was no reasoning to this; it was just the truth. "Stay here," he told Cindy.
"What're you going to do?" "Just stay here."
Barefooted, he went out into the kitchen to the river door and looked out the unlatched
screen (Cindy). In two lightning flares, everything continued quiet, and he opened the door
and looked out, up and down the length of the house. Although he again saw nothing, ev-
ery bush and tree beyond the immediate yard seemed a threat. He shut the screen,
latched it firmly, and shut the inner door behind it. "Tum on all the lights."
"All of them?" Cindy said from the doorway. "Everything. The television, too."
He turned on the kitchen overhead light, the counter light, and the stove lights. Cindy went
from lamp to lamp in the living room, turned on the blank TV, and the little-used front-
porch light. Together, they went down the hall from bedroom to bedroom until at last, they
met in a bath of illumination.
"Are we safe now?"
"I guess so." In fact, Bobby felt the same as he had last night: the Picker could see in and
Bobby could not see out. The difference was that in twenty-four hours he bad lost his
nerve. No going out there in the vegetable garden. tonight-no way. ~He was on the scared
defensive now.
"Well-" Cindy said.
"Don't worry." It was the first time in Bobby's life that he had ever done that thing that
adults do so often, hidden his fear from others, but he did it out of
180
compassion. And maybe the lights might work. They sure made daylight out of everything.
"Where're you going?" "Downstairs, stupid."
"I don't want to go down there anymore." Cindy crossed her hands over her chest. "It's
scary."
"Then don't," Bobby turned and began his way down. He had no more enthusiasm for it
than Cindy, but he had Barbara-even at the verge of surrender, he was responsible-as his
next duty.
"Bobbye-e-e-e." Cindy began to cry again, but
quietly.
That was all he needed. He wanted to cry himself. "All right, get in the closet or under the
bed. I don't care. I've got to go down."
Tom; Cindy followed him halfway, her eyes looking back up at the fearful house and then
down at the horrible basement. Still, step by step, she followed.
The door to the rec room was open as Cindy had left it, and looking at the window, Bobby
was reassured to see no one there-no one who could be seen, that is. Moreover· a glance
told him that whoever had peeked in-he didn't doubt Cindy for an instant would have had
to look very carefully to see anything unusual.
Barbara was seated at the end of the picnic bench that had been pulled up against one of
the steel poles that held up the first floor. Her wrists and elbows were tied behind the
column, and rope was wound around her body, holding it upright against it. Her legs were
entirely free and more or less gracefully tucked under the bench, and, of course, her mouth
was taped. In this position, she was considerably to the left of the window and luckily
turned away from it. Finally, the light which came from a naked bulb over the work bench,
was a poor one that put her back and bound hands in shadow.
Hesitantly Bobby walked into the shop and more hesitantly over to the wall beneath the
window, which 181
was up at nearly ground level. Cindy wouldn't come in but stood at the door looking cautiously
at him.
He turned and imagined himself creeping up to the glass there behind his shoulder. There
would 'be no noise, hence no immediate danger. There would be a quick look inside and just in
front-nothing. Then, more carefully, there would be a look left and right. Finally, there would be
the sight of someone sitting up on the work counter swinging dirty legs back and forth. The
person-the child-would look up for some reason, see the peeker and scream. Afterward all the
lights in the house would come on, and it would be time to take off.
Step-by-step deductions of this kind are attributed to people much older than Bobby without
being true in any way. It was the same with him. He didn't think this; he felt it, felt suddenly
safer. Moreover, it was the Picker, and he had run off; otherwise one of the good neighbors
would have come knocking on the door long before. Even so, he reached up and turned out the
one light.
"Bobby, that's scary. I don't want to come
m ....
"Come in or go somewhere else," he said. "I'm going to shut the door and guard. If you don't
want to, OK."
"I'm tired."
"Go to bed then."
She didn't say again that she was too frightened; instead she came in and obediently shut the
door behind her. It was black, but after a moment or two when their eyes got accustomed to
the dark, there was a little light coming down from the window from all the rooms they had
illuminated above. It wasn't half-bad once you got used to it, and after a while, they settled
down nearly as uncomfortable as their prisoner. Now it was a matter of listening.
At the beginning of the fourth night after the fourth day, Barbara had been broken by the
children,
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although-since she was gagged-she could not tell them nor beg to them. The moment had
been reached when, after the failed rebellion of the morning, she had been hung up
backward by her wrists. If they had just released her then and given her a single moment's
comfort, she would have-this was without deceit or trickery-done anything they asked and
willingly. She would have waited on them; she would have let them beat her; she would
have taken an oath of secrecy to protect them; just please end it all. And it was true, it was
true; she thought it, and she believed it. The children, however, had gone through the day
without suspecting or caring about it.
Indeed they had left her for the night in a position that Dianne had invented-tied back
against the pole, hands and arms behind, standing on one foot with the other bound up
behind to her wrists. It was not endurable and could not have lasted except for the ropes
which, winding around the supporting column, her leg and body-ropes entirely supervised
by Dianne firmly held her in place. Even fainting, Barbara would have done no more than
slump down an inch or two still standing up.
It's too much, it's too much, Barbara said. By tomorrow morning she would be in some
unimaginable state nearly vegetable. The melodramatic pity with which she repeated this
to herself-she could think of nothing else-was not so much due to present discomfort as to
the fact that this, too, was added on.
The point of the game as the children had played it among themselves, was to inflict,
observe, and experiment with the feelings of helplessness, humiliation, and-occasionally-
pain. It was a tentative exploration in at least one of the relationships people have with
other people. No one, however, had ever gone four hours let alone four days and nights as
it. Time was the ingredient they did not understand, or-not understanding-wished to play