The Vanishings by Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins

getting ready for school by the time she left at seven. “I don’t know what you kids are going to do when you’re out on your own,” she often said. “I’m creating monsters who don’t move till they’re told.”
    It seemed too bright, too late when Lionel awoke. He had always been a slow riser, in a cloud until he got up and moved around, went to the bathroom, got breakfast. This morning he didn’t feel like moving. He merely opened his eyes, squinted at the sunrays that had somehow found their way through the tiny basement windows, and watched the dust dance in the columns of light.
    Lionel was on his back, staring at the floorboards, wiring, and ductwork in the basement ceiling. This was a scary place in the dark of night. He never slept here alone.
    Lionel had a vague recollection of André slipping out of bed, sometime after midnight, he guessed. André sometimes sneaked out of the house for a smoke. Because André always slept so soundly after that, Lionel’s father once wondered aloud if André was smoking something stronger than tobacco. And when André spent more time than necessary in the tiny bathroom in the basement, even Lionel wondered if he was taking drugs.
    When André came back from whatever he was doing, he would collapse onto the sofa bed with Lionel and wouldn’t seem to move a muscle for hours. It was not uncommon for Uncle André to still be sleeping, in the same position, even after Lionel’s mother had come down to roust Lionel out of bed. They might argue or crab at each other—usually just in fun—and they were never quiet. But Uncle André would remain dead to the world.
    Once, Lionel’s mother had made the mistake of trying to rouse André too. He was so out of it and so angry that she just apologized and never tried again. He got up when he got up, and that was often very late in the morning. This morning Lionel couldn’t even hear André breathing. He turned to make sure his uncle was alive.
    There he lay, on his stomach, his face turned away from Lionel. The slow, rhythmic heaving of his back told Lionel that André was fine. But he sure was quiet.
    Lionel heard the phone ring upstairs. His mother or Clarice would answer it. They always did. Lionel’s father often urged his wife to let the answering machine screen calls when they were trying to get ready for work and school or when they were having a meal or sleeping. But Lucinda Washington made it clear to the family that she hated answering machines. Theirs was off as long as anyone was in the house. The last one out could turn it on “so it can serve the purpose it was designed for,” she would say. “Not so we can screen calls or get lazy. It’s for catching calls when we’re away, period.”
    This morning the phone kept ringing, and Lionel heard no footsteps upstairs. Maybe it was earlier than he thought. He sat up, feeling that fogginess and heaviness that made him move so slowly every morning. No onewas answering the phone. What time was it, anyway?
    Lionel groaned and whipped off the blankets. Uncle André did not stir. Lionel felt the chill of the basement as he moved stiff-legged toward the stairs. Passing a window, he noticed his father’s pickup truck in the driveway, blocking the garage door where his mother’s car was parked. It is early, Lionel decided. Who’d be calling at this time of the morning?
    Lionel was in his underwear, and his mother didn’t want him “parading around that way, now that you’re a teenager,” but he thought she might forgive him if he answered the phone for her. But why wasn’t she or Dad answering it? They had an extension phone on their bed table.
    The phone rang and rang, but Lionel was in no hurry. The phone was never for him anyway. He would answer it only because it woke him and there was nothing else to do. Anyway, he was curious.
    The kitchen was at