Mike writes on Valentine’s Day, 1985, that two more children have disappeared. He calls the police to ask if he can see the crime scene photos, and they tell him no. Mike says they are getting annoyed with him and have suggested that he see a psychiatrist.

Later, he fights the urge to call the others. He is not ready: “If I call them now, they may think I’m crazy. Worse than that, what if they don’t remember me at all?” (445). He says that when it is time, he will know, because “they will hear the voice of the Turtle” (445).

Mike attempts to recount the history of the fire at a club called the Black Spot, but stalls, writing instead that his father had served in the war while encountering horrible racism from the white officers. He tells Mike that after the war, he moved the family to Derry, where things turned out to be even worse. He tried to keep chickens, but Butch Bowers, Henry’s father, poisoned them. Then he had painted a swastika on their barn door.

Mike's father imparts that “in a way it was the fire made [him] a man” (451). He explains that the fathers of some of the kids Mike goes to school with are the ones who lit the fire.