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Raibert Armstrong sat his fine, tall, long-legged horse—spoils of this extended reaving—atop a low-browed ridge, just above the sleeping camp of his largish band. Every so often, he would take the slowmatch from out the clamp and whirl it around several times in the air before once more securing it back into the serpentine of his clumsy arquebus, for if that scurvy, ill-natured pig of a Seosaidh Scot who had robbed him of his well-earned sleep and set him to this useless, thankless task should come by and find his match unlit, he surely would set about thrashing Raibert. And Raibert would then have to kill the bully and then, even if he were fortunate enough to escape north to Armstrong lands, he would be forever marked as the man who brought back into being the long, costly, bloody feud betwixt the two clans, and it ended but less than a score of years.
Of a sudden, the horse raised its well-formed head and snorted, dancing in place, its small ears twitching forward. Then, faintly, Raibert heard it too—a deep, but blaring, bugle-like sound, seemingly coming from somewhere beyond the slightly higher ridge on the other side of the camp of nearly two thousand sleeping Lowlander Scots.
Raibert gave the beast just enough knee to set it to a distance-eating trot, loath to gallop so marvelous a prize when he could see but dimly the way ahead. He took time to blow upon that slowmatch, but then, as he harbored scant faith in the ability of the ancient, ill-balanced and woefully inaccurate firelock to accomplish anything more of value than a loud noise to alert the camp, he reined up long enough to check by a vagrant beam of moonlight that the priming had not shaken from out the pan of his new wheel-lock pistol. He also made certain that the falchion was loose in the sheath—the broad, thick, heavy blade was centuries older than the elderly arquebus, but cold steel was at least always dependable, if well honed and hard-swung.
At the foot of the higher ridge, the Armstrong clansman blew one last time upon the smoldering match, then snapped the metal ring of the shoulder strap to the similar ring in the weapon's wooden stock so that when its single charge had been fired he could drop it to dangle, leaving both hands free for horse-handling and blade work.
All preparations for alarm and battle complete, he set his prize horse to the heather-thick ridge, a sudden gust of night wind, blowing down cold from off the distant highlands and the icy seas beyond, whipping his breacan-feile about his shoulders and tugging at the flat bonnet he wore over his rusty mail coif.
But at the ridge crest, Raibert Armstrong reined up with such suddenness and force that the horse almost reared. Up the opposite slope, headed directly for him, was a monster, an eldritch demon surely loosed by none other than Auld Clootie Himself, and straight from a deeper pit of Hell!
No less than six eyes had the demon—four glaring a blinding, soulless white, the lowest-set pair a feral, beastly yellow-amber. Of the rest of the demon, Raibert could descry but little, save a dense, dark mass, low to the ground, wheezing and whining, snorting and bellowing its bloodlust as it essayed the steep slope. The hornlike bellowing was constant, as if the creature had no need to pause and take fresh breath.
Perhaps it did not need to breathe air at all? What man, priest or lay, truly knew aught of the bodily working of a Fiend from Hell? Certainly not Calum Armstrong's son, Raibert. Nor did he intend to learn more, not at any close proximity.
Moaning with his terror of the Unearthly, he had reined the skittish horse half about when the monster changed its course, bearing off to Raibert's left. Seeking the gentler slope of the ridge, was it? Or was the diabolical Thing seeking rather to flank him, to place its awesomeness twixt him and the camp?
At the new angle, whereat the glaring eyes did not so blind him, Raibert could discern more of this foul Thing—long as a good-sized wain, it was, but far lower. He could see no part of the legs for the high-grown heather, but he suspected it to possess at least a score, to move it so fast across the rising, uneven ground.
But most sinister of all, he could now see that a dozen or more warlocks—or were they man-shaped fiends?—were borne upon the thrice-damned Beast's back, all bearing blue-black Rods of Power.
Whimpering, Raibert Armstrong still set himself to do his sworn duty, despite his quite-justifiable horror. He presented the heavy shoulder gun and, taking dead aim downward into the thick of the knot of manlike creatures, he drew back the pan cover, his fingers so tremulous that they almost spilled out the priming powder. Once again, he checked his aim at the Beast lumbering below his position, shut his eyes tight, then drew back the lower arm of the serpentine, thrusting the match end clamped to the tip of the upper arm into the powder-filled priming pan. He braced himself for the powerful kick of the piece.
But that kick never came; the match had smoldered out. And still the glaring, blaring Thing lumbered across the low saddle, leaving smoking heather wherever its demon feet had trod, excreting fire and roils of noxious gases from somewhere beneath its awful bulk.
Dropping the useless arquebus, Raibert sensed that his only chance now lay in escape—for who ever heard of a lone, common man trying to fight a Monster out of Hell with only a pistol and an old chlaidhimhl—and while he could go back the way he had come, the Monster seemed headed that way too . . . and Raibert felt that that was just what the hellish Thing wanted him to do.
There seemed but one thing for it, in Raibert Armstrong's mind; he must try—with Christ's help—to outfox the eldritch Beast. Reining about, he trotted the frightened, but still obedient, horse a few yards back along the ridge crest, as if he were blindly falling into the Monster's coils. Then, suddenly, he drew his antique chlaidhimh—for, if die he must, far better to do so with a yard of steel in his freckled fist; and besides, touch of iron or steel was held by some to be inimical to the Auld Evil—wheeled that hot-bred hunter about and spur-raked a full gallop, leaning low on the animal's neck to lessen wind resistance.
Where the hill abruptly dropped away, the horse hesitated but the briefest instant, then launched itself in a long jump which sent ridden and rider soaring overtop the still-soaring six-eyed monster.
The horse alit on the slope below and to the right flank of the unheeding Hellspawn, then Raibert Armstrong was spurring northward, toward the ill-defined border, toward Scotland and his ancestral home. Forgot were the near two thousand reavers, forgot was the raid upon the interdicted Sassenachs, forgot was Sir David Scott and all. But Raibert Armstrong knew that never, until the very hour of his death, would he, could he forget the sight and the sound and the hot, oily, evil stench of the Devilspawn Horror he had faced on the Northumbrian Moors on that dark and windswept night.
Bass Foster sat directly under the ceiling vent, bathed in the cool flow from the air conditioner, watching the Collier woman swill straight vodka and trying to think of a tactful way to cut her off—his modest supply of potables would not last long under her inroads; she had guzzled the last of the gin hours ago.
The professor, her husband, seemed to have barely touched his own weak highball, but he had used the last of the tobacco in his own pouch and now was stuffing his pipe out of one of Bass's cans of Borkum Riff. Mid-fiftyish—which made him some ten years Bass's senior—he seemed as quiet and courteous as his wife was loud and snotty. His liver-spotted hands moving slowly, he frowned in concentration over the pipe, his bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows bunched into a single line.
Across the width of the oversized cocktail table from the couple, Krystal Kent sat with one long leg tucked beneath her, doing yeoman work on a half-gallon jug of Gallo burgundy, and taking hesitant drags at one of her last three cigarettes. Bass shifted his eyes to her; she was far nicer to look at, with the sunlight delineating bluish highlights in her long, lustrous black hair.
Bass and the other three carefully avoided looking out the big window at the impossibility that commenced beyond the manicured lawn. Each time Bass's thoughts even wandered in that direction he felt his mind reel, start to slip, and he assumed the others suffered the same, for all the five people who now shared his house had seemed in one degree or another of shock when first they had arrived at his doors—the Colliers at the front, the other three at the back, first Krystal Kent, then Dave Atkins and the grubby little teenager who went by the name of Susan Sunshine.
Eschewing chairs, the two were lying side by side on the wall-to-wall carpet before Bass's stereo. One of his very few tapes of acid rock was in place and both Dave and Susan had fitted padded earphones on their heads. They, at least, were not slopping up their host's booze; Dave had rolled a double-thick joint—of the diameter of an ordinary cigarette and almost as long—and, smilingly, they were passing it back and forth. Despite the efforts of the air conditioner, the room already contained an acrid reek of burning rope.
According to the story given by Collier when first he and his wife had arrived, yesterday noon—both of them soaking wet and he slimed all over with reddish-brown mud, his hands and shirtfront smudged as well with greasy black grime—they had been driving from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to Washington, D.C., had gone off at the incorrect beltway exit, become lost and spent seeming hours driving the back roads and byways of rural Maryland. Finally, a blowout of their right rear tire had forced a stop on a muddy shoulder under the driving rain of the approaching storm.
While Arbor Collier sat and fumed in the car, nipping at one of the several pints of gin she had hidden in various locations for the long trip, Collier had jacked up the aging Ford and gotten the wheel off with much effort and was kneeling in the slippery mud, putting the spare in place, when he felt the shoulder under him seem to become fluid . . . and Arbor had chosen that moment to open the passenger-side door and make to step out Collier had tried to shout a warning, then he was falling. . . .
Seconds later, or eons, Collier had found himself lying—still muddy, still gripping his lug wrench—near the base of a stone wall. Arbor was sitting, dazed, a few feet away, in her sensible traveling suit and with her huge purse still slung from her shoulder. The grass directly under Collier was wet, but that surrounding him was dry as a bone under the bright, hot sun.
"William!" Arbor had shrieked. "Where are we? How . . . how did we get here and . . . Where's our . . . car? All my clothes are in the car, William, my medicine and my vitamins, everything. You've got to find the car!"
She had continued the same selfish, shrewish litany all the way to Bass's tri-level—maybe a hundred feet. But when she discovered that Bass stocked a fair amount of the "medicine" she required, in varying proof and flavors, she had set about dosing herself, even taking a bottle of gin up to bed with her.
This morning, she had mechanically eaten the breakfast Bass and Krystal had together cooked, then had sought out the liquor cabinet. She had nagged her husband for a short while about Bass's lack of any more gin, but had soon settled on one of the couches with a water glass and a bottle of 100-proof vodka.
With his eyes on Krystal Kent's slender loveliness, Bass had allowed his mind to slip back to pleasurable thoughts of last night with her—two frightened people, taking solace and comfort in each other.
". . . ster Foster, I'm speaking to you!" The nasal, strident, supercilious voice was Arbor Collier's.
Bass turned his head to face her. "Uh, sorry, I was . . . was thinking, Mrs. Collier. What is it?"
Arbor smiled a nasty, knowing smirk. "Yes, I know the way you dirty men all think when you're looking at women the way you were looking at Miss Kent," she sniggered.
Bass felt his face going hot. Forcing calm, he inquired coldly, "If that was all you had on your pickled brain, Mrs. Collier, it could have been left unsaid. I don't like you any better than you apparently like me. If we continue to ignore each other, maybe we can make it through the day without coming to blows."
"Mr. Foster," hissed Arbor, clenching her half-glassful of vodka until her bony knuckles shone white, "you are a rude, crude lout, ill-bred and uneducated; I knew that the minute I met you. You are the type one thinks of whenever one speaks of 'dirty old men'—a lewd, low, lascivious, middle-aged Lothario. I think—"
"I don't know how you can think, Mrs. Collier, with all the booze you've been slopping down since breakfast," said Bass in frigid tones, adding, "And I warn you, ma'am, if you don't just shut up, I'm going to heave you out that door on your damned ear!"
Arbor raised her plucked brows, then nodded. "The final argument of barbarians, force. But let me warn you, Mr. Foster, my husband served with the OSS, during the war. They were taught how to kill with their bare hands."
"Now Arbor," Professor Collier began. "You know that I never left Wash—"
"Shut up, William!" she snarled. "I'm talking to this male chauvinist pig!"
Then she returned her attention to Bass. "I insist, Mr. Foster, that you make those two, filthy, disgusting hippies stop using narcotics in this house."
Before Bass could frame an answer not obscene and physically impossible, Krystal Kent spoke up.
"Mrs. Collier, they're smoking pot . . . marijuana. It's not a narcotic, it's a hallucinogen, and—"
"Miss Kent," Arbor snapped coldly, "I was addressing Mr. Foster, if you please. I, for one, do not care to have my friends hear that my husband and I were arrested at a house where a dope orgy was going on."
Krystal threw back her head and laughed throatily. "Orgy? Two kids smoking a joint? You call that an orgy? I've heard of prudes, in my time, but you—"
Arbor pursed thin lips. "Prudence, Miss Kent, is not prudery. Though I suppose a woman of your kind would call anyone less licentious than herself a prude."
"And just what," snapped Krystal brittlely, "is that remark supposed to mean, Mrs. Collier? What kind of woman do you type me as? Or, need I really ask?"
The older woman picked up the half-full glass, drained it effortlessly, and smirked. "Oh, Miss Kent, do you really think my husband and I didn't hear you sneaking up the hall and into Mr. Foster's room, last night? Think we didn't have to endure the sounds of the unhallowed filth you two committed together?"
"What the hell business of yours is it," Krystal grated from between clenched teeth, "whether or not Bass and I sexed last night . . . or any other time, for that matter?"
Arbor's death's-head face assumed the look of a martyr. "Mr. Foster would not allow my husband—and my husband is a full professor, with tenure, and he holds no less than six doctorates!—and me the use of his big, airy room and a private bath, no, he showed us into that squalid little guest room, with that old, musty bed." Abruptly, the martyred look disappeared, to be replaced with a cold anger.
Professor Collier had again snapped out of his study. "Now Arbor, dear," he said slowly and tiredly, "this is Mr. Foster's house, and who but he has better right to the master bedroom? He wasn't in any degree obligated to afford us accommodations, you know. I feel—"
"You feel?" snarled his wife. "You feel? Why, you bumbling, overeducated jackass! You, William Willingham Collier, never had a feeling, an emotion, in your life! You're so weak, so passive-natured that anyone can manipulate you . . . and generally they do, too. That's why you weren't even really considered for department head when that old queer Dr. Ellison died."
"If I played dutiful little wife and left it to you, I'd be nothing but a doormat for all the world to walk on. God knows, in the twenty-two years I've been married to you, I've tried to make something of you, make you something I could be proud of, but . . ."
Stone-faced, Krystal picked up her glass and the wine jug and padded into the kitchen. Foster, too, felt embarrassment at being unavoidably privy to what should have been a private matter.
Muttering, "My ice is all melted," to no one in particular, he followed the young woman.
But even with the door to the dining room firmly shut, still the pudgy woman's strident tones penetrated.
". . . in one ear and out the other. You've never heeded any advice I've ever given you, never stood up to people the way you should, the way a real man would. You're always off in a fog somewhere, like you just were; allowing your own wife—a good, decent, Christian woman—to be compelled to be around degenerate dope addicts and fornicators and, for all we know, adulterers and perverts, and you didn't open your mouth once. No, as usual, I had to be the one to protest these outrages against decency and God's Law. You always, you have always . . ."
In unvoiced concord, both Foster and Krystal descended the three steps to the laundry room-workshop and thence to the spacious den. The addition of two more closed doors finally made the noise emanating from the living room almost inaudible.
Krystal sank into the fake-fur double lounge, shaking her head. "Oh, that dear, sweet, gentle man. Bass, just think of it! Twenty-two years in hell! Christ, I'm ready to kill the bitch after only twenty-odd hours."
Foster shrugged. "Human beings have a bad habit of manufacturing their own hells, Krys. I'm sure Collier didn't marry her at gunpoint." He grinned. "He doesn't strike me as the type."
"I just hope," he went on as he seated himself beside her and placed a hand on her bare knee, "that your father doesn't have a shotgun."
She almost smiled. "Poor Poppa doesn't know one end of any gun from the other."
"Big, mean, nasty brothers, then?" he probed.
"I only have one brother, Bass, and he ran off to Canada to keep from getting drafted. He's still there . . . living on the money Momma sneaks out of what Poppa gives her."
"Oh, your brother was an anti-war activist?"
She barked a short, humorless laugh. "Baby Brother Seymour said that he opposed 'the unjust, illegal war,' of course, but that's not really the reason he cut out. He was just afraid somebody might force an honest day's work out of him, for the first time in his pampered, sheltered life, that's all. The snotty little leech! If he wasn't so goddamned lazy, he wouldn't have flunked out of dental school and been liable to the draft to start out."
"Not much love lost on your little brother, is there?" Foster chuckled. "Don't you ever feel guilty about hating your own flesh and blood, Krys?"
Her short, softly waving dark-brown hair rippled to the shake of her head. "Brother Seymour's not worth a hate, or a shit, for that matter. I don't hate him, Bass, I despise him. He's never ever tried to do one damned thing to please Poppa and Momma, while I've always broken my ass to make them happy, to make myself into a person they could take pride in . . . that's why I thought it so unjust, so unfair, that he should be fat and spoiled and utterly useless and alive up in Canada, while I . . ." She trailed off into silence, a sudden fear darkening her eyes.
"While you what, Krys?" There was all at once an almost-desperate intensity in Foster's voice. "While your brother was alive in Canada and you what? What were you about to say?"
But Krystal maintained her silence. Arising, she took glass and jug with her when she strode over to the sliding glass door, opened it and took a step onto the concrete patio, then she half turned. Her voice low but as intense as his own, she said, "Please, Bass, let it go . . . let it go, for now. If things keep going as good for you and me as they promise to, I'll tell you . . . I promise. But, please, just let me alone for a while; I have to think."
Alone for almost the first time in the last full day, Foster faced the fact that he, himself, had some thinking to do.
Just what in hell had happened?
He remembered the big, beefy state trooper, soaking wet in the driving rain and shouting to make himself heard above the storm, the rushing of the near-flood-stage river and the roaring of the 'copter.
"A'right, Foster, I ain' got no right to force you to abandon yore prop'ty, but I done tol' you the way she's stacked. The river's going to crest ten, fifteen foot higher'n it is right now, and way yore house's sitchated, it'll be at leas' two foot of water in the top level, even if you don' get undermined an' come all apart."
"And thishere's the las' roun' the choppuh's gonna make, an' yore friggin' lil boat won' las' two hoots in hell in thet river, iffen you change your min' later. So, you sure you ain' comin' with us?"
Foster shook his head forcefully. "No. No thank you, officer, I appreciate it, but no."
The trooper blew at the water cascading off his nose. "A'right, citizen, it's yore funeral . . . iffen we evuh fin' yore body, thet is."
And he remembered sitting in that same living room now filled with the bitchy sounds of Arbor Collier. He remembered watching the rampant river tear away his small runabout, then his dock, sweeping both downstream along with its other booty—animal, vegetable and mineral.
He remembered thinking that that trooper had been right, he had been a fool to remain, but then he had sunk everything he owned into this, his home, the only real property he had ever been able to call his. And he was damned if he would leave it to the ravages of wind and water or to the unwelcome attentions of the packs of looters sure to follow. Besides, he trusted less the dire pronouncements of "authorities" and "experts" than he did his own unexplainable dead certainty that both he and his house would, somehow, survive the oncoming disaster.
Not that that certainty had not been shaken a bit when, hearing odd noises from above, during a brief lull in the storm, he had discovered all three of his cats in the low attic, clinging tightly to the rafters and mewling feline moans of terror. All three—the huge, rangy black tom, the older, spayed queen, and the younger, silver Persian tom, which had been Carol's last gift to him—were good hunters, merciless killers, yet they shared the rafters with several flying squirrels plus a couple of small brown house mice . . . peaceably. That had been when he started getting worried and started calling himself a fool, aloud.
That was when he had decided to phone Herb Highgate, who lived a half mile upriver and who had, like Foster, vowed to stay with his house and property; but the phone proved dead. Then the lights went out, so he had dragged a chair over to the picture window, fetched a bottle, and sat, watching the inexorable rise of the angry gray water, reflecting upon the joys and sorrows, the victories and defeats, the wins and losses, which had marked his forty-five years of living. And, as the water level got higher and the bottle level got lower, he thought of Carol, grieved again, briefly, then began to feel that she was very near to him.
The hot, bright sun on his face had awakened him, had blinded him when first he opened his bleary eyes.
"Well, what the hell I was right after all. Christ, my mouth tastes like used kitty litter. Ugh!"
Stumbling into the kitchen, he had flicked the wall switch from force of habit. And the light came on!
"Well, good God, those utilities boys are on the ball, for a change . . . either that or I slept a hell of a lot longer than usual. Well, since it's miracle time, let's have a go at the phone."
But the telephone had remained dead. With the coffee merrily perking, Foster had decided to walk out and see just how much damage his property had sustained.
He took two steps outside, looked about him in wondering disbelief, then reeled back inside. Slammed the door, locked it, threw the massive barrel bolt, sank down into the familiar chair, and cradled his head in his shaking hands. Drawing upon his last reserves of courage, he had, at some length, found the guts to look out the window, to see . . . to see . . .
It could not be called a castle, not in the accepted sense, although one corner of the U-shaped house incorporated a sixty-foot-tall stone tower, and the entire complex of buildings and grounds was girded by a high and thick wall of dressed stones, pierced with one large and two smaller iron-bound gates.
A creepy-crawliness still gnawed at Foster whenever he looked across his well-tended lawn to behold, where the river used to be, the windows of that huge, archaic house, staring back at him like the empty eye sockets of a grinning death's-head.
House and tower and two stretches of wall were clearly visible, now, through the front window of the paneled den, and Foster forced down his repugnance in order to really study the view, this time. Compared to the wall, the house looked new, the stones of the house walls not only dressed, but polished and carved, as well. A wide stairway mounted up to a broad stoop—actually, rather more a terrace—on a level with the second story of the house, where was what was apparently the entrance door, recessed within a stone archway.
Shifting his gaze to the walls, Foster could see that they were crenellated and wide enough for a couple of men to walk their tops abreast. But, in several places, the merlons were askew and at last one of the huge, square stones had fallen completely off its setting, back onto the top of the wall.
On sudden impulse, he arose and crossed to his gun case. Kneeling, he unlocked the bottom drawer and took out the pair of bulky 7x50 binoculars that had departed the army with him, years back. Then he dragged a chair closer to the window and set the optics to his eyes.
The details leapt out at him then . . . and some were more than a little sinister. The askew merlons all showed cracks and chips—recent, unweathered ones. There were cracks and scars, as well, on the rough masonry of the square, brownish-gray tower—obviously, on closer scrutiny, far older than either house or walls. But there was no visible damage to the house, nor could Foster detect any sign of life or movement anywhere within or about it.
Absorbed, he nearly jumped out of his skin when Krystal laid a hand on his shoulder. "Oh, God, you're a Peeping Tom! Why is it that every man I like turns out to be a kook?"
"Just trying to see what my new neighbors are like." He forced a grin and a light, bantering tone. "But nobody seems to be home."
Setting down the half-empty wine jug, she sank onto her haunches beside the chair and reached for the binoculars. "May I?"
Wordlessly, he handed them over.
After adjusting the lenses, the young woman swiveled from left to right and back, slowly, studying details of the view. At length, she stiffened, then said in a low voice, "Bass, I . . . I could have sworn I saw some . . . something move. It was inside those windows just above the door to that . . . that place. Do you think . . . ?"
He shook his head and stood up. "Krys, I don't know what to think or imagine about any of the happenings of the last day, and I gave up trying several hours ago. The time's come to find a way to get into that building, for I've got a . . . a feeling that there's a lot of answers in there."
Opening again the drawer from which he had taken the binoculars, he removed a web pistol belt, two small web pouches, and a leather holster.
"Krys, if you can take a few seconds of that old biddy's yapping, I wonder if you'd go up to my bedroom and look in the closet. There's a brown canvas shell vest up there. You know what a shell vest looks like?"
She nodded.
"Okay, bring it down to me, huh? And the pair of army boots, too."
——«»——«»——«»——
With only her long-suffering spouse for audience and sounding board, Arbor Collier had wound down and was lapping up alcohol in silence until Krystal came through the room. Then she smirked nastily.
"I'll bet I know what you two have been doing down there!" she crowed.
Krystal's smile was icily contemptuous. "A woman like you could read pornography into Pilgrim's Progress, but"—deviltry shone from her eyes and a hint of mockery entered her voice—"this time is so happens you're right. Bass and I spent all the time we were gone in mutual analingus. You should try it sometime."
Arbor Collier appeared to be still in shock when Krystal came back down the stairs with Foster's boots and vest. Glass clenched tightly in her hand, her jaw hanging slackly, she just stared at the younger woman in mute horror. The grin of triumph on Krystal's face abruptly dissipated, however, when she reentered the den to see Foster feeding shells into the loading gate of a short-barreled pump shotgun. The web belt was now clasped around his waist, and the holster clipped to it now contained a big automatic pistol, and as well as the two pouches, there was also a nasty-looking knife sheathed over his right hip, a coil of nylon rope and a canteen over his left, and an angled flashlight clipped opposite the holstered pistol.
"Good God, Bass? You said you were going to try to get into that house, but you look as if you're getting ready to go to war. A shotgun? A knife, I can see, but two guns?"
He kicked off his short Wellingtons and, sitting down, pulled on the jump boots and began to lace them as he spoke.
"Krystal, I'm going to say some of this again, upstairs, but I'll say it to you first. We—none of us—really have the slightest idea where we are, how we got here, or what our situation actually is, now or in the future. The forty-odd years I've lived, my dear, have taught me at least one thing: when faced with the unknown, always expect and prepare for the worst; that way, you'll not be disappointed or taken by surprise."
Standing again, he shrugged his arms into the vest and crossed to the cabinet to begin slipping gun shells into the elastic loops, while continuing his monologue. "I really hope to God I am being overcautious, Krys, but I get bad vibes, as Dave would say, every time I look at that tower, even from this distance. And I'm going to be a helluva lot closer to it before long."
"Now, you haven't told me that awfully much about yourself, your background, I mean, but I get the impression sometimes that you're into psychology or psychiatry or medicine. Under the circumstances, just consider the Winchester"—he tapped the gleaming butt-stock of the shotgun—"and my Colt as security blankets. Believe me, I'd feel damned insecure if I had to go closer to that tower without them. Damned insecure!"
She smiled then. "I'm sorry, Bass, you're right, of course. It's just that I was raised in a home where there were no guns—they're illegal to own in New York City, you know, and my father is a very law-abiding man. I got that feeling of . . . of lurking menace, of something so far beyond the ordinary as to be unnatural, supernatural, even, when I viewed the tower with your glasses, so you're most likely right to go prepared."
She stepped closer and swiftly kissed his lips. "Please be careful, Bass. Take care of yourself, huh? I've become very fond of you in a very short time."
Taking her head in his free hand, he returned her kiss, with interest. "You're a sweet gal, Krys, I'll do my best. Believe me. Now, please do me another favor. See if you can snap Dave out of his fog long enough to get him down here . . . and the Professor, too, I guess."
But only she and Collier came back into the den.
"Where's Dave?"
She shook her head disgustedly. "I suppose those two are into something other than, stronger than, grass; they're practically comatose up there. I did everything but kick him and he never even twitched."
"Okay." Foster nodded shortly, then asked, "Professor, have you ever fired a shotgun?" He proffered the Winchester Model 21 double twelve which had been his father's pride.
The older man took the fine weapon gingerly, touching only the wood surfaces. There was a hint of almost reverence in his voice when he said, "This piece is truly beautiful, Mr. Foster, a work of art, nothing less. But in answer, yes, I am conversant with most categories of firearms, though I do not hunt and have not owned a weapon since my marriage." With a note of apology, he added, "My wife, you see, considers the acquisition of firearms to be a dangerous waste of one's resources."
Foster ascended the broad stairs, feeling, as he had since the door of his home had closed behind him, the weight of unseen eyes upon him, feeling some sentience marking his pro...
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