Free Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series by John Stockmyer Page B

sympathetic.
    "Hardly any damage as it turned out," John
said, wishing he'd never broached the subject of the lightning
strike.
    "You'll know better next time. For now,
ta-ta." And Kitterman was off. Followed by Gaber. Also off.
    The others gone, Paul squealed his chair
around so he could reach the office door with one, wide-as-a-barn
arm to nudge the door forward; listened until the door shut and the
latch clicked. "You did install a lightning rod, didn't you?" Paul
growled. John nodded. "You could have said that."
    The fact that John had put up a lightning rod
lay at the heart of the problem, something John would have told
Paul except that Paul seemed so ... strange ... today.
    John glanced over at the slumping chairman to
find Paul pushing on his brow ridges with the "Jolly Green Giant"
fingers of both hands. A sure sign of a sinus headache, not much
mental help to be expected from Paul, today.
    Ruefully, John remembered how old Fredericks
had warned John about lightning rods. Specifically, about how
faulty installation could put your house at greater risk than an
unprotected roof, advice John had paid attention to, John watching
carefully to make certain the workman fastened the wire from the
rod to a metal stake driven into the ground.
    Then, yesterday -- in the dead of night --
Kerboom!
    John had come awake to find himself sprawled
on the stairs, rain water dripping on his head. As it turned out, a
lightning bolt had charred a quarter-sized hole through the room
and downstairs hall floor, going to ground under the house.
    After John had stopped shaking at the thought
of how close he'd come to being lightning-fodder, first getting a
towel to dry himself, John had done the right thing. Called the
fire department.
    No hot spots found, the fire truck had
rumbled off, John solving the rain-in problem by putting a bucket
under the hole in the roof.
    Deciding that seeing an old man's face
disappear under the stairs was the result of his "wiring" being
scrambled by the strike, John went back to bed for what was left of
the night.
    And John might have continued to consider
this "old man" image to be a figment of his lightning-fried brain,
except that, coming downstairs this morning, John found the
triangular door under the stairs open, the nails John had driven in
to secure it, pried out. Opened with one of John's own kitchen
knives, no less, John finding the knife on the hall floor along
with a filthy blanket.
    What was really worrisome about this
lightning bolt business was that, before gunning off to school that
morning, John had checked out the lightning rod that had failed so
spectacularly, to discover that, just above the stake, someone had
cut the copper grounding wire.
    Except that the word cut ... didn't quite
describe the way the wire looked. Chewed through, was more like
it.
    John would have liked to have discussed all
this with Paul -- the sanest man John knew. Except ....
    "Something wrong, Paul?"
    "How'd you get to know me so well in such a
short time?" Paul groaned, managing at the same time, an
appreciative smile.
    "So ...?"
    "Probably nothing."
    "So ...?"
    "You know how doctor's are."
    "You're sick!?" Men Paul's size weren't
supposed to get sick. Like ministers didn't get sick. Or
doctors.
    "It's Ellen."
    "Ellen ...?"
    "I think I told you Ellen had trouble
carrying the last baby. This time, the Doc. wants her off her feet
as much as possible."
    "Anything I can do?" Though John didn't know
what he could do, he would have done anything to help Paul: helping
Ellen the same as helping Paul.
    "You free for a lot of babysitting?"
    Before bachelor John had a stroke, Paul
grinned. "Naw. I got that fixed. Ellen's mother is coming to stay
until the baby's born."
    As John had thought, this was definitely not
the time to bother Paul about a broken wire or about John seeing
the apparition of an old man "disappear" under the hall stairs as
the lightning bolt struck John's house.
    Returning to his "vision" of the man under
the