significance had been set in motion, that they were gathering momentum,
and that he could no more avoid playing a role in them than a condemned
man, in shackles, could avoid the noose or guillotine.
As it turned out, he didn't have to wait quite as long as he had
expected.
Because he'd had little sleep the night before, he went to bed early on
May second--and was awakened past midnight, in the first hour of May
third, by those ominous and rhythmic pulsations.
The sound was no louder than it had been before, but the wave of
pressure that accompanied each beat was half again as powerful as
anything he had previously experienced. The house shook all the way
into its foundations, the rocking chair in the corner arced back and
forth as if a hyperactive ghost was working off a superhuman rage, and
one of the paintings flew off the wall and crashed to the floor.
By the time he turned on the lamp, threw back the covers, and got out
of bed, Eduardo felt himself being lulled into a trancelike state
similar to the one that had gripped him a month earlier. If he fully
succumbed, he might blink and discover he'd left the house without
being aware of having taken a single step from the bed.
He snatched up the Discman, slipped the headphones over his ears, and
hit the Play button. The music of Wormheart assaulted him.
He suspected that the unearthly throbbing sound operated on a frequency
with a natural hypnotic influence. If so, the trancelike effect might
be countered by blocking the mesmeric sound with sufficient chaotic
noise.
He raised the volume of Wormheart until he could hear neither the bass
throbbing nor the underlying electronic oscillation. He was sure his
eardrums were in danger of bursting, however, with the heavy-metal band
in full shriek, he was able to shrug off the trance before he was
entirely enthralled.
He could still feel the waves of pressure surging over him and see the
effects on objects around him. As he had suspected, however, only the
sound itself elicited a lemming-like response, by blocking it, he was
safe.
After clipping the Discman to his belt, so he wouldn't have to hold it,
he strapped on the hip holster with the .22 pistol. He retrieved the
shotgun from under the bed, slung it over his shoulder by its field
strap, grabbed the camcorder, and rushed downstairs, outside.
The night was chilly.
The quarter moon gleamed like a silver scimitar.
The light emanating from the cluster of trees and the ground at the
edge of the lower woods was already blood red, no amber in it
whatsoever.
Standing on the front porch, Eduardo taped the eerie luminosity from a
distance. He panned back and forth to get it in perspective to the
landscape.
Then he plunged down the porch steps, hurried across the brown lawn,
and raced into the field. He was afraid that the phenomenon was going
to be of shorter duration than it had been a month before, just as that
