• Hawaii Revisited •

“He was teaching chemistry at Harvard and he also had a huge laboratory at home that he used for private experiments,” Miss Hawkline said. “Everything was going along fine until the afternoon that one of the experiments got out of the laboratory and ate our family dog in the back yard. The next door neighbors were having a wedding reception in their garden when this happened. It was at this time that he decided to move to some isolated part of the country where he could have more privacy for his work.

“He found this location and built this house out here about five years ago with a huge laboratory in the basement and he was working on a new experiment that he called The Chemicals. Everything was going along fine until—”

“Excuse me,” Greer said. “What about the experiment that ate your dog?”

“I’m coming to that,” Hiss Hawkline said.

“I’m sorry,” Greer said. “I was just a little curious. Continue. Let’s hear what happened, but I already think I know what happened. Tell me if I’m wrong: one of the experiments ate your father.”

“No,” Miss Hawkline said. “The experiment didn’t exactly eat our father.”

“What exactly did it do?” Greer said.

Cameron was very carefully listening to everything.

“We’re getting off on the wrong track again,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “I don’t know what’s happening. This is very easy to explain but suddenly it’s so complicated. I mean, I can’t believe how strange our conversation has turned.”

“It is sort of weird, isn’t it?” Greer said. “It’s like we can’t say what we mean.”

“I just forgot what we were talking about,” Miss Hawkline said. She turned to her sister. “Do you remember what we were talking about?”

“No, I don’t,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “Was it Hawaii?”

“We were talking about Hawaii a little while ago,” Greer said. “But we were talking about something else. What was it?”

“Maybe it was Hawaii,” Cameron said. “We were talking about Hawaii. Isn’t it a little bit colder in here now?”

“It does seem colder, doesn’t it?” Miss Hawkline said.

“Yes, it’s definitely colder,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “I’ll put some more coal in the stove.”

She got up and went over to the stove. She opened the lid on top to find the stove filled with coal because she had put some fresh pieces in just before she had sat down with her sister to talk to Greer and Cameron about the monster.

“Now, we were talking about Hawaii, right?” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“That’s right,” Greer said.

“It’s a miserable place,” Cameron said.

“I think we’d better go into another room,” Miss Hawkline said. “This fire isn’t warm enough.”

They left the kitchen and went into one of the front parlors. They didn’t say anything as they walked down the long hall to the parlor.

As soon as they stepped into the parlor, Greer turned to Miss Hawkline and almost shouted, “We were talking about the fucking monster, not Hawaii!”

“That’s right,” she almost yelled back and then they stood there staring at each other for a moment before Miss Hawkline said, “Something happened to our minds in the kitchen.”

“I think you’d better tell us all about that monster right now,” Cameron said. He looked grim. He didn’t like his mind fucked around with by anybody, including monsters.