Orson Card - Lost Boys

"Mostly," she said. "Drive. I shouldn't have complained, and now we're going to be late."

"Sorry," said Step. "I was just trying to be nice."

They weren't late, though, and they got a good bench on the side. Step was singing a solo with the choir, and Robbie had a talk in Primary, and so it was a busy Sunday for them. When they got home, the kids were starving and Step fixed dinner while DeAnne nursed the baby, which was a grueling experience for her, since Zap had a way of clamping his jaws down hard every now and then, nearly pinching her nipple off, or at least that's what she said it felt like.

"I think you ought to switch to formula," said Step. "The next kid's going to resent it if Zap succeeds in biting the nozzle off the firehose."

"I'm giving him formula sometimes, but this really is better for him, and he likes it better," said DeAnne.

"I'll toughen up."

"Mm," said Step. "Calluses and scar tissue-very sexy."

"If he's still doing this when he gets teeth, Step, that's weaning day-cold turkey, I'll tell you."

If he's still doing it. If he learns. If he changes. If he starts sleeping on some reasonable schedule, instead of sleeping eighteen hours and then staying up twenty-four. If somebody figures out what all those scans and probes and measurements from the hospital mean. If somebody will just put a name on whatever it is that's wrong with Zap so we can start dealing with it-or not dealing with it. Whatever turns out to be appropriate.

The kids came in and ate the tuna patties that Step had made-a Depression-era recipe that his mother had raised him on. The kids seemed to like it well enough, provided that Robbie was allowed to pour six ounces of ketchup on his.

Then, finally, the kids went down for naps-or for lying in bed reading or staring at the ceiling, in Stevie's case-and DeAnne finally went out front and brought in the paper while Step sat down and idly looked among the disks lying loosely around by the Atari, trying to find something that might possibly be that pirate game. He got sidetracked, though, by the Lode Runner disk, which he booted up and began to play. It was a nifty little character-based game in which the eight-pixel player-figure has to run around collecting all the treasures on the screen while bad guys try to chase him. The way the treasures were arranged in the changing landscape made each level a new puzzle, and Step soon found himself addicted. This is a great game, even though it's so deceptively simple. No gimmicks like the ones I'm using in Hacker Snack. Just a fundamentally sound design that allows itself to unfold in new ways, over and over and over again. I need to learn from this.

He became aware that DeAnne was standing behind him. "Step," she said. "You need to come in and look at this story in the paper."

"In a minute," he said.

"Can't you pause the game or something?" she asked.

"If it's that urgent," said Step. He reached for the space bar to pause the game, but it took too long, and his player- figure died.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said DeAnne. "Did I make you lose?"

"I've still got eight lives left," said Step. "A real Christian game. Lots of chances for resurrection. But I'm bucking for the rapture at the end."

She didn't laugh, not even her courtesy laugh, the one that said I don't know why you thought that was funny but I love you. He followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table. The headline at once caught his eye, and he read the whole story quickly, but not missing anything. He hadn't pored over a hundred thousand pages of Spanish-language newspapers while researching his dissertation without learning how to distill the essence from a newspaper story in a very short time.

"This is scary stuff," said Step. "I know you're already careful with the kids, and so am I, but I really think we shouldn't even let them in the back yard without being out there with them the whole time."

"Absolutely," said DeAnne. "But Step, didn't you notice?"

"Notice what?" he asked.

"You're going to think I'm crazy."

"Probably," he said. But his joking tone didn't fit now; he realized that DeAnne had sounded genuinely scared. She really thought that whatever she was about to point out to him would make him think she was crazy.

"Show me," he said.

"I was hoping you'd just see it yourself. Look at the pictures of the lost boys, Step. Look at their names."

He did. "Do we know any of their families or something?" That was absurd- if anyone they knew had had a child disappear, they'd have known about it before now.

DeAnne laid a list of names on the table. It was written in her handwriting. Step compared them to the names under the pic tures, since that seemed to be what she intended. Most of the names under the pictures were listed on the paper, or at least were similar. Scott Wilson matched the name "Scotty" on the list. "David" matched David Purdom. "Roddy" would be Rodd Harker. "Jack" could be a nickname for Jonathan Lee.

"Does the story say anywhere that this Jonathan Lee is nicknamed Jack?" asked Step.

"No," said DeAnne. "I hope he isn't."

"Well, then, what were you writing this list for?"

"Step, I didn't write this list today. I wrote this list back in June."

Step waited for the other shoe to drop. Then he made the connection. "That's a list of Stevie's imaginary friends. I remember Jack and Scotty"

"It's more than that now," she said. "I've heard other names since then. I know I've heard him talking about a Van and a Peter, and look."

Step looked, and two of the boys were Van Rosewood and Peter Kemeny. "Good heavens," he murmured.

"This is really weird."

"Is that all you can say?" she said. "That it's weird?"

"It scares the shit out of me," said Step. "But usually you prefer me not to talk like that. What does this serial killer thing have to do with our son?"

"I don't know," said DeAnne. "Nothing. It couldn't."

"Maybe Stevie's been reading the names or something."

"But three of the boys disappeared before we moved here. We never would have seen articles about them.

This article here is the first one ever to list all these names together. Think about it, Step. Stevie came up with almost the same list as these detectives did, and there's no way he could have done it. No way that makes any sense."

Step's hands were trembling as if it were cold. He was cold. "It's not just almost the same list," he said. "If Jonathan really is Jack, then this last one, Alexander Booth ..."

"He's never talked about an Al or an Alex," said DeAnne.

"But I watched him playing a computer game this morning and I heard him saying, like, Come on, Sandy.

Sandy's a nickname for Alexander, too."

DeAnne pressed her face into her hands. "This article already scared me, Step. But then when I saw this-what can we do?"

"I don't know," said Step. "I don't even know what it means."

"Remember that record we got in the mail? The anonymous one?" asked DeAnne. "The song about I'll be watching you?"

He hadn't thought about it in a long time. It was still on the radio a lot, but all the things that had happened since the record came had put that old scare far into the background. Now, though, it took on truly sinister overtones. "Do you really think..."

"What if this ... serial killer ..."

"Watching us," said Step.

For a moment DeAnne seemed to go out of control, uttering some high whimpering cries while she hid her face in her hands. Step wasn't sure how to deal with this, or what was happening to her; he put his hand on her back, as if to steady her, as if she were tipping and he was going to put her back upright. "Oh, Step," she whispered. "Oh, Step, I'm so scared. Who could it be? What if the serial killer has ... talked to Stevie?"

"Impossible," said Step. "You read the article. They say that this serial killer is extremely dangerous because he isn't leaving any evidence anywhere. They aren't even sure there's a serial killer anyway. Because they haven't found a single body. That's how these boys got on the list-their bodies haven't been found."