He said, "I got back in the canoe, paddled home, cleaned myself up and went to bed. When my parents got home around twelve-thirty, I pretended to be asleep. They woke me up at two, wanting to know where Tom and Jeff were. I told them the twins had gone off with Sheila Burns and that was all I knew.

      "The State Police called at two-thirty. Hank Fraleigh probably discovered the bodies at midnight, but he must have spent an hour or so looking for a way to cover his own ass. He later claimed that the twins broke into the house, and that he couldn't be held responsible for what happened to them."

      Ming, who had not been fed this evening, yowled plaintively in the kitchen. Alison ignored her. "You never told anyone what happened?"

      "No."

      "Why not?"

      "I killed them, Alison! Do you need a better reason than that?" His voice cracked, and he sat with his eyes closed for a moment before continuing.

      "It's not as if I didn't want to tell someone. But what would have been the point? They were dead, and I couldn't bring them back. I decided it was better for everyone concerned just to leave things as they were.

      "But when we got back to California -- I don't know -- I just couldn't take it anymore. I had to split. I figured I'd come back in a month or so. But then Mom and Dad died."

      He was starting to hyperventilate. He forced himself to breathe more slowly and said, "By the way, Alison, you're wrong about my parents' funeral. I was there. Not where anybody could see me, but I was there. I stood on a hill overlooking the graveyard and watched the whole ceremony through my set of binoculars. That was the only way I could handle it. I stayed away because I knew that if I joined the other mourners, I'd wind up confessing to having murdered my brothers."

      Alison came over and placed a hand lightly on his shoulder. "Joey, what happened in New Hampshire was an accident."

      He brushed her hand away and walked across the room. "I don't believe that."

      "They were stoned and drunk, Joey. They stupidly set a plugged-in appliance next to a tub of water. Then they taunted you until you lost control."

      He wiped away a trickle of sweat before it could run into his burning eyes. "I wanted them dead, Alison. I literally wanted to murder them. If the boom box hadn't fallen into the tub, I would have used something else to do the job."

      "You know that isn't true. You're not like that, Joey."

      "Don't tell me what I'm like! You don't know!" Unable to stand it any longer, he ran for the door.

      Alison grabbed him. He tried to push her away, but she was strong, stronger than he ever would have imagined. She hugged him tight, pinning his arms to his sides.

      "Joey! Stop torturing yourself! Face it, but let it go!"

      Whining like a frantic dog on a too-short leash, he made one last attempt to escape. Alison held him fast.

      It all came spilling out, years of grief and self-hatred and denial. The torrent of emotions wracked his body like a case of the dry heaves.

      He gave up and returned the embrace.

      Benjamin Wentworth, proprietor of the Wentworth Funeral Home, shook Joey's hand vigorously. "Very pleased to meet you, sir," he said. Wentworth weighed in at around three hundred pounds and exuded jollity from every pore.

      He turned to Alison and said, a huge grin on his face, "You both have my sincerest condolences. I didn't know Mr. Baribeau well, but I liked what I saw. His friends have also told me many wonderful things about him."

      Joey found Wentworth's good humor refreshing. It promised to make what he had to do today a little easier.

      "I've worked closely with Mr. Baribeau's people in the past," Wentworth continued. "Everything has been set up according to their intructions. The wake will begin in an hour. That should give you sufficient time to attend to your business."

      He led them down thickly carpeted hallways, past tastefully decorated viewing rooms. They took the elevator to the basement and entered the room where bodies were prepared for burial. There they were met by Maurice Tolliver and the two representatives from Chantal's humfo, Andrea Fontaine, a young white woman, and Lester Jones, an elderly black man.

      "You will have complete privacy down here," said Benjamin Wentworth. "If you need anything, dial nine on that phone on the wall. Someone will be at your service immediately." The chunky mortician left them to their task.

      The room stank of disinfectant and worse things. The fluorescent lighting gave everything a flat, dull look. Tasteful organ music filtered from upstairs. Joey shivered and fought his rising panic.

      Lester said to Alison, "Young lady, I'm not sure you should be here for this. Perhaps you had better wait upstairs."

      "She stays," said Joey. He gave Lester a look to show that he meant it. Lester shrugged and said no more.

      The body of Claude Baribeau lay on a table in the center of the room. Maurice, Andrea and Lester had spent most of the afternoon attending to it, washing the hungan with an infusion of magical herbs. They had stuffed cotton in his ears and nostrils and tied his big toes together with special twine. A red bandana slung under his jaw and knotted on his head kept his mouth closed.

      "Shall we begin?" said Maurice to Joey.

      It took him a second to gather enough spit in his mouth to reply. "Yeah. Let's get this over with."

      The ceremony they were about to perform was known as the de'ssunin. Since his initiation decades ago, the hungan had been under the protection of Agwe', god of the sea, just as Joey was protected by Ogu. Now it was time to break the mystical link between Baribeau and his loa mait'-tete. Not to do so was to risk angering the spirit, who might then exact vengeance on the dead man's neglectful family and friends. Joey had no doubt that he would be high on that shit list.

      Andrea opened a suitcase filled with vodoun paraphernalia: rattles, drums, amulets, powders and gourds. Maurice, Lester and Joey helped themselves to what they needed. Alison stood to one side, watching the proceedings.

      At a signal from Lester, they began, chanting to the various loa. Although by far the newest initiate to vodoun, Joey took the lead. Maurice had told him that, in order to defeat Concasseur, he would have to think and act like a hungan from here on out. This dessunin was his first real opportunity to do so.

      Maurice and Andrea took from the suitcase a white sheet and draped it over the corpse. Joey looked over at Alison, seeking her encouragement. She nodded, urging him to do what he had come for.

      He had spent the night at her apartment, too debilitated to even think about going back to Maurice's house. They talked until early in the morning. Joey lost track of how many times he broke down crying. Around three-thirty, they went into Alison's room and fell asleep, fully clothed, on the bed. When he had awakened, he had felt refreshed, ready to come here and attend to his responsibilities.

      The fear, however, had returned.

      He swallowed and approached the table. He sent a silent prayer to Ogu, hoping to be possessed and thereby spared this ordeal. His prayer went unanswered. Joey slowly hoisted himself onto the table and crawled under the sheet with the corpse.

      His whole body rebelled. His heart, his stomach, his legs all told him to run, to flee the mortuary and leave this craziness behind. But he understood that if he did that, he was lost.

      He straddled Baribeau's body. The corpse had been dressed simply in a white shirt and black pants, the pockets turned inside out to ensure that the hungan didn't take anything into the grave that didn't belong to him. His feet were bare, so that his ghostly footsteps would not disturb the living.

      Baribeau's face looked as if someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Brought near the surface of the skin by the werewolf's magic, fluids distorted his features, turning them bloated and purplish. There would be no open casket at the wake.

      Hands reached under the sheet and placed a rattle, a bowl of flour, a white jar and other assorted items on the table. Joey took the rattle and shook it over Baribeau's forehead. He invoked Agwe', exhorted him to release the hungan and let his spirit journey unhindered into the afterworld.

      With a few pinches of flour, he drew a cross on Claude's forehead. Just as the hungan had done to him in the djevo, Joey used a pair of scissors to snip away a tuft of hair from Baribeau's head and take parings from his nails. These scraps went into the white jar, which was then sealed with a cork and a prayer.

      He bent close to Baribeau's ear. The body gave off a spicy, herbal scent, not at all unpleasant until one breathed just a bit more deeply and caught a whiff of the underlying decay. Three times Joey murmurred a set of magical formulae. In as loud a voice as he could muster, he shouted, "Claude Baribeau! Claude Baribeau! Claude Baribeau!"

      The corpse sat up. Bending at the waist, it jerked like a frog leg touched by an electric current.

      Joey nearly fell off the table. Alison screamed. The body remained upright for the count of ten accelerated heartbeats. Then it slumped back and did not move again.

      Lester spoke, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of water. He had been possessed by the sea god. "It is done," Agwe' said.

      The de'ssunin was over.

      The wake following the de'ssunin went without a hitch. Almost all the members of Claude's humfo came by to pay their respects. They sang lamentations, made speeches about the deceased and, charmingly enough, played dominoes and cards.

      Claude's sister and her husband flew in from Boston. They both seemed dazed, she with grief, he with jet-lag and culture shock. A draftsman for an architectural firm, the husband confessed to Joey that he had no idea his brother-in-law was into "this hoodoo mumbo-jumbo." Later, his wife sought out Joey and thanked him profusely for performing the de'ssunin.

      Claude's ex-wife, Serena, had been contacted by telegram and telephone. She made vague promises but so far had put in no appearance. Unless she hurried, she would miss the burial tomorrow morning.

      Maurice and Joey left the funeral home at ten o'clock. They gave Alison a ride to her apartment. As she got out of the car, she leaned over and kissed Joey on the cheek. "Good job today, kid. I'm proud of you."

      A package awaited Joey at Maurice's house. Jim and Lavelle Burford had dropped it off. It contained the items he had requested they fetch from his own apartment in San Francisco, as well as a few other miscellaneous purchases.

      Once Maurice retired for the evening, Joey took the package to the altar room, locking the door securely behind him. He opened the box and began methodically arranging its contents on the altar.

      The last thing he took out was a high school yearbook. The La Canada Omega, 1980 Edition.

      This book was one of the few things he took with him when he fled Los Angeles ten years ago. He had kept it for one reason, and one reason only. He opened the yearbook now, and the pages flipped automatically to that most familiar, best-loved spot.

      "Campus Candids" served as the headline for a collage of black and white photographs. Some student shutterbug had captured his classmates during moments of supposed spontaneity. For the most part, the pictures were pretty lame, featuring teachers looking stupid, jocks cutting up with cheerleaders, and zit-faced lovers making goo-goo eyes at each other.

      For Joey, one photo stood out from the rest. In it, younger versions of himself and Alison conferred in front of a locker. She held a 16mm movie camera, he a make-shift clapboard. He was saying something, and she was reacting to it, tilting her head slightly and smiling enigmatically.

      This was the only photo of himself that Joey had ever liked. Somehow he didn't look like a creepy teenage dork in it. Maybe because Alison, so poised and beautiful and photogenic, was also so clearly interested in what he had to say at that moment.

      The picture almost vibrated with their emotional closeness. No caption was needed. Looking at it, even a stranger would say, "These people are friends, good friends."

      Joey smiled, savoring one of the few fine memories from that awful year.

      He turned to the middle of the yearbook, to pages he had rarely looked at before, sections that had not been important until now. He scanned the sophomore portraits until he reached the S's. There they were. Side by side at the bottom of the page. Jeffrey Alan Spelvin and Thomas Walter Spelvin, Class of '82.

      Marking that place, Joey set the yearbook aside. He picked up his rattles, sang an invocation and asked Papa Legba to come and open the gate. It took but a minute for the loa to comply.

      Now came the hard part. According to his teachers, it was sometimes possible to contact the spirits of ancestors by making sacrifices in their honor. The trouble was, most of those dead relatives were also believers in vodoun and so responded well to its ancient formulae. What were you supposed to do if you wanted to reach spirits who would have scoffed at the very idea of magic?

      Joey decided to wing it.

      He dropped a cassette into the battery-powered tape player he had borrowed from Maurice. He switched the machine on, and a kick-ass tune by Van Halen began to play. Joey hated Van Halen, but the twins had loved the group. He kept the volume high.

      He blessed the plate of food set on the altar, muttering a few phrases over the Big Macs, the french fries, the T-bone steaks, the marijuana joints and the bottles of beer.

      Opening the yearbook, he used beach sand to write "Tom" and "Jeff" on the page with their photographs.

      Holding his ceremonial rattle over his head, he spoke in English. "Tom Spelvin and Jeff Spelvin, Papa Legba has opened the gate between worlds. Walk through it and make yourselves known. Your brother Joey wishes to honor you."

      He waited. Nothing happened. He began to feel very, very silly. He brought his arms down.

      Behind him, Jeff said, "We thought you'd never ask."

      He turned and faced the twins, who stood only inches away. Naked to the waist and shoeless, they looked ready for a day at the beach. Tom reached past Joey, grabbed the hamburgers from the altar and handed one to Jeff.

      Joey said, "I'll be damned. It worked."

      Tom removed the pickle from his Big Mac and flicked it onto the floor. "Wasn't so hard, was it? You should have done it sooner and saved us all a lot of trouble."

      "I'm sorry." It didn't seem enough. "I was scared."

      Jeff swallowed a mouthful of food and said, "You always were a primo wuss, Lovecraft."

      It was difficult, but Joey refused to rise to the bait. He had to keep telling himself that he wasn't fourteen anymore. "I'm here to apologize. For accidentally killing you. For not paying you the proper amount of respect afterwards. For doing my damndest all these years to forget you two ever existed.

      "I've been a real asshole, but I want to make peace between us. I think it's important. "

      Tom said, "Kind of late for apologies, don't you think?"

      "No. And neither do you."

      "What makes you say that?"

      Joey said, "If you and Jeff thought you could get away with it, you'd have taken revenge on me years ago. But I have this feeling that I'm somehow stronger than the two of you put together."

      Neither twin would admit it. They merely smirked and kept quiet. Joey continued, "When you popped up at the airport that night, neither of you really threatened me. All you wanted me to do was stay in San Francisco. You must have had a reason for that.

      "At first, I assumed Concasseur put you up to it. Now I'm not so sure. I think you guys needed something from me, something I could give you only if I stayed in the Bay Area and continued my studies into vodoun. So I'm going to ask you now, flat-out. What can I do to set everything right?"

      Tom and Jeff didn't reply immediately. They glanced at each other, scratched their heads and scuffed their feet. It was Tom who finally said, "After we died, we expected, you know, to go someplace. Heaven. Hell. Someplace. But we didn't. We wound up stuck between the world of the living and the world of the dead."

      "It really sucks, Joey," Jeff said. "It's cold, dark and foggy. There are all kinds of weird characters just sort of hanging around. Sometimes they bother us. We can't get out without your help."

      Joey asked, "How do you know there's a way out?"

      "The General told us," Jeff said.

      "Who?"

      "This big black guy in a military uniform. He's always carrying a machete and smoking a cigar."

      So Ogu was behind it all. "I know him. What did he tell you?"

      Tom said, "That because we're twins, we're bound to you, our younger brother and only surviving relative. We can't enter the true afterlife until you release us. See, if you had just come to our funeral, everything would have been OK. But since you didn't, we were sentenced to that horrible place between worlds."

      "We'd just about given up hope when we met the General," Jeff said. "He said that a magical war was about to start in San Francisco and that you were in the middle of it. He promised that if we convinced you not to leave, we'd be set free."

      "Banking on the assumption that my vodoun training would eventually make me live up to my familial obligations and perform the necessary rituals," Joey said.

      Tom nodded. "Or that you'd get yourself killed. That would do the trick, too."

      "How convenient." Joey took a deep breath and said, "Look, I think I'm going to need your help if I'm going to survive this war the General was talking about. Put up with limbo for a little while longer, and when it's all over, I promise I'll do everything necessary to see that you two rest in peace."

      Tom pulled Jeff off to the side, and the twins conferred in whispers. They returned, and Jeff said, "OK, it's a deal. We figure we can't lose, no matter how things turn out."

      "Glad somebody can count on something. Now, do you guys promise not to hold a grudge? I can't have you screwing me over at the last minute."

      Tom punched Joey on the arm -- hard. "Don't worry, Lovecraft," he said. "You may be an asshole, but you're still family."

      Jeff laughed. Joey didn't.