'She is not perhaps quite in shape to see you yet, but that makes it all the more interesting, don't you think? We all like to see our friends with their masks off.'
'Aren't you the two boys interested in scientific exploration? In telescopes? How nice it is to meet two fine young fellows with inquiring minds, two fellows who want to extend their knowledge. So many young people merely coast along, don't they, so many are afraid to take risks. Well we certainly can't say that about you now, can we?'
Peter glanced at Jim Hardie's face: Jim's mouth hung open.
'No, you have been extremely brave. Now I will be with you in a moment, and I want you to relax and wait for me… just relax and wait.'
Peter slammed the back of his hand into Jim's ribs, but Jim did not move. He glanced back at the terrible figure coming toward him, and made the mistake of looking directly into the blank golden eyes. Immediately he heard a voice like music coming not from the man but speaking directly inside his head:
'Jim!' he screamed.
Hardie gave a convulsive shudder, and Peter knew that he was lost already.
The golden-eyed man was nearly to them, reaching out his left hand. Peter stepped backward, too frightened for coherent thought.
The man's white hand glided nearer and nearer Jim's own left hand.
Peter turned his back and pounded halfway up the next flight of stairs. When he looked around the light beneath the door on the landing was spilling out with such intensity that the walls were tinted faintly green: green too was Jim, in that light.
'Just take my hand,' the man said. He was two steps below Jim, and their hands nearly touched.
Jim brushed his fingers against the palm of the man's hand.
Peter looked up the stairs, but could not leave Jim.
The man beneath was chuckling. Peter's heart froze, and he looked down again. The man was grasping Jim's wrist with his left hand. The wolfish eyes glowed wide.
Jim screeched.
The man holding him moved his hands to Jim's throat and twisted his body with immense force, slamming the boy's head against the wall. He planted his feet on the boards of the landing and again smashed Jim's head into the wall.
Jim fell onto the boards and the man kicked him aside as if he were as weightless as a paper bag. A bright smear of blood like a child's fingerpainting lay on the wall.
Peter ran down a long corridor lined with doors; opened one at random and slipped in.
Just inside the door, he froze. The outline of a man's head showed against a window. 'Welcome home,' the man's toneless voice said. 'Have you met her yet?' He stood up from the bed. 'You haven't? Once you do, you'll never forget it. An incredible woman.'
The man, still only a black outline against a window, began to shuffle toward Peter, who remained stock-still just inside the door. As the man drew nearer, he saw that it was Freddy Robinson.
'Welcome home,' Robinson said.
Footsteps in the corridor paused outside the bedroom door.
'You know, I don't exactly remember-'
Panicked, Peter rushed at Robinson with his arms extended, intending to shove him out of the way: the moment his fingers touched his shirt, Robinson broke up into a shapeless pattern of glowing points of light; his fingers tingled. It was gone utterly in an instant, and Peter rushed through the air where it had been.
'Come out, Peter,' said the voice outside the door. 'We all want you to come out'; and the other voice in his mind repeated
Standing in front of the bed, Peter heard the doorknob moving. He scrambled onto the bed and banged the heels of his hands against the top of the window frames.
The window slid up as if on grease. Cold air streamed over him. He felt the other mind reaching for him, telling him to come to the door, not to be silly, didn't he want to see that Jim was all right?
He crawled out of the window as the door opened. Something rushed toward him, but he was already across the upper roof and jumping down onto the next level. From there he let himself drop onto the roof of the garage; and from the garage he jumped onto a snowdrift.
As he ran past Jim's car he looked sideways at the house; but it was as solidly ordinary as it had looked at first: only the lights in the stairwell and front hall burned, casting an inviting rectangle of yellow onto the walk. That too seemed to speak to Peter Barnes, to say
He ran all the way home.
11
'Lewis, you're already drunk,' Sears said gruffly. 'Don't make more of an ass of yourself.'
'Sears,' Lewis said, 'it's a funny thing, but it's hard not to make an ass of yourself when you talk about stuff like this.'
'That's a point. But for God's sake, stop drinking.'
'You know, Sears,' Lewis said. 'I get the feeling our little decorums aren't going to be much good anymore.'
Ricky asked him, 'Do you want to stop meeting?'
'Well, what the hell are we? The Three Musketeers?'
'In a way. We're what's left. Plus Don, of course.'
'Oh, Ricky.' Lewis smiled. 'The sweetest thing about you is that you're so damned loyal.'
'Only to the things worth being loyal to,' Ricky said, and sneezed loudly twice. 'Excuse me. I ought to be home. Do you really want to give up the meetings?'
Lewis shoved his glass toward the middle of the table and slumped down in his chair. 'I don't know. I suppose not I'd never get any of Sears's good cigars if we didn't meet twice a month. And now that we have a new member, well…' Just as Sears was about to burst out Lewis looked up at them and was as handsome as he'd ever been in his life. 'And maybe I'd be scared not to meet. Maybe I believe everything you said, Ricky. I've had a couple of funny experiences since October-since the night Sears talked about Gregory Bate.'
'So have I,' Sears said.
'So have I,' echoed Ricky. 'Isn't that what we've been saying?'
'So I guess we should tough it out,' Lewis said. 'You guys are in another league intellectually from me, maybe this kid here is too, but I guess it's a hang together or hang separately kind of situation. Sometimes, out at my place, I get really spooked-like something is out there just counting the seconds until it can nail me. Like it nailed John.'
'Do we believe in werewolves?' Ricky asked.
'No,' Sears said, and Lewis shook his head.
'I don't either,' said Don. 'But there's something…' He paused, thinking, and looked up to see all three of the older men looking expectantly at him. 'I don't have it worked out yet. It's just an idea. I'll think about it some more before I try to explain it.'
'Well, the lights have been on for some time now,' Sears said pointedly. 'And we had a good story. Perhaps we've made some progress, but I don't see how. If the Bate brothers are in Milburn, I'd like to assume that they'll do as the ineffable Hardesty suggests, and move on when they're tired of us.'
Don read the expression in Ricky's eyes and nodded.
