Free All The Bells on Earth by James P. Blaylock

and pulled the Thomas Bros. mapbook out of the Suburban, climbing onto the front seat and pulling the door shut. He was virtually certain that the zip was a fake, made up on the spot. He flipped to the index and scanned the addresses. Just as he thought, there was no 200 block of Fourteenth Street in Costa Mesa.

11
     
    W ALT FLIPPED ON THE garage light at six in the evening, leaving Ivy to wash up the dishes with Aunt Jinx. Henry was watching the news in the living room, drinking a cup of coffee laced with Half and Half and about a pound of sugar as an antidote to the chickpeas and shrubbery. Actually, there hadn’t been anything wrong with the food at dinner—nothing that a double cheeseburger from Wimpy’s wouldn’t cure. Of course, Jinx was probably right about what they needed, dietetically speaking. And probably she’d tire out soon.
    It was pitch dark out and raining in flurries, but he decided he wouldn’t bother with an umbrella. He picked up Argyle’s cardboard carton and went down the carport toward the street, where the dim yellow circles of light from the streetlamps seemed, if anything, to make the night a little darker. The wind was blowing out of the east, and the sky overhead was heavy with clouds barely illuminated by a hidden moon. A car passed as he hurried toward the corner, but otherwise the streets were deserted. The bad weather kept everyone indoors.
    He turned the corner and walked up toward Sycamore, and even from a distance he could see that Argyle’s house was lit up. There were a couple of cars parked along the street and smoke coming out of the chimney, and for a moment Walt thought about turning around and heading back home. But there was no sign of anyone outside, and the porch light was off.
    He decided to risk it. He crossed the street, angling toward Argyle’s front porch, prepared to walk straight on past if anyone came out. Quickly he cut across the lawn, slid the box beneath the porch railings and gave it a good shove. It slid beneath a wicker chair where it lay hidden in the shadows. The box was nearly invisible; when Argyle found it he’d have to wonder whether it hadn’t been lying there for a week.
    Just then the porch light blinked on, and Walt ducked, sliding around the side of the porch toward a couple of big hydrangea bushes against the side of the house. Immediately he knew he’d made a mistake. He should simply have headed for the street—just another pedestrian hurrying home in the rain. Now it was too late. He felt like a kid, out marauding through the neighborhood at night. There was the rattling of a latch, and then the door swung open, casting light from the entryway out onto the lawn. Walt crammed himself in behind the bush, pressing himself into the shadows.
    It started to rain harder, and he pulled his coat shut, waiting for them to leave, listening to shoe soles scraping on the wooden floorboards of the porch. Then there was silence for a moment, followed by low conversation. Somebody laughed, and a voice said, “
I’ll
say.” Then there was silence again, as if they were standing there watching the rain fall, hoping that it would let up so they could make a dash for their cars.
    “I hate this damned rain,” someone finally said.
    “It’s the season,” someone else said.
    “Well, I hate the season, too.”
    “Too commercialized. I agree with you.”
    “That isn’t what I mean. God, I hate it when people say that. To my mind it isn’t half commercial enough, not this year. Profit—that’s the only thing about Christmas that does me any good, and here we are in the middle of it and nobody’s spending any money.”
    A third voice spoke, Argyle this time. “Call me after someone’s had a look at LeRoy’s. Don’t worry about waking me up. We want those jars.”
    “Yes,
we
do.” It was the second man now, the one who didn’t like Christmas. “I’m still not clear on something. I understand that we’ve got a green light over there