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Sarah wiped her tears and nose with her sleeves. She didn't respond. Diane repeated the question. Sarah nodded.

"Why?' her father demanded.

'Because.'

'Sarah-' Corde began sternly.

"Hie little girl seemed to wince. 'It's not my fault. The wizard told me to.'

The wizard?'

The Sunshine Man ...'

This was one of the imaginary friends that Sarah played with. Corde remembered Sarah had created him after the family attended the funeral of Corde's father and the minister had lifted his arms to the sun, speaking about 'souls rising into heaven.' It was Sarah's first experience with death and Corde and Diane had been reluctant to dislodge the apparently friendly spirit she created. But in the past year, to the parents' increasing irritation, the girl referred to him more and more frequently.

"He made Redford T. Redford fly out to the forest and he told me-'

Diane's voice cut through the yard. 'No more of this magic crap, do you hear me, young lady? What were you doing?'

'Leave me alone.' The tiny mouth tightened ominously.

Corde said, It's going to be okay, honey. Don't worry.'

"I'm not going back to school.'

Diane whispered in a low, menacing voice, 'Don't you ever do that again, Sarrie, do you understand me? You could've been killed.'

'I don't care!'

'Don't say that. Don't ever say that!' Mother's and daughter's strident tones were different only in pitch.

Corde touched his wife's arm and shook his head. To Sarah he said, 'It's okay, honey. We'll talk about it later.'

Sarah bent down and picked up her knapsack and walked toward the house. With boundless regret on her face, she looked back - not however at the ashen faces of her parents but toward the road down which the silver truck was hurrying away without her.

They stood in the kitchen awkwardly, like lovers who must suddenly discuss business. Unable to look at him, Diane told him about Sarah's incident at school that day.

Corde said contritely, 'She didn't want to go today. I drove her back this morning and made her. I guess I shouldn't have.'

'Of course you should have. You can't let her get away with this stuff, Bill. She uses us.'

'What're we going to do? She's taking the pills?'

'Every day. But I don't think they're doing any good. They just seem to make her stomach upset.' She waved vaguely toward the front yard. 'Can you imagine she did that? Oh, my.'

Corde thought: Why now? With this case and everything, why now? He looked out the window at Sarah's bike, standing upright on training wheels, a low pastel green Schwinn, with rainbow streamers hanging pathetically from the rubber handle grips. He thought of Jamie and his high racing bike that he zipped along on fast and daring as a motocross competitor. Sarah still couldn't ride her tiny bike without the trainers. It embarrassed Corde when the family pedaled to town together. Corde tried to avoid the inevitable comparison between his children. He wished whatever God had dished out for them had been more evenly divided. It was difficult but Corde made a special effort to limit the pride he expressed for Jamie, always aware of Sarah's eyes on him, begging for approval even as she was stung by her own limits.

A more frightening concern: some man offering a confused little girl a ride home. Corde and Diane had talked to her about this and she'd responded with infuriating laughter, saying that a wizard or a magic dog would protect her or that she would just fly away and hide behind the moon. Corde would grow stern, Diane would threaten to spank her, the girl's face became somber. But her parents could see that the belief in supernatural protectors had not been dislodged.

Oh, Sarrie...

Although Bill Corde still went to church regularly he had stopped praying. He'd stopped exactly nine years ago. He thought if it would do anything for Sarah he'd start up again.

He said, 'It's like she's emotionally dis-'

Diane turned on him. 'Don't say that! She has a high IQ. Beiderson herself told me. She's faking. She wants to get attention. And, brother, you give her plenty...'

Corde lifted an eyebrow at this.

Diane conceded, 'Okay, and so do I.'

Corde was testy. Well, we've got to do something. We can't let that happen again.' He waved toward the yard, like Diane reluctant to mention his daughter's mortality.

'She's got her end-of-term tests in two weeks.'

'We can't take her out of school now,' Corde said. We can't hold her back another grade.' He looked out the window. Why did the sight of a bicycle standing upright bother him so?

It encouraged him that she could read some books by herself.

It encouraged him that she had made and kept a few friends.

It encouraged him that she was pretty.

It destroyed him that she wasn't like Jamie.

'There's something I ought to tell you,' Corde said, hesitating, not knowing how she'd respond.

He pointed to the Register, which rested with odd prominence on top of four cans of tomatoes in the middle of the table. It was open to the article about the murder.

'Somebody left a copy of that story at the crime scene. It was saying that maybe we shouldn't be investigating this case too hard. Now it could be a prank and even if the killer left it I don't take it all that serious. But I'm going to have a deputy here at the house.'

This however seemed to be just another small burden on his wife's shoulders. Diane said matter-of-factly, We shouldn't let Sarah play by herself then.'

"Not outside the yard, no. Well have to tell her somehow. But we don't want to scare her. She spooks so easy.'

Diane said, 'You keep babying her. She's never going to grow up if you keep treating her that way.'

'I just think we have to be careful is all.' Corde lifted his eyes to the post-and-rail fence two hundred feet away and saw a Hereford grazing in the field beyond. It reminded him of a picture Sarah had once tried to draw of a dalmatian. The drawing had been pathetic -an infant's scrawl. 'It comes close to breaking my heart,' he said. 'It's like she's ...'

'She isn't retarded,' Diane hissed.

'I didn't say that.'

'My daughter is not retarded.' She turned her attention to the refrigerator. 'I don't want to talk about it anymore.'

6

Rockets rising from grass from mud no no not mud servo rockets Datkar man he's great muscles ripping them all apart shooting with leasers...

Their bodies falling... Falling into flowers.

Falling. Into. Mud. ..

Philip Halpern sat behind the two-bedroom house, under the six-by-six back porch, which was for him at this moment the control room of his Dimensioncruiser. He listened. He heard footsteps from the house. They receded. Falling in mud, in flowers. Nonono...

Philip was blond, five feet eight, and he weighed two hundred and forty-five pounds. He was the second heaviest person in his freshman high school class. Tonight, in size forty-four Levi's and a dark green shirt, he sat in a pile of leaves that had drifted under the porch. The boy lowered his head and stared at the bag at his feet. It was small, a sandwich bag, the sort that would contain lunch, when his mother made his lunch, of bologna sandwiches smeared with Hellmann's and potato chips and bananas and Oreos and eighty cents in dull-clinking coins for chocolate milk. Although what the bag contained tonight was small his hand moved slowly when he picked it up, as though the contents were very heavy.

Thathar!' a nearby voice whispered.

Philip jumped then answered, 'Jano, that you?' He squinted and saw a boy his age crawling through a secret gate they had built together in the chicken-wire fence that surrounded the Halpern property. 'Jano, shit, be quiet.'

Between themselves, Philip and his friend had taken the names of characters in a recent science fiction film they'd seen four times. It was like a code, a secret that bound them together in this alien world.

'Phathar, I've like called you ten times.' Jano's voice was agitated.

Phathar whispered harshly, 'Just chill, will you? Shut up.'

Jano - full name Jano-IV of the Lost Dimension -climbed through the lattice gate of the porch. He said, Why didn't you call me back? I thought you'd been arrested or something. Man, I almost puked this morning. I mean, like really.'

'Chill. . . out. Okay?' Although Phathar-VII, also a warrior from the Lost Dimension, was calm and in control, Philip Halpern, young and overweight, was close enough to panic without his friend's adding to it. He said, 'So what is there to do?'

'I don't know. I almost puked,' Jano repeated, looking as if he had. His mouth was wet and his eyes red and though it was too early in the season for serious freckles, the brown dots stood out on his face in sickly contrast to his pale skin.

Phathar said, *How can they even find us?'

'Oh, Jesus.'

"You're like a total pussy.'

'I am not!' Jano's eyes blazed.

Philip, whom Jano could have pounded to the dirt floor with a single fist, backed off. 'All right, dude, all right.'

Jano said, We've got to destruct the files.'

"You know how long it took us to make those up?'

Jano said, We've got the names of half the girls in class on them. All the codes, all the pictures.'

'I've got them in a secret file. If anybody tries-'

'But the pictures-' Jano whined in a voice that wasn't at all the voice of a Dimensional warrior.

'No, listen,' Phathar said. 'If anybody tries to open the drawer everything self-destructs. It's automatic.'

Jano gazed into the night. 'Oh, man, I wish we hadn't done it.'

'Stop talking that way,' Phathar whispered ruthlessly. A fleck of saliva shot onto Jano's arm. The boy's revulsion showed in his face but he didn't brush the dot away. Phathar continued, "We did do it! We. Did. It. We can't bring her back to life.'

'Dathar could,' Jano sniveled.

Well, we can't so quit like crying about it.'

'I almost puked.'

Above them: A squeak of opening door. A low voice snapped, 'Phil!' Both boys froze. 'Phillip!' His father's voice stabbed through the night like a Dimensioncruiser's engine kicking into antimatter mode. The fuck are you? You got school tomorrow.'

Philip wondered if he himself was going to puke. Even Phathar was trembling.

"You can hear me, you got ten minutes. I have to come looking for you it'll be with the handy man.'

When the screen door slammed Phathar said, You gotta leave. He finds you here hell whip me.'

Jano stared at the underside of the porch above them then said, Tomorrow.' He left silently. To his shadowy, receding form, Phathar lifted his arm and closed his fingers in a Dimensional warrior salute.

Oh, she struggled. She wrote the words a dozen times, careful always to tear up the ruined note and drop it into a garbage can. She'd failed him once. She wasn't going to make it worse by letting her mother and dad find out about him.

Sitting at her desk she hunched over the tricky letters, willing her pen to move one way then watching it move the other. She would tell it to go up to make the top of a b and instead it went down and became a p. Left instead of right.

Is how an S goes? No. Yes.

Sarah Corde hated S's.

She heard the crickets playing their tiny squeak-fiddles outside in the cool night, she heard the wind brushing the trees. Neck and back cramped with tension she wrote for another half hour then looked at her work.

Im sorry. I cant' go awya, they wont let me anb a police man is coomign comming in the mourning to watch us. Can you help me? You can have yor mony back. You are the Sunshine Man arent' you? Can I see you?

She signed her name carefully.

She felt a moment of panic, worrying that the Sunshine Man might not be able to read the note. Then she decided that because he was a wizard he could probably figure most of it out.

Sarah folded the paper and wrote his name on the outside. She put on her jacket then she paused. She opened the note and added some words at the bottom.

Im sorry I dont' spell good. Im realy sorry.

Then she snuck out the back door into the windy night and ran all the way to the circle of rocks.

The deputy showed up at eight-thirty almost to the second. He was young pink-scrubbed beefy eager and he wore on his hip a combat-gripped .357 Colt Python with a six-inch vented barrel. He was, in short, everything a husband could want to protect his wife and kids.

'Morning, Tom.' Corde picked up the Register from the driveway and held the screen door open for the deputy.

'Howdy, Detective. Nice house you got here.'

Corde introduced him to the family. Diane offered him some coffee. He declined regretfully as if this were a slap at her cooking.

The deputy retreated to the comfort of his Dodge watchtower parked in the driveway and the family sat down to breakfast. Jamie and Diane were talking about something, animated, near to an argument. Sarah sat quietly but was overjoyed at the news that she could stay home from school today. ('Only today, mind you, one day Just one, but no more absences for the rest of the year, you understand, young lady?' - Oh, yes, and how many times had they said the same thing?)

Corde wasn't listening to his wife and son and he wasn't observing his daughter's elation because he was reading a short article in the Register and he was shocked.

Cult Suspected in Auden Co-ed Murder

He set his coffee on the table and knocked the syrup over. He didn't notice it fall. Diane glanced at him, frowning, and righted the bottle.

. . . Sheriffs Department investigators are looking into the possibility that a cult or religious killer may be stalking the town of New Lebanon...

His eyes jumped through the article.

. . . and robbery was not a motive. Because she was killed on the night of the first quarter of the moon, there has been speculation that Miss Gebben may have been a sacrifice victim, possibly one in a chain of such killings. Sources close to the Sheriffs Department also disclosed that death threats have been made against its personnel...