Page 43 of Going Home in the Dark

“Therefore, I suppose, as you consider this bizarre situation, you are slavering with excitement at the potential to make a so-called novel from it.”

“Well, when a novel idea excites me, I don’t really slaver.”

“You would know, I suppose. Having had the fortitude to peruse some of your writing, I have a question for you, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I do not want a hasty answer. I want you to go away and think about this as deeply as you are capable of thinking. I believe any answer you give will be fascinating, but the most revealing one will surely be the answer you have racked your whole mind to discover. What is literature? Do you understand the question?”

“You want to know what literature is.”

“Oh, Iknowwhat it is. I want to know what youthinkit is. I would find that most interesting.”

Bobby said, “I’ll be back to you.”

“One other thing. This is directed to all three of you. If you have taken Ernest’s body—my dear boy, the fruit of my womb—to use it in some satanic ritual or to give it a Christian burial, either one, I will destroy all of you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She met the eyes of each, one by one. When it was Spencer’s moment to be scrutinized, he waited to be turned to ice or stone, but he survived the stare.

“Now, though your kind might find it inexplicable why anyone would be seeking an education,” Britta said, “there are summer classes at the college. It has fallen to me to shape those foolish young minds into something less absurd than they are now. Remember my warning and conduct yourselves accordingly.”

As Britta walked away, her cape flared like bat wings, though the day was windless.

Rebecca said, “How did Ernie turn out so nice?”

“Niceness,” Bobby said, “was the best weapon he had.”

Spencer looked at the sky. It had been clear and sunny when they came out of the diner. Britta had put him in the mood to expect a tide of dark clouds swelling over the horizon, but it was still clear and sunny. It wouldn’t be sunny for long. Britta would return, and when she did, she would arrive amidst storm clouds, accompanied by flying monkeys.

25The House on Brady Drive

In the company of her amigos, Rebecca stood in a condition of alarm and keen dismay before the window seat. Ernie Hernishen wasn’t lying under the lid. Neither was anyone else named Ernie nor any other person whose surname was Hernishen. Nothing lay within that space except the blankets with which Bobby and Spencer had fashioned bedding for their friend.

Whether Ernie was comatose, in suspended animation, or dead, it was unthinkable that they could have lost him. However,unthinkablewas not a synonym forimpossible. They had to face the fact that, in less than fourteen hours, Ernie had gone missing. Of course he might be in the house, reanimated, making a ham sandwich or writing yet another song to irritate his mother.

With Britta at the college, busily shaping young students into psychopaths, there was less risk that someone would walk in on them. Nevertheless, they felt compelled to search the premises as quickly as possible.

Although the task could have been completed faster if they had split up, they stayed together. None of them needed to vocalize what they all were thinking: Somewhere in the house, they might encounter Wayne Louis Hornfly, and if not him perhaps an even more unsettling presence, in which case there ought to be some safety in numbers.

After they found no one on the second floor or the first, the cellar waited. Bobby used a kitchen switch to turn on the light in advance and opened the door and saw what lay on the landing and said, “What’s this crap?”

The meatloaf-size mass wasn’t actually crap, and in fact it looked more disgusting than feces. Mottled dark brown-green-yellow, pulsing like living gelatin, pocked by what appeared to be weeping sores, the thing sported an irregular pattern of pale two-inch-long quivering tendrils reminiscent of the stamen-capped pistils in the center of certain flowers, though (let us be clear) it was neither sweet-smelling nor pleasing to the eye as flowers traditionally are.

Rebecca and Spencer crowded the doorway with Bobby to have a look at what repulsed him. They were no less repulsed, mystified, and fearful than their amigo.

“It’s moving,” Spencer said. “Isn’t it moving?”

Rebecca said, “Slow as a snail.”

“So it’s alive?” Spencer asked.

Bobby said, “If that’s life, it’s not life as we know it.”

“What in God’s name is it?” Spencer asked in a voice trembling with trepidation.

Rebecca declared, “God had nothing to do with this.”

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