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despairing yelp, and was gone, off around the corner of the alley at the back of the yard.
    â€œHey!” yelled the guy on the deck above. “Old man!”
    Two other grungy surf kids appeared from the house, a boy and a girl, these two a bit shadowy and hard to see. The boy was none other than the missing Ira—the surfer who’d stolen that scrap of metallic hydrogen from the physics lab. The girl was new to me.
    â€œWho told you how to get here?” asked the girl, leaning over the railing of the porch to stare down at me. She had a halo of short-cropped dark hair, and her voice was a low purr. She was silhouetted against the sky.
    â€œDo you know about Val?” I blurted, sensing some connection between this weird scene and my wife’s death. “Is this magic? Can you bring her back?”
    â€œVal’s gone for good,” said Ira. “I’m sorry that happened. We’ve all had some hard times around this weird scene.”
    The blue sea-lion-thing was back down on his belly, flopping towards me, his blubber shaking in waves. There was something odd and hypnotic about his golden eyes. Once again I had the feeling of something alien reaching into my mind.
    â€œTell your pet that I’m good people,” I called to Ira.
    â€œThat thing’s not our pet, asshole,” said Header, the big guy with the muscles. “Did you just open our basement door?”
    â€œMaybe,” I jabbered. “I don’t know what’s going on. Did you bring that sea lion home from the ocean? And dye him blue?”
    â€œWas Skeeves in the basement?” pressed Header. “Did he let you in?”
    â€œI didn’t see anything at all,” I said, backing away from the blue sea lion. I didn’t want the unearthly creature to touch me. “Come here, Droog!” I added, my voice breaking. “Protect me!”
    The girl on the porch laughed musically, and then she imitated my cry, even putting a break into her voice—as if she was sampling my sound.
    With an abrupt series of wriggles, the sculptured blue sea lion circled past me and disappeared along the littered pathway that I’d used to get back here in the first place. Perhaps he was making a break for the sea.
    Thoroughly freaked, I took off across the back yard and down the alley like Droog had done. With every step I took, more of the alley became visible. I found Droog resting in a spot of sun on the sidewalk of Cedar Street. He gave me an innocent, unconcerned look. I stood there for a couple of minutes, catching my breath.
    What had just happened? I’d opened some kind of giant plastic door beneath the house. A woman had run away, I’d seen a gold sarcophagus in the basement, and Header had had sneezed a blue sea lion out of his nose. None of it made sense.
    Not to mention the fact that, as of yesterday, the whipped-to-shit green Victorian house hadn’t been on Yucca Street at all. Nor had I ever seen this place during all the months that I’d been a mailman walking from door to door.
    I paused on Cedar Street, thinking things over. Maybe, just maybe, that tunnel under the house could lead to Val. Ira hadn’t exactly said no. Maybe I’d found a new level of reality beneath the workaday world. But maybe I was losing my mind. My heart was beating like a triphammer. I couldn’t take any more just now.
    Santa Cruz looked normal from where I was standing, and I knew where I was. That was good. I wanted things to stay still for a few minutes. I could find the ghost house again later. And keep on looking for Val.
    But right now I wanted some slack.

5: Brain Event

    D roog and I walked half a block along Cedar Street and cut down a side street to Pacific Avenue. And here was Mahalo Gelato, my favorite ice-cream parlor. A Hawaiian-themed place, managed by a plump woman who invariably wore overalls. Her name was Mercedes. I put the leash on the dog and tied him to a bicycle rack.