How about if I drop off the sofa for six o'clock?"
"KILLED HER, CUT HER UP, SLICED HER OPEN," George screeched suddenly,
skidding around the counter, rolling past him, yanking the phone out of
the wall.
And in that moment, he realized what the sounds they had been making in
their private speech had been: They had been a reenactment, a grunting,
squeaking playback of the day, the fateful day, the day he'd taken his
knife and done his mischief with it.
He reached for the phone cable and plugged it back into the wall, but it
was as though his hand were moving of its own accord, because his
attention was focused elsewhere, on the three of them arrayed in a
triangle, as they had been on the hillside, as they had been when they
had chanted at him when the knife grip was sure in the palm of his
hands.
The ritual -- that's what it was, it was a *ritual* -- the ritual had
the feel of something worn smooth with countless repetitions. He found
himself rigid with shock, offended to his bones. This was what they did
now, in the cave, with Davey sitting atop their mother, black and
shriveled, this was how they behaved, running through this reenactment
of his great shame, of the day Danny died?
No wonder Darrel had terrorized them out of their home. They were beyond
odd and eccentric, they were -- unfit. Unfit for polite company.
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