Chain Letter

By Ruby Jean Jensen

Youngsters Abby and Brian decided to spend the afternoon riding their bikes to the Speedee-Mart and buying a few treats. However, plans strangely went awry. First, Abby talked Brian into taking along Babs, his six-month-old golden retriever. Without asking permission, Brian put his best leash on Babs and off they went. Abby then wanted to stop and ask Shelly to join them. Shelly agreed, but suggested that they take the short-cut through the woods. That is where things went off-track. Along the way, Babs got loose and led them on a merry chase. Up a big hill to a tall chain-link fence. Then, under the fence and into a huge, abandoned old nursing home. They searched high and low but could not find Babs. What they did find was a torn portion of a spooky chain letter—with spidery words elegantly penned on yellowed paper edged in black. This was unlike any chain letter they had ever seen. The letter plainly stated: Whosoever possesseth this letter and dares to break this chain shall suffer disaster and death . . . It had the feel of pure evil. Over the next few weeks, Abby, Brian and their family and friend’s lives came to revolve around that letter. Would they know who had broken the chain letter by who had died? Abby and Brian slowly became obsessed with finding the torn-off portion of the chain letter and learning what is supposed to happen to those who break the chain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ruby Jean Jensen
• Release date: Oct 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781951580292

Ruby Jean Jensen

Ruby Jean Jensen (1927 – 2010) authored more than 30 novels and over 200 short stories. Her passion for writing developed at an early age, and she worked for many years to develop her writing skills. After having many short stories published, in 1974 the novel The House that Samael Built was accepted for publication. She then quickly established herself as a professional author, with representation by a Literary Agent from New York. She subsequently sold 29 more novels to several New York publishing houses. After four Gothic Romance, three Occult and then three Horror novels, MaMa was published by Zebra books in 1983. With Zebra, Ruby Jean completed nineteen more novels in the Horror genre.Ruby was involved with creative writing groups for many years, and she often took the time to encourage young authors and to reply to fan mail.

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Prologue

The sign arching above the rusted, locked gates read Hawthorn Hill Nursing Home. Mosses grew deep in the letters, and vines curled around the metal arch, almost entirely obliterating the name. Trees had grown up in the driveway to become young contenders for the long-empty space. The tall chain-link fence that was hidden among the trees and vines still had barbed wire at the top. No one climbed over, not now, nor in the past. Numbers beneath the name on the sign claimed the nursing home had been built in 1926.

The building had a central core, a large lobby, from which two long wings stretched back at angles of fifty degrees for 180 feet, like the wings of an insect resting on the grass. Behind the lobby squatted a one story addition, shorter than the wings, that had once contained the kitchen and utility rooms and offices. The long west wing had barred windows on both upper and lower floors. The exterior of the building was native stone, in which moss competed with vines, and spiders skulked in the cool, shadowed depths.

A wind that moaned and moved with the sluggishness of a reptile stirred the papers among the debris in the corners of the shuttered rooms, lifting the letter from among the rags. In the darkness of long halls nothing moved but the trapped winds of long, empty years. The occasional living creature that found its way beneath the tall fences and crept into the open door also found itself trapped forever. The wind gathered force with each dying breath, and claimed each devoured soul for its own.

But evil lives in its own dark way, and demands to be fed.

Nothing is ever lost. Memories are trapped, and weep forever. Footsteps that once echoed along the shadowed halls echo still for certain ears. Voices that screamed within solid walls and behind barred windows scream there still.

The voice of the child who came to see his grandmother in the east nursing home wing still floats in the stale air.

Grandma, I brought you something. His face proud with his find as he opened the grubby little box, his shadow absorbed into the wall.

What is it, Bobby? Her twisted, stiff fingers reached out to try to help, and her heart ached with her inability to help him because of the desolate turn her life had taken. The chair in which she sat had finally become her only permanent home, but her hands were too arthritically uncooperative to do more than tremble against his young, tender fingers. Other aged people in the visitors’ room at the end of the east wing watched wistfully, in silence, reminded of similar scenes in their own pasts.

The lid opened and he showed her the snail, a large, moist specimen with intricate whorls on its shell. She touched it with one shaking finger.

Oh my, oh my, Bobby, ain’t that a grand thing. Where did you find it?

The small face beamed as the bright eyes looked from the face of his grandmother to the gift he had brought her.

I found it down on the hillside, Gram. Down there by the path is a whole bunch of little caves right in beneath the bluffs, and that’s where I found it. I brought it to show you.

Well, ain’t that a grand one. But of course you’ll take it back to its home when you go, won’t you? And you had better be going soon, Bobby, it’s nigh onto dark, and does your stepmother know you’re gone?

A shake of his head as he leaned against his grandmother’s knee, and her heart longed hopelessly to be able to make a home for him again, this wondrous child of her dead daughter. With her arms hurting she reached out to hug him before she sent him home, down the path on the hillside.

From the window of the visitors’ room she could watch him go to the fence where there was a hole in the dirt beneath, and watch his small and agile body slide under and disappear into the trees beyond the tall fence. Go to the gate, Bobby, she had said in the beginning, when she had been first moved into the nursing home. But when he did he disappeared from her view even quicker, so that now she let him be, let him choose his own path, and her reward was seeing him go safely, beyond the fence and the dangers behind the bars of the west wing. Her reward was in knowing he was safe. Her child, her blessed child.

He closed the lid on the box and carried it in both hands, as if he were carrying the most precious, fragile glass. She moved her wheelchair to the window, where she could watch him cross the wide area of the rear grounds.

Then she saw him stop and look toward the west wing, the part of Hawthorn Hill Nursing Home that had barred windows and from which terrible sounds emerged at all hours during the long nights when she slept so restlessly, her body aching, crying for change. She saw him stop and look steadily toward that other wing, and her heart stopped. She reached out to thump the window, to try to get his attention, to caution him against that west wing, where, it was rumored, the criminally insane were being housed. But he was too far away to hear her feeble peck on the window glass.

Then he was walking slowly toward that other wing, and she knew in her heart that he had been summoned there. No, Bobby, no, no.

She saw him go to a window and look up, and then she saw him reach up an arm to meet a hand that was holding something white. A message? A letter from one of the inmates?

It was given to him, and through the bars for one instant she saw the face of the man who had handed Bobby the letter. She saw the madness in his eyes and in the shadows of his face. She saw his dark, concealing beard and his beckoning smile, and she knew who he was, that most heinous killer of small children, and frantically she began to wheel her chair toward the door. She reached out and turned the knob, her hand slipping and almost losing its grip, but desperation gave her strength. She threw the door back and wheeled the chair to the threshold. She could go no farther. It took limber legs to go down the three stone steps beyond the door.

Bobby, she called, Come here.

Blessedly he heard her. His head turned in her direction, then, with an apologetic glance back at the man whose arm was still hanging out between the bars, whose hand was struggling to touch the vulnerable child, he came toward her, carrying the box with the snail in one hand, the white sheet of paper in the other.

When he drew near she saw the white page was edged in black.

Oh no, oh no.

A letter edged in black meant death, and from the barred window the laughter swooped, like a huge, taloned vulture, after the child. Too late, too late, the laughter taunted.

Throw it away, Bobby, throw it away. No matter what it was, it meant death, and he must not touch it. Throw it away, Bobby.

A guard stepped out from the low section of the central wing, his brown uniform melting against the brown stones of the walls, the guns at his sides heavy and black.

What is it? he demanded, his strong voice reaching from west wing to east wing as he went toward the little boy.

The madman across the way screamed something unintelligible to her ears, and the guard shouted, What’s going on here? Then, inexplicably, the child began to run.

He dodged around the guard, avoiding the hands that reached out for him. He tried to run toward the fence, toward freedom and escape, but the guard cut him off, his arms out, stretched wide, as if herding a wild steer.

The guard’s right hand made a lunge and grabbed the letter, and tore a large section from it. The child ran on, dodging, the rest of the page still clutched in his fingers.

She sat forward in her chair, her twisted hands gripping the arms, watching, crying silently, Bobby, Bobby, no, no.

He ran back toward the central wing, that short, low section from which the guard had come. He disappeared into the door that stood open.

Her heart thudded with fear. Why was he running? Had the letter edged in black, with whatever terrible message it contained, given him the disease of the madmen who lived behind the barred windows? Would the guards and the cooks and nurses who used the central wing help him, or frighten him even more?

She sat waiting, waiting. Then she heard an ambulance coming up the long hill from the town, its siren wailing. Bobby did not come out of the door into which he had gone, and her heart grew cold, colder. And when the ambulance pulled near that door and the men in white brought a small, covered figure out and put it into the ambulance, she knew in her heart she would never see her precious child again.

Later they told her.

He had found the old stone stairway into the large cellar beneath the wings, and in the darkness there, the slippery damp of an unpaved floor, he had slipped and fallen into the uncovered well, and had died in the fall.

Laughter rings, never lost, maniacal and wild, becoming part of the sluggish winds.

Tears wept are wept forever.

A letter edged in black brings news of death.

Chapter One

The golden Labrador retriever, six months old, raised her head and whined. She turned her nose to the soft breeze that blew down across the trees from the hills. She ran to the edge of the yard and back again to the patio, where she huddled against the screen door, as close as she could get to the people who protected her.

She stared into the night

Somewhere several streets away, another dog howled, then another, and the Lab shivered and whined and looked through the screen into the house. But it was dark and silent. Her people were asleep.

She stood up, her nose to the breeze again as it lifted from the hills and sank into the valley of the town. Something was calling her, and even though her hackles rose, she ran back toward the fence. She barked once, and once again, and trembled where she stood. She ran back to the house and stood poised on the patio, staring into the black night.

For the rest of the night she paced the yard, running to safety and then responding again to the call of the mystery.

Finally, when the sky turned pink, she crept into her doghouse and went to sleep.

Brian heard the doorbell ring, and his mother's footsteps going down the hall, but he had almost forgotten about it when her voice reached him, faintly, above the sound of the television.

He was lying on the floor in front of the television. Sometimes Cliff, his big brother, stretched out there with him. But today Cliff was draped along the leather sofa like an old horse blanket. Still, it was a warm and comradely arrangement that Brian relished. His big brother was seventeen now, and didn’t spend many afternoons at home, and even fewer watching shows with Brian the way he used to.

Their mother came back down the hall talking to someone.

I suppose he could, she was saying, so long as he’s back by dinnertime.

When they came into the big combination kitchen and family room, Brian reared up to lean on an elbow. He saw Abby Smith, all freckles and honey-colored braids, the only other kid who lived on his street who was close to his own age. She’d had her birthday just two weeks ago and was now eleven, a year and half older than he, almost. It would be another four months before he’d be ten. Sometimes she seemed even older, like a teenager. She was the oldest kid in their class, just as he was the youngest.

She was the smartest too.

She was also taller than he was. And she was a girl, which made for some embarrassing situations at school when she got friendly. The guys thought she was his girlfriend. Once they had gotten really nasty and laughed and teased him saying that he and Abby were sisters because of his own freckles and reddish-blond curly hair. But only once. He’d given them all black eyes, just to make sure they never made that mistake again. He was no girl, and they better damn well know it.

Cliff moved his legs. Hello, Abby, how’s the weather up there? Then, when she only gave him a sour look, he added, What’s Karen doing?

Karen was Abby’s sister. She was Cliff's age, and they went to the same high school. So far as Brian knew, Cliff had never dated Karen, though he was always asking Abby about her as if he really liked her. It was hard to tell about Cliff. He teased Abby sometimes.

I don’t know, Abby said. Nothing. Went swimming with some kids, I think.

When the guys weren’t around Brian was glad to see Abby. He sat up.

Hi.

Abby grinned. She had grown new teeth in front, and they looked like horses’ teeth. Also, she had lots of freckles, but the spots between them were delicate and white, with some pink in her cheeks. He’d heard Cliff say once that in three or four more years Abby would be a foxy chick, but he didn’t see where Cliff got that idea. Of course, Cliff and all his buddies were always seeing things where Brian doubted he would ever see them. All they thought about now, it seemed, were cars and chicks and cruising around, and they talked a lot about sex. He didn’t much like to hang around them anymore. Cliff was great when they were alone, but Abby was more fun even if she was a girl.

Your mom said you could go with me to Speedee-Mart, Abby said, and opened her hand to let him see the coins there. I’ve got a dollar. We can split a can of pop and a bag of peanuts or something.

Okay.

His mother had gone into the kitchen area and was opening her purse, which sat on the kitchen desk, the place which she called her corner. Brian, bring me a half pint of whipping cream, will you please? I found strawberries in the grocery store today, but forgot cream. We'll have shortcake for dessert.

Cliff said, Hey, way to go, Mom. I think I’ll hang around.

I certainly think you will, their mother said, not fooling. He’d been getting in trouble some lately, Brian remembered, because he hung out too much somewhere, past the hours he was supposed to come home.

Brian took the folded bills and pushed them down into his hip pocket.

His mother said, You can use the change for something that isn’t sugary. I don’t want your appetite totally ruined. Be back by six o’clock. They went out the back door, and the moment they stepped onto the walk, Babs, the six-month-old Lab pup, came galloping up like a small, loose-jointed horse and began pulling on his shoe laces. Brian paused to pet her. She reared up and licked his face, then she loped over to Abby and treated her to the same attention.

Let’s take her along, Abby said. Can’t we?

Mom says she gets enough exercise in the back yard, but sometimes we take her out on her leash.

Let’s do it now. She can go with us to the store.

She can’t go in.

We can take turns staying outside with her. Come on, ask your mom.

She’d say no, Brian knew. Babs was getting big and strong and could yank her leash out of his hand. However, he decided, if he took the leash that had belonged to Candy, with the loop on the end, he could put his hand through the loop and hold her. Then his mom wouldn’t care. After all, the convenience store was only down the street and around the foot of the hill over on Olson. Just a few blocks.

Okay, Brian said. Let me get her leash. Instead of going back through the patio doors to the family room, he went into the door to the utility room. The leashes were hanging on a hook there. There were four leashes in all, two of which had belonged to other dogs that had grown old and died. He reached for Candy’s, because it had a loop at one end.

He heard the telephone ring, and paused. Footsteps moved across the floor and stopped. His mother said, Hello? And then, Oh Hi, Mom. Grandma. She lived across town, and since Grandpa died last year she had sometimes come and spent the weekend. He hoped she would this time. He liked having her around. She was fun. She played games with him and she listened when he talked, just as if he were grown up.

Abby stuck her head around the door. Can’t you find it?

Brian stopped listening to the telephone conversation, disentangled the leash with the loop at the wrist, and carried it quietly lest its rattle be heard. It wouldn’t really matter if he took the dog, he assured himself, trying to allay the guilt that was sneaking up unbidden. They wouldn’t even know that Babs was gone.

He went back out into the fenced rear yard without detection, and snapped the leash onto Babs’s collar. She was jumping to go, and Brian was glad. Within a minute they were out of the backyard and running down the sidewalk.

It was a street of upper-middle-class one-level homes, all situated on large lots with trees and privacy fences. The street curved and twisted, and most of the kids who lived there were Cliff’s age, or a few years younger. All were teenagers now, except for Abby and Brian. Along the street in front of the houses were a few cars that belonged to the kids, some of them classics that had been fixed up or were being fixed up and some of them shining new. A few kids could afford Porsches and Corvettes. But even with the teenagers and their cars, the street was still quiet. Brian let Babs race ahead of them without fear, his wrist secure in the loop, his legs stretching to keep up. Abby ran alongside easily.

When Babs stopped to sniff at something beside the walk, Abby tugged at Brian’s sleeve.

Hey, let’s go over and get Shelly to go with us. We've got enough money to buy all of us something now. Come on, what say?

Sure.

Brian looked to the north, trying to see through the trees to the street that Shelly lived on. It was on the edge of the old part of town. The houses there were rundown and shabby. Shelly’s mother had worked all the time, it seemed, since they had moved there. Trying to make ends meet, Shelly had said, since her parents were divorced. Shelly’s house was three blocks out of the way, but usually Brian thought nothing of it. He and Abby almost always included Shelly in their plans, even though she was so poor they had to pool their money to pay her way anywhere.

They crossed the street and walked on along hedges that needed trimming. The green growth had stretched outward until the sidewalk was narrowed and Abby had to fall behind Brian to have room to walk. He held to Babs’s leash with all his might, his steps stretched long, half-running to keep up with the Lab. Behind him Abby started talking, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He called back to her. What?

I said I’m going to my grandma and grandpa’s this summer for two weeks instead of to camp. My folks said maybe I can. I might even get to go with them on their trip up north. If I do, I’ll be gone a month. Just so I get to go to grandpa’s instead of to camp, that’s all I really care about. I’d lots rather go there. They have a farm.

Yeah, I know.

Where are you going?

I don’t know. Maybe to church camp again, like last year.

But that’s only a week. I wouldn’t mind if I only had to go a week, but my camp lasted three weeks, and there were mosquitoes there you wouldn’t believe! I’d rather stay home, but my mom says she has to work and can’t watch after me, and she doesn’t want to saddle my sister with the job all the time. She says Karen needs a vacation too. I’ll sure be glad when I’m seventeen, like Karen, so I can do what I please like she does.

Yeah, Brian said without much sympathy. He liked his life the way it was. He was in no hurry to be as old as his brother. He would have told Abby so, but she was still talking, and he was having more trouble controlling Babs than he would admit.

He was glad when they reached Shelly’s house and went up the old, cracked walk to her front porch. Fortunately, Babs seemed to like this new detour and took to it willingly. She stood at the door and wagged her tail in silent expectation, and Brian took that opportunity to rest.

Shelly’s little brother, Nathan, came to the door, looked through the screen at them, and said, Hi. Then he just stood there smiling bashfully.

He was pretty cute, Brian thought, with a round, babyish face and plump arms and legs. Although he was five now, he kind of looked like a big baby.

The middle-aged babysitter came to the door, her footsteps heavy in the narrow hall. Abby stooped and said to Nathan, Go tell Shelly that Brian and Abby are here.

The little boy ran, and the lady who took care of him during the day and evenings while his mother worked unhooked the screen. She was a big lady, and always wore an apron. She also always smelled like a bakery.

Hello, children, she said. Come on in. But I think you’ll have to leave your dog outside, though he looks like a nice dog. Just tie him to the porch railing.

Babs is a girl, Brian explained patiently, as he always did when people made that mistake.

Abby said, We can’t come in, thank you. We have to be back to our houses by dinnertime, and at Brian’s house that’s at six.

The babysitter came on out onto the porch and sat down in the porch swing. It creaked and sagged almost to the floor on the end where she was sitting. She reached behind her to arrange a cushion.

Where are you going that you’re in such a hurry?

To the store. Can Shelly go along? We’ve got enough money to treat her, so she doesn’t have to have any money.

What store? The stores are closed. Unless you’re going out to the mall or downtown to the supermarkets, and that’s too far to walk.

Speedee-Mart. It’s just up on Olson Street.

Oh yes, I forgot about that. Those so-called convenience stores, they just pop up overnight like toadstools.

Shelly came out onto the porch, an older Nathan with a babyish round face, big round, brown eyes, and her hair cut just like his, short and smooth, dark brown and glossy, like Mom’s embroidery thread. Like her little brother, she also looked embarrassed. Brian was always embarrassed too when he came to Shelly’s house, because she acted so different. In school and other places, she opened up and was fun, but here at her house she always acted odd, as if she were uncomfortable. They didn’t come to her house often to play because of that. Brian had gotten acquainted with Shelly the previous year, when she had moved into his school district. She had lived somewhere else before that, before her folks got their divorce, and he supposed that was why she acted like she did. It must have been a lot nicer place.

Come go with us to the store, Abby said, opening her palm again and revealing the coins there. We’ll share a can of pop and some candy or something. Brian’s got money too. You don’t need any.

Shelly looked at the sitter-lady. Can I go?

Yes, I suppose so. Just be sure to be back before dark.

Shelly’s face changed. She began to look eager and alive. She ran down the steps ahead of them, as if she could hardly wait to get away.

Nathan was petting Babs, and the dog was wriggling her whole body and licking him thoroughly all over his face. The lady in the swing noticed, and reached out and pulled Nathan away. Brian tugged on Babs’s leash, and when she turned he almost fell.

The lady smiled. She’s getting to be almost too much to handle, isn’t she, Brian?

No, it’s okay, he said, and took out after the dog down the steps. Bye, he called, but didn’t have time to look back. By the time they reached the corner, all of them were running.

Let’s take the shortcut, Shelly cried out, running almost side by side with Babs.

What shortcut?

The one around the hill. Come, I’ll show you.

Shelly ran on, her hand on the back of Babs’s head. They ran into an area without sidewalks, crossed the quiet street, and went into a dirt path that led into the trees. Vines hung down all around them and even the air seemed green and sticky with dampness. It was cool beneath the trees. The path ran slightly uphill along the bluff that stuck out of the hillside.

Brian, breathless, yelled, Hey, this is really neat. How come we never came this way before?

Shelly called back over her shoulder, I come this way all the time when I go to the store.

Me too, Abby said. When I come with Shelly.

There’s a cave right around the bend, Shelly said. Want to see it?

Hey, yeah!

A real cave?

Absolutely, a real cave.

Have you ever been in it?

Well, I looked in. You have to bend down. It’s not a big cave. But after a rain there is a spring that runs out of it. And I think wild animals live in it.

They rounded the hill, and the path dropped again, but Shelly stopped, and began to climb the hill. At that moment Babs gave a lurch, and Brian’s hand, greased with sweat and the dampness of the woods, slipped out of the loop on the leash. With a yelp, as if she had caught a scent, with her nose to the ground, Babs took off up the hillside, and before Brian could cry her name she was out of sight in the heavy green vegetation on the hill.

Brian stood staring into the suddenly menacing green. Silence lay a heavy hand on the three as they stood without moving.

Then Shelly began to climb the hillside. Come on, she ordered. We’d better get her. She might be going to the cave. There might be bears living in there. Or tigers.

Abby paused to exclaim with her lip curled, There’s no tigers in the United States.

Well, Shelly puffed, reaching out for a limb to help her climb past a small bluff, it might have escaped from a circus.

Brian only barely heard them. His anxiety was growing. It was not wild animals he was afraid of, it was losing Babs entirely. He fought wildly upward through the vines and undergrowth increasing on the steep hillside, his eyes straining for glimpses of her. A dash of gold caught his eye, the reddish blond of her fur. She was going on toward the top of the hill, occasionally letting out a yipe as she always did when she was in the countryside chasing a rabbit.

Shelly paused. She didn’t stop at the cave.

Brian passed the girls, and then heard them scrambling behind him, wordless, hurrying to catch up.

Brian led the way, beneath the heavy limbs of cedars, under the more open spaces of larger deciduous trees, around the edges of bluffs that jutted out from the earth, over the mossy tops.

They came out on top of the hill, breathless, to stand in the dim, green light of the heavy forest. All sounds and sights of Babs were gone.

Where is she? Abby asked.

Shhh!

They stood holding their breaths, listening. From far away down the hill, the sound muffled by vegetation, came the sounds of traffic flowing like a river. That would be on Olson Street, Brian thought vaguely, where the convenience store was. Olson Street was really Highway 52, coming in out of Springtown and from the interstate, and lots of trucks drove on it sometimes. He could hear their deep-throated, muted roar, but rather than finding it comforting, he felt as if he were in a world different from the world he had always known.

He was scared, but he dared not give in and let the girls see the depths of his concern.

Suddenly Abby screamed, Babs!

Shelly squealed in response, startled by Abby’s voice. A violent tremor moved over Brian. Then, as if in answer, Babs’s bark came from further on. They started running again.

The thick underbrush cleared away, and they were in an area that looked as if it had once been a park. Tall, spreading trees grew widely spaced, and the briars and vines beneath them were low enough that Brian could see over them in most places. He tore through the vines screaming for Babs, and darted around the stands of blackberry briars.

Suddenly he came up against a tall chain-link fence, and he stopped with his hands gripping the wire. Beyond, inside the fence, Babs ran on, one moment in sight, and the next moment gone.

Brian stared at the native stone walls of a building. Vines grew over the stones, leaving the old gray-black revealed only in spots. What looked like hundreds of windows were almost covered in vines and boards. Though the upper-floor windows were not boarded, in some places they were almost hidden by vines. It was a huge building, stretching away into the green forest as far as he could see.

Abby cried softly, deliberately keeping her voice down, What’s that?

Somebody’s house? Brian offered, fearing the worst. An old hotel?

Babs had somehow gotten through the fence, into a yard that might be protected by fierce guard dogs. He clung to the fence yearning for his wayward dog, fearing for her life. He called, Babs, but it was a weakling’s squeak. He felt like crying.

Here, said Shelly, who had wandered down the fence. Here! Here’s where she went under. Look.

They hurried to join her. She was bending over a dip beneath the fence that obviously was often used. The dirt beneath had no weeds growing near it. Something crawled in and out regularly.

Without a word to the girls, Brian got down on his belly and began to wriggle beneath the fence.

Where are you going? Shelly cried in a lowered voice, as if she were afraid of being heard.

I’m going after my dog, Brian said breathlessly, coming up on the other side of the fence. Damp soil clung to the front of his clothes, and he paused to brush it off. You guys go on to the store without me. As soon as I get Babs, I’ve got to take her home.

Brian, Abby said, what if there are big dogs in there? Or men with guns?

That’s a chance I have to take. I’ve got to find her.

Abby said, We'll help you.

Brian, Shelly said, wait for us, we’re coming too.

He waited, more willing to have them along than he could have expressed. He stood staring toward the building, the sounds of the girls crawling beneath the fence behind him. The more he looked at the building, the more and harder he listened, the more he began to feel it was unlived in.

With Abby and Shelly out from under the fence he began to walk