At the art store, Victor walked up and down the aisles for more than two hours, choosing things. Pastels, illustration board, oils, brushes, canvas, solvent, pencils. His fingers touched shelves, came away with what they wanted. He knew, subconsciously, exactly what was needed to start a studio from scratch. Each item gave him a sharp bitter-sweet feeling of
At a quarter until nine, he stopped and ate at a hamburger stand, two for him and two for Intrepid. He could not find a water fountain, so he bought the dog a Coke as large as his own. The mutt was so excited about the taste of it that he forgot his table manners and slopped the stuff all over the seat and himself. Salsbury took it away, wiped the spilled portion up, and explained the importance of reservation. When he let the dog drink again, he was much more careful.
By nine thirty, he was starting the hour drive back to Oak Grove.
He didn't know what kind of a night it was going to be.
It was going to be very bad.
A shower, tooth brushing, and flat tire saved his life. The combination of the three served to keep him up and awake much later than he intended.
The flat tire was first. When he settled the car along the curb, he took off his jacket and set about changing the tire, only to discover, when he brought the jack down after all his work, that the spare was also flat.
He remembered that a gas station was somewhere ahead, though he could not think how far. He took the spare off the car and set out rolling both of them, then hefted them, one arm through each. Fifteen minutes later, he felt as if he would die; he was not much surprised to discover the prospect delighted him. His arms ached, and his shoulders were bent like plastic left too long in the sun. He rested for a time, hoping a car would come along to give him a lift. None did, and he went on. The third time he stopped, he sat on the tires to catch his breath and fell asleep. He woke ten minutes later when a truck roared by, oblivious of his roadside presence. At last, he came to a station that was just closing, managed to persuade the owner (via a five dollar bill above and beyond the charges) to fix both tires and drive him back to his MG.
At home a good deal later, he staggered through the living room and upstairs with only a night light for a guide. The upstairs hall clock said it was ten minutes of one in the morning. He could not escape the bathroom, for the call of nature was too strong. While there, he took a quick, warm shower because he felt greasy, and stopped on his way out to brush teeth that looked de-pressingly yellow.
Without these three routines-the flat tire, the shower, and the tooth brushing-he would have been asleep long ago and perhaps dead long before his time.
He flopped into bed, moaned as the mattress seemed to rise up and engulf him like some ameoboid creature. The only thing in his awareness sphere was a tremendous pitch cloud settling down, down, mercifully down.
Then Intrepid was barking, snarling, making thick muttering sounds deep in his throat. Victor had left the bedroom door open, and the dog had gone into the hallway. Salsbury turned over, determined not to let a stupid hound interrupt his precious sleep, lovely? black sleep. But Intrepid kept it up. Finally, unable to pretend he did not hear it, he got out of bed and padded into the hall, thinking of all sorts of tortures that might be applicable to a dog.
Intrepid was standing at the head of the stairs, looking down and snarling bitterly. Salsbury politely asked him to be quiet. The hound looked at him with bared teeth, whined, turned to gaze back down the steps.
Victor went back into his room, closed the door, started toward the fluffy bed. When he finally got there, he lifted his cement legs onto the mattress, crawled forward on his steel knees, flopped onto his stomach, and slapped the pillow over his head, seeking silence. He brought it tight against his ears with both hands, sighed, and proceeded to summon that old, soft-hued dream land. But the barking was sharp enough to penetrate the chicken feathers. He tossed the pillow to the floor and sat up. Damn dog! Damn, damn mutt! What did he want from him? He had saved the mutt from falling off a cliff, hadn't he? What more could he want?
He shouted at Intrepid to shut up.
The dog merely barked louder.
Finally Salsbury decided, buddy or no buddy, the beast had to go outside for the night. He had proved himself such a gentle, quiet companion before. This outbreak was out of character but just as intolerable as if it had been common. Victor got up, went into the hall.
Intrepid was still at the head of the stairs, looking down, straining as if he would leap. Victor saw that the hairs on the back of his mutt's neck were standing up, but that did not register with him as it should, as it would have, had he not been so sleepy. He could think only of bed, soft and cool. He trudged up to the dog, bent to pick him up, and froze.
Even in his condition, half asleep and with every muscle longing for the touch of eiderdown, he could see what the dog was barking at. Indistinctly
In the shadows at the foot of the steps.
And it was coming up.
His mind was filled with visions of lizard-things with sucking mouths, eyes bright as hot coals. He was riveted to the spot, waiting for the long cold hands to touch him, for the sweet warm horror to envelope him.
Intrepid rubbed against his leg, seeking solace, wondering why his master seemed so unmasterful in this moment of crisis.
Then the thing below moved out of the shadows, shattering all of his preconceived notions of the nature of this nightmare. It was not a lizard-thing, but a man. Merely a man.
No. Not merely. There was something subtly wrong with this man. He was over six-feet tall, every bit as large as Victor. He was dressed in brown slacks, a short-sleeved white shirt, and loafers that seemed so corny Victor wondered if there were pennies in them. Yet he could not have passed for normal on the street, mingling with other people. His face was strangely like that of a manikin, smooth and waxy, flawless almost to a flaw. And his eyes? They were blue, just as the cigarette and cologne ads said a hero's eyes had to be, but they were oddly flat and lusterless, as if they were not eyes at all but painted glass marbles that had been popped into his sockets. His face was handsome but expressionless. He did not smile, frown, or in any way betray what was going on inside his mind.
Salsbury was certain the stranger was coming to kiil him.
?Stop right where you are,? Victor said.
But he didn't stop, of course.
Instead, the intruder doubled his speed, came up the stairs fast, faster than Victor had been anticipating. Salsbury moved back to the hall. He was the stranger's physical equal, but there was something about the looks of the other man that told him his muscles would do him not the least bit of good. Besides, he was bone weary from lack of sleep and from ceaselessly working over the mysteries of his existence, trying to come up with clues about himself. Any extended physical match would only prove that the intruder had more endurance than he did. He was almost to the bathroom at the end of the hall when he heard Intrepid's screech of sheer, unadulterated venom. He whirled to face the steps just in time to see the mutt leap onto the man's throat and sink bared fangs in to the hilt.
The stranger stopped, looked perplexed, though his broad features moved as if they were nothing more than interconnecting slabs of plastic, moving on springs and hinges and hydraulic arms. Then he reached up, pulled the dog off, and threw him into the master bedroom, pulling that door shut. A second later, Intrepid was still game enough to slam against the door from the other side, all but frothing in his fury. But for all his heroic determination, he was effectively out of the fight.
One thing bothered Salsbury. He could see the holes where his dog's teeth had sunk through the waxy flesh, but he could
The stranger advanced as if nothing important had happened. Any normal man should be groveling on the carpet, mortally wounded, kicking like a trapped rat.
Salsbury realized too late that he had passed the door to his bedroom in his rush to get away from the head of the stairs, and his pistol was now out of reach. The stranger was advancing too fast for him to be able to run back to his room without being caught.
