Billy (30 page)

"Those aren't the right words."

"You're supposed to make up the words, Billy."

"Are not."

"Are!"

"Are absolutely not no way uh-uh."

"Well, I do!"

Billy sang, "The little one stops to do some doo!"

"Billy Neary, that's gross!"

The journey back had begun.

Author's Note

The theft of a child is perhaps the cruelest of all crimes, unique for its spectacular inhumanity and corrosive potency. Fortunately it is not an everyday crime; neither, however, should it be ignored. The numbers do not matter; the spectre of this crime diminishes as does no other the joy of parenthood and the innocence of the young. Childhood is not immortal; childhood could die. If it does, this will have been among its harshest poisons.

Readers wishing more information about how to help missing and exploited children can write:

The National Center for

Missing and Exploited Children

Publications Department

2101 Wilson Boulevard

Arlington, VA 22201

—Whitley Strieber

(Continued from front flap)

forty-four-year-old, fat and sweaty, searching the world for his own lost boyhood. When he sees Billy he knows that he has found the extraordinary creature he has been looking for—the perfect child that he never was. And he knows that in a matter of a few short hours he will have Billy all to himself, to love, to cherish— But Barton Royal is a very angry man. And Billy is very small.

Though Mary and Mark Neary can hardly believe that their son is gone, they suspect with every passing minute that he is in ever deepening danger. But even their worst fears cannot comprehend the gruesome and chilling reality of Barton's hideous world and the secret black room beneath his house where Billy is held prisoner.

Presented from both Billy's and his kidnapper's points of view, Billy is a story so terrifying—and yet so passionately committed to the value of the human spirit—that it will leave you breathless.

Whitley Strieber has long been hailed as a master of suspense. In Billy, he delivers a psychological thriller that will establish him as a writer of awesome versatility and power.

Whitley Strieber 
is the author of the bestsellers Communion, Transformation, and Majestic. He lives in New York City.

Jacket design by Ann Spinelli

Jacket illustration © 1990 by Don Brautigam

Photograph of the author

© by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

Printed in the United States of America