before,' Sears said. 'How do you propose to do it?'
'Peter said that Jim Hardie broke a pane of glass in the back door. All we have to do is reach in and turn the knob.
'And if we see them? If they are waiting for us?'
'Then we try to put up a better fight than Sergeant York,' Ricky said. 'I suppose. Do you remember Sergeant York, Don?'
'No,' Don said. 'I don't even remember Audie Murphy. Let's go.' He stepped into the drift left by the plow. His forehead was already so cold it felt like a metal plate grafted onto his skin. When he and Ricky were both on top of the drift they reached down to Sears, who stood with his arms extended like a small boy, and pulled him forward. Sears lumbered forward and up like a whale taking a reef, and then all three men stepped from the top of the drift into the deep snow on Montgomery Street.
The snow came up past their knees. Don realized that the two old men were waiting for him to begin, so he turned around and began to move up the street toward Anna Mostyn's house, doing his best to step in the deep depressions made by an earlier walker. Ricky followed, using the same prints. Sears, off to the side and stumping through unbroken snow, came last. The bottom of his black coat swept along after him like a train.
It took them twenty minutes to reach the house. When all three were standing in front of the building, Don again saw the two older men looking at him and knew that they would not move until he made them do it. 'At least it'll be warmer inside,' he said.
'I just hate the thought of going in there again,' Ricky said, not very loudly.
'So you said,' Sears reminded him. 'Around the back, Don?'
'Around the back.'
Once again he led the way. He could hear Ricky sneezing behind him as each of them plowed on through snow nearly waist-high. Like Jim Hardie and Peter Barnes, they stopped at the side window and looked in; saw only a dark empty chamber. 'Deserted,' Don said, and continued around to the rear of the house.
He found the window Jim Hardie had broken, and just as Ricky joined him on the back step, reached in and turned the handle of the kitchen door. Breathing heavily, Sears joined them.
'Let's get in out of the snow,' Sears said. 'I'm freezing.' It was one of the bravest statements Don had ever heard, and he had to answer it with a similar courage. He pushed the door and stepped into the kitchen of Anna Mostyn's house. Sears and Ricky came in close behind him.
'Well, here we are,' Ricky said. 'To think it's been fifty years, or near enough. Should we split up?'
'Afraid to, Ricky?' Sears said, impatiently brushing snow off his coat. 'I'll believe in these ghouls when I see them. You and Don can look at the rooms upstairs and on the landings. I'll do this floor and the basement'
And if the earlier statement had been an act of courage, this, Don knew, was a demonstration of friendship: none of them wanted to be alone in the house. 'All right' he said. 'I'll be surprised if we find anything too. We might as well start.'
Sears led as they left the kitchen and went into the hall. 'Go on,' he said-commanded. 'I'll be fine. This way will save time, and the sooner we get it over with, the better.' Don was already on the stairs, but Ricky had turned questioningly back to Sears. 'If you see anything, give a shout.'
3
Don and Ricky Hawthorne were alone on the staircase. 'It didn't used to be like this,' Ricky said. 'Not at all, you know. This place used to be so beautiful, then. The rooms downstairs-and her room, up there on the landing. Just beautiful.'
'So were Alma's rooms,' Don said. He and Ricky could hear Sears's footsteps on the boards of the lower room. The sound brought a new awareness flooding across Ricky's features. 'What is it?'
'Nothing.'
'Tell me. Your whole face changed.'
Ricky blushed. 'This is the house we dream about. Our nightmares are set here. Bare boards, empty rooms - the sound of something moving around, like Sears just now, down below. That's how the nightmare begins. When we dream it, we're in a bedroom-up there.' He pointed up the staircase. 'On the top floor.' He went up a few steps. 'I have to go up there. I have to see the room. It might help to-to stop the nightmare.'
'I'll go with you,' Don said.
When they reached the landing, Ricky stopped short 'Didn't Peter tell you this was where-?' He pointed to a dark smear down the side of the wall.
'Where Bate killed Jim Hardie.' Don swallowed involuntarily. 'Let's not stay here any longer than we have to.'
'I don't mind splitting up,' Ricky hastily said. 'Why don't you take Eva's old bedroom and the rooms on the next landing, and I'll prowl around on the top floor? It'll go faster that way. If I find anything, I'll call for you. I want to get out of here too-I can't stand being here.'
Don nodded, agreeing with him wholeheartedly. Ricky continued up the stairs, and Don climbed to a half- landing and swung open the door to Eva Galli's bedroom.
Bare, desolate; then the noises of an invisible crowd: hushing feet and whispers, rattling papers. Don hesitantly took a step deeper into the empty room, and the door crashed shut behind him.
'Ricky?' he said, and knew that his voice was no louder than the whispers behind him. The dim light guttered; and from the moment he could no longer see the walls, Don felt that he was in a much larger room -the walls and ceiling had flown out, expanded, leaving him in a psychic space he did not know how to leave. A cold mouth pressed against his ear and said or thought the word 'Welcome.' He swung around to the source of the sound, thinking belatedly that the mouth, like the greeting, had been only a thought. His fist met air.
As if playfully to punish him, someone tripped him, and he landed painfully on hands and knees. A carpet met his hands. This gradually took on color-dark blue -and he realized that he could see again. Don lifted his head and saw a white-haired man in a blazer the color of the carpet and gray slacks above mirror-polished black loafers standing before him: the blazer covered a prosperous little paunch. The man smiled down in a rueful fashion and offered him a hand; behind him other men moved. Don knew immediately who he was.
'Have a little accident, Don?' he asked. 'Here. Take my hand.' He pulled him upright. 'Glad you could make it. We were waiting for you.'
'I know who you are,' Don said. 'Your name is Robert Mobley.'
'Why, of course. And you read my memoir. Though I wish you could have been more complimentary about the writing. No matter, my boy, no matter. No apologies necessary.'
Don was looking around the room, which had a long, slightly pitched floor ending at a small stage. There were no doors he could see, and the pale walls rose almost to cathedral height: way up, tiny lights flashed and winked. Under this false sky, fifty or sixty people milled about, as if at a party. At the top end of the room, where a small bar had been set up, Don saw Lewis Benedikt, wearing a khaki jacket and carrying a bottle of beer. He was talking to a gray-suited old man with sunken cheeks and bright, tragic eyes who must have been Dr. John Jaffrey.
'Your son must be here,' Don guessed.
'Shelby? Indeed he is. That's Shelby over there.' He nodded in the direction of a boy in his late teens, who smiled back at them. 'We're all here for the entertainment which promises to be very exciting.'
'And you were waiting for me.'
'Well, Donald, without you none of this could have been arranged.'
'I'm getting out of here.'
'Leave? Why, my boy, you can't! You'll have to let the show roll on, I'm afraid-you've already noticed there are no doors here. And there's nothing to fear- nothing here can harm you. It's all entertainment, you see-mere shadows and pictures. Only that.'
'Go to hell,' Don said. 'This is some kind of charade she set up.'
'Amy Monckton, you mean? Why, she's only a child. You can't imagine-'
But Don was already walking away toward the side of the theater. 'It's no good, dear boy,' Mobley called after him. 'You're going to have to stay with us until it's over.' Don pressed his hands against the wall, aware that everybody in the room was looking at him. The wall was covered in a pale felt-like material, but beneath the fabric was something cold and hard as iron. He looked up to the winking dots of light. Then he pounded the wall with the
