“The threshold,” Meg said. “It should keep such things out.”
“Sometimes they ride in with someone in the family. Sometimes if a child has a vivid enough dream, it can open up a window in the Nevernever that the boggart uses to skip in. They can use mirrors sometimes, too.”
“Nevernever?” Yardly asked.
“The spirit world,” I clarified.
“Oh, what bullshit, Meg—” Yardly said.
Megan stood up, her eyes blazing. “Benjamin.” The tension between them crackled silently in the air for several seconds.
“Crap,” he snarled finally, and stalked out the front door. He let it slam behind him.
Megan stared at the door, her lips tight. Then she turned back to me. “If what you say is true, then how can you sense it?” she asked.
“I can’t,” I said. “That was the giveaway. The rest of your house feels normal. The closet in the younger kids’ room is a black hole.”
“Jesus,” Megan said, turning. “Tamara and Joey are asleep in there.”
“Relax,” I said. “They’re safe for now. It already ate tonight. It isn’t going to do it again. And it can’t physically hurt them. All it can do is scare them.”
“All it can do?” Megan asked. “Do you have any idea what they’ve gone through? She says she never even remembers waking up screaming, but Kat’s grades are down from straight As to Cs. She hasn’t slept a solid night in six months. Tamara has stopped talking. She doesn’t say more than a dozen words a day.” Her eyes shone, but she was too proud to let me see tears fall. “Don’t tell me that my children aren’t being hurt.”
I winced and held up my hands placatingly. “You’re right. Okay? I’m sorry. I picked the wrong words.” I took a deep breath and exhaled. “The point is that now that we know about it, we can do something.”
“We?”
“It will be better if someone in the family helps with the exorcism, yeah.”
“Exorcism?” she asked. She stared at the doorway Yardly had gone out.
“Sure,” I said. “It’s your house, not the boogeyman’s. If I show you how, are you willing to kick that thing’s ass?”
“Yes,” she said. Her voice was hard.
“Might be dangerous,” I said. “I’ve got your back, but there’s always a risk. You sure?”
Megan turned to face me and her eyes blazed.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I thought.”
“LAST A,” I said, writing. “Act.”
“That seems obvious,” Ilyana said.
“Sure,” I said. “But it’s where everything gets decided. And it’s always a gamble. You’re betting that you’ve seen everything clearly, that you know everything that’s going on.”
“Yes,” Ilyana said, her tone somewhat exasperated. “That is the purpose of the first three ahs.”
“Ays,” McKenzie corrected her absently. “Eh?”
Ilyana speared him with an icy gaze. “Whatever. Already we are discovering what is happening. That was the point of the methodology.”
“Ah,” I said, lifting a finger. “But do you know everything? Are you so sure you know exactly what’s happening? Especially when you’re about to put the safety of yourself or others on the line?”
Ilyana looked confused. “Why would I not be sure?”
I smiled faintly.
THE NEXT EVENING, the children went to bed at nine. They stopped asking for drinks, searching for the next day’s clothing, waving glow-in-the-dark light sabers in the air, and otherwise acting like children by nine thirty. They were all sleeping by nine thirty-five.
Megan, a surly Yardly, and I immediately got ready to ambush the boogeyman.
While Megan collected clipped hairs from her childrens’ heads, Yardly and I cleared off enough carpet for me to take a container of salt and pour it out into a circle. You can use just about anything to make a magic circle, but salt is often the most practical. It’s a symbol of the earth and of purity, and it doesn’t draw ants. You use sugar to make a circle on the carpet only once. Let me tell you.
Meg returned and I nodded toward the circle. “In there.”
She went over to the circle, being careful not to disturb it, and dropped the locks of hair from her children, bound together by long strands of her own coppery curls, into the center. “Right,” I said. “Meg, stand in the circle with them.” She took a deep breath and then did it, turning to face the open, darkened closet. Her breathing was slow but not steady. She was smart enough to be scared. “Remember what I said,” I told her quietly. “When you feel it on you, close that circle and think of your children.” She nodded tightly.
“I’m right here,” I told her. “It gets bad, I’ll step in. You can do this.”
“Right,” she said, in a very thin voice.
I nodded to her, trying to look calm and confident. She needed that. Then I stepped back out into the hallway. Yardly came with me and closed the door behind him, leaving Megan and her children in the dark.
“I don’t get it,” he said in a low, quiet voice. “How’s it supposed to help the kids if they’re asleep?”
I gave him a look. “By destroying the creature that’s attacking them?”
His lips twisted sourly. “It’s a prophylactic-effect thing, right?”
“Placebo effect,” I sighed. “And no, it isn’t.”
“Because there’s a real monster,” he said.
I nodded. “Sure.”
He eyed me for a while. “You’re serious. You believe it.”
“Yep.”
Yardly looked like he wanted to sidle a few more feet away from me. He didn’t.
“How’s this supposed to work?” he asked.
“The kids’ hair is going to substitute for them,” I said. “As far as the boogeyman is concerned, the hairs are the children. Like using a set of clothes you’ve worn to leave a false trail for something following your scent.”
Yardly frowned. “Okay.”
“Your sister’s hair is bound around them,” I said. “Binding her to the kids. She’s close to them, obviously loves them. That’s got a kind of power in it. She’s going to be indistinguishable from the children to the boogeyman.”
“She’s a decoy?”
“She’s a damned land mine,” I said. “Boogeymen go after children because they’re weak. Too weak to stand up to an adult mind and will. So once this thing gets into the circle, she closes it and tears it to shreds.”
“Then why is she afraid?” he asked.
“Because the boogeyman has power. It’s going to tear at her mind. It’ll hurt. If she falters, it might be able to hurt her bad.”
Yardly just stared at me for a long, silent moment. Then he said, “You aren’t a con man. You believe it.”
“Yeah,” I said, and leaned back against the wall. It might be a long wait.
“I don’t know what’s scarier,” Yardly said. “If you’re crazy. Or if you’re not.”
“Kids are sensitive,” I said. “They’ll take the lead from their mom. If Mom is scared and worried, they will be, too. If it helps, think of this as my way of giving the kids a magic feather.”
Yardly frowned and then nodded. “Like Dumbo.”
“Yep,” I said. “Couple months from now, that will be the easiest way to understand it.”
He let out a short, bitter bark of laughter. “Yeah?”
“Definitely.”
“You do this a lot.”
“Yep.”
We waited in silence for about half an hour. Then Yardly said, “I work violent crimes.”
I turned my head to look at him.
“I helped my sister set up out here in Peculiar to get her away from the city. Make sure her kids are safe. You know?”
“I hear you.”
“I’ve seen bad things,” Yardly said quietly. “I don’t … It scares the hell out of me to think of my nieces, my nephew, becoming another one of the pictures in my head.”
I nodded and listened.
“I worked this case last week,” Yardly said a moment later. “Wife and kids got beaten a lot. Our hands were tied. Couldn’t put this guy away. One night he goes too far with a knife. Kills the wife, one of the kids. Leaves the other one with scars all over her face …” His own face turned pale. “And now this is happening. The kids are falling apart. Child Protective Services is going to take them away if something doesn’t change.”
I grunted. “I grew up in the system,” I said. “Orphan.”
He nodded.