Surely, it was only a game. In the orderly, pleasant world Barbara inhabited, nice children -- and they *were* nice children -- didn't hold an adult captive. But what Barbara didn't count on was the heady effect their new-found freedom would have on the children. Their wealthy parents were away in Europe, and in this rural area of Maryland, the next house was easily a quarter of a mile away. The power of adults was in their hands, and they were tempted by it. They tasted it and toyed with it -- their only aim was to test its limits. Each child was consumed by his own individual lust and caught up with the others in sadistic manipulation and passion, until finally, step by step, their grim game strips away the layers of childishness to reveal the vicious psyche, conceived in evil and educated in society's sophisticated violence, that lies always within civilized men. More than a terrifying horror story, *Let's Go Play At The Adams'* is a compelling psychological exercise of brooding insights and deadly implications.
PREPARE YOURSELF
FOR A SHOCKING EXPERIENCE
Mendal W. Johnson's
LETS GO PLAY AT THE ADAMS'
"The unbearable tension of a silent scream. Johnson is telling us some horrifying things
about the hidden recesses of the human psyche. Wonderfully skillful.''
-Detroit Free Press
"Proceeds at a breathless pace, as horror multiplies it· self in geometric progression.''
-Hartford Times
"A superb new novel of suspense, which will hold the reader in its grip of horror until
the last page."
-Atlantic City Presa
LET'S GO PLAY AT THE ADAMS'
Mendal W. Johnson
To my wife, Ellen Argo Johnson
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITIED.
LET'S GO PLAY AT THE ADAMS'
On the keyboard of a piano--in this case, it is an upright-are two neatly positioned pairs
of bands. To the right is the pair (at C above middle C) which may be fairly said to be
the hands of a girl. They are terribly slender-only girls, only the young have hands like
that-and they are firm and strong and tanned. There is a decorative ring on the right
hand but nothing on the left: the girl is not yet engaged or married. The hands are
spread into a C-major chord and waiting. They begin.
What they are playing-and well enough-is "The Happy Farmer." It's a rather insistent
small tune that goes, "Dum
toying with it for centuries.
The hands disappear. "OK, now you try it."
Now it is the tum of the other pair of hands, the ones to the left, the pudgy, sunburned
(but wellscrubbed) little hands. They strain awkwardly. They achieve the necessary
chord and begin: "Dum
begin again.
"Come on now. You can do that after church." "Just let me. Just once more-now?''
"OK, but you come when I honk the horn. I don't want to be late." The longer, more
slender hands pull
1
on a pair of short white gloves that stop exactly at the wrist. "Now, where's Bobby?
"I'm coming, But it's early. We never leave until-"
"Let me see
These hands are also more or less clean; but they are definitely boy's hands. Against
the white gloves that hold them, they look knuckle-barked, calloused and innately
grubby in spite of their recent washing. Nonetheless they pass inspection.
"OK, let's go, Cindy.''
lence here.
"You don't have to use Miss with me." "Mommy said to."
"All right, if she said so."
The parents are in Europe, so that the children are driven to church by the baby-sitter.
They make a pleasant sight.
Cindy Adams, the smaller piano player, is an impish little girl of ten. She is pretty
enough, and she has brown hair cut rather short for summer, because with swimming
and moist heat, it wants to spring into curls and spirals and tangles and become
unmanageable. She
is the sort of child that grown-ups instinctively want to pat.
Bobby Adams, her brother, is oddly enough the beauty. He is about thirteen, thin and
fair, with high coloring to his cheeks and fine, blond hair that requires water and sticky
stuff to keep it from floating around his head in an unruly halo. He rarely smiles, and he
of- - ten stands in thought with his hands thrust straight down, as deep as they will go
in his pockets. This position, rare in a youngster, is an unconscious copy of the position
his surgeon father often takes in conversation.
The white-gloved hands that swing the family station wagon into the churchyard,
