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Harley tried the door again, pushing with all his strength. "It feels like that cabinet was slid in front of it," he said,

"She must have done it. She's crazy. Harley, really weird. She thinks she has her dead son's soul in a jug!"

He nodded and started to shout louder. He stopped and we listened: again, we heard nothing.

"He couldn't sleep through all this." Harley remarked angrily. He pounded the door with his closed fist. It was a thick door, like all of them in the house. His thumping seemed easily absorbed and smothered.

"Why isn't he waking up and coming to let us out?" Harley cried. He pounded and pounded.

"Harley," I said, now growing more terrified. "What are they doing to us?"

He looked at me a moment, his own face filling with shock and fear. Then he shook his head.

"I don't know. This is crazy. You're right," he said.

He continued to pound and pound until his hands were red. I sat on a step and waited.

"Why would they do this?" Harley muttered. "Why?" he shouted at the door.

I looked up at him. He not only looked betrayed and frightened. He looked terribly guilty when he turned his eyes to me.

"What did I get you into?" he asked, shaking his head.

"It's my fault. Harley. I should have told you about all this earlier."

"Why didn't you?" he asked, suddenly realizing and wondering. too.

"You were so happy here. Everything was going the way you wanted. I felt horrible even thinking about it, and then I told myself I would tell you everything before I left. but I got so sick from that food and whatever else she put in mine that I missed a chance to do so earlier.

"I was also hoping you might go back with me and I could tell you everything once we had left. I'm sorry," I said. "This is my fault, my fault."

"No, no, don't blame yourself. That's silly. They have no right to lock us in here. And what for? Why? Why?" he screamed at the door.

Then he looked at me and we stared at each other, both of us feeling that cold overwhelming fear that came with the question lingering above us like a storm cloud. The answer could be mare horrible than we could even imagine, and yet we had to know, we had to ask.

Why?

It was madness, all of it, the impersonation, the holy room, being locked down here.

And we were trapped in it.

"He probably thinks hers teaching us some kind of a lesson," Harley decided.

He sat beside me on the next to bottom step. I nodded, willing to accept anything that was short of the horrors running through my mind.

"I had such a good time with him today," he continued, shaking his head with a soft, dazed smile on his lips. 'When he showed me stuff, he was so patient and interested, and when I did it right, he looked so proud and happy.

"Roy's shown me stuff too, and he looks satisfied when I do it right, but this was different. It was important to him. It was like something of him had

found a place in me. I felt very good about it, too." he said, turning to me. "I felt a good family feeling."

"He's probably a very confused man. Harley. What his son did must have had a very big effect on him and then there's that Suze. Who knows what strange ideas she's been putting in his head? Before. when I went up to sleep, she stopped to ask me who had sent me?"

"Who had sent you?"

"Yes. like it was part of some evil conspiracy. like I had come from the devil. maybe to steal her dead son's soul out of that jug. Who knows?"

I gazed about the small room.