blamed. Yes, I can see how I could be blamed. But it wasn't me. It
was the crate. And I don't even know what's in there!' He uttered a
wild laugh.
'Dead?' Northrup said. 'What is this, Dex?'
'A janitor. I don't know his name. And Gereson. A graduate
student. He just happened to be there. In the way of... whatever it
was.'
Henry studied Dex's face for a long moment and then said, 'I'll get
us both a drink.'
He left. Dex wandered into the living room, past the low table
where the chess table had already been set up, and stared out the
graceful bow window. That thing in his mind, that axle or
whatever it was, did not feel so much in danger of snapping now.
Thank God for Henry.
Northrup came back with two pony glasses choked with ice. Ice
from the fridge's automatic icemaker, Stanley thought randomly.
Wilma 'just call me Billie, everyone does' Northrup insisted on all
the modern conveniences... and when Wilma insisted on a thing,
she did so savagely.
Northrup filled both glasses with Cutty Sark. He handed one of
them to Stanley, who slopped Scotch over his fingers, stinging a
small cut he'd gotten in the lab a couple of days before. He hadn't
realized until then that his hands were shaking. He emptied half the
glass and the Scotch boomed in his stomach, first hot, then
spreading a steadylng warmth.
'Sit down, man,' Northrup said.
Dex sat, and drank again. Now it was a lot better. He looked at
Northrup, who was looking levelly back over the rim of his own
glass. Dex looked away, out at the bloody orb of moon sitting over
the rim of the horizon, over the university, which was supposed to
be the seat of rationality, the forebrain of the body politic. How did
that jibe with the matter of the crate? With the screams? With the
blood?
'Men are dead?' Northrup said at last.
'Are you sure they're dead?'
'Yes. The bodies are gone now. At least, I think they are. Even the
bones... the teeth... but the blood... the blood, you know...'
'No, I don't know anything. You've got to start at the beginning.'
Stanley took another drink and set his glass down. 'Of course I
do,' he said. 'Yes. It begins just where it ends. With the crate. The
janitor found the crate...'
Dexter Stanley had come into Amberson Hall, sometimes called
the Old Zoology Building, that afternoon at three o'clock. It was a
blaringly hot day, and the campus looked listless and dead, in spite
of the twirling sprinklers in front of the fraternity houses and the
Old Front dorms.
The Old Front went back to the turn of the century, but Amberson
Hall was much older than that. It was one of the oldest buildings
on a university campus that had celebrated its tricentennial two
