Strangers

"I noticed them about half a mile after we left the motel. When we slow down, they slow down, too. When we speed up, so do they."
        "You think there's going to be trouble?"
        "There will be if they ask for it. They're probably only Army pussies," Ernie said. He grinned.
        Dom laughed. "Don't get me in a war just to prove Leathernecks are tougher than GIs. I'll happily accept your word for it."
        The road became steeper. The somber ashen sky grew lower. The dark trees drew closer on both sides. The pickup stayed behind them.
        

        
        Mrs. Halbourg, Emmy's mother, answered the door, letting a puff of warm air out of the house into the frigid Chicago morning.
        Father Wycazik said, "Sorry to come unannounced like this, but the most extraordinary thing is happening, and I had to find out if Emmy-"
        He stopped in midsentence when he realized that Mrs. Halbourg was in terrible distress. Her eyes were wide with shock - with fear, too.
        Before he could ask what was wrong, she said, "My God, it's you, Father. From the hospital, I remember. But how did you know to come? We haven't called anyone yet. How'd you know to come?"
        "What's happened?"
        Rather than answer, she took him by the arm, ushered him inside, slammed the door, and hurried him upstairs. "This way. Quickly."
        Coming directly from the Mendozas' apartment Uptown, he expected to find something odd at the Halbourg place, but not this state of crisis. When they reached the second-floor hallway, Mr. Halbourg was there with one of Emmy's older sisters. They were standing halfway down the hall at an open door, staring into a room at something that seemed equally to attract and repel them. In the room, something thumped, rattled, then thumped twice again, followed by a musical burst of girlish laughter.
        Mr. Halbourg turned, a ghastly expression on his face, and blinked in surprise at Stefan. "Father, thank God you're here, we didn't know what to do, didn't want to make complete fools of ourselves by calling for help and then maybe nothing's happening when help gets here, you know. But now you've come, so it's settled, and I'm relieved."
        Stefan looked warily through the open doorway and saw the usual accouterments of a bedroom occupied by a girl of ten-going-on-eleven, the changeling age between childhood and adolescence: half a dozen teddy bears; big posters of the current teenage idols, boys utterly unknown to Stefan; a wooden hat rack hung with a collection of exotic chapeaux probably purchased from thrift shops; roller skates; a tape deck; a flute lying in an open case. Emmy's other sister - in a white sweater, tartan-plaid skirt, and kneesocks - was standing a few feet inside the room, pale and half-paralyzed. Emmy was standing up in bed, pajama-clad, looking even healthier than on Christmas Day. She was hugging a pillow, grinning at the same astonishing performance - a poltergeist at play - that riveted her sister and frightened the rest of her family.
        As Father Wycazik stepped into the room, Emmy laughed delightedly at the antics of two small teddy bears waltzing in midair. Their movements were nearly as precise and formal as those of real dancers.
        But the bears were not the only inanimate objects infused with magical life. The roller skates were not standing still in a corner but were moving about on separate courses, this one past the foot of the bed and then to the closet door, that one to the desk, this one to the window, moving fast, then slow. The hats jiggled on the rack. A Care Bear on a bookshelf bounced up and down.
        Stefan went to the foot of the bed, careful to avoid the roller skates, and looked up at Emmy, who still stood on the mattress. "Emmy?"
        The girl glanced down at him. "Pudge's friend! Hello, Father. Isn't it terrific? Isn't it wild?"
        "Emmy, is this you?" he asked, gesturing at the capering objects.
        "Me?" she said, genuinely surprised. "No. Not me."
        But he noticed that the flying-waltzing bears faltered when she turned her attention away from them. They did not drop to the floor, but bobbled and turned and bumped against one another in a clumsy and aimless manner quite different from their previous measured grace.
        He also saw indications that the previous phenomena had not all been this harmless. A ceramic lamp had been knocked to the floor and broken. One of the