinctive action that Lisa did not question. She seemed to expect it or welcome it. They both looked at the doghouse as though they wanted to confirm the reality of what had happened. Then they went right to their front entrance. They paused on the patio when they saw the front door was partly opened.

  “Where’s Mommy?” Bobby asked.

  “Inside, silly,” Lisa said and bravely stepped forward to enter the house first.

  10

  SID KAUFMAN PUT down his clipboard and wiped his face with his handkerchief. He had been working steadily ever since he’d left George Friedman’s office. He had decided even to skip lunch, knowing that the moment he paused, he would dwell on the situation back home and lose his concentration. He looked at his watch and nodded to himself. This was a good time to call Clara. She was sure to be home since the kids would be coming home on the school bus any minute.

  He went back to Friedman’s office. George smiled with expectation as Sid approached. He was talking with his secretary and she looked up at Sid with almost as much anticipation.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Good,” Sid said. “I’m afraid I have to ask a favor of you.”

  “Sure.”

  “I need to use your phone. It’s imperative that I call home now,” he added, not realizing how intensely he spoke.

  “No problem. Go right on in.”

  “I’ll use my credit card,” Sid added as he went by them.

  “Whatever you want,” George said.

  Sid went in and took the seat behind George’s desk. After he reached the operator, he debated whether or not he should mention the basement door to Clara. After all, he was adding worries without his being there to comfort and support her. As long as she locked the door now and kept it locked, he thought. He heard the first ring.

  He heard the second and the third and shifted the receiver nervously to his other ear as the phone rang again and again and again. After the tenth ring produced no answer, Sid hung up. He looked at his watch again to be sure he hadn’t misread the time. He hadn’t. She had to be home now. It was not like Clara to let the kids come home to an empty house. She was always complaining about those “latchkey kids” and “absentee parents.” She would be home today, especially, he thought, considering all that had happened.

  George Friedman’s knocking on his own office door almost made Sid jump in the chair.

  “Everything all right?” George said, peering in.

  “No answer,” Sid said as though George knew it all.

  “Oh. Is that a problem?” He came further into the office.

  Sid looked up at him. Despite his desire to maintain strong selfcontrol, he couldn’t help having a quickened heartbeat. He had had a sick feeling come over him ever since leaving the house. He knew it was the result of guilt and worry. There was nothing he wanted more now than to hear Clara’s voice.

  “My wife should have answered. Our kids are due home from school any moment now. She’d be there.”

  “Maybe she’s outside and can’t hear the phone.”

  “No. You can hear it fifty feet from the house.”

  George nodded and took the seat in front of his desk. Sid, lost in his own thoughts, didn’t realize he was still in the factory owner’s chair.

  “You have a special reason to be concerned?”

  “What’s that? Oh, yes. Oh, here, George, take your seat.”

  “No, that’s all right. Sit, sit,” he said, waving Sid back down. “You wanna talk about it, or is it private?”

  “Private? No. We had some wild things happen recently and it makes you worry,” he said. He leaned back in the chair. George looked as if he had nothing else to do but listen, so Sid began to relate the story to him. He had been talking for nearly ten minutes straight before he realized it. Must’ve been therapy for me, he thought.

  “I don’t know that much about dogs,” George said when Sid paused, “but what you’re describing doesn’t seem natural.”

  “That’s what I’ve been gathering.”

  “What else are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m not sure. I was thinking that after I finished here, I would go up to Boston University to try to talk to some expert in animal behavior.”

  “Oh, I know someone up there. I can make a call for you. My nephew’s wife teaches English.”

  “Great. I’d appreciate it,” Sid said. He looked at the phone again.

  “Wait a few minutes and call again.”

  “I will.”

  “So, while you wait,” George said, folding his arms across his chest and sitting back, “maybe you’ll tell me some of your initial observations.”

  Sid smiled. “It wouldn’t be fair to make any conclusions just yet, George. There’s a lot more to your operation for me to see.” Friedman’s face registered his disappointment. “But we can make some preliminary comments, if you want.”

  “Sure.”

  “With the understanding that I might reverse something later on.”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re kind of top-heavy in your intake department. Those shifts are too short and they’re short because you’ve got so many men doing that work. I saw the stockpiles. They’re actually slowing themselves down because if they didn’t, the backup of materials would require another warehouse.”

  “Really?”

  “You need a foreman there, but why two at that price? Your split shift is weak on the downside. I don’t think you have to go sixteen hours there. Go twelve and promote someone to assistant foreman to run the other four.” Sid looked at his notes for a moment, almost glad that he had agreed to give George his preliminary observations. It was something he didn’t like to do, but in this case it was helping pass some very nerve-racking time.

  “Assistant foreman, huh?”

  “Yes, and even though I didn’t watch him enough to make a solid judgment, I think that Crowley fellow looked like the hardest worker in that department. He seemed serious and intent on what he was doing while the others were jawing away and looking at the clock.”

  “Yes,” Friedman said, his face reflecting how impressed he was, “Tom Crowley is a good man. You’re a pretty observant fellow, aren’t you?”

  “That’s what they pay me to do, George.”

  “I bet you’d make a good detective.”

  “Oh, I dont know. I’m having some difficulty solving a case right now,” he said.

  “Try again,” George said, nodding toward the phone. Sid dialed the operator and went through the process once more. George watched him closely as he listened to the ringing. Sid looked at his watch again. “Maybe your wife had to meet them at school for some reason. Was this some kind of conference day or parent visitation day?”

  “No, she’d have mentioned it,” Sid said as he put the receiver down. “We have a bulletin board for those things and there was nothing like that on it.”

  “What do you want to do?” George asked.

  “Go back to work, wait a while longer, and call again. What else can I do?”

  “That’s probably best,” George said. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  Sid got up but looked down at the phone again. He wished he could crawl through the wires as fast as his voice could travel and be beside Clara and the kids. It was so frustrating. For a moment he thought of Clara and recalled her waving good-bye from the garage. The image left him with such a sense of foreboding that he had to do everything he could to get back to the job at hand.

>   Lisa hesitated in the entranceway of the house and listened hard for a moment. She was unaccustomed to such complete silence when she and her brother arrived at home after school.

  “Mommy?” she called. She felt Bobby’s hand on her back.

  “My stitches hurt,” he said. “I want Mommy.”

  “Shh.” Lisa walked further into the house. When she looked into the kitchen and saw the mess on the floor, she stopped. Bobby was right beside her.

  “What happened?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’s Mommy? I want Mommy.”

  “Okay, okay. Do you have to be such a whine baby?”

  “I’m not a whine baby.”

  They both turned sharply when they heard something from the area of the bedrooms. Instinctively, Lisa put her arm around her brother. She placed her school books on the table quietly and then, nudging Bobby, indicated that they should head for that part of the house. He didn’t move.

  “Mommy!” he screamed. “Where are you?”

  “You don’t have to yell, Bobby. You’ll frighten her.”

  “I will not. Mommy!”

  “Stop it,” she said. His shouting was really frightening her. She released her grip on him and started away, herself. He followed slowly. She looked into the living room and saw the smashed lamp. Then she looked down the hallway to the bedrooms. She thought she heard the sound of heavy breathing. It was actually more like . . . like a dog panting. She recalled how King panted sometimes after running around the house with Bobby. After following him into the living room, King breathed so hard he looked as if he would drop on the spot. Usually Lisa or her mother bawled Bobby out for overheating the dog.

  “Do you hear that?” Bobby said, coming up beside her. “It sounds like King.”

  “Stop that. You know King’s dead. Mom!” This time she couldn’t help sounding the note of hysteria in her voice. When Bobby yelled again, she didn’t chastize him.

  “Mom!”

  “Mom!”

  They walked toward the bedrooms.

  Lisa stopped at the basement door. Like Carlson, she was curious about the lights being on. She, too, suspected that because her mother was down there, she hadn’t heard their bus arrival and entrance. This possibility quickly brought a sense of welcome relief. Without realizing it, she had been holding her breath as she and Bobby started down the hallway.

  “Mommy down there?” Bobby asked, pushing past her.

  “Probably. Probably in the utility room.”

  “Mom,” Bobby called after peering down the stairs. They both waited for an answer.

  It came in the form of a low growl as Phantom stepped out from behind the doorway of Bobby’s room. The dog stopped about fifteen feet from them and raised his head. His body seemed to vibrate as a result of his own heavy breathing. He lowered his jaw so his tongue could be fully exposed. It dangled over the bottom teeth. It was dark pink and thick, the sandpapery roughness of which they could see, even from this distance.

  The children stared in amazement.

  “That’s not King,” Bobby said. The dog seemed to be laughing. It moved a few inches forward, lowering its head like a hound stalking a chicken. “Whose dog is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Lisa whispered. She was surprised she was able to make any sounds at all. All the strength in her body drained in a flash. She didn’t think she’d be able to move, but she understood that she and her little brother were in danger. She had to act quickly.

  She brought Bobby up in front of her and placed her hands on both his shoulders, staring ahead at the dog that stared back at them all the while. The instinctive fear that had come alive within her was amplified by the look in the dog’s eyes.

  She had seen other watchdogs bark their warnings and growl their admonition, but this was a far different thing. They didn’t have death written so clearly in their eyes. She was positive that within the next few moments, this dog would attack them. Neither their shouts nor their gestures would dissuade it and, worst of all, a safe flight back out of the house was obviously impossible. They would barely get to the beginning of the corridor before the dog was on them. What would Lisa do if the dog seized Bobby first? She couldn’t leave him and she couldn’t beat off such a large animal.

  “Where’s Mommy?” Bobby whispered, his voice hardly audible. He didn’t turn back to her to ask the question. He was unable to move his gaze from the dog.

  Where was their mother? Lisa wondered. Surely the dog couldn’t have gotten into the house without Clara’s knowing it, and by now she would have heard them. The dog had already done something to her; Lisa was sure of it. This knowledge crumpled the little composure she had been able to muster. She felt panic rush over her. It was like walking on a frozen lake and falling through the thin ice.

  “Downstairs!” she screamed and turned Bobby so abruptly toward the basement door and stairs that he nearly fell forward, head over heels down the steps. The moment she took the action, the dog leaped, but Lisa clung to a semblance of logic as she bailed out of the hallway with her brother. She took hold of the basement door and slammed it shut behind them. The sound of the dog’s body hitting the closed door sped her flight downward, but Bobby’s ungodly scream stopped her midway. It was as though he had torn out his vocal cords with the effort.

  They both stared at the bodies below. The gruesome sight of the strange, mutilated dead man crumpled beside their unconscious mother worked like an electrical overload. The circuit breakers in their minds snapped off. All thought came to a stop; even instinctive action shut down. Zombielike, they stared ahead, unable to move, unable to speak. When Lisa had stopped her descent, she had pressed her body against Bobby’s. Now they were conjoined, glued together by their mutual sense of horror. Their hearts beat as one, synchronized in the speed at which they raced the blood around their bodies. Neither could speak. Even the attempt at sound seemed beyond them. They didn’t hear the noise behind them as the dog placed its front paws against the door and brought its mouth to the knob.

  Neatly stored on the shelves of his mind, packaged like oranges in a crate, were the different new thoughts and new awarenesses Phantom had developed since his escape from the institute. He had handled every original idea carefully, rolling it over and over gently until it became something within his comprehension. To do so, he usually related the new things to old things. Such was the case with the children.

  He had been exposed to children in different ways. When he was much younger, he had been placed in a human home environment for a short period of time, his every action restricted, all of his behavior carefully recorded. It was the home of one of the scientists. In many ways that short stay had been the happiest time of his life. He had experienced affection and had seen that humans could be soft and gentle. There were a boy and a girl there too, only the boy was bigger than the girl. They inflicted no pain on him and the tasks that they had him do were far from difficult.

  For a long time after he had been taken away from them, he missed them. Whenever a door opened in the lab or a new voice was heard, he perked up in expectation. But a return was not in the design. That portion of the experiment was over; it had served its purpose and those in control of him saw no reason to continue it.

  Just for a few moments, when he came out into the hallway and confronted these children, he was thrown back to that time. The images that played on the screen of his memory confused him. All of the recalled stimuli were pleasant and attractive. He half expected the children to come forward and pet him. He listened for the softness in their voices and looked for the pleasure in their faces. But none of this was visible and this wasn’t why he had emerged.

  Their obvious hesitation and fear ended his reverie. It was natural and logical for him to distrust anything that distrusted him, and it was justification and motive enough for him to go on with his original intentions—to take down the children just as he had taken down the others. When they were able to get behind that basement
door before he reached them, he smashed against it, frustrated, and angry at himself for having hesitated. This affection he had recalled, this desire for warm, human contact, was weakness. All that was natural and primitive in him had taught him that survival of the fittest was predicated on an absence of compassion.

  Compassion was a human thing, imposed on him only during his short stay within that household. Intelligence had no emotional requisites. He had been developed to seek only clear, logical thought. Because he hadn’t moved quickly, he had missed an opportunity. That was an error. Once again he was matched against children in a maze of sorts. Round one was over and the children were ahead. The children would get the reward; he would get the punishment.

  They had taught him to be aggressive; they wanted him to want to win. They wanted him to make greater and greater demands on his potential intelligence. This is what he had been taught to do; this is what he would do now.

  Right after he had slammed himself against the closed door, he sat back and considered the situation. He knew what was behind the door, what the room below was like and what the exits and entrances were. This was not too dissimilar from a maze in which he had been tested a few times. A small rabbit had been trained to go through a maze that had more than one entrance and exit. He was set loose to catch it.

  The maze was very much like others he had been in, except for the extra door. He charged through it after the rabbit, expecting the rabbit to be trapped at the end, with no way out but past him. When he got there, he was surprised that the rabbit was gone. He looked up. There was never a roof on any of the mazes. The scientists stood on a ramp above the maze and watched his actions. They offered no solutions.

  He backtracked, sniffing along the rabbit’s path, and found the second entrance. He nosed it open and peered out, now understanding how the rabbit had escaped. He was placed in the maze again, only this time he took a different path and arrived at the second door before the rabbit did. When it appeared, he seized it quickly and cut its neck open with a single bite.

  It occurred to him that the children could escape through the doorway through which he had first entered the house. He considered going outside and around to it but opted instead to pursue them this way. Even if they did exit through that doorway, he felt confident that he could exit that way as well and catch up to them before they got far from the house. If he moved quickly enough now, he might get to them before they reached that door. In any case, he felt certain they would head in that direction.