just as it had been before, squat and mute. Except that now it was
free of dust and three boards had been pried off the top.
The light moved and centered on one of the janitor's big, sensible
work shoes. Charlie drew breath in a low, harsh gasp. The thick
leather of the shoe had been savagely gnawed and chewed. The
laces hung, broken, from the eyelets. 'It looks like somebody put it
through a hay baler,' he said hoarsely.
'Now do you believe me?' Dex asked.
Charlie didn't answer. Holding onto the stairs lightly with one
hand, he leaned under the overhang--presumably to get the shoe.
Later, sitting in Henry's study, Dex said he could think of only one
reason why Charlie would have done that--to measure and perhaps
categorize the bite of the thing in the crate. He was, after all, a
zoologist, and a damned good one.
'Don't!' Dex screamed, and grabbed the back of Charlie's shirt.
Suddenly there were two green gold eyes glaring over the top of
the crate. They were almost exactly the color of owls' eyes, but
smaller. There was a harsh, chattering growl of anger. Charlie
recoiled, startled, and slammed the back of his head on the
underside of the stairs. A shadow moved from the crate toward him
at projectile speed. Charlie howled. Dex heard the dry purr of his
shirt as it ripped open, the click as Charlie's glasses struck the floor
and spun away. Once more Charlie tried to back away. The thing
began to snarl--then the snarls suddenly stopped. And Charlie
Gereson began to scream in agony.
Dex pulled on the back of his white tee shirt with all his might. For
a moment Charlie came backwards and he caught a glimpse of a
furry, writhing shape spread-eagled on the young man's chest, a
shape that appeared to have not four but six legs and the flat bullet
head of a young lynx. The front of Charlie Gereson's shirt had been
so quickly and completely tattered that it now looked like so many
crepe streamers hung around his neck.
Then the thing raised its head and those small green gold eyes
stared balefully into Dex's own. He had never seen or dreamed
such savagery. His strength failed. His grip on the back of Charlie's
shirt loosened momentarily.
A moment was all it took. Charlie Gereson's body was snapped
under the stairs with grotesque, cartoonish speed. Silence for a
moment. Then the growling, smacking sounds began again.
Charlie screamed once more, a long sound of terror and pain that
was abruptly cut off... as if something had been clapped over his
mouth.
Or stuffed into it.
Dex fell silent. The moon was high in the sky. Half of his third
drink--an almost unheard-of phenomenon--was gone, and he felt
the reaction setting in as sleepiness and extreme lassitude.
'What did you do then?' Henry asked. What he hadn't done, he
knew, was to go to campus security; they wouldn't have listened to
such a story and then released him so he could go and tell it again
