Free Nebulon Horror by Hugh Cave Page A

Saturday afternoon and by the time I got through it was really too late to go to the studio and develop the film. At the same time, I was really hyped on seeing what I'd got, so I did it at home that night in a small tank I have here, an old one that should have been discarded long ago. I probably jarred the cover."
    Doc returned the photos to their folder and handed it back. "They're great." Which of those doors in the blurred picture was the one Jerri Jansen habitually opened, he wondered. Or didn't open. Or whatever. "Did you get any shots of the outside?"
    "Not then. I got one a few days ago, but it won't do."
    "Another one light-struck?"
    "No, I was driving by about four thirty. We'd had a thunderstorm to wash everything clean, and the light was just remarkable, shining through that big live oak in the yard. I was really excited. But there were half a dozen kids playing on the veranda, and when I got out of my car with the camera they lined up at the rail to watch me and wouldn't budge. Here, I'll show you." With a wry grin Willard went to the bookcase again. "The light was great, as you can see," he said, handing Doc a single print. "But . . . what's that song about ten little Indians on a fence?"
    Doc had to smile too, looking at the picture. His smile became a frown, though, as he studied the lineup of juvenile faces. "Hey," he said softly. "Isn't this Raymond Hostetter?"
    Willard bent his lanky body to look, and seemed startled. "Why, so it is. I hadn't realized."
    "Jerri Jansen, Teresa Crosser, Raymond Hostetter. All here," Doc said, scowling. "I know this one, too. Debbie Voight. I look after her. Who are the other two?"
    "I have no idea, Norman."
    "How the hell many kids play at that house, anyway? The whole second grade?"

9
     
    I t was Stephanie Aube who discovered the diagram. On duty in the school yard again at recess, she mingled with the children for a time to make sure nothing like the disruption of the day before was likely to happen. Then, tired from all the tension at school following Raymond Hostetter's disappearance, she went to the bench at the end of the yard and sat down.
    At once she noticed the scratches in the reddish earth at her feet, and leaned forward to study them.
    Rising, she hurried across the yard to the open window of the principal's office and tapped on the screen. "Mrs. Ellstrom!"
    "Yes?" Lois Ellstrom said, getting up from her desk. "Can you come out here for a minute, please? There's something I want to show you."
    Lois came at once, and Stephanie led her to the bench. "Look at this. Raymond was sitting here, you remember, before he broke up the marble game. He had a stick."
    "What in the world . . ."
    "I saw something like this when I went to Haiti last summer. We were taken to a voodoo service. It was only for tourists, I'm sure, but the houngan drew designs something like this—vèvès he called them—in cornmeal on the ground."
    Lois Ellstrom studied the scratches and was aston ished that a second-grader could have drawn them. It appeared to be just one diagram with rectangles, circles, triangles or pyramids, straight and curved lines all intricately interwoven. "Wait here, please. Don't let anyone trouble it," she said, and hurried back to her office.
    Returning with a pad of paper and a pencil, she stood there by the bench for the next few minutes carefully copying Raymond Hostetter's art work. "There," she said with satisfaction when the task was done. "Have I got it right, do you think?"
    "Yes, I think so. Mrs. Ellstrom, how could a seven-year-old do anything as elaborate as this? And with only a stick!"
    "I've been wondering the same thing."
    "Will you ask him what it means?"
    Lois frowned. The Hostetter boy had been found, of course, but was not in school today. She had not expected he would be. "I don't believe we ought to mention it to him or anyone. Now that I've copied it, let's rub it out."
    Stephanie obediently obliterated the design by running her foot over