The Siege by Rick Hautala

your department.”
    Dale nodded, grateful that Nichols had gotten right on it. “Perhaps I’d better come back another time,” he said, feeling awkward. “I just wanted to speak with Larry’s mother for a minute.”
    “I told you,” Roberta said, “Mildred’s asleep right now. The doctor prescribed a tranquilizer for her, and the damned things knocked her right off her feet. ’S probably just as well, I suppose.”
    Dale shrugged and took one step backward, about to leave.
    “You know, Mr. Harmon, was it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, Mr. Harmon, you being from Augusta and working for the state and all, maybe you could help us out.”
    Dale frowned, genuinely confused. He wondered if maybe Larry’s death had seriously affected his aunt. She was staring at him with rounded eyes and a deep furrowed brow, looking for all the world like she just took a short trip around the bend. Maybe, he thought, she should try one of her sister’s “tranqs.”
    “Ahh, how do you mean?”
    “Maybe you could use some of your pull in Augusta to help us to get to see Larry.”
    Dale shook his head and reached into his pocket for his car keys for a bit of reassurance. “I don’t understand,” he said, holding one hand up helplessly.
    “They won’t let us see him,” Roberta said. Her voice was low and thin, and she leaned forward as though afraid even now she might wake her sister.
    “Franklin Rodgers, the funeral director, won’t let us look at the body. He says the accident was so horrible, he’s insisting on a closed casket service, and he doesn’t even want my sister to see him, not the way he is now.”
    The first thought Dale had was that he hoped Mildred had someone, a minister or close friend to talk to, anyone but her sister. If Larry’s death affected her this much, then Mildred was going to need some serious counseling to get her over it all.
    “I’m sure there’s a good reason for that,” he said. “I mean, if he was really, you know, bad off, it might be too much of a shock for her to see him like that. I’m sure this Mr. Rodgers wants you and your sister to remember Larry the way he was when he was alive.”
    Roberta shook her head viciously from side to side. “No! No!” she hissed. “Just the opposite. I think my sister has to see him, dead like that, so she can start to accept it and live with it.”
    Dale took another step backwards, wishing he had just waited until the funeral to speak with Larry’s mother. He hadn’t counted on a crazy aunt.
    “I’ll see what I can do about it,” he said, jingling his car keys in his hand. “Tell Mildred I was by when she wakes up, okay?” He wasn’t entirely sure how much of his visit would be relayed to Mildred, and he started to think that the less said, the better.
    “I will, don’t you worry,” Roberta said as she started to ease the door shut. “You just do what you can so my sister can see her boy one last time, all right?”
    Dale nodded and, turning, started down the walkway to his car. He resisted his impulse to run the distance, and he felt a slight measure of relief when he heard the Cole’s front door slam shut and the rattle of the chain lock as Roberta ran it back into place.
     
    V
     
    A ngie pretended to be sleeping when her father came up to the room sometime after midnight. She heard him stumbling around in the dark, tripping over unfamiliar furniture and fumbling through his suitcase. Her body tensed as she forced herself to breathe evenly and deeply.
    After supper, her dad went out to visit with Larry’s mother, but he had returned quickly, saying it wasn’t the right time. So after a mug of hot chocolate, she had said goodnight to him, Lisa, and Mrs. Appleby, and gone upstairs to bed. For more than two hours, though, she laid in bed, listening to the buzz of conversation downstairs in the living room.
    What stuck in her memory, replaying with frightening intensity, was that face, a grinning, leering face with insane, glowing