When they came to the cave mouth again, he heard another one of the screams. Brendan stirred over his shoulders and Alan set him down, heart thundering, looking every way for Davey, who had come back.
“He’s gone away for the night,” Burt said conversationally. He sat up and then gingerly got to his feet. “He’ll be back in the morning, though.”
The cave was destroyed. Alan’s books, Ern-Felix-Grad’s toys were smashed. Their clothes were bubbling in the hot spring in rags and tatters. Brian’s carvings were broken and smashed. Schoolbooks were ruined.
“You all right?” Alan said.
Brian dusted himself off and stretched his arms and legs out. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “It’s not me he’s after.”
Alan stared blankly as the brothers tidied up the cave and made piles of their belongings. The little ones looked scared, without any of the hardness he remembered from that day when they’d fought it out on the hillside.
Benny retreated to his perch, but before the sun set and the cave darkened, he brought a couple blankets down and dropped them beside the nook where Alan slept. He had his baseball bat with him, and it made a good, solid aluminum sound when he leaned it against the wall.
Silently, the small ones crossed the cave with a pile of their own blankets, George bringing up the rear with a torn T-shirt stuffed with sharp stones.
Alan looked at them and listened to the mountain breathe around them. It had been years since his father had had anything to say to them. It had been years since their mother had done anything except wash the clothes. Was there a voice in the cave now? A wind? A smell?
He couldn’t smell anything. He couldn’t hear anything. Benny propped himself up against the cave wall with a blanket around his shoulders and the baseball bat held loose and ready between his knees.