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murmuring.
    Jenks introduced himself to Mrs. Mallory and sat. They'd spoken only briefly on the phone but she'd been friendly. Thrilled, really, and he could understand why-how wild it was to become a part of the urban myth culture.
    Now she spent a minute on pleasantries, offering him coffee, diet coke, sesame seed bagels, and apologizing for the busted couch springs. After that they hit the usual barrier of silence. He'd found there was nothing he could ever say to help anybody get through it. They had to come around on their own, get used to the idea of what they were really talking about in front of him. His murdered sister.
    Finally she was ready, perked in her seat and said, "Well, Mr. Jenks, we've been here in the house for six years. Of course, we've played the tape recorder game several times."
    "Sure."
    "On Halloween, the way you're supposed to."
    He nodded. "According to the legend."
    "Right, that's why we did it. Just to see."
    "Everyone who's lived in this house after my family has done the same."
    It got her wondering and she asked, "How many have there been? Owners since you moved away."
    "Five, including yours."
    She pulled a face, gave the wide eyes. "I didn't realize there had been so many. Five in twenty years, that's a lot. Nothing ever happened to us, I mean, no noises or apparitions. No flies or blood in the tub, those things like the papers in the checkout line say."
    "No one's ever experienced anything like that. Just the voices on tape."
    "That's what we've always heard. The stories."
    She'd been doing all right up until then, meeting his eyes and conversing without becoming disconcerted. Then the sheepish quality began to soak in.
    "About my sister," he said.
    "Yes, but like I told you, nothing ever happened before when we did the game. Now, my God, those women…they're so miserable and forlorn."
    Jenks didn't agree. To him, they sounded rather petulant, edgy, crazed.
    "Why'd you play the game last week?" he asked.
    The hairdo was really bothering the shit out of her. Mrs. Mallory kept running her hands across the side of her head trying to push ropes of braids back in place, tie them off so she'd get some equilibrium back. "My husband got a promotion and we're moving to Westchester. I suppose Tracy wanted to try one more time before we left."
    He looked at the girl and she cocked her chin at him, clucked her tongue as if daring him to shake her deliberate apathy. Jesus, talk about forlorn.
    "Were you alone, Tracy?"
    The kid switched gears. The huffy touchiness ran deep in her, and now she threw it way out there. Pursing those broody lips, her gaze was suddenly filled with a sexual wickedness and immature cruelty. "It was just something to do. My boyfriend was over and he's the one who brought it up."
    "He's into the occult, that one," her mother added.
    "Frankie is not. Just because he wears black and likes horror movies doesn't mean he's into worshiping Satan."
    "I didn't say he worshiped Satan, just that he's interested in those kinds of things."
    "Was it his recorder?" Jenks asked. "Your boyfriend's?"
    "No." Tracy nailed Jenks with that glare again, working it some. Not a seduction exactly, just another way to make somebody uncomfortable. It was starting to piss him off. "I have this tiny voice-activated micro machine one...well, it's my fathers, but I use it most of the time. I write poetry and carry it around in my purse sometimes. You know, I speak bits of verse into it. I suppose he was curious about the stupid legend, so I left it on record Saturday night when Frankie and I went out to the Burger Emporium. He's read all the books on our house, really dug the idea that, you know, that something might happen. Spirits and shit. When we came back, I saw that some of the tape had run. And there they were. Those ladies."
    "Where was it? The tape player."
    "On the dining room table. But the voices sound like they're further back in the house, in one of the bedrooms."
    Jenks nodded. "They always