Hornets and Others

We stepped out not onto a solid floor as I had expected, but rather onto a narrow wooden ledge, some eight to ten feet wide with a solid waist-high railing all around. This shelf wrapped around an enormous circular room with a high wooden dome overhead. So this was the room I would work in, which I had studied the night before on the Count's thorough if imprecise drawings. There was a feeling of great empty space around me, and I was thankful not to suffer from the disease I had read about in one of the popular journals, called 'vertigo'.

We walked nearly a quarter of the way around the inside circumference of the dome before coming to a wide solid platform jutting toward its center. We turned onto this and I soon found myself on a wide circular platform, supported underneath by the crossed beams I had noted in the blueprints.

"It is here," Count Mayhew said, unrolling the plans which he held under his arm, "that you will begin."

I nodded, and we spent the rest of the morning going over fine points and making preliminary preparations for the alterations in the room.

The time passed so swiftly, once my architect's pencil began to sketch, that it was only my stomach that told me that it must be well into the late afternoon and that I was starving. As the Count seemed unwilling to break off our session of his own accord I made a suggestion that we have something to eat. This greatly surprised him, and after a moment's hesitation he suggested to me that food be sent up to us and that we continue with our work. "As I said last night, time is very short. Work must begin before tonight, and we must be finished one month from this day, Herr Begener."

"You mean actual construction?" I said, astonished. "Usually it would take me a week or two just to go over the structure of this room and to make any necessary refinements in the blueprints."

"Any refinements," he responded, "can be made while construction is underway."

I sought to argue with him on this point, stating that I had never done any job before without first becoming entirely familiar with every detail. "I like to live with my patients before I operate on them," I said with a smile, attempting to make him understand that though I understood his wishes, I possessed a set of rules that I must work by. But he merely shook his head, dismissing my levity, and stated, "One month from today, Herr Begener, we must be finished. It is essential, for both you and me."

This odd remark would have furthered my questioning of the Count, but at that moment Franz arrived with a bountiful repast and hunger replaced curiosity. I again noted that the Count partook of no food, but rather paced nervously. Hardly before little Franz had cleared away my soiled plates there came a strange, hollow, echoing sound from below us, a dull beating clang that at first puzzled me but then resolved itself, with the appearance of the top of a head followed by an entire body on the platform leading down to the floors below, into the tramp-tramp of many feet making their way up the circular staircase. The first figure was followed by another and then another, and when the metallic tattoo finally abated I counted thirty men in a line on the ledge. They seemed of a singular appearance, dull and uninspired, and none of them young; I thought I noted among their number the barman who had accompanied me to the castle the previous evening.

The Count seemed to have read my thoughts concerning their demeanor because he said, before I could make a remark, "They will do all that you say, and do it well. Our townspeople have a long tradition of craftsmanship."

As if this endorsement were some sort of sign, the solemn line of workers began to move, with shuffling feet and eyes straight ahead, to the point where the ledge met the circular platform. Count Mayhew went to meet them, giving a few short precise orders which immediately set them into action fulfilling the few things we had already decided could be accomplished that day. Soon they were at work, moving like slow, efficient shadows among us, and it was not long before I heard another echoing tramp-tramp on the circular stairs and another work force rose into view.

Thus passed the first day, and the quick days following it. When I am at work I always involve myself so deeply that all else is pushed from my mind, and I abruptly lost all track of time.

In fact nearly five days had passed before I realized that I had not heard from Natisha. This was strange, for I had not even received acknowledgment of the letter I had written her after arriving at the castle.

"Franz," I called to the jolly little porter as he passed my room on the morning of that fifth day. "Has there been mail for me?"

"No, Sir," he said, bringing a look of stem concentration across his features; but suddenly sly understanding replaced it. "The master seeks word from a young lady perhaps?"

"How did you know that?" I asked, in awe of his perception until he told me his answer.

"The master may find," he said, a grin nearly splitting his face, "that the correspondence you seek has been delivered by she who wrote it."

"What!"

"You may want to examine the newly-bloomed roses in the back garden" he said, and then he was gone before I could ask him how to reach that spot.

I hurried through my shaving and dressing; finally I could stand the anticipation no longer and rushed through my toilet, struggling with my frock coat and leaving my tie undone. Thus attired, I hurried to the back garden, passing the gnomish Franz on the way humming to himself while he went about polishing a huge oak case in the front hallway; he looked up at me brightly as I went by.

I paused at the iron gate leading into the garden at the sound of two voices. And there, in the garden before me as I watched unobserved, stood Count Mayhew with my own Natisha.

A great shock coursed through me at the sight of them embracing; from the way the Count held her in his arms it was plain that this was not their first meeting. My eyes filled with hot tears. I was only able to hear the Count say to her, "He must finish it in time," before my body betrayed my intellect and I burst in upon them.

For a moment I so startled them that they held their embrace; then suddenly they parted, with such self-consciousness that there was no further doubt in my mind at what I had seen.

Then suddenly Natisha, unfaithful Natisha, was smothering herself in my breast and crying out that she had missed me so!

"After what I've seen?" I said, pushing her back away from me.

"Oh, Karl, no, you don't understand!"

"I'm afraid I do."

Once again she pressed herself against me, and this time her presence, and the odor that she wore, and the very act of her hands around me combined to temper my anger.

"Perhaps," I said, "You would care to explain your behavior."

This time it was she who pushed herself away.

"I cannot."

"I can't accept that."

"Oh, Karl, please believe me! I cannot tell you anything, only to say that he does it for us!"

"I do not understand. You must admit to me that you knew this place before I came here, that your urging me to take this commission was a deliberate, calculated act on your part, and that you are somehow in league with the Count himself—am I correct?"

She seemed torn, and then once again she threw herself at me. "Oh, yes, yes," she whispered fiercely, and I could tell by the way she clutched me that she was crying. "Only please believe me when I say that I love you more than anything in this world, Karl, and that everything that has been done has been done for you and me. Can you believe that?" She looked up at me, clutching me firmly by the arms.

"How can I believe you unless you explain?"

"Please, Karl, I can tell you no more!"

Her pleading was so intense that I found myself swayed, and held her to me as though I would never let her go. I had not realized how much I had missed her and told her so, and for a moment we once again fell into discussion of our future together, of our marriage and the life we planned to share, and thoughts of the Count were lifted from me.

But suddenly Natisha disentangled herself from me, and I turned to see the diminutive porter standing there, a beaming smile upon his face.

"Pardon me," he said, "but I come for Herr Begener." He turned to me. "The Count waits for you in the tower."

"Tell the Count to go to blazes—" I began, but Natisha clutched at my hand with such a firm grip that her nails dug into my palm. I turned to see the pleading in her face and then said to Franz, in a somewhat less heated tone, "Tell the Count that I will join him immediately."

"Very good, Sir."

And then he suddenly threw back his head and laughed, skipping out of the garden like some wild Pan filled with youth, and without a glance back at Natisha I followed.

The days, and then the weeks, passed.

I became lost in a haze of work. Day melted into night and still the work went on; when the light in the tall wide dome began to fail there would come the solemn march up the metallic steps and a phalanx of ghostly workers bearing torches would rise to stand guard against the darkness around the circumference. There always seemed to be more workers when they were needed; but a curious fact, beside all the other curious facts I had amassed since my arrival at Castle Mayhew, was that none of the workers, or none of the other people of any capacity I had seen in all my time there, be they men or women, were young. Excepting myself, Natisha and little Franz, all were old, and tired, and worn, and all worked with the same detached weariness that I had at first noticed.

I sought to ask the Count about this one day, but he only regarded me with his weary yet blazing eyes and then turned away. "Life is for the young, it seems, Herr Begener," he said slowly, and off somewhere outside at that moment I heard a robin call and then, in the recesses of the castle, came little Franz's infectious laugh, and I asked the Count no more.

And still the work went on.

At the end of the third week it became apparent that the Count's demand had not been so far-fetched after all; and after I had become accustomed to the fact that I would get whatever I wanted and whenever I required it, night or day, I became quite confident that the commission would, indeed, be completed on time. The modifications needed turned out to be slighter than I had at first imagined. The Count, despite his sober demeanor, seemed to brighten somewhat, and when I told him that we would apparently make the deadline he had set for the completion of the work, something almost like a smile crossed his tired lips and he muttered, "So then we will win," before nodding and moving off away from me to inspect some gold plating that was in the process of being tacked over the entire inside surface of the dome. This had been one of my chief worries, but the Count had steadfastly maintained that such foil could be obtained, and, when indeed it did arrive, and in sufficient quantities, I felt completely justified in passing my completely optimistic estimate to him.

My chagrin was all the greater when I approached him a mere hour or two later with a problem that could not be so easily surmounted.

"These beams," I said, rolling out a plan before him and indicating the pair of huge timbers that formed an X and upon which the platform was presently being mounted, "I see now that they were to be covered each with pure silver. Were you aware of the fact that no such amount of silver appears to be obtainable or has even been ordered?"

He studied the paper in silence for a few moments, and then I saw his creased skin whiten under his collar. Unsteadily, he regained his composure.

"You are sure of this?"

"According to your men the silver was not ordered. And until I can get the silver my hands are tied."

"I see," he remarked, and then he wandered away from me. "I will see what can be done," he called back distractedly, and I did not see him again for the rest of the day.

When I did catch sight of him again it was under trying circumstances. Other work went on for the rest of the week, until the day finally passed that was to be the deadline for the completion of the project. By this time I felt I could work no longer without dropping from exhaustion, and so I took a short repast and then went to my bed. But I could not sleep. Strange noises from the nether parts of the castle kept me awake—the grindings and various sounds emanating from the dome, as well as the slow, steady trampings of workers here and there; and this, combined with my overactive mind kept me from the sleep I so desperately needed. Several times I rose, pacing to and fro before attempting to settle into bed once more, but without success; finally, I went to the window and gazed out upon the lawn for a while. At this time an odd sight I witnessed; for there, crossing the lawn below my window and making their way toward the outside stairway leading to the dome, were two figures; as they passed directly below me I made them out to be the old barman whom I had first met in the town below, and a youth I had seen before; he had made two or three special deliveries of material to the castle and was one of the few workers from outside the village I had encountered. He seemed excited, and before his voice faded I heard the word, "money" and the old barman's head bowed slowly. Soon came the metallic thump of their feet on the stairway and they were gone.

One final time I crawled off to bed, and for a short time seemed to attain a kind of troubled sleep; but then came a sound that was of my dreams or beside them, I could not tell which: a high keening wail that sounded like some construction process but which soon took on a distinctly human property. As I awoke fully it suddenly ceased, and now I found that I could not regain sleep again.

Finally, unable to obtain the rest I required, I put on my robe and began to wander the castle. I went first up the long flight of steps to the dome, thinking to find refuge from troubled slumber in my work. When I arrived I found an entire group of workers occupied in a most curious task. The gold-plated inside of the dome was covered in what appeared to be a fine red mist which they were methodically wiping clean. But I discovered that it was more of a dust, slightly wet to the touch, and that it seemed well ingrained. The dome top above was partly open, revealing a scattering of dull stars. I sought to question one of the workers about this red dust but he would not answer me, only continuing his task dumbly, and looking as if he wanted to sleep more than anything.

Finding no answer to my questions and scant solace from my surroundings, I now went down into the lower portions of the castle. There seemed to be no one about, but then I nearly stumbled over the servant Franz at the entrance to the back gardens. He seemed very intent, and for the first time since my arrival at Castle Mayhew there was not a beaming smile on his face but rather a watchfulness that did not immediately vanish when he sighted me. He looked less childish, older, even; and there was a wolfish light in his eyes. But then his ebullience seemed to return a bit and he nodded mischievously toward the garden.

I thought he would shy away but he did not, and he remained where he was as I advanced on the entrance.

There, as once before, were Natisha and the Count in an embrace.

Now all the feelings that I had held within me, all the engendered trust and love that Natisha, by her wiles and words, had managed to instill in me, were dashed once and for all. I rose heatedly, seeking to break in upon them and expose this folly, but at that moment they parted. There was such reluctance in that parting—such pain, I thought, and tender feeling—that for a moment even my blind jealousy and sense of betrayal were held at bay. As Natisha melted into the shadows, leaving the Count alone, I watched in mute fascination as his hands suddenly went to his face and he was racked with what I thought must be sobs; but in a moment his erect frame quieted, and when he took his hands from his eyes they were as dry as they had ever been. As he walked from the small circle of moonlight that had illuminated this scene, his head bent, I was so captivated that I failed to rush after him to shout the many denunciations I felt within me. In a moment he had disappeared into a far entrance, back into the castle.

When I turned, the dwarf-jester Franz was gone, and I spent the rest of that night walking like an apparition through the empty corridors of Castle Mayhew, my mind whirling with broken dreams before I finally stumbled to my lonely bed before dawn to find an unhappy and fitful sleep. I dreamed of Natisha, her arms out toward me but then floating past me to embrace the Count, and then being pulled away by some unseen power to fly off into the mist, and through and around these dreams swirled that unearthly high scream...

I awoke sometime the next day, not by the action of my own body but by, of all people, the Count himself. He stood over me, a tall, sad spectre, and for a moment I forgot that he was the author of my misery and nearly rose to ask what he would have me do. But then clarity returned to my mind. As I sought to throw myself from the bed to denounce him he suddenly bent over me, putting his hands on my shoulders. I could have thrown his hands from me; his touch was as light as that of a feather.

"You must leave the castle immediately," he said.

I noticed now how chilled his breath was, and how deeply fathomless his eyes were. They seemed orbs of dead glass rather than living tissue, and his breath the Autumn wind that chills flowers in their final bloom. The fire in his eyes was gone.

"Natisha—" I began, struggling up against him and pushing his hands aside.

"It is she who sends me," he responded, holding me as firmly as he might. "Listen to me. You must forget Natisha and leave Castle Mayhew immediately; if you do not all will be lost for you."

"I saw you in the garden last night," I said in a cold voice.

He stood up very straight and looked out the window to the side of my bed, which gave a view of the sloping grounds to the town below, and, beyond that, the thin blue ribbon of the Murstein River beyond. "I am her father," he said.

This statement proved effective; I lay back upon my pillows with my mouth agape.

"What! But—"

"There is no time for discussions. You must go." He was about to say something further when there came from behind him a low chuckle which rose to a healthy, booming laugh.

"Then in this too I have failed," the Count said.

In the doorway stood Franz, much improved from his appearance the previous evening. Gone were the lines on his face, and the healthy pallor of his skin had returned; once again he was the jolly cherub and he laughed delightedly to see me.

"So happy to see you awake, Herr Begener!" he shouted jovially, coming into the room. "I am happy to tell you that the silver has arrived, and that your final plans are being implemented at this moment. Soon, your job will be completed!" He laughed again, a bright cheerful trill. "Perhaps you would like some breakfast?" He turned to Count Mayhew. "Perhaps you would like to get Herr Begener some breakfast?"

The Count made no move, but merely hung his head.

It now occurred to me just how bright little Franz's eyes were this morning, how taunting, and how sharp the smiling line of his lips was.

"No matter," little Franz continued. "Perhaps you can get Herr Begener something to eat after he has dressed. You would like to join me in the dining hail, Herr Begener?"

I nearly opened my mouth to tell him that I would not countenance his sudden insolence, but something in his tone impelled me to do what he asked. I looked to the Count for guidance but he merely said, "You would do well to follow his instructions."

A few moments toilet found me in presentable condition and I made my way into the dining hall.

It was a dining hall greatly changed. At first the alteration was not apparent; there seemed to be the same furniture, the dining table and other dark furnishings in their accustomed places; but then, suddenly, a chill went up my back as I turned to the fireplace.

For there, over the mantle, hung a portrait—but not the one that had greeted me my first night in Castle Mayhew. Gone was the painting of the tall, spare man who was Natisha's father, and in its place, its somewhat smaller frame showing the dusty outline of the larger portrait that had been removed, hung a stylized, somberly depicted painting of the little man Franz who stood before me laughing.

"You are in the presence of the true Count Mayhew!" he said, throwing his head back and losing himself in his own mirth before continuing. "Don't let the serious expression I wear in that rendering fool you, Herr Begener," he went on, the laugh somewhat dissolving into a cultured, hard tone. "The subject is me." He waved a hand at the painting before turning away to sit down at the long table, which was laden with a late breakfast and from which he now took a lengthy repast. "It was painted by one of my own subjects before he was, ah, called to other tasks. I must admit I rather like it." Again he laughed, and motioned me toward the table.

"You must be hungry," he said, flashing his sharp, pointed smile. "I am not," I said weakly.

"Then sit by all means, for we must talk."

I sat, and was silent, staring at the far wall without seeing it.

"You have done me a great service, Herr Begener," the real Count Mayhew went on, talking as he ate. "And a service for which I am willing to pay a great deal. In fact, I am so happy with your work that I am willing to pay you anything you wish, many times the amount of your commission—if that is what you want."

Again he flashed his canine smile, wiping his greasy hands on his short robe.

"Natisha," I said weakly, not looking at him.

"That is impossible. I'm afraid she is not," he paused, searching for a phrase that would please him and finally finding one, "available any longer." He laughed wildly for a moment, rolling in his chair like a child with his hands on his pudgy knees, before continuing. "But perhaps I should let her tell you herself. I have been much interested in the course of this true love, and am interested to see where it will lead." He grinned rapaciously and reached for the small servant's bell next to his chair—the same bell I had seen used to summon him so many times these past weeks.

While we waited his face suddenly turned dark and I saw now just how old he really seemed; when the smiles and jolly caperings left his countenance he looked vastly aged. Wrinkles, just held in check, sought to burst forth and he appeared, at this moment, a stunted skeleton covered with layer upon layer of dead fatty skin.

"Perhaps I should tell you," he said, and again for the first time his voice attained something other than mirth; there was almost nobility in it, "that I am a man of my word. I have been so for a thousand years." He did not wait for the effect of this statement on me but went on. "And I offer you now, once only, Herr Begener, this choice. Believe me when I say that Natisha is forever beyond you. And believe me when I say that you may leave this night, only by giving me your wish to do so at this time; and that you will never be troubled by me again. If you do not take this offer at this moment it will forever be withheld, and you will choose instead the consequences." For the briefest amount of time a hint of sadness came to his features, but it was quickly replaced by a wry smile, as if he already knew my answer. "As I said, you have done well for me, and I feel bound to offer you this option."

"Is Natisha dead?" I asked, willing to face anything if she was not.

"Not dead," he answered; "but beyond you nevertheless."

"Is she coming to this room now?"

"She is."

"Then my mind is set; I will stay."

His eyes were upon me intently; and now that I made my answer, one that he had fully intended me to make, he roared with laughter, nearly tumbling off his chair this time before catching and righting himself upon it. He lifted his glass, which obtained a dark wine, and offered me a toast.

"To true love, then, Herr Begener. Only the truly young and truly foolish may enjoy it."

At that moment the door to the dining hall opened, and Natisha's father entered.

For a second I was not sure that it was Natisha that followed him in, so unlike her did she appear, but it was nevertheless she. Her face was nearly white, and her entire body seemed shrunken, drained of energy and life. This was Natisha in old age. Her features very much resembled those of her father now, and I would have had no trouble in marking them as father and daughter had I seen her this way before.

Her eyes were dull, but when she saw me she began to shrink to the ground.

"Franz," Count Mayhew addressed Natisha's father, conferring upon him the name that had obviously belonged to him all along, "I was just telling Herr Begener that I am a man of my word—is that not so?"

Franz lifted his head slowly and nodded, his dead eyes unmoving. He looked as if he wanted only to sleep the final sleep.

"Shall we tell him of our own bargain, then?"

Franz stood unmoving, his eyes downcast.

"Well," the Count said, "I think we should. You see," he continued, turning to me, "my long-time servant Franz here and I struck a bargain—one that, in his mind, would save his daughter. And I was quite willing, because it would have caused me no great inconvenience. But a bargain is a bargain, and, alas, poor Franz did not win." He began to laugh again, but cut it short as that serious tone once again came into his voice. "But perhaps I should explain, for it is really the story of the entire town of Mayhew."

Franz made no comment; and when Natisha began to swoon again I was there instantly at her side, cradling her in my arms. To my horror, I felt, even through her gown, a row of ugly raised welts on her back—and on pulling her gown gently aside in that spot I saw that they were huge swelling in the form of a circle of small sharp teeth.

"You immediately think of vampirism," the Count said, lifting himself from his chair to the floor and beginning to pace up and down before the fireplace as he spoke. "I have heard those tales and they are crude fairy stories. The truth is, I discovered long ago that my people are capable of providing me youth forever. Unfortunately," and here he flashed his horrid, sharp teeth, "at the expense of their own youth. In time they have come to look on it as their fate."

His face darkened, and he stopped his pacing to stare at his own portrait above the fireplace. "But a curious thing happened. There have been no children born in Mayhew for almost twenty-five years. Natisha, in fact, was the very last. This, I discovered, would eventually prove disastrous to me since only my own people were capable of providing me with what I need."

He raised a finger, assuming the grotesque appearance of a university professor giving a lecture. "You can imagine my anxiety. In a mere twenty years or so my people would no longer be of use to me, and I would begin to grow old! So I set to work, and after nearly two decades of work I discovered what I sought.

"It seems there is a substance that the people of Mayhew could easily pass on to me, but for others to supply it required more radical means. I found that this could be accomplished—but only at great expense to the donor. In theory it would work—but my calculations were crude, and a great precision in the workings would have to be employed."

He turned to me, and I saw that his joviality was returning. "That is where you came in, Herr Begener. And my bargain with Franz. You see, if the work was accomplished by the date specified, Natisha would be spared since I would have no need for her. But, alas," and here he showed his rodent's grin again, "the silver did not arrive in time. I even went so far as to try, for Franz's sake, the marvelous workings in the dome without this precious metal, but unfortunately without results; though I must say everything else worked perfectly!"

I thought of the two sets of screams I had heard in the night; of the fine red dust on the inside of the dome; of his horrid need, and his mouth on Natisha's back.

"As I said, Herr Begener," the Count concluded, "you have done a marvelous job!"

"But he will be going now?" Natisha said weakly. It was the first she had spoken, and her voice seemed to come from a great distance away. But her face was set and her eyes were trying desperately to bring fire into themselves, a fire they no longer possessed. "As we agreed, he will be leaving Castle Mayhew?"

The Count said succinctly, "As we agreed, I have given Herr Begener his choice. And, in all flattery to yourself, Natisha, he has chosen to stay."

"You were to live..." she said in a bare voice, her pale hands seeking to clutch mine and succeeding only in resting upon them.

"Life without you would be death," I said, and at that the Count began to howl with mirth.

"As good a performance as I could have wished." He ran to the table and once again held up his goblet of red wine. "To true love!" he cried. "But I am anxious to try my new toy."

I threw myself at him but discovered just how strong his small young body was. He held me easily. A half dozen of his workers arrived, and between their weak hands they were able to drag me from the dining hall and up the long, curling flight of metal stairs to the dome. It was now set ablaze at night by a thousand hand-held torches which glinted sharply off the gold-covered walls, and the dome itself had been partly opened to expose the bright faraway points of a million helpless stars overhead. They brought me up the final stairway to the high suspended platform, its supporting beams, now filled with the purest silver, holding it steady as the Earth itself. They strapped me upon it with silver wires, and I saw beside me on the platform the small velvet couch, as deep red as his wine, where the Count would soon lower his grinning, aged, cursed body.

It was then that I gave a last cry as Natisha, being led away by her Hamlet's ghost of a father, threw herself from the platform to land far below.

And here I stand, with only her name on my lips, as I wait for the Count's pure energies to course through and around me, whipping my body, each atom, to a fine red dust that will whirl round and round this evil dome till the essence is distilled into the howling laughing child who waits greedily beside me and I am no more.

But I will have been; and I know that the passing wind of my being will drive a fine red coat into the golden dome around me which, in all the thousands of years of youth to come, can never be washed away.

The Green Face

Lanois, who listened to the green face in the window, sharpened his knives and wept.

"I will not do what you want this time!"

There was no answer, but when he looked through the window, the Green Face was there, hanging suspended like a perfectly sculpted marble bust, smiling, lit bright green from within, framed by night.

And he did as he was told.

She was a loose girl, given to loose blouses and a top that showed her erect nipples. Men came to her, but tonight, a languid slow night, she was drawn to the streets by the humidity and summer itself. Heat coated her but radiated from her body, her long legs, her still-tight tummy, her triangle of hair. A pool of perspiration dripped between her heavy breasts, and her full mouth was open and moist. She pushed back her short hair, which clung damply to her skull

She wanted a man inside her, but didn't know why.

Lanois stumbled into the night from his home. The gate creaked mournfully on its hinges. There was a fog around the streetlamps, and the shops were closing, winking out like eyes, closing against the mist.

Lanois was a petite man, but handsome. He kept his beard trimmed tightly against his sharp chin, and his eyes were intelligent and moist behind his spectacles. He worked figures at his job, and looked like such a man. He was reserved and women took this for character.

He pushed himself down the street, toward the closing town. A deep bell somewhere announced ten o'clock. The grocer, also a small man, nodded to him knowingly, pocketing his key and hurrying away into the swallowing fog.

Lanois pushed onward, and encountered the girl.

"Ah! The accountant!" she said, smiling, stopping him as he sought to move away from her with a strangling cry in his throat. "What's the matter—won't you buy a girl a drink?"

He looked at her, and nodded, his voice still a croak. "All right," he said.

She took him to the expensive place, because she knew he had money. "You have a nice house," she said, and smiled again. Her lips were wet.

"Yes," he said, trying not to look at her, but listening to the loud chatter in the café. He felt oily, as if the night were adhering to him.

"Take me home with you," she said, pressing against him and pushing her drink away.

He trembled, and said, "All right."

Outside, the night had thickened. The fog pressed toward the ground, a green vapor. She led him, holding his arm because he seemed either drunk or unwilling.

"Here it is!" she said, pushing open the moaning gate.

Inside, she slammed the door and pushed him away. Her eyes looked full of tears, but her warmth reached him. She undid her top and let it fall to the floor, as an almost ripe odor assailed him from her breasts.

"Take me here," she said, pulling him down toward her as she lowered and stepped out of her blouse, kicking her shoes expertly off in the same motion.

Lanois, mewling, drew his knives crosswise from his pockets as he fell toward her, and, with both of the blades, crying out deeply, cut his own throat.

A deep winter day. Snow had fallen in abundance, and there was a cold smell in the air that topped the redolence of the radiators. Lanois moved from his bed, scratching himself and yawning. His feet missed their slippers, and he returned groggily to his bedside, slipping the footwear on where they lay by the bed's foot. He put his robe on over his gown and yawned again.

Saturday?

No. But a holiday!

He retrieved his rolled paper from outside the front door, thankful for the robe but still shivering. The day was suffused with light, the white snow only more blinding than the now-sapphire sky. The air smelled cold and clear in the aftermath of the storm.

He retreated to his kitchen and brewed coffee, the rich hot smell soon filling the room.

Opening the paper, he scanned the columns, noting the day's international events, another African war, the troubles in the colonies. Idly, he looked for news of his own death, and, finding none, was relieved.

Of course it was a dream, he thought.

The girl's murder was on page two.

Gasping, reading closely, he learned that she had been beheaded; that her head had been found in the gathering snow at the edge of the town park, the body nearby in an obscene position.

"The force of beheading was gargantuan," the pathologist was quoted as saying. "I doubt one man could have done this."

Lanois's coffee turned cold, and he laid the paper down.

Dressed in his working clothes, Lanois entered the prefect's office and was met by the prefect himself.

"Lanois!" the man said, smiling. "What brings you out on a holiday in such weather!" He advanced, holding out his hand.

Lanois did not take it. "The murder," he said. "I have something to report."

"Oh?"

Lanois pushed ahead, toward the prefect's office. "Please," he said.

His brow furrowed, the prefect followed.

"But this is preposterous!" the prefect said, after Lanois had told his story. "In the first place, in your dream, you were with her in the summertime, not the dead of winter. And you said yourself, you cut your own throat."

"Nevertheless. And this has happened before, other murders..."

The prefect traded his scowl for a smile. "Lanois, go home! You've been working too hard! Today is a holiday, and I suggest you use it as such. And I expect to see you at our weekly card game tomorrow evening!"

"Perhaps..." Lanois said.

The prefect's hand was on his shoulder, and Lanois looked up into the man's wide, kind face. "You had a dream," the prefect said, his hand squeezing Lanois's shoulder. "You didn't kill anyone. Anyhow, you are not capable of such an act. If you were, I would catch you!" The prefect laughed. "Now go home, and rest yourself. At the most, you had a strange dream. Leave it at that."

Lanois nodded briskly, and rose.

"Perhaps," he said.

"Good! And remember—you will lose money to me tomorrow night!"

Lanois managed a slight smile. "I'm sure I will," he said.

A week later Lanois packed for a trip. The snow had melted as if by magic, leaving the February streets clean and clear. Spring could almost be tasted, though not yet arrived. Trees in Lanois's yard, pear and peach, had begun to show faint buds, and the air was unaccustomedly mild and sweet.

The clock in the hail struck eight, and Lanois looked up from his valise, knowing he would be late if he didn't hurry.

He snapped the valise closed and his eye was drawn to the window. The Green Face was hovering there.

In an instant, it was gone. As Lanois's heart skipped a beat, the window as once again clear, half-raised, letting in the oddly warm air.

Lanois stared at it, waiting for a reoccurrence, and then quickly crossed the room to shut and lock it.

Outside, in his backyard, a blue jay sat on the branch of the nearest fruit tree and cocked its head at him.

Lanois finished packing, pressing two knives into his open suitcase before closing it, and left.

The trip was as uneventful as all trips were. The weather turned toward winter again, a cold front driving cold air and flurries into the northern city he was visiting, and leaving the sill of his hotel window covered in snow dust. Lanois pulled the shade and sought to nap until the night's meeting.

He closed his eyes, and almost immediately opened them as a knock came upon the door.

"Valet, sir!" a voice called.

Lanois rose, and, sighing, opened the door to reveal a young man with his bagged suit, pressed and ready.

The young man entered, and Lanois took the suit, realizing that his wallet had been moved to the dresser.

"Come in, please, and wait a moment," he said.

The young man, not more than seventeen and smiling, obeyed and entered the room, stopping a discreet distance inside the door.

Lanois retreated to the dresser, opened the top drawer and withdrew the two knives from where they lay atop his folded underclothes. "Close the door, please," he said.

The young man obeyed.

Lanois was instantly upon him, driving him against the door. He registered the terror in the young man's eyes.

Lanois raised the two knives and crossed them, driving deep, into his own neck.

The next morning, in his hotel room, Lanois read of the murder of the valet, whose bisected body had been found in the hotel's laundry chute.

This he read before he opened the window.

Bright sunshine assaulted him, and the day was already warm, heading toward the heat of spring. The trees in the hotel's courtyard were in full bloom, filled with robins, and squirrels chased one another from bole to bole.

The green face was there, a stringless balloon, three dimensional, perfectly formed.

His face.

"It doesn't matter if you're dreaming, does it?" the face said. It even had the fussily straight part of his hair, in bright green. "It doesn't matter if you dream of winter or spring, or if robins chirp or squirrels play. If you see me, you will then dream, and they will die." The face smiled. "Is this not so?"

"Yes," Lanois said, "it is so. You have proved it. The murders are real, and you have caused them to happen."

"Don't you want to know where I come from, Lanois? If I am a creature of your own mind, or a monster from the deep of cold space or roasting hell itself, come to feast on you?"

"It doesn't matter. You exist. I'm sure now."

The face laughed again. "Quite so. Next you will dream of the Prefect's wife, who you admire greatly. She is a handsome woman. They will find her legs cut off, and her tongue and hands."

Lanois turned his back on the face.

"Don't you approve?" the green face laughed. It moved in closer to the open window, hovering above the sill, tilting slightly to stare at him in amusement.

"Of course I do," Lanois said, turning back with both of the knives, crossed with immense tension at the blades, in his hands.

He lunged at the green face, and thrust both of the sharp weapons deep into his own throat.

His green throat.

White Lightning

We'd been talking about drinking the white lightning the whole week, but when it finally got to this morning, and we stood in the woods near Pisser Johnson's busted still with a jar of it in our hands, Billy didn't want to do it.

"Could be bad stuff," he said. "Could make us blind, or go crazy. I heard from Jodie McAfrey that Pisser's whiskey drove a man crazy in Dobbinsville a couple years ago. That's why Sheriff Mapes had to finally let the feds get at 'im. I heard the man got himself a gun and shot up the town, killed most of his family, then himself. I heard—"

"You a pussy?" I finally said, sick of his whining.

"I ain't no pussy," he said, getting red in the face. That's about as far as he ever went in anger, getting red in the face. Soon he would look at the ground, then give in to me, just like always.

"Well, only pussies won't drink," I said. "You're tired of stealing your old man's bottle beer, ain't you? Here we got a whole box of jars, just to ourself. Remember the special beating my old man gave me 'time he found me watering his gin after we drank half of it?" I was yelling pretty loud, and Billy was looking at the ground.

"I ain't no pussy," he repeated.

I held the jar out. "Then drink. Chances are, it'll only make us feel real good."

"Or kill us," he said, still looking at the ground.

"You are a pussy," I said.

So I drank from the jar first, closing my eyes, holding my breath, and felt the hot stuff go down my throat, then shoot up into my head.

I opened my eyes, and for a second I saw only stars, and thought I was blind. But then I saw Billy and the woods around him real bright, like they were lit up all around, and knew everything was just fine.

"Holy shit," I said, and Billy looked at me kind of scared, but then I gave a whoop and took another long drink. The world flashed brighter, and I felt warm all through, like the Sun was inside me.

"Even pussies've got to try this!" I laughed, and handed him the jar, and he laughed and took a big swallow.

So we drank the rest of the jar, and took another with us, and hid the rest away in Pisser's storm cellar where we'd found them, where the stupid feds had missed them, and set off back to town to get Billy's old man's gun.

It was two o'clock by the time we got back, which meant Billy's old man was drunk, so we had to sneak around back. We heard Billy's old man raving around in front, yelling at the television, kicking the furniture.

"Let's get it," I said, whispering.

The gun was in the back of the closet shelf in Billy's old man's room. We had to move some stuff aside; we'd had it down to play with a couple of times and knew exactly where everything was and where it had to go back. Billy's old man was a drunk, and drunks know where things should be and are always looking out for people doing them wrong.

The shoe box was there, along with the cardboard box full of clips. We brought them down, took everything out. I hefted the gun, pushed a 9mm clip into it.

"Feels good," I said, smiling.

"Ought to," Billy said. His head looked bigger, brighter, than it was supposed to. Everything he said came out large, like it was written in balloons above his head. "My old man took it from the cop's body they found down by the Housack River last year."

I kept smiling. "Time we put it to some good use. Let's kill your old man."

Billy started to protest, so I said, "Why not?"

"He's my old man."

"So what," I said. "He beat you this week?"

"He beats me every week."

"So I'll kill him."

I stared at him while he got red in the face, stared hard at the ground, then finally said, "Go ahead."

"Take the rest of the clips," I said, and Billy emptied them into his jeans pockets.

We walked down the hall, me in front, smiling, to the living room. Billy's old man was up at the TV, fiddling with the knobs on the back, cursing at the wavy-lined picture on the screen. "Fuckin' shit," he said, and then he said it again. I held the gun up in front of me, two hands, the way they do it on TV. I know I was smiling. I kept walking, the gun in front of me, until he put his head up to get his beer can on top of the TV and saw me.

"What the shit—" he said, but then I pointed the gun up at his head and pulled the trigger, and it kicked me back but it made a hole in his forehead just like I wanted it to. It was a neat round hole, and then blood started to come out of it like a red waterfall, and Billy's old man fell back down behind the television, his hand out trying to catch the bullet already in his head; and it was funny because when he went down he hit the TV, and the picture went clear.

"Fuckin' shit," I said, and then I put a slug into the TV to watch the screen bust, and we walked outside.

It was a low, aluminum-colored cloud day. Warm and cold at the same time. The block was empty.

Then it wasn't. The mailman was coming down the street. Billy looked at me and I smiled, and I said, "You do him," and handed him the gun.

"But—"

I opened the jar and handed it to him. "Drink."

He tilted it up, took a swallow.

"More," I said.

He took another swallow, closed his eyes.

"That's enough," I said.

He opened his eyes, handed the jar back to me.

"Do it," I said.

The mailman was heading for us, rolling his funny cart to an angle stop in front of Mrs. Welsh's gate and flipping through his handful of letters, peeling a couple off and then pushing through the gate to the front of the house.

The dog came at him then, but the mailman was already in position for it, snugged to the right of the walk, and the dog's chain went taut and he couldn't get at the mailman.

I was staring at Billy, seeing him all shiny-bright, watching him looking at the ground, and then finally he said, "Okay."

"Good." I put the jar into the front pocket of my pants, and by then the mailman, whose name was Mr. Masters, and had a big Adam's apple in his long neck that was always bobbing up and down, was coming back down Mrs. Welsh's walk, and Billy walked up to meet him.

"H-Howdy," Billy stammered, holding the gun up.

Masters just looked at the gun, kind of frozen in place, and then the gun began to shake in Billy's hand. Finally Masters smiled a little and said, "Howdy, yourself. Got a new toy for your eleventh birthday, Billy?"

"Sure did," I said, stepping up beside Billy, taking the gun from his hand, aiming it and pulling the trigger.

I hit ole Mr. Masters right in the Adam's apple. Sounded like a bone crack but there was plenty of blood, and Mr. Masters said "Oh, my God," and threw his hands up at his neck, and I popped him one right in the eye.

Billy looked at me, but by then I was pushing through the gate of Mrs. Welsh's house.

The dog was on me, but I didn't care. I kept to the middle of the walk and timed it perfect so that when the dog jumped, just reaching me at the end of its chain, I let the dog's teeth close around the gun barrel and then pulled off two quick shots.

The dog's head sort of went cloudy red and split into two parts. The top part with the eyes still wide fell off and landed on the sidewalk.

I waved for Billy to follow.

I saw Mrs. Welsh staring out at me through the curtains, frozen like a statue, a black phone to her ear. I heard her start screaming, saw her drop the phone and amble away as I mounted the creaky porch steps. "Need fixin' ," I said, and then I laughed because Mrs. Welsh was there at the front door, behind the faded door-window curtains, fumbling with the lock.

I took a quick step and planted my foot on the door, knee-jerking it in.

Mrs. Welsh fell back and started to squawk like a chicken before Sunday dinner. "Get in," I said to Billy, and as he stepped in I shut the door.

Mrs. Welsh was laying on the ground, shaking, saying, "No no!" in a high voice, covering her face with her hands, which was good because I started shooting in a line through the floor at her shaking feet and all the way up her body till I split a good shot between her hands and blood pumped out.

I turned to leave as her hands fell away from her face, but then there came a sound from the back of the house.

"You hear that?" I said. "Sounded like a splash. Come on."

We searched until we heard a sound coming from the kitchen, which we'd just looked in. We turned back, and there on the counter under a window was a fish tank, with a goldfish the size of a small carp in it. The water was rocking, and the fish took a jump and popped through the surface, then fell back in again. Next to the tank was a big cardboard canister of fish food.

"Watch," I said, and when the fish made its next leap I shot it through its middle. I shot the fish-food canister for good measure, then turned and walked out of the kitchen.

Way off in the distance, I heard the whine of a police siren.

"Time to go," I said.

As we passed the living room, there was a faint sound coming from the telephone receiver Mrs. Welsh had dropped. I stopped to pick it up and said into it, laughing, "See you soon!"

We went out through the back of Mrs. Welsh's house. There was a fence, easy to climb, which brought us out onto the next block.

My old man's garage was two blocks down and one over, and we got near it by cutting through backyards. Which was just as well, because by now the police sirens were real close, and one of the cars screamed down the street just behind us as we cut into the hedges bordering a big house.

"Ain't this Jodie McAfrey's place?" I said, and stopped to ring the side bell.

Jodie didn't answer, but his mother did, opening the door a crack. I aimed and missed her face. She turned and ran, so I elbowed my way in.

I aimed careful this time, and gave her two quick ones in the spine. After she went down, I put my foot on her back and planted a final one in her head.

"Ain't you gonna ask me why I shot her in the back?" I said to Billy as we headed for the fence between the McAfrey's yard and my old man's garage. I laughed loud and said, "Because her front was too far away!"

We climbed the fence, passed a line of worked-on cars, and then got to the mouth of the garage. I popped the clip on the gun, tossed it away, and put the gun in Billy's hand. "Put a new clip in, and do it," I said.

Billy got red in the face, looked at the ground real hard, but then he did what I said and went in. I stayed outside, sipping from the jar, but after a minute there was no sound so I ducked inside, moving around the open hood of a Chevy and saw Billy at the door to my old man's dirty office.

"You still a pussy?" I asked.

"He ain't here," Billy said.

I stared at him hard, until he looked at the ground, and then I smiled, taking a key ring off the pegboard next to my old man's desk.

"Give me the gun," I said. I held out my hand, and he put the gun in it.

Everything had gone bright and sharp again. I tilted the jar back up to my mouth and felt the white lightning burn down the back of my throat and jump straight into my head.

"I'll drive," I said, walking outside, tucking the jar back into the front pocket of my pants. The key fit the door of a late model 4x4. "Hey," I said, "it's got a CD player!"

Billy climbed in. I started the truck up, rolled out, and bent to see if there were any CDs in the case under my seat when a police car roared past and then stopped dead.

"Hold on," I said, and hit the floor, pulling left as the police car squealed around.

I headed for the narrow side lot between the last two houses on the block. We had drunk beer here some nights, and there was no way a police cruiser could climb the curb and make it over the mess of broken bottles and rusting old appliances. Sure enough, the cop braked behind us, took a long look, and roared ahead, hoping to cut us off on the next block.

I drove into the woods beside the back of the lot, instead of bouncing out on Barger Street behind it, where the stupid cop was no doubt waiting for us now.

The path in the woods widened just enough for the 4x4 to get through. I leaned over, looking for CDs. I reached under my seat, found a stack of them, and put the first one I found into the machine.

Christian music came on, telling us about how Jesus was all around us and was going to save us.

"Sounds good to me," I said, laughing, so I put my foot on the brake, stopped the 4x4, put the muzzle of the gun to Billy's ear, and pulled off three shots into his head.

His body was still twitching when I pulled it out of the 4x4 and dumped it on the side of the dirt road. I put two more shots into his head, both nostrils, just to make sure.

The white lightning jar was uncomfortable in the front pocket of my pants, so I took it out and emptied it into my throat. I had to close my eyes, but it felt like I still had them wide open. They felt like they were on fire. All of me felt like I was on fire. I threw the empty jar out the window, and it rolled to Billy's head and stopped there.

The 4x4 was bulky at the end of the narrow woods road, but I got it through. I knew they'd be roadblocking on the two-lane ahead, and wanted to avoid it, but when I tried to climb the piney bank across the road, the truck nearly flipped over and I couldn't find a way through.

I put the gun on the seat next to me, and turned toward where the roadblock would be.

As I came around the corner toward it, I thought of the one way out.

The cops were so fucking stupid. There was another narrow access road just to the left of the crossroads they'd set up on, and I barreled down on them and then clutched and cut back to second gear and turned sharp left. They were all ready with their shotguns and they let go at me, but they were fifty yards away and I got behind the trees fast.

It was bumpier in here, but I knew where I was going and pretty sure I'd get there. Behind me, I heard one of the police cruisers try to follow and then hit something.

Just for the hell of it, I rolled down the window, picked up the gun, and shot at a bluejay I saw up in the trees.

Ahead, a doe leaped across the path, and I braked hard, leaped out, and chased it, pulling off shots. I hit it in the flank and it slowed, and I ran up on it and jumped on its back and fired shots into its head all around, even after it was down on the ground. For good measure I hit the skull with the butt of the gun and kicked it in until there wasn't much left that said deer. I noticed a bulge in the belly and saw that it was pregnant, nearly to term. Something was kicking around inside, so I reared back with my foot a couple of times and planted it in until the movement stopped. One last time I kicked, hard, and my boot went into the belly, making a nice hole, and something bloody with a tiny deer's head fell out.

I went back to the 4x4, checked the clip in the gun, saw that there were only five shells left. I reached into my pocket, found it empty, thought of all the clips in Billy's pockets.

"Shit."

I thought of going back, heard cops, on foot, getting close behind. I floored the 4x4, kicking leaves, and drove on.

Pisser Johnson's still was only a half mile off the road, and I was at it in another couple of minutes. The shack holding it hadn't been knocked down by the feds, so I slammed the 4x4 into it.

The jars were in the brush-covered storm cellar ten feet away from the still. I paced out ten long steps due west, hit the sill plate with the toe of my boot, and bent down to brush away the pine needles and dry leaves that covered the door. We'd already busted the lock, so all I had to do was flip off the latch and pull the doors back.

It was rotten-smelling down there, and the steps were slippery. There was enough light to see about halfway down, then things got dark. I felt around with my boot, trying to find the last step, but I calculated wrong, and slipped, and went down forward. I felt the gun pop out of my belt and slide away from me in the dark.

It was then that I heard the first voice outside. I knew it was Sheriff Mapes right away; the old bastard was loud and heavy as a hog, and I heard him crunching away in the leaves and twigs. He halted, and there were other crunchings and what sounded like a motorcycle that roared to a stop.

"Jimmy Connel, you in there?" Mapes roared in his bellowed voice. He didn't sound too happy. "You listen to me, boy!"

I scratched around on the floor in front of me, coming up with a handful of wet.

"You come out of there now, you hear me?"

I heard him, and wanted to let him know. I crawled forward, scuttling around now like a crab, and my hand fell on one of the jar cases. I reached up and in, finding the empty spot where me and Billy'd taken our two jars, and there was another one next to it. I lifted it out, unscrewed it quick, and drank some down. I waited while the fire roared around my eye sockets, and when it subsided, I could suddenly see a little in the damp dark and saw the gun laying about a foot to my right.

"I hear you, fat boy!" I shouted, jumping at the gun and scrambling halfway up the steps, holding the gun out and firing off a couple of shots.

I heard someone shout, "Oh, shit!" and heard Sheriff Mapes say, "Is he hit? Get him the hell out of here."

"Come and get me, Sheriff!" I yelled, and then scrambled down to get the jar and drank off some more.

"I want you to listen to me, Jimmy Connel," Mapes said. "We know what you and your friend did. We found Billy lying back there, all shot up. What I want you to do is toss the gun out of the hole and walk right up to me. I'll get you a lawyer and everything. I don't want nobody else hurt. You hear me?"

Again I scrambled up the steps. I stuck my head up real quick, before they could get a good shot at me, I saw a couple of faces, one of them a deputy, the thin tall one with the hare lip who'd only been with Mapes a year, real close by, almost to the door of the hole, on his belly like a commando. I startled him, aimed, and put a hole right through the top of his skull

He screamed once and then went quiet.

They shot at me, but I was already back down the hole. I went for the jar again. When the white lightning went down, it felt like it was burning me all the way from the inside out to my skin. I threw the jar aside, fumbled back to the box, and got another out.

I heard them arguing outside, and then there was some more crunching in the leaves. I checked the clip in the gun, angling it toward the light, and sure enough there were only two more shells. I snapped the clip back in and waited while they argued.

A lot of them wanted to come in, storm the hole, but Mapes didn't want that. There was more discussion about tear gas. They all decided on that except Mapes, who wanted to try something else first. The rest of them said the hell with it, but Mapes was loud and he got them to shut up.

"Now, Jimmy' Mapes yelled out to me, "I'm going to try one more thing with you. I'm going to try it, and then you're going to throw the gun out of the hole and come out of it with your hands in the clouds."

He didn't wait for me to say anything or shoot, but then I heard Mapes say, "Go ahead" and I heard my old man's voice.

"Jimmy boy, you hear me?"

I said nothing, but unscrewed the jar lid quick and took a long swallow down.

"Jimmy, I know you hear me, so listen to me now. You've done a lot of bad things here today. I want you to stop it now. I think you know what kind of trouble you're in. What if your Momma—"

I couldn't help myself. I started to cry. I clutched the jar hard, and took a hard swallow. "Don't you do that!" I shouted out.

"Now, Jimmy," my old man said, reasonable, "these folks out here want to help you. No one's gonna hurt—"

"Tell them about my Momma!" I shouted out. I took another swallow of white lightning. "Tell 'em how you beat her when I was four till she left! How you beat her again when she came back to get me, so bad she had to crawl away on her hands and knees! Tell them what you told her, that you'd cut my balls off if she came near the house again! Tell 'em what you been doing to me every night for the past eight years, how you been buggering me and making me use my mouth on you, and what you told me you'd do if I ever told anybody!" I was crying big tears and screaming. "Tell 'em!"

There was no sound out there, just silence. I heard myself weeping. Then I stood up tall, right out of the hole, and took a shot at my old man. But he was hiding behind Mapes, and I winged the fat sheriff instead in the shoulder, and heard him curse and saw him go down to one knee.

They fired more shots at me then, and I ducked back down and swallowed the rest of the jar, and waited until the commotion calmed down.

"You listen to me, Jimmy," Mapes said, a little of the bellow out of his voice, 'cause he was breathing hard. I heard him tell someone, "Leave me alone!" before he talked to me again. "Jimmy, you listen to me. You know what we're going to have to do."

I was still crying a little bit, but I made myself stop and yelled good and loud. "That's all right, Sheriff! I'm just going to sit here and drink the rest of this white lightning!" I took the empty jar in my hand and tossed it out of the hole as far as I could in the sheriff's direction, then opened another jar.

No one said anything, and then Mapes said, "Now, Jimmy, you got to realize that Pisser Johnson never did anything with those jars. We checked them with the fed man last week. There's nothing in 'em but good, clean Housack river water."

But I guess I already knew that, so I put the barrel of the gun in my mouth as far up as it would go and pulled off the last shot.

The Glass Man

Johann Pinzer peered into his shaving mirror one morning and discovered that he was now made entirely of glass. A clear crystal visage, perfectly filling the contours of his old face, stared back at him where once a fleshy one had. He could see straight through the back of his head to the wall behind; there were no organs, skull or brain to block his vision.

He gave a little gasp of "Oh!" and turned his head away from the mirror, noticing that the hand he had brought up to his mouth was also made of glass, of a perfectly pliable sort. He could move his fingers quite easily, as easily as always, and yet when he tapped against the porcelain sink with one it gave off the unmistakable ping of crystal.

At least I'm made of fine glass, he thought fleetingly, and then the full horror of his position struck him and he began to tremble. He opened his robe, shaking, and discovered that, yes, his entire body was composed of perfectly clear glass.

The possibility that he was dreaming, must be dreaming, suddenly passed through his mind, but he quickly dismissed it. He knew he would never dream of such a thing, and his dreams were never so vivid.

His predicament was too real. His next thought was that perhaps the whole of humanity had turned to glass, and a perverse thrill ran through him. "Perhaps I am not alone," a part of his mind said. He ran to the bedroom to observe his wife.

She was sleeping on her side, away from him, and he had to turn her over to discover that she was still corporeally formed of flesh and blood. His heart sank. The act of moving his wife awoke her, and she opened her eyes on his new face. "Oh!" she cried, sitting straight up in bed and pushing herself back against the headboard with her legs. "Johann—oh!"

He sought to reassure her that what she was seeing was really him, but it took some moments to calm her. She did not, however, become hysterical, and it was not long before she was peering at him with a new interest and a fascinated curiosity. "Is it you, Johann? Is it really you in—there?" Her eyes, which he had always thought of as doe-like, were even wider than normal; he thought tenderly of their marriage and how that look of innocence always brightened her face.

"It is I, Ilse. What am I to do?"

His wife shook her head. "I don't know, we must think." She slipped out of bed and into her robe. "Come."

She made a small breakfast for them—Johann was amazed to find that his appetite was as full-bodied as ever and that food was easily ingested and was not visible through him after he placed it in his mouth ("I imagine the glass somehow absorbs it," he thought)—and they discussed his plight.

"I suppose," his wife said, "that you must try to continue life as normally as possible. People no doubt will make remarks, but you must try to bear up under your changed condition and go on as if nothing were different. That would seem best."

Johann sat chewing his toast thoughtfully; he was content to listen to Ilse since she had always been the more practical of the two of them and he knew her reasoning was sound. A sudden thought, though, a possible way to avoid the problem, occurred to him.

"What of disguise?" he said.

Ilse shook her head immediately. "Impractical," she said. "Paint would peel or chip, and a mask would turn you into a cartoon figure. I'm afraid you must bear your cross. I will be with you," and she took his hand though she wanted to pull away from its hard, crystalline touch, "and I'm sure there is a reason for this transformation. God has his ways."

Johann took his hand away; for a moment his glass visage turned, looking into a vague distance, then suddenly it revolved back on his spouse. "I wonder if I will be left alone," he said suddenly, a hard brittle edge coming into his voice; he nearly hit the flat of his left hand with his right fist but thought better of it at the last moment, fearing to damage himself. "I somehow suspect not." He looked to his wife. "I will go to work." He stood up, and his wife stood up with him.

He dressed quickly, covering as much of his body as possible, and his wife helped him with his coat and muffler at the door to their apartment. "Good-bye," he said stiffly, turning to leave, but she pulled his face down to hers and kissed his cold, clear mouth. "Remember, I am with you," she whispered, and then she turned away, a tear in her eye. "I will see you tonight."

He arrived at work late, deciding to take an out of the way route which would not expose him to as much scrutiny as his normal, busy path. Even so, a few passersby noticed his downturned, translucent face, and one woman, who he bumped into by mistake, gave a short cry before turning and scurrying away. She gave a glance back at him when she was some distance away, and Johann saw on her face a look, not so much of fear, but of something else: a growing envy, almost. Johann got quickly away from her, and he climbed the back stairs to his office and was able to make it to his desk before anyone noticed him. He feared his anonymity would not last long, however.

He was in the midst of a small stack of papers when his coffee companion, Biber, pushed open the door to his cubicle with a greeting. He drew up short, though, on seeing the glass man before him.

Biber flushed, turning abruptly to leave with a muttered apology for barging into the wrong compartment, wanting only to get away from this transparent thing in clothes, but a movement of the glass man's head, a personal attribute of Johann's that Biber knew well, made him stop. "Johann—?" he said tentatively, bending down to peer into his friend's transmogrified face. "It's you?"

"Yes, it's me," said Pinzer, leaning back with his hands behind his head, fighting desperately to appear normal when he only wanted to bolt and hide in a closet, under a desk, anywhere.

Biber's look of mystification turned to one of astonishment. "What's happened to you! How can you be this way?"

"I don't know," said Johann, and he then went on to explain his discovery on waking that morning. He was glad that Biber had been the first at the office to see him this way; he was a good working companion and would help to smooth the way for him.

"What can you do about it?" Biber asked, and when Johann replied that he did not know, Biber begged him to stay where he was and that he would return in a few minutes with coffee for the two of them. "It might not be good for you to go to the coffee room as you are, yet; let's talk about this."

Biber returned a few moments later, with a stealthy motion, peering behind him and carefully closing the door behind him, and sat down before Johann. "No one else knows," he said. "I have a plan. I've notified two acquaintances of mine, and we should have you set up grandly in no time at all."

Johann sat up in alarm. "What do you mean!"

"Why, we're going to make you famous, of course." Biber was smiling, with an open, convinced look on his face.

"No!" Johann said, "I mean, you can't do that!"

Biber looked puzzled. "What did you plan to do?"

"I had no idea," said Johann; "I was hoping, as Ilse said to me this morning, to merely continue as I always have. It may be difficult for quite a while, but I'm sure that after the furor dies down I'll be able to run my affairs as always."

"I'm afraid there's little chance of that," and there was a trace of pity in his voice. "A few days of your walking around the city, carrying on your business as usual, and you will no doubt become a celebrity. The papers will be after you before you count to ten."

Johann cringed inwardly, and took a nervous taste of coffee; and Biber noted with amazement how the coffee went into his friend's mouth and disappeared, while he could see straight through his friend's lips, face, head to the filing cabinets across the room.

"The only way out I can see for you," Biber continued, "is to either become a total recluse immediately, which is bound to drive you mad; or, to make the most of your celebrity. Shock the public into accepting you as you are and make them love you as something special; otherwise, when they discover you they may consider you a monster. I really don't see any other alternative." He looked with concern at Johann, or rather through him.

Johann fought for control, since the basically reticent nature he possessed shrank in terror at the idea of exposing himself to public scrutiny. "I'm a freak, then?" he said, through clenched teeth, fighting back tears. He vaguely wondered what his tears would look like: would they be droplets of salt or small crystal pellets?—when he had passed water that morning things had been normal enough.

"Johann," Biber said softly, evident worry in his voice; "you must try to be strong. Your friends will not desert you. Just stick by me a little longer."

Johann looked up at his friend; he discovered that his tears, which were flowing readily now, were of salt water after all. "I suppose I must put myself in your hands," he said. "You know I wouldn't be able to handle something of this sort myself."

Biber squeezed Johann's shoulder, noting the rock hardness beneath the glass man's jacket. "Good. I have made plans, and soon—"

Just then there came a discreet knock on the cubicle door. Biber bounced up excitedly. "In fact," he said, smiling down on Johann, "I believe part of the solution to your problem has arrived. He went to the door and opened it a crack, peering out; when he saw who was there he opened the door just enough to allow the visitor to enter and then closed and locked it behind him.

The newcomer—a short, balding fellow with tired eyes who, as Biber introduced him, worked for a research company that, Johann thought wryly, might very well have drained him of most of his thoughts—peered at Johann intensely and then, to Johann's horror, began to poke at him with the end of a pencil. "A robot?" he inquired of Biber, who quickly restrained him and explained that Johann was, indeed, a man and was, indeed, the amazing thing Biber had called him over to see.

"Remarkable," said the man, who once again began poking at Johann with his pencil.

The sum effect of the man's examination of Johann was that it was ascertained that Johann was, indeed, made of glass. "A particularly fine glass," the scientist explained, "comparable to the finest lead crystal. I remain at a loss, though, to explain the otherwise normality of all your bodily functions; as a matter of fact, your body is acting as if it were not made of glass at all; but it most certainly is." The scientist clapped his hands gleefully. "I haven't been so excited since my student days! There is really nothing else for me to tell you, unless you would be willing to hand yourself over to a group of experts." He jotted a note on a piece of paper on Johann's desk, folded it and put it in his shirt pocket. "I think that should be arranged immediately—only a true laboratory could uncover your little secrets, my friend."

"No!" said Johann, who was visibly shaken. "I.. .just could not go through with something like that. But thank you for offering your help." Biber picked up the opportunity to usher the scientist out of the office, promising to get back to him. When they were alone he sought to calm Johann down.

"Don't worry, Johann Pinzer, we won't let you be handed over to those wolves. I just thought it would be best to make sure that your condition was a true one. I think it's time to call in my media friend and begin to make you famous."

Johann recoiled in horror. "Karl, I don't want that! I told you, I wish to remain anonymous. I just want to lead my life as I always have!"

"And I've told you, dear friend, that that is impossible. I think the time is now to make the most you possibly can out of this whole thing." There was a wild spark in Biber's eyes.

Johann began to straighten the things on his desk compulsively. "I'm leaving, Karl. Going away. Please, I don't need your help anymore."

"But Johann, the press has already been alerted! You'll be famous by nightfall!"

A vision rose up before Johan of toy manufacturers, greeting card companies, cereal producers fighting for the use of his name and notoriety to sell their products. Talk show hosts battling for the right to ask him embarrassing questions. He knew, he knew deep down within his soul, that celebrity would kill him.

"I'm going away, Karl," he said, and before his friend could reply he was through the cubicle door and on the back stairs leading from the building.

Johann began to slowly and carefully make his way home, and had nearly made it to his building when he noticed a passerby with a folded copy of the afternoon paper. It was creased so that the headline was exposed, and read: "Man of Glass Seen Roaming City!"

"Already," he thought, and covered his face immediately.

He could not get into his building; as he approached it he became aware of noises on the street in front of it. Peeking around a corner, he discovered that a crowd was forming; they were all staring up at his bedroom window on the third floor. Some held placards reading "The Glass Man Is Here" or "We Love the Glass Man." And among them, in the center of the crush, he noticed Biber, who was standing with another man whose looks Johann instantly disliked. This was obviously Biber's media friend, and Johann could tell by looking at the two of them that some sort of scheme had already been formed for his entrapment.

Johann turned quickly, meaning to make his way to the back of the building, but as he rounded the corner into the alleyway he ran straight into another crowd which was waiting at that entrance. He pulled his hat down low and his collar up, and began to back off, but suddenly there was a shout and Johann looked up to see part of the throng running toward him. He turned and sprinted back into the street.

A cry immediately went up, and Johann glanced behind to see that Biber was charging after him, followed closely by the ad man and a good portion of the mob. "Johann, wait!" Biber shouted after him.

He ran toward the underground railway, knowing that the crowd was gaining on him and that his only hope for escape lay in getting lost in a crowded, busy area. He thought fleetingly of Ilse; he hoped that she was unharmed and that she would not worry too greatly about him—but these thoughts were quickly pushed aside by the immediacy of the mob, which had swelled in number, picking up new membership as it surged along, and which was closing the gap on him. They were shouting slogans, "Hooray for the Glass Man!" and such, though Johann could also detect the inaudible snarl of a pack of hunting dogs. Johann was quickly winded; he could feel his chest heave like a bellows, and wondered briefly if such overexertion would cause him to burst from within and crack into a million tiny fragments. But he continued to run.

He ran down onto the platform and reached a train just as the doors were closing; but as he sighed with relief, ready to handle the few passengers around him who were staring strangely, the doors reopened and the mob burst in. Johann ran from car to car—one man who grabbed at him as he ran past looked startlingly like Biber's scientist friend—Johann saw a predator's look in the man's eyes, the look of the experimenter glaring at his pinned and drugged rat—but Johann pushed the man aside and reached the first car as the train came to a halt in the next station and the doors flew open.

As Johann leaped from the train he looked back to see a solid horde pouring, like hot lava, from every car in the train and flowing towards him. The sight was both electrifying and frightening. Johann ran to the stairs, knocking aside a man and an old woman, and only as he reached the street did he realize what a horrid mistake he had made.

He had reached the center square of the city, only to find a huge assembly there, waiting for him. A "Glass Man" rally had been arranged, and thousands of people were milling about, waiting for the festivities to begin. Johann gasped in horror when his eyes fell on a dais that had been erected with a huge throne in its center, made of crystal. A gilt-lettered sign perched above it, with THE GLASS MAN emblazoned on it in silver.

Johann covered his face with his hands and tried to drift inconspicuously into the crowd—forgetting that his hands were also made of glass and offered no protection whatsoever. He slowly made his way toward an open doorway. He bumped into a vendor, a man selling buttons made of clear plastic that said "Glass Man" on them, and as he instinctively turned away in apology the man cried in recognition. "He's here! He's here!" the man shouted, holding his card of buttons aloft. A panic ensued.

Johann dove for the doorway, turning quickly through the revolving doors of the building closest to him, losing some of his outer clothing to grasping hands. He dashed for the banks of elevators at the end of the corridor, and as he reached them the horde behind him, impatient with entering through the spinning doors and frightfully weighted with pressure from behind, threw itself through the glass windows of the building. The people in front screamed, those behind stepping over them past the jagged shards of window and after Johann. Johann ran into an open elevator, then nearly fainted when he realized that the doors would not close in time to save him.

He quickly removed his clothes, dropping them in a pile at the back of the elevator, and stepped out just as the first of the mob rushed in. He was not noticed, and as a cry of dismay went up behind him he moved slowly and invisibly along the row of elevators to the last open one on the end. A woman with an ecstatic, converted look on her face brushed past him close enough to touch; Johann held his breath as she wandered on. He backed into the elevator and the doors closed in front of him.

He heard another shout of dismay and it occurred to him that the doors might be forced back open, but the car began to rise. Pushing the button for the top floor, he noted that it was fifty flights up: this, then, was one of the highest buildings in the city. He knew he would probably have to climb above that floor since the mob would use both stairs and elevators to follow him up as quickly as it could.

As the doors hissed open on the top floor, Johann stepped from the elevator and noticed that the lights on the rest of the elevator bank indicated that all the cars were nearing his floor. He searched for the emergency stairwell and pulled the door open as the first of the elevators was discharging its passengers. There was a bolt on the door and he locked it behind him.

The click of the bolt sliding into place obviously drew someone's attention, and as Johann made his way up the dimly lit stairs the door was set upon. Johann prayed that it would hold. He ran up the steps three at a time and nearly stumbled; "Is this how I am to end?" he thought, "a pile of glass splinters on a back stairway?"—but he regained his balance and continued upwards. There was a shorter stairway at the end of the climb, ending in a blank concrete wall with a steel ladder bolted to it; and seeing no alternative, with the poundings on the door below still audible, Johann heaved himself up and through the trap door in the ceiling.

He found himself on the roof of the building. The tarred surface crackled under his glass footsteps, and a chill breeze whistled through and around the fissures in his body as he walked to the edge and looked down.

The throng below, as one, raised its myriad heads to him and began to shout wildly. Babies and placards were held aloft, and a huge banner, a full three blocks in length, was unfurled, reading simply, "THE GLASS MAN BELONGS TO ALL." The crowd was immense, swelling into the streets, on top of cars, covering every inch of ground down every street as far as the eye could see. A chant went up as Johann looked down on them; it started as a whisper among the multitude and quickly grew in intensity to a frightful roar: "Glass Man, Glass Man, Glass Man, Glass Man!" Johann looked down at all this and trembled, thinking he must surely break apart under the intensity of that intonation. He began to sway back and forth on the edge of the building.

People, he saw, were now actually scaling, like obscene mountain climbers, the side of the building to get to him. And now, there came a noise from behind, and he twisted his head to see that Ise, his Ilse, was rushing toward him over the rooftop, followed by a group of chanting people. Johann began to cry out to her, but the sound gagged in his throat when he saw the wild look in her eyes and she said, "Johann, go to them!"

Johann gave a silent scream, and twisted away from her. More for support than in greeting, he threw out his arms and the chant instantly ceased. There were a huge, echoing hush.

Johann stood suspended between sky and roof, his arms thrust out before him, and in that picture-frame of a moment he cried out, above all of them.

"I am not made of glass!"

At that instant, his arms out before him, he saw that, indeed, he was not made of glass. His arms were covered with smooth flesh, his hands

of the same, their nails and cuticles plainly, lucidly, visible. A gasp of joy escaped his throat as he looked down at his body to discover that it was a plain and naked flesh of which he was composed.

"I am not made of glass!" he screamed again.

There was a moment of utter silence, and then the hush broke below, and a thousand voices, a million, spoke as one, beginning once more to chant in rhythmic cadence, "Glass Man, Glass Man, Glass Man, GLASS MAN!" Johann's own cries were drowned in the midst of the roar. The climbers, Johann saw, were once again advancing toward him like spiders up the side of the building, and, behind him, Ilse and the others were coming toward him, arms outstretched; Ilse was once more pleading, "Johann, my glass man, go to them!"

The trembling hands that Johann brought to his face, he saw with sudden and absolute horror, were once more made of clear glass. He turned to Ise and pleaded, "What is happening?"

"Johann, don't you see?" she said, her hands, and the hands of those around her reaching out to his crystal body, "You are the Glass Man!"

"NO! I AM NOT—"

His scream was lost, a molecule of water in a sea of intonation: "GLASS MAN! GLASS MAN!" Their hands were on him then, and he was lifted high overhead, and passed over the edge of the roof and down the side of the building.

In the midst of the madness around him Johann had a moment of lucid, beautiful vision: his fingers, dangling before his eyes in the bright lights of the city square, gave off the sharp rainbow colors of a prism.

And then his hand was yanked away, and he saw below, waiting hungrily to meet him, the silent salute of a million hammers held aloft.

Violets

The air was wet with perfume. I saw Lonnigan ahead of me, as if through a fog, though there was no mist in the greenhouse, only the thick, damp smell of flowers. "Lonnigan!" I said hoarsely, the words falling leaden to the ground as they left my mouth. I had difficulty in breathing—as though my lungs were coated with pleuritic fluid. "Lonnigan—don't go on ahead without me!"

But Lonnigan, I knew, was already possessed; he merely waved a hand at my words without turning around, and plunged ahead into the deeper recesses of the glass room.

Flowers, violets, nearly to the glass-paned ceiling. They were thick as the air around me, their stalks slicked bright green with moisture, their petals curling stiffly from deep purple buds. Through the fog my mind had become I thought they turned to watch me as I moved—and they regarded me with nothing short of malevolence.

Ahead of me, Lonnigan was disappearing into the thicker recesses of the greenhouse, where a veritable canopy of green thickened against the far wall like a miniature forest, blotting out the sun

"Lonnigan—!"

Then I heard him scream.

It was not a natural sound. It was more like the sound a distressed animal, faced with an unknown assailant, might utter. There was a thick grunt of surprise, and then a strangling cry that rose quickly and then, just as quickly, died.

I could not see Lonnigan ahead of me.

And then I did a cowardly thing—the most cowardly of my life.

I turned, even as the last dull sound of Lonnigan's distress ahead of me sounded, and, even as the end of that gargling cry sounded, I made my way in a panic out of the greenhouse.

Coughing for air, pushing aside thick sapped vines that appeared to block my exit, striving not to lose consciousness, I pushed my way out of that wicked room and toward clear air and sunlight.

And even as I did, the most curious thing happened, because momentarily, even as I reached the metal door, which was slick with moisture, the sky seemed to go black over my head, blotting out the glass panes of the roof completely, and as I looked down at something which seemed to stay my hand on the door, I saw something which had been holding me, something green and thin and strong and shaped very much like a human hand, pull back away from my arm, with a motion very much like the pulling of taffy.

And then the door was open, and I was in the world again.

But not free of that place. There was an investigation, of course, and the policeman who came insisted that I come with him. This was the following day, for I had fallen into a deep sleep from which I didn't wake until late into the night. While asleep strange dreams had assaulted me, with pale purple, delicate flowers caressing me as a lover's fingers might; and, just before waking, there was another caress, this one harsher and more lasting, which made me cry out and awaken.

A Detective Molson had taken my call, just before he was slated to go off duty; and, once I had convinced him that I was not a crank, and that, indeed, a man was missing, he made me promise to meet him at the glass house in the morning and then hung up.

The day was cloudier than the previous one had been. For some reason this made the greenhouse, perched on its grassy hill, less ominous-looking. Perhaps the presence of the policeman's car parked next to it also added to its ordinariness.

Molson, on seeing me approach by foot, got out of his car and waited for me. He proved to be a tall, angular man with a sallow face and thinning, blond-gray hair: he looked as though he had gotten little sleep the previous night, or any night for quite some time.

I thought he would shake my hand but he didn't. I knew he was studying me with his deep-set, tired eyes.

"You say you work just down the hill?" He flicked a finger in the direction of the Angerton Institute, the low, wide, rectangular brick building that, despite its squatness, and its location in a valley, managed to dominate the landscape.

"Yes, I do," I answered noncommittally.

His eyes rested laconically on the Institute.

"Grow flowers there, do you?"

"Study them, actually. It's an Agronomical Research Center. We make organic plant hybrids and such."

His tired eyes showed mild interest.

"Like cloning carrots?"

I looked for a flicker of smile on his pale face but found none.

"No, detective," I explained, "we don't clone anything. We haven't even bothered to try. Actually, we're dedicated to cross breeding within the various species of violets. There are five hundred of them, you know—species, that is—and we've been combining the better traits of the hardier varieties and seeking to—"

His grunt of disinterest cut me off, and now he indicated the greenhouse with a slight movement of his head.

"So the conservatory here is full of violets?"

"Yes."

"Let's have a look, then."

He made a movement toward the metal door, and I froze.

With his hand on the door he turned to regard me, and again I saw a flicker of interest on his features.

"You coming, Mr..." He checked his notebook: "...Corman?"

''I..."

For a moment I couldn't move, thinking of that slim green hand on my arm, but then the immediate image of the policeman, his curiosity aroused, supplanted it and I nodded.

"Of course."

I entered behind him, and moved aside as he insisted on closing the door behind me.

"Wouldn't want to let the hot air out, would we?" he said, mildly.

"I suppose not."

It was stifling in the glass house—worse than it had been the day before. And now a sickly-sweet odor topped the other aromas of fecundity—an odor that hadn't been present yesterday.

Molson had detected it, too.

"Smells like human death, Mr. Corman," he said, moving off toward the tangle of flowers in the back of the building.

Hands trembling, I followed.

But we found nothing. There was not the slightest trace of Lonnigan—not his body, not his clothing or his watch. I stood by while Detective Molson acted like a policeman, poking here and there and looking for whatever he expected to find, but in the end Molson stood up slowly, turned his wan, unreadable face to me and said, "Are you sure you saw Lonnigan disappear in here, Mr. Corman?"

"Yes, I did," I said.

"Did you actually see him come to bodily harm?"

"No, I didn't. As I told you on the phone last night, I heard him scream—"

"You heard him scream? That's all? You saw no body, no weapon, no assailant?"

"As I told you—"

"Mr. Corman, I was very tired last night. I worked two shifts back to back, and then I went home to an empty apartment because my wife left me three weeks ago. All I remember you telling me last night was that you were sure that this man..." he consulted his notebook, "...Lonnigan, is dead."

There was annoyance in his tired eyes now.

"Can you tell me for sure that this fellow is dead, Mr. Corman?"

"I suppose not," I said.

He closed his notebook, and, shaking his head and stepping around me, moved toward the door at the far end of the building.

"There's really nothing else I can do now, Mr. Corman," he said, not turning around to speak to me. He opened the door, brushing aside the tangle of stems that seemed to have grown up suddenly near the knob, and walked outside.

He called back, "Telephone me in forty eight hours if he doesn't show up, and we'll file a missing persons report."

Then, yawning once, he folded his lanky body into his car and drove away.

I stood for a moment in the middle of the hothouse, shaking with fear, watching that small tangle of stems which Detective Molson had pushed aside twist and turn upon itself, before I bolted for the door and into the comforting gray air outside.

"Tell me this again?" Marsha Reed said sternly. Compared to Administrator Reed, my interview with Detective Molson had been a pleasure.

Behind her neat wide desk, she sat prim and straight, her white lab coat, always worn, as starched and pressed as if she had put it on just before my knock on her office door. She was a small woman who nevertheless loomed large, and her dark brown eyes, magnified behind overlarge glasses, were as filled with quiet fire as Molson's had been with tiredness.

I repeated to her what had happened with Lonnigan, and with the policeman.

"And this Detective Molson was allowed into the nursery, without my permission?" Reed said.

I noticed that her small hands, with their small fingers and short-trimmed nails, had not moved an inch from their place on her blotter, where they rested folded in front of her.

"This happened yesterday, after hours. And I thought it best to call the police last night. As you know, I don't have your home phone number. .

There was a tinge of red on her cheeks.

"Mr. Corman, what you did was inexcusable. And I won't excuse it. At the next board meeting, which is tomorrow, I will recommend that you be either suspended or expelled from Angerton Institute."

She waited for my reaction, and I gave none, except to say, holding my temper, "This has been coming for a long time. Now you have your excuse."

Now her cheeks grew red with anger, and she unclasped her hands and pounded her small fists on the blotter.

"Get out!"

"Gladly," I said. "But before I go, I want it on the record that I turned down your advances toward me only because I didn't think it was proper to become involved with you in the workplace. It wasn't that I wasn't attracted to you—"

"Out!" she repeated, nearly choking on the word, and it gave me secret pleasure to see the redness deepen on her cheeks, and in the hollow of her throat.

In the lab, Eagleton and Smyth were slightly more sympathetic to my plight.

"Cow," Smyth muttered, under her breath. She was cow-like herself, large and slow, but not without somber wit. She was a wonderful darts player, and knew how to drink a pint.

Eagleton laughed his high, cackling laugh. But his features, even paler and thinner than detective Molson's, regained their solemnity.

"What do you really think happened to old Lonnie-pooh?" he said, referring to Lonnigan, with whom he had never gotten along.

"I don't know..." I said. "I don't want to know."

"He was doing rotten work," Smyth said curtly, without looking up from her microscope. "Weird and rotten."

"He was definitely using his grant work for other things rather than what it was apportioned for," Eagleton said. His pale head nodded in satisfaction. "I told him, but of course he screamed at me to keep to myself."

"He was a cow, too," Smyth said.

Between them, I said, quietly. "I thought I saw the violets in the greenhouse move."

Eagleton snorted, and for a moment Smyth showed no reaction, but then she looked up from her eyepiece to stare at me.

"What?"

"I said, I thought I saw the violets in Lonnigan's greenhouse move"

"As in, wiggle?" Smyth said, and I knew she was ready to either laugh or scoff.

"Skip it, then."

"No," Smyth said, suddenly serious. "Tell me."

"Did they dance, Corman?" Eagleton laughed. "A little conga line, perhaps?"

"Shut up, James," Smyth said, continuing to regard me. To me she said, "Tell me what you saw."

"I saw.. .what I thought was a hand. A green hand. Lonnigan brought me out there to show me something, and said that no matter what happened I should stick with him. He was acting very strangely. Also, I had a premonition that something terrible was going to happen, and I felt he wanted to pull me into it with him. He was not himself at all. You know the way he was, nearly always arrogant and rude. He wasn't like that at all yesterday evening. He pulled me from my bench, nearly pleading with me to come with him."

"What did he say? Exactly?" I was a bit nervous at the seriousness of Smyth's face.

"Not. . . much at all. He merely said I had to come into the violet room with him. He was very insistent."

"And when you got out to the greenhouse?"

Eagleton laughed. "That was when the dance began, of course!" Ignoring Eagleton, Smyth kept her eyes on me.

"When we got to the greenhouse he rushed in ahead of me, and then started moving deeper into the room. A... shadow seemed to fall, though it was still before twilight. And then he disappeared into the violets at the far end of the nursery, and I heard him scream, and when I turned to run it got very dark. And as I reached for the doorknob I thought a hand held me back. A green hand."

Smyth stared at me for a further moment, then nodded and turned suddenly back to her microscope.

"Interesting," she said.

"Is that all you have to say?"

She ignored me, and Eagleton started tittering then.

As I turned to leave Smyth said after me, "Don't worry about Administrator Reed. I've got a few things on her that will keep her quiet."

But I was not thinking about Marsha Reed as I left, but about that green hand, and those twisting vines.

Detective Molson was back the following day, with two blowzy looking uniformed men with shovels. After consulting with Administrator Reed, the three policemen went into the greenhouse with the Administrator in tow. Through the small window in my office I could see her shouting at them, and I watched as they disappeared into the glass building.

They were out there a long time, but finally Marsha Reed emerged, followed by Detective Molson and the two lumbering, unhappy-looking uniformed cops behind him. The two blowzy fellows were dirt-stained and sweaty, and I saw Molson wave them back to their car while the detective followed Administrator Reed, who looked quite angry, back down toward our building.

Inside, I heard the administrator stop outside my door, shout, "Here it is!" and march off.

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in," I said, unenthusiastically.

Detective Molson, as expected, entered, closing the door behind him. He looked slightly better rested than the day before.

"Mind if I ask a few more questions, Mr. Corman?" he said. He did not make a move to sit down in the chair opposite my desk, but rather leaned against the closed door, perhaps to prevent my flight.

"I thought you wanted me to ring you up in forty-eight hours if Ralph Lonnigan didn't show up?" I said.

He shrugged, and pulled a cigarette pack from his coat pocket. He shook one out into his hand and lit it without asking my permission.

Around cigarette smoke he said, "I thought a bit on what you said, and decided there was more to it than I thought."

"Oh?"

He nodded. "For instance, I'm very curious as to why you waited so long to call the police." He pulled his notebook out and flipped to the page he wanted. "You told me yesterday that. . . you fell asleep on getting home, and then called when you woke up." He cocked an eyebrow at me. "Is that correct?"

"Yes."

He paused to blow smoke. "I find it odd that you fell asleep after such a fright. How do you account for that?"

I thought about this, and realized I had no answer that would make him happy.

"I. . . can't account for it. Perhaps I was in shock."

"In shock? A man in shock would not be able to call the police at all."

"I was upset."

"So upset that you slept?"

"Look..."

Suddenly I realized that I had been burdened with an overwhelming sense of tiredness after the touch of that violet stem, which I had taken for a slim hand...

"I don't know what to say."

Molson harrumphed.

"I mean," I continued, "That's what happened, but I don't know how to account for it to you."

Suddenly he shrugged, flipping a page of the notebook.

"Be that as it may, Mr. Corman, could you tell me a bit more about what Mr. Lonnigan was doing out in the greenhouse with you to begin with?"

"He asked me to come out to see something with him. Something he was working on."

"And that was...?"

"I don't know."

Now his un-tired eyes became hard as stones.

"Do I have this right, Mr. Corman—you say Mr. Lonnigan asked you to come out to the greenhouse with him but he didn't say why?"

"He was very secretive about his work, Detective Molson."

"Can you tell me what Mr. Lonnigan was working on at this time?"

"In general terms I can."

"In general terms, then."

I was aware of his scrutiny, which was meant to unnerve me. To some extent, it did, but I plowed on.

"He was working on genetic mutations in the perennial sweet violet. It is also known as V. odorata. It's a species of violet with stemless flowers—in other words, the flowers grow on stems separate from the leaves."

I turned to rummage in the wreckage of my desk, producing a copy of Palmer and Fowler's Fieldbook of Natural History. Flipping through the pages, I stopped at the appropriate page.

"Here," I said, as Molson bent down to look at the flower my finger pointed to. "That's what it looks like. Notice how the petals have veins, and the bottom is possessed of a spur."

Molson straightened.

"I fail to see—"

For some reason, my patience had worn thin. I nearly blurted out the first thing that came to my head at that point—which would only have gotten me in trouble—but instead I said, "The point is, detective, that Ralph Lonnigan was supposed to be working on making a hardier, more productive version of V. odorata, whose oils of essence is used to manufacture perfume. Two million of V. odorata yield scarcely a pound of oil. But Lonnigan was doing something else with his violets."

"And what was that?"

"I have no idea."

Molson closed his notebook with a snap.

"I don't mind telling you, Mr. Corman, that I don't believe you. And I can be a very persistent lad when I want to be."

Something about his continued prodding, his developed meanness, made me snap.

"I know why you don't like me, detective. It's because I saw you vulnerable yesterday. You told me your wife left you and now you resent me because you appeared weak. Well, I don't care. I've got my own problems, detective, and I have little enough time to think about yours."

His eyes became even harder.

"I'll be back, Mr. Corman," he said, nodding at me. "You can count on that. And I'll be back again and again, until I break this thing or you." "Fine," I said, suddenly only wanting him to leave.

I turned back to my desk, and in a few moments when I looked back, the door to my cubicle was still open, but Molson was gone.

I stayed late that day, watching twilight turn to darkness as I straightened my affairs on my desk, and somewhere after the moon rose I saw a large figure, who I recognized as Abigail Smyth, leave the building to the right of my window and make her ponderous way up the hill. I saw her silhouetted against the red rising moon for a moment, and then she walked to the entrance of the nursery and went in.

I watched her silhouette make its way through the glass panels, and then, as she moved deeper into the greenhouse, she was hidden by a wall of leaves.

I went home; and it was only as I began to drift off to sleep that I realized that the spot where I had seen Smyth vanish into the tangle was a spot that had been cleared of flowers the week before. I knew because it had been one of my own projects that had been there, and I knew that the panels of glass on that side were now clear straight to the other side of the building.

I rose out of the dreams, veined, stemless flowers holding me in their grip, to the sound of loud knocking on the door to my flat.

"Just a minute!" I called, rising and throwing on a robe.

Even as I reached the door, sleep was yet leaving me; but my dreams and slumber left me altogether as I opened the door to find Detective Molson, stern-faced and with his two beefy gravediggers, standing at my threshold.

"Detective—"

"Mr. Corman, I'm going to have to insist that you come with me." "Of course," I said. "But what—"

"Just get dressed, please."

I nodded and pulled myself into clothes, while the two uniformed policemen moved into the flat, fingering my things. One of them tittered over a statuette my mother had given me, a reproduction of Rodin's "Thinker." "Look a' this, Willie!" he said, holding it up for his friend's scrutiny. "It's a fellah on a toilet bowl! And wiffout anythin' to read!"

Willie guffawed, until a cross look from Molson, still in the doorway, made Willie's friend set the statue down again.

We left, and I was escorted to Molson's car, where I was made to sit between the two uniformed policemen in the back.

"Would you mind telling me what this is about?" I asked.

"When we get there, Mr. Corman."

Willie grinned at me, and I noticed that his bottom teeth were horribly crooked.

"Soon enough, mate," he said.

I closed my eyes as Willie and his friend began a seemingly endless conversation about who had bet on what horse the weekend before, and what horse was bound to win this coming weekend.

"Of course, I may not be able to go this weekend, Jack, being with my mum sick and all."

His friend concurred.

"Well, the following weekend, then."

"Right."

I opened my eyes as we topped the hill to the greenhouse. The car braked to a stop by the door, and Detective Molson said, "Out, please, Mr. Corman."

Both Eagleton and Marsha Reed were waiting for us by the door.

Administrator Reed had a pinched, nearly hysterical look on her face, and Eagleton's face was unreadable, since he was staring down at his shoes.

When we had all arranged ourselves by the door to the nursery, Molson said, "Would you please tell me again, Mr. Eagleton, what you told me earlier this morning?"

Eagleton continued to study his shoes.

"Only," he said quietly, "That I saw Mr. Corman working late last night."

"And what time was that?"

"I left at seven-fifteen. I noticed his light on at that time, and caught a glimpse of him at his desk as I walked to the parking area."

"And was Ms. Abigail Smyth still here when you left?"

"Yes, she was. She said she had work to catch up on."

"Thank you, Mr. Eagleton."

Eagleton shrugged, unwilling to raise his eyes.

"And Administrator Reed, would you tell me what time you left?"

"Five o'clock, detective."

"And Mr. Eagleton, was Administrator Reed's car gone when you entered the parking area at seven-fifteen?"

"Yes it was."

"Thank you."

Again, Eagleton shrugged.

I felt all eyes on me, and waited.

"Mr. Corman," Molson said, with barely disguised animosity, "what time did you leave?"

"It was approximately eight o'clock."

"And did you see Ms. Abigail Smyth before you left?"

I hesitated, then said, "Yes. I saw her walk up the hill from the administration building and enter the greenhouse."

"How were you able to see that?"

"The moon was just rising. I saw her silhouetted against it."

"Administrator Reed," Detective Molson said, turning to Marsha, "did Ms. Smyth report for work this morning?"

"She did not. She normally comes in early, at seven-thirty or so."

"And did you check with her boarding house when she didn't show up?"

"I did. And I was told that she never came home last evening."

Again Molson addressed me.

"You saw Ms. Smyth enter the greenhouse, Mr. Corman?"

"Yes."

"Did you see her leave the greenhouse?"

"No. I went home before she came out."

I registered the fury in Molson's eyes a scant second before the back of his hand hit me across the mouth.

"I don't like what you're telling me, Mr. Corman. I think you've murdered two people, and we're going to find them."

Blood flowed, and as the pain of the blow spread through me, my eyes observed shock on Marsha Reed's face. Even the uniformed policemen looked momentarily shocked, before Willie guffawed.

"Get your shovels," Molson said to the two officers, who went to the boot of Molson's car; to Administrator Reed and Eagleton he said, "You don't have to come in there with us."

Administrator Reed said, "I think we should. In fact, I insist."

It was Molson's turn to shrug. "If you insist, Administrator Reed. But I must warn you that what we find in there might be quite gruesome."

In a near-whisper, Eagleton said to his shoes, "I'll stay outside, if you don't mind."

Impatiently, Administrator Reed said, "All right, Eagleton. But don't go away. We may need you again."

Willie and Jack stood ready with their shovels, and Detective Molson said, "Let's go in, then."

The metal door was opened, letting out the hot, sickly sweet odor of perfumed flowers and decay. Willie and Jack went in first, with myself between the two officers and Molson behind me. Administrator Reed brought up the rear.

"Try anything in here, Corman," Detective Molson whispered close by my ear, "and I'll tear you to pieces myself. Better yet, I'll let the two lads at you."

Ahead of us, Willie and Jack had reached the thickets of vines about halfway through the building.

"Same place as last time, guy?" Willie said.

"This is strange," Marsha Reed said behind us. She sounded genuinely puzzled. "Everything in here seems to have been rearranged."

I glanced back and saw her studying the place where my former experiments had been.

"All of this was clear—"

It grew very dark, and things happened very fast.

First, there were hands on me, but not human ones. The sky overhead blotted out as vines crawled up and overhead, making an artificial jungle of green vines. In the midst of the vines I saw two shapes, one of them vaguely that of Abigail Smyth, only now she was green and her limbs flowed like liquid. Things closed in around us. I heard Marsha Reed cry out, and then Detective Molson was no longer standing close behind me but was overhead, being both lifted and absorbed by a carpet of purple violets which covered him simultaneously from head to foot. In front, both Jack and Willie lifted their shovels but the weapons were pulled from their grips as flowers covered them also. They disappeared into the thicket before us in a gargle of swallowed cries.

I heard my own screams, and felt the floor pull away, but it was not an unpleasant sensation. As through cotton wool, I heard glass breaking and Eagleton's own distant call for help.

And then, for a while, there was silence—until I felt Lonnigan' s slim hand on my own, which was a beautiful limb to behold.

The Quiet Ones

The first case was reported to the police around June 28^th. A man, who was later found to be intoxicated, swore that a newspaper vendor who had been standing not ten feet in front of him was suddenly yanked into nowhere. The man who claimed to have seen this was not that intoxicated though, so two rookie policemen were sent to investigate. They found nothing.

The next case occurred outside the city limits, in a nearby suburb. A young girl ran in screaming to her mother, saying that she had been playing jacks with a friend on the sidewalk, when one of the slabs of concrete suddenly lifted like a trap door and a hand snaked out, grabbing her companion and pulling her underneath.

There was a lot more attention paid to this report, since what the police ended up with was a missing child case; the surrounding sixty miles were combed over the next weeks but nothing of the child turned up. It reached the point that even her playmate's story was taken into account and a half-block of sidewalk churned up; but all that was found here was, predictably, dirt and worms. The playmate stuck to her story and was eventually taken to a child psychiatrist.

The first week of July brought, as I recall, three more cases, and now one of the yellow newspapers started to pick up on the "Sidewalk Snatcher" angle—though it was buried in the back of the paper. The one link in all these occurrences was that one or more witnesses swore that a person was literally stolen off the sidewalk by something reaching up out of holes which appeared and then disappeared again.

When a politician running for re-election disappeared in front of twenty witnesses, including two newspaper people and a TV cameraman, things began to heat up. The cameraman was able to shoot two very controversial feet of film which may or may not have shown the congressman being pulled downward into the ground; there were a lot of milling bodies in the way. But there was no doubt that he was there from the waist up in front of the camera one second, and then not there the next. The Associated Press ran a still photo produced from the footage; UPI refused to pick up the story. Most papers ran the AP picture, and though a hundred different conspiracy theories were set forth, at the bottom line they all came to the conclusion that there was absolutely no possible criminal link among the twenty witnesses, and that something out of the ordinary had happened.

The following week, after the Fourth of July weekend, there were over a hundred incidents.

Now something had to be done about it. The sheer weight of eyewitnesses (and the concurrent political clout they could command) forced the city government to declare war on the "Sidewalk Snatcher" and a special task force was set up. A high police official was named head of the operation, and was answerable directly to the mayor.

He disappeared off the sidewalk the following day.

The sidewalks were becoming much cleaner of pedestrian traffic these days, with most people either walking down the center of the street or staying in as much as possible: one man had gained a bit of instant celebrity by walking the streets in a pair of overlarge, floppy clown shoes—his smiling picture was seen in many papers the following days—but the levity disappeared when he too was whisked off the concrete, floppy footwear and all: he had been walking across a particularly wide walkway at the time, it was noted.

The mayor himself barely escaped kidnap on his way to a press conference following the latest snatch. On stepping out of his limousine and placing his foot on the sidewalk, the mayor suddenly found his foot in what he later described as a "bear trap of vise-like grip"—but he instantly jumped backward, his two aides helping him, and he escaped. Nothing was seen of the perpetrator, and when the section of walkway from which the attack came was pulled up, nothing was found underneath that was out of the ordinary.

Though the mayor was lucky that day, 450 or so others weren't.

It was just at this time that I returned to the city, after a long and deserved stay in the mountains, where I had been blissfully unaware of the events transpiring by now all over the country. I hadn't, in fact, seen a newspaper in three weeks, and I must admit I greeted the news of these disappearances as something of a joke.

I quickly revised that impression.

Just off the bus in front of my apartment, my folded newspaper under my arm, I witnessed the man who disembarked before me get sucked underground. The buses and city streets were nearly empty these days and only he and I had gotten off; the bus driver averted his eyes, closed the door behind me, and sped off.

I must admit I was alarmed. I tried to pry up the block of sidewalk by the curb where the man had vanished, but was unable to budge it. As I was bent over, I felt a firm tug beside me and looked over to see the next section of sidewalk raised up like a door and the hint of a hand on my trouser leg. With a cry of alarm I pulled away and the sidewalk slammed back down into place.

Needless to say, I no longer considered these events a joke.

But I was fascinated. When I returned home, by a circular route to the back of the building and employing a curious method of walking that resembled a game of hop-scotch coupled with a long-jumper's finest moves, I turned on the television to discover that a total of six thousand people had disappeared that day across the country. There were now cases being reported from all over the world—even from behind the Iron Curtain, which had just a few days before scoffed at the whole phenomenon as another Western figment of the imagination, akin to flying saucers and the Soviet threat of aggression.

The following day I spent mostly indoors in front of two windows—one the real window in the front of my apartment, overlooking the absolutely empty streets below, and the other the window of the television which told me that martial law had been declared in this and other large metropolises, and that, despite denials by military officials, there were unconfirmed reports that as many as four hundred and fifty military personnel and National Guardsmen had been swept from the face of the earth while on patrol. The mayor came on during all of this and tried to calm everyone down, but it was obvious that he didn't believe a word he was saying and so kept his speech short.

I ventured out only once that day, to buy groceries to stock my vacation-depleted larder. Even then I barely made it back, with my trouser cuffs a bit frayed from being pulled at from below. One never thinks about the essentialness of sidewalks—but after trying to avoid using them I realized just how dependent the city dweller is on them.

The next morning, one of the television stations went off the air, announcing that there were not enough personnel left to manage it; that evening, another station followed.

The streets were quietly deserted now. I made one more trip to the grocery, amazed that more looting had not gone on. Though the shelves were nearly stripped clean, it seemed to have been done in an orderly fashion. The front doors had been left open, and no windows were broken. The only shops along the way that seemed to have suffered any sort of damage were the jewelry stores, though I couldn't imagine why, since a goodly number of the thieves must have found their fate just outside the doors as piles of gems lay scattered about after being thrown into the air as the felons were pulled under.

Making it back to my apartment this time proved extremely difficult, and I only managed it by employing on my feet a pair of large and uncomfortable snow shoes from a sporting goods store which I was obliged to jump into just after leaving the grocery. It was here that I met a compatriot—an extremely frightened girl of nineteen who seemed so glad to see me that she threw her arms about me; after these preliminaries I learned that she had seen both of her parents disappear just outside the door of this store two days previously, and she had been in a sort of shock since, thinking herself the only person left alive in the city.

It was decided that she should accompany me back to my apartment, an arrangement which she was at first reluctant to go along with not because of any mistrust of me but because she was terrified of venturing outside. When I came up with my snow shoe plan, however, she warmed to the subject, not having eaten in forty-eight hours, and she even improved on the scheme by putting on herself a pair of cross-country skis. We double-lashed this gear to our feet and made our way homeward.

Even still we barely made it. Sections of concrete were popping up like jack-in-the-box covers all over the place. They had an almost comically obsessive quality about them which thoroughly frightened the two of us, as if they were impelled to carry us below ground at all costs. And try as I might, I could not peer into any of the momentary openings to discern what was doing all this.

We did manage to arrive at my apartment safely, though one of Julie's skis was wrenched loose as she made a dash from the road to the front door of the building: during one skip, an opening appeared and something firm and strong grabbed her leg. It was only by making a heroic (if funny-looking, considering that I was wearing snow shoes) leap onto this concrete door, forcing whatever it was (I thought I caught a glimpse of what resembled a human arm) to let go and pull back underground, that she was able to free herself, the ski coming off in the process. With one terrified leap, she fell into the doorway of the apartment building, and I followed none too gracefully behind.

One television station of importance was still left in operation, and it was here, huddled before the blue-gray lens with cans of cold soup and blankets wrapped around us (the heat and all other normal services of course had disappeared faster than anything else) that I learned that my worst fears had been realized. Up until this time I had nurtured some vague hope of making it back to the countryside I had so recently quitted, planning now to bring Julie along with me. But a jiggly camera bearing film that had been shot outside the city showed scenes even more horrible than those we had witnessed here, entire roads arching up at the center and dumping their contents—people, cars, whatever else had been moved there off the sparse sidewalks—off to either side and underground, spilling over and down below each curb, so now even the streets were not safe. The pun didn't occur to me at the time, but now, at last, this phrase was literally true.

That night Julie and I spent huddled together not so much for warmth as for the reassurance that there was still another human being within reaching distance; while outside and all around us the sounds of a city, and a world, slowly emptying itself underground went on, with huge groanings and slidings and horrid burpings, like the bowel movements of giant beasts. I remember the sound of the street in front of my building buckling as I fell off to sleep.

When I awoke Julie was gone. There was a note, taped to the television, stating that she could not live like a hunted animal and that the loss of her parents had been too much of a blow. I ran to the window to see, on the ravaged street below, her pair of cross country skis; I felt a moment of anger at her decision to abandon hope, but quickly recovered, resolving that I would survive at all costs.

Even the television had degenerated into madness now. The one operable station had apparently been abandoned by all of its normal staff, and had been commandeered by a bearded prophet of doom utilizing, of all things, a ventriloquist's dummy. I had seen this character in the park at one time or another; first he would spout his message of coming destruction and then the dummy, dressed in frayed evening dress, would echo the same words in a falsetto voice. So this is what was left of the world—but that wasn't entirely accurate, since as I was about to turn him off he abruptly announced that he would now go to his salvation, and ran shrieking off camera, apparently to meet his fate outside the studio. Fading away in the distance, the dummy's voice was crying, "Be saved! Be saved!"

The television was now completely useless in all bands, exhibiting either station call letters or an empty stage set. My multi-band radio, little more than a toy actually, proved of little help either; the lone station I managed to pull in, from somewhere in Europe, died an hour after I located it with the eerie words reminiscent of the famed "War of the Worlds" broadcast initiated by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre in 1938: "Is anyone there? Is.. .anyone?" The voice sounded English, and frightened. I wished I could have answered it. A little after nine that night it faded and could not be recaptured.

For three days I stayed in my apartment, alternately trying the television and radio for some signs of life, spending the remainder of my time at my window with a pair of binoculars. Aside from a few airborne birds I saw no signs of life. Always having been something of a loner, I at first thought that my time had finally come and that I would now be afforded the solitude I had always craved; however, that hope quickly vanished with the prospect looming that I would run out of food, a prospect which was now imminent. I surveyed the pathways outside and was chagrined to find that there was little chance of my traversing them in the same fashion I had before: large sections of road and sidewalk were alternately moving up and down, like predatory mouths, and I knew that those openings were large enough to swallow a human being whole, snowshoes and all.

I resolved to stay on as long as possible, stretching my food in the hope of some lessening of activity outside; but, when my water suddenly dried up in the tap in the middle of my fourth day of self-imposed captivity, I knew my fate in the city was sealed.

I made up my mind to get as far away as possible, making it, if I could, to the suburbs. From there I would hike, using whatever stealth and guile was necessary, to the mountains I had recently left, where perhaps this activity was less ravenous. I knew that reaching the country-side alone would not solve my problem-1 had seen, on the television before it was cut off, reports showing dirt roads breaking up under those walking on them. I had the feeling that even forest trails and whatnot were susceptible. What then could I do? I must admit my plan was tenuous, but I did feel that I must make my way as far from the city as I could.

And so began my journey of adventure. I spent most of the morning of my leaving with gathering together whatever from my apartment I deemed necessary for my well-being. I remember packing the shortwave radio, forgetting completely that it required electricity to run on, and that electricity was the one thing I would probably be finding less and less of as I traveled, except in battery form. I also packed a few treasured books and sentimental possessions, and water from my tub which I had managed to drain out of the pipes before everything went dry—this I put in various Tupperware containers, some of which worked perfectly and one, a lettuce storage container which was never meant to hold a quart and a half of water, which burst all over most of my aforementioned treasured possessions. After making exchanges (a Kafka for a Roethke, as I recall) I donned my ridiculous snowshoes and made for the exit.

Those ridiculous snowshoes proved my salvation. Running and leaping like a madman, I managed to make it to the sporting goods store, where I outfitted myself with every piece of camper's equipment I could carry. I resembled Admiral Byrd himself at the end of my shopping spree, and I even managed to locate a book which informed me of all the best and lightest gear I would need for keeping myself alive in all climates. I left the store twice as confident as when I had gone in. Then, leaping and jumping once more, I made my way to the grocery market where I stocked up with whatever material I was unable to find in the dry foods section of the sports store.

As I said, my snowshoes proved my salvation. Portions of the ground were literally alive with appearing and disappearing holes; but with cunning and no small bit of luck I was off. As I hopped my way to the edges of the city the activity of the ground lessened somewhat; apparently its strength was regulated by population. I still barely managed to escape a few encounters with pot holes which suddenly materialized out of nowhere; once, when two popped into existence so close together as to form virtually one hole, I managed only with a great show of strength born of fear to yank my legs free from whatever had grasped them from below.

I won't relate all of my experiences with hiking, sleeping in trees, and the avoidance of wild animals which I found myself faced with over the coming weeks; let it suffice for me to state that I stayed alive, and even thrived a bit. I never saw another human being in all this time, and (rightfully so, I believe) I began to fancy myself as the Last Man on Earth.

Eventually I reached my string of northern mountains, and was encouraged when the lack of activity under foot decreased dramatically as I climbed; and then, to my great relief, ceased altogether. When I finally topped a high portion of one peak, which, I guessed, had hardly if ever been visited by human beings, I at last began to feel safe and secure again. Picking out a high level spot near the summit with a commanding and clear view of all below, I made my home. I built, over the next two months, a rough-hewn cabin, and, from then until the present, have maintained a periodic survey of my surroundings, here and below, for any sort of activity, in the ground or otherwise.

There hadn't been any up until yesterday. But early in the morning I noticed some sort of odd movement through my binoculars at the base of the mountain. And then last night I spied a ring of campfires halfway up the peak. And so at last I'm faced with having to think about everything that's happened, and what might happen from here on.

These new developments disturb me, because I really have been convinced for the past few months that I am the last man alive on earth. I can't really explain why I've been so sure that there are no other human beings alive; it's more of a gut feeling than anything else. And that of course forces me into thinking about who or what is sitting around those campfires down there.

And I've come up with a funny theory. Early on after settling down here I tried to sort out just what might have happened below, in the cities and everywhere else. I thought about earthquakes, of a scale and strangeness never before seen, but that didn't seem right. There had been those "hands" I'd thought I'd seen and where there are hands there must be someone connected to them. So I thought about a huge underground race, like H. G. Wells' pasty subterranean Morlocks from The Time Machine. But that didn't seem right, either—and neither did twenty other theories.

But finally I hit on one that I couldn't shake. Again, I had a gut feeling about it.

The way I see it, those figures below me, who hiked all day today up toward me, out of sight, and are traveling that last mile toward me now by the light of torches, just out of range of my binoculars, are either men or they're not. If they're men, that's fine and good; it means the world down there is safe once more and that maybe we survivors can get about the business of building things back up again. And if they're not men, they must, of course, be something else.

And a curious scenario popped into my head. Like I said, a gut feeling. What if, I thought, another race, the quietest of all races, had decided that it was time to trade their world for this one. What if they had determined that it was time for us on the surface to inhabit their world and they ours? What if these quiet ones—the dead, of course—had decided to switch places with us? To take back what they had once had? What if that was who was behind those bobbing torches, just coming into focus in my binoculars? The silent, stealthy dead. How many early cultures had cosmologies that designated the underground as the abode of the dead? Suppose that now it's time for a switch of living quarters?

I can now see down through my window, with my binoculars, the first pale, fleshless faces in the flickering torchlight as they break through the brush and my crude fences.

Hornets

Too warm for late October.

Staring out through the open door of his house, Peter Kerlan loosened the top two buttons of his flannel shirt, then finished the job, leaving the shirt open to reveal a gray athletic tee-shirt underneath. Across the Street the Meyer kids were re-arranging their newly purchased pumpkins on their front stoop—first the bigger of the three on the top step, then the middle step, then the lower. They were jacketless, and the youngest was dressed in shorts. Their lawn was covered, as was Kerlan's, with brilliantly colored leaves: yellow, orange, a dry brown. The neighborhood trees were mostly shorn, showing the skeleton fingers of their branches; the sky was a sharp deep blue. Everything said Halloween was coming—except for the temperature.

Jeez, it's almost hot!

Behind him, out through the sliding screen door that led to the back yard, Peter could hear Ginny moving around, making an attempt at early Sunday gardening.

Maybe it's cold after all.

He opened the front screen door, retrieved the morning newspaper he had come for, and turned back into the house, unfolding the paper as he went.

In the kitchen, he sat down at the breakfast table and studied the front page.

The usual assortment of local mayhem—a robbery, vandalism at the junior high school, a teacher at that same school suspended for drug use.

In the backyard, Ginny cursed angrily; there was the sound of something being knocked against something else.

"Peter!" she called out.

He pretended not to hear her for a moment, then answered, "I'm eating breakfast!" and began to study the paper much more closely than it deserved.

On the second page, more local mayhem, along with the weather—sunny and unseasonably warm for at least the next three days—as well as a capsule listing of the rest of the news, which he scanned with near boredom.

Something caught his eye, and he gave an involuntary shiver as he turned to the page indicated next to the summary and found the headline:

Hornets Attack Preschooloers

Another shiver caught him as he noted the picture embedded in the story—a man clothed in mosquito netting and a pith helmet holding up the remains of a huge papery nest; one side of the structure was caved in and within he could make out the clumped remains of dead insects—

Again he gave an involuntary shiver, but went on to the story:

(Orangefield, Special to the Herald, Oct. 24) Scores of preschoolers were treated today for stings after a small group of the children inadvertently stirred up a hornets' nest which had been constructed in a hollow log. The nest, which contained hundreds of angry hornets, was disturbed when a kick ball rolled into it. When one of the children went to retrieve the ball, the insects, according to witnesses, "attacked and kept attacking."

Twenty eight children in all were treated for stings, and the Klingerman Preschool was closed for the rest of the day.

The nest was removed by local bee-keeper Floyd Willims, who said this kind of attack is very common. "The nests are mature this time of year; and can hold up to five hundred drones, along with the Queen. Actually, new drones are maturing all the time, and can do so until well into fall. With the warm weather this year; their season is extended, probably well into November The first real cold snap will kill them off"

Willims continued, "Everyone thinks that yellow jackets are bees, but they're not. They're hornets, and can get pretty mean when the nest is threatened. At the end of the season, next year's Queens will leave the nest, and winter in a safe spot, before laying eggs and starting the whole process over again with a new nest."

As of last night, none of the hornet stings had proved dangerous, and Klingerman Preschool will reopen tomorrow.

Peter finished the story, looked at the picture again—the bee keeper holding the dead nest up—and gave a third involuntary shiver.

Ugh.

At that moment Ginny appeared at the back sliding door, staring in through the screen. He looked up at her angry face.

"I can't get that damned shed door open!" she announced. "Can you help me please?"

"After I finish my breakfast—"

Huffing a breath, she turned and stormed off.

"Aren't you going to eat with me?" he called after her, hoping she wouldn't turn around.

She stopped and came back. "Not when you talk to me with that tone in your voice."

"What tone?" he protested, already knowing that today's version of 'the fight' was coming.

She turned and gave him a stare—her huge dark eyes as flat as stones. She was as beautiful as she had ever been, with her close cropped blonde hair and anything but boyish looks. "Are we going to start again?"

"Only if you want to," he said.

"I never want to. But I don't know how much more of this I can take."

"How much more of what?"

She stalked off, leaving the door open. After a moment, Peter threw down the paper and followed her, closing-the--sliding screen door behind him and dismounting the steps of the small deck. She was in front of the garden shed, a narrow, four foot deep, one story-high structure attached to the house to the right of his basement office window.

"Well, I'm here," he said, not at all surprised that she momentarily ignored him.

Jeez, it is hot! he thought, looking up at a sun that looked summer-bright, and then surveying the back yard. The colored leaves fallen from the tall oaks that bordered the backyard looked incongruous, theatrical. There was an uncarved pumpkin on the deck of the house behind theirs; it looked out of place in the heat.

Peter turned to stare at Ginny's little garden, to the right of the shed, which displayed late annuals; they were a riot of summer color which normally would have been gone by this time of year, killed by the first frost which had yet to come.

"I've been weeding by hand," she explained, "but I'd like to get some of the tools Out and get ready for next spring. I've been having trouble with the shed door again."

He stepped around her, pulled at the structure's wooden door, which gave an angry creak but didn't move.

"Heat's got the wood expanded; I'll have a look at it when I get a chance." He gave it a firmer pull, satisfied that it wouldn't move. "Isn't there anything you can do about it now?"

"No." He knew he sounded nasty, but didn't care.

She reddened with anger, then brought herself under control. "Peter, I'm going to try again. We've been through this fifty times. You're punishing me, and there isn't any reason. I know it's been rocky between us lately. But I don't want it to be like that! Can't you just meet me halfway on this?"

"Halfway to hell?"

She was quiet for a moment. "I love you," she said, "but I just can't live like this."

"Like what?" he answered, angry and frustrated.

"No matter what I do you find something wrong with it—all you do is criticize!"

"I. . . don't," he said, knowing as it came out that it wasn't true.

She took a tentative step forward, reached out a hand still covered in garden loam. She let the hand fall to her side.

"Look, Peter," she said slowly, eyes downward. "I know things haven't been going well for you with your writing, believe me I do. But you can't take it out on me. It's just not fair."

Male pride fought with truth. He took a deep breath, looking at her, as beautiful as the day he met her—he was driving her away and didn't know how to stop.

"I. . .know I've been difficult—" he began.

She laughed. "Difficult? You've been a monster. You've frozen me out of every corner of your life. We used to talk, Peter; we used to try to work things out together. You've gone through these periods before and we've always gotten through them together. Now..." She let the last word hang.

He was powerless to tell her how he felt, the incomprehensible frustration and impotence he felt. "It's like I'm dry inside. Hollow..."

"Peter," she said, and then she did put a dirt-gloved hand on his arm. "Peter, talk to me."

He opened his mouth then, wanting it to be like it had been when they first met, when he had poured his heart out to her, telling her about the things he had inside that he wanted to get out, the great things he wanted to write about, his ambition, his longings—she had been the only woman he ever met who would listen to it, really listen to it. He had a sixth sense that if he did the wrong thing now it would mean the end, that he had driven her as far away as he dared, and that if he pushed her a half step farther she would not return.

He said, "Why bother?"

Again she reddened with anger, and secretly he was enjoying it.

"I'm going out for the day. We'll talk about this later."

"Whatever you say." He gave her a thin smile.

She turned away angrily, and after a moment he heard the screen door slide shut loudly, the front door slam, and the muted roar of her car as she left.

Why did you do that? he asked himself.

And a moment later he answered: Because I wanted to.

The screen was still blank.

At his desk in his basement office, Kerlan sat staring at the white clean sheet of the word processing program. It was like staring at a clean sheet of paper. Maybe that's why they settled on that color, so that writer's block would be consistent in the computer age.

He cringed at the words: writer's block.

After a moment he looked up over the top of the monitor at the casement window over his desk. Outside the sky was high and pallid blue and the window itself was open, letting the unnatural warmth in. It felt more like late August.

While he watched, a hornet bumped up against the window screen, followed by another. After tapping at the unbroken screen in a few spots, trying to find entry, they moved off with a thin angry buzz.

Not gonna get in here, boys.

Again the thrill of a shiver went up his spine as he remembered the story from the morning paper.

Too bad I can't turn that into a piece for Parade magazine...

The phone rang.

He grabbed at it, as much in relief from the prospect of work as in annoyance.

"Pete, that you?" a falsely hearty voice said.

"Yeah, Bill, it's me."

His agent Bill Revell's voice became guarded. "I hesitate to bother you on a Sunday, but..."

"I'm not finished with it, Bill."

A slow long breath on the other end of the line. "They need the story by Tuesday, Pete. Halloween's a week from today and they have to coordinate artwork with it and—"

"I know all that, Bill," he said, with annoyance. "It's just going slow is all."

"All that research stuff you found—did it do you any good?"

"Fascinating stuff. But it hasn't helped me yet. I just can't seem to get a handle on this one."

"Jeez—" Revell started to sound frustrated, but held it in check. "Come on, Pete. You're one of the most popular children's horror authors on the planet. Your stories have sold in the millions in every language on earth. You can do this stuff in your sleep. Bogey man, a nice little scare, kids save the day, end of story. Tuesday. Two days. Can you do it?"

"Sure I can do it. In their hands Tuesday..."

"You sure, bud?" Revell sounded doubtful.

"No problem."

There was a hesitation. "You.. . sure you're all right, Pete?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You sound. . . weird. A little strange." A pause. "You been drinking?"

"Hell, no."

"Everything okay between you and Ginny?"

Maybe I should ask you that, you bastard.

He said, with sarcasm, "Sure, Bill. Just fine."

"Oh." After a long moment, Revel! added, "Anything I can do?"

"Fifteen percent worth of advice?"

"No need to get nasty, Pete. I'm just trying to help."

Before Kerlan could stop himself it came out: "You've already helped plenty, Bill."

The longest pause yet. "I told you, Pete, there was never anything between Ginny and I."

"You know how much I believe you, Bill? Fifteen percent."

"Perhaps we shouldn't work together any longer, if that's the way you feel."

"You really want that, Bill?"

"Actually no, I don't. But if you can't get over this idea that Ginny and I had an affair, I think we'd better think about it."

Something far in the back of his mind, in the place that still was rational and mature, told him to stop.

He took a long breath. "Let's just forget it," he said, reasonably.

There was a long breath on the other end of the line. "I'd like that, Pete. Get back to where things were."

Continuing in a reasonable tone, Kerlan said: "I'll have that piece in by Tuesday."

"Tuesday it is, bud. Maybe we can meet up early next week for a Halloween drink?"

"Sure, Bill. Whatever you say."

"Talk to you soon."

"Right."

There was a click and the phone went dead.

He held it in his hand for a moment, staring at it. Did she have an affair with him or not? The truth was, he didn't know. He was smart enough to know that the root of his problem with Ginny was deeper than that—deeper in himself. She was perfectly correct when she told him that all of his problems were rooted in his own frustration with his writing. He knew that was true. But didn't everything else flow Out of that? He'd always been a grouch—but had his moods grown so dark in the last months that he was actually driving her away from him?

Wasn't it reasonable to suppose that if he was driving her away, she would be driven into the arms of someone else? Someone like Bill Revell, who was handsome, and younger than he was, and made plenty of money?

Did it matter that he had absolutely no evidence of an affair between the two of them, except for that fact that he realized he was such rotten company that she had to fall into someone else's arms? That and the fact that he'd seen Revell put the moves on Ginny once?

God, Kerlan, you're an asshole.

He still loved Ginny, still loved her with all his heart—but had no idea how to tell her that.

The phone receiver still clutched in one hand, he lowered it slowly to its cradle and reached for the half empty fifth of Scotch, which had been open since noon. He poured two fingers of the honey-colored liquid into the tumbler to the left of the keyboard.

I do think I'll have that drink with you now, Bill, he thought, staring at the white sheet of the computer screen in front of him.

Four more fingers of Scotch and two hours later, he was no closer to filling the white blank space with words, but was at least enmeshed in the research in front of him.

Why the hell can't I get this down on paper?

It was fascinating stuff, the legends of Halloween and how they eventually became the relatively benign children's holiday of the present age. It was not always so. Halloween's roots were deep in pagan ritual, specifically the Celtic festival of Samhain, the Lord of Death. Samhain had the power to return the souls of the dead to their earthly homes for one evening—the evening which eventually became known in the Christian era as All Hallows Eve.

Why can't I turn this into a nice, not-too-scary children's story for the Sunday supplements?

He'd tried it a thousand ways—with pets, with witches, with scary monsters—but always it came out too frightening, too strong for children. Always it came out with Samhain as something not benign at all—but rather a hugely frightening entity to be feared more than death itself.

How the hell do you turn the Lord of Death into a warm, fuzzy character?

How the hell do you keep making a living, and straighten your life out, you dumb, useless bastard?

After another two fingers of Scotch, and another two hours, he gave up, went upstairs, and fell asleep on the couch in the living room, dreaming of endless white pages filled with nothing.

He heard Ginny come in, heard her hesitate as she beheld his prone body on the couch, heard her mutter, "Wonderful," and waited until she stalked off to the bedroom and slammed the door before trying to rouse himself. Blearily opening his eyes, he saw the orange sun setting through the living room window. It looked like a fat pumpkin.

Maybe there's something I can use there, he thought blearily. A fat old pumpkin named Pete...

He closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.

A noise roused him. He knew it was much later, because it was dark through the window now. A dull white streetlight lamp glared at him where the sun had been.

He stared at the grandfather clock in the adjacent dining room, and saw that it was nearly eleven o'clock.

He heard noise off in the hallway leading to the front door.

He hoisted himself into a sitting position on the couch. Head in his hands, he saw the empty Scotch bottle on the floor on its side between his legs.

"Wonderful indeed," he said, remembering Ginny's use of the word hours before, as the first poundings of an evening hangover began in his temples.

He stood, and discovered he was still mildly drunk.

And there, piled in the hallway leading to the front door, was much of what Ginny owned, neatly stacked and suitcased.

Holy shit.

He suddenly discovered he wanted another drink. He found his way to the liquor cabinet, and was rooting around for an unopened bottle of Scotch when Ginny returned.

In a cold, even tone, she said, "Don't you think you've had enough to drink for one day?"

"Just one more, to clear my head," he said. "I get the feeling I'm going to need it"

She was beside him, her hand on his arm as he removed the discovered fifth of Dewers. To his surprise, her grip was gentle.

"Please don't," she said, and moved her hand down to take the Scotch from him.

Sudden resentment and anger boiled up in him. He pulled the bottle away, keeping it in his own hand. He turned away from her and twisted the cap off, looking unsteadily back into the living room for the glass tumbler he had used.

Ginny, amazingly, kept the gentle tone, but it had hardened slightly into urgency: "Please don't, Peter—"

"Just one!" he said, swiveling back to take a fresh tumbler from the top of the liquor cabinet, where they stood, cut crystal sparkling like winking eyes.

He poured and drank.

"I really can't take this any longer," Ginny said quietly, and the continued mild tone of what she said made him focus.

"Take what? Me?"

"Yes."

He grunted a laugh. "So you're going to—leave?"

"I think I have to"

"You gonna run to your lover? Jump into Bill Revell's arms?" Even as he said it, even with his drunkenness, he knew it was a mistake.

Silence descended on the room like a cold hand. "I told you, Peter—"

He poured another drink, downed it. "You told me! You told me!"

He waved the tumbler at her. "What if I don't believe you?"

With iron control she motioned toward the dining room table. "Sit down, Peter."

He moved the neck of the Scotch bottle to the tumbler, but her hands were firmer this time, yanking the bottle and glass out of his grip.

"Sit down."

He did so, fumbling at the chair until she pulled it out for him. He sat, and watched her sit on the opposite side of the table. Startled, he saw that there were tears in her eyes.

"I'm going to say this for the last time, Peter," she began, and suddenly he was focused on her as if he'd been struck suddenly sober. He knew by everything—by her posture, her voice, the tears in her eyes—that this was the pivotal moment they had been moving toward for the past weeks.

"I'm listening," he said, the fight out of him before it had even begun.

She studied his face for a moment. "Good. Then please listen closely, because this is the best I can do to explain what's happened to us." She took a deep breath. "First of all, I never had an affair with Bill Revell, and never would. He's your agent, and, quite frankly, I don't like him. He's smart but he's ruthless, and the only reason he's with you is that you're making him money. We both know he would drop you in a second if you stopped producing."

Kerlan thought of his conversation that afternoon with Revell. "You're right about—" he began, but Ginny cut him off.

"Let me finish. I was merely being polite to him at that party in September. He tried to kiss me and I didn't let him. End of story."

"I saw—"

"You saw him try. I turned my cheek and let him peck me there. That's what you saw. After you turned away I told him as nicely as I could that if he ever tried to kiss me again I'd knee him in the balls."

Kerlan felt an odd urge to laugh—this sounded so much like the old Ginny, the one he had fallen in love with. But instead he just stared at her.

"You said that? You never told me—"

"You never let me tell you. For the last month you've been treating me like a leper. Ever since you started that Halloween magazine assignment Revell got you."

He found that his head had cleared to a miraculous extent. It was as if the importance of the moment had surged through him, canceling out the liquor.

"You know I've been having trouble with it—"

Ginny laughed. "Having trouble? Like I said this morning, you've been nothing but a monster since you began researching it."

"The money's too good—"

"To hell with the money—and to hell with Bill Revell! Just tell him you can't do it!"

"I've never had trouble with anything before—"

She leapt on his words as if she had been waiting for them. "Isn't that what this is all about, Peter? Isn't this all about you not being able to pull the trigger when you want to? It's always come easy, hasn't it? You've always been able to write when you wanted or needed to—and now for the first time you've got. . . writer's block—"

"Don't say that!" he nearly screeched. She had touched the nerve, and even she seemed to know she had gone too far.

"All right then," she said, backing off. "Let's just say you're having trouble with this one. Isn't that the root of all our problems lately?"

After a moment, when he found there was nothing else he could say, he said, "Yes."

She seemed to give a huge sigh of relief. In the gentlest voice he had ever heard her use, she said, "Peter, do you think we can stop fighting?"

His eyes were drawn to the pile of her belongings waiting in the hallway. He found that the last thing in the world he wanted was for her to leave. To hell with his work—to hell with everything. He wanted her to stay.

"I.. .love you, Ginny. I'm . . . sorry for everything I've done."

Then suddenly she was around the table and holding him, and they both were crying.

"Oh, Peter, it's all right, everything's going to be all right."

"Yes, Ginny, I promise...^"

"And you'll tell Revell you can't do that piece?"

He stiffened, and she pulled away from him.

"You'll tell him that?" she repeated.

The old anger tried to boil up in him—all the feelings of inadequacy, of helplessness, of everything that was mixed in with it, of him hitting middle age, getting older, afraid of losing his talent, afraid of losing her—

With a huge effort, he brought himself under control and said, "If it doesn't work in the next day or so, I'll toss it."

"You mean it?" Her huge beautiful eyes were searching his own, studying him, begging him—

Again he had to control himself, and knew she sensed it. She was waiting for him—

"Yes."

She hugged him tighter. "I can't tell you how happy I am. I didn't want to leave. I was going to go to my sister's, and you know I can't stand her—"

"Neither can I," Kerlan said dryly, and Ginny laughed.

"I love you more than anything in the world, Peter," she said, kissing him. "Don't ever doubt that."

She kissed him again, and Peter said, "I love you, too. More than you'll ever know."

She pulled away from him, smiling, and said, "I'll put everything away in the morning. It's Monday, and I want to get the rest of my gardening done early, before I go to work. I'll put my stuff away after I get home tomorrow night, all right?"

"All right," he answered, smiling back at her.

"You coming to bed?"

He almost said yes, sensing from the look in her eyes that she might want more than sleep, but instead he said, "I'm going to spend a little time in my office."

Her face darkened slightly. "You're not going to—"

"If it doesn't work immediately, I'm giving it up. Let's call this a last stand."

He could tell she was thinking of arguing, but instead she nodded.

"All right, Peter. Give it one more try."

"I'll be up later."

She stopped, looked back at him. "I'll wait up for you, if I can keep my eyes open."

"See you later."

She went down the hail to the bedroom. Kerlan, grunting with the continuance of a well deserved hangover, made his way downstairs.

At three in the morning, he was finally ready to give up. The piece, no matter how he came at it, was just much too dark. The more he delved into the character of Samhain, the more frightening the Celtic Lord of Death became. There were hints of human sacrifice as tribute for good crops and prosperity. There were various dark tales of horrible deaths and evil perpetuated in his name. There was just no way to lighten him up. Peter tried making him into a character with a black cloak and pumpkin for a head—but when he read over what little he had written, the Lord of the Dead was just too scary for children. It just seemed that no matter what he tried to make the Samhain character do, he always ended up surrounded by death.

The real stuff.

And if little kids didn't like one thing, it was the real stuff.

He stared at a sketch he'd made of Samhain to help him, with the folds of his bright pumpkin head set back into the dark shadows of his cowl, a horrid sickle grin on his cut-out face, a spark of terrifying fire deep in the ebony eye sockets, stark white bone hands reaching from beneath the folds of the cloak, and shivered.

"Hell," he muttered to the picture, at the end of his rope, realizing that it just wasn't going to work, "I'd even pay tribute to you, Sam, if you'd help me finish this damn story."

Suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown, it came to him.

Sam.

That was it!

Call him Sam.

Almost before he knew it, he was tearing through the story, and, in what seemed like no time at all, it lay all but finished in front of him.

He came out of what felt like a trance, but what must actually be, he realized, a mixture of waning work-adrenaline, the remains of a Scotch hangover, and just plain tiredness. Through the window above his desk, the sun had already circled the globe and come up over the back of the house. Brighter than it had been the evening before, when it had hovered in the living room window, it now resembled a happy pumpkin.

By the clock, he saw that it was eight in the morning.

I worked five hours straight. Amazing.

Three tiny shadows passed by the window in front of the sun, hovering briefly before the screen, and he saw that they were yellow jackets. Briefly, he remembered the newspaper story from the day before. A shiver started, but was suppressed by tiredness.

He stretched, suddenly remembering Ginny.

I hope she just drifted off to sleep, and didn't wait for me.

He rose, stretched as if his frame had been locked into a sitting position for a year, rubbing his eyes while yawning, and left the office, tramping upstairs.

He thought of making coffee, but knew he would never stay awake while it brewed.

In the front hallway, he walked around Ginny's pile of belongings, noting with curiosity that the front door was open.

Upstairs, Ginny was not in the bedroom.

She was nowhere in the house.

On the pile of her belongings, perched like a bird, was a note: Peter I'm sorry, but I have to leave...

"And there's a possibility the note may have been written the previous night, before your reconciliation?"

"Yes."

"Thing I don't get is, Mr. Kerlan: why'd she leave without her things?"

Detective Grant had been nice enough in the beginning, even solicitous; but now, standing with the man in the front hallway of the house, Peter sensed a change in the atmosphere, an aggressiveness that hadn't been present before. At first all the questions had been about Ginny, where she might have gone, why she would have left, but now, Grant couldn't seem to take his eyes off the pile of belongings in the hallway. Peter could tell it stuck like a wad of gum to the roof of the man's mouth.

"I told you, detective, we had a fight Sunday. A big one. I was sleeping on the couch when she came home, and when I woke up all of her stuff was in the hallway—"

"She packed while you were asleep—"

"Yes. And when I woke up we started the fight all over again. By the end of it we had squared things away, I thought. Ginny went up to bed and I went down to my office to work—"

"This was late, almost midnight—?"

"Yes."

"And you worked through the entire night—" Grant said, referring to his notes. "And when you went upstairs—"

He looked up at Kerlan from his pad, and for the first time Peter sensed a faint belligerence from the man.

"When I went upstairs she was gone."

The detective snapped his fingers. "Just like that?"

"Yes."

"Left her belongings, her car, just took off after you had supposedly settled everything?" He gave a twist in emphasis to the word "supposedly," making it sound almost sinister.

"That's exactly right."

"And you called us after you spent yesterday looking everywhere she might have gone, including her sister; an...^" he consulted his notes ^"...uncle in Chicago, her best friend from college, and even your own mother." He glanced sideways from his notebook at Kerlan. "Your mother?"

"My mother and Ginny are very close. I could see her going there, yes. Ginny's own parents are dead."

Grant nodded briefly, went back to his notes. "You called all the local motels and hotels. . . that about the whole story?"

"Yes."

Grant straightened his heavy frame, turning his notebook to a new page. "Well, maybe not exactly, Mr. Kerlan. I'd like to fill in a few blanks, if you don't mind."

"Anything you want."

"All right, then. Let's see...^" Grant was running his eyes down a notebook page, flipped back to the previous page and did the same. His eyes, which were bright blue in a rough, stubbled face, making them startling, pinned Peter suddenly.

"Let's start with you being asleep on the couch on Sunday. You were taking a nap?" Again the emphasis on a word, this time "nap," which made Grant sound incredulous.

"I'd had a few drinks, and was sleeping that off."

"Ah." This seemed to satisfy Grant and he went on searching his notes. Kerlan had the feeling that the detective already had laser sharp questions in a neat list in his head, and was only scanning the notebook for effect.

"You had two fights with your wife that day?"

"One at breakfast time and then another that night."

"You fought a lot?"

"Recently, yes."

"Marital. . . trouble?" Grant let this hang in the air, waving his pencil in a little circle to make the question more than it was.

"I've been having trouble with my work. It carried over."

"Any other obvious difficulties? Money? Sex life? You having an affair, maybe?"

Kerlan blinked, surprised at the question. "No. Nothing like that."

"Nothing like that." Grant nodded to himself, making a note on his current page. "You drink a lot, Mr. Kerlan?"

Again, he was taken aback. "No. Occasionally I have a few."

"Have a few. . . You ever hit your wife? Slap her around?"

Now Peter became angry. "No."

Grand nodded, made a note.

"You can't think of anywhere else she might have gone, anyone else she might have gone to see?"

The detective eyed the pile of goods stacked in the hallway for perhaps the twentieth time. "Any idea why she left her stuff behind, Mr. Kerlan?"

"That's the part I don't get."

"Me too. If you were running away, would you leave all your things behind after spending the time and trouble to stack it all up in the hallway by the front door?"

"No, I wouldn't."

Suddenly the detective straightened again, turning it into a stretch. He flipped the notebook closed and pocketed his pen in the side pocket of his jacket. His tie was loosened, Peter noticed.

Without warning, Grant smiled, making Peter blink.

"Thanks, Mr. Kerlan. I've got everything I need for now. We'll check over everything you did, and widen the motel and hotel search a little into the next county. It's kind of early yet to be too worried. I'll be in touch." He suddenly winked, and held out his hand. "If she shows up give me a call, will you?"

Peter went to shake the hand but then saw that there was a business card in it, which he took automatically.

"I will, detective."

"Do that." Grant turned on his heels and was out the front door and into his sedan almost before Peter could answer. Peter saw him light a cigarette as he climbed into the car.

He watched the detective pull out of the driveway over a mat of yet-raked leaves. In the last two days the trees had denuded themselves completely, leaving a riot of reds and yellows on his lawn. Peter idly noticed that the Meyers' had cleared and bagged their own front yard, the neatly clipped grass of which showed yellow green. Their three pumpkins had settled into a neat row—smallest at the top, fattest of the three at the bottom. In their picture window were Halloween cut-outs: a jointed white skeleton with a toothy grin, a black-clad witch riding a broomstick angled up toward a sickle reddish moon.

Halloween was only five days away.

And it was still too damned hot.

He turned away from the front door, confronted by the mute pile of Ginny's belongings.

For a moment, tears welled up in his eyes.

Ginny, where are you?

I thought we had fixed it? I thought we were okay?

The boxes, the suitcases, the bags of clothing, remained mute.

He first felt not a sting, but the vague, insistent, faint, tiny itch of an insect on his leg.

He swiveled in his armchair, bending his left leg and at the same time brushing at the itch; something small, dark and solid dropped from his leg and melded with the carpet beside his desk. It wriggled there for a moment, righting itself in a tiny lifting of small wings, and he bent to examine it, suppressing a sudden shudder.

It was a hornet, not much past pupae stage, its tiger stripes muted into almost orange and black.

He remembered the story in the newspaper; the children stung by a legion of hornets from a nest they had disturbed—

"How in hell—" he said, lifting his carpeted slipper almost without thinking to grind the insect into the carpet before it could advance or, possibly, take flight.

Supressing another shudder, he drew his foot away, dragging it across the carpet to rid the slipper's bottom of the creature's remains. A diminishing line of bug guts, looking dry and powdery and papery, trailed the low cut gray rug till they came to a point and disappeared.

Have to clean that later, he thought, turning back to his work.

The basement office's single screened window was open above his desk, and for a moment he idly heard a buzz and looked up.

There, outside, was a fat bumblebee, just bumping the screen before lumbering airily off.

Before turning back to his work he let his eyes roam over the screen, looking for torn corners or holes; there were none.

Didn't get in that way.

He turned back to his work, which was still going well; after sending the Halloween story to Parade magazine on Monday he'd discovered he had more to say on the subject of Samhain—or, as he called his own cute little version, Sam.

Almost immediately the phone rang, and he clutched his pencil, almost throwing it down angrily, before dropping it on the desk and, with a sigh, picking up the receiver.

"Yes?"

It was Revell on the other end of the line, asking after him.

"I'd be doing a lot better," Peter said, trying to keep the testiness out of his voice, "if I didn't have people like you bothering me."

Revell said with false concern, "I'm just worried about you, Pete."

Are you?

"Thanks for the concern."

"You heard anything more from the police?"

"No. They don't have anything new."

Unless Ginny 's with you after all, you bastard.

"Well, let me know if you need anything," Revell said. "I—"

Peter cut him off. "I really have to get back to work."

"Nothing wrong with that. Take your mind off what you're going through. Actually, that's the reason I called—"

Of course it is, you bastard. He recalled what Ginny had said: "He would drop you in a second if you stopped producing..."

"I've got to go. I'll call you soon."

Like hell I will.

He half-slammed the phone down, stared at the wall next to his desk.

Something was crawling up it, above the wooden filing cabinet that held his printer, muted orange and black stripes—

"What the fu—"

He reached out a palm, hit it flat; the hornet, still whole, tumbled from the wall behind the metal filing cabinet and was lost to view.

He was on his feet, pushing his swivel chair back and pressing his head against the wall to try to locate the insect behind the cabinet; unable to, he stalked from the office in anger and went to his messy workbench at the other end of the basement, pushing objects aside—a power screwdriver, coffee tin of miscellaneous nails—until he located a flashlight. He turned back toward the office, flipping the flashlight switch, which produced a click but no lightbeam.

"Shit!"

He reversed stride, rummaged through the wreckage on top of the workbench, then pulled drawers open until he found an opened four pack of D cells; he unscrewed the flashlight's top, turned it over impatiently, dropping one of the two batteries within from his waiting palm to the floor where it rolled beneath the bench.

"Shit! Shit!" He kicked the bench once, pulled back his slipper to kick it again before breathing deeply and turning his attention to the new batteries, which he shoved viciously into the flashlight's tubular body before screwing the head back on and flipping it on once more.

Light shone this time, blinked out until he smacked the tool against his palm, hard.

The beam stayed on.

He strode back to the office and played the beam on the wall above the filing cabinet. Getting closer, he was about to shine it behind the cabinet when he saw an immature hornet crawling over the printer's paper tray, and another on the wall beside it.

He cursed, put the flashlight down on the desk, looked for something to hit the insects with, and found a recent trade journal, which he rolled up, smacking the two hornets with it.

One dropped away to the rug; the other lay squashed against the printer's paper stack.

Wary now, he looked in increments behind the printer, saw another insect making its way up the wall behind, and what looked like two others below it, showing movement.

Shivering, he drew back, moved away from the desk and toward the office's door, his eyes glancing at the rug, the walls, the ceiling.

He closed the door behind him, dropped the rolled up magazine and climbed the steps to the house's first floor two at a time.

He made his way to the front door, pushing his way past piles of Ginny's clothes, Ginny's books, her cds.

He yanked open the front door, pushed open the screen, descended the porch's four steps and walked quickly to the western rear corner of the house, which fronted his basement office and the bedroom above it.

The cable television and phone line entry, as well as the house's gas main, were clustered near the side corner. He examined them, seeing no entry for an insect where the wires and gas line led into the house's siding; everything was sealed and caulked.

He moved closer; a hornet flew past him, then another, and he spotted the entry, below the siding level. He watched a moment, saw a hornet fly to a spot near the corner of the house where foundation met siding, land and crawl underneath the siding.

Edging closer, he crouched nearly to the ground, turning his head to examine beneath the siding.

There was a gap there in the wooden sill plate on which the house rested above the concrete foundation; it looked like the two boards which met at the corner had either not been properly butted, or that the butting board had shrunk, leaving an opening into an area between the house's first floor and basement.

"Jesus," he said, as a hornet crawled out from the space, flying past him with a rush as another crawled into the opening.

They had obviously built a nest back there.

"Damn."

Filled with fury and resolve, he got to his feet, returned to the house and kicked his slippers off in the living room, looking for his deck shoes; they were nowhere to be seen and he searched down the hallway, almost reaching the back bedroom before finding the shoes nestled one against the other just outside the bedroom door.

He slipped them on, checked the pockets of his shorts for his car keys and then moved back outside, slamming the house door behind him.

I'll take care of you, you bastards.

He got into his Honda, nearly leaving rubber as he backed out of the driveway, and was back in twenty minutes with two cans of Hornet and Wasp Killer. Barely reading the instructions, he pulled the safety tab from the top of one can, shoved the thin, hard plastic straw that came with it into the can's top nozzle and shook the can as he marched back to the outside corner of the house.

Want to eat this? Enjoy it!

He stopped before the spot, watched a hornet alight and then crawl into the hidden opening, watched another crawl out and fly off. He crouched, thrusting the can's nozzle forward and awkwardly trying to fit it under and into the opening.

The hard plastic straw missed, sliding away as a hornet, angered, crawled out, followed by another.

Flinching, he pressed the nozzle, watching the acrid spray cover the two insects; they froze and dropped to the ground.

And now the rest of you bastards.

Still spraying, he crouched lower, his eye level below that of the foundation, and found the opening.

He angled the nozzle's straw in and tightened his grip on the can's trigger.

A single hornet fought its way out, dropped immediately to the ground. Another, coming from the outside, circled the opening, caught a whiff of escaping spray and also dropped.

He emptied the can, pushed himself back as three returning hornets began to circle the hole widely; one of the insects ventured into the hole, immediately retreated and then dropped to the ground. There was a long stain of spilled pesticide spray down the foundation under the hole, which began to dry as he watched.

A cloud of hornets circled the sprayed opening, darting toward it, landing tentatively on the lowest level of siding over the opening, took off again.

He shook the can, let a final spray cover them; all but one dropped to the ground as the remaining one flew off.

That'll take care of you.

Breathing deeply, the adrenalin rush that had sustained him for the past hour receding, he went into the house, scooping up the second can of insect spray where he had deposited it on the front stoop, in time to hear the telephone begin to ring.

It was Bill Revel! again.

"Pete, I'm sorry to bother you again but you didn't let me finish before. Parade was so wild about that Halloween piece you did that I showed it to Doubleday and they flipped. They'd like you to do more, and turn it into a book. We're talking high five figures, maybe low six for this one—"

"I'll think about it."

"Jeez, what's to think about? Just say yes and I'll take care of the rest. They're talking about publishing next Halloween, cash register dumpster display, a real push. These characters of yours could become perennials—you could turn one out every Halloween, have the kids waiting in line—"

"I said I'd think about it—"

"I know you're worried about Ginny, bud, but this one could set you up with a guarantee every year for the next five years at least. Can I at least negotiate a three-book deal?"

He said nothing, and Revell went on: "The characters are great, Pete! A real Halloween character! Named Sam no less! And I love Holly Ween! I've got feelers out already to television, and I think we can expect a big bite on that—half hour like 'It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.' We're talking ancillary—lunchboxes, tees, the whole nine—"

"Do whatever the hell you want!" Kerlan shouted, and slammed down the phone.

He gripped the receiver tightly as he suddenly began to cry.

If she wasn't with Revell, she was with someone else.

And he'd driven her away.

She's gone and I know it.

Gone for good.

He let the second can of bug spray slip to the floor as he covered his face with his hands and wept, and kept weeping.

After trying to watch television, and trying to eat, he went to bed early and as a consequence rose early the next morning.

With a tepid cup of instant coffee in his hand, he made his way down to the basement office.

Even before reaching it, the faint, acrid smell of bug spray tickled his nostrils.

"Christ," he said, wincing as he walked into the room; it was even worse than the faint, musty odor the basement room sometimes held in the summer months, when the foundation walls behind the sheetrock covered studs picked up humidity from the ground. The smell had been particularly noticeable this year.

He stood up on his swivel chair, cursing sharply as it tried to turn sideways with his weight, then leaned out over his desk to open the room's single casement window.

"Shit," he said, recoiling; in the casement box were the bodies of five small hornets, all but one seemingly dead; the live one moved feebly, its small wings opening once, then again. Behind the casement, somewhere behind the room's wall, he heard a faint buzzing sound.

He climbed down from the chair, nearly ran to the workbench area, and returned with the basement's wet-vac.

He plugged the vacuum into the wall socket between his desk and the printer stand, turned it on, and angled the hose nozzle up into the casement, sucking up all of the hornets.

His eye caught movement by the printer, and he saw another small insect body crawling up the wall over the machine.

I thought I wiped you bastards out yesterday!

He covered the hornet with the sucking nozzle, then looked wildly around the walls, then at the floor.

"Shit!"

There was a cluster of dead bodies fanned out in the corner just to the left of the printer stand, where a heat register ran across the wall at floor level; two live hornets were just crawling out of the bottom of the register itself.

"Shit! Shit!" he said, fighting an uncontrollable chill, thrusting the vacuum head around the area and plugging it into the corner under the register as far as it would go.

He heard the tap of insect bodies rushing up the vacuum's soft plastic accordion hose and into the wet-vac's drum.

Another crawled out onto the rug from behind the printer stand, and he speared it, then put the nozzle back into the corner. He kept it there, feeling another tiny body sucked up into the machine, and then another.

He gave up all thoughts of work, and fled the office; at the doorway he saw a feebly moving hornet on the rug by the sill, and mashed it with his foot, closing the door behind him.

"Sounds weird enough, Mr. Kerlan, but they all sound weird to me. One time—"

"Can you come today?" Peter said into the phone, cutting the beekeeper off before he went into yet another anecdote. "This infestation is in the place I work, and I need it taken care of."

"Sure," the other said, slowly. "I suppose I can be there this afternoon. We'll take care of you."

"I hope so," Kerlan said, slamming down the phone.

He stole a glance into his office, opening the door a crack. By now all sorts of nightmares preyed on his mind: the room filled with flying insects; a swarm waiting for him, covering him as he opened the door—

All inside seemed quiet; the casement window threw a rectangular shaft of light against the far wall's built-in bookcase.

He opened the door wider, listening for buzzing.

Maybe I wiped them out after all.

His relief was short-lived; as he stepped toward his desk his foot covered three squirming hornet bodies, and he saw a few more scattered here and there, some unmoving, others moving as if drunk; there were three or four on the walls, also, and more, perhaps a dozen, covering the casement's window itself, silhouetted dots against the light.

He reached for the wet/dry vac, recoiled as a hornet brushed his hand as it fell from the hose; others were crawling over the instrument's drum, one hiding coyly by one of the rolling wheels.

Once again he fled, and closed the door.

"What you've got there is a classic case of wall infestation," the bee-keeper, whose name was Floyd Willims, said. He looked like a beekeeper, was tall and thin-haired and preoccupied when he stepped from his dirty white van; and now even more so, dressed almost comically in a pith helmet whose brim was ringed with mosquito netting; from the back of his van he pulled a thick pair of rubber gloves from a soiled box. He held up the gloves for inspection. "Triple thickness," he said, almost proudly; "stingers can't get through." After retrieving a powder filled canister and what appeared to be a pump hose from the van, he turned back to Kerlan and said, "Proceed!"

Kerlan had already showed him the corner of the house where the hornets had gained access; they returned to that spot now and the beekeeper knelt, put the thin end of the hose which led into the canister in the opening, and began to puff powder into it.

"This'll kill 'em dead," he said. "Whichever ones return will carry the powder into the nest and spread it to the others."

As if on cue, as the bee-keeper removed the hose from the opening a hornet alighted and crawled into it.

"Now let's have a look at the nest," the bee-keeper said, heading for the house with Kerlan.

They had already studied the office on the bee-keeper's arrival, and the bee-keeper had helped Kerlan move furniture so that the upper corner of the wall, behind which the bee-keeper said they would find the nest, was exposed; luckily, there would be access through a nearby panel, behind which the house's electrical box was located. To either side of the box was packed insulation, which the bee-keeper began to remove.

The smell of insect spray became stronger in the room.

The bee-keeper lay the strips of insulation on the floor; Kerlan was repulsed to see hornets crawling feebly over the pink spun glass fibers of its back.

The bee-keeper held up a strip, examined the five hornets on it carefully.

"You zapped them pretty good with that off-the-shelf stuff you sprayed into the nest yesterday," he said. "If you'd gotten them at dusk, when they were all in the nest, you might have killed them all. What we're looking at are the dregs, I think."

"How did they get in here to begin with? How many openings does the nest have?"

Willims had shown him a picture of a typical paper hornet's nest; a nearly round structure with a single opening, usually at the bottom.

"They either made another exit, or left an opening near the top," he said. "This isn't quite a typical nest. They were drawn to the light in your office." He pointed to the baseboard, the corner of the floor where the heat register butted the wall. "There's an opening down there, I'm sure. Doesn't take much, just a quarter inch." He squinted through his mosquito netting at the molding along the rug where the printer stand had been before they moved it. "There may be others. Like I said, a quarter inch is all they need."

An involuntary chill washed over Kerlan as a hornet crawled onto the bee-keeper's glove and onto his shirt sleeve. The bee-keeper regarded it for a moment and then flicked it to the floor. "Like I said, you must have hit them good. if they were healthy they'd be all over us, because of the light." He turned to Kerlan as if having a sudden thought. "Sure you don't want to leave?"

"I'll stay, if you think it's safe."

The bee-keeper laughed. "Safe enough. If they pour out of the walls when I remove the rest of this insulation, I'll yell and you can run."

Kerlan's eyes enlarged in alarm but the bee-keeper added, "Not likely to happen."

At that moment the bee-keeper pulled the last strip of insulation out with a grunt.

Nothing happened; the bee-keeper angled his head, aiming a flashlight up into the exposed cavity, and called back, "Yeah, you hit 'em pretty good."

Kerlan leaned over, trying to see; pulled back and a fist-shaped clutch of dead hornets fell from the space between the open cavity and the bee-keeper's body.

The bee-keeper angled his arm up into the cavity.

"I'll. . .get it out if I can—"

He pulled a huge chunk of dark papery gray material out of the cavity, let it drop to the floor.

"Nest," he said in explanation. It was followed by a bigger chunk, mottled and round on the inside; within it's crushed interior were dead hornets and a few feebly live ones.

"Ugh," Kerlan said.

"Pretty big nest," the bee-keeper said, continuing to pull sections of the structure out. Mixed with the leavings now were the familiar honeycombed sections that Kerlan knew contained the pupae. Most but not all were empty. "About the size of a soccer ball. They built it right up in the corner beneath the floor above. As they built the nest it forced the insulation back. Amazing critters."

He continued his work, and Kerlan shivered.

An hour later the office was more or less back to normal, and Kerlan was writing the bee-keeper a check.

"You'll want to caulk that hole they used in a couple of weeks," Willims said. "That powder I sprayed around it will take care of any stragglers."

"Why not plug it now?"

"Well, you could, but there could still be a few females outside the nest; they'd just start another one."

Kerlan had forgotten that each nest held a queen.

"Didn't we kill off this nest's queen?"

"You can be pretty much certain of that. But even so, any female can become a queen. They'll just start another nest." He grinned. "Summer's not quite over, you know. I'll be getting calls like yours 'till mid-November, if the heat holds out."

"Christ."

The bee-keeper folded the check and turned toward his dirty white van. Kerlan had a sudden thought.

"You're sure my nest is dead?"

The bee-keeper shrugged. "Pretty sure. You may see a few strays wander out of your baseboard gaps looking for light, but believe me, that nest is dead. Only other problem you could have is if two females got in there originally and the second one started another nest somewhere else inside the wall, farther down." Seeing Kerlan's eyes widen he laughed. "Not likely that happened, though. Plug the gaps in the baseboard if you can; you can use a wad of scrunched up cellophane tape. Call me if you have any more problems."

Kerlan nodded as the van drove off.

A single yellow-jacket brushed by his face as he entered the house.

The next morning he entered his office to work. The evening before, he had moved along the edge of the baseboard where he could get at it, pushing cellophane tape into anything that looked like an opening. By the baseboard he had found a huge hole surrounding the heat pipe which let into the register; around it were tens of dead yellow jackets and a very alive spider as big as a thumb nail, feeding on them.

There was a sour smell emanating from the vent; a mixture of fading bug spray and the strong damp smell from the cavity behind. After recoiling he cleaned the area out with the wet/dry vac and then plugged it with insulating material. The smell receded.

He vacuumed the rug thoroughly, sucking up dead hornet bodies, and then replaced his furniture and turned on his computer.

There came a tapping at the casement window above him and he started, looking up. It was just a fat bumblebee, probably the same from the other day, which ambled sluggishly off.

He let out a deep breath and turned to the screen.

He typed out the words Sam Hain and the Halloween that Almost Wasn't and suddenly, for the next hours, he was lost in the characters as words poured out of him in a torrent. Nothing like this had happened to him in the last twenty years. Page after page scrolled down the screen, and he knew they were all good. He finished one story and the ideas for two others came into his head unbidden. He typed so fast his fingers began to ache—something he hadn't felt since the days of electric typewriters, when the constant kickback of the keys would rattle his knuckles and literally make his fingers sore. It was a marvelous feeling. And still he wrote on, completing outlines for two more stories before finally letting himself fall back into his swivel chair, breathing hard. It was as if he had run a marathon, and he couldn't believe the mass of material now stored on his hard disk.