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any shopping at all.
    Then, out of the comer of her eye, Kathy saw Missy leave her room and enter the sewing room. Kathy was only half listening to what her mother was saying; what could Missy possibly want in there, where all the flies had been the day before? She could hear her five-year-old daughter humming, moving about some still unopened cardboard boxes.
    Kathy was about to cut her mother short when she saw Missy come back out of the sewing room. When the child stepped into the hallway and returned to her own bedroom, she stopped her humming. Puzzled by her daughter's behavior, Kathy wound up her conversation with her mother, again thanking her for the tree. She hung up, walked silently toward Missy's room and stood in the doorway.
    Missy was back in her rocking chair, staring out the same window and humming again, a tune that didn't sound quite familiar. Kathy was about to speak when Missy stopped humming, and without turning her head, said, "Mama? Do angels talk?"
    Kathy stared at her daughter. The little girl had known she was there! But before Kathy could step into the room, she was startled by a loud crash from overhead. The boys were upstairs! Fearful, she raced up the steps to the playroom. Danny and Chris were rolling on the floor, locked in each other's arms, punching and kicking at each other.
    "What's going on here?" Kathy screamed. "Danny! Chris! You stop this right now, you hear!" She tried to pull them apart, but each was still trying to get at the other, their eyes blazing with hate. Chris was crying in his anger. It was the first time, ever, that the two brothers had gotten into a fight.
    She slapped each boy in the face-hard-and demanded to know what had started this nonsense. "Danny started it," Chris sniffed.
    "Liar' Chris, you started it," Danny scowled.
    "Started what? What are you fighting about?" Kathy demanded, her voice rising. There was no answer from either boy. Both suddenly withdrew from their mother. Whatever happened, Kathy sensed it was their affair not hers.
    Then her patience snapped. "What is going on around here? First it's Missy with her angels, and now you two idiots trying to kill each other! Well, I've had it! We'll just see what your father has to say about all this. You're both going to get it later, but right now I don't want to hear another peep out of either of you! You hear me? Not another sound!"
    Shaking, Kathy returned downstairs to her shelving. Cool down, she told herself. As she passed Missy's room again, the little girl was humming the same strange tune to herself. Kathy wanted to go in, but then thought better of it and continued on into her own bedroom. She'd talk to George later when she had a chance to be calmer about the whole affair.
    Kathy picked up a roll of shelf paper and opened the door to the walk-in closet. Immediately a sour smell struck her nostrils. "Oh, God! What's that?" She pulled the light chain hanging from the closet ceiling and looked around the small room. It was empty except for one thing. On the very first day the Lutzes had moved in, she had hung a crucifix on the inner wall facing the closet door, just as she had done when they lived in Deer Park. A friend had originally given her the crucifix as a wedding present. Made of silver, it was a beautiful piece about twelve inches long and had been blessed a long time before.
    As Kathy looked at it now, her eyes widened in horror. She began to gag at the sour smell, but couldn't retreat from the sight of the crucifix-now hanging upside down!
    6 December 24 -It was almost a week since Father Mancuso had visited 112 Ocean Avenue. The eerie episodes of that day and night were still very much on his mind, but he had discussed them with no one-not with George and Kathy Lutz, not even with his Confessor.
    During the night of the twenty-third, he had come down with the flu. The priest had alternated between chills and sweating, and when he finally got up to take his temperature, the thermometer read 103