he ran. The hammer was ready in his right hand.
And there was nobody there. He stood at the top finally, up by the doors, and looked around, and he was absolutely alone. He glanced back at Mary, who had moved nothing but her head, so she could watch him, and he was about to call to her that it was a false alarm when he heard the thud.
From where? He cocked an ear and listened, and it happened again, a dull-sounding thud, muffled, from behind him.
From the doors.
He turned around and frowned at the doors. The other side of them was a large square platform built out from the face of the barn, ten feet above the ground, to match the height of the rear rows of seats inside. Wide wooden steps led down to ground level, with wood railings up the sides of the steps and around the platform.
There was someone – or something – out on the platform. The thud came again, sounding very low on the end door to the left, and Grofield frowned again, trying to figure out what it was. It wasn't the rapping sound of knuckles, but it wasn't the scratching noise a cat or a dog makes either.
Feeling more foolish and vulnerable than ever with no clothes on – and with this hammer in his hand – Grofield went down to the last door at the other end from the noise, slowly and silently unlocked it, and abruptly pushed it open and jumped out into nighttime darkness.
There was a quarter moon, and a sky full of stars, giving just a little light. Enough to see the shape of a body lying face down on the boards of the platform over to the left. As Grofield watched, the body pushed itself slowly up on its elbows, and lunged forward, thudding its head into the door.
Grofield peered around, but saw no one else. Cautiously he approached the body, which had collapsed again after hitting the door. Was it familiar?
Dan Leach.
'Good Christ,' Grofield whispered. Still staring down at Dan, he backed up to the open doorway and called, 'Get your clothes on and bring me my pants. It's somebody hurt.'
6
Mary called, 'Hey!'
Grofield was on the roof in the sunlight, with shingles and nails and a hammer. He looked down. 'What?'
'He's awake.'
'Delirious?'
'No, really awake this time. He wants to talk to you.'
'I just get started on something-' Grofield grumbled, and shook his head. 'I'll be right there. Soon as I finish this one I started.'
She was keeping the sun from her eyes with one hand, and now she waved the other and moved off, disappearing from his sight when she approached the building.
It was two days since they'd brought Dan in, bleeding from four knife wounds, and put him to bed on an Army cot in the men's dressing room. Mary, afraid he'd die, had wanted to call the First Aid Squad ambulance to take him to the hospital, but Grofield had known that would be bad for everybody and had insisted they could nurse Dan themselves. Mary had gotten the first aid book from the box-office down at ground level under the rear theater seats and they'd followed its instruction. And apparently it was working out.
Grofield finished with the shingle he'd been putting in, hooked the hammer over a nail partway driven into the roof, made sure the rest of the new shingles and the bag of nails weren't going to slide off, and then made his way down the slanting roof to the ladder, and then to the ground.
Dan looked very pale, but he was awake. He said, 'You got a beautiful wife.'
Mary looked pleased. Grofield said, 'And you've only got eight more lives.'
'How'd you know where to find me?'
'You came knocking at the door. Don't you remember?'
Dan frowned. 'Are you putting me on?'
'No. You came here and crawled up the steps out front and beat your head against the door till we let you in. Don't you remember any of it?'
'The last thing I remember is Myers with that knife.'
'Where the hell did he get a knife?'
'From the car. It was his car, you know, he had one in a sheath under the dash. I left it there, I didn't need any knife.'
There was a folding chair closed up and leaning against the wall. Grofield opened it and sat down. 'Tell me what happened,' he said. 'From the beginning.'
'I took your goddam advice,' Dan said. 'That's what happened.'
'You let him go.'
'I underestimate the bastard. I do it every time. I took him back to where I had him tell you the story, and I let him go there.'
'Thanks a lot. You couldn't take him a few hundred miles first.'
'I was sore,' Dan said. 'I just wanted to get rid of him.'
'Not around me.'
