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again, vigorous and angry sounding.
    Brian raises the bat. He gets very still. He’s learning the mechanics of fear all over again: When you’re really, really scared, you don’t shake like in the movies. You grow still, like an animal bristling.
    It’s only afterward you start shaking.
    The beam of the flashlight slowly scans across the dark niches of the attic, the detritus of the well-to-do: an exercise bike laced with cobwebs, a rowing machine, more trunks, barbells, tricycles, wardrobe boxes, water skis, a pinball machine furry with dust. The scratching noises cease again.
    The light reveals a coffin.
    Brian practically turns to stone.
    A coffin ?
    *   *   *
    Philip is already halfway up the staircase when he notices, up on the second-floor landing, the attic stepladder hanging down, unfolded.
    He pads up to the landing in his stocking feet. He carries an axe in one hand and a flashlight in the other. The .22 pistol is shoved down the back of his jeans. He is shirtless, his ropy musculature shimmering in moonbeams filtering down through a skylight.
    It takes him mere seconds to cross the landing and scale the accordion steps, and when he emerges into the darkness of the attic, he sees the silhouette of a figure across the narrow space.
    Before Philip even has a chance to shine his flashlight on his brother, the situation becomes clear.
    *   *   *
    “It’s a tanning bed,” the voice says, making Brian jump. For the past few seconds, Brian Blake has been paralyzed with terror, standing ten feet away from the dusty, oblong enclosure shoved up against one wall of the attic. The top of the thing is latched shut like a giant clamshell, and something scratches to get out of it.
    Brian jerks around and finds in the beam of his flashlight his brother’s gaunt, sullen face. Philip stands on the threshold of the attic with the axe in his right hand. “Move away from it, Brian.”
    “You think it’s—”
    “The missing kid?” Philip whispers, cautiously moving toward the object. “Let’s find out.”
    The scratching noise, as if stimulated by the sound of voices, surges and rises.
    Brian turns toward the tanning bed, braces himself, and raises the baseball bat. “He might have been hiding up here when he turned.”
    Philip approaches with the axe. “Get outta the way, sport.”
    “I’ll take care of it,” Brian says bitterly, moving toward the latch, his baseball bat poised.
    Philip gently steps in between his brother and the tanning bed. “You don’t have to prove nothing to me, man. Just move outta the way.”
    “No, goddamnit, I got this,” Brian hisses, reaching for the dusty latch.
    Philip studies his brother. “Okay, whatever. Go for it, but do it quick. Whatever it is—don’t think about it too much.”
    “I know,” Brian says, grasping the latch with his free hand.
    Philip stands inches behind his brother.
    Brian unlatches the enclosure.
    The scuttling noises cease.
    Philip raises the axe as Brian throws open the lid.
    *   *   *
    Two quick movements—a pair of blurs in the darkness—shoot across Philip’s sight line: a rustling of fur and the arc of Brian’s bat.
    It takes a second or two for the animal to register in Philip’s heightened senses—the mouse darting out of the glare of the flashlight and scurrying across the fiberglass trough toward a hole gnawed in one corner.
    The baseball bat comes down hard, missing the fat, oily-gray rodent by a mile.
    Pieces of the bed’s switch panel and old toys shatter at the impact. Brian lets out a gasp and recoils at the sight of the mouse vanishing down the hole, slithering back into the inner workings of the bed’s base.
    Philip lets out a sigh of relief and lowers the axe. He starts to say something when he hears a little metallic tune playing in the shadows next to him. Brian looks down, breathing hard.
    A little jack-in-the-box, thrown by the impact of the bat, lies on the floor.
    Triggered by the fall, the tinny music