shouldn't be there, and see shapes that can't exist.
    'That's an-an insect'?' I asked Dan. 'That was actually part of something that walked 
around?'
    'It could be. It could be a clever hoax. But I don't think the kind of creature who 
could drown a boy in his bedroom would have much of a sense of humour, do you?'
    I stared at the carapace in dread. 'You mean that could be a lobster shell, a crab 
shell, something like that? Do you know what you're saying?'
    Dan laid the scales back in the tub. They rolled over with an unpleasant clattering 
sound, backwards and forwards, until they settled.
    'I don't know what to say, to tell you the truth,' he said, unhappily. 'It looks like 
the shell of a lobster, or an insect, but the size is insane. I don't think I understand 
any of this at all.'
    I heard more dripping noises from outside the bathroom. I felt nervous enough without 
standing around in that house debating whether Oliver could have been attacked by some 
horrific insect. I said: 'Maybe let's go call Carter. At least the police have a 
procedure for dealing with weird things. I can't solve a problem unless I can solder it, 
or lag it, or tighten it up with a wrench.'
    Dan smoothed his hand over his bald head. His eyes were uneasy. He said: 'None of 
this makes any sense. Look at that thing. It's a carapace, or a clever copy of a 
carapace, but the nightmarish size of it, Mason ...'
    'Let's go call Carter, huh?' I repeated. 'You know what happens when people have to 
fight giant lobsters in the movies. They send for the police, and the police send for the 
National Guard, and the National Guard drop atomic bombs on them. Well, let's go do that.'
    Tor God's sake don't joke about it,' Dan snapped. 'There's a boy dead in there."
    'I'm not joking,' I insisted. 'I'm just tense. I'd just rather be out of this place. 
Now, shall we go?'
    He took another long look at the carapace, and then nodded. 'All right. But I want to 
ask Carter to,let me have some photographs of that thing.'
    We left the bathroom and squelched back out on to the landing. We paused there for a 
moment, and listened, but all we could hear was the constant drip-dripping of water. 
Stepping carefully on the wet carpet, we went back downstairs again, and into the 
living-room. There was a telephone there, and I was hoping that the water hadn't fused 
that out, too. I picked it up and listened. It was crackling a little, but I had a tone.
    Carter Wilkes took a long time to answer. When he did, he said tiredly, 'Sheriff's 
office, Carter Wilkes, hold on, will you?'
    'Carter,' I said quickly, 'it's me, Mason Perkins.'
    'Oh, how are you doing, Mason? Can you hold? I'm right in the middle of a briefing on 
the Demon boy.'
    'Carter, this is worse than the Denton boy.'
    'What are you talking about?'
    'I'm up at the Bodines' place on Route 109,' I said. 'There's been an accident or 
something. Young Oliver Bodine's been drowned.'
    'Drowned? Where?'
    'In the house. In his bedroom, as a matter of fact.'
    'In his bedroom?' asked Carter, with hoarse incredulity. 'Are you sure you didn't 
stop by the Northville Liquor Store on your way home? Are you quite sure" you're sober 
there, Mason?'
    'Carter, it's true. And there's something else, too. But you'll have to come up and 
take a look for yourself.'
    Carter out his hand over the receiver, and I could hear him talking in a muffled 
voice to some of his deputies. Then he came back on the line again, and said: 'Do you 
have Jimmy and Alison up there with you, Mason? Are they okay?'
    'They're missing. We've been here for a good half-hour, and we haven't seen any sign 
of them.'
    'Okay,' said Carter. 'I'm coming out straight away. You just stay there and wait for 
me, and you make damn sure you don't touch anything.'
    He banged the phone down. I held my own receiver in my hand for a moment, and Dan 
turned towards me and said: 'Well?'
    'Carter's coming right out. It shouldn't take him more than ten minutes. Not the way 
he drives.'
    'What did he say?'   .
    I shrugged. 'He thought I was drunk at first. I'm beginning to wish I was.'
    'Did he say wait?'
    I nodded. 'Let's go do it outside, shall we? This place is giving me the oojabs. I 
don't fancy meeting up with one of those giant-sized crustaceans, for starters. And I 
always did believe in ghosts.'
    'You believe in ghosts?' asked Dan, interested, as we made our way cautiously across 
the wet hallway and out through the kitchen.
    'Sure. Don't you?'
    'I guess not. I never saw one. My mother used to swear by ouija boards, but I never 
actually saw a ghost walking about. Did you?'
    'I used to have an apartment on Tenth Street, in the village,' I said. 'I was sure I 
could hear people whispering in my bedroom in the night.'
    Dan opened the screen door, and we stepped out into the frosty night air. 'What did 
they say?' he asked me.
    'I don't know. I was always taught it was impolite to listen to other people's 
conversations. But seriously, it went on for months. Later on, the janitor told me that 
two girls had been murdered in that room by some schizo rapist.'
    We walked around the house to where my station wagon was parked, with its sidelights 
on. I climbed into the driver's seat and Dan considerately got into the back, so that he 
wouldn't disturb Shelley. 1 started up the engine so that we could have some heat. 'At 
least a schizo rapist is a schizo rapist,' remarked Dan. 'But don't ask me what that 
shell-thing in the bath is, or where it came from.'
    'Something just occurred to me,' I said. 'When I was out here this afternoon, talking 
to Jimmy, he mentioned that he'd been having dreams about drowning.'
    'He did? Was that all he said?'
    I thought for a moment. Hadn't Jimmy said something about being underground, in a 
subterranean pool? 'The thing that always gets me is the feeling that the water is 
underneath tons and tons of solid rock, so even if I did reach the surface, I couldn't 
breathe.'
    I said: 'He seemed to think he was drowning under the ground. Maybe in a flooded 
mineshaft or something like that.'
    'Under the ground? That doesn't make too much sense.' I nodded towards the Bodine 
house, dark and silent in the freezing night. 'What happened to young Oliver doesn't 
majke too much sense, either. But it still happened.'
    'It could have been some kind of premonition, Jimmy's dream,' suggested Dan. 'I don't 
believe in ghosts, but there are several recorded cases of genuine clairvoyance.'
    'And what about the insect shell, or lobster shell, or whatever it is?' I asked him.
    'There's something about that which worries me more than anything,' said Dan. His 
face was illuminated pale green by the lights from the station wagon's instruments. 'It