The Metrognome and Other Stories

THE CHAIR [with Jane Cozart]

Story ideas come from everywhere. Even objects.

In west Texas dwells a remarkable lady. Jane Cozart was born into a theatrical family. Her father, for those older readers, was none other than Smilin' Ed McConnell of radio and TV fame. Some might remember his rubbery sidekick, Froggy. Jane elected to forgo a possible career in films when she broke her leg prior to the filming of a minor epic in which she'd been cast. The film was National Velvet, and Jane's part eventually went to another teenage actress, name of Taylor.

Jane married and settled in west Texas to raise a few kids, a lot of animals, and a little hell. Any mail that arrives in that region addressed simply to the Wicked Witch of the West goes directly to her. I was immediately impressed the first time I met her because her personal library was larger than that of the local school.

My wife JoAnn had scrimped and saved to buy me a fascinating carved chair prior to our marriage. When I described it to Jane one time, she allowed as how it might form the basis for an interesting story. I was less sure but told her that if she wrote it, 1'd collaborate with her on it. The chair itself still sits in my study, the face in its back glaring at me even as I write this, its actual origin still lost in the mists of time.

And if June Foray, she of the many cartoon voices, happens to read this, Jane McConnell says hello.

"Not another antique store."

Dylan McCarey Grouchoed his eyes and did his best to look as exasperated as he was tired. The Ford sedan idled nervously around him, anxious to please.

Across the front seat of the gold gas guzzler-currently road-dusted to a limp bronze-his wife folded her arms, pursed her lips, and threw herself into a first-class pout. It was a well-practiced posture, one that gave her the look of a martyred spaniel. The resemblance was compounded by her moss-green eyes and the black hair that fell straight behind her to tangle in the belt of her skirt.

Dylan had been the recipient of that pout numerous times in their frenetic, brief marriage. That didn't do anything to stiffen his resistance to it. Goering, he reflected, had known when the RAF and American bombers were coming across the Channel. That foreknowledge hadn't given him the power to stop their raids any more than Dylan's was able to prevent him from melting under Marjorie's pitiful little-girl expressions.

"All right, all right. But it better not be too far." He checked his watch. "I'd like to get home before midnight."

"Thanks, honey." The pout vanished faster than a starving hummingbird. "We're not far." She studied a slip of paper thick with hieroglyphics. "It's just south of Colorado, near Lake."

"Pasadena." They were already passing Covina off ramps, he noticed. They were close, and it was on the way out of LA. Time for him to take credit for sane involuntary magnanimity. "Sure, sugar. No reason we can't stop and look for a few minutes."

But it took him longer to locate the store than he'd thought. The car made several passes in front of the right street numbers before Marjorie spotted the little sign set in among the brickwork, an identifying afterthought.

They parked nearby. Impatient to be on its way, the car grumbled when he turned it off. They didn't have far to walk. A Goodwill store, one dealing liquor, another pornographic books and magazines and FILMS, CHANGED EACH WEEK, ZSC.

A dim stairway to the right of the sign led up into the building, a narrow throat lined with flaking plaster. "Either it's a very old, exclusive store or else another secondhand store masquerading as an antique shop." He studied the stairwell warily.

"Why do you say that?"

He started up the stairs. "He's on a second-floor walkup in a run-down neighborhood. They have an old-line, class clientele that knows the location or else he's upstairs because he can't afford a street-level location."

"Think you're pretty smart, don't you?" She squeezed his arm affectionately, and he grinned back at her.

The door was the first one they saw at the top of the stairs. To the right and left, dark hallways ran off into silent oblivion. They could have run into other doors, other shops, or into the fourth dimension for all Dylan could see:

A name on the door: Harry Saltzmann. There was no bell. Several knocks produced no response.

"Nobody home." He hoped his relief didn't show. Three days of traipsing around the megalopolis had tired him out, and he didn't share Marjorie's fanatic fondness for antiques. He was disgusted with breathing the effluvia of industrial civilization. It was time to go home.

"It's Tuesday. How can they be closed on Tuesday?" Marjorie sounded puzzled. "There're no posted hours, though. Damn."

"You'll find another antique store someday, Marj," he assured her. "You can smell 'em."

The door clicked, moved inward slightly. Eyes peered out and up at them. They were green as a young kitten's, the youngest feature of an old face. They formed an informal boundary between the narrow, tower face and jaw and the bulging oversized skull. The latter was fringed with white hair, the whole fleshy basilica seemingly too large' to balance on the sunken cheekbones and thin jaw below.

"Oh, you're open."

The man's voice was reassuringly firm, the accent southern: somewhere between Dallas and Nibelheim. "Mebbe, young lady. Who're you?"

"I'm Marjorie," she replied with her usual charming directness. "This is my husband, Dylan. He's a writer. Are you Mr. Saltzmann, the owner?"

"Not much use denyin' it," he mumbled. He looked resigned. "You want to look around? I haven't got much time."

"Not if you're closed. We don't want to cause you any trouble." Marjorie never wanted to make trouble, Dylan reflected wryly. She was the type to apologize to the tax collector for not being able to give the government more money.

"No, no trouble." The top-heavy face seemed to soften slightly. "You folks from out of town?"

"Yes. How can you tell?"

"You look happy. Whereabouts?"

Dylan was growing annoyed at the inquisition, but Marjorie threw him a sharp look, and he hung on to his retreating sense of courtesy. "Up the coast. Little town called Cambric. It's near San Simeon. You know, where the Hearst castle is?"

"Sure I know. They got a few nice pieces."

A few nice . . . either the old man was putting them on, or else the first of Dylan's suppositions was correct and the inventory within would not be cheap.

The door rode back on its hinges. "Come on in, then."

The shop was as organized as a Pacific tide pool. Furniture, clothing, and brie-a-brae were scattered about the high-ceilinged old room with an awkward yet eye-pleasing efficiency. One had the impression that whenever anew assortment was added to the melange it would spread itself like a wave across the existing stock, disturbing nothing, adding another layer of ancient creativity to the store's sedimentary deposits.

Light came in off the street through an old, high window. In the darker recesses of the nowhere-bright chamber, isolated small bulbs shone with feeble fluorescence, like fat fireflies in an Ohio forest.

Masterworks and gutterworks crowded together, competing for scant display space. An old city garbage can held dresses that must have been over a hundred years old. In a scratched glass case junk jewelry lay heaped in piles of gleaming paste. There was also an old-style tiara sparkling with suspiciously genuine-looking emeralds and diamonds. One faceted green pool was as big as Dylan's watch face.

Curious, he called the proprietor over. Saltzmann peered down over his belly to where Dylan's finger was pointing.

"The necklace? That's seven dollars."

"No, no. The tiara, next to it."

"Oh, that one. That's three hundred thousand."

Dylan missed a breath, stared at the slim, delicate filigree of gold and gems. "You're kidding, of course."

"Too much? Oh, well, if you really want it, I suppose I can let it go for two hundred and fifty. Belonged to Josephine . . . Bonaparte's gal."

Dylan tried not to smirk. "We'll keep it in mind."

There was a call for help from the far side of the shop. Marjorie was buried back among the old clothes there, running centuries through her fingers, trying on one era after another. Saltzmann waddled over to assist.

That left a bored Dylan to wend his own way deeper into the depths of the store. The long room seemed to run clear through the building. A ship's figurehead smiled down at him, and he admired it, tried to imagine it breasting the waves of the seven seas. He passed barrels stinking of long-drunk whiskey, kegs of railroad spikes, old cast-iron toys. There were baked and cracked horse collars and rusty farm tools dangling overhead that whispered of droughts and bad crops.

A corner led him to a back room, slightly better lit than the main store. Several pieces of furniture lay taken apart on floor and benches. He was just realizing that he'd stumbled onto the old man's workshop when he saw the chair.

It squatted off in a dim corner of its own, unadorned with antique Coke bottles or limp fur capes or power tools. To a writer of travel and adventure stories it was as irresistible as a guided tour of eighteenth-century Arabia.

Still, he paused long enough to peek back into the shop proper. Marjorie was holding a long black Victorian gown in front of her, dickering with the owner. The gown seemed to fit the nips and tucks of her Junoesque figure well. Somewhere an equally lovely form, the original wearer of that dress, was now dust. Quickly he drew back into the workroom and walked over to stare greedily at the chair.

It was straight-backed, with four legs, two straight arms, and a curved seat all hewn from some heavy, dark wood. Probably oak or walnut, he mused. In addition to the fairly standard clawed legs and swirling decorations there were more flagrant examples of the wood-carver's art.

Each arm ended in the head of a peculiarly anthropomorphic fish. At each upper corner of the straight back a deeply sculpted lion's skull, fangs agape, glared back at him. But it was the back of the seat that drew most of his enraptured attention.

Roughly half the smooth slab was filled with tiny carved faces. None was larger than his thumbprint, yet the amount of detail in them was astonishing. Peering closely at one, a middle-aged woman, Dylan could make out perfect carved teeth, eyebrows, hair. The expression was twisted and distorted, as were all the others.

Above this miniature gallery was a much larger face, so big that his spread palm could barely obscure it. It was extraordinarily animated and lifelike. The long nose appeared broken. Both cheeks swelled out into whorls of wind, gusting to either side of the chair to break against the smooth manes of the lions. Dylan studied the almost flexible carving, unable to decide whether the master wood-carver had shown a face laughing or screaming.

"This room's off limits, son."

Startled, Dylan nearly stumbled as he spun around. "Sorry. I . . . didn't see a sign or anything."

Glancing at the floor, Saltzmann located and picked up a dirty, battered rectangle of cardboard on which EMPLOYEES ONLY had been crudely painted. He muttered something to himself, set about rehanging it just outside the entrance.

While he was busy with that, Dylan beckoned his wife in.

"Sugar, come take a look at this."

Marjorie walked over, glanced at the chair, and grimaced. "That's your taste, all right. Gruesome."

"Oh, come on, Marjorie. Look at that workmanship; look at those faces, the detail."

"That's your way of saying you want it?" she asked evenly.

He was abruptly embarrassed. "Uh, did you find anything?"

She smiled tolerantly. "A couple of dresses."

"That's great. Buy whatever you want, hon."

"You always say that . . . after you find something you want."

"Wellllll . . ." He knew she was teasing him now.

"Never mind. I'm glad you found something, too. Just don't expect me to sit in it." Turning, she confronted the watching Saltzmann. "How much is it?"

"The chair? Well, you know, it really taint far sale." Dylan's hopes fell apart. "I've had it goin' on forty-five years." He looked at his watch. "But since I'm goin' to die 'round seven-twenty tonight, I s'pose you might as well have it as any other. That is, if its history don't bother you none. I'm bound to tell it to you."

"History intrigues me, never bothers me." Dylan turned a proprietary look on the chair, barely reflecting on the old man's macabre sense of humor.

"How old you think that chair is, folks?"

Dylan knew next to nothing about antiques. He let Marjorie guess. "A hundred years? No, two hundred."

Saltzmann was grinning, showing gold teeth alternating with dark gaps. His mouth displayed more masonry work –than a Saxon fortress. "Little less than four hundred."

Uh oh, trouble, Dylan thought. A chair that old, in this kind of condition, would be expensive.

"It belonged to John Dee. Dr. John Dee?" Both Dylan and Marjorie waited expectantly. The owner looked disappointed. "He was court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth the First herself, after she got him off the hook for practicing black magic. He invented the crystal ball; leastwise, he told fortune-tellers what it was good for." He paused for emphasis, added, "Made the only English translation of the Al Azif."

"Never heard of it," Dylan confessed honestly.

Saltzmann grunted, mumbled something about the ignorance of today's youth, and pointed at the back of the chair. "That's his face, Dr. Dee's, on the top there."

"That's interesting." Dylan had his wallet out. "How much?" He tried to sound casual.

"Oh, it don't matter now. Fifty dollars?"

Dylan made up for the earlier missed breath. "Okay. Sure."

Marjorie held the door for him while he wrestled the chair out into the hallway. "Hurry it up, son," the owner urged him. "I've got a lot to do before I'm taken."

As they finally finished securing the chair in the backseat of the car, Marjorie mentioned the oldster's earlier comment about dying at seven-twenty.

"He fancies himself a wit," Dylan told her, making sure the chair wouldn't slip on the long drive home. "Besides, didn't you hear him say as we were leaving that he was getting ready to be taken somewhere? Somebody's picking him up. Now, he can't very well go and die at the same time, can he?"

"I guess not." Marjorie slipped into the front seat, admiring her old new dresses.

They beat the fog in, for which Dylan was grateful. It curled in around him like a damp pair of pajamas as he climbed out of the car, stretched, and closed the garage door behind them. Then he was carefully extricating the chair from the sedan's backseat as Marjorie unlocked the service porch door.

"Can't wait to see what it looks like in the study."

Some minutes later Marjorie had fed the cats, hung her dresses, and joined him there. Forty feet below the wide window, surf slapped sharply on the seawall supporting the house. His desk backed that window. Books lined the other three walls, interspersed with hanging house plants, paintings, sculpture, an old rifle, a Polynesian cane, crossed battle-ax and saber, and other paraphernalia collected on their many travels. Somewhere offshore a ship's horn brayed at the fog like a hippo with sinusitis.

The chair rested behind the desk. "Got to polish it tomorrow." Loud barking exploded nearby. The study sided on another beach house. "Damn those dogs! A poodle I could maybe stand. But no, we move up here to be a hundred miles from noise and neighbors, and a month later he moves in with a pair of Great Danes not quite as big as ponies." The stentorian yapping sounded again.

"You'd better learn to live with it, hon. It's not against the law for a neighbor to own dogs." She indicated the chair. "And incidentally, you're going to polish that, not me. I'm not touching it. Gives me the quivers."

Making a face, teeth protruding over his lower lip, he advanced on her with cawed hands outstretched. "Ah, beware zee terror of zee Transylvanian chair, my lufly!"

"Stop that. Cut it out, Dylan!" She backed away, swatting nervously at his hands. "You know how easily I scare."

He dropped his hands, looked disgusted, "Oh, for heaven's sake, Marjorie. It's only a dead hunk of wood."

"Fine." She retreated toward the bedroom to unpack. "But you polish it."

Shaking his head, he turned to admire his acquisition. Now he had time to examine the tiny faces cut into the wood below the large one, time to admire the rich grain of the wood as well as the craftsmanship.

"They don't build furniture like this anymore," he murmured to himself, sitting down in it. He gripped the fish heads, sat straight. "Fifty bucks!" The straight wooden back was a bit stiff, but that was to be expected. In sixteenth-century England they built for endurance as much as comfort. The tiny faces pressed into the small of his back, the larger portrait's gaping mouth between his shoulder blades.

"Hope you don't bite, Doc." It was very dark and quiet outside, the ocean a hidden, heaving mass idling and breathing beneath the fog.

Halfway to the kitchen, Marjorie stopped at a sudden sound, turned, and headed for the study. When she peered in, Dylan was hunched over the typewriter. The chair almost hid him, though the familiar hysterical chatter of the machine was enough to tell her what he was doing.

"Working now? I thought you were exhausted from the drive."

He stopped, looked back at her. "I just had a thought I had to get down. You know me, Marj. If I don't do it now, I'll forget it." A staccato cackle interrupted him.

"Those dogs! I've got to try and reason with Andrus again."

"Andrus is a lawyer, hon. You know you can't reason with him." She turned and headed back toward the kitchen.

The coffee was purring to itself, a dark liquid feline sound. She hefted the old-fashioned percolator, poured two cups. Dylan walked in, closing the door on disappointed morning mist. The paper was clutched in his right hand. "Foggy out still this morning, hon. What's the matter?"

His expression was solemn, thoughtful. "I wish I hadn't been so hard on Mark Andrus last night. I just ran into his housekeeper, Mrs. Samuels." Marjorie nodded, waiting. "Andrus died last night."

"Oh, Dylan, no." He nodded. "How'd it happen?"

He tossed the paper on the kitchen table, didn't bother to open it. She put his coffee in front of him, and he sipped delicately. Steam crawled upward out of the cup, slim shadow matches to the curls in his hair.

"Heart attack, the doctor said. That's what Mrs. Samuels told me she was told. It doesn't seem fair. He wasn't much older than I am. "

"Isn't that kind of unusual, for him to have a heart attack? Not being forty yet and all." She stirred sugar into her own cup.

Shrugging, he opened the paper, laid it flat on the table. "Depends, I guess. If the men in his family had a history of heart trouble, then I suppose it's perfectly natural. Big fire up the coast near Eureka." He tapped the page. "If we don't get some honest rain soon here . . ."

He stopped, looked-up at nothing. Marjorie knew that faraway gaze. Until he decided to return, she might as well talk to the coffee.

"You know," he finally told her, as though he hadn't been silent for several minutes, "it may seem a little sick, but this has given me a great idea for a story."

From behind the stove, she grimaced at him as she started the eggs. They made a sound like a desert sandstorm when they landed in the hot skillet. "You're right, that is sick."

"But it's a terrific idea." He pushed back from the table, stood. " 'Scuse me, hon, be right back." Marjorie sighed, watched him almost run toward the study. She'd have to call him to breakfast half a dozen times now, and his eggs would still get cold. Not that he would mind. In the fever grip of a new idea, he couldn't taste anything, anyway.

That breakfast was the beginning. From then on it seemed creation was only a matter of typing fast enough to keep up with the flood of inspiration. Everything Dylan wrote in the succeeding months sold, and the two books he managed to complete sold big. Not quite bestsellerdom, but considering the lack of advertising the publishers put behind them, the books did very well, indeed. That was enough to wake up the editors. If and when Dylan finished the third book, there'd be some spirited bidding waiting for it.

All of which, while gratifying, took a heavy toll on Dylan. It got so he rose explosively and raced for the typewriter. A hysterical day of writing left him barely enough strength to munch in slow motion through supper and stagger exhaustedly into bed.

Dylan used to be creative elsewhere besides behind the typewriter. Which is one way of saying his incredible surge of creativity was also taking a heavy toll on Marjorie.

"Hey."

"Hmmm?" Dylan didn't look up from the typewriter. She'd never cared much for the sound the electric made. Lately she'd felt as though each tap, each character printed, was a tiny bullet aimed squarely at her heart.

"I said, the housekeeper would like a word with the master." She stood leaning against the frame of the study door. Her insides had wound tighter and tighter the past week until her stomach felt as tiny and hard as a golf ball. Grayness obscured the view outside the study window, the inescapable coast fog of the north California coast.

"Damn it, sugar, I'm working."

"You're working, and I'm dying." She tried to sound furious. It came out in a sob.

"Don't be ri-" Something went click in his head, and he turned, stared at her curiously. "Hon, is something the matter?"

She didn't have to volunteer it now. He'd asked the question. "The matter? What could possibly be the matter?" She straightened, walked into the study.

"C'mon now, hon what is it?"

"Don't 'c'mon now, hon' me!" Her control vanished. "I haven't seen you, talked to you, done anything with you in months!"

"I've been working." His voice was soft but not gentle. "Working my ass off, for us. You know how well we've done lately. Our bank account . . ."

Usually his mock little-boy manner of arguing was ingratiating. Now it was simply irritating. "To hell with our bank account. I'd like my husband back. You've been so obsessed with your work here lately, ever since we got back from LA, that . . ." She stopped, stared at him open-mouthed.

"Obsessed, yes. Ever since you bought that god-awful chair. "

"It's not god-awful. It's beautiful. You said so yourself."

"I never said it was beautiful, never! Well made, maybe, but I'd never've said it was beautiful. I'd remember."

"You're being silly, Marj. If anything, I'd have to say this chair's been good for me, considering how much and how well I've been selling recently."

"Maybe it's been good for you, but not for me. I-I want you to get rid of it."

"Get rid of it?" He looked at her as though she'd suggested some night swimming, now, in November. "This chair's one of my favorite things." He smiled patronizingly. "Don't tell me, Marj, that you're jealous of a chair. "

"Will you get rid of it?" Her voice was low, edgy.

He sat quietly for a moment, then spoke calmly and with a chill in his voice that made her tremble. "You're a little hysterical, Marjorie. I can't talk sensibly to you when you're hysterical. We'll talk some more about it later. I've got ten more pages to do yet tonight." He turned back to the typewriter.

She stared at his back. Tatta-ta-tat-tatta-tatta . . . the letters fired at her, each one a little pinprick deep inside her guts. She opened her mouth, started to say something, then whirled and ran from the room.

He did not look up.

The doorbell rang, demanding. Sweating despite the coolness of the room, Dylan looked up from the machine on the third ring. Dazedly, he surveyed the evening's work. Nearly nine thousand words.

As the bell rang and he rose to answer the door, he vaguely recalled something disquieting about the evening. Oh, yes, he and Marjorie had had an argument of some kind.

That was probably she at the door. When she got mad or frustrated, she liked to take the car out and drive. Silly fool had probably forgotten her house keys and locked herself out. Try as he could, the cause of their argument escaped him. Well, he'd apologize for whatever it was, take the blame, promise never to do it again, and they'd kiss and make up.

He was composing excuses as he opened the door. Marjorie wasn't there.

Instead, he found himself staring blankly up at a tall stranger in a blue uniform. The man wore a white plastic helmet and sported insignia and buckles like a cubist's cactus. He favored Dylan with a solemn stare entirely out of keeping with his quasi-military appearance.

Dylan felt himself drowning in a sudden thick surge of conflicting thoughts and emotions. He heard a voice, distant and suspiciously like his own, saying, "Yes, Officer?"

"Mr. McCarey? Dylan McCarey? This is 1649 Oakhurst Place?"

"Marjorie . ." Dylan leaned out into the steely dampness, tried to see into the garage. The door was up, open. "Has she been in an accident?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. McCarey. She died at the scene."

"Died?" He shook his head. That didn't clear it. He smiled crookedly. "Marjorie?"

"Apparently, in the fog, she missed a turn. About halfway between here and Goleta."

"Goleta? What was she doing way up near . . ." He stopped, remembered. They'd argued, and he'd turned away. Marjorie.

"Marjorie." He started out the door. A firm hand caught him, an arm barred his way.

"I'm very sorry, Mr. McCarey, very sorry. It was quick. Her car went over a three-hundred-foot cliff. I'm told she died instantly."

Dylan stared past the man, into the smothered night. Nothing was visible through the fog save a faint squarish outline in the driveway topped by a leering red light winking. Blood, fog, night . . . Marjorie.

"I'm Sergeant Brooks. I'm with the San Simeon station. If you'd like to come down there for a while . . ."

"Later, maybe. Not now," he replied numbly. "Later. "

"You sure you'll be okay?"

"I'll be okay." He looked up. "Thank you, Sergeant. I have to make some phone calls, get in touch with people."

"Of course. We'd like you to come into Obispo tomorrow . . . or as soon as you can. Official identification. I'm sorry."

"Of course you would. I'11 come in the morning. After I make the phone calls. Good night, Officer."

"Good night, Mr. McCarey. " Brooks studied him professionally, reached a decision. "I'11 be going now. If we can do anything, please call us."

"Yes. Thank you."

Dylan remained framed in the doorway, a weaving silhouette in the hallway light. He watched as the tall patrolman was swallowed by the fog. There was the sound of a car door slamming. Rumbling throatily, the blinking red light turned and receded into the distance. He stared until it had disappeared completely.

Reflex guided him back to the study, back to his desk. A detached part of him was coolly aware of the mournful dialogue of wind and wave below the window. Marjorie, Marjorie. What had they fought about, to send her blindly running from the house, from him? That silly fight over nothing, over a chair. A damned piece of furniture.

Turning, he looked at it. One little argument and his Marjorie was taken from him forever. One absurd little

He froze, his spine rippling like an underground cable in an earthquake. Some unmentionable fear swamped his muscular control of self, and he shivered uncontrollably.

The back of the chair was altered, different. He could've sworn, would've sworn, he'd originally counted nine faces carved into the seat back. There were eleven now. On bulgy-eyed, close inspection, one resembled very much, quite impossibly, that of a recently deceased young lawyer and former neighbor, Mark Andrus. The other . . . oh, God, the other . . .

Long hair formed a cirruslike nimbus around the delicately rendered face. The tiny mouth was open, forming a deep little gash in the dark wood, while the miniature glaring eyes focused on some unseen but immediate terror. The complete expression was one a person would adopt on viewing some soul-twisting horror or a train abruptly bearing down on her, the earth cracking beneath her feet, or . . .

Rocks at the bottom of a cliff rushing up at her.

Shaking, cold, cold in the heated room, he bent around in the chair. A forefinger reached out unsteadily toward the tiny portrait. His voice was an echo.

"Marjorie?" He touched the carving.

It was warmer than the wood around it.

Dylan jumped out of the chair, hit the desk, backed away from it. His eyes never left the chair. He struck something-the wastebasket-and stumbled over it. Strange noises were coming from deep in his throat, a low grunting sound like someone might make while experiencing a nightmare in the –midst of deep sleep.

Backing into a wall, he knocked precious books from their shelves and ignored them. A vase full of coleus fell, shattered, and stained the green carpet. Something else heavy was bumped, hit the floor with an imperative cushioned thud.

He looked down. The battle-ax lay smooth and clean among the dirt and humus and broken waxy stems from the cracked vase. Slowly he reached down, picked up the replica. Its weight blotted out everything else in the study. Cherry glaze blurred his vision.

Howling like a crippled wolf, he raised the ax over his head with both hands and rushed on the chair.

At the last instant it rose nimbly on four clawed legs and skittered aside.

The ax came down blindly, missing, gashing Dylan's right calf. Overbalanced, he spun, swung, and raised the ax again. It went through the picture window with a crystalline scream, and Dylan followed it.

Immediately thereafter a dull, distance-damped thump sounded from the rocks below. Then it was quiet in the study. Through the break, the fog began to enter, marching on the sound of winter waves forty feet below.

"I don't understand." The young girl looked happily at her fiancй. "It was so cheap."

He grinned at her with the superior knowledge of the older (he was two years older than she and had already graduated college). "Small-town estate sale, that's all. No dealers to bid against. It was sure a buy, though. What a way to start furnishing our apartment! Wait till Sally and Dave see it.

"Lot's go. You've got classes tomorrow morning."

"Mondays, yecch!" She wrinkled her pretty face. "You'll have all day off to admire it while I'm slogging through Haskell's seminar."

"It.11 be there when you get home." He slid behind the wheel of the van.

"Isn't it gorgeous, though?" She turned in her seat to stare back at the chair. It leaned up against the convertible couch, dogged down securely by rope. She admired the carved arms and lion's heads, the open-mouthed gargoyle crowning the back of the seat, and most especially the twelve miniature faces carved into the back.

Her fiancй frowned, looked in his rearview mirror. "Did you hear someone scream?"

She smiled at him, took his free hand. "Probably just some kid separated from his momma. I didn't hear anything but laughing, dummy."

"Laughing, screaming, who cares? We got ourselves a helluva buy!" He started the engine, guided the van out of the lot. They laughed as they rocked their way across several chuckholes and depressions in the road.

Behind them, the chair squatted expectantly as four wooden feet dug a little more deeply into the blue-red carpet . . .