JOHN BYRNE 
FEARBOOK 
    
Prologue
    
    In the darkness he was not alone.
    Around him there were sounds. Scuttlings. Scrapings. The slosh and drip of noisome, stagnant water. There were cobwebs matted against his hair, his face wet with cold sweat. When he tried to brush them off his fingers left trails of slime across his brow.
    As his jacket dried-he'd fallen full length in the foul, constant pool at the foot of the short stairs-it lifted from his back. It seemed to draw decaying fingertips across his flesh; like the fingers he was expecting.
    All his senses were wound tight. The hair on his neck bristled at the slightest movement of air. His nostrils twitched as the mixture of foul odours wafted around him. Fragments of the darkness drew closer. Against the grimy walls old dirt shifted, perhaps from its own sodden weight, perhaps not. When he moved, it set off a chain reaction of sounds; the darkness came alive with rustlings. When a floorboard creaked above him, it was as if the earth itself moaned aloud.
    He drew himself into a ball, screwed up in lame defence against his nameless fears, his hands pulled back into the cuffs of his jacket, his knees tucked up against his chin. His eyes narrowed to slits, willing form out of formlessness.
    Hours he had been there. It had seemed like days, in the dank, foul darkness. His back was still on fire from the lashing of the great wide belt. His heart pounded, leaping faster at each new sound. He listened to the footsteps on the floorboards above, the raised voices, muffled by the thickness of the wood.
    Waiting. Waiting.
    Waiting for him to come as they had said he would come, his head twisted on his broken neck, his dead eyes seeing perfectly in the darkness. His decayed fingers reaching unerringly for a wrist, an ankle. Inhumanly strong.
    Seeking revenge.
    "But it wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault!’ A whisper in the darkness, but loud in the enclosed space. Speaking at all made his temples throb, made his dry tongue feel on fire. "It wasn't my fault."
    It grew louder, louder, each time he said it. Until it was no longer a frightened whisper. Until it was a scream. Until all the air in his lungs went into that one phrase bellowed towards the low ceiling, over and over and over again.
    "It wasn't my fault! It wasn't my fault! IT WASN'T MY FAULT! IT WASN'T MY FAULT!''
    He screamed and screamed until his very brain felt aflame.
    And in the darkness he was not alone.
    She was walking. It was hot. The air was hot. The land around her was hot. The asphalt beneath her bare feet was blistering.
    She walked without the slightest sense of her direction. Her eyes faced the darkness, where the desert rose to meet the deep, black bowl of the sky; behind her the lights of Benson touched the heavens with their pearly glow. Ahead, the road stretched arrow straight.
    There was a knot of pain between her thick blond eyebrows. Her face twitched each time her bare soles came down on the scorching pavement.
    But the pain went deeper.
    Her green eyes-small, wide-spaced-were filled with hot tears that ran down her cheeks. They dropped from the jut of her long jaw and gathered in small pools on her chest as they rivered their way between her bare breasts.
    
    The air felt hot against her naked flesh. She expected relief to come with the night, but there was none. It almost seemed as if the darkness made the heat press closer, like a great black beast curling itself around her, suffocating her.
    She walked naked through hot, dry darkness. It was a service road she walked along. She had chosen it specifically from the crumpled road map that had guided her to her cousin's house. It was a long, straight road that no one used, a road that went nowhere.
    I told him, she thought. The words repeated and repeated, like surf pounding against a rock shore. Pounding, pounding, wearing away the rocks, smoothing away their hard, sharp faces until they were no longer proud, jutting crags. Until they were only lumps of smooth stone without a trace of their violent birth.
    I told him, I told him, I told him. A hundred times, it seemed. A thousand. Begging. Pleading. Cajoling. Demanding. "Don't do this thing. You don't know. You can't know what you might let loose. You said yourself.…"
    "I know what I'm doing," he insisted. (How hard his voice! How sure!) "It's a simple process. Nothing can go wrong, provided you don't distract me. Provided you don't make me screw it up."
    "But in the house? Does it have to be in the house?"
    "Where do you want me to do it? In the middle of the yard? So the neighbours can see? They think we're strange enough as it is."
    "In the garage-you could do it in the garage, couldn't you? I'll move the car.
    "I've told you. Haven't I told you? It's too new. That garage is less than ten years old. I need the age of the house around me. The sureness of age."
    "You keep saying that. You keep saying that, but it doesn't make sense. The house is only a couple of hundred years old. What you're talking about goes back thousands of years. Millions!"
    "You're free to leave. You can take your doctor friend and go. Anytime you like. I won't stop you."
    The hot, still air was so close around her. She drew her breath in short, pained gulps. Why did he bring that up? Why did he throw that in my face? It was over. It had been over for weeks.
    "I don't want him. You know I don't want him. It was… .it was just a craziness. Because you were so busy with your work. I know it's such a cliche, but…1 don't want him. Please. We could go away. You've always wanted to go to Europe. To take your studies there. Katherine recommended it. We could go to Europe."
    "Katherine is a fool. You know how I feel about her. She likes to play scientist. But this isn't science. This is nothing like science."
    All the time he spoke, he worked. She watched him spread the small, bright stones on the dining room rug. Arranging them. Rearranging them. She saw a pattern evolve. Then another, and another. She winced as he swore under his breath.
    He swept up the stones and started again. A circle within a square within a circle. Nearly a hundred of the small, shiny black stones. Spaced so carefully. One just exactly here. Another just precisely there.
    Then the words. Horrible, horrible words. Not English. Nor nothing like English. She could not understand a syllable. They made her skin prickle. They made her want to scream at him and to kick the smooth little stones all out of their careful array.
    "Please. Baby, please, don't…"
    ' "Shut up! Shut up, damn you! Now I'll have to start again''
    The words. A chant. Rhythmic. Guttural. It made her think of her grandfather muttering in German when Gran told him not to smoke in the house.
    It wasn't German. It wasn't any language spoken aloud for thousands of years. She knew he'd spent most of his adult life gathering all the clues that would tell him how to pronounce those words. Twenty years, easily. Since long before they met and married.
    The hot tears dripped against her breasts. The pavement scorched the soles of her feet. The sky above was black. There were no stars. There was no moon. The stars and moon were hiding from her. They didn't want to look at her in her nakedness. In her pain.
    The pain that brought her across the country. Driving, Alone. Stopping only for gas. For nature. Sometimes not even for that. Her cousin scarcely recognized her, banging on her door. Three o'clock in the morning. Banging on the door. hanging and banging. Wanting to scream. But her throat wouldn't let her.
    After it happened she'd screamed for nearly three days without halt. She'd sometimes had to stop the car to scream. Scream and scream and scream, until her throat felt broken. Until she couldn't scream anymore.
    She heard the words again, low and rhythmic and guttural. Over and over. Him moving a stone, chanting the words, kneeling before the intricate pattern of a hundred smooth, shiny black stones. Chanting. Swaying.
    "Please…" The word had forced itself past her clenched teeth. No more than the barest whisper, the faintest sigh. "Please…"
    He looked up at her. His face was drawn behind his bushy black beard. His hair was all in disarray. There were beads of sweat on his brow. Cold, white fury in his deep brown eyes. Not at all the face of the man she married. He snarled at her. "God dammit, I told you…"
    Then there was light. Bright. Searing. Like an atom bomb exploding before her eyes. Exploding right there in the dining room. Bright, searing light. A rush of scalding hot air.
    It pushed her back against the wall. It pushed inside her blouse. It felt like hot, dry hands. Groping. Pushing up her trouser cuff. Up her legs. Battering against her sex.
    It forced its way past her lips. Down her throat. Into her lungs. It filled her, expanded her, until she thought her chest would burst.
    And right there before her eyes, she saw him dancing. Jerking. A puppet on a single string. Dancing in the very centre of the bright blue fire. As his flesh bubbled and cracked. As black bile oozed from his nostrils. From the corners of his eyes. From his ears.
    He was screaming, but there was no sound. No sound anywhere in the world.
    Then he was gone. The light was gone. The blue flame was gone. The shiny black stones were gone.
    She began to scream.
    
    The desert air was hot against her naked flesh. She left her clothes strewn along the road behind her. She walked tall and straight, as if invisible wires were pulling on her. Forcing her to stand erect. Her joints were locked, her legs and arms stiff. It would have looked a painful way to walk, if anyone had been around to see.
    There was no one. Only the endless desert night. Only the voices in her head. The voices that played and replayed the same tired record. The same scene over and over.
    I told him, I told him, I told him.
    She chuckled.
    A little thing. Almost a hiccup. Like a baby at its mother's breast. She chuckled. Deep down in her throat. Her hand went to her mouth. Her small, wide eyes grew large.
    Again. A stronger sound. Stronger still the third.
    She was starting to laugh. And she knew, with all the blinding clarity of pure, unbridled terror, that if she laughed she would not stop laughing. She would not stop until her lungs burst. Until her life ended.
    She clamped her hands tight over her mouth. Still walking, stiff-legged, into the desert night. She clamped her hands over her mouth. She breathed through her nose. Deep, even breaths. Forcing herself to breathe steadily.
    The laughter was pounding against her throat, her tongue, her teeth. The great, wide, thundering torrent of laughter. Pounding. Pounding. Like the surf against the rocks.
    I told him. Ha ha. I told him. Ha ha ha. I told him. Hahahahahahahahaha…
    The laughter filled the hot, still desert night. In the centre of the laughter she knew she was going to die.
    It only made her laugh the harder.
    
    
Chapter One 
1
    
    The Catalog came without fanfare, mingled with the morning mail.
    In two and a half months Sam and Joanne Dennison had grown accustomed to their mailbox being stuffed to overflowing with all manner of come-ons and catalogs. At first they gave the new arrival no more thought than the dozens of others they'd consigned to the trash bag since the move from New York in June.
    They had found a fine old colonial on heavily wooded property four miles from the centre of Fairharbour, Connecticut. They liked the colonial feel of the English spelling. It seemed to them a quiet, constant reminder of the town's history. Its pre-Revolutionary founding.
    Relocation, like so many of the things in their life, had been more or less on impulse. They were seeking an escape from the chaos of the city, or, as Sam sometimes put it, *'seeking to fulfil the American clich6."
    Fifteen years of hard work in a Madison Avenue design studio had earned all the desired rewards. For Sam and Joanne that meant a house with a history. Four acres of trees and lush grass in a New England town with a curiously misleading name.
    "Fairharbour'' spoke to them of tall masted ships lined side by side in a calm, sheltering cove. A village of white frame buildings growing haphazard along the waterfront. Ancient wharves thrusting bony fingers toward the waiting vessels.
    In reality Fairharbour was twenty miles from the open water of Long Island Sound. It had been named arbitrarily. The logic was simple enough: give the new town a good name; it would be bound to attract good people. Three hundred years later twenty-five thousand good people called Fairharbour home.
    Sam Dennison was glad to be one of them. As a boy of six, growing up in Evanston, Illinois, he'd seen Christmas in Connecticut on the family's tiny black-and-white TV. Something in that Hollywood imagery had touched his young soul. He found himself checking the TV Guide for any time the movie might be repeated.
    His childhood had been a living hell. His parents had hated their marriage. Had hated him as the thing that bound them. They filled his daylight hours with fear and pain. The dark he learned to fill himself, with nightmare.
    He longed for the peace reflected in the scratchy images of that old movie. He ached for it as some men do for power, for women, for wealth. As his quest for success carried him eastward across the nation, it was always to that Connecticut dreamworld that his imagination returned.
    Then one day Joanne started a campaign to get them out of their Brooklyn Heights brownstone apartment. Sam took it as a signal that the time had finally come. A quick look in the New York Times Sunday Magazine real estate listings found them a likely prospect.
    They placed a call to the office of the realtor that very afternoon. Two days later they were stepping of the train in Fairharbour. Ed Wheeler met them at the station. He proved to be the first real sour note in the proceedings. Late middle-aged, with thinning white hair, he had a ruddy complexion that spoke less of Connecticut's fresh air than of too many five-martini lunches. He had what Joanne always called a "Eugene O'Neill quality"-a tragic Irishman bound for glory in a whiskey bottle.
    
    He also had a wife only a handful of years older than Joanne herself. That made Joanne's skin crawl. Ticky Wheeler was a small, frail woman, with lank brown hair. Big, constantly frightened eyes. Introducing his wife to the Dennisons, Ed Wheeler put a big arm around her middle. He clamped a short-fingered hand over her right buttock. Ticky seemed to shrivel at his touch.
    Ed planted a loose-lipped kiss on her cheek and sent her off to "find some coffee." Ticky hurried toward the kitchen with an obedient little jig that made Joanne want to scream.
    Wheeier's office was an extension built onto the back of his big Italianate house. Once it might have been a small stable, or even a very early garage. Now it perfectly encapsulated everything Joanne Dennison hated in middle-aged businessmen. Red leather chairs squeaked at every motion. Deep rosewood panelling supported far too many brass appointments. Fox-hunting lithographs hung in mahogany frames. Beside them, golf trophies and framed and mounted handguns.
    On his broad oaken desk, the ultimate obscenity, a hand grenade. Wheeler hinted broadly that the thing was still live, forty years after being brought home as a souvenir of World War Two. Correction: 'The Big One." Of course, Ed Wheeler was the kind of man who'd call the Second World War "The Big One." At least they had been spared any wartime reminiscences.
    He took a sheaf of brochures from a wooden filing cabinet behind the desk. He spread them for Sam and Joanne to see. There were half a dozen places he'd selected on the basis of their earlier telephone conversation. Sam was careful to specify the price range he was prepared to afford.
    They selected four that looked promising. After politely sipping Ticky's thick, bitter coffee, they climbed back into Ed's big Buick station wagon and headed out to see the houses for themselves.
    As they drove through town, Joanne studied the faces on the street. A New Yorker all her life, she found herself very conscious of the sameness of those faces. Fairharbour seemed to have nothing of the wide racial mosaic of the big city. She leaned forward from her place on the back seat. "Is this town really as… well, as white Anglo-Saxon Protestant as it looks?"
    "Oh, no," Wheeler said. He swerved the Buick hard right around a slowing Winnebago. "It's a pretty even mix. We have Catholics here, too."
    Joanne flopped back, eyes rolling. Wheeler had answered her question much more fully than he might have guessed.
    The third place they looked at was 1717 Wolf Pit Road, a two-century-old Victorian recently renovated. Sam wondered aloud what and where a "wolf pit" might have been. Ed Wheeler could offer no insight.
    Joanne was as good as sold the moment she stepped into the house. It fairly sang to her. The front hall was wide, high-ceilinged, alone nearly as spacious as their Brooklyn apartment. The walls were in two tones of soft browns, with carefil white trim on the doors and chair rails. The plaster moulding around the ceiling would have cost a fortune in a modern house. Wheeler assured them most of the details were authentic and original.
    To the right the hall opened into a big, pale gray living room with tall, white-shuttered windows; to the left a cosy sitting room all in muted peach and rose. The hall was dominated by a broad staircase, magnificently appointed with dark oak banisters and white spindles.
    The house was still furnished with the items the former tenants had rented from Dick Keillor, the owner. Wheeler told Joanne anything she liked could be purchased as part of the package deal on the house. Ever on the lookout for a bargain, a special find, she examined the pieces carefully.
    Nothing really caught her fancy. She preferred moving their old stuff into the empty house. They would be going from four rooms to ten. It was as close to starting from scratch as she could hope for.
    Between the front hall and kitchen was a long dining room, set at right angles to the rest of the house. The walls were covered with a dark green watered silk that Sam would grow to hate. On the floor a worn pile carpet of uniquely bilious green reached from wall to wall. Although the room was brightly lit by two broad bays of tall windows at either end, the colours combined to create an air of moody oppression.
    
    Beyond the dining room the kitchen was a return to sunlit openness. The room was bigger than the living room of their apartment. Two of the walls were filled with the same tall windows that characterized the rest of the house. Here the motif was in creams, with burnt-orange trim.
    Sam stepped through a small door to the left of the kitchen and fell in love. Beyond was a glassed-in sun porch on the back of the house. He paced out the floor. Already he could envision his drawing board square in the centre of that pool of gold-green light. He grinned in delight when Wheeler informed him the area was already properly insulated and wired.
    Wheeler led them through the mud room off the kitchen to the opposite side from the sun porch. There the clothes washer and dryer squatted against a corner wall, modern intrusions into a room designed to accommodate arriving ladies in hoop skirts.
    The age of the house reached out to Joanne, memories deep within the walls.
    Wheeler pulled open the basement door and started down into blackness. 4'Sorry about the dark," he said without looking back. "The light switch's at the bottom of the stairs. You might get Keillor to move it before you sign on the place." The confident tone of the real estate salesman. In all three houses that they had been shown so far, he'd never once used the word "if." He spoke of each as if the sale were already assured. This time he might be right.
    At the top of the stairs Sam froze. The air wafting up from the basement was thick. Wet. He could smell wood rot and coal oil. His knuckles whitened on the stair rail. Joanne saw the twin veins stand out against his forehead.
    "There's nothing down here we absolutely need to see, is there, Mr. Wheeler?" she asked. She'd pointedly ignored his insistence on being called "Ed."
    "Guess not," he said from the darkness below. He gave up groping around for the light switch and huffed back up the stairs. "Just the furnace and water heater," he said, stepping past Sam into the mud room. "I have Keillor's assurance they're brand-new and in tip-top shape."
    "Good enough for me," said Sam Dennison. He slammed the door and led the way back to the kitchen, away from the basement. His mood grew lighter with each step away from the brown-painted door. Joanne linked her arm through his and drew him close. She knew why he hated basements.
    They followed Ed Wheeler out the kitchen door, to the broad expanse of fresh-mowed grass at the side of the house. The big, old trees stood tall and proud around the verdant rectangle.
    Centuries, Joanne thought. Guarding the house. Watching over it down through the decades. The centuries.
    The age of the structure folded around her again. She thought of men in starched collars and ladies in hoop skirts. Liveried servants bustling through the tall rooms. She stood next to Sam and looked up at the high, wide roof. The windows gleamed in the sun. Like eyes. And what have they seen, those eyes? What have they looked out on in two hundred years?
    From somewhere to her right a bell tinkled. A tiny sound. Joanne turned to see a bright orange cat crossing the lawn toward their little group. It moved confidently, a lord of the manor coming to investigate these strangers. Joanne smiled and bent to stroke its pointed ear as it came into range.
    "Well, hello there. And who might you be?" At Joanne's touch the cat collapsed, rolling onto its back, stretching. Joanne stroked its soft fur. It purred. A collar round its neck held a small silver bell, and a name tag inscribed "Rudy." The inscription was lopsided, scratched into the metal by a child's hand.
    "Well, hiya, Rudy," Joanne said. The cat purred louder.
    It followed them as Wheeler led them round the grounds. Four acres seemed like a small country after the narrow streets of Brooklyn Heights. Periodically Rudy meowed. Joanne bent several times to renew her stroking. Each time the cat flopped onto its back.
    Wheeler brought them back to the other side of the house from the kitchen door. An open porch faced onto the driveway as it rounded the house. They entered, finding themselves in a small alcove off the dining room. They completed one more tour before returning to Wheeler's car. Rudy had to be restrained from climbing in the back seat with Joanne.
    "You've made yourself a friend for life." Sam grinned. Rudy whined from the centre of the parking area.
    The cat watched without moving as Wheeler backed his Buick along the drive to the front gate. It would have been easier to turn around, but Wheeler did not want to risk running over the cat. Joanne guessed he couldn't have cared less for the animal's safety himself. He just wanted to avoid upsetting Sam and Joanne, possibly to the point of wrecking the deal.
    Even then the mailbox bulged with catalogs. Dr. and Mrs. Hanson, the previous residents, evidently bought everything but food by mail. There were catalogs from clothing stores, handyman stores, electronics supply houses. Without ever having met the Hansons, Sam and Joanne began to build an interesting picture of the former inhabitants of this grand old house.
    The house itself was intriguing enough. About a hundred years earlier it passed out of the hands of descendants of the original builder, Josiah Wembledge. Then began. a slow process of decay as it went from one owner to another. Fifteen years before Sam and Joanne came to Fairharbour, that prime piece of level property began to look more and more like the ideal location for a condominium development.
    That was when Dick Keillor came on the scene. Keillor was Old Money. A man bored with the mundane responsibilities of maintaining the family fortune. In search of new things to occupy his interest, he discovered old houses.
    As owner of their home-to-be, he was one of the first neighbours to greet the new arrivals, full of fascinating tales of the history of the house. It was from him they learned the place was still sometimes called "Wembledge Manor," prompting Sam to mention that in his mind a manor was a house that required telephones for communicating between the rooms. Wembledge Manor was spacious, but not large by the standards of the neighborhood.
    Keillor was politely amused. He rattled on in quick, breathless phrases, filling in the details of the house's long story. Tall and soft fleshed, his slim-fingered hands often seemed barely attached to his wrists.
    
    To Joanne's eternal gratitude and joy, he produced a pair of photographs, printed from original glass negatives in his possession. They showed the house as it looked nearly a hundred and fifty years before. The towering copper beeches that now dominated the front of the property were reduced to mere twigs. Sitting in formal-portrait stiffness on the front porch were Zack Wembledge, his wife, Elizabeth, and seven of their nine children.
    Joanne boggled at the concept of a family of eleven crowded into this house. Keillor pointed out that his restorations included the removal of an additional wing, built by Zack and his family. Keillor's work had been directed toward restoring the house to something more closely approximating its original lines.
    So it was, too, that Sam and Joanne began learning what little they could of the real nature of the Hansons. The drier climes of Arizona had called the psychologist and his wife. They'd had only a month-by-month lease. Keillor was not even aware of their intention to move until a late-night call from Polly Hanson revealed to him they were already gone. The Dennisons saw the house only four days after Keillor decided to sell, rather than seeking new tenants.
    The image of the isolated Catalog people turned out to be not very far off the mark. Not natives to Connecticut, the Hansons apparently felt the need to shoehorn themselves into the traditional mould of standoffish New Englanders. They did not shop at all at the local stores. They bought almost everything through the catalogs. The only intercourse they tolerated with the town was when Mrs. Hanson would telephone the farmer's market, availing herself of their home-delivery service.
    It was known that the doctor claimed some vague connection with Yale, and that his wife fancied herself a sculptor. Sam and Joanne found parings of dried clay accumulated in the most unlikely corners months after they settled in.
    They did settle in, finally.
    For several days it had seemed that Philip Marsdon was determined to kill the deal. He was their lawyer, an old friend of Sam's. He was also the second sour spot in the proceedings, an unkempt man with bad manners and a foul mouth.
    
    Try as she might for Sam's sake, Joanne could find nothing to like in Marsdon. She openly despised him. Sam finally found it necessary to intervene directly in Marsdon's dealings with Dick Keillor, lest the lawyer's ham-fisted handling blow the deal entirely.
    Sam found that the town and countryside about it fit every detail of his childhood fantasy. He took to strolling about their acreage late at night. Sometimes Joanne woke to find him gone from their bed. Moving quietly through the big, dark house, she'd discover him seated cross-legged under the big old maple behind the garage. His sandy head would be back against the rough textured bark, his blue eyes fixed a billion miles away, out in the bowl of the night. Sometimes there were tears in his eyes.
    Then Joanne would hunker down at his side, pulling his face to her breast, loving him with every fibre of her being.
    She knew of the dark corners that haunted Sam's dreams. The nights, early in their marriage, when he'd wake screaming. Clawing the air with hands suddenly more like talons. To find him so utterly at peace, his eyes brimming with tears of joy, filled her with a contentment she'd only imagined.
    Joanne, born and raised in Brooklyn, began her own consuming affair with country living. She joined the local stable. She cajoled Sam into long walks beyond the last houses of Fairharbour. She revelled in the clean air. Right after they moved in she capped Sam's dream scenario. She announced that she was pregnant.
    For all the eight years of their married life the Dennisons had been trying to have a baby. After several false alarms Joanne sought professional help. She was assured there was nothing wrong with either Sam or herself. The doctor fussed a little over Joanne's history of nervous stress, but he resisted prescribing medication. She only needed to stop worrying about it. Let nature take its course. It would "simply take time."
    "Time" had finally been taken. Sam and Joanne celebrated with a dinner out. They chose Sakura, a Japanese restaurant in Westport recommended by Dick Keillor. Oblivious to the dancing knives flashing above the hibachi grill, the expanding Family Dennison made plans for the next few centuries. The enrolled and graduated their unborn offspring in a dozen prime colleges. They selected and rejected a half hundred careers.
    The meal was superb. They returned to their more and more cosy home rested and content. That night when they made love, it was filled with a poignant sweetness new to both of them. All tensions melted away. The Question no longer lurked in the backs of their minds. This would not be the time that made the baby.
    The baby had already been made.
    
2
    
    As the unending stream of mail-order brochures poured into their mailbox, Sam and Joanne found themselves looking at some with more than casual interest. The various handyman and renovator's books provided many of the items they were finding they needed around the house. Dick Keillor may have done wonders, but his restorations fell short of one hundred percent. Only renting, the Hansons were disinclined to follow through on some of the necessary repairs and upgradings that remained.
    Sam was not so foolish as to think he could attempt any of the more complex electrical and plumbing repairs. He was an advertising design consultant, a commercial artist, a master with pen and brush, utterly mystified by matters electronic. He was cowed by carpentry, but quite capable of installing a towel rail or changing a doorknob. Those items he and Joanne soon took to purchasing from the copious catalogs.
    It wasn't too long, then, before many of the familiar brochures began arriving with their name on the mailing label. Sometimes they replaced the ones that came to "Hanson, Dr. Timothy H. or Current Resident." Sometimes they supplemented them.
    The cast-iron radiator near the right side door became repository of these tomes. There they gathered in an ever-increasing pile, until Joanne's tolerance peaked. Then Sam would come home from the city to find a suspiciously sharp-cornered Hefty bag decorating the front gate, the radiator's white-painted surface once again bare.
    
    The next morning would bring more, more, and even more catalogs. Sam and Joanne found in many cases that they no longer even looked at the familiar ones. They discovered there were cycles to the contents of catalogs. Outlets would only occasionally rearrange or enlarge their offerings.
    Some of the more mundane catalogs Sam found himself slipping immediately into the dead pile against the left end of the radiator. There they mountained precariously against the corner walls, occasionally slipping down behind the radiator itself.
    The Catalog, when it came, went into that pile immediately.
    It was a Tuesday morning. Sam had departed for the city. He was on the first half of his two-week vacation, but a call from the office summoned him in. Joanne was annoyed at the interruption of their idyll, but she also beamed at the indispensability of her husband.
    She sorted through the mail as she carried it in from the gate. A bill. A bill. A postcard from her mother, vacationing in Spain. Another bill. And twelve catalogs. A new record.
    Joanne flipped through them quickly. She sorted out two electronics brochures and one gardening book. The cover of the Catalog caught her eye only briefly. She flipped it into the growing pile at the radiator's end. It was dark, so deep a red it tended almost to black, completely without the usual high-gloss finish she associated with catalogs. It was smaller than most, too. A size she associated with little shops selling lace doilies and tablecloths through the mail. Those normally wore bright, cheerful covers. There was nothing cheerful about this one.
    Something about it said cheap to her. She tossed it into the trash pile without its cover even being opened. Joanne did not notice that the address sticker said simply "Current Resident."
    The pile had reached threshold proportions by then. Joanne snorted at it. She resolved to dump the lot as soon as she returned from shopping that afternoon. She was out of trash bags, among other things. Eviction of this collection would have to wait.
    Despite all the time that had passed since their move from New York, the Dennisons were still undecided on their major suburban need: a car. Joanne was spending a considerable portion of her housekeeping money on cab fare. A summoned taxi came sooner than anticipated. In her hurry to get out of the house Joanne left Wembledge Manor with the doors unlocked.
    New York paranoia boiled out of the corners of her brain. She pushed it back with contempt. Fairharbour was a safe community. Neighbours watched out for neighbors. People often left their houses and cars open. She did not concern herself with the matter much beyond the moment she realized her error. By then she was in town. She decided it would be pointless to go all the way back home, only to return immediately.
    In Carson's Meat Market she ran into Babs Greeley. Fast friends from their first meeting weeks before, they decided to have lunch before heading back to their neighbouring houses. They chose Teddy's, the newest in a series of small restaurants springing up along Mill Road. Lined with little shops and stores, Mill Road was the central avenue that functioned as Fairharbour's main drag.
    Teddy's menu was simple, Xeroxed onto a sheet of ordinary typing paper. A disclaimer across the bottom apologized for the unprofessional look of it. The proprietors were exploring "market conditions."
    Babs chose a deliciously juicy hamburger, and enough fries to share. With an envious little sigh Joanne contented herself with a small chef's salad. Only five weeks pregnant, she was determined to clean up her act. She would do nothing that could in any way damage the child.
    Noting this change from Joanne's usual junk-food indulgences, Babs became the first neighbour to learn of the impending maternity. Her whoop of joy turned every head in the restaurant.
    Fifteen years older than Joanne, Babs was small and soft-edged. She had perfect skin and remarkably tiny hands and feet. Her generous bust had forced a modification of her nickname in high school. "After the equipment arrived," as Babs put it.
    She'd told Joanne how her family briefly relocated from her birthplace in Fairharbour to Westport, between the eighth and ninth grades. She started at the new school insisting on being called "Barbara." It earned her a reputation of being stuck-up, as she failed to respond to that name for the few weeks it took to become conditioned to it. At least she was no longer "Boobs."
    When people finally got to know her, they discovered, like Joanne, that there was nothing stuck-up about this vivacious, enthusiastic woman. Back in Fairharbour, marriage and a couple of kids behind her, Babs felt comfortable returning to the nickname of her youth. Her husband, Doug, for reasons kept entirely to themselves, called her "Lefty." Holding her burger firmly in her right hand, Babs bubbled about the baby-to-be.
    Babs had introduced herself first to Sam. He was busy painting the Dennison name on the mailbox a day or so after Dick Keillor completed his introduction to the house. Sam invited her in for iced tea. Joanne took an instant liking to this neighbour. From Babs she gleaned a few more details about the mysterious Hansons. They were not great details. If anything, they served only to make the former residents of Wembledge Manor a little more mysterious.
    Dr. Hanson kept his professional life to himself. Even the gregarious Dick Keillor could learn nothing of note. Whatever the projects that occupied Hanson's time at Yale, they were nothing he was prepared to discuss.
    But, Babs admitted with a resigned shrug, it was unlikely there would be anything really scandalous. Babs had some tiny suspicions about Polly Hanson and Josh Witlaw, a handsome local doctor, but nothing concrete. The Hansons were just strange people, but probably not much stranger than any of the colourful characters who'd occupied that house in two hundred years. They finished lunch on topics more mundane.
    Outside Teddy's they climbed into Babs's waiting Volvo wagon. Within fifteen minutes they were pulling up the drive of Wembledge Manor. Babs helped Joanne carry her four bags of groceries into the kitchen. Joanne excused herself for a quick "potty stop."
    She emerged from the small first-floor toilet to find Babs sitting at the kitchen table, reading the Catalog. At first Joanne was outraged. She felt at once that she was overreacting, but it seemed strangely intrusive that Babs should have sorted through the Dennisons' discarded mail. And very uncharacteristic.
    Joanne felt a wall forming between herself and her first Fairharbour friend. A thin sheet of very cold ice. It left her with a queasy feeling in her stomach.
    Babs looked up from the Catalog. Her big green eyes were a size and a half larger than usual. "Where, where on earth did you find this!" she asked. "Surely you've never ordered from these people?"
    "No. I guess the Hansons must've. We get a lot of their junk mail, still."
    Babs shivered, closing the booklet, putting it carefully on the tabletop. She seemed afraid it might slip away if not set firmly in place on the blond wood. "I'll take that tea now, I think," she said.
    Joanne felt her earlier misgivings soften slightly. The transformation she saw in Babs was startling. The older woman was quite pale. Beneath her ginger-colored hair her skin was parchment. Her opulent flesh appeared somehow to droop, hanging heavy on the suddenly sharp angles of her bones. Joanne blinked once, twice, trying to dispel that strange image.
    She got the kettle on the stove. They selected which variety of herbal tea they would investigate that day. The everyday activity seemed to work wonders. Joanne relaxed. Babs began to look much better. As the kettle heated to a whistling boil, she helped Joanne debag and store the groceries. Together they loaded the piled catalogs from the side hall radiator into a dark green Hefty bag.
    Conversation turned to other things, predominantly the baby. Which room would be the nursery? How was that room to be decorated? Babs promised to take Joanne to a wonderful wallpaper shop she knew in Stamford. By the time Babs glanced at her watch and realized her husband would be home in a few minutes, Joanne's misgivings of the hour were mostly faded.
    She felt silly for reacting so strongly to so trivial a thing. Especially now that there was a baby on the way, Joanne knew she needed to rein in her sometimes overactive emotions. She walked Babs to her car, parked on the rectangle of asphalt behind the house. Then she followed the dark blue Volvo down the drive, carrying the catalog crammed Hefty to the gate.
    The Catalog remained where Babs found it, on the kitchen table.
    
3
    
    Sam was just returning as Joanne reached the gate.
    Looking past him, she saw Doug's powder-blue Mercedes pulling into the Greeleys' own driveway a quarter mile down the tree-lined road. Babs followed in her wagon. Sam grinned his toothy grin, hugged his wife.
    "Ran into Doug at Grand Central," he said. "He offered me a lift from the Fairharbour station. Was that his lady wife I saw leaving?"
    Joanne returned his hug. "Yup. I ran into her, shopping in town. We should have them over for dinner one of these days."
    Sam feigned a shudder. "Only provided it's a day when Doug Junior is otherwise disposed. I get the creeps around that kid."
    "Oh-he's just overly mothered, I guess." Joanne didn't like Dougie Greeley, either. The Greeleys had two sons, Dougie and Rod. Rod was twenty-four, away in the army, and recently divorced. Dougie was nine years younger, over weight, shrill voiced; he clung to Babs in a way that brought images of drowning men and logs.
    His jet-black hair was long, and always greasy. The fingernails of his left hand were bitten back to the quick. He gnawed them while he sat hunched over his latest artistic endeavours. He'd claimed the top of the Greeley house as his own, creating there a maze of computer equipment, science fiction paperbacks, girlie magazines, and comic books. The roof pitched steeply. Even Dougie could walk upright only down the middle of his lair.
    Somehow it was those comic books that most perturbed Sam Dennison. He'd enjoyed a great love for the garish delights of supeiiiero derring-do, but he had let it slide into the realms of happy memory about the time he reached Dougie's age. "By the time," he put it, "I figured out what girls were for."
    
    On the Dennisons' first visit to the Greeley house, Sam found himself dragged up to Dougie's quarters. The fact that Sam was an artist prompted the junior Greeley to display his own artistry. It amounted to several dozen sketchbooks, eight-and-a-half-by-eleven pages crammed with badly muscled barbarians doing gory things to an increasingly disgusting array of demons and dragons. And, occasionally, what passed as Doug Junior's renditions of beautiful women.
    Since that visit Sam found himself inclined to cross the street whenever he saw the assembled Greeley clan approaching. He liked Doug Senior. He was certainly appreciative of Babs's well-upholstered charms. But there were limits to his tolerance of their overindulged offspring.
    Sam and Joanne walked back along the hundred foot curve of their drive, entwined in each other's arms. The late afternoon sun was still summer-high. The air smelled of things green and growing. Their white sided house seemed almost to shine with a light all its own. Once again Sam felt a surge of happiness, a resounding joy they'd moved here.
    Exactly the right decision, he thought. Leave behind all the garbage of life and start all over. Start all over with a wonderful new life.
    As they approached the front door a now-familiar bell tinkled. Rudy the cat rounded the side of the house. He crossed the lawn to them and hurled himself at Joanne's feet. Obediently Joanne bent to rub the cat's belly.
    Sam laughed. "I may get jealous of that beast yet."
    Joanne angled her head to look up at him. Her dark eyes flashed mischief. "Want your belly rubbed, sailor?" She rose into Sam's embrace. Sam pressed his hands on her back, feeling the warmth of her along his length. Joanne worked herself against him. Sam felt his loins stirring.
    Rudy the cat whined loudly and broke the mood. Sam snorted. Together they stepped over Joanne's insistent suitor and into the house. Joanne went on into the kitchen. Sam paused in the side hall to sort through the mail. He opened, moaned at, a couple of bills. He scanned quickly the card from Joanne's mother.
    Satisfied the mail held no surprises, he followed his wife's path into the kitchen. He smiled at her back as she busied herself before the sink. Joanne had hung the tall windows with soft white curtains that muted without obscuring the light. The main wall of the kitchen faced the sunset. Westering light spilled across the honey tones of the golden oak table and chairs. The rich wood of the panelled cabinets gleamed. Sam sighed in rapturous contentment, sat at the table.
    "You sound happy," Joanne observed, rinsing salad works under a silvery stream of ice-cold water.
    "And why not?" Sam beamed. "Am I not the luckiest of mortals?"
    Joanne studied his face. Hardly changed since she'd first seen him, three days after she started work at Dunbar, Kline, and Moore. She had been impressed then by the boyish exuberance, the friendliness in his wide-open face. It wasn't until after they were married that she first suspected those dark shadows clinging to his soul. She discovered a rage in Sam Dennison. Deep. Firmly repressed. Never directed against her in any fashion. But there.
    Not to be seen when they first met. Then there was only a long, lean, friendly man. The long arms, the broad, angular shoulders did not at all suggest the orange-haired gorilla described by her fellow toilers in the typing pool. She warmed to Sam almost at once. When he sought her out three weeks later to ask for a dinner date, she did not refuse.
    Nor did she refuse when he invited her back to his one-room apartment after dinner. Sometimes it was just right.
    Now, nine years later, they were married and parents-to-be. Their life together, while encumbered here and there by the unavoidable ups and downs of matrimony, was a good one. With promises of getting even better.
    She noticed with a small part of her mind that Sam was playing with the Catalog. He was twirling it around on the table's smooth surface, pinning one dark red corner with a long finger. She thought the trio of staples in the binding flashed more brightly than they should as they caught the light.
    "Easily the most fortunate of mortals." She smiled, responding to his question. "But what prompts this particular declaration?"
    The grin widened. It was an effect Joanne found unnerving from the first time she experienced it. Sam's big mouthful of teeth threatened to encircle his head, to meet at the base of his skull like a zipper. "Nothing special. Everything special. This house. This town. You. Us."
    "Not necessarily in that order, I hope." Joanne arranged her features into her best mock glare and directed it at her husband.
    Sam rose. He crossed the kitchen to enfold his wife in his long arms. "Starting with you," he said. He found her mouth with his own. "Everything starts with you."
    He swept her from her feet, recrossing the kitchen in three strides, bound for the backstairs on the other side of the mud room. Joanne pulled herself closer to him, arms around his neck. The last memory of her earlier discomfort, with Babs, dwindled to nothing. The tenderness of the moment filled her. The child within her. The wonderful old house. The most wonderful husband anyone could have.
    In the warm glow of the kitchen the panels of window light tracked slowly across the floor, across the tabletop.
    Across the Catalog.
    
    
Chapter Two 
1
    
    "What the hell is this!"
    The words greeted Joanne as she came down to breakfast the next morning. It was Wednesday. Sam was seated at the kitchen table. He was still in his robe. He was paging through the Catalog. Slowly. As if afraid of what each new page might hold.
    "Oh. I don't know, really. It came in yesterday's mail."
    "And you didn't throw it out? Did you look at it?" There was anger in Sam's voice that made Joanne stiffen. She felt all at once like a small child summoned to the principal's office the very first week of school.
    "I put it in the slush pile. Babs got it out. She was reading it when 1 came out of the John."
    "And does she make a habit of poking through other people's mail?" He was still paging through the Catalog. His eyes did not leave the turning pages. The veins stood out in sharp relief on his temples, at the edge of the rusty hair,
    "I dunno," Joanne said. She was forcing her voice to be strong, to match Sam's intensity with her own. "I was a little pissed off myself when I saw her doing it."
    "And you didn't stop her? I mean, what the hell business is it of hers what mail we chuck out?"
    "What? Oh. No. I didn't see her going through the stuff. She was already reading it when I came into the kitchen." The image of the pale, sagged Babs returned to Joanne's mind. "Why? What's in it?"
    She started across to where Sam sat. He snapped the Catalog shut before she reached him. "No, don't." The edge in his voice changed to something stronger. Rage. The same buried rage Joanne had sensed deep inside him all these years. She reached to take the Catalog from him. He slapped her hand away. Actually slapped her hand!
    "Ow! What's the big idea?"
    Her eyes met his. There was something burning in them, behind his boyish face. Behind the glimmer of his sky-coloured irises. Something white hot. Something with a life all its own. His face was somehow not his own. The angles were too sharp. "Sorry," he said. His voice was soft again. "Sorry."
    He rose to take her in his arms. Joanne stepped back. "Not so fast, buster. You don't get off with an apology. You've never hit me before. Not even a love tap. Now, let me see that-"
    "NO!"
    He snatched the Catalog off the table, pushing past her toward the back door. He fumbled with the key. He fumbled with the latch. He was consumed by a need to get out of the house. To get the Catalog out of the house.
    That was the precise moment the word capitalized itself in Joanne's mind. She realized she could refer to it only as "the Catalog." She couldn't recall any store name on the dark, dull cover.
    Sam got the door open. He lurched onto the screened porch, then through the outer door. He crossed the concrete parking space behind the house and entered the garage. A minute later he emerged with lighter fluid and the barbecue igniter. A few moments more, and the Catalog was ablaze in their Weber grill.
    Joanne watched from the steps of the porch, stunned by his most peculiar behavior. Disturbed by the stiffness of Sam's movements. It struck her that he was behaving like someone doing something he really did not wish to do. Someone fighting against some inner commands that were trying to force his limbs to go one way when he wanted them to go another.
    Even at that distance, the thirty feet from the porch steps to the barbecue stand by the side of the garage, the intensity of his gaze spoke volumes. Sam was burning the Catalog because, somehow, some way, he felt he must. It was as if it was the most important thing he would ever do.
    The Catalog burned easily. Soft white smoke billowed up and across the expanse of lawn to the south of the house. Joanne watched as it mingled briefly with the leaves of the oaks and maples, fading on the morning air.
    Sam pushed the long, silver needle of the igniter into the ashes, stirring them. His whole universe condensed into that patch of ash-black paper. His brain reeled from the imagery of those pages.
    At last satisfied, he returned to Joanne. This time she allowed him to enfold her in those long arms. She stood on the top step, he on the flagstone pavement. He buried his face in her bosom. She stroked his short, wiry hair. Under her fingertips the nape of his neck was damp with heavy, cold beads of sweat.
    She thought of the rage she'd seen in his eyes, the unspoken questions of eight years of marriage. Questions raised each time that buried rage poked out into the world, each time a stubborn faucet or a missed hammer blow drove him into an explosion of violence.
    
    He had smashed the bathroom sink in their apartment, once. Joanne trembled at the memory. Actually smashed it with a sledgehammer, because the new washer he'd laboured three hours to install had not stopped a leak.
    All those questions, all those isolated moments, came back to Joanne now as a single mass. This time she could not let the moment pass without words. "Baby-what is it?"
    He spoke without moving his face from her chest. He spoke softly, with great earnestness. "Promise me-promise me that if another Catalog like that one comes, and I'm not here, or asleep, or busy or whatever, that you'll do what I just did. You'll burn it. Without looking inside it."
    "Honey, I-"
    "Promise! You must promise!" He was rigid in her arms.
    "I-I promise. I promise."
    He raised his eyes to meet hers. The strange, cold fire was gone. The soft edges were coming back into his face. He drew back a little, relaxing. More and more himself with every moment that carried the burned Catalog deeper and deeper into the irretrievable past.
    
2
    
    That morning's mail brought another Catalog, as did Thursday's and Friday's. Each was identical to the first, nondescript, unremarkable on its own. With each, Sam repeated the ritual of conflagration in the deep black bowl of the Weber. As he did, Joanne thought he looked a little more pale, a little sharper of feature. His big teeth made his mouth look more like the fleshless grin of a skull. His movements were more and more those of a man walking through a dream.
    Still Joanne had not seen the insides of one of the Catalogs.
    On Saturday morning Sam was still sound asleep when Joanne awoke. Concerned over the deep circles darkening under his eyes, the unnatural hollowness in his cheeks, she decided to let him sleep. If necessary, she would perform their little ceremony of fire herself.
    She made her way down the long hall from their bedroom to the rear landing. The windows at the top of the backstairs faced north and east. The small room was aglow with the morning light. Joanne pushed up the wide window at the head of the stairs and breathed deeply. The air against her skin was wonderful, cool in the early day. There was just the barest suggestion of a heaviness that might mean rain later.
    Joanne loved rain. Thunder and lightning were another matter, but the glistening, diamond-studded world after a rainfall was one of her favourite places.
    She turned from the window and descended the narrow stairs into the mud room, from there crossed to the kitchen. She unlocked the back door and stepped out onto the screened porch. How wonderful it all was in the stillness of morning. How absurd that the serenity should be disturbed, even slightly, by something as innocuous as a catalog.
    She looked toward the front of the house. The mailman had not come yet. He made his run as early as he could, even on Saturdays, but this was still too soon. She saw that the little red flag was still down at the side of the Dennison mailbox.
    Joanne went back into the kitchen and set the kettle on the stove. She selected a high setting, so the water would boil quickly, and walked through the house to the front door. The paperboy had made his delivery. A wind had scattered the Courant the length of the porch.
    Joanne let a long, exasperated stream of air whistle through her nostrils. If Billy Teachers once more tossed the paper on the porch instead of tucking it under the mat as Sam had asked, Joanne would call his mother. Joanne hated confrontations, but she was tired of fishing the paper, strewn beyond reassembly, from the bushes at the ends of the porch.
    This time the paper was not too badly disheveled. She shuffled it into something like its original shape and walked around the house, back to the porch. She wore only the long T-shirt that subbed as a nightgown. She wasn't concerned about being seen. Through a break in the trees to the west, she could see the top of the Greeley house, and one of the dormer windows of Dougie's domain. It was too far for her to see if he was watching. If he was too far to be seen clearly, so was she. Besides, the T-shirt covered as efficiently as one of her summer smocks. In fact, the material was thicker.
    Why do I think the little creep might be watching, anyway?
    
    She sorted through her mind for some logical reason. For the moment it eluded her.
    She climbed the back porch to the kitchen door. She lifted the kettle off the burner just as it began to whistle. She took the package of herbal tea Babs had introduced her to from the cupboard by the stove and set a bag in her big, hound-stooth patterned mug. She watched hot water turn a pale pink as it filtered through the bag.
    Joanne took the tea out onto the porch. She settled into the old wicker sofa to read the paper. She found the world full of the usual ills. The funny papers were less funny than she remembered from childhood. She sipped her tea and read, looking over the top of the paper every once in a while. No sign of the mailman.
    Between her seat and the mailbox a huge, ancient oak tree spread wide branches full of leaves. And crows. Joanne set the paper to one side. There must have been a dozen of the birds in the tree. Black, gleaming. And loud!’ They were squawking at the tops of their shrill voices.
    Joanne rose from her chair. She stepped across the screened porch. She squinted up into the branches. The crows squawked and flapped. Something was upsetting them terribly. Joanne frowned. What in the world… ?
    Tinkle. Tinkle tinkle.
    Joanne laughed, stepping out the porch door. She went down the steps, crossed to within ten feet of the tree.
    "Rudy?" Meow said a familiar voice. A branch trembled. The crows squawked again as the orange cat worked its way down the trunk. It crossed to Joanne and prostrated itself.
    "Yooooou," Joanne chuckled. She hunkered down to stroke the waiting feline. As Rudy purred into ecstasy, Joanne looked toward the front gate. The white-and-blue post office jeep pulled up to their box.
    She waited for the mailman to drive on before she rose and headed for the gate. Rudy trotted along beside her. He rubbed against her legs.
    There won't be anything today, she thought. She beamed a magical command toward the long, ribbed metal tube. Just bills and junk mail and maybe a nice friendly letter. But nothing weird.
    
    There were eight catalogs in the mailbox. One of them was small, its cover dull and dark red. Joanne sighed. Something like a wave of terrible disappointment rippled through her. Sadness mingled with exasperation.
    The sensation reminded her of times as a child, when a special bundle under the Christmas tree had not yielded what she hoped or guessed it would. She started back up the drive, the mail clutched against her chest. Her big slippers flapped against the gray asphalt.
    Halfway up the drive the Catalog slipped from the bundle. She felt the gathered papers shift. She heard the slap of paper on stone. Startled by the sound, Rudy vanished into the nearby bushes. His bell tinkled as he ran. Joanne froze. For an insane instant there was genuine terror in her heart. She gulped hard, fighting for her breath.
    She'd felt the papers shift. Not just the sliding of one slick-covered brochure against another. An actual stirring. A movement within the pile of mail. As of something seeking to free itself from constraint.
    She knew that it was the Catalog that moved. Moved of its own volition. Pushed its way out of the stack. Its dark, dull cover slithering, undulating against the glossy faces of models in impossibly expensive high-fashion throwaways. Moving, using the motion of her body to disguise its own.
    "Oh, stop that!" She spoke aloud. Her voice was harsh in the warm morning sun. She glanced about quickly, hoping no one was passing. No one to see her acting out her ridiculous fantasy. She heard a crow call. Rudy's bell tinkled from the opposite side of the yard next door.
    Her concern over Sam was beginning to do things to her sensibilities. She knew that. People born in Brooklyn were of common-sense stock. They did not lend their minds to fairy tales. How many times did her father tell her that? Telling her to be strong and brave. Telling her not to be foolish. Trying to calm the pounding heart of a frightened little girl. A "sensitive child" she was called. How she grew to hate that term.
    This is ridiculous. It's only a goddamn catalog!
    She had no proof Sam was burning the Catalogs because there was something necessarily evil about them. It was her own imagination that coated Sam's disgust with a patina of pure evil. For all she knew the Catalog contained nothing more than some particularly explicit ads for X-rated videotapes. She knew such things reputedly came under 'plain wrapper." Sam, for all his healthy, eager sexuality, was positively prudish when it came to sex as a spectator sport.
    Joanne almost convinced herself that was the case here. Then she caught a glimpse of the Catalog, lying at her feet. It was open. She found pages somehow too bright. Brighter than the reflected sunlight should account for. Against their whiteness the printed illustrations looked like dark holes. Deep, black shadowed.
    She closed her eyes tight, remembering the promise to Sam that she would not look at the thing. Whatever other differences might have flared between them in eight years of marriage, she prided herself that she had never once broken her word to him. No matter how petty or ridiculous she might consider the circumstances under which that word had been given.
    Eyes still tightly sealed, she stooped, groping for the fallen Catalog. She felt like a damn fool, certain more now than when she spoke aloud that a parade of townsfolk had gathered along the ancient wrought-iron fence. She sensed them all, deriving much entertainment from the bizarre behaviour of their newest neighbour.
    Her questing fingers found the open Catalog. Her hand jerked back. The pages were cold! Ice cold. As if the thing were only recently delivered out of a long stay in someone's deep-freeze, resting alongside the rock-hard slabs of animal flesh.
    She resisted the temptation to open her eyes. She found the edge of the Catalog with a fingernail, flipped it shut. She looked. She put out a hand. The cover felt only dull and dry. She picked up the book and thrust it back into the gathered catalogs.
    After sorting out three bills and a letter from one of Sam's office cronies, she dropped the whole bundle in the Weber and ignited it.
    She looked up through billowing smoke to see Sam standing in the kitchen doorway. His long body looked painfully lean and angular. He wore only the bottom half of the striped pyjamas she bought him a month before. The sash at the waist was pulled tight. He'd lost a lot of weight, Joanne thought. Weight he could ill afford to lose.
    "Another one," he said. It wasn't a question. It was a statement of frustration and despair.
    Joanne nodded. She stirred the burning papers with the long steel finger of the igniter. There was a keen chill in the summer air. Sam frowned. He descended the steps from the porch and crossed the parking area. His hand closed with sudden, painful firmness about her right wrist. "You didn't look inside. You promised-"
    "No. Not really. I mean, I dropped it, and I got a glimpse of the open pages, but I didn't really register anything. No images. Nothing I could describe under torture, or-"
    "Why did you say that?" She heard the edge in his voice again. Saw the strange, hollow look to his face that frightened and alarmed her. His eyes were cold. Hard. Accusing. His grip? tightened.
    She winced. "What? Say what? Listen, you're hurting MM!"
    my-
    Sam twisted her arm down, bending her elbow forward so it locked at her side. Joanne found her face brought up suddenly very close to his. Somehow it wasn't his face at all. "About torture." He spoke through clenched teeth. "What made you mention torture, if you didn't really look at the fucking pictures?"
    His language shocked her. In nine years she had never heard him use so strong an expletive. "I-I don't know." His grip was growing steadily more painful. Tears welled at the corners of her eyes. "Let me go, dammit!"
    Sam blinked. Again he looked like a man coming out of a dream. A sleepwalker brought into sharp awareness of his surroundings. "S-Sorry." He released her wrist. He stepped back a pace. "Sorry. I- Listen, just don't look, okay? If another one comes-just leave it in the mailbox. I'll take care of it."
    Now her tears were for another reason. There was so much anguish in his voice. "Baby-what? What's in that book?" Her eyes drifted to the flames in the barbecue. For a moment she thought-Yes! There it was! Lying in the heart of the flames. Its dull red cover reflected none of the flickering light around it. Its edges seemed unsinged.
    Then, like something rotten bursting from within, the cover cracked. The flames surged up through the paper canyons. The Catalog was gone.
    "What's in there?" She could not take her eyes from the flames.
    "Stuff," Sam said. His quick cough carried immediate apology for the lameness of the word. "Bad stuff. Nasty." He paused. His brows worked.
    For a moment Joanne had a clear picture of him as a small boy confronted with something new and terrible. Groping in a child's tiny vocabulary for the words that would change the awfulness into something he could comprehend.
    She thought of her father again. "Name your fear, and know it," he always said. He never quite understood how very real a child's fears could be. How difficult to dispel.
    "Listen-" Sam coughed again. His voice was a closer approximation of its normal self. "I'm cold. Let's go inside, okay? Let's not talk about this again. Just leave any more Catalogs in the mailbox, and I'll take care of them. Deal?"
    Emotions waned in Joanne's heart. This was all too ridiculous. They were civilized adults, born and raised in the twentieth century. They'd seen mankind reach for the moon, and grasp it. They'd seen the bright beacon of Reason driving back the Shadow.
    But she looked into Sam's haunted eyes and saw there all the ancient fears. All the demons that followed down the ages, from the caves.
    "Deal." She'd started to say something else. His silent plea stopped her. She took his arm and half led, half followed him back to the kitchen door.
    There was a big tin-framed thermometer screwed into the orange-painted wood frame of the door. It said seventy-eight degrees, but Joanne wasn't about to dispute Sam's claim to feeling cold. She felt it, too. She huddled close against him. His bare flesh was clammy and goose-pimpled. The little bumps rose to creep across her own skin, beneath the worn old T-shirt.
    What's in that damned Catalog? Again she sensed the capitalization of the word in her mind. Again she felt foolish for it. That silly little red book was beginning to dominate their lives. It was barely five days since the first one arrived. Silly.
    But she knew it wasn't silly. Sam's eyes. His pallor. His painful grip on her wrist. The slap on her hand. These things said it was not silly. Not in any way.
    Joanne found herself dreading the coming of Monday. She stood next to her husband in their big, cozy kitchen. She felt the warmth returning slowly to both their bodies. She waited for the strange, confusing sensations of the morning to fade. They would not. She knew the Monday morning mail would bring another Catalog.
    Things that were very, very normal retreated a little distance around her. She clung to Sam with all her might, knowing that the lost normalcy was never going to come back.
    All because of that damned Catalog.
    
    
Chapter Three 
1
    
    Monday morning Dougie Greeley rang the front doorbell.
    It was not ten minutes after Sam had departed for town. This was the day he set aside to begin repainting his studio. He'd headed in to Hemlock Decorating Supplies in search of paint. Joanne was just stepping from the shower when she heard the bell. Her first thought was that something had brought Sam back. She grabbed a towel and flew downstairs.
    Dougie boggled at her as she opened the door. Joanne's breath escaped her lungs in a long, slow sigh of exasperation. The day was warm, but after the heat of the shower the air was cool enough to raise goose bumps on her exposed flesh.
    
    She was instantly uncomfortable, vulnerable beneath the probing scrutiny of this pubescent boy. She felt her towel shrink upon her.
    "Dougie-" The word hung in the air between them. All her annoyance managed to cram itself into those two short syllables. Her strongest inclination was to slam the door in his round, fat face.
    Joanne saw his Adam's apple bob behind his second chin. "Er-" So far their conversation fell short of brilliant. "Er-hi, Mrs. Dennison. How're you?"
    "Cold and wet. What do you want, Dougie?" Joanne was in no mood to stand and drip in her front hall. Especially not for the amusement and edification of Doug Greeley.
    "Oh-" He drew his eyes up from the hem of her towel with visible effort. "Um-Mom told me you got a catalog last week. She said it was one I might be interested in seeing."
    For a moment Joanne couldn't follow his words. Her mind raced. Catalog? Surely he couldn't mean… ?
    "She-urn-she said it had a red cover. A dark red cover."
    It was Joanne's turn to boggle. He does mean…! The Catalog! The awful, damnable, creepy-crawly, life ruling Catalog! Why on earth would Babs-"What did your mother say about it, Dougie?"
    "Just-that it had some stuff in it I might-find interesting. That's all." His eyes were straying again. Roving over her body. Joanne felt his gaze like ants crawling on her flesh. She shuddered. She wondered how much was showing below the towel.
    Sam's right. The kid's icky.
    "Look-Dougie, I don't have time to talk right now, okay? We threw away the one your mom was looking at." She looked past his round right shoulder. The little flag was down on the mailbox. "And it looks like the mail hasn't come today. Not yet."
    Dougie's face dropped at her words. "Threw…it… away-"
    "Look, if there's one in today's mail, I'll call you. Okay? Now I really have to dry off, Dougie."
    
    He brightened. "Okay. Thanks, Mrs. Dennison. Thanks a lot."
    Joanne closed the front door. She headed back toward the stairs.
    Now why in the world did you say that? There's no way you're going to pass along a copy of the wretched thing. Not after watching Sam's face all week.
    Was I really so eager to get rid of the little monster that I'd just flat out lie like that?
    She was about to remove the towel and continue drying herself properly when something stopped her. She spun around just in time to see Dougie Greeley jerk his fat, round face away from the window by the door.
    "Little pervert," she said.
    She wondered again what could have prompted Babs to discuss the Catalog with Doug Junior. The memory of Babs, of how she'd looked, floated to the surface of Joanne's mind. Babs looked so sickly. And that after flipping through only a few pages of the thing.
    Joanne fought against morbid curiosity. The more she dwelled on it, the more the contents of that little red book took on the aspect of forbidden fruit. She was beginning to regret her promise to Sam.
    But, with luck, there would be no Catalog in that morning's mail. With luck, that was all behind them. The days of this week would not begin with the ritual conflagration that commenced each day of the week before.
    Content that she would not be adding to the education of Dougie Greeley, Joanne slipped off the towel. She rubbed herself dry as she climbed the stairs. The terry cloth was soft against her skin. The thick carpeting warm beneath her feet. Small, sensual pleasures began to wear away the worrisome thoughts.
    By the time she emerged from the bathroom, dressed for the day, the matter faded to inconsequence. It was hard enough to keep that bizarre situation in proper focus. Her mind was simply not adjusted to such things. The insanity kept slipping off her mind.
    Her thoughts turned to the day ahead. She looked forward to a riding lesson later that afternoon. Joanne intended to take advantage of as many of them as she could before encroaching maternity put all such activities on hold. She also wanted to order the new carpet for the dining room.
    The hideous green stuff had a black burn scar at one end, just at the centre of the bow of windows. When they first moved in Sam peeled back a corner of the ragged carpet to see what lay beneath. It tore easily. Dust exploded in Sam's face. He spent the rest of the afternoon coughing and hacking about the house.
    Joanne bought a pair of dust masks and they completed the job together. They had fun ripping up the bilious green. Hearing the crackling tear of the old cloth. Seeing the air fill with swirling fairylands of dust. Under the rotten covering the floors were dark stained and in fine condition.
    Except for that burn scar. It went right through to the floorboards.
    A week after they got rid of the last strip of the old carpet, they called in a carpenter to examine the floors. He informed them that the floors had been refinished so many times in over two hundred years that they'd been sanded and planed almost down to the tongue-and-groove fittings that held the slats together. Another sanding was unwise, he thought. Especially one as thorough as would be needed to get rid of the burn. It seemed to go very deep into the wood.
    Sam and Joanne decided to order carpeting to replace the old. Not wall to wall this time. At least the beautiful dark wood could remain exposed around the edges.
    In the kitchen she called Fairharbour Cabs for a car to transport her into Bridgeport. There was a discount carpet store there which, according to Dick Keillor, provided the best materials for the lowest prices. Twenty minutes later the cab was bearing her out of the broad gate of Wembledge Manor.
    As the taxi cruised west along Wolf Pit Road, they passed the little post office jeep. The mailman waved as they passed. Joanne returned the greeting. Then her premonition of Saturday morning came crashing back to her. What's in the back of that jeep? What will I find lurking in the mailbox when I get home?
    She thought again of Dougie. The image of him paging through that book disturbed her as much as anything she could remember, aside from the book itself. That same book that put such strange fires in her husband's eyes. That same book that added ten years to Babs Greeley's plump features. That same book that looked so cold and white and evil, lying on their driveway.
    
    What on earth did Babs see in that damned thing that could be of interest" to Dougie? Does she really indulge him to the point that something that caused her such obvious distress would be allowed under her roof provided it pleased her little darling?
    
    A strange parade of pictures rolled past the window of her mind. 
    
    I left the door unlocked that day I went into town for groceries. That day I ran into Babs at Carson's. And Dougie was home. School's been out for two months. There's nothing to keep him out of trouble. All alone in the Greeley house, Bored. Nothing to do,
    So he wandered over to our house…,?
    The way he was peering through the window when I went back to the stairs. Has he done that before? Spied on me when I've been walking around starker’s? It's not something I do all the time, but-
    And what about that time-when? I'd almost forgotten it. Six weeks ago? Four? I was sunbathing out by the garage, and the phone rang. I was way back from the road and sheltered by the trees, so I left my top off when I went for the phone. I stood on the back porch steps with just my bikini panties on.
    And there was that noise in the bushes! Like something big and clumsy falling over. Snapping twigs. A thump. But Sam came home before I could investigate-
    
    It all came back to her, sharp and clear as yesterday.
    
    Could that have been Dougie Greeley?
    And that day last week. Did he come over? Did he discover the door unlocked? Did he come in? Wander through the house? Opening drawers? Poking through private things? Sifting through the mail on the radiator?
    Did he find the Catalog? Take it into the kitchen? Maybe looking for something to eat while he amused himself? And did my coming home with his mom send him scurrying out the front door?
    Leaving the Catalog on the kitchen table? Is that where Babs found it? Is that why Dougie invented this preposterous story? This ridiculous story of Babs telling him he might find "something interesting" inside those dark red covers?
    
    Or was the whole scenario preposterous in itself? Was she letting her embarrassment at being visually fondled by an overweight adolescent colour her perceptions?
    By the time she returned from Bridgeport, frustrated that the ordered carpet could not be delivered in less than eight weeks, she'd forgotten about Dougie Greeley. Forgotten his possible prying.
    The cab dropped her at the gate. Sam was obviously not home yet. The mailbox bulged with catalogs. The familiar red cover was not among them. Joanne beamed. Her heart soared.
    The siege was over! There was no Catalog in the mailbox!
    
2
    
    Another Catalog came on Tuesday morning.
    Sam was gone again, headed into town. Pursuit of the right hue of paint had sent him all over Fairfield County the day before. He anticipated no less of an adventure today. It showed early indications of turning into a full-fledged career.
    Joanne spent the morning going through the last boxes left over from the move. She was quite proud of herself. Their Brooklyn apartment had been decorated in occasional cardboard for almost four years. Wembledge Manor was purged of corrugation in less than three months!
    She collapsed the last empty box and bound it atop the other flattened cartons. A mighty heave, and she got the whole awkward bundle up into her arms. She headed downstairs and out the front door. The garbage collectors always came Tuesday afternoon. A sizable pile of Hefty bags had already grown beside the gate. Dumping her load on top of the dark green plastic, Joanne pulled the bundle of mail from the box.
    She stood by the gate for a long time after she found the Catalog. The regular mail she held clutched against her. The Catalog lay on the grass where it fell. She dropped it, startled as if by a striking snake, when she found it in the middle of the bundle.
    Memories of the night before came back to her. She'd prepared a celebratory dinner for Sam. He, too, was delighted by the absence of that red-covered book from the morning mail. They laughed. She realized it was the first time in a week that they'd really laughed together. The Catalog wormed its way into their private joys. Ate them away.
    But it was missing from their mail Monday morning. It would not come again. If that was not a reason for celebration, what was? Then, as they climbed in next to each other in their wide, welcoming bed, Sam said something that made Joanne place a finger across his lips. Made her wish for a magical rewind button that could undo his words.
    "I knew there had to be an end to it," he said. "It was all just too damn crazy to go on. It had to end sooner or later. Lucky for us it was sooner."
    The words corkscrewed into Joanne's gut. She felt all at once the way a child feels when a secret wish is inadvertently spoken aloud. The sudden, sure knowledge that speaking the words somehow undid the magic. That saying what you felt or thought or dreamed would make it never happen. Or, in the case of something bad, make it certain to occur.
    She realized she was feeling like a child a lot lately. Since the day she'd caught a glimpse of the pages of the Catalog. It was as if all her hard years of fighting had been for nothing. Once again she was a scared, nervous, "sensitive" child. Afraid of the dark. Afraid to be alone. Terrified of thunder. Of the sighing of the wind in the chimney. Of the invisible universe behind her.
    It took Joanne a lifetime to strip away those groundless fears. She worked so hard at it. At freeing herself.
    The Catalog put it all back. And it shouldn't have. Couldn't have. It wasn't fair. She had not done more than glance within the dark red covers. Yet there was no doubt in her mind. It was the Catalog that insinuated itself into their lives. It was the Catalog that made Joanne Dennison stand weak-kneed by the gate of Wembledge Manor. Stand there pale and trembling, while her heart pounded and her eyes burned. While all the ancient fears came crawling up from the darkest tteptbs of her mind. Came scratching and clawing at the soft underbelly of her life.
    "No no no no no no no."
    She did not care this time that she was speaking aloud. She did not care what neighbours might pass. Might see this peculiar spectacle. This small, dark-haired woman dressed in shorts and tank top. Clutching a bundle of mail-order catalogs with straining, knotted muscles. Shaking her head in quick, hard jerks, side to side. Murmuring over and over again the single word "no."
    Her blood was ice water. Her lungs were flame. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to mark crosses in the air. Speak holy names. Banish the thing forever. Send it back to the awful, black netherworld it came from. Burn it. Bury it. Sow the ground with salt.
    "No no no no no."
    
    It didn't come yesterday! Every single mail delivery last week there was one of these awful things in the mailbox. But it didn't come yesterday. The spell was broken. There was no more need for Sam to pace around the yard, looking like a zombie. No more need for the ceremony of exorcism. No more need for the burning.
    
    Joanne felt tears come hot and wet against her cheeks. She was crying! It made her feel completely ludicrous! Standing there in the clear, bright sun of late August. Standing there and sobbing, because a stupid red Catalog came in the mail. She felt Logic and Reason crumbling around her. Rational people do not act this way!
    With that thought came another, no more rational than the rest.
    
    This is all a plot! 
    All part of some mad scheme. Sam's commented more than once on Babs's figure. She's got more padding than I do, no question. And Babs is quite taken with Sam, too. Have they fallen in love? In lust? She's ten years older than him, but so what? That sort of thing happens all the time these days. Have they cooked up this bizarre charade? To push me over the edge? So they can run off together? Leave Doug and Bougie. Leave poor little Joanne bubbling away in a rubber room somewhere. Sam knows all about my childhood. All about the nerves. The fits. The medication. He could have cooked it all up. To prey on my weakness. My old Achilles heel-
    It came all in a rush. She couldn't stop it. The moment it was done the foolishness of it all burst across her. Like a noisome pocket of gas bubbling out from beneath a deep, black tar pit. She felt ludicrous. She felt angry. Embarrassed. Her cheeks burned hot.
    All at once it was just too much. Too much to bear alone. She threw the bundled mail away from her body and ran into the house. Sobs racked her. Hot breath choked her. The air was fire in her lungs. She wanted to scream and scream and scream.
    All because of the Catalog that still lay by the mailbox. So simple. So completely unremarkable, lying on the fresh-cut grass.
    
3
    
    When Sam came home that afternoon, the mail was gone from where Joanne dropped it. The sun was just dipping below the tops of the trees along the right side of the property. Long shadows reached out toward Wembledge Manor. He found a battered old Studebaker parked before the front door, and Babs Greeley waiting for him. She looked very small and round to Sam.
    She looked something else, too. She looked tired. Pale. He saw a heaviness about her flesh that was completely new to him. A cold spike stabbed through Sam's heart. He dropped his bag of paint cans. They hit the grassy verge by the front steps with a dull clang.
    “Joanne-"
    "She's all right, Sam. She's upstairs in bed." Babs's usually mellow voice nearly cracked as she spoke. "She's resting comfortably. The doctor says-"
    "Doctor!" Sam was past her and up the stairs almost in one stride. Babs was forgotten. The paint cans were forgotten. Sam Dennison's whole universe collapsed into that one room off the top of the stairs.
    Dr. Sanderson was just emerging from the master bedroom as Sam reached it. Sanderson was a man not unused to dealing with distraught husbands. Gaunt, with a complexion, old shoe leather, he looked like a man who would live forever. He caught Sam by the arm as the younger man tried to push past him into the bedroom. His grip surprised Sam. It was firm. Not hard, but irresistible.
    "She's all right, Mr. Dennison. She's resting comfortably." The echo of Babs's words sounded worse in Sam's ears than bad news.
    "What-" Sam gasped against his pounding heart. "What happened?" He looked past Sanderson's thick glasses, deep into the pale gray eyes. Eyes the colour of a spring sky, when clouds gather before rain. Eyes with deep, hidden sorrow. Very deep. Hard to be certain what it was, or even if it was really there.
    Sam wondered for a moment what it might be. Then his own agony reclaimed his mind with a sudden, soul-wrenching thought. "The baby…?"
    "Mother and child are both fine. I promise. Come on now. Mrs. Greeley has some coffee brewed downstairs. You could use a cup, I think."
    Sam allowed himself to be led downstairs to the kitchen. The house ebbed and flowed around him. Reality had gone all soft at the edges. Sam could not concentrate. Joanne and the baby filled his thoughts. Nothing else mattered.
    They found Babs in the kitchen, already pouring out the last of three cups of dark, rich brew. The odour filled the room. Sam breathed it deeply, trying to cling to it. A wonderfully normal sensation in a world gone topsy-turvy. Coffee. Rich. Dark. He'd never cared for it until Phil Marsdon taught him the trick for taking out the edge of bitterness. The tiniest pinch of salt in the cup.
    The thought sent memories of youth cascading through Sam's buzzing brain. The Greenwich Village cafe he hung out at with Marsdon when both were new to New York. The sights and sounds of the Village. His tiny little downstairs apartment. Four hundred dollars a month for a single room he could just about stand erect in. But with a back door that opened onto a private patch of greenery.
    That apartment was where he and Joanne ended their first date. Wrapped in each other's arms. He savoured the remembered sensations of that night. She was so tiny against his long body. Her naked flesh so smooth.
    Something brought him back to the kitchen of Wembledge Manor. Sanderson had guided him to the table. He was trying to make Sam sit. Sam let his long legs bend. He thumped into a chair. Babs put a mug of coffee before him, and to one side the Dennisons' old cream and sugar set.
    Another flood of memories. He hadn't seen those ornate little containers in years. Where on earth had Babs found them?
    He took a firm grip on his cup and reached over the sugar for the salt shaker in the middle of the table. A quick shake of the wrist, and he picked up a spoon. He stirred the dark liquid. He felt the warmth of the coffee through the mug. -What-"
    He still experienced trouble getting the words to come out. Sanderson seated himself opposite Sam. He laid a soothing hand on Sam's shoulder. Sam felt the long, gnarly fingers, warm through his shirt.
    "Some kind of seizure," Sanderson said. "An anxiety attack, but on a scale like nothing I've ever seen before. U Mrs. Greeley hadn't seen the mail scattered across the driveway and come in to investigate, it could have been a lot worse."
    Sam felt the kitchen floor grow soft beneath his chair. "The-mail-"
    Babs nodded. She was still standing by the stove. "I was coming back from June Craddock's house. I saw all the catalogs and letters and things blowing across the road. I stopped and saw your front door was open."
    "The-mail-" Sam repeated. "And you picked up the mail, Babs?"
    "Yes. After I'd come in to check on Joanne. Were you expecting something important? It's all right here-"
    Sam focused on the pile on the short counter to the left of the stove. Babs's neatly manicured right hand was resting on it, patting it. "No," he said. "Nothing important. What was wrong with Joanne?"
    "She was-well, she was just sitting on the bottom step in the front hall. Just sitting and rocking back and forth and hugging herself. She was saying 'no no no,' over and over, and-and, Sam-she-she'd wet herself."
    The coffee cup was far too heavy to hold. Sam watched it begin to rotate around his index finger. The thick liquid sloshed toward the edge of the mug. It made a smooth, brown arc in the air, curving gracefully toward the tiled floor.
    He watched it leave his finger. Watched it tumble end over end. The coffee made wide circles. All in slow motion. The slightest effort and Sam could have reached out, caught the cup. Maybe even scooped up the coffee, it fell so slowly.
    He made the effort. The kitchen floor jumped up and slammed him in the face.
    
    
Chapter Four 
1
    
    Babs Greeley tried everything she knew to drive the horror out of her mind. The madness. The awful, clawing terror that wanted to rip apart her carefully constructed life. Shred it. Throw it, torn and bloodied, at her feet.
    She stood at the sink, trying not to look out the kitchen window. It overlooked the parking area. Her Volvo was parked next to Doug's Mercedes. Babs tried vainly to connect the Joanne Dennison who had so recently ridden with her in that blue station wagon to the one she'd found curled in a little ball in the front hall of the old Wembledge place. It was so bizarre to find her like that.
    Babs saw her again, sharp and clear in her mind's eye. So pale. So drawn. As if she'd been sick for a week. Mewling and shivering. Wetting herself like a newborn.
    Babs shivered. Her stomach turned. Her throat constricted. She tried to pour all her concentration into the simple tasks of preparing dinner for Doug Senior. Tasks she'd performed a thousand times in twenty-five years of marriage. Tasks she wanted to shield her now. To draw up around her. To shut out the awful events of the afternoon.
    But every time she let her eyes drift past the tops of the family cars, she saw the Dennison house through the trees.
    The Greeley house was set sideways, close to the front of their wide, deep lot. There were oak and maple set at random all around the rambling Victorian house. The short drive curved sharply to the left of the gate, ending in an open patch of white gravel that served as the parking space. There was no. garage. The Mercedes and Volvo sat side by side, facing the house.
    The house was reversed on the inside from conventional layouts. The big, sunny rooms in the back did not seem logical as kitchen and pantry, as they were when the Greeleys moved in. Mostly with his own hands, Doug Greeley renovated and rearranged the rooms.
    He liked doing things around the house. Big, manly projects, he thought them. Rip out a wall here. Retile a floor there. The kitchen was his greatest achievement. It took nearly two years, mostly of weekends and evenings. There was not an inch of wire or a foot of pipe that he had not placed himself. The knotty-pine cupboards he cut and planed in his own basement workshop. The parquet floor he laid himself. Only the sink and the appliances were store-bought. Even the microwave he'd disguised in a custom-built cupboard all its own. A very cozy kitchen. Warm. Full of love and care. It reflected Babs Greeley. She cherished it.
    Now she clung to it. To the warmth. The cosiness. The normalcy. Anything that was part of what was supposed to be. That was not part of the rest of the day. Try as she might she could not put the image of Joanne Dennison out of her mind. It was simply not the kind of thing Babs Greeley was accustomed to, in her warm and sheltered little life. A life built entirely around the cornerstone of home and family.
    She was not career oriented. Not like her younger sister, Angela. Angela Finney ran her own company out of Los Angeles. Not a very big company. A mail-order place that sold spices and herbs and exotic condiments. She'd created and owned it herself. She made a very good living from it. She often chided Babs for having contented herself with being "just a housewife."
    Babs was not the type who would ever point out that the job of housewife was easily one of the hardest, most demanding avocations in the world. Even a doctor could escape his patients if he really wanted to. A housewife was on twenty-four-hour call. She tended the sniffles, the sneezes, the cuts. The scrapes and irritations, both major and minor, that beset a normal, active household. Sometimes she even found time to take care of her own needs, too.
    Now this awful thing had happened. Babs felt her carefully cultured life coming ever-so-slightly unglued. Just a little bit, around the edges. Making her very uncomfortable in the deep places.
    And this is the second time I've had a bad experience at the Dennison house. In just a week! Just a week since she'd seen that catalog. Her stomach twisted again.
    That horrible catalog. Those terrible pictures.
    Horrible, horrible pictures that made her want to go on looking at them. Go on turning the pages as each image proved more disgusting than the last. Disgusting in an insidious, compelling way. A way that made her tingle down deep inside. Like she tingled sometimes when Doug touched her in her private places.
    She tingled now, thinking about those deep black lines on that cold white paper. Her heart raced. Her fingers trembled. "O-Ohhh!"
    The involuntary exhalation brought Doug's eyes up from behind the Courant editorial pages. "Something?"
    Babs felt the blood burning across the back of her neck. She shook her head. "No. No. The-urn-the onion's a little hot. Go on with your reading."
    Doug Greeley studied his wife with his head cocked slightly to one side. It was a characteristic posture. One that made him look somehow like a bull terrier listening to faraway sounds. He liked what he saw. Liked it-loved it-very, very much. At forty-eight Babs was still a handsome woman.
    
    Lord knows, all I'll ever need, Doug thought, in or out of the bedroom,
    He only wished sometimes that she would not indulge Doug Junior the way she did, but what the hey!
    Okay by me, I guess, if it makes her happy.
    Babs had suffered through a difficult birth, unusual in a second child. Doug felt old emotions stirring. His lips drew into a tight line. A terrible time. He almost lost Babs and the new baby. If she wanted to mollycoddle the boy a bit, fine.
    Plenty of time to set him onto something more like a proper course.
    Doug Senior owned a prize racing sloop, berthed now at the Westport Yacht Club. He liked to apply what he considered nautical terminology to anything that allowed it. At the office his employees called him "Skipper." Behind his back.
    He rose, setting the paper on the kitchen table. A broad, stocky man a full head taller than his diminutive bride. There was about him that had the look of many a high school football coach. Rock-hard once, now softening. Still something like stone there, but lately tending more to gravel.
    He pressed his big chest against her back. He put his arms around Babs, letting his hands find her opulent breasts. The smell of her perfume filled his nostrils. He breathed deeply, hugging her.
    Something like a shiver went through Babs. She leaned back against him, wriggling the small of her back against the front of his pants. Her arms pulled tight against his, pushing his hands in and up, so her breasts mountained below the slope of her shoulders. Doug felt himself stirring, stiffening.
    Then she seemed to catch herself. She tensed. "Dougie's home," she said. The traditional response to Doug's amorous advances outside the bedroom. Usually he let it nudge him aside, ever so gently. Tonight he lingered a moment.
    Babs looked especially radiant. Not just the rosy glow of love that was not dimmed with the years. Her cheeks were flushed. Her breath was quick. He knew that little sigh did not mean hot onions. He heard it only infrequently, and that made him cherish it.
    Doug knew he was not a master love maker. When that little gulped breath signalled his wife's climax he felt his manhood surge within him. But it was so rare he heard it nowadays. He did everything he could to satisfy Babs, but her brain was too often busy with grocery lists and what was said at the last PTA meeting.
    And whatever troubled Junior at this particular juncture of his life.
    But she never refused Doug Senior's advances. He was grateful for that. However small her own real pleasure might be from their sex, it often appeared that his satisfaction contented her.
    Still, whenever he heard that trademark sigh he knew there was something more that he could give her, if only he could find the way. This time he heard it as she stood at the sink, peeling onions!
    Now he responded to her whispered "Dougie's home" by tightening his hands on her breasts. He kneaded them, gently. He felt the left nipple harden under his palm. Always the left. Only the left. It was this phenomenon that inspired the nickname he always called her. It always made her blush when he used it in public, or in front of the children.
    He nuzzled into her neck. The short hairs of the nape tickled his nose. He snorted. She squirmed a little as the hot breath touched her throat. He blew hard through his nostrils. The loose front of her blouse fluttered. He looked briefly down into the dark valley within. He squeezed her once more and stepped back. Later. Later.
    "You didn't finish telling me what happened over at the Dennisons'," he said. "They're going to be all right, you said?"
    Babs returned to the casserole she was preparing. "That's what Dr. Sanderson said." Doug watched the flush fading from her cheeks. "I was so glad he was back from Washington. I really don't care for that Dr. Witlaw he's got working with him. And hardly any of the other local doctors will make house calls anymore. Even in an emergency. Ticky Wheeler was telling me just the other day-"
    Doug returned to his seat. Whatever happened at the Dennisons' that day he would have to find out from Doc Sanderson. Babs was obviously intent on avoiding that particular topic. Not unusual. It was just her way to avoid anything unpleasant. Doug was content to let her.
    She finished her preparations and slid the shiny white Corning Ware crock into the oven. Then she turned to the separate task of preparing Dougie's meal. Two weeks past he'd decided to become his unique version of a vegetarian. Now Doug Senior watched with mounting disgust as Babs prepared lettuce sandwiches, carefully adorning each with celery sticks and carrot slices.
    Doug would have delighted in this newfound dietary sense in his son, if only each meal did not include the usual allotment of Twinkies and Ho-Hos. Doug snorted and turned back to his paper. It was likely Dougie would reach three hundred pounds by the time he turned twenty.
    Babs knew exactly what her husband was thinking. She decided to leave the matter alone tonight. After the business with the Dennisons, she was in no mood for the kind of "discussions" that sometimes accompanied Doug's observations of her preparing Dougie's dinner. Doug Senior was a good and wonderful husband. Babs loved him with all her heart. But he sometimes found trouble understanding their younger boy's special needs.
    Leaving Doug in a kitchen filling with the aromas of the baking casserole, Babs went up the backstairs to the attic. Dougie loved having his own private stairway. He often spoke of having a separate, outside entrance installed, with steps down the side of the house. Then he could come and go without crossing through the main part of the house.
    Doug Senior drew a firm line at that. Enough that he'd spent the best part of a year insulating and finishing the attic, only to have Dougie claim it for his own. He would not build the boy an exterior door.
    Distracted by the cloying memories of the day's events, Babs did not knock on Dougie's bedroom door that evening. The effect was electric. At the other end of the attic Doug Junior vaulted out of the pool of light around his bed. There was something in his right hand. Something that he stuffed quickly into the pile of girlie magazines growing at his bedside.
    Babs paused in the doorway. His sudden movement confused her. She was not used to seeing him so galvanized. He looked very young. Very guilty.
    Another mother might have asked him what he was doing. Not Babs. Even after fifteen years she was so glad to have Dougie alive and well that she rarely questioned his actions. It never occurred to her to wonder what there could be that a boy who'd been permitted to read Playboy and Penthouse since he was eight years old might not want his mother to see.
    She was too far away to tell it was a small catalog with a dark red cover.
    
2
    
    The next morning Babs watched Doug Senior drive off to the station. A frown knitted her brows. It was not an expression Doug would have recognized. Not an expression Babs displayed many times in the past.
    Painful memories came to her, of other times she'd frowned like this. When her doctor told her there might be a problem with the birth of her second child. When Rod, her older boy, came home to tell her his girlfriend was pregnant.
    A mixture of concern and fear. Something she could not put into words. Something like a need to yell at the world. To tell everyone to go away. To be very much unlike herself, unlike the very proper girl she was brought up to be. At forty-eight Babs had no difficulty thinking of herself as a "girl."
    She watched the powder-blue Mercedes bear her husband to the crest of the hill to the west, where Wolf Pit intersected with Grainge. Then she let her eyes drift toward the Dennison house.
    Situated as far forward as it was on their lot, the Greeley house commanded a good view of Wolf Pit toward the east. The top of the Dennison house was visible through the tall trees on the near side of their property. Babs guessed that twenty-five feet higher-say, in the south window of Dougie's room-and she would have a pretty clear line of sight to the Dennisons' bedroom windows.
    She knew that house, the Dennison house, was the focus of her bad feelings. Something in that house. Too much madness packed into those walls last night. Too much for Babs to shunt off, to put away.
    She stood on the neat, white-trimmed porch of their rambling old Victorian house and felt far away from the everyday pleasantries of Fairharbour, Connecticut. She hugged herself as if against a cold wind. The August air was warm. The sky was clear. She heard birds singing. She caught the fragrance of countless blossoms on the soft breeze from the north. Everything was right with this little corner of the world. Except at the Dennison house.
    That awful catalog. It wasn't capitalized yet in Babs's mind. It's the centre of this business. I can feel it, somehow. It's like a big, fat, bloated spider sitting in the Dennison house. Spinning out thick black threads that fill the air. Like a storm cloud.
    
    What happened over there? When I saw Joanne-when? Tuesday? Wednesday?-she was just as right as rain. She was so full of life. So excited about the baby. Just as pleasant as could be.
    Or was she? There was that moment-when she came out of the downstairs John-when she found me looking at that awful catalog. She changed. Somehow. She stiffened. She- drew into herself. Drew away from me. As if she were just greatly disturbed that I should be looking at that awful catalog. She said it wasn't theirs. She said it must have been one of the thousands of catalogs those strange Hanson people ordered all their things from. But-why such a strong reaction, then? I was terribly upset by that awful thing, but even so, I could feel the chill. Like there was ice between us, all of a sudden.
    I was so relieved when she remembered she'd offered me tea. It was so normal. It took the edge off the moment.
    Until that moment Babs had almost forgotten Joanne's reaction. Now she put it in the perspective of Joanne's collapse. "Nervous exhaustion," Dr. Sanderson called it. But could someone really get into such dire straits in so short a time?
    I'm no expert on the things that can go wrong with the human mind. If it's not a cold or a scrape or a cut-well, I'm just out of my depth totally. But Joanne was fine when we had lunch at Teddy's. She was fine through the drive home. Fine unloading the groceries. Fine putting them away. Fine with the tea. She even looked fine again after the bad moment, when I left.
    Just that moment. That one moment. And all around that awful catalog. Why would Joanne and Sam Dennison have such a dreadful thing in their house? I don't think I can really believe it's a holdover from the Hansons. They were strange, that pair. But not that strange.
    She decided it must have been something the Dennisons ordered. Maybe from some store in New York. Babs hated New York. She was Fairharbour born and raised. She successfully avoided Manhattan most of her life. Only three times in the years of their marriage had she let Doug persuade her to go in with him for a night on the town. It was always too much for her. The smells. The noise. The constant rush of people.
    Joanne was born there. Well, Brooklyn, really. There are enough strange tales about Brooklyn, too. Those people have a reputation for a toughness, a surliness.
    Babs saw nothing of that in Joanne. And there's nothing about Sam to suggest he could be so-perverse. That was the only word Babs could think of.
    And what does that make you? She thought again of last night, preparing dinner. The tingling. The involuntary gasp that escaped her as she remembered the contents of that book.
    How could such pictures make me feel that way? I'm a proper woman, a civilized woman. I enjoy the moments with Doug, even though he obviously enjoys it more than I do. I like it when he caresses me. When he touches me, when we pass each other, just moving around the house. I even like "Lefty," if he'd just be sensible about when he uses it.
    No. I should not have had those animal stirrings, looking through that awful catalog. Thinking about it later. Animal. That's the only word for it. Not human. Not civilized. Those scratchy drawings. Like etchings in an old Bible. But nothing like the pictures you'd find in a Bible. So crude. Crude in every sense. And so black. So incredibly black against the white pages. And so cold, the pages.
    
    She felt them now, under her fingers. Felt their coolness, as she stood in the morning sun on this clear August day in Fairharbour, Connecticut.
    Babs snapped back to the real world, startled. She'd been drifting. Drifting miles and miles away. Her thoughts had been twisting and turning. Going places she had no way to stop them going. She turned back toward the house.
    Dougie was standing in the doorway. His eyes were wide as saucers. His mouth hung open. He was-touching himself. Touching the front of his pants. Touching the bulge there. Stroking.
    Babs felt ice water trickle down her spine. Fire blazed in her cheeks. The moment froze. It stretched. It became an awful eternity that had nothing to do with the moments before it. Nothing to do with the moments that would come after. For there would be no moments after. There would be only this one terrible moment that stretched off and off and off toward some impossible infinity. Babs and Dougie frozen precisely at the centre. Butterflies pinned to a piece of white cardboard.
    He's been watching me. And he's been playing with himself!
    And-what have I been doing? What had she been doing, as the images from that Catalog filled her mind? Made her loins burn. Her palms were damp with sweat. She felt again the straying of her own hands moving across her body. Pressing and squeezing her breasts. Finding the deep cleft between her thighs. Stroking.
    I've never masturbated in my life! Never! Never! And now! Now I’ve done it standing in broad daylight on the front porch! With my son watching! Let the ground open. Let it just open up and swallow me. Her knees became Jell-O.
    She felt hands on her. Hands steadying her. Strong hands that would not let her fall. And a voice. Shaky, but comforting in her ear.
    "M-Mom? Mom, are you okay? What happened?"
    She looked into Dougie's round face. Pale as snow. Moonlike. Empty-eyed. Stupid.
    Babs never allowed herself to think of her son as anything less than a fine, bright boy. Certainly she never allowed any question of his intelligence level to cross her mind. Now she saw him as a drooling idiot. Wide eyed. Blank faced.
    Immediately Babs hated herself. She knew why he looked like that. Because of her shame. Because of what he must have seen! She straightened suddenly. She pushed him away. She heard his broad, flabby back hit the side of the house with a strangely wet sound. Like raw liver hitting the countertop at Carson's Meat Market.
    "I-I'm all right." Babs was almost choking. Every emotion was vying for command of her body. She felt her face twisting through a hundred expressions between every heartbeat. "Go into the house. Just go into the house, and leave me alone for a minute."
    Her tone was rising, out of her control. Building toward a shout. A scream. In fifteen years she'd never once shouted at Dougie. She'd shouted at Doug for shouting at Dougie. She'd had raging fights with Doug, because he shouted at Dougie. Now she wanted to shout. Scream. Claw at him with her perfectly manicured fingernails. Scratch out those eyes that saw her shame. Poke burning irons into the empty sockets.
    "M-Mom-"
    "Go in! Damn you! Go inside!"
    Dougie scrambled for the screen door. He tripped. He fell with another wet, squishy thud. Babs's heart lurched. Mother instinct carried her one step toward him. Her rage stopped her.
    Dougie's fear propelled him into the house. Crawling. Struggling to his feet. Dashing for the backstairs. Away. Away from her.
    She wanted to be away, too. Away from this wonderful, big old house. This beautiful, normal house. With everything so sweet. So pure. So clean. So much a reminder of the awful thing she'd done.
    Get away from it. She walked down the porch steps. Down the drive. Go out of the gate. Along Wolf Pit Road. Anywhere. Anywhere that's not here. Anywhere that was away. Away and away. Away from her house. Away from her son,
    Away from her shame.
    
3
    
    Babs let her undirected feet carry her away from the house she shared with Doug and Dougie. No part of her conscious mind was on her movement. Her eyes did not see the green grass of the front lawn give way to the dirty gray tarmac of the road. Her ears did not hear the bird song, or the train whistle rolling softly over the hill after its journey from town.
    There was only one focus to her mind. Expulsion. Exorcism. Driving out any thought, any mood, any feeling. She wanted nothing in her head. Nothing. Just a great, white emptiness. An emptiness to fill the world. To take away the last twenty minutes. To wipe them away. Like a teacher wiping figures from a chalkboard.
    Cleaner than that.
    No trace should remain. Not even unreadable smears. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
    "Hello, Babs."
    She heard the voice before she heard the words. An abstract sound. Like something heard outside late at night. A car door? A garbage can lid caught in the wind? Part of her mind turned to the task of identifying the sound. But she still wanted to resist. She wanted only to escape from the realities around her.
    You've been spoken to.
    That was it. Someone had spoken to her. Said, "Hello, Babs." You must respond. You've not been raised to be so ignorant you'd ignore a friendly greeting.
    Her eyes focused. It was Sam Dennison. Her pulse quickened. He was naked.
    No. He wore a pair of old, paint-splattered shorts, faded almost the colour of his pale, freckled flesh. The orange hair bristled on his bare chest. On his long, skinny legs. He wore a baseball cap with a Chicago Cubs badge. Dark glasses. The shadow of the cap's brim fell across the narrow strip of white surgical gauze that circled his head. It covered the contusion he'd collected the day before.
    Bab's befuddled brain tried to sort out the details of the image before her. There was a slender paintbrush in Sam's right hand. A long, thin stick in his left. He was crouching before the Dennisons' mailbox, his weight on one knee. The stick was resting on the mailbox. Sam's right wrist was resting on the stick. He was painting something to the mailbox. Painting something. Painting something under the neatly lettered name "Dennison."
    "H-Hello, Sam." Babs found her voice. She heard the strain in it. Even in those two small words. Strain she knew was telling him everything. His eyebrows were drawn closer. She knew her words, her posture, perhaps even her clothes were telling him all about her. About what happened. What she'd done.
    I might as well be naked in front of him.
    Suddenly she liked that idea. She liked the thought of being naked before Sam Dennison. Of feeling his big, wide hands on her flesh. Stroking her breasts. Pinching her nipples. Putting his hands on her shoulders. Pushing her down, down. So she went onto her knees before him. Kissing his smooth, firm belly. Working lower with her lips until her mouth-
    "H-How are you this morning, Sam?" Make conversation. Polite, ordinary conversation. She prayed that would disguise the quality in her voice. The terrible quality that told the world about her thoughts, about her shame.
    "Okay, I guess." Sam rose to his feet. Her head tipped back to follow him. Up and up. He was nearly two feet taller than Babs. Her eyes were level with his pectorals. His nipples stared at her like little pink eyes against his white skin. He sounded tired. When Babs looked again at his face, the cheeks were hollow.
    Babs looked away to the mailbox. She tried to make sense of the words he was painting there, NO CATAL. That's not English, is it? There was no sense to the three syllables. Something told Babs she should be able to reason some meaning into the strange words. But she could not.
    "Maybe I should be asking you how you are, Babs." Sam's smooth voice brought her eyes back to his face. She concentrated on the movements of his lips. Nice lips. Very friendly. Very sexy.
    She blinked. "Oh-no. I'm fine., I'm fine. How is- Joanne?" It all sounded so false to her. So phony-baloney. Talking to this man. Her friend's husband. Her husband's friend. Saying nothing. When she wanted to say how sexy his mouth was. Wanted to tell him how she longed to feel his mouth against hers. Feel his hands on her body. Stroking. Squeezing. Pinching. Hurting a little. Just a little.
    His hand was hot on her arm. "Babs! Are you all right? C'mon and sit down." She did not resist. She let Sam lead her back to the wide front porch. Let him sit her in one of the rockers Joanne bought just days after moving in.
    Babs felt like a toy, guided by his big hands. She felt helpless. As if Sam could, at that moment, have done anything he wanted with her. She delighted in the sensation. She wanted him to do anything he wanted with her.
    "Sam-" She shivered. Just saying his name was doing something inside her. Making her want to stretch out and squirm and- No! No no no!
    She jumped to her feet. What in God's name is happening to me? This madness/ This dirtiness/ Thought and feelings like nothing I've ever allowed myself. A jumble of memories collided in her skull.
    There was Ricky Shoemaker putting his hand on her leg in seventh grade. Saying it was a fire truck. That when she wanted him to stop sliding his hand up under her dress she must say "red light." And she said "red light." And Ricky Shoemaker laughed and said, "Fire trucks don't stop for red lights!"
    Or Bob Hanley trying to touch her breast in the eleventh grade. Ripping her blouse when she pulled away.
    Or Doug. Doug, the first. The only. Until now. Until-
    "Babs?" Sam's hands were on her again. On her shoulders. Strong. Firm. Pushing her down. Yes. OK yes yes yes! He was pushing her back into the rocking chair. Making her sit. Making her obey. The way she wanted to obey.
    "Oh-Sam-" Sam wasn't there anymore. She remembered him leaving. She remembered words. His words. He said something. He gave her an order. To stay. Yes. He ordered her to stay. Stay right there while he did something. While he-
    Got Dougie.
    Babs bolted out of the chair. Her breakfast surged against the back of her throat. Her head pounded. Like a trapped beast she danced back and forth. A step, a back step. She didn't know where to go. What to do.
    She could see Sam sprinting down the road toward her house. His long legs carried him fast. She realized he'd be there in seconds. Babs could not escape her little dance. She took another step forward. Took another back. She turned. Turned back. Her neck was aching. She felt cold sweat on her palms.
    He's going to get Dougie. Your son. Because you're acting so strangely. And that's what you do when a neighbour turns up at the door acting like a madwoman. Fetch the next of kin. And he was painting the mailbox. So he probably saw Doug leave. So he's going to fetch Dougie.
    Dougie was the last person on earth she wanted to see. Not now. Sometime maybe. Maybe soon. But not now. She needed to hide. She knew she must hide. But she couldn't think where. Through the trees she could see the porch of her house. Even at this distance, she could see Sam mounting the steps. She knew he'd see her if she tried to leave. If she tried to run. Tried to hide*.
    Inside the house. In the basement. Maybe. Maybe. If he comes back with Dougie and I'm gone, it would never occur to him to look in the basement.
    She pulled open the screen door. She stepped into the house. The curtains were all drawn. It was cool and dark. She found the entrance hall a womb, dark and silent. Even the singing of the birds seemed to fade, as if locked outside by the screen door as it swung shut.
    Babs took a few paces into the hall. She began to feel better. In the darkness, no one could see her. In the silence, no one could hear her. She felt as if she could stay right there, right on that spot and Sam would not see her. He would come into the hall with Dougie. They would walk right past her. Because she was so small, so still, there in the quiet darkness. Like something that belonged there. Not a middle-aged woman who'd behaved so foully. Something small and still and proper, there.
    Then she heard a sound. Faintly at first. Indistinct. Unrecognizable. Like the way Sam's voice sounded as she had passed the gate only minutes ago. But she was not distracted now. She was calm and collected. There was no reason for any sound to be strange to her.
    What is it? What is it?
    No matter how hard she tried she could not place the noise. It was alien. Not alien like in a movie. She'd seen lots of movies with weird alien creatures. Doug Junior rented hundreds for their VCR. She'd heard all those so-called alien sounds. She'd been able to figure them out. Figure out what the soundman did to make a weird roar, or the scream of a rocket engine. They were all ordinary sounds, everyday sounds. Just slowed down, or speeded up, or mixed with other sounds.
    This was different. This was like no sound she'd ever heard before. Not a human sound. Not Joanne, still resting on the bed upstairs, almost directly above Babs's head. Not Sam and Dougie coming up the drive. Not an animal sound, either. No bird or skunk or deer or dog or cat. Nothing she had ever heard made a sound like that.
    Almost it was not a sound. She felt it rather than heard it. Felt it in the very tips of her fingers. In the hairs on the nape of her neck. The barest touch of the softest breeze against her bare skin.
    But, no. A sound it was. She was sure of that. Just a strange sound. A sound she'd never heard before. Nearby. She could tell that much. In the dark stillness, it was quite close by. She turned, slowly. She rotated on her toes. A full 360 degrees. And again.
    She closed her eyes, letting her ears do all the work. She tipped her head to one side, slightly. Concentrating. Listening. Listening.
    There! She opened her eyes. Against the curve of the banister, at the foot of the stairs, Babs faced a small teak table. She'd been with Joanne when Joanne found it in an antique store on the Post Road. The table was quite small. No more than a foot across, with a high, curved back to stop things falling down behind. A single shapely spindle leg. Three wide-spaced feet that ended in paws. Like a calfs, Babs thought, carved in the rich wood.
    The sound was coming from that table. From a small, flat package oh that table. Babs took a few steps closer. Even though she identified the source, the nature of the sound still eluded her. A rustling, but not quite. A slithering, sliding sound. But not quite. A sound of movement. What kind of movement?
    She stepped closer. The package was a manila envelope, eight and a half by eleven inches. She squinted at the address scribbled on the facing side. She couldn't read it in the dim light. The handwriting was unsteady.
    The sound was coming from that package. As she looked, as she squinted in the darkness, trying to read that hurried hand, she thought the package moved. Just a little. Perhaps the span of an ant's antenna. Hardly at all.
    She could easily have imagined it. A memory came to her. In high school once she volunteered for a class science project. She was one of a small group of people shut in a dark room. A single, small lamp burned, making no impression on the darkness.
    They were told to watch that light. At the end of twenty minutes, they would be asked how far the light moved. Each reported a distance, some quite large, some very small. But each reported that the light had moved, even Babs.
    In fact, it was fastened to the wall and did not move at all.
    Babs never forgot that experience. It taught her never to absolutely trust her senses. She remembered it now. She knew, besides, that a manila envelope lying on a small teak table in a dark hall in Fairharbour, Connecticut, was hardly likely to move.
    It's hardly likely to make strange, alien noises, either. And it's definitely doing that. She bent to hold her ear closer to the table, to the envelope. It's definitely doing that!
    She put out a small, white hand. Her fingers trembled above the manila paper. Her every impulse told her to pick it up. To open it. She wanted to open it. Only a tiny part of her brain reminded her that opening other people's mail was not going to improve her dwindling self-esteem.
    She started suddenly, heart racing again. She'd heard movement outside. Sam and Dougie coming up the drive? She dashed for the backstairs. For the basement door. There were two small brass bolts on the door, one at the top, the other near the bottom.
    
    She did not remember them from earlier visits to the house, after the Dennisons first moved in. She decided Sam must have put them on the door. Hadn't Joanne said something once, in passing, about how much Sam hated basements? Babs slid back the lower bolt easily. She had to stretch to reach the higher.
    In the cool, damp darkness of the top of the basement steps she paused, listening. Her heartbeat was the loudest thing she heard. This is so foolish. Another memory came. She remembered the time she'd dropped a glass, drying dishes after dinner at her grandma's. She remembered the terrible crash it made on the slate floor. The way the china pieces spun through the air. The way they flashed in the afternoon sunlight.
    She'd fled the kitchen all in a rush. Down the basement stairs. She'd jammed herself into a corner. She fully intended to hide in that corner forever. Her tiny fists were balled against her tightly closed eyes. Her tears were hot. Her whole body trembled uncontrollably.
    She'd been eight then. Forty years had passed. Now her fists were tightly balled again. Only, there was something in her right fist. She looked down at it. She did not move her hand to raise it to her eyes.
    It was a manila envelope.
    She felt her face colour. She'd grabbed the envelope after all. As she ran. Without even thinking. Without even realizing.
    There was just enough light there in the cellar, as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. She could see the colour of the envelope. The dark smear of the address. In one corner a dull, white blur. One of Sam and Joanne Dennisons' return-address labels. In one corner of the label was the logo of an environmental protection group.
    Her mind was wandering. She was trying to avoid the unavoidable fact of that envelope in her hand. With the trembling fingers of her left hand, she traced its edges. It was crumpled where she held it still so tightly in her fist. There was something inside. She flexed the smooth, flat package between two hands. Thick. Bendable.
    She peeled back a corner of the flap. Just a little. A little. A little more.
    
    The paper tore. She cursed, ripped the thing open. It was a clumsy motion. The contents slipped from the envelope and flapped onto the top step.
    Babs bit the heel of her hand and managed not to scream.
    
    
Chapter Five 
1
    
    Dougie raced through the Greeley house as fast as his fat legs would carry him. His heart pounded. His lungs burned. There was a haze before his eyes that turned everything the colour of blood.
    He thundered up the stairs to his room and slammed the door closed behind him. He wished there was a lock on his door, but his father drew the line there, too. Dougie might be allowed his own little lair at the top of the house. He was not going to be allowed to lock his parents out.
    Dougie leaned all his weight against the door. He prayed he would not hear his mother's footsteps on the stairs. He prayed she would not come after him. Not after what I saw.
    What I saw! What I saw! The images still hung before his mind's eye. Try as he might he could not erase them. They bobbed in his brain. They ebbed and flowed. Now sharp and clear. Now blurred and vague. Always inescapable. His mother. On the porch. Touching herself. Stroking and squeezing herself. The way women did in the pages of his girlie magazines. Squeezing her breasts. Pushing them up and together. Like huge, ripe grapefruit. Soft and round and-
    "NO!" He screamed it. His shrill voice cracked. His knees gave out His fat behind thumped against the floor. "NO!. NO! NO! NO!" To have seen such things! To have such thoughts! About his own mother!
    He'd not been able to keep his hand away from the bulge in his pants. I tried! I tried! It was an instinctive reaction. Dougie was a compulsive masturbator. He hated himself for it. But what else could he do? Those snotty brat girls at school only made fun of him.
    Old Doc Sanderson-old fart Sanderson-told him his attitude was at fault. And his weight. And his hair. Fuck him. The girls in his magazines never made fun of Dougie. They opened themselves for him. Only for him. Late at night. The pool of lamplight spilling across the bed. A box of Kleenex by his side. They were the women he wanted.
    Not those snots at school. And not my mother! Please, God, not my mother!
    He'd seen his father make playful passes at his mother when the two of them thought Dougie was in his room. Out of earshot. Out of sight. He'd seen his father touch his mother. Touch her breasts. Once touch the front of her skirt.
    Objectively, he knew they must do it sometimes. At least twice in their lives, or where did he and Rod come from? He'd read in his magazines how even people as old as his parents could sometimes still have sex.
    His imagination got away from him again. The image flashed of his mother and father. Naked together. Naked and sweaty and grunting as his father lay on top of his mother and thrust and thrust-
    Dougie wanted to be sick. He wanted to vomit it all out. One gigantic heave that would empty his mind as well as his guts. Carry it all away. The image of his mother stroking herself on the porch. The new image of his mother and father fucking.
    He couldn't puke it out. The most he could manage was a sickly little hiccup. A dribble of spit oozed from the corner of his mouth. It trailed down to drip off his round chin. It mingled with the tears streaming down his cheeks. Tears hot and painful. Tears of fire.
    There was no sound of his mother on the stairs. Dougie lurched to his feet and made his way to the closest of three dormer windows facing east. The sunlight was bright in his eyes. Painful. He screwed up his fat face. He peered through slitted lids.
    There she was. Walking off down Wolf Pit toward the Dennisons' house. She was moving like a little robot. Like a wound-up toy. Down the middle of the road. He could tell from the way she moved she was not seeing or hearing anything. Oblivious to her surroundings.
    He thought all at once that she would not sense a car or truck if it came barreling unexpectedly over the ridge. With the thought came the sudden wish that it would happen. A great, big truck, coming over the ridge, down from Grainge. Barreling down so fast the driver would have no chance to spot the little woman on the road. Not until it was much too late.
    Then a squeal of brakes. Tires laying thick black streaks on the pavement. Babs's head jerking up. Spinning around. A single, terrible scream. Suddenly cut short.
    Dougie nodded to himself. There would be no more problem. He would not have to face his mother again. He would not have to sit at the same table with her. He would not have to be haunted by the images of Babs fondling herself. Or of his mother and father fucking.
    No truck came. Babs walked on in her stiff little march.
    Dougie turned away from the window. He stumbled the length of the attic and flopped onto his bed. He rolled onto his back.
    On the angled ceiling above him two years' worth of Playmates of the Month were pinned to the wall. They were all upside down, so he could look up at them with his head on his pillow. They smiled down with vacant, plastic eyes. To Dougie they were perfect in every way. They had big tits and long legs. No brains.
    That was what Dougie wanted. A woman he could fuck. Not a woman he'd have to talk to. Just a big, soft doll he could play with. He could do things to.
    Someone like Joanne Dennison, maybe.
    She isn't exactly a Playmate. She's too short. And she's got no tits at all.
    But she had smooth skin the color of honey. The biggest, darkest nipples Dougie had ever seen.
    He'd seen her naked more than once. Ever since the Dennisons moved into the old Wembledge Manor, Dougie watched her. Sometimes he used the telescope his father bought him last Christmas. From the middle dormer window he had a pretty fair view of the Dennison house. Their bedroom window was right in line with his. Through it, he could see across the room to their bathroom door. Sometimes, late at night, he could see both of them walking around naked.
    Sometimes Sam Dennison had an erection. Then Dougie wanted to look away. He wanted to, but he couldn't. Sometimes they would meet each other in the bathroom door, one going in, one going out. They would put their hands on each other. Their mouths on each other. Sam Dennison's big hands would engulf his wife's small frame. His fingers would knead her flesh. No tits at all. But enough. Enough to squeeze. Dougie wanted to squeeze them. Just once.
    He went over to their house several times. Sneaking around in the bushes. Getting close to the windows. Looking in. Up close, Joanne Dennison was even more beautiful. So small, and dark. So perfectly proportioned. Except for her tits. She was barely taller than Dougie's mother. But slender. Her body was all long, slow curves. It made him lick his lips just to think about it.
    That one time-when was it? A month ago? More-He snuck over to the Dennison house with his father's field glasses in hand. In the bushes near the gate he'd opened a small tunnel mouth. By burrowing into this he could travel some distance toward the house without being seen. Birds scattered before him. A fat gray squirrel made angry noises. Dougie himself could not be seen.
    He reached the patch of bushes parallel to the side of the Dennisons' garage. And there she was! Sunbathing! Lying on a towel a few yards from the porch steps. Only the tiniest of bikinis covering her. She was on her front. The top of the bikini was untied. Her small breasts were squashed flat against her chest. They bulged out a little at the sides. She lay with her head on her folded arms. Her whole body looked to Dougie like one long, golden curve.
    Mediterranean, he'd thought. He'd read that somewhere. Mediterranean women were special. They had dark hair and dark eyes. Olive coloured skin. Dougie couldn't quite figure that one out. Olives were black or dark green, and Joanne Dennison was neither. But she looked Mediterranean to him.
    Even though she was no more than fifteen feet away he raised the field glasses to his eyes. He followed the curves of her body, lingering on a hollow here, a shadow there. There was a film of sweat and sun oil all over her. She glistened.
    Then it happened. The telephone rang. Joanne's head came up. She frowned toward the porch. Dougie shifted his gaze for a moment in that direction. The receiver of the Dennisons' cordless phone was on the top step.
    He swung back to the towel. Joanne was gone. He looked over the top of the field glasses. She was walking toward the porch. And she had not refastened her bikini top. The house was set well back from the road, surrounded by trees. No one could see her. No one but Dougie.
    More than any Playmate of the Month, Joanne Dennison became Dougie's private property at that moment. He knew he must share the Playmates with millions of other men. Joanne he must share with no one. Sam? Sam was just a skinny, crude lump. Easily disposed of. Like wiping dog shit from the bottom of one's shoe. Dougie often fantasized ways of getting rid of Sam.
    Joanne belonged to Dougie from that moment. She was all his. He fought to keep from groaning as she crossed the grass to the house. She picked up the phone. She leaned back against the frame of the porch door. One leg was bent up under her, almost as if she were sitting on it. The thigh was round and perfectly smooth. Her other leg stretched straight down below her. It took her weight. Her hips were cocked to the right. As she talked she ran an index finger over herself, smoothing out the sun oil.
    Dougie thought he would go mad, crouching in the bushes, his weenie threatening to burst out of his shirts.
    Not weenie. Weenie's a kid's word. Mom's word Cock. Men have cocks. Dougie was a man. How could anyone doubt that he was a man? Would this beautiful woman have such an effect on anyone but a real man?
    Joanne finished talking on the phone. She placed it back on the top step. She stretched. Dougie's vision blurred. The ground liquefied. He fell sideways against the bushes with an explosion of snapping twigs. Joanne tensed. Dougie wanted to puke.
    She knows I’m her el She'll come over and find me and tell Mom and I'll be locked in my room without my telescope and I'll never be able to see her naked again!
    Sam Dennison saved the day. He came striding up the driveway on those lanky legs. Calling, waving. Joanne turned to greet him and immediately forgot the noise in the bushes.
    Thinking of Joanne made Dougie think also of the Catalog. It was still hidden under two years' worth of back issues of Playboy and Penthouse by his bed. He rolled on one side and thrust his hand into the pile, groping. He found the dull, textured cover and pulled the little book out. He sat up on the bed and took a deep breath.
    This Catalog was the greatest discovery of his life. He never dreamed before that such things existed. Not even in his wildest fantasies. It was as if they knew about him. The people who put out the Catalog. Knew about Doug Greeley Junior. His personal wants and needs. His darkest imaginings.
    He opened the Catalog. The pages were so perfectly smooth and white. So wonderfully cool against his hot skin. The line drawings were so perfect, so delicate. The way his own drawings looked in his head. So different from how they reached the page. The blackness of the ink against such whiteness was a magnificent contrast.
    The drawings! How perfectly they captured the psyche of a sexually frustrated fifteen-year-old boy.
    Not for the first time he wondered why the Dennisons would ever have sent for such a book. No reason for Sam Dennison to be sexually frustrated. Not with Joanne's dark, smooth body there for him to use whenever he liked.
    Unless she doesn't let him! Dougie ignored the evidence of the telescope. He seized that thought. There's no one in the Catalog who looks like Sam Dennison. But all the women look like Joanne. And all the men look like me/ A fantasy Dougie. A perfect Dougie. Fat replaced by smooth, hard muscle. A Dougie only Dougie could recognize.
    In each perfectly rendered etching, that woman who was Joanne Dennison was a willing slave to the needs of that man who was Dougie Greeley. She served him fully, without hesitation. In ways Dougie had barely begun to imagine.
    A sound brought Dougie out of his reverie. The doorbell. Mom? No, stupid. She wouldn't use the doorbell. He left his bed and leaned out the nearest window. From there he could usually see if there was a car parked in front of the house. There wasn't.
    The doorbell rang again. Ding dong ding dong ding dong. Insistent bastard, thought Dougie. He ran across his room and down the stairs. He crossed the kitchen and burst into the front hall without any time to stop himself being seen by the man at the door.
    It was Sam Dennison. Dougie realized in sudden horror that he still clutched in his hot, sweaty hand the Catalog he had stolen from the Dennison mailbox Monday morning.
    
2
    
    "Dougie? Dougie, open up!"
    Sam jiggled the screen door latch. Dougie's mind raced. He could not remember locking the door. He must have. To keep his mother out. He stepped farther into the front hall. The hand with the stolen Catalog was behind his back. Sam Dennison couldn't have seen it. That couldn't be why he was there.
    "Dougie, let me in." Dougie sensed a growing anger in Sam's voice. Sam rattled the door with increased urgency. "Something's happened to your mom."
    Dougie felt the solid oak floor beneath him turn into a playground slide. He stumbled. The Catalog fluttered from his hand as he grabbed for the support of the entrance arch. The booklet made a very loud slap as it hit the floor.
    Something's happened to Mom. His fantasy of not ten minutes past came careening into his mind. It was a shining steel thing with whirling blades and needle-sharp spikes. It tore his mind. Something's happened to Mom. Because I wished it. Because I wished it'
    "Wh-What-" He couldn't speak. There was no spit in his mouth. His tongue felt ten times its proper size. He coughed. "What… happened… to… her…?"
    "She had some kind of seizure. I don't know. I left her on the front porch of my house. I need to call your father. Where's his number?" The words came in a sudden rush. Sam was rattling the screen door latch. Dougie stumbled to the door. He unlocked it. Sam pushed past him. "Where is it? Your father's office number?"
    Dougie groped for some kind of logic in this maelstrom. "He-he only just left. Maybe half an hour ago. He won't be there yet."
    "I realize that." Sam seized the boy's heaving shoulders. His thumbs dug deep into Dougie's flab. The softness turned Sam's stomach. He shook Dougie. "I've got to leave a message for him. It's the only way I can reach him. He'll be on the train to New York by now." There were welling tears in Dougie's eyes. Sam read anger. Pain. Something else he couldn't identify.
    "Let me go! Let me go!" Dougie was screaming at the top of his lungs. Sam let go of one shoulder. He brought the flat of his hand across Dougie's fat cheek. Hard. Harder than he needed to. Dougie spun out of Sam's grip. He slammed against the near wall.
    "OW! You hit me!" Dougie became a blur of whirling arms. His fists pummeled Sam. He formed his fist the wrong way, thumb tucked inside his curled fingers. His fat hands felt like big marshmallows striking Sam's lean muscles. "You bastard," Dougie shrieked. "You fucker! I'll kill you! I’ll kill your
    Sam took two steps backward, away from the fat fury. Something skidded under his right foot. He looked down to see a catalog. The Catalog. Lying on the floor of the Greeley house. Dougie took advantage of Sam's momentary distraction. The long nails of his right hand clawed across Sam's cheek. Sam cried out in pain and surprise. Blood spurted.
    Something snapped inside Sam Dennison. He balled his big hand into a tight, hard fist. He brought it full force into Dougie's middle, driving up under the curve of the ribs. Dougie flew backward, riding the power of Sam's swing. He crashed into the big, old church pew against the righthand wall. He tried to scream. No sound emerged. Sam's punch had knocked the wind out of him.
    
    Sam grabbed the front of Dougie's T-shirt. His long fingers curled into the curious message across the front of the shirt. i'm a mutant maniac. Part of Sam's seething brain tried to make sense of those words. He failed. They were ridiculous. Incongruous.
    He lifted Dougie, pinned him against the wall. "Your father's number. Where?"
    Dougie blinked at him. His big round cow eyes swam and failed to focus. Dougie could barely recognize the man holding him. Sam's mouth was a rictus, the ivory grin of a skull. His eyes blazed white hot.
    'Til tell him," Dougie choked. Vomit made a trail of greenish slime from one corner of his mouth. His breath stank. "I'll tell my father you hit me."
    Sam bounced Dougie against the wall. The boy's greasy head hit the wallpaper a couple of times. It left an oval stain on the pale floral print. Sam's cheek was on fire where Dougie scratched him. His hand thumped Dougie's chest like a basketball.
    "The number." Sam's voice was ice cold. In another second he would kill the boy. Kill him. Think no more of it than swatting a fly. He slapped his free hand against the side of Dougie's head. "The number." He slapped again. "The number." Again. "The number."
    Dougie's head rang. "In the kitchen!" He shouted it. "In the kitchen! The kitchen!" Sam was still bouncing him, still slapping him. "On the door of the icebox!"
    Sam seemed to come back from a long way away. He relented for a moment in his assault. Dougie ducked under Sam's arm. He bounded for the door. Sam took one step to follow, stopped. His heart was thundering in his ears. The room swam.
    What in the name of.… ? He held his hands up before him. The fingers were curved into talons. He took several long, deep breaths. He forced his hands to relax. It was painful. The muscles stood out like cords along the sides of his fingers.
    Then he saw the Catalog again.
    The Catalog. That was it. Somehow. That was it. That little red-covered book opened his darkest soul, held it out for everyone to see. There, on those painfully white pages. The rages. The anger. The hatred. Buried all these years. Buried. The eagerness to kill and maim and destroy. If only an opportunity presented itself. To revenge himself for seventeen years of hell. To find his father. To find his mother. To kill them. To smash them.
    The pictures the Catalog evoked in his brain were so real he might have lived them. He could feel the hot rage singing in his veins. Hear the snap and crack of bone. Feel the wet squash of flesh as he took a giant hammer and swung and swung and swung-
    Sam leaned against the doorjamb. He could barely breathe. The Catalog danced across his vision. He was going to faint again. He slid down the wall and sat. He stared stupidly at the Catalog. It was open, face down. The dark red covers looked alive. Like the wings of some unholy bat.
    Where did the things come from? Who sent them? Was it possible the Hansons really ordered from such a Catalog? If so, what? It wasn't a catalog, in the strictest sense. There was no order form folded into the middle of it. From what Sam saw, there was really nothing to order. Unless it was those drawings that were for sale. He was so disgusted, so outraged that he hadn't really looked. The black-and-white images burned into his brain. He had not thought to see what they were for, what they were selling.
    "Insanity." He spoke to the empty hall. "They're selling insanity." He reached out a trembling hand. He touched the cover of the Catalog. It felt warm, dry. Like it always did. Like the ones he burned. Like the two he finally put together in a package to mail to Phil Marsdon.
    Maybe Phil could track down the printers, find the source of the madness. Find out if it was even legal to send such garbage through the public mails. At first sight of the Catalog his impulse was to call the police. But Phil was better suited to deal with such things. If necessary.
    Sam hesitated a long time before finally sealing those two Catalogs in that manila envelope. Phil was his oldest friend. Not that that meant a great deal of time, in the life of Sam Dennison. Since he'd left Evanston, shortly after his parents ran off, he'd wandered through so many cities and towns there had been no opportunity to develop any long-term friendships. Marsdon he'd first run into a few days after arriving in New York. Marsdon had been there through some interesting times. Some hard times.
    Sometimes Sam wondered if "friend" was the right word, exactly, for the lawyer. It would be hard to find two men of more divergent natures than Sam Dennison and Phil Marsdon. Marsdon was all rough edges. His tie was never straight. His shirts were never clean. He was overweight, foul-mouthed. His complexion was coarse. It came to Sam that Marsdon shared much, physically, with Dougie Greeley.
    He had a mousy little Puerto Rican woman for a secretary. Marsdon once told Sam she kept her job only because she fellated him, first thing every morning. "Begin the day with a blow job," Marsdon said. "End it with a beer." Something else Sam never told Joanne.
    That was part of the reason Sam hesitated before deciding to send those two Catalogs to Marsdon. Those two books with their crisp black-and-white etchings of Sam Dennison's secret soul. How could a man like Marsdon have the sensitivity to comprehend what Sam would be revealing to him? The degree to which he would be opening himself to the lawyer's scrutiny.
    Insanity. That was the only word, wasn't it? There could be nothing else that would possibly describe something like that Catalog. Something that could come through the mails unbidden. Containing within its dark covers exactly the right images to resurrect in Sam Dennison the shape and substance of those ancient rages. Evil. Insane.
    Sam stared at the Catalog. It still lay on the floor between his feet. It still looked innocent enough. No markings to distinguish it from any other mail-order brochure. Only Sam Dennison saw the evil in those spread covers. Only Sam Dennison saw the bat's wings.
    He shook his head. He was insane, but he still had responsibilities.
    What a terrible insanity, that would not let him escape from reality. A cruel insanity that made reality unreal. That left Sam with only a memory of how things were supposed to be. An awful insanity that made him force himself to his feet.
    
    Made him move toward the kitchen. He left the Catalog where it lay.
    The Greeley kitchen was not as large as the Dennisons'. What little space was available Doug had half filled with a butcher-block island. A hand-made clay pot held spatulas and wooden spoons at one end. A large cutting board covered a third of the working space. Above the island a burnished metal framework supported hooks that held pots and pans. They seemed too low, until Sam remembered who would be reaching up for them.
    The other half of the kitchen's floor space was nearly filled with a round, artificially antiqued blond wood table. A dark brown cloth, square, lay across the top of the table. A basket of silk flowers sat in the middle. There was a pile of loose mail to one side.
    The refrigerator was by the side door, a small, built-in desk between its stippled brown side and the corner windows. Everything in the kitchen was either dark brown or pale tan. A warm, friendly place, if Sam paused to think about it. But he was in no mood to enjoy the calm pleasures of life. Sam picked up the telephone from the desk. It was a cordless model, not unlike the Dennisons'. For a moment he could not find the "on" switch. When he finally did, he put his thumb over it while he searched out Doug's phone number.
    The front of the refrigerator was layered with scraps of paper, each attached with a plastic magnet shaped like a daisy or a piece of fruit. A page from a Stew Leonard's dairy store shopping list appeared as he pushed aside the PTA schedule. Under the smiling face of a farm boy milking a cow, a row of numbers descended the yellow paper. It was hard to read Babs's big, lopsided hand. Sam found Doug's number, flipped the phone on, dialled.
    The telephone bleeped a moment, storing the number before sending it on to the exchange. Sam hated those delayed-action diallers. He burned slowly as the phone made its impersonal little noises.
    "Manshot and Greeley, may I help you please?"
    Sam never had reason to call Doug Greeley at work. The receptionist's voice surprised him. She sounded very like Babs. Sam wondered for a moment if Doug had hired a Babs proxy for the office. "Er-yes, hello. This is Sam Dennison. I'm Mr. Greeley's neighbour."
    "I'm sorry, Mr. Dennison, but Mr. Greeley isn't expected in for about-"
    "Yes, I know. I'd like to leave a message."
    "Certainly." Her tone became ice. This was a woman who did not like being interrupted. Sam gave her his message. He made his own voice very calm and cold. He related Babs's condition. He used the word "seizure" several times. For emphasis.
    The receptionist's voice was not so steady when he finished. "Is-is that…"
    "That's all. Tell Mr. Greeley to call me right away. At my home." He gave her the number and hung up. "Stupid bitch," he said to the side of the refrigerator. The Stew Leonard boy smiled back at him. Sam saw a clear image of an officious little creature with plastic hair and a too-tidy desk.
    He realized he was squeezing the phone hard enough to turn his fingers white. He took a long, deep breath. He set the receiver back in its cradle. The little red recharge light lit beneath his hand. Sam stared at the light for a long time. It was too bright. The phone was too hard-edged.
    Everything around him was too sharply focused. A fly buzzed somewhere on the other side of the room. It might have been a buzz saw in his ear. His jaw muscles worked. He felt the veins throbbing on his forehead.
    He stepped back, stumbling against the butcher-block island. The edges were like razors. The corner took a small bite from the palm of his hand. He yelled. He kicked the thing. He tried to overturn it, but it was bolted to the floor.
    He swung a fist at the refrigerator. The brown enamelled surface thronged like an old bell. He heard bones crack. He screamed. He swore and swung his arms in mad pinwheels. His undamaged hand caught the back of one of the kitchen chairs. He snatched it up and threw it across the room. It smashed into the window above the sink. The glass cascaded in a hundred directions. The chair hung there for a long, slow moment, then crashed back into the sink.
    Sam went on screaming and swinging and hurling things until everything that would break in Babs Greeley's sun-bright kitchen lay in bright, shattered fragments on the floor.
    
3
    
    Dougie was running again. Running down Wolf Pit Road, toward the Dennison house. He was driven, confused. He was afraid to go there. He was more afraid not to. He'd wished harm on his mother. And his mother had come to harm. He did not know the nature of the harm. He only knew he'd wished it.
    As he knew he needed to get to her. Needed to find her, to undo the harm. To make it better. The way she'd made it better for him a hundred thousand times. So that she would be all right again. So that she would protect him from Sam Dennison.
    Dougie's breath came in painful gasps. Sam's punch would leave an ugly blue-black bruise under the boy's sternum. For now it left excruciating pain.
    Dougie paused at the gate to Wembledge Manor. The dark blue mailbox said NO CATAL under the gold letters of the Dennison name, no catal? "No Catalogs' of course. The fucker musfve been painting it when Mom interrupted him. No Catalogs.
    Dougie reasoned it out. The Dennisons didn't want any more of those red-covered books appearing in their mailbox. Dougie knew they could not put out a specific ban. The mailman was not in the habit of editing the mail before he slipped it into the box. So "No Catalogs." Trying to stop them all.
    Dougie looked for his mother as he walked up the drive to the house. Sam said she was on the porch. He couldn't see her. Dougie mounted the steps and rang the bell. Through the screen door he heard the buzzer sound deep inside the house. The sound matched the buzz of flies around him. He thought the air was unnaturally hot. His mind was filled with pain and blood and torture. And resolution. He would avenge himself on Sam Dennison. He would see Sam Dennison flayed alive. A child abuser!
    They'll take him away. Joanne will see him for what he really ist and they'll take him away. Destroyed. And she'll have no one to turn to for comfort. No one but me. Because I'll be the one who revealed the monster. Maybe freed her from the monster.
    Does he ever beat her? He saw her bound. Sam standing over her with a huge whip. Lashing her naked flesh. She's naked, yes. Her wrists bound to her ankles. Right to right, left to left. The picture was very clear in Dougie's mind. Like one of the illustrations in the Catalog. One Dougie especially liked. You can see the sense in that configuration. It kept the victim absolutely helpless, open to all avenues of approach.
    Dougie came slowly back to the Dennison front porch. No one came to answer the doorbell. He pulled himself away from the hot, dark images in his brain. He tried the latch. The door was unlocked. He stepped into the hall. It was cooler. Still, not as cool as he would have wished.
    "Hello? Hello, Mom? Mrs. Dennison?5' Dougie did not know of Joanne's breakdown. Babs had not told him. She saw no reason to upset the child. "Mrs. Dennison?"
    Nothing. He moved into the house. The first floor was deserted. He saw no reason to check the basement. He wandered up the backstairs. One step creaked loudly under his weight. His fat hands left wide, wet stains on the banister's pale blond wood.
    He found the upstairs silent. He moved through the house. Quiet. Cautious. Like a spy in an adventure story. His stomach felt light, bubbly. His breathing was uneven. At any moment he expected someone to appear out of a doorway, around a corner.
    No one came. At the front hall window he looked back along Wolf Pit Road. Back to his own house. There was no sign of Sam Dennison coming up the road.
    Dougie turned to the master bedroom door. It was slightly ajar. Inside, the curtains were drawn. The room was warm darkness. Dougie inched the door open with his toe. The light from the hall tracked slowly with the opening door. A widening trapezoid of light spread across the shag carpet, across the Oriental night table. When it reached the bed, Dougie froze.
    He saw Joanne Dennison lying on the bed. A single sheet was over her. Her dark hair was spread on the pillow. He thought her face looked pale. A momentary fear stabbed through his heart.
    She's dead!
    Dougie squinted. She was breathing, slowly. There was something he took to be a knot of pain between her eyebrows.
    He moved into the room. Gliding silently over the thick shag. His whole body clenched. Almost levitating. He reached the side of the bed and looked down. Joanne's face was broad and smooth. Large eyes, closed now. A small, full-lipped mouth. A slightly pointed chin. There was a sheen of perspiration that made her look like polished stone in the dim light.
    Dougie studied her. Her breathing was so slow. So steady. He looked around. A bottle of pills stood on her night table. He picked it up. Sedatives. He recognized the name. He'd collected some fairly esoteric knowledge in his years of reading comic books. That particular mixture he remembered figured significantly in a Batman story two years ago.
    She's zonked pretty good if she took these.
    What's wrong with her? Why does she need a tranquilizer? Does the fucker keep her drugged sometimes? Drugged so she can't protest when he-
    Dougie replaced the little plastic bottle on the nightstand. He reached out his hand to touch her hair. He stroked it. It was smooth as corn silk under his hot hand. Stray strands stuck to the sweat on his palm. Joanne did not move. Dougie came to an important decision. He took a careful grip on the top of the thin umber bed sheet and drew it back, down the whole length of Joanne Dennison's body.
    His mother was forgotten. Sam was forgotten. Joanne Dennison filled the room, the world, the universe. Dougie stood perfectly still for a long time, just looking at her. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt, off-white against the dark sheets. It was long enough to reach almost to her ankles. Now it was bunched around her knees. Across the chest in faded letters it said born to sleep.
    Dougie recognized it. He'd seen it in one of her drawers the day he searched the house. The day he found the Catalog. Joanne's body was indecipherable lumps under the shapeless cloth.
    
    Dougie's throat was dry. He breathed through his mouth in short gulps. He put out a hand that trembled to a white blur in the pool of light from the doorway. He reached out to the vague mound of her left breast. He cupped her breast. He squeezed it. He felt the flesh yield under his fingers. Kneading up like soft dough. Warm. Alive. Softer than he'd imagined it would be. He felt her nipple against the hollow of his palm. It was not as big as he'd remembered.
    He reached a second decision, more important than the first. He released Joanne's breast. He reached for the hem of the shirt. He pulled it upward. His dark eyes drank in the increasing expanse of honey-toned skin. Her knees appeared. Then her thighs.
    He kept pulling. Slowly. So far the shirt was coming up easily. Joanne's calves were slender and well muscled. Her thighs looked smooth as marble. Like statues Dougie had seen in museums. He kept pulling. Up. Up. Higher.
    There it is! A dark triangle of hair. Not a perfect triangle, without the dubious benefit of a retoucher's airbrush. Curled. A little wild. Not at all what he'd expected. Not at all what he'd fantasized.
    He kept pulling on the shirt's hem. It caught under her buttocks. He needed to lift her a little. She didn't weigh much. His free hand went under her back easily. The skin was tight between the subtle parentheses of her pelvic bones. The colour of pale bronze. There was a deep, inverted V where her ribs rose to her sternum. It pointed, like an arrow, between the small mounds of her breasts.
    He needed both hands now to roil back the cloth along her sides. The bottom halves of her breasts were exposed. He forced himself to slow his pace. His heartbeat boomed in his ears. His forehead ran wet with sweat. His knuckles ached, so tightly clenched were his fat hands.
    Make this time last forever. It was a prayer, a beseeching.
    A nipple appeared. Dougie froze. Everything focused into that single point. Small and dark. Like a little tower surrounded by a dark island. He kept curling back the cloth until both her breasts were fully uncovered. He uncurled his fingers from the cloth.
    The shirt was a heavy collar around Joanne's shoulders, curving sharply down to her armpits. Her breasts barely curved above the smooth plane of her ribs. To the side they made shadows over her arms.
    Dougie touched her left nipple with the index finger of his right hand. He stroked it. He pinched it, gently. Joanne was far away in dreamland. She did not respond.
    The nipple did. It hardened and grew larger. Dougie was amazed. The women in his magazines had nipples of all shapes and sizes. Somehow he'd never registered that an individual nipple could change like that. Like a little cock. You touch it, you stroke it, and it gets bigger!
    The thought brought awareness back to his penis, straining against his shorts. And why should it strain? The fucker beat me up. Only fair that his wife should make it up to me!
    He pulled down his shorts. He was not wearing any underpants. He knew his mother hated it when he didn't. It made him feel more grown-up somehow.
    Dougie's heart pounded. His vision blurred. He kicked his shorts from around his left ankle. He climbed on top of Joanne Dennison. He felt a swift dagger of pain from the darkening bruise under his ribs. He ignored it. The mattress groaned. Joanne did not stir. Dougie kissed her full on the mouth. There was no response.
    He rested his body along her length, taking his weight on his elbows. He kneaded her breasts. He took her right nipple between his teeth. He bit. Harder and harder, until Joanne moaned a little. But she was still asleep.
    He shifted his legs from side to side, slipping down between hers, spreading her thighs. They were rougher than he thought. There was a fine stubble covering Joanne's legs. Dougie frowned. He did not like that. It marred his image of her. Joanne Dennison should not have to shave her legs. That made her less perfect, somehow.
    He lifted his weight on knees and elbows. He pushed his right hand between their bellies, searching. His stomach was fat and soft. It hung out in a great, slow curve. Joanne's solar plexus was firm and smooth. The contrast disturbed Dougie. He forced it from his mind, forced himself not to think of his body, white and slug like. Soft and drooping on top of her firm, golden skin.
    
    He found the beginnings of the triangle of hair with the tips of his fingers. He probed further. He found his penis. He began guiding it up. Up toward Joanne's body. Toward the joining of her legs.
    His great round gut was too fat. He couldn't move properly, lying on top of her like that. He raised his weight on straightened arms and shifted to a half-kneeling position. Joanne's legs draped around his waist, across his heavy thighs. His heart was a jackhammer. He wasn't certain where his cock was supposed to go. He wasn't thinking of such details just then. It would go somewhere.
    His breath was short and hot. His face burned. A spasm shot through him. He convulsed. No! NO! Not yet! NOT YET! His semen spurted. A hot sticky trail along Joanne's thigh. Dougie slumped forward. His full mass fell on her. He buried his face in her hair. Even unconscious, drugged, Joanne shifted. Trying to get out from under that pinning weight. She grunted, a funny little sound.
    The first time! The first time! And you blew it! You blew it! He rolled away from Joanne's body. She still looked so dark, so lovely in the oblong pool of light from the doorway.
    A shadow moved across Joanne's bare legs.
    Dougie jumped as though jabbed with a cattle prod. He rolled off the bed. He landed with a hard thud on the shag. Pain shot through his right knee.
    There was someone in the doorway. Someone small and soft. 44M-Mom…?"
    Babs took three steps into the room. She was trembling. Even with the light behind her like that, Dougie could see her face was twisted in rage. It was not an expression he remembered ever seeing on her face. Not an expression he liked. Not in the least. Especially not directed at him. After all, he was not to blame here.
    "Mom- It was Sam Dehnison. He hit me, Mom. He-"
    She wasn't listening. She was looking past Dougie. She was looking at Joanne's bare body, there on the brown sheets. Looking at the sticky smear on her inner thigh.
    Babs took another step forward. She grabbed Dougie by the back of the neck. It wasn't easy. His neck was fat, her hand was small. Her short little fingers dug into the soft flesh.
    
    "OW! Mom! You're HURTING!'" She jerked him to his feet. He would never have guessed she had such strength. His knee shot flame up his leg as his weight came onto it.
    Babs swung up hard with her free hand. Her fist bounced off the side of his head. She swung again. Again. Again. Dougie screamed and danced. His fat legs pumped. It was the nightmare of Sam Dennison all over again. Babs's nails drew blood on the back of his neck. He jerked away, leaving red-flecked flesh under her long nails. He staggered. Babs advanced on him again.
    Panic seized him. Dougie swung at her. His arms windmilled. His fists were blurs. It was the same way he'd struck at Sam. The only way Dougie knew to fight. One of his wild swings caught Babs under the chin. Her teeth clacked together loud in the hot, dim room. She lurched back. Her feet tangled in Dougie's shorts, still lumped at the side of the bed where he'd dropped them. Babs stumbled. She tottered back. She leaned out over the shag rug at an impossible angle.
    Her dance with gravity ended. She fell. Dougie heard a dull, wet crack as her head hit the brick fascia of the fireplace in the corner. Babs seemed to hang there a moment, half crouched against the brick. Then she toppled forward. Ever so slowly. Her left shoulder hit the floor. She rolled forward. She landed face down in the grate. Across the white-painted brick a dark red stain pointed toward her head like an accusing finger.
    
    
Chapter Six 
1
    
    Paul Sanderson turned his battered old Studebaker onto the -Greeley driveway. He'd promised Babs he would stop by to check on her. He'd seen she was so clearly distressed by the nasty business with Joanne Dennison. But he'd set no time for the visit. It was simple coincidence that brought the doctor to the Greeley house that day, at that hour.
    His stiff old joints protested as he climbed from behind the wheel. He was feeling every day of his age. He knew what it was. The nasty business with Joanne Dennison had affected him in a way he would not have expected.
    Such a nice young girl. So sad to see her in such a state.
    Still, the feelings surprised him. He wouldn't have thought anything like that could still affect him like that. Not after so many years.
    He was seventy-eight, and he'd practiced medicine in Fairharbour almost fifty years. His practice was not so active as it had once been. He wanted no new patients. He no longer trusted the clarity of his eyes, the steadiness of his hands. His most loyal patients, those too old to trust another, younger doctor, he still tended. In cases requiring more than his present level of skill, he fell back on his junior partner.
    Once, that was his son, Malcolm. A familiar pang made Sanderson blink. An exploding mortar shell in a Vietnamese jungle hellhole ended their partnership and that promising career.
    Two weeks earlier Paul Sanderson had made his first pilgrimage to the Vietnamese Memorial in Washington, D.C. He spent the better part of a day seeking out his son's name in all the thousands etched into that eloquent black gash. He was moved close to tears, standing with the silent throng of widows and brothers and sisters. Sons and daughters and pals. All with a cherished name somewhere on that wall. A name, a memory.
    But Paul Sanderson did not weep. He had not shed a single tear in all the years since Malcolm's death. To his mind such an outward display of grief would be unseemly. He felt it would diminish the deceased.
    A few drops of salty water to commemorate a life? Never. Never.
    Sanderson's new partner-like the rest of Fairharbour he thought of the younger man as "new," even though he'd been living in the town, working with Sanderson, over a decade-was Josh Witlaw. He was bright, eager, and most important, highly skilled and trustworthy.
    He was forty-two. Sanderson met him when Witlaw brought Malcolm's body home. Josh had been a close friend of Sanderson's only offspring. He'd sought and obtained special permission from the Army Surgical Corps to escort the casket stateside. In his few days in Fairharbour Josh Witlaw found something of that same magic that first enchanted Sam Dennison. When his hitch ended he asked to be mustered out in Fairharbour. Sanderson was delighted to take him as a partner.
    Sanderson knew Witlaw was almost used to the older patients sometimes calling him "Malcolm." From the first he'd not bothered to correct them. Sanderson once asked him why. Witlaw shrugged, dismissing it. What did it matter, so long as his presence helped keep alive a little bit of Malcolm Sanderson in the hearts and minds of these good people? The older Sanderson was deeply moved by Witlaw's gesture. By the love it represented.
    Witlaw made himself very much at home in Fairharbour. He bought a ramshackle old five room house backing onto Tremens Creek. He spent many hard hours renovating the place. He mingled well with the people of the community. He even found, in Timothy Hanson, a fellow survivor of the Vietnam horror. Witlaw gained the distinction of being the only person in Fairharbour regularly invited out to the Hanson's home.
    Sometimes it seemed that the real reason for his regular visits was Polly Hanson. Some of Sanderson's patients frequently reported back to him that his partner and Hanson's wife were seen having lunch together when Hanson was out of town.
    Sanderson had only snorted. He pointed out that the very fact they were seen indicated they were seeking to hide nothing. Some of his older patients wanted to build the most astonishing inverse logic out of that. He wouldn't let them. Babs Greeley, too, which was why Sanderson made this house call himself. He knew Babs did not care much for Josh Witlaw, though he never really understood why.
    Sanderson creaked up the short steps to the Greeley porch, his ancient black bag clutched in a gnarly old hand. He rang the doorbell, turned to look back over the front of the Greeley property. The air against his dry, tanned flesh was summer-warm, but experience taught him the signs of fall. Nothing an outsider would ever notice, he believed. A change in the air. A change in the direction and keenness of the prevailing winds. The nights got cooler sooner. The long shadows touched the rosebushes under his office window a little earlier each evening.
    No one answered the doorbell. The inner door was open. Sanderson rapped on the edge of the screen. He called. Again, no answer. When he tried it the latch turned easily in his hand. He stepped into the front hall.
    A sense of pleasant comfort came over him. He'd always liked the Greeley house. He remembered when it was the Champerton house, and before that the Donovan house. The first floor ceilings were high, white plaster with intricate trim at the edges. The floors were smooth and dark. All immaculately tended. Babs had just enough of a decorator's eye to keep the mingling of traditional and modern carefully in balance. The big old church pew to the right of the door stood under a large, framed poster from the Museum of Modern Art. Doors to the dining room opened on either side of the pew. Opposite them the doors to the living room and Doug's den. Sanderson nodded appreciatively. A comfortable house, as well befitted very comfortable people.
    He called again, a little louder. Still no answer. He advanced into the hall. He thumped his feet as loudly as his arthritic ankles would allow. He did not wish to startle anyone. He paused just past the pew. There was something lying in the pool of light from Doug's open den door. Just in front of the second door to the dining room. He squinted at it, dark against the dark wood. Some kind of booklet.
    He stooped carefully and picked it up. The covers were the deepest red he had ever seen. So dark he was not certain he actually saw a color there until he angled it to the light. They were rough textured, reminding him of dry skin. Warm, Warmer, he thought, than just lying in the sunlight from Doug's den windows should account for. It was almost the warmth of a living thing. That made the texture seem all the more like human flesh. He turned the odd thing in his hand, seeking a logo. There was none. He flipped open the front cover.
    And fell into nightmare.
    War. War in all its horrible detail. Death. Pain. Mutilation. The ritual sacrifice of young men upon the altar of old men's ideology.
    What in God's name is this thing selling? What product needs such awful, explicit illustrations of death on a gigantic scale?
    He set his black bag on the seat of the pew. He began turning the Catalog's pages slowly. All the madness of unfettered conflict marched across the pages. He sensed an order to it. Strange. Almost historical. Tribes of cavemen slaughtering each other with bone axes. Armoured swordsmen mounted on huge draft horses. Archers. Musketeers. The pointless carnage of the First World War spread across half a dozen pages.
    Sanderson remembered the Great War. He was eight years old when his father marched off with the other young men of America. Marched off into the maw of that dirty, inhuman conflict. He never saw his father again, except in dreams. Dreams always full of blood and filth, where he walked with his father through the battlefields of France.
    Now this strange little booklet opened the horror of those dreams. Spread them across all the ages of man. Precisely delineated them in ink so black it looked like scratches through the paper. Cuts that opened into shadowed infinity.
    Sanderson was seized by an unshakable compulsion. He could not stop turning the pages. Even though he knew what must be coming. Even though the march of years must carry him inexorably toward the campaign in Southeast Asia. Toward the whistling scrap of metal that turned his son's face into a puddle of broken bone and blood.
    He turned the pages. He turned the pages.
    There it was. Jungle. Hot. Sticky. If only it would rain. If only Charlie would let up for just five minutes. If only we could see Charlie. But we can't. Only the trees and the leaves and the sudden flash of rifle fire. Then someone will scream. That terrible, strangled scream. Like no other scream. And someone will yell "Medic!"
    
    Sanderson had read and reread his son's letters until sometimes he felt the slender barrier between imagination and memory begin to blur. Then he would be right there, in the stink and the heat and the mud. With the bullets whistling. The bugs buzzing. And the whole damn world an insanity that went on and on and on as you ran and tripped and slogged through the mud. Trying to reach a man with half his arm shot off. Seeing hot red blood squirting. Mingling with the mud. Knowing there was nothing you could do for him out here in the filth and the slime. Knowing the bacteria were already eating into his ruined flesh. Knowing he would have to be carried miles through hostile jungle. Miles to a place where the choppers could land and he could be lifted away. Away to a hospital that was nothing more than aflat place in the jungle. With the same mud and slime and bugs and bullets.
    And now the jungle goes deathly quiet. The leaves stop rustling. The men stop shouting. The crack and whistle of gunfire halts. A banshee wail rises to fill the treetops. Someone shouts "Incoming!" Men scatter. Flame erupts in the jungle. The air is full of shrapnel. It tears like knives. And there* s one last impossible image of a piece of scrap metal the size of a golf ball coming straight at your face and
    Paul Sanderson leaned against the same doorjamb that lately supported Sam Dennison. He wept. Wept uncontrollably. The tears streamed down his face. Some dropped from his craggy cheeks. They spattered against the cold white pages of the Catalog. Running in little streams that did not soak into the paper. Running across the precise, detailed rendering of Malcolm Sanderson. Just enough of his face still there to be recognizable. The rest an exploding arc of pink froth. Pink. The color vivid in his father's eyes, even though the drawing was black and white.
    How could they know? How can they portray so perfectly, so cruelly all the substance of my nightmares?
    And who in hell are "they"? What company sells its goods through the pages of this hideous little book?
    Sanderson closed the covers. He looked at the thing. A sudden calm came to him. The quick, cold concentration of the analytical mind.
    
    Now that's odd, isn't it? There's nothing whatsoever to indicate this is a catalog. That its intent is to sell merchandise. Yet there was no other thought in my mind from the moment I realized what it was, lying on the floor. But there's no recognizable merchandise in any of the pictures. I'd expect a thing like this to be selling reproductions of weapons, but no.
    And even if they are, what is my son's death doing in here? The last moment of his life, in such exact detail? That's an image that would have meaning only to me.
    What's it doing in this abominable Catalog?
    
2
    
    "Dr. Sanderson?"
    The voice came from somewhere to his right, behind him in the dining room. Sanderson struggled away from the images of death in his mind. He turned his head. It was Sam Dennison.
    Sam stood in the kitchen door, diagonally across from Sanderson, on the other side of the dining room. No, Sanderson realized, he wasn't standing. He was slumped. He leaned his long body against the polished wood frame. He cradled his right hand gently in his left. There were vertical scratch marks down his left cheek. Red. Angry. His bare flesh shone with sweat. He looked worn out. More than that. With the circle of bandage around his head he looked like a casualty. A casualty of war.
    Sanderson straightened. "Sam-" The evocative image of Sam Dennison's battered form brought all the horrid memories back to Paul Sanderson. He blinked. He closed his eyes for a dozen heartbeats. He could not clear his mind. The grisly pictures continued to float before his inner vision. He opened his eyes. Sam was still there.
    Without thinking, Sanderson stuffed the Catalog into one of the deep pockets of his loose black jacket. He needed it out of his sight. He needed to clear his thoughts of the contents. Somehow, he also needed to keep it near.
    "Sam-" He said the name again, firmly. Trying to reinforce the reality of the situation. "What-what are you doing here?"
    "I came to get Doug's office number. Babs has had some kind of seizure over at my place."
    Sanderson locked on the word "seizure." It was something demanding his professional mind to take command of the situation. His jumbled thoughts could be stuffed away in a back corner until this more pressing need was attended to. "When? What kind of seizure? And what have you done to your hand?"
    He crossed the dining room as he spoke, striding around the big black-lacquered table. He reached out. He took hold of Sam's wrist. Sam let out a short, sharp bark of pain and pulled his hand back.
    Sanderson reached for Sam's wrist again. His eyes wandered past the younger man's shoulder. Beyond the rosewood coziness of the dining room, the kitchen door framed a bomb site. Chairs were overturned. Two were smashed. The table was tipped over. One of its folding wings hung from a single hinge. Shards of glass and pottery were everywhere. Pieces of torn paper. The curtains over the sink were torn from their rail. There was a chair in the sink beneath the broken window.
    Sanderson brought his eyes back to meet Sam's. Sam tried to avoid the steady gaze. He shuffled uncomfortably.
    Like a child caught in a wrongdoing, Sanderson thought. Very like a child.
    "Sam, what the devil happened here?"
    "I-" Sam found his tongue too fat to work properly. His lips were loose, rubbery. He felt his cheeks burning. "I-I don't know. It was-like this when I got here. Maybe Dougie…?" He knew the moment he voiced it that it was a pointless lie. A stupid lie. He hated himself the instant the words fell from his mouth. He could not stop them.
    "And your hand?" Sam thought Sanderson sounded almost willing to let the lie slide past. It was as if the old doctor was trying to avoid details that would require him to too closely assess the situation. "How did you hurt your hand?"
    "Tripped-over a chair…?" Sam felt a deep and consuming shame burning up from within. A familiar shame.
    
    How many times had he lied before, as a boy, seeking to avoid punishment? It seemed millions. His father never even tried to understand him. He demanded one hundred percent perfection from the boy in all he did, all the time.
    He lashed Sam a thousand times with his broad leather belt. The belt he kept hanging on a hook on the back of Sam's bedroom door. The belt he never wore, but used only to punish Sam. Sam always tried to get away from the belt. Tried anything he could, any way he could. For he was not such a bad boy, really, he knew. Most of his childhood lies he created to escape from punishment for something he had not even done.
    Punishment so often more than merely physical. There were also the terrible hours, the endless hours locked in the crawl space below the house. Locked in with the dirt and the bugs and the stench of stagnant water. And the terrible thing his parents told him lived down there.
    In Sam's mind the memories were suddenly as fresh as yesterday. He was eight years old. He had a friend named Danny DeFrancis. A dark-haired, dark-eyed boy. Smaller than Sam. Feistier. An adventurer. Always encouraging Sam to try a little harder, push a little farther. Live life a little more fully.
    One day they were riding their bikes along Chicago Avenue, one of the busiest streets in Evanston. As they approached the intersection with Main Street, Sam swerved around a parked car. Behind him, Danny swerved even wider. Straight into oncoming traffic. He never saw the truck that hit him. He was dead before Sam even realized what happened.
    In the weeks that followed, Danny became another weapon in Sam's parents' arsenal of pain. It was not long before Sam's father began suggesting that the death of Danny DeFrancis was entirely Sam's fault. That "dead Danny" would soon come to exact a terrible vengeance upon his former friend. Maybe the very next time Sam was locked in the crawl space.
    The next time Sam was banished to that basement darkness he did not recover for a week. He screamed as his father dragged him down the stairs. He screamed as the low, rough wood door was unlatched. As it was opened. He screamed as his father pushed him face first into the stagnant swill. He pounded on the locked door. He screamed until he could not scream anymore. For the rest of the week he awoke each night, screaming, clutching the air with hands no longer his own. At school he could not hold his pen steady enough to write.
    Thirty years later he trembled again as he stood before Paul Sanderson. It was the eight-year-old Sam Dennison who looked into the physician's watery grey eyes. Who tried to lie his way to safety. Only making matters worse with the lie.
    Sometimes it seemed as if Sam Dennison never got past being eight years old. As if, when Danny DeFrancis died, Sam Dennison died, too. Somebody else took over his body. Ran it, worked it. Like a puppet. Whenever the pressures of life got too great, whenever Sam found himself crawling inside his own head, to hide, it was always as if he were eight years old again. Even Joanne couldn't entirely free him of that.
    Sanderson was holding Sam's wrist. The way his father used to hold his wrist. Pain shot through his arm the way it did then. Sam yanked his hand away. The old man's grasp was not so sure as Sam's father's. He was not restraining an eight-year-old boy while he rained down stroke after endless stroke of a wide leather belt.
    "I tripped over a chair," Sam repeated. There was petulance in his voice. A challenge to Sanderson to dispute his claim. Sam was growing stronger in his lie. "I tripped and hit the wall. I hit the wall with my hand."
    "Punched it, more like," Sanderson said. His professional eye could recognize the difference between any number of self-inflicted injuries. He could tell from the way Sam's knuckles were raw and swollen they'd taken the full brunt of the impact. It was unlikely that Sam, tripping on an overturned chair, would ball his outstretched hand into a fist. The natural reaction would be to spread the fingers wide.
    "Did you wreck your cheek at the same time? All right," Sanderson said quietly, "let me do something with it, and with your hand. Then we'll go see to Babs. Is she still at your house?"
    Sam was still fighting the sensations of being eight years old again. He couldn't quite construct the proper sequence of words to answer Sanderson's question. He allowed himself to be led into the better light of the kitchen. Sanderson bathed Sam's damaged hand and bandaged the abrasion. From his black bag he took some pale yellow salve and dabbed it carefully on the vertical scars on Sam's cheek. It was cool against Sam's hot flesh. It stung a little.
    "You'll have to come back to my office to get those fingers set," Sanderson said. "I don't have the proper things here. I'll give you something for the pain, though." He rummaged again in the bag. He produced a small red plastic bottle. He shook out two white capsules and handed them to Sam with a glass of water. Sam swallowed them obediently. Almost at once a numbness filtered through Sam's body. He felt the pain in his knuckles withdraw behind an invisible line. He flexed his fingers gently. The simple motion no longer sent daggers up his arm.
    A minute later they stood once again at the Greeleys' front door. "Where's the boy?" Sanderson asked. "I don't like having to leave the house unlocked." Ordinarily, like most people in Fairharbour, he would have found no problem with the open house. But he knew this was not an ordinary situation. Not ordinary at all.
    Sam shook his head. "Don't know. Haven't seen him since I came over to tell him about his mother's seizure."
    "Then he was here when you arrived? You spoke to him?"
    Sam blinked stupidly. He couldn't get his thoughts to wrap around the shape of his lie. He couldn't keep the details in their proper order. He'd tried foolishly to shift the blame for the shattered kitchen to Dougie. But if Dougie was home when Sam came over-
    "He-ran past me as I came up the drive. He-headed up the hill. Toward Grainge." His gut twisted tighter. Stupid. Stupid, stupid lie. But done. No going back.
    "Then you didn't have the opportunity to tell him about his mother?"
    "Tell him…? No. No, I guess I didn't."
    Behind his thick glasses Sanderson's pale grey eyes were huge, impossible to read. But Sam could guess what the old doctor's expression would say. What was he lying for? This old man was patient, caring. He would understand, surely, about the Catalog-
    The Catalog. Sam's blood turned to ice water. He'd left it on the floor in the front hall. He turned toward the house. "I have to-"
    "No." Sanderson's thick-knuckled hand closed around Sam's wrist like a manacle. There was no resisting this time. "Get in the car, Sam. I'm taking you home."
    "But-"
    "Get in the car, Sam, Now."
    Reluctantly Sam obeyed. Sanderson struggled in behind the wheel and revved the old engine. The Studebaker lurched as he let out the hand brake. It felt like a sudden, swift blow at the base of Sam's back. His head jerked on his long neck.
    Then the car glided down the drive and through the gates. As it turned toward his home, Sam looked back over his shoulder toward the Greeleys'. The beige and grey house looked so peaceful, so normal in the morning light.
    Still only morning! Hardly two hours since Doug Greeley had guided his powder-blue Mercedes out that same gate. Hard to believe so much madness could be crammed into a bright August morning. Madness was the only solution, Sam decided. He was losing his mind. Finally. After all these years.
    That was the only logical explanation. It couldn't really all be because of that damned Catalog.
    
3
    
    Dougie Greeley's brain burned with white fire. Around him the details of the Dennison bedroom leapt into sharp relief. Every atom vibrated on its own special frequency, whispering to Dougie of its unique place in the universe.
    The red smear crackled on the white brick of the fireplace. It still pointed its accusing finger to his mother's head. Babs still lay face down in the hearth. Her feet were still tangled in Dougie's discarded shorts. She did not seem to be breathing.
    Dougie turned slowly, studying the room. Joanne Dennison still lay on the bed. Her nearly naked body was sculpted honey on the umber sheets. That did not seem important now, somehow.
    Dougie's mind was very, very clear. There was no room in it now for the foolishness of sex. Not with Joanne Dennison. Not with anyone else. He stooped and disentangled his shorts from his mother's feet. Babs did not stir. He dusted off the shorts. He pulled them on, tucking his mutant maniac T-shirt into the waistband. Wincing as he put weight on his injured knee. It shrieked at him, but it was not broken. He was sure of that, at least.
    He crossed to Joanne's bedside table. He pulled open the single drawer. As he remembered, there was a box of Kleenex within. He pulled out a handful and wiped the sticky smear of his semen from Joanne's thigh. Then he walked to the half bathroom and flushed the tissues down the commode.
    He paused in the little bathroom's door and surveyed the scene. Nothing I can do for or about Mom, he decided. Better get Joanne covered up again, though. He returned to her side. He began pulling the T-shirt back down toward her knees. It was much too big for her. An acre or so of cloth, it seemed. Plus Joanne was a dead weight.
    He arranged the shirt in bunches around her knees, just at the tops of her calves. He tugged some small wrinkles out of the shirt and smoothed it across her body. His hands passed several times over the small mounds of her breasts. Nothing stirred in Dougie Greeley. He pulled the sheet up to her chin. He stepped back.
    As nearly as he could remember, Joanne looked as he found her. Babs was another matter. He sat on the corner of the bed closest to his mother. He spent a full minute pondering what to do with her. In a different context his father would have been surprised and delighted to see his son attacking a problem with such slow and determined logic. Dougie was aware himself of the crystal clarity in his mind. It was as alien there as Babs's broken-doll figure was in the Dennison bedroom.
    
    I can move her easily enough. When I held her up on the porch-when was that? In another lifetime. She was sure lighter than Id've thought. She says she's small-boned." That must explain why someone so plump can be so light.
    
    The thought brought an instant flash-memory of Babs on the porch, her hands moving slowly across her opulent flesh. Dougie screwed his eyes tight. He shook his head. His loose cheeks flapped. A sound like a horse's laugh forced itself out of his lips.
    He turned back to the problem. I can move her-but do I want to? The smallest part of a plan was growing in his mind. He wanted a way to avenge himself on Sam Dennison. Although Joanne no longer seemed to occupy his mind as the reward for destroying Sam, that destruction remained vital.
    
    As nearly as I can tell there's nothing here that points to me. Sam Dennison didn't see me come here, so far as I know. There's nothing to connect me with the murder.
    
    The word came easily to his mind. He looked at the still, small form of his mother. He felt completely disconnected. This was not the woman who bathed him, who fed him, who shielded him from his father's wrath. This was an object to be used to his best advantage. In this case, to destroy Sam Dennison.
    
    Anyway, if he did see me, it's his word against mine. Only he and I know he came to the house to tell me about Mom's attack. She could have come here-he could have murdered her-and then he could have come looking for me.
    Unless he already called Dad? How would that mess things up? If I came here after he attacked me, he could've called Dad as a cover. And I'm all-over bruises, so that backs up my side of the story.
    
    Gravel crunched at the end of the drive. Dougie rose. He stepped quickly to the window, parted the curtains the width of a finger. He recognized the old Studebaker immediately. Most of Fairharbour thought of that car as a historic monument. Dougie thought it an eyesore.
    What's that old fart doing here? He looked back toward the bed. Joanne was breathing softly, evenly. Coming to check on her, probably. That's his scrunched-up little scrawl on the prescription label on the pills she took.
    The car stopped below the bedroom window. Dougie could not see the driver's side door. The passenger door opened almost at once. Sam Dennison climbed out.
    Dougie experienced a moment of blind panic. It sliced through his newfound logic like a long blade through canvas. He started to run for the door. The pain in his knee stopped him.
    Logic. Logic! Your feet will thump on the floor. They'll hear you downstairs.
    He knew he must be logical. Always logical. Especially now. He crossed the room slowly, placing his feet flat against the shag. He tested each step before allowing his full weight to come to rest on any potentially squeaky board. He moved as quickly as he could to the hall, to the top of the stairs. He listened. He heard Sam Dennison call for Babs. His voice was weak, but there was great urgency in it.
    From the sound, Sam and Sanderson were in the front hall. Dougie crossed the length of the house to the back stairs. He realized he'd probably left fingerprints on the rail. He pulled out the hem of his T-shirt and ran it along the blond wood as he descended.
    A step creaked beneath him. A rifle shot in his ears. He froze. He anticipated the thump of feet as Sanderson and Sam Dennison raced through to the back of the house. Instead he heard only their muffled footfalls on the thick carpet of the front stairs. Dougie swallowed bile and continued down the steps.
    The backstairs of the Dennison house opened into a mud room off the kitchen. Once it had been to receive visitors in inclement weather. Now it held the clothes washer and dryer. To one side was the door to the basement. It stood partly open. The air rising from it was cool and musty.
    Dougie was about to head for the kitchen-porch door when he stopped dead in his tracks. On the broad top step of the basement stairs lay a torn manila envelope.
    And two copies of the Catalog.
    
4
    
    Sam had no clear notion of what sent him bounding up the front stairs. There was only the consuming conviction that Joanne was in trouble… in danger… that he must get to her. Babs Greeley had been forgotten. Paul Sanderson was only a vagueness at the edge of Sam's conscious mind. Only Joanne filled his thoughts.
    Sanderson huffed up the stairs after Sam. He was nearly as tall as the younger man, but he could not manage Sam's long stride, and was quickly left behind.
    What the devil is going on, he wondered again. I've had almost nothing to do with the Dennisons, to be sure, but they don't strike me as the kind of people to find themselves at the centre of such madness.
    Mrs. Dennison's collapse. Sam's physical and mental distress. The smashed Greeley kitchen. And Bougie's gone. What does it all mean? What could it mean?
    It was pointless to even try to figure it all out. Sanderson held far too little information to conjure with. Anything he put together out of such a patchwork would be nothing but the wildest guesses. And he did not like to guess about things.
    He paused for breath on the landing, where the front stairs turned 180 degrees before they completed the ascent to the second floor. Green shadowed light spilled through the huge window that filled one wall of the turn.
    Beyond the glass the Dennison property spread to the left in waves of verdant leaf and grass. Sanderson considered the pastoral view. Squirrels darted through the trees, accomplishing with ridiculous ease their amazing acrobatics. Two big black ravens swooped and arced in the morning air. A thrush called. Through one of the open panes a cool breeze carried the scents of life and growth.
    From the corner of his eye Sanderson saw a shadow move across the side of the garage. Only for a moment. Too quick for him to be sure he actually saw it. If it was real, it would have to have been somebody leaving by the-he called up a floor plan of Wembledge Manor-the kitchen door.
    He thought again of Dougie Greeley. Such a bizarre boy. Not at all like his older brother.
    Sanderson liked Rod Greeley a lot. Enough that he gave serious thought to dissuading him when the lad spoke of enlisting in the army. Only thought. He would never speak against the military, whatever it might have cost him.
    If only Dougie could be more like Rod.
    Even without proper psychological training, Sanderson could recognize Dougie's problems. Overindulged by his mother. Protected from any real paternal authority. Allowed to stretch his growing young mind along avenues not at all proper.
    Sanderson was astounded to learn, when Dougie was nine, that the boy had already amassed a sizable collection of girlie magazines. Paul Sanderson never had any real problem with the concept of young ladies displaying their charms in magazines. But he felt that such things belonged to a rite of passage into manhood.
    A boy should be old enough to understand the reaction of his body to those pictures. Sometimes I think Dougie will never understand such things.
    That Babs allowed it was an even greater mystery, to his thinking. Sanderson liked Babs. He'd not actually delivered her, as it sometimes seemed he had half of Fairharbour, but he had known her mother for thirty-five years. He watched Babs grow through girlhood, into comely womanhood, watching with the interest of a devoted uncle.
    He knew that beneath her bubbling, ever-vivacious exterior there were some unfortunate dark areas, vague like a tiny spot of ink on wet paper, bleeding fine hairline threads of darkness into the surrounding white.
    Something in Babs never quite allowed herself to accept the joys of her own sexuality. Sanderson suspected she repressed a great deal. He could only guess how much. Babs would never openly discuss such matters. Not even with a kindly old family doctor. Perhaps she might have unburdened herself with a stranger? I doubt it.
    It was so odd that sexually repressed Babs Greeley should allow Dougie his collections of Playboy and Penthouse. Sanderson believed such magazines could only foster the worst possible fantasies in someone with Dougie's particular bent. Sanderson spoke with the boy enough to know his attitudes toward women were decidedly unhealthy. When he spoke of the girls at school, he always referred to them as "brats," or "snots." There was nothing Sanderson could do to persuade Dougie that the boy's own attitudes might be more than a little responsible for the way he was treated.
    Babs actually came after Sanderson following one such session with Dougie. Sanderson frowned at the recollection. She shouted at him. She demanded to know who he thought he was, telling her son how to live his life. They might have known each other forever, but there were things Paul Sanderson should damn well keep his nose out of, thank you! It left a long, cold passage in their relationship.
    Later Doug Senior stopped by Sanderson's office to apologize. The doctor dismissed any need for such.
    Now Sam Dennison says Babs has had some kind of seizure, and Dougie is missing.
    Seizure! Sanderson snorted at the word. He continued up the stairs. 'Seizure'' was altogether too broad a word for his taste. It could encompass any number of human ills. Babs was so clearly upset by the business with Joanne that Sanderson feared for the worst. Babs was exactly the type who would bottle things up, repressing and denying until something like Joanne Dennison's breakdown tore open her carefully constructed shield.
    Babs knew Joanne for only a few months, but it was obvious to Paul Sanderson that a strong bond had developed between them. The difference in their ages seemed unimportant. Sanderson realized fifteen years meant very little between two adults. If Joanne were ten and Babs twenty-five, a lasting friendship would have been unlikely. Thirty-three and forty-eight was another matter. It appeared Sam and Doug Senior got along well, too.
    There was a deep uneasiness in Paul Sanderson as he mounted the last step, started down the hall toward the master bedroom. Finding Sam half naked in the Greeley house unnerved him. Especially after finding the Catalog. Bloody thing.
    He stopped. That was part of it. A big part of the way he felt. It had much less to do with the Greeleys and the Dennisons than with the contents of that awful little booklet. He patted the side of his jacket. It was still there, in his deep pocket. Thinking about it made his eyes burn again. He fought a sudden urge to pull it out and look at those pictures again. He didn't need to see them. They were seared across his brain. Dreadful! So dreadful!
    Then something else occurred to him. When he came to the house to tend to Joanne, Babs mentioned finding a pile of discarded mail by the gate. That was what first signalled her there might be trouble in the house.
    And Sam reacted strangely when Babs mentioned the mail. The mail. The mail. Why does that mean something?
    He took the Catalog from his pocket. He handled it gingerly between thumb and forefinger. The address label was still affixed. It said "Current Resident, 1717 Wolf Pit Road."
    Sanderson's brows knotted again. This is 1717. The Dennison house. But I found this at the Greeleys'- He opened his black bag and dropped the Catalog into it. He thought the little book looked even redder than before in the shadowed mouth of the bag. It seemed to be lit somehow, very faintly. Almost lit from within. It looked like blood to him. Blood against the cool sheen of his stainless steel instruments.
    He snapped the bag shut and went on to the bedroom. The shades were drawn. He found the room cool, dark. Sam Dennison was a thickening of the darkness, kneeling at the side of the bed. As Sanderson's old eyes adjusted, definition resolved out of the shadows. Sam's big hand lay on his wife's forehead. He stroked her brow so gently Sanderson wondered what could have prompted his earlier suspicions.
    "She's all right," Sam said. He spoke in a low whisper. Sanderson could tell he was crying. "She's all right. She's still asleep." He started to turn toward Sanderson. He stopped. In the light from the door Sam's eyes grew wide and frightened. Sanderson turned to follow his gaze.
    Babs, lying face down in the ashes of the hearth. Across the brick fascia of the fireplace a smear of red curved down toward her strawberry curls.
    Sanderson bent to one painful old knee. He turned her over. Her eyes were open, glazed. There were flecks of gray ash all over her face, her eyelashes. The left side of her head was a black mass of dried blood. As Sanderson rolled her back, the scabrous surface broke. A slender trickle of bright scarlet drew a wiggling line across her forehead. Sanderson stopped it with an index finger before it reached her eye. She was still breathing.
    Sanderson barked a demand for assistance. Sam was at his side in an instant. His big hands now helped shift Babs to a more comfortable position on the floor. 'Better not move her too far," the doctor said. "She's in a bad way."
    He looked up to see Sam's face a white blur in the dim light. Sam was trembling all over. Rage? Fear? Sanderson couldn't tell. "What happened to her, Sam?"
    Sam Dennison stammered. The words were there, but they would not come out. "I-I-" Sanderson's question pounded at him. He couldn't begin to imagine what Babs was doing there. In such a mess.
    He looked at his wife, sound asleep on the bed. She couldn't have had anything to do with this. She was in a drugged slumber. The Last Trump could sound. She would sleep through it.
    "I don't-" The words still would not form.
    Sanderson rose. His knees popped loudly as he straightened. He found the light switch and flicked it up. The sudden illumination hurt Sam's eyes. He blinked. Sanderson crossed to the phone by Sam's side of the bed.
    "I'm going to call the hospital, Sam," he said. He spoke slowly, as if to a backward child or a foreigner. "I'm going to call the hospital. And then I think we'd better call the police."
    Sam nodded dumbly. He went back to Joanne's side. He sat on the edge of the bed. He stroked her hair. He kissed her.
    What had happened to their lives?
    
    
Chapter Seven 
1
    
    There could be no doubting Angela Finney was Babs Greeley's sister. The same hair. The same eyes. The same generous bust. But half a head taller than Babs. Slimmer.
    
    Angela carried herself with the casual assurance of a woman familiar with the feeling of control. Of being in control. Which is what she was. While Babs stayed in Connecticut to marry and raise a family, Angela left the comfortable womb of her home state in quest of adventure. Or, at least, something to do besides marrying a man like Doug Greeley and bearing his litter.
    Angela hated Doug, hated him with a sharp, pure disgust unsullied by the demands of logic. She hated him when Babs first brought him home thirty years ago. She hated him on their wedding day. She hated him when Rod was born, when Doug Junior was born. She hated him now. She could not tell why. She never bothered to analyze the emotion. It was chemistry. The man made her skin crawl.
    It crawled now, as she saw him waiting for her at the end of the long corridor from the Arrivals gate. One more unpleasant sensation in a growing sea of unpleasant sensations. La Guardia was an airport Angela Finney tried as hard as she could to avoid. It was always dirty. Always crowded. Always dark and loud.
    She loved the gleaming expanses of California architecture. Each trip to the East Coast was a little death. It diminished her.
    "Hello, Angie." She thought Doug looked a thousand years old. His cheeks were dark shadows, his eyes sunken, glazed. There was a mist of white stubble across his chin and jowls. His shirt was rumpled, sweat stained. He looked as if he'd slept in it. He had. It had been two days since Doug placed his call to Angela's West Coast office. In that time he had not been out of his clothes or away from his wife's bedside. "I'm glad you could come back now." He held out a hand in welcome.
    Angela thrust her tote bag into it. "I have some other bags coming. Three."
    Sighing, Doug accepted the bag in lieu of a handshake. As always he'd hoped things might have miraculously changed between himself and his sister-in-law. There was no reason he knew of for her loathing of him. Perhaps it would someday evaporate as illogically as it had formed. But not today.
    He led the way through the hugging couples, the crying grandparents, and the tired, bleary-eyed businessmen. Their eyes became less bleary as Angela passed. She sensed the attention at once. Her back straightened. Her blouse pulled tight against her full bosom. Her stride lengthened, showing more smoothly muscled thigh through the high slit in her tan skirt.
    The luggage carousel was downstairs. Doug elbowed his way through the cluster of passengers already gathered around the rubber-rimmed loop of black rubber slats. Angela decided there might be advantages to having a thick-necked jock around. Certainly Doug could clear his way through a crowd better than anyone she knew.
    He collected her three bags and manhandled them to the doors. His Mercedes was standing across the road in a No Parking zone. A parking ticket was pinned under the driver's side windshield wiper. It flapped in the hot breeze. Doug opened the Mercedes' trunk and heaved in Angela's bags. Then he opened the passenger door and stepped aside to let her in.
    Angela watched his bustle of activity with only part of her mind. She was sorting sensations. The air was thick and heavy. It stank of ozone and gasoline fumes and a thousand other poisons. It made her hair droop. Made her blouse cling to her flesh.
    All she wanted to be was far, far away from there. On a beach near Santa Monica. In the arms of a very special man. A stranger. Dark and mysterious. With skilled hands and mouth. Patient. Practiced.
    She climbed into the Mercedes. Doug slammed the door. He hurried round to the driver's side and slid behind the wheel. Before he closed his own door he reached out to snag the flapping ticket. He squinted at it, crumpled it, tossed it under the car.
    He settled behind the wheel and slipped the key into the ignition. He looked all wrong to Angela, the wrong shape, the wrong place.
    How ludicrous that a stumpy, muscle-bound clod should be sitting behind the wheel of a sixty-thousand-dollar automobile, she thought.
    Doug always looked to Angela like a man who'd be most at home in an outdated Buick. A short cigar clamped between his teeth. A too-tight T-shirt on his fat torso. A T-shirt that said something crude across the chest. She'd seen a man once in a shirt that pictured a drunken cat crammed into a whiskey bottle. Below was the legend happiness is a tight pussy. She'd thought of Doug when she saw it. She always thought of Doug Greeley whenever anything reminded her of the seamier side of sex.
    Doug gunned the Mercedes into traffic and sought the expressway. They did not speak as the lights of Queens rolled by. Angela looked out at the sparkling towers of Manhattan.
    Filthy, disgusting city, she thought. But still capital of the goddamn world. Still the only place where you can find the highest of the high and the lowest of the low, cheek by jowl, like brothers.
    As they left the Bronx and moved up 1-95, Angela let down her guard just a little. She knew it was irrational to let her loathing of Doug get in the way now. This was one of those family times when everyone needed to pull together.
    "How is she?" Angela asked. She stared straight ahead. The lights of the oncoming traffic were too bright. She squinted, aware of the wrinkles it made around her eyes. The smells of the city still clung to her clothes, defeating the Mercedes' air-conditioning.
    "Okay, I guess." Doug was hunched forward over the wheel. He reminded Angela of an old man, peering past the dashboard, trying to see the road ahead. There was tension in every muscle. She fought the momentary urge to reach out and knead the knotted sinews at the back of his neck. "Okay, I guess," he repeated. "Concussion. Maybe some brain damage, they say." His voice quavered. "She's still unconscious."
    "Is that unusual?"
    "Maybe. I don't know. I can't get anything out of the doctors. Anyway, they can't seem to agree. Sanderson asked me if she'd been under any kind of nervous stress."
    Angela blinked at the familiar name. Christ, is he still alive? He must be a million years old by now! "Had she?"
    "I don't think so. I don't know. I don't know. Sometimes- well, you know Babs. She keeps things to herself a lot."
    
    I'll tell the world, Angela thought. To her way of thinking, her relentless, forthright openness, Babs was always a repressive personality. Angela remembered how she tut-tutted over every uninhibited adventure her younger sister ever tried. Babs made disapproving noises over each new boyfriend, each outlandish fashion.
    Angela admitted now-to herself-that some of her turns had been on the wild side. But Babs went beyond the protective-older sister routine. Even for a house without a mother.
    Angela often thought Babs envied her, deep down. They were ten years apart. Angela knew that decade made a difference. Babs had been married to Doug barely a year when Angela first spread her independent wings. She ran off to Mexico with a boy from Bridgeport.
    A "boy" now. He seemed such a man then, with stubble on his chin and studded leather on his back. Angela stifled a groan. Such a cliche!
    Babs came after her. Alone. Hugely pregnant with Rodney. What a picture she made! That tiny, round woman bullying her way through Greg's pals. That was his name, yes. Gregory Makepeace. Angela smiled at the memory. I'd never've thought my little Babs had it in her. And she never told Daddy. He was away on business. He was always away on business. And tiny little pregnant Babs came after me and brought me home. Did she tell Doug what she was going to do? She couldn't have. Not even Doug Greeley would ever have let his tiny little wife go chasing off to Mexico alone, eight months pregnant with his first son.
    And when Daddy came back, she never really had the chance to tell him anything. Angela sighed. Her father died only a month after her Mexican adventure. A sudden, swift heart attack, quite unexpected.
    Doug was droning on at the back of her thoughts. She returned her attention to him. "… seem at all the type, but I guess Dougie wouldn't lie."
    Angela tried to think what Doug had been saying while she'd drifted over the lost past. Something about the madman who attacked Babs? Sam Dennison, that was the name. And Doug's saying he's surprised 'cause this Dennison didn't seem the type.
    "That type is always the type," Angela said. The words sounded hollow. "Sorry. I guess you're not in the mood for platitudes. He really smashed up your kitchen, huh? What about the wife? His wife."
    "She's okay. She's still popping tranks, but she's up and about. One of her sisters came up to stay with her. She's pregnant."
    "The sister?"
    "No, Joanne. Joanne Dennison. Christ, I still can't believe it's all happened!"
    Angela turned slightly. Doug's knuckles were white where he gripped the wheel. His arms trembled. "What did the police say?"
    "Not much. Everything corroborated Dougie's version of the story. Dennison came over. Chased Dougie round the house. Beat him up. Dougie got away. Then Sanderson turned up and took Dennison back to his house, to Dennison's house and found-and found-" He made a strange little sound. Like a hiccup.
    Angela realized he was crying. She saw the tears glistening on his cheeks, bright in the glare of the oncoming headlights.
    Despite herself she reached out to place a hand atop his. "Doug-"
    "S'okay. I'm okay." He let go of the wheel with his left hand and squeezed hers. 'Thanks."
    Angela pulled back her hand and repressed a shiver. His touch made her feel soiled again. I need to get over this loathing if I'm going to be any use at all over the next few days. No doubt the house has completely fallen apart without Babs's efficient hand at the wheel. And it's not as if you have to go down on him.
    Angela instantly volunteered to come to the rescue when Doug phoned with the awful news. She'd hoped she'd gotten over her phobia toward Doug. It was seven years since she'd last seen him.
    "When does Rod get in?"
    Doug calculated in his head. "About midnight, I guess. About an hour after we get home. He's driving down from Seneca Depot. His CO granted him compassionate leave when he heard what happened to Babs."
    Angela was pleased by the news. That will make things easier.
    Angela liked Rod Greeley. He was tall, dark. A handsome youth. Unlike his father in every way. Well mannered. Almost elegant. His features were finely chiselled. His eyes deep blue. He reminded Angela of pictures she'd seen of her father as a young man. The crisp army uniform only added to his charms.
    Very sexy, Angela thought when she first saw Rod as an adult. What a pity he's my nephew.
    She checked her watch. The luminous analogue dial said nine-thirty. That means six-thirty on the Coast. And by the time we reach the house if II be-eleven? Eight in L.A. Plenty of time to check in with Todd. Todd Martin was her business partner and closest friend.
    Conversation died away completely. Angela debated filling the void with small talk. She decided against it. What kind of small talk can you make when your sister has just been beaten and almost killed by a lunatic neighbour?
    She wondered what Sam Dennison might be like. Of course, Doug's call contained no physical description of his wife's assailant. Angela now worked up an image of a large boned man with thick, hairy fingers, a dark five-o'clock shadow, and deep, wild, burning eyes. The kind of eyes that stripped your clothes off you as you sat in a restaurant or walked down a street.
    Angela had no problem at all with men admiring her body. She was proud of it. She'd worked hard to hone and enhance what nature provided. But it had to be the right kind of man, on her terms.
    Images began to flow through her mind. She crossed her legs, aware of the delicate whoosh of nylon against nylon. Aware of the luxurious expanse of thigh the pose revealed. And with only Doug Greeley to appreciate the view!
    She came back to the Mercedes from a very long way off. She'd drifted again. At least this time Doug wasn't talking to her. There was no thread of conversation to try to pick up.
    They were well into Connecticut, off 1-95, when she saw the lights of Fairharbour. Doug guided the Mercedes along dark country lanes. Within twenty minutes they were on Grainge, passing through the centre of town.
    Seven years and nothing's changed. The library was the same. The post office. The one theatre on Mill Pond. Now it showed two movies. One of them was something by Steven Spielberg. The town thinned out. Lights twinkled off to the sides. Houses, warm and cosy. Angela felt the surge of a flood of memory. She blocked it.
    There were enough pleasant memories from her years in Fairharbour. Only, nowadays they made her feel stifled whenever she thought of them. They made her think of Babs and Doug. Of the life she might have had. When she thought of those things she wanted to scream.
    They continued along Grainge. She started spotting houses she knew… the Gruenwald place… the Simonsons'… the Sterns'… the Carlins'… the Wheelers'… each was a memory encapsulated.
    She decided she'd known Ed and Ticky Wheeler for something just under a million years. She sat up straight as Doug guided the car past their gate. The hair slowly prickled on the back of her head. Doug slowed the Mercedes.
    The Wheeler house was at the centre of a pool of whirling red light. There were green-and-white Fairharbour police cars all over the place. And Doc Sanderson's old Studebaker.
    "What the hell…?" Doug leaned past her, gazing out the passenger window.
    Angela squeezed herself toward the door, away from his encroaching shoulder. "Should we go in?"
    Doug stopped, considering. Then, "No. You've had a long trip. Lemme get you home." He applied pressure to the gas pedal. Gravel spat from the curbside wheel. "I'll hoist signals and find out what happened."
    "Hoist…?"
    "Telephone. I'll phone Ed."
    Angela remembered Doug's ridiculous nautical affectation. She wanted to laugh out loud. She stopped only for fear the laughter might turn into something else. Something less controllable. This is for you, Babs. Only for you.
    They turned onto Wolf Pit Road. Forty seconds later they were at the end of the Greeley driveway. Doug stopped the car beside Babs's Volvo at the front of the house. He climbed heavily from the Mercedes and walked round behind to get Angela's bags. "It should be open," he said, tipping his head toward the front door of the house. "Go on in."
    Angela climbed out of the car. She stretched. The air was cool against her face. It smelled of rain. Leaves rustled. She looked up. The moon was a bright crescent. The sky was full of forgotten friends: Cassiopeia, Orion, the Bear.
    You don't see stars like that from a high-rise in L.A.
    She walked up to the front door and pushed it open. She stopped dead in her tracks. I thought Doug said this Dennison creep confined his rampage to the kitchen? The whole house looked like a tornado had stopped by for a few days.
    Angela had no way of knowing she was looking at the aftermath of Dougie Greeley's search for his Catalog.
    
2
    
    How can everything have gone so wrong, when it was so perfect? Dougie reviewed the situation. For the hundredth time he turned the events over and over in his mind. Dad came home. He was met by old fart Sanderson. The cops came. An ambulance went to the Dennisons' house. More cops. The Fucker was taken away. In handcuffs. Sam was now nothing but "the Fucker" in Dougie's mind.
    Crouching in the bushes halfway along Wolf Pit toward Wembledge Manor, Dougie saw all this. It was perfect. It unfolded like a TV script. Event followed event with clockwork precision. As the police car carrying Sam Dennison passed his hiding place, Dougie stood up, revealing his presence. Sam went mad. He started screaming and kicking. And it looked like the cop in the back seat with him had to hit him to quiet him down.
    Dougie had waited until the car passed over the ridge onto Grainge. Then he headed back toward the Greeley house, sneaking through the bushes to the back door. He went straight up to his room. It was dark. Dust stirred in a pool of light around his open east dormer. The breeze was cool.
    Dougie stripped off his sweat stained clothes. He stood naked in the window. His right hand found his dangling penis. It rose to his touch. Sensations and memories intermingled as he stroked himself. Memories of the wonderful imagery of the-
    Catalog.
    The Catalog! The Catalog! Finding two more made him forget all about the first one. He'd dropped it in the front entrance hall when Sam Dennison came to the house.
    Dougie grabbed his bathrobe from the hook on the back of his door. He raced downstairs. He flew through the kitchen. No part of his brain acknowledged the destruction Sam Dennison left. He ran across the dining room.
    It must still be there. It must still be there!
    It wasn't.
    He spun around. His knee began screaming at him. His lungs were on fire. He thought he might faint.
    He did. His next conscious memory was of Doug Greeley wiping his face with a cool, damp cloth.
    "You okay, sailor?"
    Dougie tried to focus on his father's face. We're in the living room. I’m on the couch. The couch in front of the fireplace. Someone else here. Sanderson. He looked even older than Dougie remembered. He looked for all the world like a skeleton someone had covered with a baggy old suit. He looked like death.
    "Mom…? Dougie's voice was a croak.
    "She's okay," Doug Senior lied. Then he thought better of the lie. "Well, no. She's not exactly okay. She's-had a nasty accident. She's been taken to the hospital."
    Dougie blinked. No, that's not right. To the morgue, maybe. He's trying to shield me from the truth, stupid bugger. "She's-not okay." It was partly a question, partly a challenge. He tried to sit up.
    Sanderson moved to place a bony hand on his shoulder. "You rest easy, young fella. Your mom'll be just fine in a few weeks. Concussion can be serious, but she's a strong woman."
    "I came to get you before I went on to the hospital," Doug said. His voice was on the edge of cracking. His eyes were full of tears. "I-think we should both stay close by her, don't you?"
    
    Dougie couldn't find anything to say. Not one single word. She's still alive! The thought rang in his head, the sounding of a great gong. She ought to be dead. She's supposed to be dead. But she isn't.
    Yet he'd seen the perfect scenario unfolding before his eyes. The police. His father. Sam Dennison taken away.
    "Sam Dennison." He said the name without thinking.
    "Yes." Doug Senior nodded. "It was Dennison. How did you know?"
    Dougie's jaw twitched. Sanderson was looking at him with those big, watery eyes. Eyes that bobbed and danced behind his thick glasses. Eyes that made Dougie want to puke. "I-I-" He was trembling. Shaking uncontrollably. It's all going wrong, wrong, wrong!
    "He hit me!" The words exploded out of Dougie's mouth. The full form of his lie was the only shield he possessed. He must cling to it. He must hammer it into this new shape. He must make it work. "He came here and he had scratches on his cheek and he yelled and he hit me. He was going to kill me. But I got away."
    "That must've been when he smashed up the kitchen," Doug Greeley said over his shoulder. Sanderson nodded.
    Dougie was lost. The kitchen? Who the fuck gives a shit about the kitchen? "He must have done it, Dad. He must have been the one who hurt Mom."
    Sanderson was pushing him down on the couch again. Doug Senior spoke in soothing tones. "Yes. That's what Doc here thought."
    Sanderson? He's been there already? Before the police? Before Dad came home? Dougie tried to put the pieces together. He had to get every detail straight, absolutely straight in his mind, if the lie had any chance of holding. Yes. Sanderson drove the Fucker back to the old Wembledge Place. The old fart must've found him at our house. I thought he was coming to check up on Joanne, but-
    Joanne. Joanne. Another X-factor. Dougie loved the word. Even in his distress he savoured it, played with it. Was she awake through the whole thing? Enough that she knows I tried to rape her? Enough she knows I almost killed Mom? "Joanne-"
    
    Sanderson's fat white brows shot up. "You mean 'Mrs. Dennison,' don't you, boy?"
    "Oh for Chrissake!" Doug Senior rose from his place at Dougie's side. He was scowling. He found Sanderson's propriety was totally out of place in this madness. "This is no time for that kind of shit, Paul. What about Joanne, Dougie?"
    "She-Mom went over to their house. If Sam Dennison attacked Mom-" He was losing it.
    But Doug Greeley was looking at his son with new respect. That the boy should actually have the awareness to be concerned about Joanne Dennison at a time like this! Amazing! "Joanne's fine. She was just waking up when I left their house. There's a lady cop staying there. I think the police are going to try to reach her family."
    Dougie calmed down, just a little. That part's okay. That part's still sound. For now, at least. What about his mother? "The hospital-"
    Dougie looked at his big Rolex. "Yes, we'd better get a move on. I don't want your mother to be all alone if she wakes up." He drew a short, sharp breath. "I mean when she wakes up."
    Dougie headed back up to his room to dress. The house was strange around him. All the corners were filled with shadow. There was darkness at the edge of his vision. But there was hope. There must be hope. Provided you don't fuck up and lose your grip again.
    Concussion, is it? He'd read about concussions. In his comic books people could lose their memories completely from concussions. They could get a knock on the head, turn into completely different people. Strangers even to their closest family. Maybe that'll happen to Mom. Maybe she'll come to and not have any memory of today. No memory of this shitty, awful day.
    So it would be Dougie's word against Sam's. Dougie stopped at the kitchen door. Now his brain received the message his eyes sent. The whole room was a shambles. It looked as if all the pieces of furniture had attacked each other. So the Fucker did this? When? And why? After you got away from him, obviously. But why? Why?
    He remembered the strange look in Sam Dennison's eyes.
    
    The contortion in his face. As if he was trying to change. To turn into somebody else. Dougie shivered. He crossed to his stairs. He climbed with his head down, staring at his bare feet. His robe opened. He looked at his limp penis.
    He wanted nothing more than to crawl into his bed with one of his magazines. Focus all his rage into a single, violent masturbatory fantasy. One with lots of pain and blood. Smooth, bare flesh stretched tight for the kiss of the whip.
    He touched his penis. Nothing happened. He closed the bedroom door and crossed to his bed. He pulled a copy of Penthouse from the stack and flipped through it. A woman with dark hair and huge, soft breasts lay spread-eagled on a golden-sheeted bed. Her eyes were big and dark brown. Only one of her wrists was visible in the cropping of the picture. A slender cord was wrapped around the wrist two or three times.
    As he looked, her face became Joanne Dennison's face. Her eyes pleaded for mercy. Dougie had none to give. He put his hands around her smooth, soft neck. He began to squeeze. Her eyes widened in terror. She tried to scream. His thumbs dug into her throat. Her tongue lolled in her mouth.
    Beautiful images. Beautiful images. Like none he'd ever known, before the Catalog.
    The Catalog. He dropped the magazine. He grabbed for his socks, huffing and puffing to pull them onto his sweaty feet. Where has it gone? Where has it gone? I remember exactly where I dropped it. Did the Fucker take it?
    Probably. It was his. You stole it. And the Fucker wouldn't want to risk Dad or Mom or anyone else coming in and seeing those pictures. Not those pictures of me and Joanne. He felt the sudden need to look at the pictures again. A physical need. Like hunger. Worse than hunger.
    He cursed himself for not having taken the two Catalogs he found on the stairs of the Dennison basement. He only hid them against his eventual return. Why didn't I take them? Why? Why?
    Because I knew I’d be,going back. There's a powerful reason to go back.
    Joanne. He might have to do something about her. Something more than a fantasy while he gazed at the slick pages of a magazine. He might have to deal with her before she could become a real problem. He might really have to kill her.
    He felt again the sensations of his hands on her neck. The veins pounding against his palms. The blood that could not return to her heart building up behind the flesh of her face. Her eyes so big, so full of terror.
    Now he felt his penis stir. He concentrated on the image of Joanne Dennison's engorged face. Her arms and legs twitching, restrained by slender cords. The soundless scream forming her mouth into a small round o.
    "Dougie! Get a move on!" Dad. Yelling from below stairs. Dougie fell out of his fantasy like a drowning man thrown by chance onto a spur of rock. He slumped back onto the bed. He lay gasping. His eyes refused to focus. With an effort he opened his fist. His penis went limp almost instantly.
    He sat up. He pulled himself into his small bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. He looked at himself in the mirror. Long, greasy hair. The suggestion of shadow on his loose jowls.
    He pushed away from the sink and went back to finish dressing. The Penthouse lay open where he'd dropped it. He pulled on his sneakers and ground a rubber heel into the face of the dark-haired model. The paper crinkled. When he took his foot away, her face was ruined, as if it had collapsed in upon itself.
    He hurried downstairs. Sanderson was gone. Doug and Dougie went out to the waiting Mercedes. Doug gunned the car out of the driveway. He drove too fast the whole way to the hospital. Three times they ran red lights. Twice they narrowly avoided hitting other cars.
    Finally they reached Fairharbour Memorial. The afternoon sun was very low in the sky. It hit Dougie across the eyes like a physical blow as he climbed from the tinted womb of the Mercedes. Doug Senior wasn't waiting for him. He was bounding across the parking lot like an Olympic sprinter. Dougie pounded after him.
    The hospital was a low, broad building. Two stories, with a four-story addition rising on the southwest corner. The exterior was dull gray, with apologetic splashes of yellow around some of the larger windows. It always looked to Dougie like a place someone would go to die. He was glad to have had no need to visit its halls since his birth fifteen years before.
    Until now. Until everything went so terribly wrong. He had been comfortably convinced that the next time he saw his mother she'd be in a casket. Her present condition was too far from that ideal scenario… too loose… too much beyond his control.
    Doug was already at the reception desk by the time Dougie hurried into the lobby. The nurses were very kind and understanding. Fairharbour did not have events of calculated violence often within its serene boundaries. The condition of Babs Greeley was buzzing across the whole hospital. One of the nurses took Doug by the arm. She led him to his wife's room as Dougie fell into step behind.
    Babs was in Intensive Care. Tubes and pipes snaked across the bed. They poked into her arms, her nostrils, her mouth. It made Dougie think of a short comic book story he'd read once. "Octopus," it was called. A pulse meter made little, regular bleeps to one side of the room. She was gray. Every second of her age was carved into her face. Doug was in tears by the time he was allowed to take his station at the side of her bed.
    The sun sank lower. The sky darkened through purple, into black. The stars came out. Fairharbour turned into a fairyland of lights. Dougie stood at the window in the hall outside his mother's room. He was a thousand light-years away from the hospital. His thoughts were black. Full of sudden death.
    A hand on his shoulder snapped him back to the starched white reality around him. Sanderson, "There's no need for you to stay, Dougie," he was saying. "I'm sure your father would feel better if you were at home, getting a good night's sleep."
    Dougie nodded. Home, Alone. I might be able to find the Catalog, I might even be able to sneak over to the Dennisons' and search there. If the lady cop is gone. If Joanne's alone. Especially if Joanne's alone.
    His brain still turned to murder when he thought of her. The smooth curves and honey tones of her body were no longer a focus in and of themselves. They were a background for images of pain and violence. There was an instant stiffening in his groin when he thought of killing Joanne. He grew more and more to like the idea. To like the sense of power in the act. To take another life. To kill another human being…
    "Dougie?" Sanderson again. "If you'd rather stay…?"
    "No! No. I'd-like to go home. But-I'll need a ride."
    "Of course. I'll take you myself."
    Dougie cringed at the thought. He'd ridden in Sanderson's Studebaker only once before. It stank of ether. And something else. Something Dougie thought might be the smell of old age. "I-could call a cab…"
    "Nonsense. I'll be happy to take you home. I used to take my son everywhere. Just everywhere." His fingers were tight on Dougie's shoulder. There was no getting out of it. "Okay, Doc. Just lemme say 'bye to my dad."
    Sanderson didn't hear. He was ten thousand miles away, in the steaming jungles of South Vietnam.
    
3
    
    "Aunt Angela!"
    She heard the voice as a strangled squeak from the living room. Angela Finney turned her green gaze like radar probing the room. The lights were out. The only illumination came from the hall, where she stood. The hall light was a central chandelier set in the middle of the four doors that opened from opposite sides into the front hall. It sent its pool of yellow light at an angle, toward the front windows of the living room. The rest of the room was mostly black on black.
    Angela squinted. "Dougie?" She would not bring herself to believe Rod's smooth, alto tones could have mutated into that squeak in the five years since he visited her in California. "Is that you, Dougie?"
    Behind her she realized Doug Senior was struggling through the front door with both arms full of Angela's bags. "Dougie! For Chrissake, don't sit there like a lump! Help me!"
    Something soft and round moved out of the shadows. It became Angela's second nephew. She choked back an exclamation of disgust. Much had happened to Dougie Greeley since she'd last seen him, when he was eight.
    
    He'd been pudgy then, in a cute, baby way. The pudge had matured into full-fledged fat. The greasy hair she'd hoped he would somehow outgrow was long and matted. It stood out from his head in strange crooks and elbows. He looked to Angela as if he'd not felt the touch of water in weeks. There was a dark misting on his loose cheeks that might have been the beginnings of stubble. His big eyes were round, vacant. He wore a sweat stained T-shirt and shorts. There was a bandanna tied around his fat neck. His whole body stood as anathema to everything Angela Finney held dear.
    Dougie reached out a fat, shiny hand for one of the bags his father was manhandling through the doorway. For a sudden instant Angela wanted to slap it away. She didn't want that pink grease spot touching her luggage, staining it.
    Too late. Dougie took two of her bags and headed for the centre stairs. Angela shivered. The leather made wet, squishy sounds when the bags slapped against Dougie's bare thighs.
    Doug Senior appeared oblivious to the disorder of his house. Angela wondered if it was really possible for two men-strike that; a man and a boy-living alone for two days to actually have done this much damage. Well, not damage, really. Nothing looks as if its been destroyed. Just a general impression of the whole damn house being lifted off its foundations and given a good shake.
    She studied the jumbled scene. Books were off their shelves. Wastebaskets were overturned, their contents scattered. Chair cushions were strewn across the floor.
    "I've made up the back bedroom for you," Doug was saying. Angela turned her attention back to him. Watch that, she thought. That's three times you've gone away from him. You're lucky he hasn't noticed.
    "In the back it doesn't get the early morning sun," Doug went on. "I-thought you'd probably want to sleep in until you get adjusted to our time zone."
    "Very considerate." Angela's smile was utterly without warmth. She did not add that she had not the slightest intention of staying in Fairharbour long enough to adjust to Eastern Time. She wondered for a moment if her entire visit was going to consist of her not saying what she thought. For you, Babs. Only for you.
    
    She followed Doug upstairs. As promised, the back bedroom was pleasant enough. Babs's decoration tended to a vaguely colonial style. The carpet was thick and pale patterned. The wallpaper was light blue, with intertwining flowers that Angela thought might have been tiny daisies. A medium-sized brass bed was centred against one wall. Doug set her bags at the foot of the bed. He opened an adjoining door.
    "Bathroom,' he said. "You might want to watch the flush mechanism. Sometimes it doesn't stop. Last year Gary Cody and his wife Bernett stayed over and it ran the whole night after Gary used it once. We woke up to a flood in the dining room. That's right below us." He thumped the floor with his foot.
    "Mm. Can I take a shower?" Please!
    "Oh, sure. Sure. Everything else works fine." He stood flustered for a moment, as if searching for some profound statement upon which to make his exit. Dougie stood in the doorway with his two-bag burden. Finally Doug ordered him to put them with the others and leave. Senior followed Junior. Angela closed the door with a sigh of vast relief.
    She crossed to the closer of the two tall windows, looking out across the dark expanse of the Greeley property. There was a broad pool of yellow light below the window, radiating from the back deck.
    Beyond that, trees were half-guessed shadows against the stars. The window was open. Again she found the air cooler than California. Her flesh tingled into goose bumps. But she left the window open.
    Angela pulled down the shades. She peeled off her blouse and skirt. She kept on her bra and panties while she did a few quick knee bends, one hand out to a mahogany dressing table for support. Her leg muscles bunched and relaxed in smooth, easy rhythms. She fished the bobby pins out of her hair and shook it loose. Released from the restraint, it fell about her shoulders in amber waves.
    She stretched, feeling the joints pop in her shoulders and hips. Then she went into the small bathroom. She studied the controls for the shower, set the water running hot. She felt better immediately, just being out of that first layer of travel grimed clothes. Just to be unkinking muscles that had been locked into sitting position most of the last eleven hours.
    She accepted the fact that Los Angeles was far from the cleanest city in the world, but Angela always felt less soiled there than anywhere else. It was the brightness of the city. The openness. L. A. did not crowd in on itself like East Coast cities. She had her own theory on why that was. By the time the pioneers reached the Pacific they were well aware of the space America afforded. They were beginning to spread out and enjoy it.
    Steam was filling the bathroom. Angela closed the door. She unhooked her bra, slipped off the silk panties. Turning to seek a place to put them, she found herself facing a full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. She paused in appreciation of the view. She always paused in appreciation of what any mirror showed.
    Yes, you could tell she was Babs Greeley's sister. You could tell she was Margaret Finney's daughter, for that matter. But Angela worked a lot harder with what she had than Babs or Mummy ever did. Angela had only vague memories and photos of her mother to go by, but it was obvious from those that Margaret had gone soft around the edges. Like Babs.
    Angela worked out. Her muscle tone was hard and smooth beneath the traditional Finney skin. A perfect complexion was her greatest pride before-how did Babs always put it? "Before the equipment arrived.’
    Does she still say that? I wonder. I'm sure she does. To her closest girlfriends. Babs's idea of rough talk.
    Angela smiled in confident approval of her image in the glass. The equipment certainly had arrived. Full breasts. Narrow waist. A smooth roundness to the hips. Angela's height was all in her legs. Chopped off at the hip, she and Babs would have been the same height. Babs's legs were short and heavy in the thigh and ankle. Angela's legs were very long, very well turned.
    She definitely liked what the mirror showed her. She climbed into the shower. She pulled the blue plastic curtains closed and began soaping herself. Halfway through she remembered her intention to call Todd as soon as she got in.
    
    She hopped out of the claw-footed tub and grabbed a towel. She was sure she'd seen a phone in her room.
    There it is. A quaint little Princess on the bedside table. Angela shook her head, smiling. She'd not seen one like it in ten years. She picked it up.
    "…dest thing I ever saw."
    I know that voice. She sorted quickly through a long file of memory. Ed Wheeler. Doug must have called him. She started to hang up. Curiosity caught her as Doug spoke.
    "How long was he in there alone? I mean-it takes time to come to that kind of decision." Angela frowned. Doug's voice sounded shaky.
    "I think the decision had already been made." Ed's voice was slurred. Has he been drinking? Does the Pope shit in the forest? Angela turned the mouthpiece up, away from her mouth. She tried not to breathe too hard.
    "Jesus." Doug again. "Jesus H. Fucking Christ on a pogo stick! Ed, what's happening to this town? Murder and suicide and God knows what! We're turning into fucking Bridgeport!"
    "Maybe." Ed was definitely a few pints over his limit. Angela remembered him best as her high school history teacher. Before he "retired" and went into real estate. His thirst was magnificent, even then.
    What could have happened? All those cop cars. And old Doc Sanderson's Studebaker. Again Angela marvelled that Paul Sanderson was still among the living, let alone practicing medicine.
    "If you'd seen the mess in my office…" It was Ed again. "Shit, Doug, I'll never get the blood off those walls!"
    Blood? What blood? What in hell?
    "What did the coroner say?" Doug. She thought he sounded steadier than Ed, but not by much.
    "Said he must've pushed the damn thing into his mouth and pulled the pin. And then just sat there. Shit, Doug, that fucker had a fifteen-second delay I Do you realize how long that is? Fifteen seconds with a live grenade in your mouth?"
    Angela almost dropped the phone. The walls moved away. She flopped onto the high edge of the bed. Her breath whistled out of her.
    
    "Dougie? Dougie, is that you?" It was Doug. From the phone. The phone in your hand.
    She raised it to her mouth. "No. It's me. What- Sorry for listening, but, what happened?"
    'That you, Angie?" Ed. "Sorry you had to come back to this kind of shit. First your sister, now Paul Sanderson." He sounded as if he was trying to be politely conversational. The booze wouldn't let him. His voice cracked. "He killed himself tonight. In my office. Blew his head off with my old Dubya-Dubya Two grenade." He paused as if to let that awful image shape itself in her mind. "Oh-and something I didn't mention."
    Together Angela and Doug said, "Yes?"
    "He was sitting behind my desk when he did it. And he had this book. A catalog, I guess you'd call it. Had it open on the desk in front of him."
    "A catalog?" Doug sounded as if he was trying very hard to make sense of all this. "You mean like from Sears or…?"
    "Don't know the store. Didn't get a real good look at it before the coroner's guys took it off in a little plastic bag. It was all covered with-it was all covered. Funny. Now that I think about it, I don't even know why I thought it was a catalog. It just--felt like a catalog."
    Angela was fast becoming impatient, annoyed with this seemingly unimportant digression. "What's your point, Ed?"
    "No point, I guess. I just wonder why anyone would blow their head off with a hand grenade, just sitting there looking at a catalog?"
    
4
    
    All I have to do is wake up. Really. That's all I need to do. That's the way out of this madness.
    The only snag was, no matter how hard Douglas Greeley tried, he could not convince himself he was asleep.
    This must be some kind of unending nightmare-hut I'm not asleep. And I don't think I'm insane. Some of this could be explained if I've just gone completely overboard, completely looney tunes. But that doesn't make sense either.
    
    And don't they say the only people who never doubt their sanity are people who are insane? Boy! If doubting your sanity is the key to a clean bill of health, headwise I'm just laughing,' I got no problems in the world!
    Just a wife in the hospital with what might be a fractured skull. Just an old family friend who used another friend's war memento to redecorate his office with his brains. Just a son who's a few bricks short of a load.
    Doug nursed the bourbon in his glass. He focused on his younger son. Dougie. Dougie, Dougie, Dougie.
    Why do I keep coming back to you, Dougie? Why can't I shake the feeling you're at the heart of this somehow, some way? Some strange connection between you and Sam Dennison and Paul Sanderson. And Joanne. And Babs.
    He chugged back the last drops in his glass. He rose. He crossed the den from his big old leather wing chair to the gigantic bar on the north wall. That bar was his pride and joy.
    There was a big antiques-and-oddments place in South Norwalk. A great, huge, Disneyland of a place. Doug hated antiques, but Babs persuaded him to go there with her once. He saw this bar. God only knew where it came from. It was fifteen feet long, and the counter was four feet deep. The back was beautifully lathed posts in dark mahogany. There was finely inscribed mirror work behind the shelves of bottles.
    It cost forty-five thousand dollars. As much as I paid for this house twenty years ago. But I had to have it. Even if it cost another three grand to move it into the house. It meant removing an entire wall to install the thing. It filled the room. Dominated it. Overpowered it.
    It was a thing of absolute beauty in Doug's eyes.
    Babs loved it, too, if only because it more or less created a carte blanche for her antique shopping. There was no way she would ever approach the price tag of that monster bar. Doug knew it. To Babs Greeley's credit, she kept her purchases in reasonable check anyway.
    What the hell. I earn more money than I'll ever know what to do with. Manshot and Greeley has never had a bad year. Stan's got a magic touch in the market. He was a millionaire a hundred times over before he ever invited me to join him as a full partner.
    
    Doug stood behind his beautiful mahogany bar and tried to fit the last three days into the pattern of his life. Tried to set them comfortably alongside Manshot and Greeley and antique mahogany bars that cost more than some men make in a year.
    They wouldn't fit. Not unless I stepped through the looking glass sometime when I wasn't paying attention. Not unless this really isn't Fairharbour, Connecticut. "Land of the silent C," Doug called it. He thought it was very funny. By the fortieth repetition Babs thought it was boring as all hell.
    Babs. His vision clouded. How in Gods name could anything this awful happen to someone as sweet and wonderful as-
    "Got some of that to spare, barkeep?"
    He looked up. For the briefest, fleeting instant he saw Babs framed by the hall light. But the figure was too tall, too slim. "Pull up a stool, Angie. There's plenty for all."
    Angela sat. She wore a floor-length terry robe cinched in tight around her narrow waist. It emphasized the full curve of her bosom. The lower front parted when she sat. Doug could not help noticing how very long her legs looked, dangling from the stool. Long and tan, and firm of muscle.
    She eyed Doug in a way he did not like. He knew Angela did not think too highly of him. Sometimes he acknowledged how far it might go beyond simple dislike. As ever, he was at a loss to explain why she should feel that way. He only knew that every move he made, every word he spoke was measured against some unspoken rule book. Angela was always checking him out. Gathering together the reasons he wasn't good enough for her sister.
    "What'll it be?" he asked.
    Angela shifted her gaze to the bottles on the shelves behind Doug. "Johnny Walker. On the rocks." As Doug poured the drink, she glanced at her watch. She wore the face on the inside of her wrist. Like a trucker, Doug thought.
    "Almost midnight," she said. "Rod should be here soon."
    Doug checked his own watch. Eleven fifty-eight. "Any minute, I guess. If he hasn't been delayed."
    "How's he been doing since the divorce?"
    Doug shrugged. "I dunno. I think that was harder on Babs than on Roddy. I always expected it, I guess. I told him he could have let Carol have the abortion and be done with it. It would've been easier all round."
    "Rod never struck me as the type to see convenience as justification for abortion." Angela was trying very hard to be civil with Doug. Why is it everything this man says rubs me the wrong way? Babs said once I just don't like men, period. She always oversimplifies.
    Angela enjoyed a perfectly normal heterosexual appetite for the male of the species. That was often as far as it went. She would certainly enjoy a tumble with a good-looking guy, but nothing long-term had ever come out of her relationships. She even hated that word "relationships." It was so sixties.
    Her adolescent Mexican junket notwithstanding, Angela Finney was not at all a child of the seventh decade. She recalled again how Todd Martin often said the only reason she got on as well with him as she did was that he was totally gay, and she therefore did not have to come to terms with him as a Man-capitalization hers. He just occupied a Todd-shaped space in her life that was warm and comforting, in no way sexual.
    Maybe Babs is right after all. What was it Jules Feiffer said somewhere, about men confusing liking pussy with liking women? Maybe I am the flip side of that. Maybe I just like schlongs, but not the bozos they come attached to.
    Dammit, Doug's talking again.
    "… could have made him do it. It's pretty much the way Malcolm died, you know?"
    Malcolm. Sanderson. Yes. Got his head blown off in Nam. He's talking about Paul Sanderson's suicide. "Certainly doesn't seem like the Doc Sanderson I remember. What do you make of this catalog business? Or is that just Ed Wheeler talking around the mouth of a whiskey bottle, as usual?"
    "Now, that's not fair, Angie. You haven't seen Ed in- what? Twelve years? He's been on the wagon most of that time. He'd dried out pretty good last time we all got together."
    Angela snorted. I saw him fall off the edge of his desk once too often in school to buy that one at face value.
    But that was not the issue here. "Then you accept his story. Paul Sanderson went to Ed's house specifically because he knew he'd find exactly the instrument he needed to reenact his son's death. And he used it. But first he pulled out some catalog and placed it on the desk in front of him."
    Doug coughed. He took another swallow of bourbon. "You could make almost anything sound strange if you talked it out that way. And, anyway, suicide is strange to begin with. I mean, Doc must've been pushing eighty. If he was fed up with life, he could've just sat around and waited it out. You know he was very Catholic."
    "So?"
    "So Catholics say suicide is a straight ticket to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Just vrooml" He made a sharp downward arc with his free hand. Booze clouded his depth perception. His hand hit the top of the bar with a loud thwack. He yelped. A funny little puppy-dog sound that made Angela smile.
    Doug sucked his offended little finger and talked around it. "Why would he kill himself, then? Unless he felt like he was in hell already." / can sympathize with that!
    "What makes you say that?"
    "Oh, shit, I don't know. It's just-I mean-I liked Sam Dennison. I really did. How could he have done this awful thing unless everything's gone to hell?"
    "I'll admit an attempted murder and a suicide within three days is a bit much, but there's no reason to invoke the devil just yet, is there?" Angela was uncomfortable talking about such things. There was a strong, black memory lurking behind her. In junior high school she'd had the barest brush with the occult. Three of her friends invited her over to one of their homes on Halloween. They'd found, they said, the best gag for Halloween ever. When she arrived they told her they were going to hold a black mass. She didn't know what that was. They told her they were going to conjure up the devil himself. Or at least some minor demon.
    The very concept shocked and horrified her. Angela walked out without looking back. The next day none of them wanted to talk about it at all. Her best friend, Ticky Andrews, actually went into a screaming fit when Angela tried to push the point. A week later Jimmy Dolan, leader of their little group, tried to hang himself. He botched the job. Oxygen starvation to his brain put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. When he finally died of cancer three years ago, Angela took the news as almost a relief. Betty Hamilton, another member of the group, vanished from Fairharbour after high school. Ticky was married to Ed Wheeler, thirty years her senior.
    All in ally Angela thought, they've probably each met with a "fate worse than death."
    "I'm not invoking the devil," Doug said. He finished his drink and dumped the remains of his ice into a handkerchief to hold against his injured finger. "I just don't like the way everything is going. Look at the mess this place was in when we got home, too!"
    "Oh, then you didn't contribute to that? I wondered."
    "No, it was Dougie. Honest to God, Angie, I sometimes wonder why I gave that kid my name. He's got none of my genes."
    Angela's eyes flashed. "No Finney ever turned out like that, Mend." Her tone was ice.
    Doug reddened. "Oh, I didn't mean- Hey, listen."
    There was a sound of tires on gravel. A brake squeaked. A few seconds later the doorbell rang. Angela went to answer it, which was quicker than Doug coming round from behind the bar. Anyway, it was probably Rod. The thought made her pulse quicken.
    The door opened on the most handsome young man Angela had ever seen. Even more handsome than she remembered. His uniform was immaculate. His face was scrubbed and smooth. He was only twenty-four, but there was a dusting of white at his temples. Very distinguished, Angela thought.
    "I'll be damned," Rod said. He was startled for the space of a heartbeat by the vision that greeted him. 'Aunt Angela! Is that you?’
    She punched him in the bicep. "I told you to drop that Aunt' crap five years ago, soldier. It makes me feel a hundred years old."
    Rod stepped forward to hug her hello. His muscles were hard as rock under his jacket. "Never a hundred," he said in her right ear. "Hardly twenty-one, surely."
    She laughed. "Still the right words for the right occasion. Do you have bags? Your dad's in the den."
    "Just this." He held up a small overnight bag. "We travel light in this man's army." He stepped past Angela to meet Doug, still nursing his hand as he came into the hall. Angela watched the cab pull away. She felt a sudden strange churning in the pit of her stomach. Something about what Doug had been saying. Something about the craziness of the situation.
    "I thought you'd be driving," Doug was saying.
    "I was going to," Rod replied, "but my best buddy decided to get laid tonight instead of lending me his car. So I hitched a ride with some guys flying into Sikorsky, and here I am."
    "You took a cab all the way from Bridgeport? Why didn't you call? I could have-"
    Rod held up a hand. "I dealt with it efficiently, Dad. You always told me to deal with things efficiently, didn't you?" Doug winced. It was a tug on an old barb. Not one that Rod would ever let loose.
    "And speaking of efficiency," said the younger Greeley, "you ought to check your mailbox more often." He pulled a bundle of envelopes from inside his jacket. As he handed them to Doug, the thick elastic band circling them snapped. They exploded from his hands like a deck of cards.
    Angela bent automatically to pick them up. She hardly paid any attention to the miscellaneous bills and brochures. The only thing that caught her eye, briefly, was a small catalog with a dark red cover.
    
    
Chapter Eight 
1
    
    "All right, I've got good news and bad news."
    Sam Dennison blanched. He looked up at his lawyers’ florid face and wondered again why they were friends. "I've got zero threshold for your humour, Phil."
    Philip Marsdon shrugged. "Okay. Have it your way."
    They were in a small holding cell at the back of the Fairharbour Police Station. It had been Sam's home away from home for three interminable days. Marsdon, Sam felt, was entitled to be the bearer of only good news.
    "The good news," Marsdon said, "is that they've tested the skin they found under the Greeley woman's fingernails, and it doesn't match yours."
    "I could have told you that."
    "Ah, yes. But now the miracle of forensic medicine has told us that, and those boys with their test tubes and microscopes are much more trustworthy than murder suspects. And you're still that, which is the bad news."
    "Then I'm still stuck in Happy Hollow here?"
    "Not at all. On the strength of that discovery I roused Judge Richard Shoemaker from his golf game and forced him to reconsider his decision to deny you bail. You know, you really shouldn't have clonked a gal he used to have the hots for."
    Sam was on his feet in a flash. "I sometimes do not know why the fuck I put up with you, you know? You're such a tactless ass."
    Marsdon chuckled. "Sticks and stones, Sammy. Anyway, that's why I'm not in criminal law. That's why you'll need another legal eagle to defend you from the grinding wheels of justice. But at least I got your bail set."
    "How much?"
    Marsdon coughed. "A hundred fifty thou. And before you tell me you haven't got that kind of money, I know. But I found you a nice friendly bail bondsman and got the money. By the way, you owe me a blow job."
    "Oh, Christ, can't you be serious?"
    Marsdon shrugged again. "Okay. I'll ask Jo-Jo." It was what he always called Joanne. The words painted an image of painful clarity in Sam Dennison's mind. Rage surged through him. His left fist came up so fast the lawyer had no chance to dodge. Marsdon's head bounced between Sam's big hand and the wall of the cell. He fell to the floor in a sudden lump.
    
    "Sonofabitch." He kicked out. Sam stepped aside quickly, avoiding his foot. "Sonofabitch," Marsdon repeated. "You cocksucking sohofabitch. This is the fucking thanks I get!"
    Sam was breathing very hard. The skin of his face felt tight and flushed. He forced himself to focus his eyes. The angry redness retreated until it coloured only the fringes of his world. He reached out a hand and pulled Philip Marsdon to his feet.
    "Language, Counsellor." He made dusting motions across the seat of Marsdon's trousers. "And don't talk like that about my wife. Ever again."
    "Jesus Fucking Christ. What's got into you?"
    Sam laughed. It was a cold, bitter noise. "Oh, nothing much. Been accused of attempted murder. Wife had a nervous breakdown. Same old shit. What's new with you?"
    Marsdon straightened his tie. He reached for his jacket and briefcase, both on the small bunk. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Point taken. Put me up for the Nobel Prize in Ass-holiness. But for fuck's sake, tone it down, will ya? You act like this in front of the boys in blue and they'll strap you into the electric chair without bothering with shit like a trial."
    Sam nodded. "Advice taken. When can I go home?"
    "As soon as you like. Let me call the fuzz."
    Six minutes later Sam Dennison strolled out onto Mill Road, into the cool night air. He did not feel like a free man. Philip Marsdon was quick to remind him he wasn't one.
    "Look, boyo, there are a few things you need to remember.
    "Number one, keep that fucking temper in check. You may have been able to hide it from wifey, but I've known you since the before time. I know some of your private demons by their first names.
    "Number two, these country bumpkin Keystoners probably busted every regulation in the book throwing you in the slammer like that, but that's not my worry. Get yourself a smart criminal lawyer and he may just roll your ass out of that sling on a technicality. Remember that."
    "I don't want a technicality," Sam said. He was staring up at the crystal-clear sky. "I didn't do anything to Babs Greeley. I bounced Dougie off the wall a couple of times, I think. I don't really remember. But I didn't hurt his mother. She's a sweet lady. I couldn't have."
    
    "No? Like you couldn't have almost ripped the arms off that punk in Central Park? Don't shit me, boyo. I was there."
    Sam turned to meet Marsdon's gaze. The lawyer was shorter than him by eight inches. Marsdon was still standing on the last riser of the police station steps. His eyes were level with Sam's. Sam felt colour rising in his cheeks. "That was-well, that was different."
    "Maybe. But you have a history of uncommon violence, jerk off. You've pushed in more than a few faces in your time. Not since you were twenty-five, I know. Again, I was there. But if these bozos check-and they will-they'll find out. So you better pray someone else crawls out of your bedroom chimney and says 'I done it,' or you better pray for that technicality. Your sterling character ain't gonna be worth squat in this town. Not now."
    Sam felt his eyes starting to burn. Everything Marsdon said was true. Of course it was. But he'd been so careful. He'd been such a good boy!
    He was trembling. Marsdon laid a hand on his shoulder. "C'mon. Let's get you home to joyful Jo-Jo. She's probably horn… Probably real keen to see your ugly mug again."
    Sam followed Marsdon to the lime green Jaguar X-KE parked behind the station. It was difficult for Sam to fit his long frame into the low-slung sports car, but he managed. The engine growled softly. Marsdon headed them back through town toward Grainge.
    Thirteen minutes later they pulled into the drive of Wembledge Manor. Sam was surprised to find it looked the same as when he left. Hadn't it been a few centuries? Shouldn't there be funereal banners or some such outward signs of the horror that lay within?
    The car stopped. He climbed out in grim silence. Behind him the driver's side door thunked as Marsdon joined him on the gravel between the driveway and the porch.
    The front door of the house opened.
    Joanne flew out.
    Sam's heart shrank. She was pale. Her eyes were dark shadows, but her smile was brilliant and very, very real. She threw her arms around Sam's neck. She sought out his lips with hers.
    
    "Oh, baby! I am so glad to see you!"
    Sam hugged her as tightly as he could. She felt half the size he remembered. His long arms never had any trouble surrounding his wife's slender form, but now he felt like he was hugging bones. "You been taking care of yourself? The baby-"
    "-is just fine, doctor. And so am I. Now that you're home. Oh, Sam!" She hugged him again, burying her face in his chest. Sam looked over her head to see her sister Nancy in the doorway. Nancy waved, a half hearted gesture.
    Sam liked Nancy. Her coolness disturbed him, even though he could easily guess its source. She was nine years older than Joanne. Twice divorced. World-weary. She was a strong woman, physically strong, but she always looked older than her years. She was the only relative close enough geographically to be called to care for Joanne.
    "Hello, Sammy," she said as they all stepped into the house at last. "On the stove I've got hot water. In the cupboard there's tea, coffee, hot cocoa. Pick."
    "Coffee," Sam said. "No. Cocoa. With lots of whipped cream."
    Joanne laughed. "My husband the sensualist. You are all right."
    Sam slowed his pace as they neared the kitchen. Nancy and Marsdon entered several steps ahead of Sam and Joanne. Sam stopped altogether. He turned Joanne to face him. "You know what's done all this, don't you? You understand what's really behind this insanity."
    Joanne nodded. "The Catalog. I know. But, Sam, that's the wonderful thing. It hasn't come in the time you were-away."
    Somehow the words did not form into intelligible sounds for a moment. He swayed a little. Joanne put a steadying hand to his arm. He heard his own voice from a long way off. "It hasn't-"
    "Not in three days, Sam! There hasn't been a Catalog in three days!"
    
2
    
    "Don't worry about it, baby. It happens to everyone. I'm just glad to have you home, safe and sound."
    Sam ran his long fingers through Joanne's hair. He smiled into the darkness of the bedroom. "You've been reading your women's magazines again. 'How to Console the Husband Who Can't Get It Up.' "
    Joanne laughed, a husky sound in the warmth of the night. "You're behind the times, son. More like 'How to Trade in That Old Has-been for a Stud Who Can Make It Every Time.'" She kissed his chest. "In case you hadn't noticed, there's more to my love for you than whether or not your weenie snaps to attention on command."
    He pulled her close. Her body was a long warmth against his. He ran a hand down her arm, across the small of her back, over her fanny. Smooth, until the goose pimples rose at his touch. He cupped her right cheek and squeezed. "I guess I could say I've got a lot on my mind…?"
    "Oh, how weak," said Joanne in her very best mock disdain. "Blaming it all on being wrongfully accused of attempted murder. Couldn't you say you were tired or some* thing?" Her left index finger was tracing circles in his chest hairs. Spiralling lower.
    "How about too much to drink?"
    Joanne made loud sniffing sounds near his mouth. "Nope. Evidence not available. You could say you've been bonking the buxom blond from the typing pool and you're all shagged out"
    "Mm. No good, though. Haven't been to work in a week."
    "Buxom lady cop at the station? A torrid tryst through the bars?"
    "Nope."
    "Sam-" Her voice was suddenly scarcely more than a whisper. He could read the change of mood clearly in that single word. She was going to be serious now. "If it's still the Catalog-" She felt him tense immediately and wanted to bite her tongue off. "Baby, I'm sorry. I-"
    "No. No, it's okay. I've had a lot of time to think about it. I'm still not sure what to make of it all. I just know the damned thing is the centre of all this madness. I don't know how or why. I just know."
    
    "You know, Dougie Greeley came over here looking for one of them. Last week, I guess. The day you went looking for paint for your studio." She did not stop describing circles with her fingertip. The pleasant tickle was moving across his abdomen. "I guess he's the reason there was that one day we skipped getting one. He stole it."
    "Looks that way. I wonder why they've stopped now?"
    Joanne shrugged her free shoulder. She shifted closer to Sam. Her left leg was draped across both of his. He stroked her thigh. It felt so long. So smooth and warm.
    She extended her leg. He moved his hand along to her ankle, to her foot, then back along the length again. The Catalog was moving farther and farther from the focus of his thoughts.
    Joanne shifted her leg to let her fingers continue their southward odyssey. Sam relaxed a little. He buried his face in the fragrance of her hair. Infinity filled with the smell and the feel of her.
    Fond recollection stirred. This was so like their very first night together. Almost. He did not fail to perform then. Joanne was enough to block out everything else. Her raspy voice, low and enticing. The sweet scents of her hair, her body. Not perfume. Just well-scrubbed clean. She wore little makeup, almost never wore scents. Her hair always fell in perfectly natural curves. Her big, dark eyes needed no mascara.
    He let his mind drift freely through the early days. It was just that natural beauty which first caught Sam's eye. She'd seemed so perfect, so wholesome, it took him three weeks to summon the nerve to approach her in the midst of all the other secretaries.
    A lot like diving after a goldfish in a pool filled with piranha, that. If Joanne said no to his bid for a dinner date, it would be all over the building in a half hour. He was only too aware of the typing pool's description of him. He admitted that he did look a little like an orange-haired gorilla.
    But the age of miracles had not passed. Joanne said yes. Eight years ago. Sometimes it seemed like yesterday. Sometimes it seemed like a lifetime. In many ways it was a lifetime. Sam had not had what he'd call a happy life before Joanne. Successful, to be sure. But always one intangible something short of the happiness he yearned after.
    He wasn't completely surprised when that intangible something turned out to be shaped like Joanne McAllister.
    For their first dinner he took her to the Lion's Head, off Sheridan Square. It was a short walk from his West Village digs, and within his meagre budget. At least after he scrimped on his usual expenditures for a week. A warm, cosy place. Presided over by a big black cat reputed to be the real owner. Sam ate there only infrequently. When he did, he always enjoyed the English pub atmosphere.
    The sensations of that first evening were as clear in his mind, there in the big old house in Connecticut, as they would have been if they had happened only the night before. He remembered how Joanne was a little on the reserved side at first. Almost shy.
    She opened up more and more as the evening progressed. He learned of her mother, her three sisters, her father. He learned of her mostly happy childhood. There was, that night, only the hint of the problems she'd known. The nervous fits, the groundless childhood terrors.
    She glossed over that part. Whatever her problems might have been she was convinced they were completely internal in origin. Later he understood that she had no intention of creating in Sam Dennison's mind any wrong image of her home life. He learned that it was very important to her that he love her mother and father and sisters as much as she did.
    They closed the Lion's Head. Strolling along Christopher Street, Joanne linked arms with Sam without a second thought. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to her. She let her head drop against his shoulder.
    It was three weeks before Christmas. Greenwich Village was an elfin glade of bright lights and festive windows. Couples of every conceivable combination passed them as they walked. Joanne did not question when their steps brought them to the battered wrought-iron railing outside Sam's garden apartment.
    Nothing was spoken. They went in. He lit the candle in the old wine bottle by the door. He took her coat. She helped him out of his. They stood for a long, long moment. Not moving. Hardly breathing.
    She reached up to clasp her hands behind his neck. She drew his big, boyish face toward hers. Their first kiss. The first of many that evening. His hands were slow and electric on her body.
    In the morning he brought her breakfast in bed and asked her to marry him. She said she needed time to think about it. She waited until she'd eaten her cornflakes and had drunk a second cup of coffee before she said yes.
    "Penny for your thoughts?"
    Sam returned to the present. He squeezed her bottom again.
    "Ah," she said. He felt the shape of her smile, where her head rested against his chest. "Nice thoughts."
    Her scribing index finger could go no farther. She flattened her hand and stroked. She kissed his chest again. She nipped his left nipple with her teeth. She drew a long line from nipple to navel with her tongue. She kissed him all around his belly. Along the curve of his pelvic bone.
    Her fingers stroked. Her lips were magic. The tensions melted away. Sam Dennison felt his passions stirring. He reached down to encircle her waist with his big hands. He lifted her into the air. She stroked his bulging biceps with the tips of her fingers. She trailed her hair across his face.
    He held her like that for a long moment. Conscious of her as a darkness in the darkness above him. Sensing her with the tips of every hair on his body. Then he shifted his grip ever so slightly. He brought her down again. Slowly. So slowly.
    She opened herself to him. She impaled herself with a long, soft sound. Like a cat's purr. Her calves gripped his hips. She began to rock. Back and forth. Back and forth.
    He let go of her waist. He let his hands wander over her smooth flesh. She curved down and forward until she covered him. Her lips found his mouth again.
    Neither of them was thinking anything at all about the Catalog.
    
3
    
    Nancy McAllister tried to concentrate on her book. Through the wall behind her she could hear dim sounds, and she knew what they must be. Twice married, she knew all the sounds of sex. She was pleased that, in Joanne's case, they were so clearly the sounds of love.
    She was also embarrassed to be overhearing.
    She considered going down to the kitchen for some tea. There was a problem getting from where she lay to the ground floor. The old house sometimes seemed one giant creaking floorboard. The last thing she wanted was to disturb Sam and Joanne. Or give the impression she was sneaking about in order to listen. She tried to put every shard of her concentration into her book.
    It was hopeless. She knew full well why. Too long without a man. Two years since her divorce. She thought the anger, the frustration over the way Ned treated her would be enough to sublimate her sexuality into the next century. She was wrong. The sounds through the wall and the feelings they provoked in her body told her she was very, very wrong.
    Of course that served to make her angry at Ned all over again. The pattern of her anger was well established. The familiar train of memories rolled by. She thought again of how it all seemed so good when they started out together.
    She was nearly twelve years older than him, but that did not seem to matter. She still had her figure. She still had her love of life. There were no children from her previous marriage. She felt completely free to start a new life with a man who loved her as much as she loved him.
    Three days before their second anniversary Ned went off for a weekend in the Bahamas with his secretary. Nancy was shattered. She couldn't believe it. She was a rational, intelligent woman of late twentieth century America.
    To lose a young husband to Miss Clairol and a double-D cup! It was too trite! Almost too much to bear.
    After two long years, the wound was as fresh as ever. She still wondered if she could really do some of the things she imagined if she ever ran into the happy couple again. The divorce had been very nasty, very messy. She'd taken Ned for every cent he owned, but it was not enough. There were still deep scars that cried out for vengeance. Things she let creep out of the back corners of her mind late at night when she was too tired to stop them… too tired to give a damn about what she might later think of herself for letting such nastiness get out.
    She wondered sometimes about that terrible, sadistic twist in her imagination. Wondered if it might be some manifestation of that same cruel streak that gave Joanne those awful nervous fits as a child. Always seeing monsters in the shadows.
    Nancy McAllister made her own shadows, her own monsters.
    Of all the people she'd known, it was Sam who noticed. Not her sisters. Not her mother. Sam Dennison. She felt a pleasant warmth growing within her, pushing back the black thought of Ned. She liked Sam a lot. But before that one time, she'd never given him credit for the kind of sensitivity that would let him peer into her hidden mind like that.
    More memories. Three months after the divorce. Nancy just back from a whirlwind world tour. An insane thing, really. She wanted to get away. To fill her mind, her senses with something other than thoughts of the boiling in oil of Edward Olsen and his playmate. Sam and Joanne invited her to stay in their little place in Brooklyn Heights while she looked for an apartment of her own; she was not going back to the place she'd shared with Ned.
    One night, very late, Sam came into the living room. He found her staring into the darkness beyond the tall windows. He came over and sat beside her without a word. It was several minutes before Nancy really became aware of his presence there.
    Then, when she turned to him, he placed a hand on hers. "I think I can guess what you're feeling," he said. His face looked very young in the moonlight. Almost a child's face. There seemed no trace of the laugh lines around his eyes. "I recognize the look I've been seeing in your eyes. I know you've got pain. I know you've got anger. The best thing you can do is try to let them ooze out. Like they were some kind of oil in your skin or something." His voice sounded younger, too. So very much like a child's. "Don't let 'em ail out at once. But don't keep 'em bottled up inside, either."
    He squeezed her hand once, and left. In the morning he said nothing about it. For a long while Nancy was half convinced it was a dream.
    It wasn't. Her thoughts and attitudes toward Sam were changed irrevocably from that moment.
    Now, thinking of the life Sam and Joanne were making for themselves, Nancy cherished that small warmth inside her, shielded from the dark things. She liked the way she felt about Sam. She loved the picture of Sam and Joanne as a couple. Soon to be a full-fledged family.
    Despite her earlier distancing, when Sam arrived home from the county lockup, there was absolutely no doubt in Nancy's mind that this business with the Greeley woman was some ghastly mistake. It must be.
    Although she did not much care for the images that conjured, either. If it was not Sam who attacked Babs Greeley, it was someone else. Someone else who was in this house, in their bedroom. With Joanne unconscious on the bed. All alone.
    Nancy put her book to one side and swung her legs off the edge of the bed. Her feet reached easily to the floor, even from the high mattress. She inclined her head, listening. The sounds of love in the next room had stopped. Nancy decided to risk crossing her bedroom. Her robe hung on a brass hook on the back of the door. She took it down and slipped it over her short nightie.
    It was a soft, frilly thing. She liked such clothing. It denied the masculine feeling she sometimes got from her athletic figure. She favoured soft, feminine things as a reminder of her gender. Not for herself; for the rest of the world.
    She made her way to the backstairs and down to the mud room. All the lamps were out in the house. The moon was bright. Pools of silvery light spotted the stairs and floor. She did not turn on the mud room light as she crossed to the kitchen. At the kitchen door she paused. She sniffed.
    There was a strange smell in the air. Stale. Musty. A smell of age and damp. She flicked on the kitchen light and looked about. There was no sign of anything in the big, bright room that might be the source of the unpleasant odour.
    She felt a chill against the back of her legs, bare below the hem of her robe. She turned.
    
    The basement door was open.
    It was in a little alcove to the right of the kitchen-mud room door. A small window threw light against its rusty-orange surface. Through the door she saw the ceiling sloping quickly down toward the flagstone-walled cellar. The ceiling was the underside of the backstairs.
    The basement door was open when Nancy arrived to look after Joanne. The policewoman who met her explained the whole house had been searched for any sign of a possible intruder. They took Sam away as suspect number one, but that did not stop them from doing a thorough job. Since they'd found the basement door open, they left it that way.
    Nancy was sure she'd closed it. Now it was open again.
    It was possible either Sam or Joanne opened it. Or Philip Marsdon. Nancy could not recall anytime when any of them went into the mud room. From the time Sam came home until Marsdon left, they'd all been in the kitchen. Sam, Joanne, and Nancy went up to bed at the same time.
    She shivered. She did not hold much truck with the supernatural, but there was something in houses as old as this that always made her uneasy. She stepped to the basement door. She was about to close it when something caught her eyes.
    Between the door and the jamb was a space of about an inch. A sliver of moonlight was shining through. It cut across the top steps of the basement stairs like a silver laser beam. Cold and very hard edged. It was illuminating something tucked into a corner of the steps. Where there was a gap in the ancient flagstone.
    Nancy groped for the basement light Sam had had installed at the top of the steps. She found it, flicked it on. In the warm yellow light she saw what was jammed into that little space.
    
4
    
    News of Paul Sanderson's suicide came with the morning paper. Sam and Joanne could not believe it. Not that sweet, kindly old man! And such an awful, gut-twisting way to do it!
    "He must've been carrying a lot more grief around than anyone guessed," Sam said. Babs once told Joanne about the sad death of Malcolm Sanderson. Joanne repeated the story to Sam. "I guess that would be the kind of thing that could build up inside over the years. And if there might have been some way he blamed himself-"
    Joanne set a toasted bagel with cream cheese on a small plate before Sam. He took a few bites without thinking. She turned back to the stove to pour herself a strong cup of Indian tea. The cooking aromas filled the kitchen.
    Outside the big white-curtained windows the sky was azure brilliance. Along the horizon white clouds drifted like the sails of those tall ships Sam and Joanne expected to find in Fairharbour. Murder and gory suicide did not seem appropriate topics for such a day.
    "What could he have felt guilty about?" Joanne wondered aloud. "Babs said his son volunteered. Said Sanderson was proud to see him go. Proud to see him serving his country like that."
    "I'm just making guessing noises." Sam held up the paper. He studied the picture of Paul Sanderson on the front page. He judged it to be easily thirty years old. The white hair showed as only a suggestion of salt and pepper. The familiar bushy brows were black caterpillars hunched over the frames of Sanderson's glasses. Only the big, watery eyes seemed unchanged.
    There were no highlights in the eyes. Sam remembered hearing some newspapers had a policy of blacking out the reflections in the eyes of photos of dead people. It was hard to tell if that was the case here.
    Details of the death were sketchy. The late night visit to Ed and Ticky Wheeler. The souvenir hand grenade. Ed Wheeler was to be brought up on some minor, mostly symbolic charge for possession of that deadly weapon. Sam realized it would be hard to make anything solid stick after all these years. The Fairharbour Police were well aware of the existence of the thing. Ed made no secret of it. They politely looked the other way as long as it sat on his desk as a paperweight.
    Now that its purpose had been fulfilled, now that it had finally killed someone, it could no longer be ignored.
    Sam tried to imagine what the last moments of Paul Sanderson's life must have been like. In college Sam drilled with the ROTC. He learned a little something about hand grenades and the other instruments of war. The notion of forcing that fist-sized iron pineapple into your mouth, then pulling the pin-!
    According to Ed Wheeler, there was a substantial delay on the fuse. Fifteen seconds. Sam closed his eyes. He counted in his head. One Mississippi-two Mississippi-
    It was a lifetime!
    The incredible determination required to sit there with your jaw stretched out taut by that lump of metal. To sit there, waiting patiently. To not make a last-second grab for it. Try to pull it out. Throw it away.
    Judging from Ed Wheeler's account, Sanderson was sitting with his hands folded in his lap, his fingers intertwined. Sitting upright and straight, as if he were sitting in church.
    Gone from the collarbones up.
    Sam shuddered. Joanne was standing behind him, leaning against his back. She put a hand on his shoulder. "Does it say-anything else? Anything about a suicide note or anything?"
    She stepped around him to sit at the nearest chair. She angled her head to scan the lines of type beneath Sanderson's picture. She found it somehow impossible to connect the words with the picture, the picture with the man.
    Sam skimmed over the rest of the article, turning to page three for the final paragraphs. "No. No. He was just sitting there in Wheeler's office. Oh, here's something. They think he was reading a-"
    It was as if a giant hand closed around his chest and squeezed.
    "Sam?"
    "A catalog." He forced it out. He felt the half-eaten bagel come up against the back of his throat. "It says he was reading a catalog."
    Joanne's teacup clattered against its saucer. Hot tea splashed across the back of her hand and wrist. She yelped in pain.
    Sam did not look up. His eyes were fixed on the word "catalog." Small and black in smudgy newspaper print.
    "You don't suppose-?" Joanne could not finish the thought.
    Sam tried to concentrate. Was it possible? Of course. It was only too possible. He'd left the Catalog in the Greeley front hall. That was where he found Sanderson. Sanderson looked like death for just a moment, before Sam spoke to him. If he'd picked up the Catalog-if he'd looked into it-
    But that didn't make any sense. The images in the Catalog were cut from Sam Dennison's private nightmares. Hideous though they might be, they couldn't possibly drive another man to suicide. It could only be a crazy coincidence. It had to be.
    Unless…
    Unless. Unless.
    A concept was forming in Sam's fevered brain. He recognized it instantly as a ridiculous concept. Ludicrous. Insane. He looked up from the paper. The tendons stood out in his long neck, the effort was so great to lift his eyes from that little black word.
    "You said-you said Dougie Greeley came looking for the Catalog. Last week sometime. What exactly did he say?"
    Joanne's brows knitted. "I don't remember the exact words. Just that his mom said he might find something 'interesting' in it. Why?"
    Sam shook his head. He wasn't ready to answer any questions just yet. There were still a few left he needed to ask first. "Babs. Babs was the first one to look at it. What did she say about it? Do you remember?"
    Joanne tried to think back. It was only-what? Ten days ago? Two weeks? Time made no sense anymore. She closed her eyes. She pictured the kitchen as it was then. Babs Greeley sitting in the same chair Joanne now occupied. The Catalog open on the table in front of her.
    Again, she could not remember the exact words. They'd not seemed important then. "Something like, 'Where on earth did you find this thing? Surely you've never ordered from these people?' " Unconsciously she imitated Babs's soft, breathless tones. "She looked a hundred years older. I remember that."
    A hundred years older. The image was crystal clear in her mind's eye. The way the flesh drooped on Babs Greeley's round face. The way her bones became all angles and jutting points. The way she sagged!
    "Sam-baby, what does it mean? What are you thinking?"
    "I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Babs looked at the Catalog and came over here a week later and had some kind of seizure. You got only the briefest glimpse of it and had a nervous breakdown. Maybe Dougie stole one from our mailbox last Monday morning. Maybe Paul Sanderson looked at it after I found it in the Greeley front hall. And Paul Sanderson committed suicide last night."
    "Baby-" Joanne realized she did not want to ask the next question. She was afraid to ask it. Afraid of what Sam might say. She forced the words out. "Baby-what's in there? What's in the Catalog?"
    He let out a long, slow breath. "Torture. Instruments of torture." His voice was rock steady, ice cold. Emotionless. His eyes were fixed, unmoving. A doll's eyes. "And people being tortured. Broken bodies. Terrible pain. A horrible creature with a face like a skull. And yet-and yet it was my face, too. And-and-"
    Joanne put out her hand to touch his. He jerked away as if stung.
    "They were my parents," he finished, all in a rush. "The people being tortured. They were my mother and father."
    "But that's-that can't be!'
    Sam's eyes focused. He looked at Joanne for a long time, as if memorizing her features. As if seeing her for the first time. "Yes. It can't be. It can't possibly be. Unless-" He couldn't say it. It was too crazy. Joanne would be frightened. She'd know he'd finally gone right off his rocker…
    … or she'd laugh. He didn't know which would be worse.
    Then she did something wonderful. Something that made Sam love her more than ever. More than he thought he ever could.
    She finished for him. "Unless everybody who looks into the Catalog sees something different. Unless the Catalog changes for each person who looks at it."
    Sam was on his feet at once. "Dougie. I've got to talk to Dougie Greeley."
    Joanne rose to embrace him. To hold him. This time he did not pull away. "No. Baby, you can't."
    "I've got to. He's the only way that Catalog could have gotten into the Greeley house. He must have stolen it. He must have looked at it."
    Joanne was squeezing him as tightly as she could. Her face was buried in his shirtfront. "M-Maybe he didn't. Maybe he didn't get the chance."
    "He had it for days. For days. He must have looked at it. Right away he'd have looked at it. You know he would. Why would he have stolen the damned thing if he wasn't going to look at it?" He disentangled himself from her embrace, gently. "I'm going over there. Now."
    A steel clamp was tightening at the base of Joanne's skull. She recognized the old warning sign. She was right on the edge. She could feel it. Everything was going fuzzy and vague around her. Her mind wanted to drift. To think about other things. Any other things.
    She held on. Because Sam needed her. Sam needed her more than she needed to turn inside out, to hide from the madness. "I'll come with you."
    "No. I-"
    "Yes. No argument. I'm coming with you. You can't go over to that house alone. You can't. Not if we're right. Not after all that's happened. I'm coming with you." There was iron in her voice.
    Sam kissed her. "All right. Leave a note for Nancy."
    There was an antique tin chalkboard hanging over the radiator by the foot of the backstairs. Joanne scribbled a quick message to her sister.
    Nancy McAllister would never read it. At that moment she was sitting cross-legged on the bed in her room. One of the Catalogs was gripped in both her hands, open. The other lay in the nightstand by the bed. There was blood on the pages of the Catalog. It trickled from her right nostril.
    The haemorrhage had smashed through her brain, smashed through everything that could be considered Nancy McAllister. It left a vacant shell, alive but no longer truly human.
    It hit her thirty seconds after, she started flipping through the cold, white pages of the Catalog.
    
    
Chapter Nine 
1
    
    Rod Greeley was breathing hard as he rounded the turn onto Wolf Pit Road. The run through Fairharbour had been interesting. In the three years since he had last come home little had changed. And yet, of course, everything had changed.
    How typical of the human brain, he thought. We freeze everything the way we last saw it. And it's so jarring when the reality doesn't match with the memory.
    He'd found new buildings in the centre of town. Most were designed to blend in with the colonial ambience of the rest. Some were startling anachronisms. It was unlikely that Fairhaibour would move gracefully into the twenty-first century.
    People looked much the same. He was surprised and pleased to see Mary Beth Wilcox still working behind the counter at the Carvel ice cream stand on Washbourne. She had been the great love of his life when they were both seven years old. Seventeen years later she looked as beautiful as ever.
    Rod wondered-not for the first time-why that relationship had not gone in a different direction. He decided, again, that it was not surprising, really. They began as friends; they would end as friends.
    He waved as he ran by. She waved back automatically. Rod was a block past before recognition dawned in her hazel eyes. She bolted round the counter to look after him. By then he was too far away to be called back.
    He preferred not to stop, anyway. He began each day he could with a ten-mile run. The sinews of his legs were like steel. That morning he ran in white shorts and track shoes. The deep cuts of his muscles turned many heads. In a bedroom community like Fairharbour there were few opportunities to see such prime specimens of young manhood on display.
    There was something of his father in Rod, despite what Angela might think. The angular solidity of his frame came from Doug. The smooth, lean line of his muscles. It was as if Doug Greeley's wide, hard frame had become attenuated. Rod looked more like a track star than a football coach. He could see himself in his mother's old pictures of her father.
    He could never think of that dark-eyed man as his grandfather. It was hard, almost impossible to make such an intimate familial connection to a man who died before Rod was born.
    Only weeks before, as it happened. Whenever Rod asked Babs about her father she deflected the question. There was something she did not want to talk about. Something behind her smiling face, her bubbling personality. Rod found it difficult to think of his mother as having secrets, but there was something there.
    The closest he'd ever got to an answer suggested Babs carried some kind of guilt about his death. Rod came away from one truncated conversation with the distinct impression his mother had revealed something to her father, something terrible about herself or Aunt-or Angela. A revelation that killed the old man.
    Just a guess, of course. Rod knew nothing of the relationships between his mother and aunt, and their father. He only knew Angela commented more than once on how much she thought he looked like "Daddy."
    She said it with such a tone in her voice, such a wistful mixture of sadness, of something like sexual longing, it made Rod uncomfortable.
    The first time he'd been eighteen. It might have been his own rampant sexuality that coloured Angela's words, only the memory that maintained them in context, after so many years. At eighteen he'd felt no shortage of female companionship. But Angela Finney at thirty-two was so much more a woman than anyone else he knew, her attentions stirred something in Rod that embarrassed and disgusted him. She was his aunt, after all, protests at the title notwithstanding. And she looked so much like his mother, however more glamorous she might be.
    Still, he was eighteen. There was a great frontier out there, waiting for him to explore it. He felt uncomfortable when he thought of his aunt in any sexual way-the mere thought brought vivid pictures to his mind-but each time the thoughts came it was a little easier.
    Now, as he came down Wolf Pit Road, twenty-four, one year divorced, Rod Greeley found himself thinking about Angela Finney in that strange, uncomfortable way again.
    From the vantage of an additional six years, things looked very different. The concept of incest did not trouble him quite so much as once it had. A sexy woman was a sexy woman, after all. An aunt was just far enough removed to make it less appalling than, say, a sister.
    Not that this was ever likely to turn into anything more than pure-or rather, impure speculation. Even though he was well aware of Angela's eyes tracing the contours of his muscles as he set off on his morning run. It was interesting as speculation. He'd seen Angela in a bikini, and been impressed. She was ten years younger than his mother. That still left her nearly ten years older than him.
    If Carol looked as good at twenty-four as Angela did a decade farther down the line, the marriage might have held better, Rod conceded one of "the Great Dumb Things" of his life was marrying that girl instead of paying for the abortion. If only I hadn't been such a romantic idiot. He was so sure marriage would generate in him the love he did not feel.
    No such luck. Especially after Carol let her natural softness turn to fat, her high voice to shrill.
    Shit, thought Rod Greeley. He increased his pace for the last sprint to the driveway.
    There were people at the end of the drive. A tall, skinny man with a bandage around his head. A small, fine boned woman of dark, almost delicate beauty. Rod slowed, then stopped a few paces from the strangers. "Can I help you?"
    Rod sensed hesitation in the man. Then he thrust out a big, broad hand. "You must be Rod Greeley," he said. "I'm Sam Dennison."
    Rod was pumping the offered hand before the name registered. He jerked his hand back as if Sam's had just become a rattlesnake. "What the fuckV9
    Joanne was between the two men immediately. "Please don't be upset, Sergeant. My husband and I need to talk to your brother. To all of you, really."
    Rod was having trouble assimilating. The morning air was turning the sweat on his back and legs to ice water. He shivered. A little of it was from rage. "What… do… you… want… to… talk… about…?"
    "What happened to your mother," Joanne said. She spoke carefully. Her voice was very calm. She put a hand on Rod's arm so gently he didn't even notice it for a moment. The tips of her fingers were warm against his skin. "And what happened to Paul Sanderson."
    "We think the two incidents may be related," Sam said.
    Rod was still sizing him up. Trying to get a fix on him. The boyish face. The wiry red hair, thinning a little in the front. The mouth looked friendly, quick to smile.
    This is the guy who attacked my mother? Put her in a coma? That didn't seem to fit.
    "Related-?" Rod regained control of his brain, his voice. "How could they be? Did you kill Sanderson?"
    Sam tensed. Rod was impressed with the muscle that corded Sam's bare arms. Rod was a scrapper by birthright, but this lanky older man might well give him a time of it, if they tussled.
    Again Joanne's voice was soothing, calming. He liked the husky quality. Other times when he'd heard a voice like that it made him want to clear his throat. Not now. He looked into her big, dark eyes. He felt better.
    "We're not going to get anywhere," she said, "if we talk like that."
    Rod nodded. "Agreed. Okay, that was out of line." He looked back at Sam's face. There was a lot of pain there. Anger, too, way back behind the sky-blue eyes. "Shall we go inside, before I catch pneumonia?"
    Sam and Joanne followed him up the short Greeley drive to the house. The sun was still below the tops of the maples on the east side of the property. Their shadows turned the porch into a pool of cool darkness. Joanne caught the smell of bacon wafting through the open front door. Rod pulled back the screen door. He motioned for them to precede him. He called out to his father as they entered the front hall.
    
    Doug came out of the den. He froze. He was still wearing his bathrobe. His square face was gray with lack of sleep and three days' stubble. There was a newspaper in his right hand. The paper crackled as his fist tightened. In his left hand was a large tumbler of bourbon. "What-"
    "At ease, Pops."
    Rod stepped between his father and Sam Dennison exactly as Joanne had placed herself between Rod and her husband. Rod could not explain why he was acting as he was. His first reaction was just what he read in his father's face. The desire to pummel Sam Dennison into a mush. Now he moved to act as a protective wall between Doug Greeley and the object of his anger.
    The only reasonable answer was Joanne Dennison. The woman worked a magical, soothing effect. It brought a sudden shock of realization to Rod. Anyone who was married to such as she could not be the monster who attacked Babs Greeley.
    "He wants to talk to us," Rod said. "Just talk. About what happened to Mom. I-think we should hear him out."
    Doug took a long, shuddering breath. His neck was bright flame. But the newspaper crackled again as he relaxed his fist. He sipped his drink. He studied Sam over the rim of the glass. Finally he dropped the newspaper into a big leather chair just inside the door to the den.
    "All right. Angela has coffee brewing in the kitchen. We can talk there." He gestured toward the closer of the two dining room doors. "You know the way, I think."
    The barb was not lost on Sam. He walked arm in arm with Joanne through the peaceful hominess of the Greeley house and tried to attach something of himself to the last few days. He couldn't. They belonged to someone else's life, not his. Not his quiet, idyllic life with Joanne and the baby-to-be in his quiet, idyllic house in quiet, idyllic Fairharbour, Connecticut.
    Sam held his breath as they entered the kitchen. It still showed signs of his mad assault. Much of the damage had been repaired or disguised. Enough remained to make Sam feel even more uncomfortable than he already did.
    The broken wing had been removed from the big table. The shards of pottery and glass were gone. A sheet of plastic was thumb tacked over the lower half of the window above the sink.
    Dougie was in the kitchen. He sat at the table staring sullenly into a half-empty bowl of Sugar Frosted Flakes. His eyes were vacant. He did not seem to notice who entered. He wore jeans torn off just above the knee, and a blue T-shirt. One of his fat knees was discoloured by a nasty bruise. On the front of the shirt was Superman's red-and-yellow S emblem. It looked absurd on Dougie's bulbous form. The lower third of the shield was gone, folded under the overhang of Dougie's pendulous pectoral fat. Around his neck was a dark brown kerchief. The knot was lost under the layers of his chins.
    Dougie's attention did not so much as flicker as Doug Senior introduced Angela to the Dennisons. Her initial reaction was also anger. Again it was Rod who acted as the soothing agent. Angela allowed herself to be calmed. She put a hand on his shoulder. It struck Joanne that Rod's aunt let her fingers trail a little too deliberately across the hard curve of his bicep when the hand was removed after a moment.
    Doug turned to the table. He frowned at Dougie. The boy was a million miles away. Doug grabbed a soft shoulder and shook. Dougie resisted returning to the mundane reality of a kitchen in Connecticut. His eyes turned without his brain behind them. They did not focus until Joanne said, "Hi."
    Then Dougie did a most unusual thing.
    He screamed.
    He screamed as loud and as hard as his voice could manage. He screamed like a man being fed ever so slowly into a blazing furnace. Even after Doug slapped a quick hand across his fat cheeks, he kept on screaming. Even after there was no breath left to make a sound, his face held the scream in a long, silent pantomime. His face was bright crimson. His throat made odd little clicking noises. His eyes were the eyes of a cornered beast.
    At last he collapsed on the kitchen floor. Sam and Joanne stepped back from the grotesque scene. Sam reached out, found Joanne's hand without looking. He squeezed it. She returned the pressure, tightening her grip until she was holding on to Sam as if in fear of being swept away.
    Dougie calmed. His breathing returned to normal in little gulps. His face relaxed. Rod helped his brother to rise. He steered him toward the backstairs. 'I’ll take him," Rod said. "Wait for me, okay?"
    They passed within an arm's length of Sam and Joanne. Dougie paused. His eyes found Joanne's. There was a terrible, haunted look in his young face that made Joanne tremble.
    "I'm sorry," he said. He spoke under his breath. Joanne could barely hear the words.
    "I'm sorry I took the Catalog. I'm sorry I tried to rape you."
    
2
    
    Sam Dennison remembered reading of things like this. Of rooms that became "so cold you could cut it with a knife." Of moments that hung suspended, separated from time and space. Little universes all unto themselves. He always thought that was nothing more than purple prose. He never experienced anything comparable in real life.
    Until now.
    The Greeley kitchen faced into the rising sun. All around them the room was a pool of bright summer light. But Sam could have reached out and caught hold of the air. Torn a piece out of it. Held it, cold and hard in his hand.
    They sat around the kitchen table. Doug Greeley. Rod. Angela. Sam. Joanne. And Dougie. Of course he was not allowed to go up to his room. Not after what he said. He sat on one side of the square table. His breakfast cereal was a lump of sugary mush in the bowl before him. Doug Senior faced him across the table. Sam and Joanne sat to his left, Rod and Angela to his right.
    Dougie stared at his hands, fingers intertwined on the place mat. He prayed for the ground to open. For the linoleum that looked like slate tile to rip open and reveal a bottomless pit beneath. If he thought about it hard enough, he could see the tile tear. See the floor open. Like a great hungry mouth.
    Not for him. For them. For them, with their accusing eyes. Their harsh voices. So loud. So painful. Why couldn't the earth just open up and swallow them? Swallow his mother, too. Swallow Fairharbour. Swallow everyone who might ever look at Dougie Greeley with those accusing eyes. Or speak to him with those hard voices.
    His father was demanding that he speak. That he explain himself. Dougie ignored him. There was a large, brown mole on the second joint of the thumb of his right hand. He stared at it. He pushed every iota of his concentration into that dark brown spot. Until there was nothing anywhere but dark brown. Until the world was no longer accusing and cold and hard.
    "I think this pretty well proves what we came over to talk to you about." Sam Dennison's voice. Go away, Fucker. Go away!
    "What?" Rod. Shut up. Shut up. "You said something about my mother and Doc Sanderson. About what happened to them being connected, related somehow. You think this has something to do with it?"
    "You're not saying Dougie attacked Babs?" Aunt Angela. Be quiet. Just be quiet!
    "If you're trying to blame my son-"
    "No. I'm not. Just settle down a moment, Doug." The Fucker again. Doesn't he ever shut up? "Joanne and I have had-a problem for the past couple of weeks. I think this is part of it, somehow. I don't know how. But Dougie mentioned the Catalog-"
    Dougie looked up. Rod and Angela were looking at Sam. Doug Senior was wiping a short-fingered hand across his face. Joanne was staring at Dougie. There was a terrible, awful look on her face. Utter, utter disgust. As if something foul were being thrust at her. Something obscene and rotten.
    Something like Dougie Greeley.
    What could she think of me now? No chance for the shining knight. The one who was going to rescue her from the Fucker. Joanne's right arm was linked through Sam's left. Their hands were joined. She’s holding him so tightly. So tightly. And staring at me with such disgust!
    He tried to find the right expression, the right form into which he could arrange his features. His face felt like clay. He couldn't find the smile, the right twisting of lip or raising of eyebrow to defuse her look. It came out as a weak little grimace, lopsided.
    
    He reddened. He hid his face in his hands. His heart pounded. His stomach was a sack full of razor blades. His mind filled with blood and death.
    Why can't she just die? Why can't I reach out and grab that long, slender neck and squeeze and squeeze until her eyes bug out and her tongue turns black and the blood gurgles up out of her mouth like a fountain?
    Then she wouldn't look at me like that. Then I could use her again. Any way I liked. Until she became too vile to touch. Then I'll just throw her away. Like garbage. That's what she is anyway. She wouldn't have let me try to rape her if she wasn't garbage. Yes. Yes. I can kill her and use her all up and throw her away. Kill her. Kill her!
    Again he felt the blood surge into his penis at the thought. His mind flamed with the beautiful imagery. His emotions surged and peaked. Kill her and use her and throw her away. Kill her and use her and throw her away. Kill her and use her-
    Something hit him in the side of his head. He careened sideways. He crashed into the kitchen's butcher-block centerpiece. Noise exploded around him. Shouting. Pain. Something dug into his side. Hard. More noise. He blinked.
    Through hot tears he saw Rod pulling Doug Senior away. Doug was kicking out at Dougie. Kicking with all his force. Sam Dennison joined to help Rod restrain his father. Dougie struggled onto his knees. His mouth was full of vomit. He parted his lips and let it splash out onto the kitchen floor.
    Joanne Dennison was slumped in her chair. She was holding her throat. Angela was steadying her.
    OK shit. I did it. I really did it'
    He'd actually reached out with his fat-fingered hands. Actually found Joanne's neck. And-and-
    He puked again. The spew gushed out of him in a long, yellow white torrent. He felt it rise up his throat, strike the top of his mouth. It pushed out past his teeth. He watched it spreading over the fake slate tiles. He felt disconnected from his body, from the racking spasms of the vomiting. He felt a thousand light-years away. All curled up in a safe little ball.
    A warm, soft place that was full of nice things. That never had anything to do with Catalogs. He drew the warmth closer around him. He pushed away all thoughts of Joanne Dennison, or his mother, Sam, or Rod, or his father. He pushed away all of Fairharbour. All of Connecticut. All of the world.
    Then the warm, soft place grew blazing hot for one screaming instant. Dougie yowled in anguish and pitched forward into his own puke.
    
3
    
    An ambulance took away the lump of flesh that was Dougie Greeley. The lump of flesh that lay in the back with vacant eyes contemplating the roof, the infinity beyond. Its heart beat. Its lungs sucked and cycled air with the rhythmic efficiency needed to keep the cells alive.
    It was no longer really Dougie Greeley. Most of Dougie Greeley oozed out of the ears and nostrils as red-flecked mucus. The attending paramedics said they'd never seen anything like it. One said it looked as if the boy's brain had been put through a blender. The other was more eloquent. He simply threw up, mixing his own spew with the pool in which Dougie had lain.
    Doug Senior was on his fifth straight bourbon when the ambulance arrived. He was on his seventh by the time Rod pulled him from behind the bar. Forced him out of the house, into the passenger seat of the blue Mercedes. Doug still wore his robe and pyjamas. Rod had pulled a light cotton shirt over his bare torso.
    Angela watched the ambulance pull away with her brother-in-law and nephew in pursuit. The stench of the kitchen was still in her mind.
    In my clothes, too. I need to shower and change as soon as I can. This was not the homecoming she anticipated. Not at all. In her mind Fairharbour was taking on all the aspects of a war zone.
    My sister, hospitalized, comatose.
    My nephew, brain dead.
    An old family friend, exploded in another friend's office.
    What the hell is going on? Dennison didn't get the chance to finish what he was going to say about the connection between all this shit. Dougie's attack on the wife interrupted that most efficiently.
    That was an incredible sight to behold! I'd never have believed anyone as fat as Dougie could move so fast. One second he was all slumped on one side of the breakfast table-the next he was at Joanne Dennison s throat. I wasn't looking straight at him when it happened. I was concentrating on Sam Dennison. I didn't see Dougie move. Not even out of the corner of my eye.
    Didn't I read somewhere that the corner of the eye was most sensitive to motion? He must have teleported across the table. He didn't move. He didn't move.
    She knew that was ridiculous. Ludicrous.
    Angela decided she must have blinked. Dougie moved, coincidentally at just the precise moment her eyes were closed. What speed! What ferocity! He'd plucked Joanne out of her chair. Shaken her like a rag doll. Her arms pinwheeled, to no effect.
    Sam moved. Somehow Doug Senior was faster. Red rage flashed in his eyes. His fist swung against Dougie's skull like a pile driver.
    The paramedics assured them there was no way Doug Greeley's blow could have been responsible for his son's haemorrhage. Doug was too far into his bourbon to care. He blubbered.
    Angela decided there was justification. If any man could claim the right to spend a few hours coming apart at the seams it was Douglas Greeley Senior.
    And Sam and Joanne! As the ambulance disappeared over the top of the hill, Angela remembered them. They'd gone to sit on the deck out back while the paramedics did their work. Angela turned to enter the house. She thought better of it.
    She stepped off the front porch, followed the little stone path around to the back. The Dennisons were still there. Joanne was sitting on one of the wrought-iron patio chairs surrounding the glass-topped table in the centre of the deck. Sam was standing, looking north, away from her.
    The Greeley property rolled down from the back of the house to a small stream. In the still morning Angela could hear the gurgling voice of the water. Songbirds punctuated the sound with their ancient territorial declarations.
    Angela found it all suddenly disgusting in its tranquillity. Obscene in its peace and quiet. The madness should show itself on the face of the land. There should be ominous storm clouds gathering against the horizon. Crows circling. A skeletal man in a tattered black suit seen passing through town, speaking to no one.
    The image reminded her of Paul Sanderson. Poor old Doc!
    Angela cleared her throat as she climbed the four steps to the deck. Sam turned. Joanne straightened. "They're gone?" This from Joanne.
    Angela leaned back against the railing. Her long legs stretched out before her. She pushed up on her toes. She felt the muscles tense in her calves, her thighs. It was a favourite pose. One that showed her limbs to their best advantage. Especially in the tiny shorts she wore.
    Almost immediately she pushed away from the rail. The calculated allure of that pose seemed at once to be very cheap. She felt herself colouring. She tried to remember what Joanne said.
    "Yes. Yes, they're gone. Can I-get you folks anything? More coffee?"
    Sam shook his head. "Thanks. But I think we should be getting along, too."
    Angela held up a perfectly manicured hand. "Uh-uh. Rod and Doug may be gone, but I want to hear the rest of what you have to say. I want the whole story on this business."
    Joanne looked up at Sam. Angela found something wonderful in that glance. So simple. So eloquent. Trust. Love. Desire. If only I could find a man I could look at with those eyes. But, no.
    "I can't begin to think how to tell it, now that we have to," Joanne said. "I can't think where to begin."
    "The beginning is always good." Angela grimaced at the cliche. "Sorry. Too glib. Bad habit. Ignore my California manner, please. Tell me." She seated herself on one of the chairs near Joanne. Sam joined them.
    What a picture, Angela thought. Three people all in their summer outfits, sitting on a sun deck in Connecticut, blue skies, birds singing, all ready to talk about death and brain damage.
    "About two weeks ago," Sam began, "we got this Catalog in the mail-"
    
4
    
    He told it all. Every detail, as clearly as he remembered. Joanne supplied the snatches he left out. They were both embarrassed sitting there in the clear morning light, telling their little tale of horror.
    Angela listened without comment or expression. Her face was a blank mask. Her eyes moved only to track from Sam to Joanne and back again as each spoke in turn.
    Sam groped for some way to finish. To tie the madness into a cohesive package. There was no way.
    "So-this morning we both came to the same conclusion. And we came over to talk to Doug and Dougie about it." His impetus began to run out. His voice sounded dry. Joanne moved as if to speak. She said nothing. What was there to say?
    Angela studied them carefully. If this was some kind of attempted insanity plea, she could not imagine why Joanne was involved. Sam's defence for his attacks on Babs and Dougie would require that he, and he alone, be off the deep end. His wife did not have to be crazy, too.
    She decided they were not insane, either of them. They did not look like people trying to cover up a lie, a crime. They looked very much like people trying to come to terms with the impossible.
    Angela leaned back. "So what is it you're trying to say, then? That there's something spooky in this? Something supernatural?" She tried to keep any hint of sarcasm out of her voice. If she was to get anything like the truth out of this matter, she needed Sam and Joanne Dennison to think she believed them. At least for now.
    Sam shrugged. "I-don't know. I don't know. I've never had any kind of experience with this sort of thing. Maybe it's something supernatural. I don't know. How do you recognize the supernatural when you run into it?"
    
    Angela pushed down memories of junior high. Of Ticky Wheeler. Of Jimmy Dolan. Of Betty Hamilton. "Anyway, you think this Catalog's at the heart of it? You got one, and it started preying on your minds. You think Joanne's glance might have been responsible for her nervous breakdown. You think Dougie stole one, and that's what led to-what led to his collapse. And Doc picked up the same one, and it made him commit suicide."
    Joanne was close to tears. "It sounds insane, I know. But you haven't seen that damned book. The dark red cover. And those white, white pages."
    "Dark red?" Now, why does that jingle a very faint little bell? Angela pushed her chair back from the table. The metal legs squealed loudly on the wooden deck. She rose. "Hang around a bit."
    She vanished into the house. As the screen door opened and closed a waft of foul, sick odor spread across the deck. Joanne shuddered. Sam rose to cross and crouch at her side. He rested his undamaged hand on hers, folded in her lap.
    Joanne did not meet his eyes as she spoke. "Do you think she believes us?"
    Sam could only shrug again. "I don't know. She's not very much like Babs, is she? Despite the physical resemblance. I can't tell what she's thinking. Babs is an open book, but not Angela."
    Joanne saw the face of Babs Greeley floating before her. The face of her friend as it had been when Joanne came into the kitchen of Wembledge Manor and found her looking at the Catalog.
    So haggard. So old. Joanne frowned. Is Babs really such an open book?
    "I'm not so sure I like her," Joanne said, looking toward the screen door. Sam cocked an eyebrow. He knew Joanne was not the type to make snap decisions about people. She gave Phil Marsdon a dozen chances before finally expressing her disgust. "She seems-very cold, somehow. Very distant. Maybe just because she looks so much like Babs I expected her to be Babs. And so anything else seems wrong."
    Sam gave her hand another squeeze. He straightened. His head was pounding where he'd cracked it on the kitchen floor a few lifetimes ago. His cheek was on fire. Everything was exaggerated. He felt sure he would explode soon. Sure that toe needed to explode. To get it out of his system.
    There was always something lurking at the edges of his soul. Something that mingled with all the repressed rages. Something that wanted to be let free in one giant whirlwind of destruction.
    Not for the first time he realized that talking about the Catalog made him feel like this.
    The Catalog. What was it about that book? Could it be supernatural? If so, why did it come to them, to the Dennisons? Why did it single them out, in all the houses in Fairharbour? In the world?
    The notion began to reform that it must be something to do with the Hansons. All those catalogs they received each day. What was the old line? 'The best place to hide a leaf is in a forest." Yes, a leaf in a forest. If you wanted to get something into someone's house, say, something they might be expecting, be on guard for, something they didn't want in their house, you'd disguise it somehow. Disguise it as something quite ordinary. Something they took in naturally-
    It was no good. He was building castles in the air, and he knew it. He just didn't have all the information.
    And he knew, too, that there was a flaw in his thinking, anyway. If the Catalogs were aimed specifically at the Hansons, why did they continue to come even after the Dennisons arrived? Why had they now stopped?
    Joanne was rubbing her neck gently. It was still red from Dougie's attack.
    Sam seated himself in a close chair. He hunkered it next to hers. "What he said-what Dougie said-" His voice failed. The words drifted away on the breeze.
    Joanne met his eyes. "About trying to rape me?" She shook her head. "I don't know what he meant. I don't think I want to know. When could he have…?"
    Realization struck at the same moment for both of them. "While I was knocked out on Doc Sanderson's sedatives? When Babs was attacked? Oh, God, Sam!"
    She collapsed forward into his arms. Sobbing. Shivering. Sam clutched her to him. She was going over the edge again.
    
    "Honey-Honey-don't. Don't." His words were a paper wall against a hurricane.
    Her hands found his shoulders. Sam felt her grip tighten, relax, tighten again. He knew she was fighting it.
    She was winning. Joanne raised her head. Her face was wet with tears. Her eyes filled with the haunted look Sam knew and feared. But she was in control again. Of that much he was sure.
    "I'm-okay, babe," she said. "I think-just somehow- knowing what's behind it-helps me fight it."
    She sat up. She pushed her hair out of her face. She sniffed. She seemed almost to shake herself, straightening. "You can put the concerned husband back in his box for a bit." She was smiling. Not a strong smile, but genuine. "I don't think I'll be needing him after all."
    Sam stroked her cheek. "I threw out the box a long time ago," he said. "He's out all the time, here all the time. Whether you need him or not."
    Joanne leaned forward to kiss him. Their lips lingered.
    "Is this what you- Oh. Sorry."
    They jerked apart. Angela had emerged from the house. She was half turned on her heel to go in again. "No, come on out," Sam said. "We're all finished."
    Angela studied Joanne's face. The dark eyes were clear. She looked a hundred percent better.
    "You must be some kisser, Sam," Angela said. "Anyway, I found this. I thought I'd seen it in the mail the night I arrived."
    She crossed to the table. She dropped the Catalog on the smooth circle of glass. Sam reached out carefully. He touched the cover with his unbandaged hand.
    Warm, dry.
    "Did you-look inside?"
    Angela shook her head. "After what you said? Not bloody likely. Look, I won't pretend I absolutely believe you, okay? But there are weird things in the world, and-well, something happened to some friends of mine a long time ago. When I was a kid. It made me-cautious about stuff that tends to the weird. I mean, I'd probably walk down a dark alleyway in L.A. at midnight and not think twice about it. I can take care of myself when it's things like that. But if there really is something about this little red book…"
    She sat, folded her arms on the tabletop. The Catalog lay almost equidistant from each of them. Sam picked it up. He flipped it over. The address label said "Douglas Greeley Junior. 1655 Wolf Pit Road." Sam stared at the small typewritten letters. He stared for a long time.
    None of the Catalogs that came to Wembledge Manor had his name on the address label. They all said simply "Current Resident." But this one came specifically to Dougie.
    Joanne was leaning to look at the label. "How can that be?" Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
    "I thought," Angela Finney said, "that we might all take a quick look at page one and see if we really do see something different. Of course," she spaced her words carefully for emphasis, "I'll only have your words for it, won't I?"
    Joanne looked at her. "If we were going to lie, Miss Finney, don't you think we'd have come up with a more reasonable story?"
    Angela twitched her eyebrows noncommittally. "You've got to admit I have no reason to believe anything you say. Your husband is accused of attacking my sister and nephew. If you're both whacko, you might have expected us to believe your story, however crazy it might seem."
    "All right," said Sam. "I guess the best way is for you to have a look for yourself, Miss Finney." He pushed the Catalog across the tabletop until it touched her folded arms. "Go ahead. If we're telling the truth, I think you'll know without Joanne or me having to look."
    Angela picked up the Catalog. There was the dry-skin feeling the Dennisons described. The cover was jet black, except where the light was caught in the slight stipple of the surface. There it was deep red. She turned it in her hands a few times. The staples were bright silver. They flashed when they caught the sun. The address label was a plain, white rectangle attached to the back cover.
    Or is it?
    She held it closer to her eyes, squinting. "This label isn't glued on," she said. "It's part of the cover. It's embossed ever so slightly so it looks like something glued on, but-"
    
    She tested the edge with a long fingernail. "No. It's definitely part of the cover itself." She wet her thumb with her tongue, rubbed it across the address. "And this isn't printed either. It's part of the-natural coloration. The cover itself turns white for the label, black for the print."
    She looked up. Sam and Joanne were leaning forward in their seats. They looked like bowstrings drawn tight as could be.
    "I-don't think I want to look inside," Angela said. "I think I believe you. I- Ick!"
    She dropped the Catalog. She jerked back in her chair. Sam was on his feet in an instant. "What!"
    "It-changed! The texture of the cover. The warmth." Angela was staring straight into Sam's face. She held his gaze as if afraid her eyes might slip back to the Catalog. "When I said I wasn't going to look inside it - reacted Like it knew what I'd said!"
    "It's alive." Joanne's voice was steady. "I thought it might be. Somehow I knew it was. The Catalog is alive."
    
    
Chapter Ten 
1
    
    Philip Marsdon was in his office only three-quarters of an hour before the phone rang. He looked over his reading glasses at Roberta's shadow, moving against the frosted-glass partition between his work space and her little reception area.
    He listened as she tried to put off the caller. Marsdon had a pile of papers on his desk. Everything was past need for attention. He'd told her to make sure he was undisturbed for at least two hours.
    He couldn't hear her words, only the mumble of her voice. It was obvious the caller was being insistent. He watched her shadow rise, cross to the adjoining door. She rapped. Very lightly, as if hoping he wouldn't hear.
    "Come."
    The door opened. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Marsdon. It's Mr. Dennison. He says it's very important."
    "Okay." Marsdon took off his glasses. He reached for the phone. "I'll talk to him, Bert." She closed the door. He watched her shadow go back to her desk.
    That shadow looks even skinnier than she does, he thought. She really would have been long gone if she didn't have such a talented mouth,
    He'd not lied to Sam Dennison about that. Whatever his other faults-and they were legion-Marsdon was not a liar-lying meant shades of gray. Philip Marsdon was all in black and white.
    He was dark haired, dark skinned. Although he was less than a year older than Sam his heavy cheeks already descended into jowls. His mouth was loose lipped, his ivory-coloured teeth uneven.
    Once he told Sam, with absolute sincerity, that he loved his wife so much he kept another woman for sex.
    Joanne officially gave up on her attempts to like or understand Phil Marsdon when Sam repeated that story to her. Sam never told Joanne of Marsdon's tales of his secretary's extracurricular activities. He was afraid Joanne would go after Marsdon with a large knife.
    "Hiya, cocksucker," Marsdon said into the phone. "Beat up any lawyers lately?" The line hummed its long-distance song. In the background two female voices exchanged heated gibberish.
    "We need to talk." Sam's voice was cold. Distant.
    Marsdon couldn't remember ever hearing quite that tone. And I've heard an awful lot of different voices come out of this boy over the years. Sometimes you'd think there was more than one brain in that fuzzy head.
    "What's up? More trouble from the polizia?’
    "No. I mean, not directly. Look, could you come up this afternoon? I need to show you something."
    "You show me yours, and I'll show you mine? I'd rather see Jo-Jo's. I could give you a fine legal opinion on that."
    
    There was a long pause. The arguing women finished their background sounds. Their voices faded into undecipherable whirs and clicks.
    At length, Sam spoke again. "I told you once before not to talk that way about my wife. Ever. Now, we need your professional help. Do we get it, or do I find another lawyer?"
    "Not likely, boyo. I know where the bodies are buried, remember?" It was Marsdon's pet phrase. Sam hated it. It touched a nerve down somewhere deep. To hear it in Marsdon's smug, oily tones made Sam want to scream.
    When Sam said nothing, Marsdon filled the space. "Okay. I can be up by-" He glanced at his digital watch. "One? Better make that one-thirty."
    "Fine. I'll be waiting." The line went dead.
    Marsdon tossed the instrument back and forth between his stubby-fingered hands. What the fuck? Me and Sammy have never been like brothers, but he's never talked to me the way he has in the last few days. Never acted this way. Even when he was your original angry young man.
    He cradled the phone and turned back to the papers on his desk. It would take a good two hours to make an acceptable dent in all this. Then he had a early lunch meeting that would probably last until at least noon.
    Shit. The Jag's in the shop. "Bert!"
    She appeared at the door. "Mr. Marsdon?"
    "Call Jerry and ask him if I can have my car by noon today. If I can't, call Grand Central and check the times for the trains to Fairharbour. New Haven line, I guess."
    "Yes, sir."
    Marsdon considered his timetable. His lunch meeting was at Aurora's, on Forty-eighth. He always enjoyed eating there. It was an oasis of pale pastel, of tiny, perfectly prepared portions. He knew his rough edges and raucous manner were completely out of place.
    It wasn't an important lunch, at least. If he needed the time to take the train, he could shave it.
    "There's a train at twelve-oh-five," said Roberta de Vasquez. "You'll have to change to a spur line in Stamford. That will get you there in an hour and thirty-five minutes."
    "No Jag?"
    "Not until Thursday."
    "Shit. Okay, Bert. Back to work."
    This better be fucking important, Sammy boy. I don't take to bouncing around jail cells and being called on wild-goose chases all in one week. You'll have to let Jo-Jo gimme a whack at th' crack yet.
    He leaned back. He thought about Joanne Dennison for a few moments. Now there was a surprise! To think a queer cat like Sam could hook up with someone as luscious as that! Must've sold his soul to just the right devil for her. If she's half as good in the sack as she looks like she should be, it might even be worth whatever it cost him.
    He picked up the top sheet from the nearest pile of papers. His eyes would not focus on the fine print. He was drifting back over the years, to a small bar in the West Village. Finnegan's was the name. It was there he first met Sam Dennison.
    The last time Marsdon found himself in the neighbourhood, he looked up his old haunt. It had become a boutique specializing in custom crafted leather goods.
    In those early days, when it was still a bar, it looked as if Sam Dennison and Philip Marsdon had much more in common. There was a lot of anger in Sam, but he kept it in check. He seethed, he boiled. But he never overflowed. Almost never.
    Marsdon remembered taking him in hand, leading him out of the dark places of his soul, into something more closely approximating the real world. He steered a few girls Sam's way. Hookers, mostly, at first. Clean. Specially selected by Marsdon's peculiar list of standards.
    Big tits, busy mouth. And no brains. If I want conversation, I'll take two of 'em.
    The regular female clientele of Finnegan's were secretaries, upwardly mobile junior executives. Sam's stiff manner, his burning eyes, drove them away. The professionals Marsdon hired thawed out the young man from Illinois. Sam never knew Marsdon's money was behind his newfound success with the ladies.
    By the end of the first year of their friendship Sam was able to communicate with people on a nearly human level.
    
    Marsdon felt quite proud of himself, playing Henry Higgins to this very odd Eliza.
    Marsdon took occasional delight in reminding Sam that Joanne would never have fallen so hard, so fast for the Sam Dennison who first occupied the stool next to his at Finnegan's. Sam preferred not to discuss their youthful escapades. In fact, he'd warned Marsdon that great physical violence would undoubtedly befall anyone who tried to reminisce about those times with Joanne in earshot.
    "Those days are dead," he said. "Dead and buried." Philip Marsdon remained as the only vestige. Like a good little vestige, he should keep himself vestigial.
    Marsdon finished the paperwork. He realized a good two-thirds of it had been done with almost no part of his brain addressing the problems on the page. He decided not to bother rereading the stuff. He'd been a lawyer long enough to handle this kind of nonsense in his sleep. Or mostly distracted.
    He gathered the papers into one lopsided pile. He rose. He crossed out of his office. He dropped them on Roberta's desk. He paused before stepping into the outer hall. "See ya tomorrow, sweet cheeks." He grinned. He licked his lips and was gone.
    Roberta watched him leave. For the thousandth time she wondered why God made her fall in love with such a man as Philip Marsdon. There was no doubt in her mind it was love. Not at all the kind of love her upbringing taught her.
    But why should that be a surprise? Nothing about her life was as she'd been taught it would be. This was not what her mother dreamed for her. Not what her grandmother prayed for her.
    Sometimes she wondered if Philip Marsdon would have to die before she could find the life she was supposed to have. Sometimes she wondered if there really was anything better, written somewhere in the book of fate, waiting for her.
    She was a tiny, birdlike creature. Her arms and legs were sticks, her hips and breasts nonexistent. She had a huge mass of jet-black hair above big, sad eyes that seemed always on the verge of tears. Her upper teeth protruded slightly. There was a gap between her front incisors.
    Sometimes she wished Philip Marsdon would die. Those were the nights she cried herself to sleep, all alone in her tiny one-room walk-up in Spanish Harlem. Those were the nights she wondered about how much time she would have to spend in hell if she killed herself.
    The rattle of the doorknob brought her out of her dark thoughts. It was Morrie, the building mailman. She was in no mood for him. Not today. Morrie always behaved as if he somehow knew of the ritual which began each day, Monday through Friday, in this small office. She was sure he could not know, of course. Roberta could not bring herself to believe Philip Marsdon would ever tell anyone of their affair.
    She fixed Morrie with her coldest stare as he entered. She prayed silently that he would simply drop the mail and go away.
    "Not quite the usual today," Morrie said. He sorted the bundle in his arms. "Never brought you lovebirds a catalog before." He squinted at her. He was barely taller than the top of her desk. His face was marked with lines so deep they looked like knife cuts. His hair was white, his eyes rheumy. There was always sleep residue in their corners. "You branchin' out or something?"
    Roberta said nothing. The pencil gripped between her hands snapped like a sudden firecracker. Morrie chuckled. He dropped the mail by the papers Marsdon left on her desk.
    "That's some Catalog, Bertie. I looked it over. Mebbe you 'n' me' try some of that when the boss is out of town, hey?" He licked his lips as he turned to the door. It was so much like Marsdon's parting expression Roberta wanted to scream. "Never thought they sent stuff like that through the mail. Nossir."
    Roberta stared at the pile of mail. She didn't notice the door finally closing, Morrie on the outside. Every scrap of her attention was pulled toward the slender pamphlet on the top of the pile.
    She could still see Morrie's sweaty fingerprints on the dark red cover.
    
2
    
    Sam and Joanne strolled back toward Wembledge Manor. Their hands were linked. To a casual observer they might have seemed nothing more than a happily married couple out for a morning stroll.
    That's what we should be, Joanne thought. There's no reason for this madness we've fallen into. There's no reason for Sam to have a bandage on his head. To have his right hand trussed up and bound. No reason for me to feel like I'm only holding on to sanity with the very tips of my fingers.
    The baby.
    It's so long since I've been able to think about the baby. A little life growing inside me. She pressed her free hand against the curve of her belly. Nothing showing yet. Much too soon for that. Mom always says the events of a woman's maternity shape the child, mark the child. If it's true, what's it going to be like for her when she comes out into this world in seven and a half months?
    From the moment she knew she was pregnant, Joanne had not doubted their child would be a girl. She felt a kindred spirit, a oneness with the unborn.
    Seven and a half months. April. My favourite month. Spring in full vigour. The promise of summer so keen in the air. Our first spring in Connecticut.
    They'd missed it all, moving when they did. How would the house look after the bare branches of winter? How would the grounds seem, coming back to life in little green buds? Flecks of paint across a waiting canvas.
    They turned into their driveway. They had not spoken since leaving the Greeley house. There were a million things Joanne felt she ought to say. She did not know where to begin.
    At least we're past the Greeley part. Angela seems nice enough, after all. Not really warm. But intelligent.
    Not Babs. Never Babs.
    But she's come a little over to our side. It was nice of her to promise to call Doug at the hospital and tell him about it all. If he can be made to understand the strange power of the Catalog, maybe this business might come to a happy ending yet. Doug will have to see Sam's not the sort of man who'd attack an innocent woman. No matter what rages he keeps bottled up inside.
    
    Sam's grip tightened on her hand. The timing made Joanne think he'd sensed her thoughts. But no. The post office jeep was just emerging from the Gibneys' drive next door. It looked so tiny, so far away.
    "Shh." Joanne returned Sam's squeeze. "They've stopped coming to us, remember." She pulled him close, pulled his face down to hers. Her lips explored the line of his chin. "They don't want us anymore."
    Sam shook his head. He frowned. "I-still can't put it all together. I still can't make the connections. I know what I said to Angela. But I heard my own voice, and it didn't make any sense. To see that little jeep now, and think, 'There won't be a Catalog for us today. It's going to the Greeleys now. It's going to leave us alone.' " He trembled, a single involuntary spasm. "It just doesn't make any sense."
    The jeep paused at their mailbox. Joanne saw only a single letter pass from the mailman's hand. She let go of Sam and walked down to collect it.
    It was from her mother. With a small shock Joanne realized Sheila McAllister knew absolutely nothing of what was happening here. Sam persuaded Nancy to tell no one else why she was coming up to visit her sister in Connecticut
    Joanne opened the letter and scanned the few lines. Her mother's easy, looping script was comforting. It told her the rest of the world was normal… still unchanged.
    / was beginning to have my doubts.
    Sam recognized his mother-in-law's handwriting even from the porch, as Joanne walked up the drive reading the letter. "How's the happy wanderer?"
    "She's fine. She's met a couple of English sisters travelling together. Her age. Lily and Maude Kitchener. She says they're very nice."
    They entered the house and passed through to the kitchen. Sam set the kettle to boil as Joanne went on reading the letter. Nothing major to report. The vacation was everything Sheila hoped for. The only thing missing was a husband to share it with. Joanne's father passed away less than a year into his retirement.
    Tears came to Joanne's eyes. She did not look up from the letter. "Sam. Sam, I don't want to lose you."
    
    He stopped scooping instant coffee into their monogrammed mugs. "I don't want to lose you either, babe. Don't worry. I don't think it will come to that."
    Joanne folded and refolded her mother's letter. "How can we be sure? No one has ever lived through anything like this before. No one has ever had to deal with a damned Catalog that shows something different to everyone who looks into it. No one has ever had to deal with something that preys on their lives. Sucks them dry. Like a vampire."
    Sam came over to her. He pulled a chair to her side. He sat, taking her hands in his as best he could. "I'll bet there's some kind of logical explanation for all this, you know? I won't pretend I have the vaguest idea what it might be. But I'll bet you once Phil investigates, finds out who's sending the damned things, we'll find there's-I don't know. Some kind of hallucinogen in the paper, maybe. Nothing spooky."
    Joanne chuckled. "Nice try. Ten brownie points for wife cheering." She freed her hands and draped her arms around his neck. She kissed him. Long and hard. His big hands came up, exploring the contours of her body. Joanne drew back slightly. "Nancy."
    "Well, if you insist. But she's not really my type." Sam smiled. It was a wonderful, genuine smile. It made Joanne's heart leap.
    "You know what I mean." She straightened a little more. "Hey, where is she, come to think of it? My big sister was always an early riser."
    Sam did not release his hold on her. "Maybe we kept her awake last night."
    Joanne blushed. "Oh, wow! You know, I didn't even think about her being right in the next room."
    The kettle was whistling. "Whyn't you go see if she's in the mood for some of my umber elixir," Sam said. "I'll get another mug."
    Joanne kissed him again. She went across the kitchen, through the mud room, out of his sight up the backstairs. Sam poured the boiling water into the two prepared mugs. He fished another out of the dishwasher. He turned on the hot tap in the sink, began to swirl water around the dirty mug.
    Joanne's scream cut through the house like a banshee wail.
    
    Sam dropped the mug and bolted for the stairs. Joanne was still screaming when he reached the top. Still screaming as he launched himself down the short length of corridor to Nancy's bedroom door. Still screaming as he entered. Still screaming as she collapsed into his arms.
    Sam settled her gently into the big wing chair in the corner. He tried to make sense of the tableau before him. It seemed to want to come to him only in fragments.
    Nancy.
    In bed.
    Sitting up.
    Glasses on her nose.
    A light robe around her shoulders.
    Blood all over her upper lip and chin.
    Drool at the corners of her mouth.
    The Catalog in her lap.
    
3
    
    Sam waded through invisible molasses to the edge of the bed. Part of his mind was expecting Nancy to jump up, to shout, "Booga-booga!" It all had to be some kind of bizarre joke.
    Only it wasn't.
    There was a Catalog on the bedside table, closed. His hand went out to it. It faltered. It dropped to his side.
    He turned back to his sister-in-law. Nancy looked like Dougie Greeley. The same glazed eyes. The same rasping, mechanical breathing. Sam touched her neck with the back of his index finger. The jugular twitched rhythmically.
    He was trying hard not to look at the open Catalog. His peripheral vision was signalling him there was something strange about the book. Something different. He fought against looking. He lost.
    He looked. There was blood splattered across the pages. Dried blood. Dark brown. Very dark against the whiteness of the paper. For long moments his brain refused to register what it was. What was different. The blood. Nancy's pale hands, like claws, framing the open book. The blank white pages.
    
    The pink of her robe beneath. The dark blue bedspread beyond.
    Blank! The pages were blank!
    Except for the blood, there were no markings at all on the smooth, white leaves. Sam put out a trembling, cautious hand. His fingers touched the page. Warm. Like the paper of any book lying open to the summer air.
    He slipped the Catalog from Nancy's grasp. It wasn't easy. Almost, it seemed, she was resisting him.
    The booklet's cover was still dry and skin like. But the pages were no longer ice cold. Their whiteness no longer burned into the eyes. He turned the pages. Carefully, so the two bloodied sheets did not touch.
    Blank. Blank. Blank.
    He put the Catalog back where he found it, between Nancy's cool, still hands. Joanne was stirring. He crossed to the big old chair and scooped her up. He carried her down the short stretch of hall to their bedroom.
    His brain was burning. One thought kept repeating and repeating and repeating. White pages. Blood and white pages. As if the Catalog had achieved its purpose.
    As if it had-fed.
    He pushed the thought away. He laid Joanne gently on their bed. She was coming back fast into the waking world. Her eyelids fluttered. They opened. Her brown eyes focused.
    "Sam-what-?" Her eyes grew to saucers. "Nancy!"
    "Shh. Shhhh. There's nothing you can do for her." He pushed her back onto the pillow. He reached over her for the telephone. "What's Sanderson's-" He paused. He searched for the name, heard only once before. "Witlaw. What's Witlaw's number?"
    Joanne told him. "Shouldn't we-" Her voice was a croak. "Shouldn't we-call the police?"
    "She's not dead. She had a brain haemorrhage. Like Dougie."
    "On her lap. Did I see-?"
    "Yes." There was no reason to lie. If Joanne found out later, it could only make things that much worse.
    "Hello," said Sam into the phone. "Yes, hello. This is Sam Dennison. Is Dr. Witlaw in? I see. Could I leave a message? Yes. Have him come to my house as soon as possible, would you? Seventeen Wolf Pit Road. Yes. No, my sister-in-law. She's had some kind of-stroke or something. Yes. Thanks."
    He hung up the phone. 'I’ll bet she might have been just that cordial with Jack the Ripper. My fame is spreading."
    Joanne was up on her elbows. "What-" The words did not want to form. They ran away from her like pearls from a broken necklace. "What do you suppose she saw? That did that to her?"
    "What I saw," Sam said evenly. "What Dougie saw. What Sanderson saw. Her insides. Her darkest thoughts. All drawn out in thin black lines." He shook his head. "Or maybe nothing at all. Maybe it's just a coincidence."
    Joanne said nothing. She didn't have to. Her eyes spoke for her.
    Sam nodded. "I know. Not too likely, is it?" He rose. "You could probably use that coffee. I'll go-"
    "No!" Joanne vaulted off the bed. "Don't leave me. Don't leave me alone." She was staring at the wall that separated their bedroom from Nancy's. "Don't leave me alone with-with-"
    Sam put his arm round her shoulders. "No. I won't. I won't."
    They went together out of the bedroom. They turned toward the front stairs. It was the long way to the kitchen, but using the backstairs meant passing the door to Nancy's room.
    As they crossed from the downstairs hall into the dining room, Sam hesitated. Joanne did not notice at first. Her additional step swung her on the arm she held tight about his back. He brought up his arms, folding them around her, drawing her close. She looked up, puzzled. She followed the direction of his gaze.
    He was staring at the scorch mark in the bay of windows at the other end of the dining room.
    "I wonder-" Sam's voice came down to her from a long way away. She felt the vibration of his words through her cheek, pressed tight against his chest. "I wonder," he said, "what they burned there."
    She looked up at him again. "You don't think…? Surely not in the middle of the house?"
    
    Sam shrugged. The gesture tightened his clasped hands under the curve of her spine. A sound like a tiny hiccup escaped Joanne's lips. Sam seemed not to notice. "I don't know." He was frowning. A deep frown of intense concentration. Trying to think something through. Something that didn't make any sense. Trying to put together a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with only nine hundred pieces, half of them blank.
    She'd seen that look far too often in the last ten days. She felt a need to break the spell of silence. "I wonder if we could get in touch with the Hansons? If there's any way at all we might reach them, he might tell us what he'd been studying. Maybe that's-I don't know, connected somehow."
    Sam released her, but Joanne kept her arms around him. "Yes! Brilliant girl! Top marks! That's what I've been groping for! What did Wheeler say about Hanson? 'Some sort of psychologist,' he called him. Could that have been parapsychologist! Could he have been studying ghosts, or demons, or witchcraft?" His voice died away. His heart beat loudly. Joanne felt its pounding where her chin rested on his chest.
    Sam looked down at her. His face held a sheepish grin. "Does that sound as crazy to you as it does to me?"
    "A month ago I'd have said yes. Not anymore. Is there someone we could call? Someone up at Yale?"
    "I'm not sure. I-guess they must have some kind of information office. Someone who can tell us which department Hanson worked for." He walked past her toward the kitchen, the phone.
    In earlier days, when they'd first started going together, Joanne sometimes found herself growing annoyed at Sam's occasionally extreme shifts of attention. She grew to recognize them as a reflection of the intensity with which he would sometimes focus on a given activity. But at first there were cross words. More than once.
    Now she merely followed him into the kitchen. She watched in silence as he dialled directory assistance, then the number for Yale's psychology department. Ten minutes later he had a name scrawled on a piece of paper frantically hunted up from the drawer by the phone.
    
    He rolled the paper into a tight little tube, tapped it against his lower lip. His eyes were very far away.
    Joanne was curious. She'd heard only his end of the call. "You were quiet there, a lot," she said. "On hold, or-?"
    "Sometimes on hold. Sometimes listening. Sometimes being transferred. Must've talked to ten people. Took awhile to find someone who'd heard of the good doctor. They have a parapsychology department, but it's not exactly one of their major callings. And it's not part of Psychology. It's oflf to itself. Hanson was something like a visiting professor, or some such."
    "Who did you finally talk to?"
    "A student working summers for the school. She said the actual head of the department was out. 'In the field,' she said. Made it sound very mysterious."
    "What did she have to say about Hanson?"
    "Something of a crackpot, by all accounts. I guess that fits. The way he and the missus scrammed out of here indicates a, shall we say, flighty personality. Guess he got into a few screaming matches with his boss before he left."
    "Who's the boss?"
    "Goodbridge. Professor Goodbridge. The gal I talked to kept saying the name as if it was supposed to be spoken only in hallowed tones. He must be a holy terror. Or unholy, maybe."
    "This doesn't help much, does it?"
    "Not a whole bunch. Certainly doesn't get us much closer to the centre, until we can talk to this Goodbridge guy, anyway."
    Joanne fought off a shiver. "This gets crazier and crazier." Even that sounded silly, as she said it.
    What could possibly add to the craziness? It's like trying to pace off infinity. I'm just about ready to believe Timothy Hanson had horns and cloven hooves. In fact, I’d be more surprised to find out he didn't. In the middle of all this mess that sounds about as normal as having brown eyes.
    
4
    
    Gravel crunched outside. A car making too sharp a turn at the curve of the driveway.
    Sam leaned over the sink. He saw a dark green Volkswagen convertible slow to a halt on the concrete parking apron. The top was up. The lone occupant was lost in shadow.
    The driver's side door opened. A sandy-haired man of about forty rose from the high seat. Sam did not find him a familiar face. The black bag he carried identified him.
    "This must be Witlaw," Sam said. His brain raced. "You meet him. I think he's bound for the side door. I'll-tidy up upstairs."
    For a moment Joanne failed to follow Sam's meaning. Then it came clear.
    He's going to remove the Catalogs from Nancy's room.
    A cold shudder went through her. In the last minutes she had almost forgotten the condition of her oldest sister. The search for information on Hanson had given her something else to think about. Her brain welcomed the diversion.
    She put her hand to Sam's arm. "Do you-think you really should?"
    "No. I don't know. I just-I think it would be better if he didn't see the Catalogs. I think too many people have seen them as it is."
    The side door bell jingled. Joanne paused long enough to kiss Sam one more time. She hurried to answer the bell.
    Josh Widaw turned out to be an angular man of medium height. He had a coarse complexion, his cheeks scarred by teenage acne. His eyes were bright, his light blond moustache trimmed with military precision. His mouth was framed by deep creases, a mouth Joanne thought would be quick to smile.
    He was not smiling then. He offered a warm, dry hand, which Joanne took. His grip was firm.
    "Mrs. Dennison?" His voice was soft, a trifle nasal. Not enough to be annoying. "My nurse told me your husband called. Something about your sister having a stroke?"
    He was no more impressed with lay diagnoses than Paul Sanderson. It showed in his voice. Joanne found herself armouring against this man. Yet, despite that, something told her she should trust him, even like him.
    "Yes. She's upstairs." Joanne waved toward the main staircase. "I'll show you."
    He followed her up the stairs without further comment- In Nancy's room Sam sat in the wing chair. He rose as they entered. There was no sign of the Catalogs.
    "Dr. Witlaw."
    "Yes. Mr. Dennison." They shook hands.
    Witlaw sat on the edge of the bed. He looked at Nancy. He lifted her chin with one hand. He pulled back an eyelid with thumb and index finger. Her head lolled. Joanne turned away. Her mind was suddenly full of birthday parties and summer trips to Vermont. The tears came quickly.
    Witlaw turned to face them. "Funny she didn't get blood on her lap, with her head at that angle." Joanne faced him, her hand on Sam's back.
    He suspects something. But how could he? How could he know what to suspect?
    "When did it happen?" Witlaw drew a small notebook from his bag, flipped it open. He scribbled the name Dennison across the top of the page. He looked up, waiting for an answer.
    "During the night sometime," Sam said. "We found her like this. We called your office immediately."
    Witlaw shook his head, making notes in a small, cramped shorthand. The sunlight was behind him. His blond hair caught it, surrounding his head with a faint, golden aura.
    In another ten years or so, Joanne thought, he's going to look every bit the country doctor he is. Her reserve was softening. She looked again at Nancy. Joanne's chin trembled.
    "It's not a stroke," Witlaw said at last. "It's nothing like a stroke, in fact. It's like parts of her brain have been homogenized." He saw Joanne stiffen. He frowned. "Sorry, Mrs. Dennison. I guess I'm a bit shook up. I was in the hospital when my nurse reached me. I'd just got done with the Greeley boy. His father ran into me there and asked me to take a look. I think he thinks I may have greater healing powers than the local doctors. Being a 'foreigner,' you know."
    Joanne nodded to ease his discomfort. "This is-the same, isn't it?" She felt the muscles of Sam's back bunch under her hand. He reached around to take hold of her. The pressure of his hand on her shoulder spoke volumes.
    Shit, she thought. I’m letting myself draw parallels. Sam doesn't want Witlaw to know about the Catalogs.
    "Yes," said Josh Witlaw. It was not quite in answer to her question. He seemed preoccupied. "Never seen anything like this. Saw a man take a dumdum in the back of the head in Nam. Turned his brain to Jell-O. Saw a lot of things like that. Pieces of people turned to mush."
    Sam was on the verge of demanding that Witlaw stop talking like that in front of Joanne when the doctor pulled himself back from his dark remembrance.
    "Sorry," he said. "Yes, Mrs. Dennison. This is like Dougie Greeley." So he had heard her. "Superficially, at any rate. But closer examination will probably reveal-"
    He paused. As he spoke his eyes had travelled around the room, as if searching. "Where is it?"
    Sam felt his blood turn to ice water. "Where-?"
    "Don't play games, Mr. Dennison. The Catalog. Greeley Senior told me all about what you got out of Dougie before his brain exploded. There's some kind of weird Catalog involved in this, isn't there? Where is it?"
    Sam sighed. He let go of Joanne, crossed to the closet. He opened the louvered wooden doors. Inside half a dozen of Nancy's light summer frocks and blouses hung on wooden hangers. And on the shelf above, the two Catalogs. The one she'd been reading was open on the top. The blood looked almost black against the white pages as Sam took them down from the shelf.
    He held them out to Witlaw. The doctor held up a declining hand. "No. I don't want to look at them. I just wanted to be sure they're here." He dropped a hand to his bag, resting by Nancy's still form. His fingers drummed the black leather. "Have you done anything at all about this?"
    Sam was at a loss to understand Witlaw's attitude. He was too calm, too reasonable. He clearly knew about the Catalogs, was not at all disturbed by what he knew. "What-do you mean?"
    "You've got some kind of supernatural occurrence here, right? Something about the Catalogs? What have you done about it?"
    Joanne voiced Sam's confusion. "You seem so-calm about all this. Do you-know what they can do?"
    "No. But I can hazard a pretty good guess. I got to know Timothy Hanson pretty well before he-left. At least as well as anyone did. We'd both been in Nam, you see. Not in the same place, but close enough to have similar experiences. Paul introduced us." At the mention of his late partner's name, Witlaw paused. He snatched up his bag, stuffed it under his arm.
    "Look, there's nothing that can be done for this woman. Let's go downstairs. I want to make a few calls. Then you can tell me your side of the story, okay? And-did I smell coffee as I came in? Right about now I could use a cup."
    Back in the kitchen Sam emptied out the cold mugs and prepared fresh coffee. Witlaw sat at the kitchen table, Joanne directly opposite. Sam brought the mugs over, seated himself to form the apex of their triangle. Joanne was already well into a detailing of the events since the arrival of the first Catalog.
    Witlaw listened without comment. He stayed silent several minutes after Joanne finished. Neither Sam nor Joanne felt any need to fill the silence.
    At length Witlaw rose. He crossed the kitchen to the counter by the sink. The open jar of Maxwell House still sat by the kettle. Witlaw washed out his mug with hot tap water, prepared a refill.
    Sam and Joanne said nothing. It was most likely, if he knew the Hansons as well as he claimed, he'd been in this kitchen several times before. Enough, it seemed, to have grown to be quite at home. Enough to be used to helping himself.
    Sam said: "You and Dr. Hanson were close friends?"
    Witlaw shook his head. "Not really. After we talked about Nam a bit, we kind of cooled out." He looked at the mug in his hand. He reddened.
    "You're wondering how I got so comfortable in this kitchen that I'd help myself to a cup of coffee." He sighed.
    He returned to his seat. He looked heavier, as if a weight had settled across his shoulders. "Polly Hanson and I had an affair."
    He paused for comment. There was none forthcoming, so he continued. "Very intense, very passionate. All over and done with by the time they left. I hadn't even spoken to Polly in weeks. Just as well, I guess. If Paul had known about it-well, he'd have killed me."
    "Not to mention Dr. Hanson," Joanne said. "I can't imagine he'd have been too thrilled."
    "You didn't know him," Witlaw said. "No one did, really." He leaned back in his chair, sipped his coffee. It was too hot. He blew across the rim of the mug gently. "He was about the most distant man I've ever met. Very-I don't know. Otherworldly, somehow. Almost like a priest sometimes. Like a holy man on a mission.
    "He'd loosen up a bit when we talked about Nam, but there was always something else on his mind. And Polly, she was this soft, delicate creature. An artist. She had a beautiful touch. With the clay, I mean. A great sensitivity. I doubt that you could have found two people less suited to each other if you'd tried.
    "Did you know he's a parapsychologist?"
    Sam nodded. "We guessed. I just got finished talking to someone up at Yale when you arrived. I'm supposed to be going up there this afternoon. To talk to them about what Hanson was working on."
    "Very good. You put that together very nicely, Mr. Dennison. If you don't mind, I'd like to come with you."
    Sam raised an eyebrow. "Why the sudden interest?"
    "Not so sudden," Witlaw said. "I bought the story of Hanson and Polly taking off all of a sudden for parts unknown. Most of it, anyway. I've got just enough ego to have played with the notion that their sudden move might have been specifically to get her away from me."
    "You said it was over," Joanne commented.
    Witlaw shrugged. "Maybe it wasn't for her. I don't know. I just have-a bad feeling about the whole business. I thought it was all logical…"
    "Now you don't think so anymore?" It was obvious from his posture, his tone he did not. Still, Joanne felt the words needed to be said.
    "No. Not in the face of all this stuff. This business with the Catalogs. Paul's suicide. Dougie's and your sister's haemorrhaging. Everything."
    4'What then?" This from Sam.
    "I think he murdered Polly," Witlaw said. His voice cracked as he spoke.
    "I think he killed her in some obscene rite he performed somewhere in this house."
    
    
Chapter Eleven 
1
    
    Sam Dennison believed that to walk through the campus of Yale was to be transported… Transported through time and space, to part of a lost world that never was.
    The sandstone buildings, with their high, pitched roofs and rows of narrow windows, made him think of the Middle Europe of a Hollywood production designer. It was entirely possible, he felt, walking through the shadowed archways, to forget the modern bustle of New Haven right outside. The ivy-covered walls and flagstone paths denied the contemporary world.
    Statues of forgotten heroes dotted the grassy commons within the circle of the university buildings. Trees stood in huge, mute testimonial to the age of the college. In late summer the buildings were largely empty. The fall would bring the influx of students, but for the present Sam found a stillness. A peace. This, too, added to the sense of being suddenly in another land.
    "Shit," said Philip Marsdon. It broke Sam's mood. "Where're all the nubile college girlies in their tight shorts and halter tops? I was expecting to see all kinds of erectile tissue bouncing around up here."
    Sam noted that without changing from his steady forward pace Josh Witlaw seemed to move away. Draw himself in, placing an invisible shield between himself and the brash, foul-mouthed New Yorker.
    Sam realized he'd offered no more than three words to Marsdon since the lawyer arrived at the Dennison house. Sam wasn't surprised… He already saw in Witlaw a depth of feeling, a sensitivity that would be utterly alien to a man like Philip Marsdon.
    Now the three of them walked through the Yale campus, seeking the office of Professor Goodbridge. Although the professor was out when Sam called, he'd been able to arrange a meeting. The student-secretary could not absolutely guarantee they would be met. She did assure Sam that if Goodbridge came in that afternoon, she would do her best to prevent the professor from departing before Sam and his party arrived.
    After Marsdon arrived by taxi at Wembledge Manor, Sam and Joanne filled him in on the details of their situation. Sam's lips tightened to a thin line at the memory. Marsdon laughed out loud at first. Sam and Joanne were insistent. Witlaw's stony silence proved eloquent testimony on their behalf.
    Finally Marsdon demanded to see one of the Catalogs for himself. Vindictively, Sam did not hesitate. The two from Nancy's room he'd transferred to a drawer in the kitchen. He opened the drawer, took out one of the red-covered books.
    "You asked for it," he said.
    Witlaw moved as if to stop him. Sam held up a restraining hand. "He won't believe us unless he sees with his own eyes," Sam said. He handed the Catalog to Marsdon.
    Marsdon opened the covers with his eyes still on Sam. Then he looked down. He flipped the pages. Slowly his expression changed. His brows drew together.
    "Big, fucking comedian, right?" he said. His voice was almost a snarl. "Drag me all the way to Fuckharbour Connecticut for a fucking jokeV
    Sam and Joanne did not understand what they were hearing. "Phil-"
    
    "Don't 'Phil' me, asshole. I pulled your dick out of the grinder, and this is the thanks I get."
    "I-I'm sorry, Phil. I don't know what you're seeing, but I didn't think-I didn't think it would be so bad."
    "What the fuck are you talking about, jerk-hole?" Marsdon held up the Catalog, pages toward them. Instinctively Joanne looked away. Sam saw the same awful images of pain and torture. Witlaw let out his breath in a long, slow whistle.
    "There's nothing funny in making me haul my ass all the way from New York just to look at a bunch of blank pages, needle-dick. And don't you stand there with your face hanging open. You know they're blank."
    Sam tried desperately to understand. "You-you mean you don't-?"
    "Nothing." Joanne spoke without looking at Marsdon or the Catalog. "He sees nothing!’
    Sam boggled. "But-how can that be?"
    Witlaw brought them back to reality. "I think the only way we'll ever understand is if we take a chance on meeting this Goodbridge fellow this afternoon, Mr. Dennison."
    After watching Joanne ride away in the ambulance with her sister, Sam, Witlaw, and Marsdon climbed into Witlaw's VW. They headed east. Marsdon wound up folded like an accordion in the narrow back seat.
    At least in the glorious summery weather they were able to lower the top. The drive was not as cramped and uncomfortable as it might have been.
    It took forty minutes to reach New Haven, another ten to find a place to park. Sam called the number he'd located and heard the same student's voice. The professor had not yet arrived, but was now definitely expected by three.
    Sam looked at his watch. Forty minutes to. The three went in search of a late lunch before heading into the campus grounds.
    They found a small, very collegiate restaurant across the street from the college. The soup and sandwiches disappeared quickly. Within twenty minutes they were on their way to Goodbridge's office.
    Directions led them down. Down and down into the bowels of one of the oldest buildings. Stepping through a service door, they almost trampled a tall woman, arms loaded with papers and heavy, leather-bound tomes.
    Sam shot out a hand to catch her precarious pile before it toppled. She smiled.
    "You gentlemen look a trifle lost, yes?" Her voice was smooth, even. "Can I help you?"
    "Not nearly as much as I could help you, sweets." Marsdon grinned. He made a grab for her rear. He found himself holding a handful of long, jet-black hair. "Shit! It's Crystal Gayle!"
    The woman narrowed her bright black eyes. "Who or what are you looking for?" Her tone was no longer friendly.
    "Professor Goodbridge," Sam said. "We have-well, we don't exactly have an appointment, but it's vital we see him. We need to find out some things about his associate, Dr. Hanson." The woman was still looking daggers at Marsdon. "Look, I'm sorry-"
    "This way." She turned on one heel, heading off down a narrow corridor.
    Hot-water pipes snaked along the ceiling. More than once Sam needed to duck his head as they followed. Witlaw and Marsdon experienced no such difficulty, but Marsdon was clearly uncomfortable in the close confines of the narrow halls. He muttered a stream of expletives under his breath, offering up a heartfelt "Shit! Finally!" when the office was located.
    It presented itself as nothing more than a small door at the end of a short corridor. The walls around it were an ugly off-white, more greenish yellow. Where the walls met the ceiling the paint bubbled and cracked. In places water trickled down the buckled paint. The pipes still crowded around each other above their heads. To the right of the door a bulletin board was several layers thick with notices and clippings, all dealing more or less with matters occult.
    "I get the feeling this is not one of their major-funding projects," Sam said in an aside to Witlaw.
    "Parapsychology is past its vogue," said the woman. Sam was startled she'd heard him.
    "I'm surprised a college like Yale maintains even this much of a department," Witlaw said. "I can see why they'd be unhappy with a gadfly like Hanson."
    The woman nodded noncommittally. "This way, gentlemen." She stepped through the door into the office. Her long hair billowed briefly, trailing like a witch's cloak. They followed.
    The office became instantly overcrowded. In the centre of the small room a huge desk afforded just enough space for one person to get around. The walls were floor to ceiling with bookcases. Shelves even passed over the lintel of the door through which they entered. There were no windows. Light came from a single yellowed bulb in the centre of the ceiling.
    The books were all heavy, leather-bound. Like the ones the woman carried. None of them looked less than a hundred years old. There were at least five hundred crammed into every available space. What space was not crowded with books held esoteric objects that defied any guess Sam Dennison might hazard as to their precise nature. There were scraps of bone and feather. Bits of intricately intertwined thread. Ornate carvings, small and large. Some bordered on the pornographic. Some were simply disgusting.
    Their guide dropped her mass of papers and books on top of another mass of papers and books already on the desk. She rounded the ornately carved monstrosity, flopped into the plush-cushioned chair behind. Sam sighed. He felt the sudden urge to strangle Marsdon.
    "You're Goodbridge," he said.
    "Katherine Goodbridge, yes. Sorry I can't offer you seats, gentlemen," she said. "As you can see, I'm in the only one. Now, what did you want to know about Tim Hanson?"
    Sam cleared his throat. For one long, eternal moment none of them wanted to answer her. Then all three spoke at once.
    Katherine Goodbridge held up a hand. "This won't work at all, will it?"
    There was the barest hint of an accent shaping her words. Sam tried to place it English? Australian? South African, maybe? He couldn't be sure.
    Her face was nearly square. The jaw was wide, the angles sharp. Her eyebrows arched high. She had a manner of inclining her head, so she looked up at them from beneath thick, dark lashes. The only makeup she wore was the heavy mascara. Her lips and pale skin were clean.
    Her dark gaze paused on Sam Dennison. "You're Mr. Dennison, yes? The one who called?" With a theatrical flourish she produced a pair of reading glasses. She held the ear stems flat against the frames, positioned the lenses in front of her eyes. Her free hand rummaged through the debris of paper on her desk.
    "'We had to dismantle this monster to get it in here," she said. She spoke to no one in particular. "More than worth it, though. Nearly six hundred years old. Belonged to the Comte de Bourgainville St. Jacques Marrane. A rather notorious warlock, if you lived in south-central France around fourteen hundred. Had a nasty habit of cutting off the heads of little boys and girls and surgically attaching them to the backs of goats. The goats died of blood poisoning and all manner of infections, of course. The reports say the heads remained alive as long as the hosts did. I'm inclined to believe it.
    "Ah, here we are."
    She studied a small piece of paper. "Yes, Mr. Dennison. You've moved into the house Tim Hanson rented over in Fairharbour, yes? And you're having some kind of trouble? Trouble of a supernatural nature?"
    Sam did not rise to the bait. "I didn't tell that to your secretary."
    "I'm sure you didn't. I can't afford any paid staff on the stipend I receive from the college. You probably talked to either Margie or Veronica. They very kindly volunteer their summer hours to my service. And, no, you didn't tell either of them any such thing. But this is not a dentist's office, is it? You're having some problem with something you perceive to be of occult origin, yes?"
    Sam nodded.
    "Then why not just say so? Obviously it's something you consider important, or you wouldn't be here. Is there a particular reason you feel you need to be coy about it?"
    "The dumb shit's probably embarrassed." This from Marsdon, perching himself on the edge of the desk. He leaned toward Katherine Goodbridge. She wore a dark silk blouse and black knee-length skirt that clung nicely to her slender frame. The blouse was open one more button than it really needed to be. A small gold cross hung in the shadow of her breasts. Marsdon's eyes were fixed on the tiny, filigreed thing.
    "Copy of an eleventh century piece," Goodbridge said. Marsdon raised his blue-circled eyes to meet hers. "The cross," she said. "You were admiring the cross, yes?"
    "Actually I was looking at your tits," Marsdon said. "Nicest pair I've ever seen on a broad with so little meat on her."
    Katherine's eyes flashed. Once, very hot. She rose. Standing, her eyes were higher than his. "Let's understand something, mister," she said. Her voice was dead calm. "I don't like being groped, and I don't like fat, greasy pigs staring down my cleavage. This is the only warning you're going to get."
    She turned her attention back to Sam. "Now then, Mr. Dennison, perhaps you'd like to tell me the exact nature of the problem."
    "Exact nature?" Sam tried to sort through the events piling up in his head. "I'm not sure I can give you the exact nature."
    "I'm not asking for technical terms, Mr. Dennison. You don't need to know the difference between a witch and a warlock to tell me what I need to know. Just outline the manifestation in your own terms." She settled back into her big chair.
    Witlaw made a little snorting sound. Almost a laugh. "You were surprised by my matter-of-factness about all this, Sam. This lady sounds as if we're here to tell her about-" He groped for an analogy. He couldn't find one.
    Katherine smiled. "I don't get a lot of civilians coming through that door. As I said, it isn't a dentist's office. When I do have company, they're all here for very much the same reasons, Mr.-Mr.-?"
    "Witlaw. Josh Witlaw. Doctor."
    Her eyes widened a fraction. "So you're the one..." She leaned forward, elbows resting on the desk, fingers intertwined, thumbs resting against her chin. "Well, well. Hanson mentioned you once or twice. You had something rather hot going with Polly, yes?"
    Witlaw stiffened. "Then-then he did know?"
    'I knew. Tim saw everything only in the context of his studies. Oh, he might have guessed about you and his wife-from what I understand you were something less than cautious-but if it didn't interfere with whatever he was working on, he didn't feel the need to address the situation, but he said just enough in passing for me to get a clear enough picture."
    She looked Witlaw up and down. "Yes. I can see where there'd be an attraction."
    "Let's cut the shit and get to business, shall we?" It was Marsdon again. Sam released his breath in a short, sharp sound. A warning. Marsdon ignored him. "I don't like being told off by smart-assed skirts who think a few letters after their names make 'em special. You're just a well-educated gash, baby, and I could eat you alive anytime I wanted to. And I have about had it up to here with the supernatural bullshit. These two want to play games with a little blank notebook, and I'm supposed to go along with it. Well, fuck it, I say."
    Sam's temper had nearly peaked. He started to say something. Katherine's laugh filled the room. It was a surprising, silvery thing. It did not seem to belong to the voice with which she spoke.
    "Very well," she said, "I think I can see which of you three I should be addressing myself to if I want any real answers in this. Dr. Witlaw, Mr. Dennison, if you'd be so kind as to wait outside? This gentleman and I need to have a few words."
    Sam felt stunned, betrayed. He started to protest. Marsdon grabbed his arm. He pushed Sam toward the door.
    "Sorry, Sammy. The lady knows a class act when she sees one. You, too, Doc. Catch you again in a few strokes."
    He winked broadly at Sam, closed the door firmly behind them.
    
2
    
    Hospitals depress me, thought Joanne Dennison. Not the most blinding of revelations. Hospitals depress everybody.
    That day, in that context, she found the halls of Fairharbour Memorial Hospital especially gloomy. Nothing real. Nothing tangible. The tall windows that were the south wall of die spacious lobby were filled with sunlight. The afternoon sun was a blaze to her right. Everywhere the halls were bathed in gold. Joanne stood in the center of one of the big panes of glass and looked out over the town.
    Situated on a small hill, the hospital commanded a fair view of the main part of town. Joanne could see the post office, the library, the town hall. She could see the roof of the building that housed Teddy's restaurant.
    Thinking of that brought her an image of Babs Greeley's plump face lit with the joy of Joanne's pregnancy. Joanne placed a hand on the smooth plane of her belly. She called up good thoughts. She radiated them toward the foetus growing within her. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. Everything will be fine.
    Joanne had not seen Babs since the attack. She knew her friend was in this very building somewhere. Possibly nearby. There were not many private rooms. Babs, Dougie, and Nancy occupied three of them.
    "Mrs. Dennison?"
    She turned to find a handsome, haunted face before her. Joanne nodded recognition to Rod Greeley. Again she was struck by his rugged good looks. The distinguished hint of salt-and-pepper in his temples. The broad shoulders. The big chest.
    He still wore the jogging shorts he'd worn-oh, God, was it really only this morning?-when they'd first met at the end of the Greeley driveway. The muscles of his legs were hard, the cuts sharply defined.
    "Hello, Sergeant Greeley. Are you still here?"
    "Just heading back," he said. "Dad's going to stay with Mom for a while. And I guess it should be 'Rod'- Joanne?"
    "Rod." She smiled weakly. "And your brother?" She realized with sharp surprise that she actually cared. She actually cared about the condition of Dougie Greeley.
    "No change. The medics say there's not likely to be any change. I'm amazed you'd ask, after-" He shrugged. He didn't want to say the words.
    "Me, too," said Joanne. "But in a way I feel-I guess I feel kind of responsible. I mean, that damned Catalog came to us first."
    Rod shook his head. "That's like blaming yourself for a war because your house was the first one to get bombed. What happened to Dougie - well, if he wasn't such a little-" He shrugged again. There were tears in the corners of his eyes.
    "Shit. Shit shit shit. I keep thinking about him, keep talking about him as if he's gone off to camp or something. Like he's going to come home in a few weeks and be the same snotty little bastard he always was. Only-only-"
    Joanne put an arm up around his shoulders. She felt the muscles cord across his broad back. Then he relaxed. His near arm went round her waist.
    "What exactly did the doctors say?" Joanne asked.
    Rod sniffed. "That younger guy-Witlaw? He got 'em to do a CAT scan or whatever it is. You know? That sonar, or radar or whatever that reads the inside of the skull in layers? He said it was as if something had gone through Dougie's brain and selectively punched out certain areas. Just the automatic stuff was left alone. The parts of the brain that handle, like, breathing and heartbeat. The rest was like it'd been in a Bass-O-Matic."
    He grimaced at his misplaced levity, but the reference to the old "Saturday Night Live" routine brought a quick smile to both their faces. Joanne let a small laugh escape.
    Rod chuckled. "I guess there's still some light in the world, huh? Say-I didn't ask why you're here."
    The world grew darker again. "My sister. The same thing happened to her."
    "Oh, shit! The Catalog again?" Angela told me everything.
    "Yes. I thought we'd destroyed all the copies in the house, but she found two somewhere." Joanne became aware of how close she was standing to Rod Greeley. How firm the muscles of his body felt as they pressed against her.
    She took her arm from around his shoulders, tried to step back a pace. Rod did not immediately release her waist. For the briefest moment she feared he was going to force her to stay pressed against him. Then he let go. He looked away.
    "I-looked inside one myself/' he said. His voice was very small. Around them the hospital noises grew loud. Joanne was suddenly very aware of the passing doctors and nurses. The candy-stripers. The patients shuffling past in their dressing gowns.
    "There's a diner just down the hill," she said. "Let me buy you a cup of coffee."
    Rod smiled, growing strong again. "No. My treat."
    "Dutch," said Joanne. She linked her arm through his. They walked out together into the clear Connecticut summer. They walked in silence across the parking lot. They turned onto Cleveland Avenue, strolled the block and a half to Harry's Diner.
    Joanne loved the old diner. It was a converted railroad car hoisted on big, red bricks. Painted bright green and yellow. They found a cool corner, ordered two coffees. Rod also asked for a side of fries with gravy.
    They waited for the order to come before they spoke again.
    "What did you see?" Joanne asked.
    "Hard to put into words, exactly," Rod said. "When I was nine years old Dad bought me a retriever puppy. My first dog. He was about the best dog I'd ever seen. All ears and feet, you know? The way puppies are. I remember Mom throwing up her hands in absolute despair when she saw him. “Oh, Loni, Doug,' she said. 'You know it's going to grow into those feet!'
    "And he did, too. By the time he was six months old you could scratch him behind the ear with out bending. He was such a great dog." Rod paused. He focused on Joanne. The dark skin was drawn tight across her inverted-teardrop face. There were creases in her pointed chin. Her mouth was a straight line. "Anyway," Rod continued, "Dad decided he should be trained to do stuff. Fetch the newspaper. That kind of shit. I didn't want to, but I went along with it, I used to take Rusty-that was his name, Rusty-I used to take him out in the yard and throw a stick for an hour or so every day. It was the middle of winter. We'd had heavy snow that year. It was pretty thick across the yard. Rusty would go bounding through the snow like a colt or something. Sometimes he'd bring back the stick. Sometimes he wouldn't. I didn't care. I was having a ball, freezing my ass off with the best damn dog in the world.
    "But that wasn't good enough for Dad. He was into some kind of high-efficiency kick at the time. He said I'd never get Rusty to really obey me until I showed him who was boss. I said I thought he knew already. After all, I was the one who fed him, and I was the one who whacked him with a rolled-up newspaper when he piddled on the living room shag.
    "But Dad had been talking to old Ed Wheeler. He and Dad have been buddies for years. Wheeler had read or seen or heard somewhere that the way to get a dog to understand who was boss was to get it to really understand how much it depended on you. And the way to do that, according to Ed, was to take the dog out in a field and tie it to a stake and then get in the car and drive off. About half a day later you'd come back for the dog and it would be just so fucking grateful it would be your slave forever."
    There was an edge rising in Rod's voice. He stabbed a couple of his gravy-soaked fries, stuffed them into his mouth.
    "That," said Joanne into the sound of chewing, "is the most stupid thing I have ever heard!".
    "Wait," said Rod. "It gets better." He forked the last three fries into his mouth. He picked up his coffee. He sat back against the worn red leatherette of the booth and sipped. "We took Rusty out into this field about ten miles down the road. Dad tied him up, and we got into the car and just peeled out of there. I was crying my eyes out. Rusty howled like I don't know what. I was kneeling in the back seat, looking back. I could see him pulling and pulling on the rope, on the stake.
    " 'You'll see, Roddy,' Dad said. 'This is for the best. It's the efficient way to handle him. You'll see.'
    "But what I saw was that Rusty'd pulled up the stake and was chasing after us. I let out this big whoop and Dad just floored it. We turned up onto Grainge and Dad laid about a thousand yards of rubber getting us out of there.
    "Now-everybody thinks their dog is the smartest dog in the world, right? Everybody says their dog understands every word you say, you know? But, Rusty-he really was a smart dog. And I guess he figured out there was no way he was going to catch that car by following the road. So when we turned onto Grainge, he left the side road we'd been on and started bounding after us cross-country.
    "He bounded straight into Tom McGyver's big pond. The ice was just thick enough to let him get halfway across before it cracked and he went under.
    "I never saw him again.
    "That summer McGyver brought his collar to me. It was all mouldy and rotten. Like I guess Rusty must've been by the time McGyver found him."
    Rod paused. He drank some more coffee. Slow, deliberate sips.
    Joanne put a hand to his, lying on the Formica tabletop before her. "I-"
    He tossed his head to one side, dismissing. "You don't have to say anything, Mrs. Dennison. It was a long time ago. I remind Dad about it once in a while. Just to keep him hurting. For Rusty."
    "Joanne," Joanne reminded. "That's all got something to do with what you see in the Catalog? I mean, that's why you ^old me the story?"
    Rod nodded. "What I saw in the Catalog-" He shook his head. A quick, clearing gesture. "It has a lot to do with Dad. And drowning." He dropped his eyes. "What did you see?"
    Joanne closed her eyes. She tried to form images out of the quick glimpses she'd had of the insides of the Catalogs. The one on the driveway. The one Phil Marsdon held out toward her.
    "I didn't really see anything. I didn't get a long enough look. I saw there were pictures, but I'd promised Sam I wouldn't look in the thing. The best look I got was when I accidentally dropped one when I was getting the mail in one day. And that glimpse was enough to set me off. Literally."
    "Yes. Dad told me about your breakdown. Bad news, with a baby on the way."
    Joanne patted her belly. "This is going to be one tough little lady," she said. "If she survives all this shit."
    
    She became aware of the changing lights. They'd been talking-he'd been talking-a long time. Outside Harry's Diner the sky was darkening. Joanne looked at her watch. "Time I was getting back to the homestead."
    "Let me give you a lift," Rod offered. "I was heading back anyway."
    "Thanks. With luck Sam and the others should be back from Yale by now." She outlined briefly what her husband was doing.
    Rod nodded approval. "I don't -generally hold with this supernatural crap, but-I don't have to be hit over the head. Somebody's got to know something about these books."
    They left the diner in silence again. Rod's words echoed in
    Joanne's mind. "Somebody's got to know something…"
    Maybe. Maybe.
    If there's anything we can know about that damned Catalog.
    
3
    
    Two cars drove away from New Haven.
    Witlaw's VW led the way. Goodbridge followed, with Marsdon, in her late-model Chrysler. Sitting next to Witlaw, Sam Dennison stared out at the scenery passing on either side of the gray strip of 1-95.
    From New York north, as far as Boston and beyond, there was almost no relief in the urbanization of the countryside. Here, less than a hundred miles from the Big Apple, the conurbation was almost unbroken. Before Sam's eyes city blended into town blended into city. Only the briefest flash of greenery told him where one community stopped and another began. Sometimes not even that. Often there was only a sign to show that one centre of inhabitation was yielding to another.
    The traffic thickened as the westering sun brought the day to a close. Rush hour ebbed and flowed around them. They rode in silence to the southwest boundary of Bridgeport. Then, as Witlaw guided the Bug onto the off ramp that would carry them toward Fairharbour, he could hold his words no longer.
    
    "What do you suppose-went on in there? While we were cooling our heels in the hall? I can't honestly believe they were-V He stopped. Sam saw him shake his head, as if trying to dislodge the image.
    "Not a pretty picture, is it?" Knowing Marsdon's fondness for fellatio, Sam found himself with an instant scenario forming in his mind. He could not bring himself to accept the idea of Katherine Goodbridge on her knees between Marsdon's fat thighs.
    "I don't know," Sam said after a while. "I've known Phil for a long time. He's always been a foul-mouthed slob. But he's always had a hell of a harem scattered around."
    "Or so he says."
    "No, it's true. I've seen some of em." Sam felt uncomfortable defending Marsdon to this virtual stranger. He liked Witlaw a lot already. He did not care for the idea of attaching himself too strongly to the doctor's impressions of Marsdon. "He even tossed me a couple of his leftovers back in the days of my horny youth. The days before Joanne."
    Memory came to him in a sudden torrent. What a different man he'd been then-or so he thought. He was so sure his love for Joanne had quelled the worst of his inner fires.
    The Catalog had fanned some of those embers to blazing flame. The rages stirred in his blood again. With them came the smell of the crawl space, the whispers of the thing that lived down there.
    Witlaw glanced in the rear-view mirror. The Chrysler was still there. Marsdon sat in the front passenger seat. Goodbridge was driving. They did not seem to be in any kind of physical contact.
    It was hard to tell. Witlaw knew full well any number of things could be happening below the level of the dashboard. He didn't want to think about it.
    He'd been struck immediately by Katherine Goodbridge’s poise, her carriage. The strength of the sudden emotion amazed him. She was not beautiful in a conventional sense. The line of her jaw was too sharp-angled. Her arching brows gave her a school marmish look. But her dark eyes were bright, clear. Her gaze very direct.
    And he thought her voice was wonderful. The idea of her in any kind of sexual congress with an uncouth lout like Phil Marsdon made Witlaw want retch.
    The gas stations and fast-food outlets of the Bridgeport perimeter yielded at last to the rolling green hills of southern Connecticut. Sam let his head fall back against the seat cushion. He closed his eyes. With so much else to consider, he did not share Josh Witlaw's fixation on the matter of Katherine Goodbridge and Philip Marsdon. He didn't even want to concentrate on the question.
    He let it slide away. His mind filled with thoughts of Joanne and the baby.
    The baby! Like Joanne he was taken aback at how rarely in the last few days his thoughts had turned to that burgeoning life. He knew Joanne was from that ancient school that taught a mother's prenatal experiences could affect the child. A few years before their move to Fairharbour, they went to see The Elephant Man on Broadway. Joanne found herself moved to uncontrollable sobbing at the thought that poor John Merrick might have been so hideously deformed because of his mother's unfortunate encounter with pachyderms during her pregnancy.
    Sam did not give much credit to such things. Neither did he like to be absolute in the matter. He understood how mother and child were so completely intermingled for those long nine months of growth. Who could really say what forces might work in the shaping of a new life?
    Fairharbour spread itself before them as the Beetle came up over a rise. Sam marvelled at the vista. How normal it looked! How picture-postcard perfect. Not a real town at all. The set for an old Bing Crosby movie.
    The rows of neat little shops and houses spread out to the larger homes and acreages, finally to the really big estates fifteen and more miles from the town hall. None of them, none of the people who lived in those houses, had any idea of the cancer growing in their midst. Poisoning their streets.
    The Catalog came first to Sam and Joanne. Sam was sure of that. It was only a guess. Every time he thought of it, he was more and more certain. Eight thousand families called Fairharbour home, but he was convinced that, so far, only two had found that red-covered booklet in their mailboxes.
    
    The Dennisons were the first. The manifestation-that was what Goodbridge called it, wasn't it? The "manifestation" seemed to be centred on the Hansons. But what if it wasn't? Could it be that Timothy Hanson was just another innocent victim?
    The word "innocent" hung in Sam's mind. It mocked him.
    Who was really innocent, after all? Not Sam Dennison, with his buried rages. His anger. He thought again of his parents, vanished since he was seventeen, gone without a trace, without any indication to their battered boy. Sam was so glad to see them gone, but in the end it led only to frustration. He didn't know where they were. He didn't know if they were even still alive. That unknowing would always stand between Sam Dennison and the road to innocence.
    He always thought it funny that they should have run off together like that. He believed from the evidence around him that they hated each other more than they hated Sam.
    But one day he came home to find them gone, the house empty. All their furniture was still there. All their clothes in their closets. The belt still hung on the back of Sam's bedroom door.
    Gone without a word, without a trace, without the actual confrontation he needed. The confrontation his psyche needed to free itself of thoughts black and terrible. Dreams of blood and death.
    Those dreams, so vivid in their imaginary reality, haunted him for most of his life. Only in the past few years had he finally set aside the black thoughts. He knew why. His love for Joanne exorcised them.
    Until the Catalog came, and showed him the images as clearly as if he'd drawn them himself. Which, now that he came to think about it, must be exactly what he had done. Everyone saw something different in the Catalog. What Sam Dennison saw was the fabric of his own hidden thoughts.
    There was a slight bump. Sam opened his eyes to find they'd turned into the drive of Wembledge Manor. Witlaw guided the VW around the left side of the house, to stop on the apron in front of the garage. Doug Greeley's powder-blue Mercedes was parked close to the kitchen door.
    
    Sam climbed out of the Beetle. He called. "Hellooooo the House! Joanne?"
    She appeared in the kitchen window. She waved. Sam saw movement behind her. He recognized Rod Greeley. A sudden anger flashed deep within him. He did not at all like the idea of Joanne alone in their house with the handsome serviceman. The feeling faded when Joanne came into his arms as he entered the kitchen.
    She pressed the warm length of her body against him. Her welcoming kiss lingered until the crunch of gravel announced the arrival of Katherine Goodbridge's car.
    Joanne stared as the woman unfolded herself from the Chrysler. She crossed the tarmac to the porch steps, Phil Marsdon following at a discreet distance. He looked like a trained lap dog.
    Katherine entered the kitchen. She shook hands with Joanne and Rod. "Ah, yes. You'd be the older son of the first victim. Babs?"
    Rod nodded. It was the first time he really thought of his mother in that context, as a victim of the Catalog. Of course she is. We all are.
    Katherine stepped past them to the centre of the kitchen. Her head moved in a slow lazy circle as she stood. The long mane of hair flowed about her back. It accentuated her height, seen from behind like that. She was one long cascade of jet.
    She turned to face them again. "There is a centre here. And it's very strong. But it's small. Very specific. That's a relief, at least. Now, I think it's time I saw one of these Catalogs for myself."
    Sam opened the small drawer by the mud room door. He looked down at the contents for a full thirty seconds before he reached down to touch anything. Framed by the familiar jumble of elastic bands, string, paper clips and empty Scotch tape dispensers, the Catalogs looked suddenly very normal. Ordinary. Sam took a slow, deep breath. He placed one of the Catalogs on the kitchen table.
    Katherine sat in one of the antique chairs. She caught her long hair with a quick motion of her right arm, sweeping it to one side as she sat. Now it trailed across the floor beside her.
    She sat bolt upright. Her reading glasses were perched on the end of her nose. The last rays of the sun glinted on the crucifix in the deep V of her blouse. Her hands were flat on the table, bracketing the Catalog.
    "And the one with the blood on it is still in that drawer, yes?" Her voice was flat. Toneless.
    Sam nodded. He realized the angle of her head did not permit her to see the movement. "Yes," he said.
    "Leave it there for now. And leave me also, if you would."
    They obeyed in silence. The five of them walked out the back door, onto the porch. The door squeaked as it swung shut behind them. The air was becoming chilled. In the west the sky was shot with pink and orange.
    Joanne pressed closer against Sam. He put a long arm around her, smiled down into her eyes. She managed to smile back, but there was no warmth behind the expression.
    "An-interesting woman," Joanne said. "At least from what I've seen."
    "Fascinating," Witlaw said. He realized the intensity in the single word. He coughed. He glanced toward Marsdon. The lawyer said nothing. He was standing at the other end of the porch. His back was toward them.
    "I wonder what she'll see," Sam said to no one in particular. "I wonder what a woman like that carries, buried deep inside her."
    "Some interesting things I wasn't even aware of, Mr. Dennison."
    They all turned as one. Katherine had joined them. The squeaky back door made no sound to signify her coming. She looked very gaunt. Behind the half lenses of her glasses there was a new darkness beneath her eyes.
    Josh Witlaw stepped immediately to her side. Katherine did not resist his offered support. She took his arm, let herself be led to one of the white wicker chairs set casually about the porch.
    "This is more serious than I'd even begun to guess," she said. Her voice was calm. Keeping it so was clearly an effort. "More serious than anyone could have guessed."
    She looked out toward the sunset. Her eyes did not focus on the mundane world of Fairharbour, Connecticut. "I don't know what happened in this house," she said, "but before I can proceed I've got to find out. I may have to run up your telephone bill quite a bit, Mr. Dennison. "I've got to find Timothy Hanson."
    
4
    
    "I've found them. Or her, rather. What's left of her."
    It was noon the next day. Joanne thought {Catherine looked three days dead. Her cheeks were black gashes across the whiteness of her skin. The corners of her mouth were pinched.
    She had not slept at all the night before. No one had. After Rod returned to the Greeley home, a vigil was held in the big, pale gray living room as Katherine sat in the kitchen, talking all night on the telephone.
    First Sam called Dick Keillor. From him they got the information that the last three months' worth of rent on Wembledge Manor were drawn on a single check, and sent to him by Polly Hanson.
    "How did he know it was her?" Witlaw asked.
    "It was drawn against the Hansons' joint account," Sam said, "but it was signed by Polly. The postmark was somewhere in Pennsylvania. She must have mailed it as they headed west."
    "Where was it they were supposed to have gone?" Joanne wondered aloud. "Arizona?"
    "Benson, Arizona," Rod said. When they looked at him, he shrugged. "It's in the title song of a science fiction movie. Dark Star. I just happened to make the connection, first time I heard it."
    Now Sam, Joanne and Witlaw and Marsdon sat in the living room in utter silence. Only calls of nature had moved them from their seats the whole night. The sound of Katherine's voice came to them sometimes across the dining room. She talked, hung up, dialled, talked some more. Again and again. Tim and Polly Hanson had not left an easy trail to follow.
    "Polly Hanson is dead," Katherine said. She was framed in the tall doorway at the south end of the living room. The room was in shadows, the sun almost directly overhead. Her flesh was chalk white against the darkness of her blouse. She leaned against the doorjamb. She looked collapsed from within.
    She turned to Witlaw as she spoke. His eyes closed. His mouth drew to a thin line. Then he looked back at her. His gaze cleared.
    Katherine nodded, continued. "Tim didn't kill her. In all likelihood, he's also dead. Or worse. But he didn't kill Polly. She killed herself in a psychiatric hospital in Benson, Arizona."
    Sam frowned. "How could she kill herself in a hospital like that? What was she doing there?"
    "She was a patient. She'd been staying with a distant cousin-her only living relative. One morning the cousin got up and found Polly gone. Given the state she was in when she arrived, Mrs. Amberton, the cousin-called the police. Seventeen hours later they found Polly Hanson walking across the desert, stark naked.
    "They took her to the psychiatric hospital, strictly for observation. While she was there she told one of the nurses what happened to Tim. Then, when she was alone-" Katharine paused. She crossed from the doorway, sat in the big, low chair at the end of the couch. Her left knee almost brushed against Witlaw's right. "When she was alone she killed herself. She bit through the flesh of her wrists. Bit right through her own flesh. Bled to death before anyone found her. They didn't think there was any way she could hurt herself. She was in a padded cell, you see."
    Joanne swallowed. "P-Padded cell?"
    "Yes," Katherine leaned back. She closed her eyes. "After what she told the nurse, they thought it would be best to confine her where she couldn't hurt herself-or anyone else. After I got the story from the staff, I called the cousin. She corroborated some of it. Polly had been with her ten days before she took off. Mrs. Amberton has a three-room apartment. Polly was sleeping on the couch in the living room. Seven out of the ten nights she woke up screaming."
    "What-" Witlaw's voice was so small he barely heard it himself. Katherine opened her eyes. She fixed him with her ebony gaze. Joanne could not help thinking that he seemed to draw strength from Katherine. "What happened to Hanson?" Witlaw asked.
    
    "He was taken," Katherine said. "Snatched out of this house by a force Polly could not begin to explain in terms the staff of the hospital or her cousin could understand. But I understood enough. Polly was consumed by guilt because she thought she should have stopped Tim. But I don't think there was any way she could have. Not if he was doing what I think he was doing."
    "Which was?" This from Joanne.
    "No." Katherine rose. "If I tell it now, I'll only have to tell it again later. I think I know what he was doing. And, if I'm right, I think it puts us on a time limit. I'm not sure exactly how long. But I think we'd better wrap up this whole affair. Tonight. And before midnight."
    Sam, Joanne, and Witlaw all started to speak at once. Katherine held up a hand. "This could get to be a habit, yes?"
    Sam smiled. He remembered the similar incident in her office. "All right, Professor. You're in charge, it seems. What do we do first?"
    "Get in touch with the Greeleys. That young man-Rod is it? He seemed level headed. Get him back over here. Tell him to search the house and find every Catalog over there. Then we need to figure out who else might have been in contact with one of the things. That man Wheeler, for example. Dr. Sanderson took one into his house, didn't he? Get everyone together and we'll make a complete list, if we can. Get them all here. Now."
    Joanne did not have to wait for anyone else to act. She reached over the back of the couch. It sat in the centre of the living room, behind it a low table. A pale gray European-style telephone sat near her end. She picked up the receiver. She dialled the Greeley number with a stiffened finger of the same hand.
    Six minutes later Joanne left them to answer the front doorbell. Katherine rose as she returned with Rod. "You may as well sit here, Mr. Greeley. There are one or two things I need to do alone in the dining room. And you need to be apprised of the present situation."
    Rod's eyebrows went up. He knew that tone. Katherine's voice held all the sombre menace of a commander issuing orders to troops about to march into a hopeless conflict. Katherine seemed to sense his thoughts. "The next few hours are not likely to afford much in the way of comfort for any of us. Sit, relax. Try to get some rest, all of you. I want some time to myself, to gather my wits and prepare for battle.'*
    "I hope you're speaking figuratively," Josh Witlaw said.
    Katherine smiled at him. Her whole face seemed to light from within. "So do I, Dr. Witlaw. So do I. Now, if you'll excuse me-" She returned to the door through which she'd entered. She closed the tall, glass-panelled partition behind her, stepped out of their line of sight.
    The curtains were all drawn in the dining room. It was a pool of darkness at the centre of the house. Katherine found the light switch, thumbed it. It was not much of an improvement. She didn't mind. For what she needed to do, she preferred some cover of darkness.
    Witlaw listened with only half an ear to Joanne and Sam briefing Rod Greeley. Marsdon sat in sullen silence in the chair at the other end of the couch. Witlaw concentrated on the panes of glass now between him and this most remarkable woman. Occasionally her shadow moved across the far wall as she passed back and forth before the lighting sconces opposite.
    Joanne transferred the telephone from the table to her lap. "I guess we should try to figure out who to call first," she said. "Who do we know for sure has seen the wretched things?"
    "My mother and brother," Rod said. He was standing in front of the fireplace, his back to the rest of them. He looked into Joanne's eyes through her reflection in the big old mirror above the mantel. His face was dark to her, with the light behind him.
    "What about your father," Joanne asked. "Or your aunt?"
    Rod shrugged, resting his folded arms on the mantel. "I don't know. I don't think so. I brought one in with the mail the first night home. I can't think of a time when Dad would have had the opportunity to look. And on the drive here you told me Angela refused to look."
    Sam felt a chill cut through him. He thought again of the thousands of mailboxes all over Fairharbour. Again the image that filled his mind was of a growing cancer. If more than one home in Fairharbour received the thing-
    "It came to Dougie," Rod continued. "You saw it."
    Sam nodded. "Somehow, once it gets in a house, it must start-what're the words? How do you say this?"
    "It addresses itsel,' Joanne said. "Once it gets in a house, it checks out the residents and adds that address to its list of 'customers.'"
    She looked toward Marsdon. She expected a stream of dismissing expletives. Instead he said nothing. It occurred to Joanne he'd said not a word since arriving back from Yale the day before. All night he'd sat with them in total silence.
    "We better call Ed Wheeler," Rod said. "If that's the mechanism of this thing, he and Ticky have probably been getting the Catalog every day since Sanderson killed himself."
    "Oh, Christ, yes," Witlaw said. His face was pained. "Paul was in Wheeler's office with one of them."
    Joanne could hear the cold reverence building in their voices. Each time they spoke of the Catalog the capitalization was clear. They were demonstrating a curious respectfulness. Based on fear. "How many is that?" she said.
    Sam counted them off aloud. "Angela, Doug, Ed, and Ticky Wheeler. Rod, Josh, and Phil. You and me."
    "Nancy, Dougie, and Babs," Joanne finished. Her eyes were bright with beginning tears. Sam put a hand on her thigh.
    "Four to call," Rod said.
    Witlaw shook his head. "Maybe more. Maybe a lot more." Sam's frown asked the question they all had in their minds. "At least three people I know of came into contact with a Catalog," Josh said. "The Catalog Paul had. Two paramedics came to the scene. They removed the Catalog. They may have looked at it. Then there's the examining doctor at the hospital. He might have done the blood tests. It would have been required, to match the blood on the Catalog with Paul's. That means he'd have had to look inside the thing."
    "Shit," said Rod. "Do you know their names?"
    "Abramson is the doctor. The paras are a couple of young guys I've seen around. Can't remember if I've ever spoken to either of 'em. Abramson would know them, I guess."
    
    "I have a feeling this is already growing out of our control," Sam said. "How in the world can we track down everyone who might have come into contact with the thing, out of a whole hospital staff?"
    "Might not be as bad as all that," Witlaw said. "Sorry to have sounded so much like the voice of doom. Suicides are treated as homicides, you know. That means the Catalog would have been handled very gingerly. No extra fingerprints and all that. We might not have to deal with any more than those three, Abramson, and the two paras."
    "Start with Abramson, then," Rod said. "He can maybe round up anyone else who might have had contact. Including my dad. He's probably still there in Mom's room."
    Sam leaned his elbows on his knees. He kneaded the bridge of his nose with the long fingers of his left hand. Two veins throbbed in his temples. "This is never going to work. It's like knocking over dominoes. We can't begin to guess how far it's spread already."
    Witlaw was again more positive. "I think if we assume it's been relatively isolated since it reached the hospital everything is still more or less on our side. I know it was sealed in a plastic bag before leaving Ed Wheeler's den. Abramson probably wouldn't have removed it from the bag to get the blood samples. I wouldn't, anyway. I wouldn't want to increase the chances of outside contamination."
    "Blank pages!" The words came from Joanne in a sudden sharp exclamation.
    "What?" Sam turned to his wife.
    "You said the pages were blank in the one Nancy was holding. Maybe something about the blood…?
    Sam's mind raced. "It fed," he said. "I thought that, when we found the blank one with Nancy. I thought, 'It's fed. This one has done its job, so now the pages are blank.' "
    Witlaw leaned forward. "That makes about as much sense as anything else. You're saying you think of this thing as if it's alive?’
    "I've already thought that," Joanne said. "When it changed. When the one Angela was showing us physically changed. Because she wouldn't look inside it. I thought then it must be alive somehow."
    
    "Hey-" A dawning realization opened Sam's eyes wide. "I just thought of somebody else we'll have to call. The mailman! That poor bastard's been coming into contact with these things almost every day,"
    "A very astute observation." The voice came from the door. Witlaw thought at once how much Katherine Goodbridge seemed changed again. She no longer looked tired. Now her posture was erect. She looked hard edged, as if her bones had turned to steel. Her eyes were narrowed, cold.
    "I don't think we need concern ourselves with your mailman," she said. "That is not the way the Catalogs work. In fact, if my guess is correct, he probably hasn't even seen one.
    Witlaw frowned. 'Are you saying they just-teleport into people's mailboxes?"
    "I would prefer the word 'materialize,* but yes."
    Rod shook his head. "The one that came to our place was in a whole bundle of mail. A bundle fastened together with an elastic band. How could the Catalog get in there unless the mailman put it there?"
    Katherine smiled. Rod found it a cold, almost frightening expression. "And you think a detail like that would be a problem? You underestimate our foe, Sergeant. A good military man should never do that, yes?"
    She took three steps into the living room. She faltered. Witlaw crossed the room at a run. He caught her.
    "Thank you, gallant sir." The look of exhaustion came flooding back into her face. She pushed herself upright, driving back the tiredness by force of will. Her voice was still weak when she spoke again.
    "Make those calls, Mrs. Dennison. And make them now."
    
    
Chapter Twelve 
1
    
    By nine o'clock that evening all were assembled in the dining room of Wembledge Manor.
    It wasn't easy. In the end Witlaw handled most of the calls. He invoked the name of Paul Sanderson to give credence to their story. He forced phone numbers out of reluctant receptionists. He told people as little as possible. Only enough to let them know a life threatening situation was evolving in their cozy, sheltered community. That they, through no fault of their own, might be tainted with evil.
    Now they sat on mismatched chairs gathered from all over the house. Katherine arranged the seating in a wide U inside the curve of the windows at the west end of the dining room. She stood in the centre of the curve, facing her audience.
    Near her feet the black burn scar spread wispy tendrils of charcoal through the dark stain of the floor. To Katherine it looked very much like a child's drawing of a starfish. In front of her, centred over the burn scar, was the Dennisons' rickety folding card table. In the middle of this sat a small canvas bag the size of her fist. A bright red cord held the mouth of the bag closed.
    Katherine stood in silence. She was waiting for the normal hubbub of conversation to die down. She knew there was no point in trying to tell these people what was happening until they were completely ready to listen. Listen of their own accord. She held her glasses against her nose, examining the list of names Sam and Josh prepared for her. She found it easy enough to fit the names to the gathered faces.
    Ed and Ticky Wheeler, she decided, would be the big, boozy faced senior of the group and his diminutive bride. Katherine studied Ticky Wheeler carefully. What she sensed, and what she felt radiating from the little woman did not jibe with what Katherine had been told.
    Ed swore his wife had had no contact with the Catalog. He insisted that she had not been allowed into his office until every trace of Sanderson's explosive end was excised. Yet there was an unmistakable haunted quality about her. Katherine felt it. It tickled the edges of her senses. Like a soft breeze against the hairs on her arm.
    Yet Katherine had to admit there was nothing about Ed Wheeler's wife, nothing visible, to substantiate her feelings. Ticky was tiny. Barely five feet tall. Bony. Hollow cheeked. Her eyes were big. Frightened. Like the eyes of a startled doe.
    Katherine drew her lips into a tight line. / will need to watch this one in particular. Watch her very carefully, as the evening progresses. Katherine could not guess how or when, but Ticky Wheeler had been touched by evil before.
    She found Clarence Abramson another case entirely. The image he presented to Katherine's study was middle-aged, middle height, middle everything. On the street she would have passed him without a second glance. Her scrutiny revealed absolutely nothing about him to suggest his professional status, income, interests, anything.
    A cipher who's accidentally walked into Shadow.
    He would bear watching also, she knew, for different reasons than Ticky Wheeler. If Katherine's assessment of his unrelenting normalcy was true, he would be the most likely one to lack the imagination to properly deal with what lay ahead. Experience had taught Katherine Goodbridge the dangers there. A closed mind was always the most venerable.
    She looked again to her list. Murray Vandenberg and Brian Willis were the paramedics. They were easier to locate than anticipated. When Willis's number was called, Vandenberg answered the phone. They'd neglected to tell the hospital they shared a bed as well as an ambulance.
    Katherine permitted herself a small, wry smile. At least that eliminated any need to track down tainted girlfriends.
    She looked at each of them in turn. Vandenberg was short, round, with close cropped black hair and a neatly trimmed pencil moustache. Willis was much larger, harder, and black. Neither presented any major cause for concern so far as Katherine could determine. Katherine felt the fact they were homosexuals suggested, in its own odd way, that their psyches might be better adjusted than some of the others present. They had come to terms already with a few of their personal demons,
    Angela Finney sat close to Rod Greeley. A trifle too close, Katherine thought. Katherine's arrangement of the chairs set them at equal distances around the curve of the bay windows. The first thing Angela did was hitch her chair closer to her nephew. She sat with her hand resting casually on his knee. Her eyes darted, studying the room, studying the others in it. When she was introduced to Angela, Katherine felt the blond woman's eyes go through her. Estimating her worthiness.
    Someone who likes to be in complete control, Katherine decided. She doesn't like to surrender the spotlight like this. Well, good for her. She'll need that strength before we're done.
    Doug Greeley Senior came as a surprise to Katherine. Looking at him, she wondered what the absent Babs must be like. It was obvious that handsome Rod got little of his looks from his father. Doug Greeley was by no means an unattractive man, in his solid, squat way, but he lacked any trace of Rod's movie-star appeal.
    Katherine noticed the conversation was ebbing. As the kitchen clock chimed the hour, the voices died away completely. She drew a deep, slow breath. She felt her scalp prickle, as if from a slight electric current. She closed her eyes a moment, counting her own heartbeats, counting out the full tolling of the bell.
    Seven-eight-nine-
    "My name is Katherine Goodbridge," she said. All eyes swung to her. The room bristled with emotions. Some anger, some suspicion. Some fear. "Professor Katherine Goodbridge, for those who concern themselves with such things. I am the head and sole member of the parapsychology department at Yale. Until six months ago I shared that department with Dr. Timothy Hanson."
    The name elicited response in some faces, blank stares in others. Katherine noted where each reaction lay, on which face. It could serve her later, knowing who had had contact with Tim and Polly. Not everyone in this room had reason to cross paths with the departed couple.
    "We've asked each of you here tonight because there is a strong likelihood that you've been exposed to something. Something very nasty."
    There were instant mutterings. Vandenberg put out a hand to find his lover's knee. Abramson frowned and said something in a low whisper to Witlaw, seated next to him. Each of these reactions Katherine noted. Every movement in the room was now vital, significant.
    Don't miss anything, she reminded herself, unnecessarily. Not one detail.
    "For the benefit of those medical persons present," she went on, "let me assure you I am not talking about a disease, germ, or virus of any kind. Although there are similarities."
    The murmur of voices intensified. Abramson was in rapid conversation with Witlaw. The older man's middle-sized hands made middle-sized gestures as he talked. The gesticulation seemed the closest thing he had to an outward demonstration of personality.
    Katherine studied the motion of his hands. They were really quite delicate. The movements surprisingly intricate. Abramson might almost have been conducting an invisible orchestra. Of middle size, Katherine thought.
    Josh Witlaw's side of the conversation was slow and earnest. Katherine inclined her head, directed her focus to him for a moment, but she could not pick out any words.
    A slurred voice to her left interrupted her concentration. "I wanna know what this is all about. I don't wanna hear any more mumbo jumbo until I know what this is all about."
    Ed Wheeler. Katherine faced him directly. His voice and manner she found grating. All her life she'd had precious little tolerance for his kind of man. The kind who'd let himself go. Let his body and mind degenerate. She would have to be careful not to let an instinctive dislike misdirect her attention. Lead her search astray.
    "I'm about to explain this all in great detail, Mr. Wheeler." She spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. "When I'm done you will no doubt consider it more of what you call 'mumbo jumbo.' I assure you it is not. It is very, very real.
    
    Very, very dangerous. It has already killed at least one person. That we know of. Driven another to suicide. Turned two more into mindless vegetables. And it has been indirectly responsible for the hospitalization of a fourth."
    Wheeler started to say something more. Sam Dennison put out a hand to his shoulder. Sam was next to Wheeler, Joanne next to Sam.
    "Just listen, Ed," Sam said. Katherine's bright eyes narrowed. She felt the urgency in his voice. She studied Sam's face, not for the first time. His boyish features drew her eye from their first meeting. She liked what she saw. Felt she should freely, openly like Sam Dennison. But…
    Something there, she thought. Something hidden. Hiding from-me?
    Ed Wheeler frowned at Sam. He flapped his gums a bit, and was silent.
    Katherine turned to face the rest. "First of all, understand exactly what I mean when I tell you Fm a practicing parapsychologist. It's an old field with a new name. There are a lot of people who would hesitate to label it a true science. I'm not one of them. I try to bring the logic of science to this very illogical field.
    "The classic scientific method is very difficult to apply to parapsychology. It is based on the repetition of experimentation. Information is gathered. A hypothesis is formed. More information is gathered. The hypothesis is tested. It is retested. If it holds up to this repeated testing, it may graduate to being a theory. If that theory goes undisputed long enough, under all the correct circumstances, it becomes a law. The law of gravity, for example. The laws of thermodynamics.
    "It is not easy to make parapsychology work like that. We operate at the very edge of hard science. Almost into the realms of theology. I had a teacher once who said scientists try to quantify God, while priests try to enlarge Him. What we do, what I do, is something in the middle.
    "Every day our universe is being expanded. Physicists and astronomers, mostly, are pushing out our knowledge of the physical world. And every day they learn that each answer is really a question in its own right. But at least it's some kind of answer. In my field we usually have only the questions.
    
    And every question is a hundred other questions. Each of them a hundred more.
    "I cannot use the scientific method in my work, any more than a priest can. A priest believes in his God because something deep inside, something that defies rational explanation, tells him what he believes is true. But there are no repeatable experiments to test the existence of God. No proof of the divine.
    "I have the same situation in my work. For a priest it's not a problem. The lack of physical evidence only increases his faith. For me, it just makes my job that much harder. And makes my chosen field that much harder to justify as a true science."
    She paused to let her words sink in. The eyes of her audience spoke volumes to her. She was asking a lot of them, to follow all she said. To pay attention to each word, even when it seemed she might be simply making a speech for the sake of hearing her own voice. But she knew how important it was, how they must be made to understand who she was, how she got there.
    She realized how out of place she must seem in that quiet little bedroom community. Tall, black sheathed. Like something from another world. Especially with her place in this bizarre scenario.
    Sam and Joanne were first to show signs of understanding. Not surprising. Their exposure to this madness was the longest of anyone in the room. Almost-almost-they would be accustomed to it. Nothing Katherine had said yet would be too outrageous to them.
    They represented one end of the spectrum. At the other, Ed Wheeler. Katherine guessed he probably believed in God, in his own way. A church goer. Money in the collection plate. An eye to the morals of the community. Protecting others from themselves, from the vices he cultivated for himself.
    But this would be another matter entirely. What Katherine said went past him completely. "Very well," Katherine said after a suitable pause. "That's my resum6. Now, something about the nature of the danger to which I have been alluding. That's going to require from each of you a complete suspension of disbelief."
    
    As she spoke she picked up the canvas bag from the centre of the card table. She shook it gently a couple of times. The contents clicked against each other. Katherine drew back the restraining cord and emptied the bag onto the table.
    It contained perhaps a hundred shiny black stones, each no longer than a quarter of an inch. Each with a tiny white scar on one side. She spread out the stones with the flat of her hand, until none was touching its neighbour. They were cool and hard against her palm. Sensual. Almost sexual. Their smoothness seemed to return her touch, to caress her hand.
    She looked up at the assembly again. What she must say next would make or break the hold she was building on them. If she phrased it wrong, if she gave them too much, too little, too soon, she could lose them.
    She knew that if she did that the repercussions would ripple out from this Connecticut bedroom community and devour the world.
    A terrible price to pay for a misplaced word.
    She pushed the little stones around with the index finger of her right hand. It was, at that point, a simple little ritual. One she'd performed a dozen times before, under many different circumstances. She could almost allow herself to draw solace from the familiarity of the movement. Let the terror she felt at the centre of her heart recede a little.
    Almost. The danger was so great. It could spread out so quickly. Like the mathematical formula of a geometric progression. A penny, doubled every day, one cent, four cents. Eight. Sixteen. By the end of a month it would have grown to thirty million dollars.
    She was prepared to accept the responsibility, though she might never have sought it out. If Katherine Goodbridge did her job properly that night, the terror could be stopped. There, in that room, it could be ended. She was certain the evil Hanson unleashed was searching out a specific target. If it was possible to allow it to take that target, it might be satisfied.
    Katherine did not like what she was thinking. What she might have to do before the night was over. She thought about sacrificial lambs. None here, she mused. No on innocent enough to be a lamb. Someone in Fairharbour had a black secret attached to his or her soul. A black secret that kept active the portal Hanson opened. Before Katherine could be certain who, there must be a sorting. Got to get rid of the red herrings, she said to herself. Got to clear out the mundane evils. The everyday pettiness. Got to push right into the very core of this.
    The tiny stones were taking on a distinct pattern as she moved them. She was only half paying attention now. She let her hand move automatically. Experience taught her the shape must define itself, if it was to work to her advantage.
    It was time to tell them. Tell them the full story. "It started about two weeks ago," she said. "Sam and Joanne Dennison found a Catalog in their mailbox. It looked perfectly ordinary at first. Small. Four by six inches. Dark cover. No logo or picture to identify the origin.
    "That is not without good reason. It is not possible to spell the name of the place that Catalog came from. Not in any extant human language. Nor is it possible to produce a picture that could be remotely comprehensible to our eyes. A thousand generations of humanity have tried to put a name to the place that Catalog came from."
    They were hanging on her every word. She felt her pulse quickening. She pushed the stones across the green baize of the tabletop. They made a slight sighing sound as they slid over the cloth. There was no way to delay the next step. She had to say what had to be said.
    Katherine looked up. "The closest we've managed to arrive at is hell.
    
2
    
    The room exploded. Half the people present sprang to their feet. Ed Wheeler's chair crashed over backward, with him in it.
    Katherine waited for the storm to abate. The whirlwind of emotions crashed against her. She braced herself, resisting the urge to back away a step or two. She let the feelings swirl around her.
    Good. Good. This is anger, not fear. They're annoyed.
    They think they've been called here for some preposterous joke. Katherine could not know it was very much like Phil Marsdon's initial reaction to the Catalog.
    Katherine turned her back on the hubbub. The unleashed passions continued to pluck and tug at her. She reached inside her blouse for the Catalogs. They lay against her abdomen as she spoke. Warm and dry.
    She turned back to face the others.
    She held up the books, one in each hand. Her pose and her silence demanded their attention. The room grew still again. "You've each seen one of these," she said. "Some of you have seen the contents. Think about that. Then think about what I have said."
    Ed Wheeler was struggling to right his chair and himself. He squinted at the Catalogs. "That's one of the books Paul Sanderson had. Or something like."
    Katherine nodded. "These are two of the Catalogs the Dennisons have been finding in their mailbox for two weeks now. It seems they have also started coming to the Greeleys. Have you received one, Mr. Wheeler?"
    "Course not. This is just damned foolishness."
    "No." The voice was tiny, frightened. "We got two. Yesterday and the day before."
    Wheeler swung to face his wife. "What are you saying?"
    "They came in the mail. Like she said." Ticky Wheeler was still seated. She stared at her hands, clutched together in her lap. Katherine's heart went out to her. She looked so small, so frail before the mass of her husband.
    Katherine had a sharp realization of how terrible must be their conjugal bed for Ticky. Angela Finney left her seat by Rod. She crossed to Ticky's side. She put a reassuring arm around the narrow shoulders of her old friend. Again Katherine was struck by Angela's personal strength. She could feel the loving warmth flowing into Ticky Wheeler.
    "They came in the mail," Ticky repeated. "Like she said."
    "And you didn't tell me?" Wheeler's voice was rising fast to a bellow. Ticky shriveled. "Since when do you not tell me what comes in the mail?"
    "I-didn't want to." Katherine found herself leaning closer. Straining to hear Ticky's words. "I didn't want you to see the pictures."
    Wheeler loomed over his wife. His big, red hands clenched and unclenched. Katherine debated with herself. To step around the table now, to divert Wheeler's fury… In another moment he would certainly strike out at Ticky. Ticky's terrified gaze told all it would not be the first time she had received such treatment.
    Now Angela rose. She stepped directly in front of Ed. "Cool down, Wheeler," she said. There was steel in every word. "Ticky's taken more than her share of shit from you."
    "You keep out of this, Angie. This isn't your affair."
    Angela's face was rock hard. The muscles worked along the line of her jaw. "I'm making it my affair. Do something about it, why don't you?" Her face was barely six inches from Wheeler's. His breath was hot. It reeked of gin.
    Wheeler's big fist came up so fast it was a blur. There was no time for Angela to sidestep the blow. But it did not connect. Unnoticed, Rod Greeley moved quietly within range of the confrontation. As Wheeler moved, Rod hooked his arm around the bigger man's elbow and spun him. Hard and fast.
    Wheeler's feet left the floor. He rolled across Rod's back as the soldier pushed up under him. Wheeler flipped a full 180 degrees. He landed with a huge crash right next to the card table. Katherine's breath escaped in an involuntary gasp. The small black stones jumped on the green baize.
    Wheeler lay for a moment, panting. He stared at the ceiling. His eyes seemed to move independently. Then he focused. There was sudden terror in his frozen face. His mouth opened wide.
    His scream filled the room. Within the starfish shape of the burn scar a pale light flashed. It was there only the tiniest fraction of a second. Only Katherine saw it. All other eyes were on Ed.
    He thrashed about. His hands slapped at his back as he rolled. Katherine grabbed the edges of the card table. She lifted it. She turned ninety degrees away from Wheeler. His rolling brought him right on top of the scar. His scream became a piercing shriek.
    "Burning!" He forced his voice to form the word. "Burning!
    
    Burning!" There was no sign of flame. He clawed at his shirt. He rolled away from the scar.
    Katherine put the table down. She had to act fast. Wheeler's pain crackled through her. Alive, electric. She grabbed Rod's arm. 'Knock him out! It's feeding on his anger. His fear. Knock him out! Quickly, before he ignites!" Her voice was the commanding bark of a drill sergeant.
    Rod responded instinctively. He grabbed the front of Wheeler's shirt with his left hand. He yanked the big man to his feet. In the same motion he brought his right fist up and across Wheeler's jaw. There was a loud crack. Wheeler collapsed into Rod's arms.
    Ticky's sobbing rose to fill the following silence. Angela pulled Ed's chair close to her old school chum. She sat. Ticky buried her face in Angela's full bosom. She sobbed without restraint. Angela patted her mousy brown hair.
    "Tell us, baby," she said so softly. "Tell us what was in the Catalog. What you saw." Katherine nodded approvingly. Exactly the right question,
    "I saw-" Ticky's voice was muffled by Angela's body. She gasped around sobs. "I saw him, I saw him in flames. In hell."
    Katherine hunkered down before Ticky's chair. She let her emotional shields drop. She accepted the torrents flooding out of Ticky Wheeler.
    So much pain. For so long!
    "And you know what that looks like, yes? You've seen the face of evil before. A long time ago." She reached out a gentle hand to turn Ticky's head. Her hair was damp with sweat. Their eyes met.
    Ticky's sobbing stopped as if a switch had been thrown. She straightened. Angela looked into Katherine's eyes, and quickly away. She was instantly annoyed with herself. Annoyed at the reaction. But she could not meet that gaze without trembling.
    "Yes," Ticky said. "Yes. So long ago. So long. So long."
    Katherine kept her hand on Ticky's cheek. The flesh was like fire under her palm. "You must be strong now, Mrs. Wheeler. You must reach down inside yourself, yes? Find your most hidden strength."
    
    As Katherine spoke, Angela felt Ticky relax. Just a little. She still had an arm around the little woman's shoulders. The muscles softened.
    Katherine rose. Ticky's eyes stayed on hers, following her up. "You'll need all your strength, Ticky," Katherine said. She turned to face the others. There was a dreadful fatigue crowding around the edges of her thoughts, her feelings. It made it all the harder to say the next few words.
    "We will all need our strength. Our innermost strength. Now, please be seated again. It's almost ten o'clock. We have very little time."
    She picked up the Catalogs from the chair on which she'd set them. She returned to the card table. She placed one on each of the far corners. Then she picked up the table again, re-centering it over the burn scar.
    She fought back a shudder. In her hands the Catalogs had felt noticeably warmer.
    The time is near, she thought. So very near. And still I’m not sure of the focus. She set about realigning the shiny black stones. Their white markings glinted, even in the low light of the dining room. Like the slits of cat's eyes.
    "What about him? Rod inclined his head toward Wheeler.
    "No, I don't think he's the one." Katherine turned. "Sorry. Miles away. Pull him over to the side, would you, Sergeant?"
    She turned back to the others. "Doctor Hanson was something of an extremist," Katherine said. "He was one of those who sometimes give parapsychology a bad name. Or give it the image most laymen have. Spook chasers and demon busters.
    "That is not my approach. Tim and I argued about it, and more than once. I told you I try to treat the thing as much like a science as I can. I also use certain, v/ell, faculties I possess. A certain sensitivity. I've been tested for ESP, and I do rather well in such controlled situations. I cannot let that mislead me. I have to be certain everything I do is grounded in solid research. I have never published a paper that did not have the most complete back-up documentation I could arrange.
    "Tim Hanson was the other way. He treated speculation as hard fact, and guess work as gospel. He was supremely overconfident. I warned him more than once he would make a serious mistake one day. A mistake that might very well cost him his soul."
    She pushed the last of the stones into their place. The pattern began to glow. A dull red light. Like dying embers. A light only she could see. She felt suddenly very alone.
    They have no idea what's happening around them. None at all. If anything goes wrong…
    "A mistake that might very well cost him his soul," she repeated. "I think that is what happened. And I think it happened in this room."
    She looked at Ed Wheeler. Rod had arranged him in more or less a sitting position against the north wall. His head slumped on his chest. His lips made small blubbery sounds when he exhaled. His jaw was colouring. His breathing was laboured. Katherine noted that none of the medical personnel present had moved to his aid. Not even to check his condition. She hoped perhaps her words were having the desired effect.
    These men of science have realized they've stepped outside the boundaries of their domains. Whatever's the matter with Ed Wheeler, they know it's got very little to do with a crack on the jaw.
    "Fear is the primary key in all this," she said. She did not take her eyes off Wheeler at first. His breathing was loud in her ears. The wet burble of his loose lips made her twitch, suppressing a shudder. When she finally turned back to the others, each person in the room felt her black gaze pierce him or her like a spear. Angela actually gasped aloud.
    "We repress what we fear, and fear what we repress," Katherine said. "This thing feeds on fear." She tapped the right-hand Catalog. Hot and dry. Hot and dry. "And I say 'thing' with very specific use of the singular.
    "These Catalogs, as you perceive them, are not individual objects. They are part of a large whole. Cells of a larger organism. That organism has nothing to do with this world. Not as we understand it. It lives outside. It is very old. As old as the universe, perhaps."
    Sam forced his gaze away from Katherine. He was still expecting derision from Phil Marsdon, but nothing came. It strengthened-if strengthening was needed-his conviction that something happened in Katherine's office, or on the drive home… or both, something that cowed the lawyer as never before.
    "There are many names we've used to describe the forces of evil," Katherine went on. "Satan. Lucifer. Asmodeus. Loki. Different cultures all have their name for it. Ml have different images, different tales.
    "That's because they seek to describe something which does not fit into the normal parameters of human experience. We each see only a tiny part of it, and to each of us it's different.
    "Like the contents of these Catalogs. Different pictures for each observer. Keyed always to fear. Drawing always on repression. Some of us fear pain. Loneliness. The power others have over us. Some fear our own sexuality. That's the basis, you see? Each of us carries around some dark parts buried within us. Anger. Sexual frustration. Envy. Manifestations of the Seven Deadly Sins. Parts of ourselves we hate and fear.
    "Our ancestors were very bright, you know. There's a silly tendency to think of them as being less intelligent than us. To explain their wonders as the work of aliens, space gods.
    "But they were smart. As smart as us. They just didn't have as much history to back them up. As much accumulated knowledge. It took humanity a lot of years to begin to understand the universe. Our ancestors didn't have all years behind them. So they sought their explanations in the supernatural. They explained psychosis as demonic possession. They saw little sprites, little devils in sickness and hunger. They shaped their world out of their imaginations. and more than once they hit very near the target, as we understand the workings of things today.
    "In other cases, they created the right answer. The evil that waits outside depends on us to believe in it. The more people believed in ghosties and ghoulies, the more power it had in the world. The more we turned away, toward science and the church, the more its power diminished.
    "The evil waits for us all around us. It waits for little doorways to open, little weaknesses in the human soul. Those doorways let it squirt some of its bile into our universe.
    "Tim Hanson believed. He would never in a thousand years admit it to anyone, not even himself. But he believed in the pure, naked power of the evil. And so he let some of it out. Right here in this room. And I'll wager he had no idea what he was releasing. Not even as it consumed him, took him away bodily into its own universe. It's not something that can be understood, strictly speaking. God cannot be quantified. Neither can the devil.
    "It's adaptable, the evil. It shapes itself to whatever society will accept. In this instance, Catalogs in the mail. What could be more innocuous? If you found a fork-tailed imp squatting on your doorstep, you'd never let it into the house, would you? But a Catalog? You wouldn't even think about it.
    "It needed that trust, you see. To get back into the house. Tim Hanson opened the portal, but there was a catch. You've all seen the Bela Lugosi and his ilk stalking through people's houses at will. But did you know the legends, the 'real' legends, say a vampire cannot enter a house unless it's invited'! It's a theme common to many such stories. Many forms of evil, all over the world. Hanson brought the evil into this house. He invited it in. Right on this spot, in fact." Her foot tapped the burn scar under the table. A faint tremor ran up her leg. All the way up. Not that way, she thought. You don't get to me that way.
    "But after the incident with the Hansons, something happened. The house changed owners. Hanson's invitation became void the moment he left. If Mr. Keillor had chosen to move back in, he might have found himself victimized. I'm not sure on that. It doesn't matter, since he sold the house. He sold it to Sam and Joanne Dennison.
    "Then something curious happened. The evil persisted. Hanson was gone. By then Polly was probably dead. It should have gone away. Dispersed. But it stayed. Like a cloud around this house. Because it sensed something here. Something it could use.
    "But it was stymied. Stymied by that change of ownership. It had to get itself invited' back into the house. It needed to be invited. Once that was achieved, through the simple ruse of the Catalogs, there was no stopping it. You burned every copy that came after the first one, Sam," Katherine said. Her eyes looked into Sam's.
    Definitely something there. Still something she could not read. She felt as if she were clawing at a sheet of thick, smooth glass. Trying to find a finger hold in its flawless surface. What am I reading in you, Sam Dennison?
    "But burning was no good," she went on. "It was too late. It had already gotten itself back into the house. And, Mr. Greeley, your wife saw it too. And your son before her. Eventually he stole a copy, and that's how it found its way into your house.
    "It started working immediately on everyone it touched. I can only guess what it tapped into. Each of you had a darkness to feed it. Some were greater than others.
    "In you, Sam, it found rage. Ancient and buried rage. Oh, yes, Mr. Greeley. It wasn't Sam who attacked your wife, but it could have been. If she'd come upon him in a moment of thrall. He could have smashed her the way he smashed your kitchen."
    Joanne was mesmerized by Katherine Goodbridge. The smooth tones of her voice. Speaking all the unspeakable words. Sorting them. Filing them. Making some kind of terrible order out of the chaos of their lives.
    It sounds so matter-of-fact, coming from her. She knows about these things. She understands them.
    Then she found her eyes drifting to Phil Marsdon. He was seated to Katherine's right. He was stiff in his chair. His mouth was open. His eyes were wide.
    He didn't tell her any of this, Joanne thought. I was sure he must have. We certainly didn't. But no.
    Sam told her how Katherine singled out Marsdon while they were still at Yale. She said he was her best source of information, but none of this came from him. She said she's got something like ESP. Is she reading our minds? No. No, I don't think so. It's something even more basic than that. She's reading the shapes of our emotions. The colours in this room. I can almost feel them myself, if I let my guard down.
    The room was alive with feelings. Emotions were surging around the four walls like tigers pacing the confines of their cages. Katherine Goodbridge was reading those emotions. Snatching them out of the air. As one might catch a feather drifting on the breeze.
    Joanne felt her own emotions building inside her. Boiling. Pushing up. Pushing out against the constraints of her body.
    
    She wanted to scream at Katherine Goodbridge. Scream at her to stop talking and do something.
    Katherine stepped from behind the card table. She crossed to stand before Joanne's chair. She placed a hand on Joanne's shoulder. A soothing coolness flowed through Joanne's body.
    "I will, Joanne," Katherine said. Joanne realized she'd spoken her thoughts aloud.
    "I'm going to do something right now."
    
    
Chapter Thirteen 
1
    
    Sam felt it again. The air was turning to something cold and thick. Something he could grab hold of.
    He put out a hand to find Joanne's. Her fingers linked with his. Her grip was immediately almost painfully tight. And there was something else. A coolness. A calm that seemed to radiate up through his palm, through his arm. Katherine's hand was still on Joanne's shoulder. Sam knew, instinctively, that the soothing peace originated there.
    Katherine's mouth was moving. He heard no words. It was some kind of silent communication. It was meant only for Joanne. Joanne and-the baby!
    All at once Sam knew this to be true. Katherine was reaching down through his wife. Down into her deepest soul. Finding there, nestled within the consciousness of the mother, the developing mind and soul of the baby.
    Sam felt a surge of parental protectiveness. Bright anger flashed inside him. The thought of Katherine's mind reaching out to touch that of his unborn child seemed too much an intrusion to bear.
    The feeling passed, replaced by another. Anger gave way to embarrassment. He felt as if he were intruding. As the calm from Joanne's grasp moved through him, as it wrapped around his heart, he wanted to let go. Break the connection. He was sharing something not meant for him. Something very special. Very private.
    From the dark places within himself he heard a voice telling him he had no right to share. He did not deserve to share.
    Joanne would not let go of his hand. Her fingers tightened when he tried to pull away. Her nails dug into his flesh.
    Katherine stepped back. Contact was broken. The cool peace faded. Part of Sam reached out to seize it. Keep it from leaving. It seemed an old part of himself. Something from a long time ago. Something very small. Very lost. Down deep within him. Something he almost recognized.
    Then, like the effect of Katherine's touch, it was gone. It spun away from him. Water whirling down a drain. He felt empty. Worse than empty. The tiny, lost something faded. Only the dark things remained. He felt tears grow at the corners of his eyes.
    Katherine looked into his face. Her brows twitched. It seemed like a fleeting recognition. As if she saw Sam, knew Sam as someone she'd met before. She tried to hold the sensation. To form it into something tangible. This, too, passed.
    She stepped across the half circle of chairs to face Philip Marsdon. She spoke, and it was to everyone present.
    "Mr. Marsdon here turned out to be my first, best clue. Most of you here don't know him. Those who do don't like him much. Joanne doesn't like him at all. She can feel his eyes on her whenever he's around. She can feel the way his looks trace the contours of her body. She knows what kinds of pictures he's painting in his mind.
    "She hates him for that. But it's open, honest hate. It's not buried. Joanne Dennison has more than her share of things buried in her soul, but that's not one of them. Her repressions are something else. Deeper. Harder to name. The evil of the Catalog tapped into them after barely a glance from her. It could reach out to them, because they are ancient things, like itself. They are the kinds of things we all carry around. The fears that have been with us from the caves, and will be with us when we walk the worlds of distant stars.
    "It was this evil that attacked Joanne through those primal fears, and her mind's rebellion against them pushed her over into 'nervous exhaustion.' That's what Paul Sanderson called it, isn't it, Dr. Witlaw? That was the closest thing he could find to fit what he saw. And, of course, he had no way of knowing he was looking at anything else.
    "He hadn't seen the Catalog himself, then. It hadn't started to prey on his tortured memories of his only son's death. The emotions he kept bottled up, locked away. Because he foolishly thought Malcolm's sacrifice would be diminished if he let himself grieve openly.
    "For Babs Greeley there was the sexual repression of a middle-class hausfrau. Don't try to protest, Mr. Greeley. It doesn't reflect on your manhood. It reflects on your wife's upbringing. She had to raise a younger sister almost alone, after her mother died. A sister with more than a bit of a wild streak. Babs might have shared that wildness, but she ladled herself into a mould she thought more appropriate as a model for Angela.
    "Yes. Bits and pieces of all kinds of repressions. In each of you who saw the Catalog. Bits and pieces of fodder for the evil to masticate. To reshape as it saw fit.
    "Except for this man here." She indicated Marsdon with a tip of her head. Her hair moved as if in a subtle breeze. "Easily the most disgusting human being any of us are likely to meet. I know. I've spent several long hours in his charming company." She heard Josh Witlaw's exhalation of relief.
    "No, Dr. Witlaw. I wasn't screwing Phil Marsdon while you and Sam Dennison waited in the hall. I was examining him. Although I'm sure Mr. Marsdon never realized it. I was playing a little game with him. Testing him."
    "Fucking bitch." They were the first words Sam had heard Marsdon speak in over twenty-four hours. The lawyer's throat sounded rough, dry. Painful from disuse.
    "Mr. Marsdon is disgusting because he represses nothing. To use the old phrase, he 'lets it all hang out.' That's why every other word is a four-letter one for him. Why sex is only for his pleasure. Why business is just for the screwing of others. That's why the Catalog was blank to him. This revolting specimen gave it nothing to feed on."
    She stepped back as Marsdon surged to his feet. "Lousy fucking cunt! I-"
    
    His voice died. In a quick, fluid motion Katherine snatched a Catalog from the near corner of the table. She brought it up to face him, pages open toward his eyes.
    The blood drained out of Marsdon's face. The five-o'clock shadow on his jowls turned dark blue against the white skin. He slumped back into his chair. His eyes did not leave the Catalog.
    "You see something now, don't you, Mr. Marsdon?" Katherine held the little booklet out before him. "You see something now because I've given you something to see. Because I've shaped you a nice, new repression, yes?
    "Anger. Against me. Anger you couldn't let out. Because I've never been that alone with you. And you're too smart a lawyer to act in front of witnesses."
    She held the Catalog closer. With one finger of her free hand she flipped the pages. Marsdon's rage was building again, building fast. A palpable thing, to one with Katherine's fine-tuned perceptions.
    "What do you see, Mr. Marsdon? Tell us all what you see."
    "Fuck you."
    "No. That's not it. You don't think of sex in terms of anger. If you see me here, it's not fucking that's happening. What do you see? Is it me, Mr. Marsdon? Is the Catalog showing you some nasty things you'd like to do to me?"
    Marsdon swung out at her savagely. There was a sudden, sharp sound of ripping fabric. The Catalog flew from her hand. It slapped against the near wall. It seemed to cling there for one long moment. Then it fluttered to the floor.
    Marsdon rose, swinging with his other hand. His fist came hard against the side of Katherine's head.
    She toppled away from him. Around her the air filled with balls of colour, dancing. The floor sought unusual angles. The backs of her thighs hit the card table. The shiny black stones sprayed across the room. The other Catalog spun from the corner of the table. It curved back under, landed in the exact centre of the burn scar.
    Katherine lost her footing. She went down in a lump. The legs of the table screeched on the hardwood floor as she rolled against them. Her hand went out to steady herself. It came down in the outer edge of the starfish scar.
    Her fingers curled. Her eyes widened. She jerked back, launching herself away from the black mark on the floor.
    It was as well she did.
    At the moment she cleared the dark smudge, a plume of blue flame shot up from the centre of the scar. The Catalog flew up on the fire. It struck the underside of the table. Together they were lifted and hurled to one side. The flame reached the ceiling and spread, radiating out like water gushing from a hose.
    Unlike water, it did not fall back toward the earth. It flickered blue fingers across the ceiling, mirroring the shape of the scar on the floor.
    Joanne clamped her hands over her ears. The room was filled with screams. Not just of those present. The searing blue flame seemed full of the sounds of anguish.
    Marsdon stumbled back against the wall. His foot came down on the fallen Catalog. It shot toward the side like a banana peel, out from under him. He toppled forward, into the heart of the flame.
    He screamed. He stepped back. He was a human torch, outlined in blue fire. He screamed and screamed and screamed. Abruptly the flames were gone from him. He stood like a statue, staring into the column of fire.
    It wavered. It bent. It bowed outward slightly. As the curve increased, it appeared to be rotating. Turning on the points where it touched floor and ceiling. It reached out to each of them in turn. Blue fire highlighted each face. Throwing into sharp relief each expression of horror and dread.
    At first it bent out most toward Katherine. She was up on her knees. She stared into the shimmering blue light. The flames darkened near her. Tendrils flickered out from the main column. Probing. They did not touch her. She fought the drive to rise, to run. To break out of that house, that tiny town. To seek the farthest horizon, never looking back.
    It knows me› she thought.
    It turned and pushed out a little more as it swept past Angela. Past Rod. Past Doug. Past Abramson and the paramedics.
    The screaming stopped. There was no sound. Absolutely no sound anywhere in the wide world. Everyone stood as if the air around them had turned to ice, freezing them in place.
    In front of Sam and Joanne it lingered. Sam had his arms around his wife. Pulling her close. Joanne's eyes threatened to escape her head, so wide was her look of total terror. The blood thundered in her ears. Her heartbeat, amplified ten thousand fold by that pervading silence. The tendrils of blue flame licked out toward them. They tried to pass around them. Encompass them.
    "Step apart!" Katherine heard her own voice as if it belonged to a stranger. A strength she would never have dreamed in herself jolted her into action.
    "Step apart," She shouted. "Don't give it a single target!"
    Sam and Joanne did not move. Katherine forced herself to her feet. She stepped around Marsdon, past the surging blue flame. She went behind Sam and Joanne. She pushed between them. Sam stumbled a pace to the right. Joanne slipped into a chair.
    The blue flame lunged toward her, then deflected suddenly. The curve of flame bent sideways. The flickering fingers snaked toward Sam. Katherine stepped into its path.
    Now or never. She seized the screaming fear in her heart. She drove it down. Down. She mouthed a single word, without a sound.
    The flame vanished. Marsdon staggered back. His knees gave out. He sat on the floor with a thud. The house seemed to tremble. A piece of burned plaster peeled away from the blasted ceiling. It spun down, a wide helix path. It landed with a dry crack near Ed Wheeler's feet.
    Outside, the night was pitch black. The house might have been floating in ink. Somewhere a dog howled. A distant, painful cry.
    Katherine stepped back to the centre of the wide curve of chairs. She righted the card table. She leaned against it. Everything within the narrow confines of her chest seemed to be forcing itself upward. Her heart wanted to leap from her throat. Her lungs felt crushed, useless.
    The hair had risen around her head. Strands of it floated on the air. Like cobwebs. Her blouse was torn. One breast was exposed. She did not notice. She clutched the crucifix around her neck and forced herself to breathe. In, out. In, out. Her mouth moving without sound.
    In the midst of madness, Joanne Dennison was the only one to notice both Catalogs had disappeared.
    
2
    
    Katherine fought to hold on to her sanity as everyone else went mad.
    They yelled. They screamed. Doug Greeley started to run toward the kitchen door. Rod grabbed his arm. The older man spun to face his son. There was a flash of blind rage in his eyes. He wanted to get away. He would smash anyone who tried to stop him. Rod's face was white. His whole body trembled.
    "Dad…" he said. His voice was shrill, full of dread. They collapsed into each other's arms, sobbing.
    Ticky Wheeler sat bolt upright in her chair. Her arms were rigid at her sides. Her knobby knees were clamped tightly together. Her wide, thin-lipped mouth was open in a piercing scream. Her lungs seemed in no danger of running out of air.
    Angela Finney sat by her, holding tight to her old friend. Angela's smooth face was drawn tight against her skull. In another second or two she would start to scream herself.
    Brian Willis was the first to regain some portion of his senses. He moved to stand at {Catherine's side. She pushed herself up from the table to face him.
    "Now look, lady," he said, "I've seen just about enough of your voodoo." His deep voice was quivering. He struggled visibly to maintain control. "I want some straight dope. What happened? What happened to this guy Marsdon? What was that blue fire? Where did it come from? Why didn't it hurt him?"
    "It was a doorway, Mr. Willis." The strength returned slowly to {Catherine's limbs. She reached out to embrace it. Her voice grew steady. "A portal to another realm. To a world more ancient than ours. A world where our rules simply do not exist."
    She looked at Marsdon. He was shaking all over. There was drool at the corners of his mouth. The crotch of his slacks was two shades darker than the rest. Katherine caught his soiled odour. Her nostrils flared.
    "And as for Mr. Marsdon, I suspect he would debate your assessment that it did not hurt him."
    She bent to hook a hand under Marsdon's arm, lifting him to a nearby chair. "My apologies, Mr. Marsdon. I needed a control. Someone whose psyche I understood. I did not expect that degree of manifestation. I made the same mistake Hanson made." Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. "It might have cost you your life."
    "Then-" It was Sam. He sounded on the verge of complete collapse. His movements were erratic. Not fully his to control. "Then you know what happened? What really happened?"
    Katherine shook her head. The long hair swung in slow echo of the movement. They were turning to her. Turning to her as the wise one, the learned one. The one who had faced these fears before. Beaten them. She drew more strength from their open trust. She clung to their faith in her.
    "What you saw was a kind of mystic sensor, Mr. Dennison. A radar beam. And it was seeking something. Something in this house. In this room."
    Doug Greeley was stabilizing. His face was still ashen. His eyes a little too wide. But his patience was at its limit. He used that to make himself bluster.
    "I agree with this fella," he said. He jerked a thumb toward Willis. "We need more concrete answers. My wife's been attacked. My son's a vegetable. And you give us guesswork. Your sails are all loose, lady. Set us a straight course."
    "Dad." Rod's sigh spoke much of his exasperation. He was embarrassed by his father's affectation. "Just tell us what you know, Miss Goodbridge. Without the supernatural generalities."
    Katherine nodded. She moved to an empty chair and sat. She seemed for the first time to notice her exposed breast. She felt her cheeks grow warm.
    A silly thing to get upset about, all things considered. She tugged the torn blouse to cover it. Josh Witlaw found he could breathe again.
    "Each and every one of you has something you fear. An evil repressed inside." Katherine forced her breathing into a slow, steady rhythm. In control. They want you to stay in control. Don't let them down!
    "It's a sadly human thing we all bear. But the game has been altered. Unfairly. Some of you have been exposed to the influence of these Catalogs. And that has given new strength to your dark areas.
    "This room is full of fear and greed and lust. Angela. You lust after Rod. Don't deny it. It's a feeling not entirely unreciprocated, but neither of you is likely to do anything about it because our society has certain taboos about such things. And Rod gives the evil something else to feed on. Something older than his sexual awareness.
    "Ticky. You've lived in fear of something that happened to you when you were a teenager. A brush with the supernatural. I can't get a clear fix on the exact nature. Such things have a way of shielding themselves even from my sensibilities. Especially with everything else I'm trying to contend with. I'm correct, yes? And something about that brush with evil made you want to punish yourself ever since. You used to be a fine, healthy young girl. But you seduced Ed Wheeler into marrying you. It probably didn't take much. And you've been using him to punish yourself."
    "I wasn't hurt," Ticky said. 'The others. They were all hurt. But I ran away. I broke the circle. It wouldn't have hurt the others, but I broke the circle." She was sobbing again. On the floor Ed Wheeler made noises that suggested returning awareness.
    "No, you're wrong." Katherine studied Ticky's cramped little frame. So much pain there. And with no reason. She wanted to reach into Ticky's skull. Find there the long scroll of memory. Rip from it the useless guilt and fear she carried. "You allowed yourself to get involved in something none of you understood. That's what went wrong. Your actions could not have affected the outcome either way. But your repressed guilt did mislead me. When I sensed it I thought it might somehow be the reason this portal has remained active. But you aren't the focus. The focus is someone else."
    Joanne was not comprehending. "Focus?"
    "The target. Tim Hanson opened the doorway. And it took him. Physically. But he wasn't a particularly evil man. Driven, yes. Very intense. But not evil. And it feeds on evil. Draws evil to itself. Adds it to itself. So it was left unsatisfied.
    "It needed something blacker than whatever it was Tim Hanson might have been carrying around in his shadows."
    
    Katherine crossed the room as she spoke. She stood directly in front of Joanne. She looked into her big, round eyes and felt the agony, the chaos. Such a normal little life Joanne Dennison made for herself. Now, no matter what happened, irrevocably altered. Shattered? Katherine prayed not.
    "It contented itself with Babs and Dougie for a while," Katherine said. "Playing little mind games with them. Twisting their psyches. In Dougie it may even have sensed a potential matrix. Someone young enough to be shaped. But Dougie's mind was already set in too many ways. He was interesting enough for the focus to shift to him for a while, though. That's why the Catalogs started going to the Greeley house.
    "But it was nowhere near enough. It killed Paul Sanderson. His blood on the pages made it stronger. But death was too final. It didn't leave the subject alive for further torment. It's rather like a spider, you see? It doesn't like to kill its victims outright, unless it has to. It prefers live food.
    "It experimented with your sister. It smashed Nancy's brain. It killed all the parts that were Nancy. It left only a shell.
    "I think you'll find, Mr. Greeley," Katherine said without turning, "that your son is not so badly damaged as Nancy McAllister. You'll find parts of him, parts of his personality, still alive in that shattered brain. Not enough to save. Not enough to restore him to full consciousness. Just enough to make him suffer for as long as that body is kept alive.
    "I'd give some serious thought to pulling the plug on Dougie, Mr. Greeley. Whatever he might have done, I doubt very much he deserves what he's going through now. Nobody really deserves damnation."
    She closed her eyes. Closer now, the focus. More and more sharp the resolution. // only it were something else, she thought. Someone else.
    "No, none of them was the one it was really after. None of them was in the right condition, with just the right taint of evil. None of them was keeping it here, orbiting this house."
    She opened her eyes. She studied each of their faces, one after the other. "Dr. Abramson, Mr. Willis, Mr. Vandenberg, I think you should leave. Ticky and Ed Wheeler, too. Ticky's previous brush with the occult makes her a distraction. I cannot afford to be distracted. Not now. Perhaps you gentlemen can help her get Ed home."
    "Now just a goddamn minute." Willis towered over Katherine. His face gleamed with sweat. His eyes were very bright. "You expect us to just waltz on out of here, after all we've seen? Just stroll on out like nothing happened?"
    "I don't expect you to behave as if nothing happened," Katherine said. Something most definitely happened, and I expect you will carry the memory of it for the rest of your lives. But I do expect you to leave. All five of you." She was staring him down. She seemed almost as tall as him, if barely half his breadth.
    Vandenberg put a hand on his lover's arm. "Maybe we'd better do what she says." They were the first words he'd spoken since his polite greetings upon arrival. His voice had a high, reedy quality. A strange contrast to Willis's basso profundo.
    Willis scowled. He placed a reassuring hand over Van-denberg's. He squeezed it. "Okay. Okay, we'll go. But we go no farther than the Wheeler house, understand? And if we don't hear from someone here by midnight, we call the cops."
    Katherine nodded. "That is quite acceptable. Thank you."
    The room fell silent again as the two paramedics carried Ed Wheeler toward the back door.
    A plateau, Katherine thought. Another calm between the storms. She wished it could be a long one. But the minutes were ticking away too fast. Too fast.
    Abramson took over from Angela, comforting Ticky Wheeler as they left. She walked like a robot. Arms and legs locked stiff as boards.
    "What about the rest of us?" Angela said as Ticky left the room. She was still sitting in the chair next to the one Ticky had occupied. Her eyes were bright pools surrounded by the black smears of her ruined mascara.
    "You stay." Katherine allowed no equivocation in her voice. It was not a request. Rod and Doug moved to stand with Angela. Seeking strength in the family unit, Katherine thought. She smiled approval.
    She did not tell them their brushes with the Catalog had nothing to do with why she wanted them present. She wanted Rod, Doug, and Josh Witlaw because they were big, strong men. If the picture she was building was correct, she might have need of big, strong men.
    She listened for the low growl of cars rounding the house. The others were gone. Already, with the departure of Ticky, she felt her concentration narrowing. Final confirmation was perhaps as close as it could ever be. Only Katherine's own resistance stood between her and the truth. It could not stand much longer.
    Joanne's big eyes asked a thousand questions. Katherine looked from her to Sam. His eyes were shadowed. Pained. Again something roiled deep within. Something that wanted to run away from this place.
    Something afraid of being found out, Katherine thought.
    It was time. She held back something that felt very like a sob.
    "The only way we can free ourselves of this influence," Katherine said, "is by appeasing the evil. I propose to give it what it came for."
    But I'm going to need help. Very special help. She thought of sacrificial lambs again.
    Her eyes fixed on Sam. He tried to look away. She held his gaze as if by physical action. A white light seemed to lance from her pupils to his. Only Sam could see it. He squinted against the glare. The muscles of his face twitched. His mind raced. And it was not entirely his mind. Not anymore.
    The light shot across the space between them to pierce Sam Dennison's soul. "Sam," Katherine said softly. "Tell us about your parents, Sam. What happened to your parents?"
    "They ran off." Joanne turned. It was not her husband's voice. Not Sam's smooth alto tones. It was so small. So childlike. There were tears welling in his eyes. Her heart felt as if it would break. "They ran off. When I was seventeen. I came home one day and they were gone."
    "Did you try to find them? You were a minor. You couldn't have stayed alone."
    "One of the neighbors took me in. It was only five months to my eighteenth birthday. Then I was independent." Joanne started to put out a hand to him. Something held her back. Oh, Sam. Oh, my poor, sweet Sam!
    "The police tried to find my parents," he said. "They were gone. I never heard from them again."
    "The dead do not speak," Katherine said. Her gaze was devouring Sam. He could feel his skin peeling away. Feel his muscle and bone dissolving. Until only the soul remained. The dark, hidden soul he wanted no one to see.
    "The dead do not speak, do they, Sam?"
    "Sam doesn't know his parents are dead," Joanne said. Katherine found her defiantly protective attitude deeply touching. She sensed the defensiveness move to shelter Sam. So much love. So much caring. Joanne felt her husband was being threatened in some inexplicable fashion she did not understand. Her instinct was to protect him.
    "He's often said he wished they were dead," Joanne said. "Or that he knew they were dead. So he could let go of his anger. He could, if he knew they were dead."
    Katherine continued to stare at Sam. It was a struggle to keep her voice calm and even. "That's not quite right, is it, Sam? That's what you tell people. That's even what you tell yourself. But it's not the whole truth, is it? Not the big, black secret truth."
    Dear God, if only I were wrong. But no. Not this time. Forgive me, Joanne. Forgive me, Sam.
    Sam shook his head. He freed himself of her gaze at last. His fists were balled. The veins throbbed in his temples. "What… are… you… trying… to… say…?"
    Katherine took a step toward the kitchen door. Everything was unfolding as she'd thought it might. She had to be careful now. So very careful. Everything was boiling up to the point of release. But it had to happen on her timing, not his. Her whole body fairly vibrated. Everything was wound so tightly.
    "Let's take a look in the basement, shall we, Sam?" That was the key. The basement. The darkness below the house. The stale smells. All part of the picture. "You wouldn't mind going downstairs, would you? Not with all of us there."
    Sam quivered like a plucked bowstring. Fear? Rage? Katherine wasn't sure. Joanne could not begin to guess. The rest stood in rapt silence. They were out of their depths. Around them the blood-red seas were only getting higher.
    Katherine returned across the room. She put a hand on Sam's bicep. It was like rock beneath her fingers. She looked quickly to the other men in the room. Sam was enormously strong for one of such slender build. She might yet need Rod, or Doug, or Josh. Or all of them.
    "What do you say, Sam? Just a quick look in the basement, yes?"
    Joanne grabbed her. She spun her hard. Katherine had to brake herself to stop from turning a complete circle. Joanne's voice was nearly a shriek. Katherine found it hard to meet her eyes. "What are you talking about? There's nothing in the basement. Sam's never even been in the basement." Suddenly the words struck her as odd. In a rush her thoughts pulled together, crystallized.
    Three months in this house and he's never once been in the basement. He even hired a guy to do the work when he realized the best way to wire the stereo speakers was under the floor And yet all that took was a few holes drilled and some wire pushed through. I could have done it. Certainly Sam could have.
    He'd refused to go in the basement.
    But he's always hated basements. It's-claustrophobia or something. That's all.
    Growing desperation made her seize the denial. Whatever Katherine Goodbridge was thinking, whatever it was it was wrong. It had to be.
    Claustrophobia. That's got to be all!"
    "It's not this basement, particularly," Katherine said. "It's basements in general. Basements, and what they mean to him." She stepped away from Joanne. She faced Sam again. "What do you say, Sam? Just a quick look." Her voice was honey. Sam hated her. A swift, total hate that blocked out the rest of the world.
    "All right," he said. "But I don't know what you're talking about."
    Joanne linked her arm through his. Like Katherine she felt the tension in his muscles. She'd never known his body under such pressure. They led the way to the basement door. All but Marsdon followed. He still sat in the middle of the dining room floor. Hugging his knees. Rocking a little back and forth.
    Sam shot back the small brass bolts and opened the door. A wave of chill mustiness flowed over them all. Sam paused. His hesitation stretched to several seconds. Then he flicked up the light switch, started down the stairs.
    Rod Greeley froze on the top step. "If that blue flame…"
    "It didn't come from beneath the floor, Sergeant," Katherine assured him. "Trust me. As long as you do exactly as I say, everything will be fine. For most of us."
    Rod went after Sam and Joanne. The others followed. A curious procession down into the cool, dark-cornered hollow beneath the house. The walls were flagstone slabs, piled flat. Cobwebs hung everywhere from the beams of the floor above. Two ancient tree trunks took the main weight of the house, in the center of the basement.
    The huge old furnace squatted like some tribal god in its alcove to the side. It was converted to modern heating methods, but retained its original shape. Pipes for the house's five heating zones snaked up and away from it. They vanished into the maze of wires and webs above. In the floor before its cast-iron grate was a deep square hole, once a bin for coal.
    Katherine noted the usual basement clutter lying about. Cans of dried paint. Old rags. Two ladders, one with rungs missing. The shattered remains of a lawn chair in one corner. Under a tattered tarpaulin it looked for all the world like the decayed carcass of some prehistoric beast. The floor was rough, filthy.
    They huddled together. As close as they could be without actually touching. Everyone was clearly uncomfortable in that place. None more than Sam Dennison. Against Joanne's arm his muscles were hard as stone. His hands trembled. The sweat beaded on his brow. It ran down his cheeks. A single glistening droplet gathered at the point of his chin. It hung there, ignorant of gravity.
    His head turned from side to side. His eyes peered into the dark corners. The veins pounded under the thin flesh of his temples.
    Katherine stepped away from the assembled onlookers. She positioned herself under the dining room. Directly above her head would be the starfish-scar of the burn. There was absolutely no sign of it from below. She heard a small creak from the floorboards above. Philip Marsdon shifting his weight.
    'Tell us about basements, Sam," Katherine said.
    "No." His voice was petulant. Never had he been so much the child in Joanne's eyes. She wanted to weep. She could feel the world crumbling around her.
    "They're nasty places, aren't they, Sam?" Katherine kept her voice reasonable. But she also kept at him. "Horrible, smelly places. Your father and mother locked you in their basement, yes? In the crawl space under the house. When you were bad."
    Sam shook his head. "No. No."
    "And you could never understand what you'd done." She studied him carefully. The slightest movement, the tiniest tic was a blaring signal to her.
    He's changing, she thought. The effect was even greater than I’d guessed. Those horrid bastards. To do this to a child. To destroy him like this. They deserved what happened to them.
    "You never understood why you had been bad," Katherine said. "You tried to be good. You tried so very hard to be good." Her voice was becoming childlike itself. She was addressing herself to a closed part of Sam Dennison's brain. A part locked away for thirty years. Sealed away. Until it shrivelled almost to nothing. The real Sam Dennison. The one his parents tried to kill.
    "How old were you the first time, Sam? The first time they locked you in the crawl space? Were you four? Four years old. All alone in the dark, smelly crawl space. With the cockroaches. The spiders. And something else." His every motion talked to her. She reached out with her mind. She felt the air around Sam Dennison. Felt it swirling. Roiling. Changing. As he changed. "And what else?" she asked. "What else was down there?"
    "Dead Danny." It was not Sam's voice at all anymore. It was the sniffling voice of a small child. A child beaten unmercifully. Tortured beyond reason. Finally a child who crawled away inside himself. Left the world to someone else. "They said Dead Danny was in the basement," the child's voice said. "They said he'd get me one of those times. One of those times when they locked me down there. Dead Danny would get me."
    The house seemed to be breathing, Very softly. Water trickled down the flagstone walls like sweat. The air was dank. Fetid. Katherine felt her blouse clinging to her back. Her perspiration was ice water against her flesh.
    This is it. 1 have to force it now, or it will never happen and we'll lose it all. Again the image came of the sacrificial lamb. I’m sorry, Sam, she thought. But Sam was no longer there.
    Joanne stepped back from the side of the man whose arm she held. Her face was twisted, tight with horror. Katherine's voice came from the other side of the basement. The other side of the galaxy. "But Dead Danny didn't get you, did he, Sam?"
    "No." It was a croak. Not a child's voice anymore. Not Sam's either. Joanne looked up at the face of the man she'd married. It was a skull. The orbits of the eyes were dark craters. The big teeth grinned from lips drawn back into a hideous caricature of a smile. It stared into the world with a horrible dead glare.
    "S-Sam-?"
    "No." He turned that sick, blank gaze on her. "Dead Danny. Dead Danny. Dead Danny is my name." It was the rustle of dry leaves through a graveyard. A singsong. A nursery rhyme, without form.
    "This is the evil that touches your lives," Katherine said. She could barely speak against the pounding of her heart. "The evil Sam Dennison's parents created."
    The thing that was no longer Sam Dennison turned back to her. It took a long stride toward her. Its big hands were claws at its side. No human hands ever looked like that. They came up level with Katherine's throat. The fingers were curved into talons.
    Joanne recognized something in those hands. She'd seen the barest shadow of them years before. On the nights when Sam woke screaming. The hands moved toward {Catherine's throat. Katherine stood her ground.
    "Sam!" Joanne screamed into the musty air. There was enough agony in the single word to fill a hundred volumes. "Sam, don't!"
    "It's not Sam," said Katherine Goodbridge. "Stay back, the rest of you. I'll not guarantee your safety if you move now."
    The questing hands closed about her throat. They began to tighten. Slowly. Oh so slowly. Katherine offered no resistance. The hands tightened. The pressure began to build against her throat. She fought to keep her own hands at her sides. Fought against the urge to tear at the hands on her throat.
    She fixed her dark gaze on the eyes of the thing that called itself Dead Danny. This is it, she thought. This is what you wanted. Now, what do you think you can do with it?
    "Sam," she said.
    "Dead Danny. Dead Danny. Dead Danny is my name, my name." The skeletal head lolled side to side. The hands continued to tighten. The creature's impossible smile grew wider. It was enjoying itself.
    "Sam," Katherine repeated. Her hands would no longer obey her. They closed around the creature's wrists. Her strength was nothing compared to his. "Sam. You have got to help me now, Sam. You must help me. Sam."
    "Dead Danny, Dead Danny."
    "Sam. Listen to me, Sam. Your wife is going to have a baby, Sam. Your wife. Joanne. Think of Joanne, Sam. Think of the love she's given you." She coughed. The pressure on her throat was making it hard to force out the words. But she had to. It was the only hope.
    "Dead Danny. Dead Danny. Dead Danny is my name, my name."
    The sacrificial lamb. But not an innocent. Not this time. That's not what's needed here. "Sam. Think about Joanne. Think about Joanne, Sam."
    The creature's hands stopped tightening. They did not relax. The blood pounded in Katherine's head. His hands on her throat were like fire.
    
    Slowly the creature's head turned. The dead eyes looked at Joanne. She let out a little shriek. A terrible sound. A helpless, hopeless sound. Rod Greeley stepped up behind her. He folded his strong arms over her. She turned her head into his chest and sobbed.
    'Think, Sam. Think." Katherine could feel the world slipping away. There was a bloodstained darkness all around her, closing. 'Think. Please think." She put all her conscious will into the effort. She forced her thoughts out. Across the length of Dead Danny's corded arms. She pounded against the walls of his mind. The wails holding eight-year-old Sam Dennison prisoner. What was left of him.
    "Help me, Sam. Only you can help me, Sam."
    The pressure stopped. The hands relaxed. The arms dropped. The dead eyes grew wide. They looked past her. At the basement floor. At the cracks growing across the basement floor.
    Katherine kept her eyes riveted on his. Only in his gaze could she read the pattern of events as it unfolded. To the others, they simply stood facing each other. Joanne wanted to run to them. Rod Greeley held her back. His grip was strong. Tender, but unbreakable.
    To Katherine's eyes alone, Dead Danny's face became a battleground. "Yes, Sam. You know what to do. You know."
    The concrete buckled beneath her feet. Large chunks began to push up. To topple over. Dirt flowed out of the wounds. Viscous. Like water gushing from below the floor. And out of the dirt, rising, two figures. A man and a woman, once. Now scarcely recognizable as human. Crushed and broken.
    Something large and heavy had smashed into them. Again and again and again. Their mouths hung open, jaws ruined. The empty sockets of their eyes were filled with mud.
    Katherine felt them behind her. They, too, could be seen only by the creature and herself. She would not look. She was suddenly deathly afraid. She kept her eyes on the face of the man who had been Sam Dennison. This was all in his mind. But it was in her mind, too. She had forced him into her reality. Now he brought her into his.
    She could still see Rod Greeley comforting Joanne. She could see Josh Witlaw's agonized face. He was straining against himself. Wanting to come to her. Staying back. Heeding her warning to all of them to keep back.
    The dead came closer. Their feet shuffled on the floor. Dirt rained down from the folds of their clothing. Katherine smelled the rotten flesh. "This is what Dead Danny did, isn't it, Sam?" The twisted face swung toward her. Its gaze was horrible. Terrifying and terrified all in one.
    "This is why your parents went away. Because Dead Danny killed them. They tried to use Dead Danny to frighten you, Sam. But Sam surrendered himself to Dead Danny… to the evil, an evil that had nothing whatsoever to do with your little friend Danny. Evil so black only the mind of a frightened child could ever begin to understand it. And Dead Danny set you free, Sam. It took many years. Danny had to take over complete control. Had to become Sam Dennison. But finally he set you free."
    "With the sledgehammer." Dead Danny's claw hands pantomimed the holding, the swinging of the lethal instrument. The dead ignored him, coming closer. "With the sledgehammer. Killed them. And with the sledgehammer, broke the floor. In the crawl space. Put them under the floor. Poured the water over the floor. No one knew. No one knew."
    "Yes," said Katherine. "He killed them. Buried them. Poured fresh concrete over their graves. And when it was dry he poured water on the floor. There was always water on the floor, in the crawl space. Then, only then, did he let you go to the police and tell them you parents were gone." The shuffling footsteps were right behind her. She did not have to turn. The look in Sam Dennison's face told her all she needed to know.
    Something stirred at the edge of her vision. Something dirty and rotted that reached out from behind her. Toward Dead Danny. Katherine closed her eyes. She felt the dry, rotten strips of cloth move against her as the dead things passed. Dead Danny was whimpering.
    "No. No. Go 'way. Go 'way."
    Katherine held her eyes closed. She listened to the clumsy steps as Dead Danny back away from Sam's parents' outstretched arms.
    Then she felt the wind rise. Hot and dry. Full of screams.
    
    The same screams that filled the blue flame. The stone beneath Katherine reared up hard. It threw her forward. Josh Witlaw saw her stumble. He moved with all the speed of lightning. She fell into his arms and clung there.
    She turned and saw the spectres. They were very close to Danny now. He'd backed all the way to the furnace. He pressed himself against it. The skull face shook.
    "No. No. No." They did riot stop. They folded Danny in their corrupted arms. They drew him back toward the broken floor. The soil still bubbled there. Liquid. Oozing. The bubbling soil only Dead Danny and Katherine could see.
    His feet began to sink into the soil. At first he did not seem to react. His head lowered. His dead eyes moved over the bubbling soil as if fascinated by it. Astonished by it. Then it reached up to his knees, rising faster and faster. His grinning mouth opened wide. He began to scream.
    There was no time for the scream. The three of them were sinking too fast. The mud oozed up past the line of his jaw. It gushed past his big, yellow teeth. The scream became a strangled cry. Muffled. Gone.
    At Katherine's right Joanne Dennison cried out. She broke free of Rod. She ran to her husband. He lay collapsed on the unbroken basement floor.
    His face was his own again. The hands that reached up to grasp her shoulders were Sam Dennison's hands. There was indescribable agony in his wide blue eyes. The big veins pounded against his forehead.
    Joanne cradled his head in her lap. She stroked his face. His face. His face. His own sweet, boyish face again. He was cold. Wet with sweat. His eyes drifted. He did not seem able to hold her in focus. The grip of his hands weakened. The right one dropped away from her shoulder. Then the left.
    He forced his left hand back. He touched the side of her face. The vein no longer throbbed in his temple. His eyes began to glaze.
    "I love you," said Sam Dennison, and died.
    
    
Epilogue
    
    Joanne Dennison returned to Fairharbour with a baby girl in her arms and an emptiness where her heart had been.
    She'd been gone a year. At her mother's insistence she had joined her in Europe. They travelled together. The beauty and good companionship pushed the nightmares farther away.
    Then it came time for the baby. Joanne flew back to New York. Little Samantha Dennison was born in the same room in which her mother first drew breath.
    Sheila McAllister drove her youngest daughter back up to Connecticut. Joanne knew she must return to the house once more, before it was finally sold outright. It was a necessary pilgrimage. She sat staring out the passenger side window as the green hills rolled by.
    I missed the spring again. Missed the buds returning to the bare branches of winter's trees. She felt her eyes begin to water as she remembered how much she'd longed to be a part of that reawakening. As the Buick pulled into the driveway of 1717 Wolf Pit Road all the memories came back as a hammer blow.
    Joanne clutched little Sammy to her bosom and wept. Her mother climbed from the car and walked to the end of the drive. Experience had taught her it would be best to wait for the storm to end itself. It was better in these times for Joanne to be alone with the baby. When it passed, Sheila would be there for her, for Sammy.
    She drank in the glorious countryside. What a terrible shame Joanne can't keep this house.
    She looked up and down the white walls of Wembledge Manor. It was the first time she'd seen the house outside of photographs. This house almost cost me two of my daughters, she thought, and the memory of Nancy beckoned. Sheila turned her back on it. Later, when Joanne no longer needed her, there would be time for the dead. Now her full vigour belonged to the living.
    The land was so peaceful. So impossible to connect to the terrible tale Joanne had finally been able to tell her. So peaceful. So exactly what she would have prescribed for her daughter under other circumstances.
    A movement down the road caught her eye. Two women were walking up Wolf Pit Road toward the Dennison house. One was tall and dark-haired. The other, short and round, and walking with the aid of a cane.
    From Joanne's descriptions Sheila recognized Katherine Goodbridge and Babs Greeley. The older woman held her strawberry-blond head at an odd angle. Professor Goodbridge had cut her hair since Joanne last saw her. It fell now only to the small of her back. It still managed to look like a cloak when the wind caught it. It caught it then. For a moment the black mane spread behind her.
    Katherine thrust a pale hand toward Sheila. "You must be Mrs. McAllister."
    "Yes. Katherine Goodbridge, I presume. And Mrs. Greeley?"
    "Babs," said Babs. "I'm so very glad you wrote us, Sheila. I've been so worried about poor Joanne." Her voice was slurred, as if she might have been drinking heavily. There was no hint of alcohol on her breath. The blow to her head had damaged Babs's speech centers. It took her six months to learn to talk again.
    "How is she?" Katherine asked. She had been living at Wembledge Manor, off and on, for most of Joanne's absence. The house presented a treasure trove of research potential. Nothing more was revealed of the precise nature of the evil Timothy Hanson had unleashed. All traces of the Catalogs vanished with the blue flame that touched Philip Marsdon. No more came. The evil had accepted Katherine's sacrificial lamb. The portal was closed.
    "She's… recovering," Sheila said in answer to Katherine's question. "She's not even close to being over it, but she's recovering."
    For now at least.
    The passenger door creaked on the Buick. Joanne climbed out into the summer sunshine. She drank in the house, the grounds. Everything seemed too friendly to her senses.
    The trees were full of leaves and bird song. The air was wonderful in the complexity of its scents. The other women moved immediately to Joanne's side. Babs bubbled and cooed over the baby. Katherine placed a hand on Joanne's shoulder. Joanne experienced once again the cool peace she'd known that night so long ago.
    "You should bottle that," she said, and the humour in her tone was genuine. She looked around the acreage. "Everything seems so normal."
    Katherine appraised Joanne's appearance. She looked healthy. Her eyes were haunted, but there was hope deep in their brown pools. Hope named Samantha.
    "Everything is normal," Katherine said. "The house is clean. You have my word on that. You could live here if-" Joanne's sudden change of expression stopped her words.
    "And everyone else," Joanne asked. "Are they okay?" In the jumble of events following that evening, she had lost track of so much.
    "As okay as can be expected," Babs said. She'd been given only the barest outline of the events. Her husband and son wanted to spare her more grief as she struggled along the hard road to recovery. Babs found what they gave her more than enough. She closed her mind to any further discussions of the incident. Even so, there were nights when her sleep was full of hot, dark dreams.
    "Ed Wheeler had a massive coronary and died about five months back," Babs said. "Ticky's a changed woman. She put on thirty pounds and got her hair done. You should see her. The change is wonderful. Angela went back to L.A., of course. And Roddy went back to the army. Professor Goodbridge has been seeing quite a lot of Dr. Witlaw."
    Katherine inclined her head and smiled. "Only human, after all. He's a good man, though. The kind of man you could use as a friend, Joanne."
    "If I were staying in Fairharbour."
    "You should. These people are your friends. You don't need to stay in this house. There are other houses. I think the friendship of people who shared the experience will be good for you. It will remind you that you're still sane."
    Joanne walked to the mailbox. Katherine had been away for the weekend, and it was still full. There were some newspapers and bills. No catalogs. She ran her finger along the white letters Sam never finished painting, NO CATAL.
    "I still wonder-you know, what actually happened to him. What really happened."
    "An evil force claimed an evil force," Katherine said. Sheila shot her a withering glance. Katherine ignored it. "Understand, Joanne, that the man you loved, the man you married, was never really Sam Dennison. Sam Dennison died, for all intents and purposes, sometime when he was about eight years old. When his parents shut him in the crawl space for the one time that was one too many.
    "The man you married remembered what it was like to be Sam Dennison, and over the years he even became a pretty fair approximation of what Sam Dennison would have been, given the chance. And a lot of that was because of you, because of the unquestioning love you gave him.
    "But really he was that creature we saw in the basement that night. Partly a construct of Sam's mind. Partly the twisted psyche his parents so lovingly crafted. Our parents scar us one way or another, whether they mean to or not. And Sam's parents meant to. Destroying Sam Dennison must have been something akin to a work of art for them, they did such an enthusiastic job of it.
    "And partly it was evil. Pure evil." She put an arm around Joanne's shoulders. The muscles were stone. They softened as Katherine sent her good thoughts. "The Sam who loved you, the Sam you loved, died in peace. That much I can guarantee, if nothing else. In those last moments of his life he knew the truth, and he was finally freed of all the rages, all the buried anger he carried. The anger that fed 'Dead Danny.' All that rage he never needed to carry, because Dead Danny had eliminated the focus of that rage. But Sam couldn't allow himself to remember. He turned away, and that let the evil personality take over.
    "Now it's all finished and done."
    "Not quite. Did you hear about Phil Marsdon?" Joanne was staring off down the road as she spoke. She turned to look into [Catherine's face for the answer.
    "No. What happened? He left here something of a changed man, I thought."
    "He was attacked." It was Sheila, speaking from behind Katherine. "Castrated."
    Katherine turned and stared. "Dead?"
    "No. Probably wishes he were, though. Two days after- after all this happened,"-she gestured toward the house- "he went back to his office. His secretary was waiting for him with a great big knife."
    Babs boggled. "Why-why did she do it?"
    "Apparently they'd been having some kind of an affair for months. I suppose she got tired of it. I never liked him."
    "There was more." Joanne's voice was soft. There was a strain at the edges of it. "She said she'd been shown what to do in a Catalog. A Catalog that came to the office one morning." She saw the shock in their faces and answered the question she read in their eyes. "The police searched the office and the secretary's home. They didn't find any such Catalog."
    "Could it have been the same…?" Babs could not finish the sentence. She didn't have to.
    "No doubt," Katherine said. "Sam planned to send some of the Catalogs to Marsdon to see if he could track down who was sending them. He'd even gone so far as to put some in an envelope. And address it."
    "The envelope 1 found?" Babs was torn between her curiosity and the desire to leave the whole, awful business ended and forgotten.
    "Mmm. Clever bugger, yes? Probably learned the address as Sam wrote it. Saw Marsdon as another potential portal.
    
    Pity, really. If he'd seen it before the secretary, he'd have found only blank pages. He'd likely have just thrown it away."
    Joanne sighed and held Samantha closer. The baby hiccupped once and settled back to sleep. "Then it's finally over?"
    "This part," Katherine said. "Your part. The war is never quite won, never entirely over. Never entirely lost, either, so be glad of that. But I don't think you have any more to worry about. Call it a professional opinion." She touched Samantha's small, round brow. The few wisps of hair were swan's down against the tips of her fingers. "This is a very lucky baby, Joanne."
    Joanne barked a bitter laugh. "How in God's name can you say that? After all that's happened?"
    "All that's happened is why she's lucky." Katherine bent to kiss the baby's cheek. "You've both been purged, Joanne. You'll have memories, bad memories and worse nightmares. And for some time to come. I won't try to hide that from you. But they'll go away. Know that they will go away. You'll come to see none of the bad things cling anymore. Not for long.
    "That's what it was all about, in the end. A cleansing. A purging. Little Sammy here will grow up without any dark places in her soul. She'll know about the Shadow, but she'll always walk in the sunshine."
    There were bright tears in Joanne's eyes. For the first time in over a year they were not tears of grief or pain. She felt happy. Only in a little way, but she knew Katherine was right. The happiness would grow. Joanne and her daughter would find a life somewhere out there. A happy life, without dark corners or groundless fears.
    She understood Katherine's words. It was her legacy. Her-daughter's legacy. Sam Dennison had bought it for them.
    And paid for it with his soul.
    
THE END