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Becca could hear her friend's voice from outside, calling in reply, 'Soon as I get these sheets up!'

Margaret moved over to her mother's side. 'Mama, I've never seen that thing before, but it's real pretty. If you don't like it, why don't you let me—'

Margaret reached out for the amulet, and Becca, fearful that her daughter might take it and put it on, suddenly pulled back, clapping the amulet to her breast. The sudden movement knocked her chair against the wall, and Becca grabbed the edges of the chair as she scurried to keep from falling over.

'You be careful, Mama!' cried Margaret, 'if you don't—' She stopped abruptly. 'How'd that happen?' she asked, surprised.

'What?' said Becca.

'That chain's 'round your neck. You had it in your hand not two seconds ago, and now it's hooked 'round your neck.'

'NO, it's not', said Becca.

'Yes, it is, Mama!' exclaimed Margaret, who couldn't understand why her mother was contradicting a self-evident fact. She laughed in her perplexity and returned to the apples. Becca tugged at the amulet, and with an expression of intense disgust, followed her daughter's movements at the stove. Margaret peered out the window, and said, 'Mama, Sarah'll be right here.'

Margaret carefully brought another apple up to the surface of the pot. She heard her mother rise from the breakfast table behind her. 'Mama', she said, 'you think I ought to make eggs too? I mean, they's gone be nearly fifteen of us, and that's not counting little Mary Shirley, and you know what that little girl told me? She told me that now that her mama and daddy is dead, she's not ever gone eat a egg again when the sun is up! She said to me that eggs was for the nighttime!'

Suddenly Margaret felt herself grabbed from behind. Her mother had her hand on her daughter's throat, tight and stifling. Margaret was so surprised that she did not even think to struggle; but in a moment, when that hand began to push her face down towards the violently boiling syrup in the pot, Margaret tried to squirm out of her mother's grasp. She opened her mouth to scream, but the liquid flooded up into her throat, and searing pain that seemed to melt her consciousness was all that was left to the unfortunate girl.

Sugar syrup boiled out all over the stove and the counter and floor. Steam hissed up from the contact with the electrical coils beneath the pot. The apples rolled off the counter and smashed solidly against the linoleum. Margaret's body went limp under Becca's hands, and fell to the floor under its own weight. The pot of seething sugar toppled as well and poured out all over the girl's corpse, cooking her flesh until it was the colour and consistency of deep-fried chicken skin. Becca had had to spring well out of the way so that she would not be burned also.

Margaret's face was a featureless, bubbling lump of pink candy. With a broom handle Becca overturned the corpse, so that it lay face down, and then she gingerly reached over to turn off the stove. She heard Sarah's voice, calling softly from just underneath the kitchen window. Becca stepped to the sink and looked out at her friend.

'What'd Margaret want, Becca?'

'She just wanted to know if you're ready to go to the plant', Becca replied with a smile.

i'mready', said Sarah, 'don't even have to go back inside.'

Becca nodded, and backed away from the window, at the same time carefully slipping the amulet beneath her blouse. She retrieved her purse from the breakfast table, and went out the back door without even glancing at her daughter's corpse on the kitchen floor, lying in a pool of still-bubbling sugar syrup, with the brilliantly red candied apples scattered all round her.

Becca pulled out of the driveway a few moments later, and the two women drove down the street in front of Sarah's house. Instinctively, Sarah stared out the car window at the front of her house. Suddenly, the curtains in the living room were jerked open. Sarah could see Dean, bandaged and motionless, propped up in a chair in the little alcove there. Jo was in the chair beside him, staring directly out at Sarah. She jumped, and averted her eyes: who had pulled the curtains open?

'Well', said Becca, 'did you two have it out? What'd Jo say when you came in yesterday?' These were Becca's first questions to Sarah, even before they had got into the car.

Sarah looked well, and appeared stronger than before the attack had occurred on Saturday.

INo', said Sarah, 'we didn't have it out. I went in yesterday-afternoon and I fixed supper and I took it to them. And Jodidn't say a word about my being gone.'

'I cain't hardly believe it', said Becca, but asked no more questions on the drive to work.

But Sarah was thinking, and thinking hard: herself wondering why Jo had said nothing to her. She had been prepared for an onslaught of abuse and recrimination, but none had been forthcoming. Jo had been sullen and even more watchful than usual, but there was no blatant hostility.

The fat woman sat by while Sarah fed Dean, and Sarah began to think that she had got away with it. But she also wondered about Jo's strange and unexpected behaviour in this. Sarah had come back from Becca's with new resolve to take control of her life again, to fight Jo - and fight Dean - to the last drop of her blood, and if necessary, theirs. Now she felt as if she were lying in wait for them, preparing herself for a long siege against the mother and son.

That would take time, however, and while she played her games with Jo, other people in Pine Cone might die. But Sarah knew that haste and hysteria and strident accusations against Jo would do no good, and that the only way to get at Jo was by the same methods she used herself: silence, deviousness, and treachery. All Sarah's strength was gathered up from her heart, from the whole of her body, and set right against the backs of her eyes. Nothing would escape her, and she would feel no remorse for anything that happened, for anything that would have to be done.

At last, after Dean had finished his supper, Sarah's patience was rewarded. Jo said, 'Becca told me about them two coloured girls that died in the beauty parlour.'

Sarah looked up but said nothing. She doubted if Jo was telling the truth.

'She said you went in there, and saw where it happened, and all.'

Briefly, Sarah told what she knew of the circumstances of the deaths of Martha-Ann and Ruby.

'Becca said that you told the sheriff about the amulet.'

Sarah nodded. 'I told him I was looking for it, and I described it to him.'

'What else did you tell him about it?'

'Nothing else. I just told him I had lost it, and was looking for it, that's all. If I had told him . .. anything else, he wouldn't have believed me.'

Sarah saw that this lie pleased Jo, and relieved her of some anxiety.

'But you told Becca. ..' said Jo.

'Becca believes in all sorts of things. Becca would believe anything you said to her. You know, we were watching
The Song of Bernadette
on TV the other night, and Becca made Margaret sleep in the same room with her, 'cause she was afraid that the Virgin Mary was gone make an appearance in the bedroom closet. ..'

The two women were in a standoff now, and neither said anything for a few minutes. Jo continued with her sewing, and Sarah read through two short articles in
Redbook.

'What you gone do now?' said Jo.

Sarah folded the book in her lap, but kept her place. 'I'm gone see what happens tomorrow .. .' Then she smiled, and opened the magazine again.

That had been an act to scare Josephine Howell; Sarah really wasn't sure what she would do next - but it was above all necessary to keep Jo on her guard. That morning, as she prepared herself for the beginning of the week at work, Sarah had noticed with satisfaction that Jo was nervous, and so distracted that she forgot to be irritable.

Sarah dreaded the beginning of this week, another forty hours on the assembly line in which she
would
have nothing to oo except think of Jo, and Dean, and the amulet. But she had drawn her strength up, and was, in fact, reassured to know that she was willing and prepared to fight, that she was ready to risk everything. She had got beyond despair.

The Monday morning on which all the young people were to be let out of school was bright and warm. And though it was the first day of the week, the great crowd of workers that entered the Pine Cone Munitions Factory did so cheerfully. Playfully they shoved one another up the small narrow flights of wooden steps into the factory and managerial offices of the place.

After Sarah and Becca had parked the car in the parking lot and had got out, they became separated, moving along with different groups of acquaintances into the building. It was a happy morning, for the end of the school year, even for those who hadn't been inside a classroom in thirty years, still meant the beginning of summer in Pine Cone. And summer in south Alabama despite the worsening heat meant trips to the Florida coast, going fishing in the late afternoon after work, picnics, and barbecues.

A couple of minutes before the whistle was to blow, Becca and Sarah seated themselves at the assembly line, arranging for two hours of work before the coffee break.

Becca checked over her religious artifacts on the boards beside her, and then pulled the amulet out from underneath her blouse, setting it to best effect. Sarah stood up and leaned over the partition that separated them, intending a final few moments of conversation before the belt started up.

'Margaret told me yesterday she was going picnicking today', she said. 'She told me—'

Becca had turned to face her friend, and Sarah stopped short when she caught sight of the amulet around Becca's neck.

'Becca!' Sarah cried.

What?' said Becca, with surprise.

'Becca, where'd you get that thing?' said Sarah, in great alarm. Sarah was very frightened, and completely at a loss to know how Becca had come by the amulet. She could not even stop to think of possibilities.

Becca stared at her friend blankly and grasped the amulet protectively to her breast.

Sarah reached for the amulet, and actually had her fingers around it, but Becca pushed her hands away violently.

The machinery ground up suddenly, and the assembly belt quivered and moved forward. Sarah again spoke to her friend, but her question could not be heard over the sound of machinery. Again she lunged for the amulet, but Becca jerked away. The partition behind her was upset and fell against another female worker. Two figurines smashed to the floor.

Becca stared around her, as if in panic, and Sarah made a move to come around the partition to get at her. The women in the immediate vicinity, those who could see what had happened, stopped to stare. What had come over these two women, who were best friends in all the world?

Becca fled from Sarah down the aisle. Workers stopped and looked, and tried to shout their curiosity and wonder to one another over the sound of the machinery. Sarah ran after her, determined now to get the amulet, no matter the cost, no matter the embarrassment.

Becca turned a corner into an aisle bordered with much larger pieces of machinery. These were die presses and the like, all operated by men. She whirled around to see where to go next, and then fled down the aisle, heading towards the door that opened on to the parking lot. All the men turned and stared, but none tried to stop her. Sarah was almost as quickly around that corner as well and gave chase. Becca was an older woman and not as quick, so that Sarah soon caught up with her. Sarah reached forward and grabbed at the amulet. Becca lunged to the side to get away from her friend, stumbled and careened; she fell beneath the dies of a metal-punch machine.

The operator of the machine, even as he saw Becca stumbling, moved to turn off the machine's switches. He was too late. Two of the large circular dies, like pistons in an automobile engine, cut through Becca's body. The sickening sound of crushing bones could be heard above everything else. Sarah screamed Becca's name.

The dies came up again, dragging Becca's body a couple of feet into the air before letting it drop again. The machinery halted. Blood gushed from the obscenely large wound in

Becca's body. The operator had run away, and Sarah continued to stare at her friend's corpse. Becca's eyes remained open. Sarah could no longer see the amulet about her neck.

She screamed at the corpse, though she could hardly hear herself over the machinery. 'Where is it, Becca, where is it?'

Sarah spun around in panic. Becca was dead, Becca had died in front of her eyes, Becca had died because Sarah had chased her through the plant. Sarah had wanted to protect her friend against the prediction of the Ouija board, and had succeeded only in fulfilling it. Becca had had the amulet around her neck when she fell into the machine, and now it was no longer there.

With revulsion matched only by her determination, Sarah knelt beside the corpse, ignoring the crowd of men that in the past few seconds had begun to gather. She tore open the top of Becca's blouse. Blood dyed Sarah's hands to the wrists. The amulet wasn't there; it must have come loose in the fall, and dropped somewhere near. Maybe it had been smashed in the machine. Sarah dropped to her hands and knees and scurried around on the bloody hardwood floor searching for it, and violently resisting the efforts of the men around to raise her.

Because of the great size of the factory, and more especially because of the tremendous volume of noise in the place, only a few people realised that something terrible had happened. Because the machine in which she was killed was set back a little from the others, only a couple of people had actually seen Becca Blair die. The women who worked on the assembly line had only seen the two women running off, and with the rifles still coming through they had not the leisure to follow after them. The two women on either side of Becca's and Sarah's places had to work double-time while those two were absent and perform their tasks for them on each rifle that was to go through. They cursed Sarah and Becca both.