Tick Tock

lovely number.” Although the volume was low, she could identify the tune. “Artie Shaw, ‘Begin the Beguine.’”
    Del said, “I like it too. By the way, mother, it's not just burning yachts and cars. There's an entity involved.”
    “An entity? This just gets better and better,” said Mrs. Payne. “What sort of entity?”
    “Well, I haven't identified it yet, haven't had time, what with all the running and chasing,” Del said. “But it started out as a devil doll with a curse note pinned to the hand.”
    To Tommy, Mrs. Payne said, “This doll was delivered to you?”
    “Yes. I—”
    “By whom?”
    “It was left on my doorstep. I think Vietnamese gangs—”
    “And you picked it up and brought it into your house?”
    “Yes. I thought—”
    Mrs. Payne clucked her tongue and wagged one finger at him. “Dear boy, you shouldn't have brought it into your house. In this sort of situation, the entity can't become animate and do you harm unless you invite it across your threshold.”
    “But it was just a little rag doll—”
    “Yes, of course, a little rag doll but that's not what it is now, is it?”
    Leaning forward in his chair, agitated, Tommy said, “I'm amazed that you just accept all of this so easily.”
    “Why wouldn't I?” Mrs. Payne asked, clearly surprised by his statement. “If Del says there's an entity, then I'm sure there's an entity. Del is no fool.”
    Mummingford entered the music room, pushing a tea cart laden with china, a silver coffee urn, and pastries.
    To her mother, Del said, “Tommy suffers from an excess of scepticism. For instance, he doesn't believe in alien abductions.”
    “They're real” Mrs. Payne assured Tommy with a smile, as though her confirmation of Del's stranger beliefs was all that he needed to embrace them himself.
    “He doesn't believe in ghosts,” Del said.
    “Real” said Mrs. Payne.
    “Or lycanthropy.”
    “Real.”
    “Or remote viewing.”
    “Real.”
    Listening to them made Tommy dizzy. He closed his eyes.
    “Though he does believe in Big Foot,” Del said teasingly.
    “How odd,” said Mrs. Payne.
    “I do not believe in Big Foot,” Tommy corrected.
    He could hear the devilment in Del's voice as she said, “Well, that's not what you said earlier.”
    “Big Foot,” said Julia Rosalyn Winona Lilith Payne, “is nothing but tabloid trash.”
    “Exactly,” said Del.
    Tommy had to open his eyes to accept a cup of coffee from the apparently imperturbable Mummingford.
    From the old-looking radio on the faux-ivory coffee table came an announcer's voice identifying the broadcast as originating live from the fabulous Empire Ballroom, where “Glenn Miller and his big band bring the stars out when they play,” followed by a commercial for Lucky Strike cigarettes.
    Del said, “If Tommy can stay alive until dawn, then the curse fails, and he's okay. Or at least that's what we think.”
    “Little more than an hour and a half,” said Mrs. Payne. “What do you suppose are his chances of making it?”
    “Sixty-forty,” Del said.
    Flustered, Tommy said, “What? Sixty-forty?”
    “Well,” Del said, “that's my honest assessment.”
    “Which is the sixty? Sixty percent chance that I'll be killed or sixty percent chance that I'll live?”
    “That you'll live,” Del said brightly.
    “I'm not comforted.”
    “Yes, but we're steadily improving those odds by the minute, sweetheart.”
    “It's still not good,” said Mrs. Payne.
    “It's terrible,” Tommy said, distressed.
    “It's just a hunch,” Del ventured, “but I don't think Tommy is scheduled for unnatural extraction. He feels as if he has a full-life destiny with a natural departure.”
    Tommy had no idea what she was talking about. Addressing him in a reassuring tone, Mrs. Payne said, “Well, Tommy dear, even if the worst were to happen, death isn't final. It's only a transitional phase.”
    “You're sure of that, are you?”
    “Oh, yes. I talk to Ned more nights than not.”
    “Who?”
    “Daddy,” Del clarified.
    “He appears on the David Letterman show,” Mrs. Payne said.
    Mummingford passed a silver tray of pastries to Del first, who took a plump cinnamon-pecan roll, and then to Tommy. Although Tommy initially selected a sensible bran muffin, he reconsidered and asked for a chocolate croissant. If he only had an hour and a half to live, worrying about his cholesterol level seemed pointless.
    As Mummingford used pastry tongs to transfer the croissant to a plate, Tommy asked Del's mother for a clarification: “Your late husband appears on the David Letterman show?”
    “It's a