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empty corridor.
    As his eyes tracked up the ancient staircase to the second-floor hallway, he flashed on all those days—so long ago—when he had trod those stairs and that corridor. These memories were mixed with the more recent and, in some ways, more immediate memories of the dreams. . . .
    —No, nightmares!
    . . . he’d had about this place.
    “Jesus Christ,” he repeated, shivering so wildly he had to hug himself to make sure he was real.
    Reflections from the sunlit street behind him made it difficult for him to see very much in the school, but he could make out a dusty bar of sunlight, angling into the upstairs corridor from an opened classroom door on the left. The light looked almost solid, a sickly brownish-yellow like the sepia tones of an old photograph.
    That used to be Mrs. Doyle’s fifth-grade classroom , Pete thought with a hollow twisting of nostalgia.
    Gussie Doyle. . . . How long ago did she die?
    His mind filled with a rush of memories about his fifth-grade teacher—of the time he thought he’d lost his lunch box and had started to cry in front of the whole class, only to find it buried beneath his papers inside his desk; of the time Phil Ricci, one of the school bullies, had beaten him up on the baseball field during recess, right there between second and third base, all because Pete hadn’t paid him back the dime he had borrowed for a pack of bubble gum a week ago; of the afternoon when Sally Phillips had heard the town fire horn signal a fire in her neighborhood and, worried that it might be her house, had started to cry so hard she peed her pants; of the time Ralph Haley had felt sick to his stomach and, not knowing what else to do, had lifted up his desktop and thrown up into it, all over his books and papers.
    Mesmerized by the flood of reminiscences, Pete leaned forward until his nose was pressed flat against the wire-mesh glass. He couldn’t get rid of the sensation that he truly was looking back in time into another dimension.
    He glanced down at his watch and saw that it was three-fifteen. Exactly the time when school used to let out.
    He tensed, half-expecting to hear the sudden clanging of the school bell and see the rush of students, charging into the hall toward the front door and freedom.
    Chilled trickles of sweat ran down his sides from his armpits. Rubbing his hands roughly over his face, he stepped back and cast a nervous glance in the direction Cindy had taken Ryan. The building blocked his view of the playground and cut off all sounds. He could no longer hear the shrill squeal of Ryan’s laughter or the squeaking of rusty swing chains. Pete had the impression that he was inside a glass jar, looking out at the world.
    “All right . . . all right,” he whispered to himself. “You’ve seen enough.” His voice had a harsh quality that grated on his nerves.
    Taking hold of the doorknob again, he pulled back on it hard and spun it around. A shocking jolt as bright and hard as a bolt of lightning shot through him when he heard the door latch click. He whimpered softly when he pulled back on the door, and it opened slowly with a low, chattering groan.
    “Oh, Jesus! . . . Oh, shit!” Pete whispered, looking around fearfully.
    A rush of stale air wafted over him like a dry breeze from inside a tomb. It carried with it a teasing mix of aromas, so subtle yet strong they seemed more like tastes than smells. They stirred Pete’s senses and memories—
    The warm sting of old varnish that almost burned the back of his tongue . . . the scratchy mustiness of stale air that irritated his eyes and the inside of his nose . . . the smell of ancient floor wax that felt thick and pasty in his throat . . . and—beneath all of that—something else. . . .
    Something that had a faint, sickening tinge of decay and rot. It hit Pete’s stomach—hard, like a clenched fist.
    For several seconds, he just stood there with the door braced open with his hip. Finally, realizing that someone might