He stared at the ceiling where gunpowder blew in a spontaneous combustion, all their lives exploded in one day at the end of an unbelievably late summer, a thing of weather and blind sky and the surprise miracle that he still lived, still breathed, amidst lunatic events. Christ! Who ran this parade and where was it going? God, stand alert! The drummer–boys are killing the captains.

‘There must be others,’ he whispered to the open window. ‘Some who tonight feel as I do about these infidels!’

He could sense the shadows trembling out there, the other old rusted iron men hidden in their high towers, sipping thin gruels and snapping dog – biscuits. He would summon them with cries, his fever like heat–lightning across the sky.

‘Telephone,’ gasped Quartermain. ‘Now, Calvin, line them up!’

There was a rustling in the dark yard. ‘What?’ he whispered.

The boys clustered in the lightless ocean of grass below. Doug and Charlie, Will and Tom, Bo, Henry, Sam, Ralph, and Pete all squinted up at the window of Quartermain’s high bedroom.

In their hands they had three beautifully carved and terrible pumpkins. They carried them along the sidewalk below while their voices rose among the star-lit trees, louder and louder: ‘The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.’

Quartermain turned each of his spotted papyrus hands into fists and clenched the telephone.

‘Bleak!’

‘Quartermain? My God, it’s late!’

‘Shut up! Did you hear about Braling?’

‘I knew one day he’d get caught without his hourglass.’

‘This is no time for levity!’

‘Oh, him and his damn clocks; I could hear him ticking across town. When you hold that tight to the edge of the grave, you should just jump in. Some boy with a cap–pistol means nothing. What can you do? Ban cap–pistols?’

‘Bleak, I need you!’

‘We all need each other.’

‘Braling was school board secretary. I’m chairman! The damn town’s teeming with killers in embryo.’

‘My dear Quartermain,’ said Bleak dryly, ‘you remind me of the perceptive asylum keeper who claimed that his inmates were mad. You’ve only just discovered that boys are animals?’

‘Something must be done!’

‘Life will do it.’

‘The damned fools are outside my house singing a funeral dirge!’

‘“The Worms Crawl In”? My favorite tune when I was a boy. Don’t you remember being ten? Call their folks.’

‘Those fools? They’d just say, “Leave the nasty old man alone.”’