The witch glanced at them, then pressed an additional sequence. The next line read:
She nodded to herself and began to undress, tossing her clothes onto the bed. Naked, she removed her contact lenses. Taking a black glass bottle from a dresser drawer, she poured a small quantity of unguent into the palm of her left hand and smeared herself with it, beginning at her feet and giving special attention to her vulva, rectum, and breasts. It smelled as weeds do crushed beneath the tires of a truck in spring.
The anointing completed, she turned off the light. Dull winter sun leaked around the blind, yet left the room nearly dark. The screen pulsed yellow-green:
The witch herself now possessed a slight luminescence. She replaced the bottle and took a yellow pastel from the same drawer. This pastel, if it glowed at all, did so only feebly, but when she scribed a circle on the floor, the line seemed almost a trench of flame.
Leaning to reach the drawer without leaving her circle, she took out a small drum. Its body was of blackened metal; its head carried a blurred picture of a rose, executed in blue and red. The witch placed this instrument in the center of the circle, then with the pastel inscribed the words
Cradling the drum between her crossed legs, she tapped it with her fingers. The sound was like the beating of a heart.
After an hour or more had passed, she sang in a clear contralto:
At length, she began a new song:
The old house trembled slightly, as though some subway train, blocks from the tunnel through which the trains ran, had gone beneath it. As though some old motorman, asleep and dreaming, had sent his train hurtling through the earth.
The witch smiled.
The Attackers
The machine came down the street on the back of a flatbed truck. Not that it could not move by itself; it could, on two stubby, treadless tracks. Its neck, which lay stretched upon the flatbed, was not stubby but longer than the neck of any giraffe. Like a giraffe, the machine was bright yellow but smudged.
The flatbed truck parked five doors down from the Free house, and the operator and the driver got out. Heaping one splintery timber on another, they built a ramp at the back of the truck. The operator climbed onto it and into the machine; its engine roared; oily black smoke belched from a pipe shaped like Lincoln’s hat.
A second truck brought the ball. The ball too was black; it might have been the bowling ball of a giant.
The machine lifted its head slowly but smoothly and looked about at the snow-powdered neighborhood. It crawled down from the flatbed and picked up its ball.
Through the windshield of his squad car across the street, Sergeant Proudy watched the machine with somber satisfaction. It was the policy of the Department to overawe resistance with a show of force, and he had brought two patrolmen with him; their names were Evans and Williams.
“Here we go,” Proudy said. “Let’s make sure everybody’s out.” They left the squad car, and the two preceded him up the steps. Both were younger and taller than he.
Williams rattled the knob. “Locked, Sarge.” He rapped a panel with his knuckles. “There’s a fire station a couple blocks down. I could borrow an ax.”
A large and very neatly turned out man in a blue overcoat was watching them from the sidewalk. “You three busy now?”
None of the three answered.
“Don’t worry about me. I can wait until you’ve got a minute.”
“Hit it again,” Proudy told Williams.
Williams drew his revolver and used the butt to pound the door. “I could shoot the lock off,” he said hopefully.
“The three of us will take it with one shove,” Proudy told him.
Evans asked, “We got a warrant, Sarge?”
“We don’t need one. This building’s condemned—it’s city property. Altogether on three now. One … two … THREE!”
Three shoulders crashed into the door, which did not budge.
The man in the blue overcoat mounted the steps. “I’ll give you a hand,” he said. “I used to be pretty good at
