My ears roared. I wanted this not to be real. I wanted to change the channel. I wanted to wake up and find I was dreaming. But it was real. They stared at each other, Jum frozen to the wall, the man moaning.
"Oh, Jake," the man said, so softly I could barely hear him. "I'm so sorry Jake." His voice bubbled.
He was the Devil; he must have been. He had come to take my brother away. He would carry him into the night and I would never see him again and his body would never be found.
"Are you dead?" Sue stood at the bottom of the stairs.
The man whirled to face her. "Am I dead?"
"What's it like being dead?" she asked.
The air filled with static. I felt my hair moving. A tremendous electric flash burned that face into me, to be outlined in blue every time I blinked. Outside, something huge splintered like a child's toy. The house shook. A window shattered. I don't remember thunder.
He shot to his feet with a shriek, gaping like a rotten pumpkin. "What's it like being dead?" He sprayed us with his stench. The candles, all but one, guttered and went out. His arms went stiff, straight out from his sides, and something bubbled in his throat: "She wants to know what it's like being dead!!" Then he just stood there. Arms out. Crucified in our kitchen. It was forever when the screen door flapped, and he was gone.
I was frozen, paralyzed, too numb to move. Jum choked, fighting for air through tears and fingers, and I thought he was going to faint. Sue floated like a small, white angel on the stairs.
". . . . dead!!" It was a distant scream, grabbed and torn by the wind. But maybe it was just the wind that I heard.
We still hadn't moved when headlights flooded the kitchen, and the half- ton churned through the lake that used to be our yard. "Yaaa-hoo!!" yelled Dad. "C'mon in, the water's fine!"
We still didn't move.
Mom and Dad splashed out of the truck and into the porch, whooping and spraying water everywhere. "Hey, you guys," yelled Dad. "Aren't you glad to see us?" They burst into the kitchen. One look at our faces turned their laughter into panic.
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