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'Hell, he's getting to play them out in virtual reality,' Steve said. 'That's what you're describing — the ultimate virtual reality game.'

'There's another possibility,' Audrey said. 'Seth may not be able to stop Tak anymore, or even put a brake on it. Tak may have tied Seth up, gagged him, and thrown him in a closet.'

'If Seth could stop Tak, would he?' Johnny asked. 'What do you think? What do you feel?'

'I'm sure he would,' Audrey said at once. 'I'm sure that, somewhere inside, he's terrified. Like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, when the brooms got out of control?'

'Let's say you're right. Let's say Tak is driving this thing that's happening to us all by himself now. Why is he driving it? What does he get out of it? What's the payback?'

'It,' she said, her mouth drawing down in what Johnny thought was an entirely unconscious moue of disgust. 'It, not he.'

'All right, it. To Seth, Poplar Street is the Force Corridor, the houses are cocoons, and we're the evil aliens that live inside them. It's a shootout at the OK Corral, interstellar version. But what does Tak get out of it?'

'Something all its own,' Audrey said, and Johnny suddenly thought of an old Beatles lyric: What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you, but I know it's mine. 'The fantasies were always strictly for Seth, I think — they're the way Tak taps into Seth's powers, which complement its own. Tak . . . I think Tak just likes what happens to us.'

Silence in the room.

'Likes it,' Belinda said at last. She spoke in a low, considering tone. 'What do you mean, likes it?'

When we hurt. We give something off when we hurt, something it . . . it licks up, like ice-cream. And when we die, that's even better. It doesn't have to lick then. It can just gobble the stuff down whole.'

'So we're dinner,' Cynthia said. 'That's what you're saying, right? To Seth we're a video game and to this Tak . . . we're dinner.'

We're more,' Audrey said. 'Think what food is to us: the source of energy. Tak is making, that's what Seth told me. Making and building. I don't think the desert where Seth picked it up was its home; I think that was its prison. Its home is what it may ultimately try to re-create here.'

'On the basis of what I've seen so far, I don't even want to visit its neighborhood, let alone live there,' Steve said. 'In fact — '

'Quit it,' Cammie said. Her voice was harsh and impatient. 'How do we kill him? You said there might be a way.'

Audrey looked at her, shocked. 'You're not killing Seth,' she said. 'No one is killing Seth. You can get that thought right out of your mind. He's just a harmless little boy — '

Cammie leaped at her and grabbed her shoulders. It was done before Johnny could even think of moving. Her thumbs sank deeply into the tops of Audrey's breasts. 'Tell it to Jimmy!' she shouted into Audrey's stunned face. 'He's dead, my son is dead, so don't you go crying to me about how harmless your nephew is! Don't you dare! That thing is in him like a tapeworm in a horse's belly! In him! And if it won't come out — '

'But it will!' Audrey said. She began to regain control of herself, and her voice grew calm again. 'It will.'

Cammie relaxed her grip slowly, and her look was not trusting. 'How? When?'

Before Audrey could reply, Kim said: 'I hear a humming sound. Like electric motors.' Her voice rose, trembling. 'Oh God, they're coming back.'

Now Johnny could hear it, too. It was the same electric humming he had heard before, only it was louder now. Somehow more vital. More threatening. He looked toward the cellar door and decided it was probably too late to try for the basement, especially with two sleeping children in the pantry.

'Down,' he said. 'Everyone down on the floor.' He saw Cynthia take Steve's hand and point through the open pantry door with a finger which wasn't quite steady. Steve nodded and they went in to cover the children's bodies with their own.

The humming swelled.

'Pray,' Belinda said suddenly. 'Everybody pray.'

Johnny was too frightened to pray.

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