In the night room Page 0,125

her book. As soon as she had spoken, the lunatic electrical wire beneath the window spouted fiery apostrophes and commas, and it seemed to Tim Underhill that the fabric of reality, already sorely strained, rippled around them.

The overtone of a sound too distant or quiet to be identified entered and hung in the air, a single note that had been played on an upright bass, plucked a moment before by the bassist’s finger—

There came the burning metallic hum of a thousand cicadas, greedy, intrusive—

Somewhere above, a door softly opened and closed. Light footsteps on the stairs sounded hush hush hush. Tim Underhill’s blood seemed to stop moving through his veins. A boy with Willy’s face entered by something that was not a door, smiled at him lovingly, then without pause moved toward Willy, who took his hand. They were already, instantly, in the roles he had given them, and he could not follow, he could watch them no more. Where Willy went, she went for him.

Clamorous, swiftly moving spirits spun, gyrated, sailed through the night air, even in Millhaven.

He was alone in the room, but for the presence that had offered him illumination in the form of a wire thrashing like a nerve. His Lily had joined his Mark, and one day, if he was lucky, he would glimpse them, as he had glimpsed the world’s glorious, disastrous Lily Kalendar, through a car window. On these glimpses he would live; on the hope of them he would do the work of the rest of his career.

A kind of tragedian’s wonder had filled him during the previous few minutes, and, as specks of plaster and broken bits of wood and charcoal-gray mats of dust and tissues of flesh like old spiderwebs began to rustle and twirl in various parts of the room, his fear returned. It seemed as jittery and unstable as the wire, now firing sparks and beating its head on the floorboards as it squirmed. The filthy material within the room twirled itself together, piece by piece, hair by hair, speck by speck, and elongated its substance to a height well above six feet.

The shivery column of mercury again grew up through the center of Tim’s body, and his knees began their merry jig. Even his heart seemed to tremble. To the extent that he could think, he thought: I hate being this afraid, I hate it, it’s humiliating, I never want to feel this way again . . .

The Dark Man began to emerge out of the fabric of his unclean substance, first a great brooding bearded head with eyes the color of lead, then black-clad arms meshing into a bull-like chest, the long, dirty coat, and legs that swelled and lengthened into heavy black boots planted on the floor. He held his wide-brimmed black hat in one black-gloved hand to demonstrate his anger. Kalendar wanted Timothy Underhill to see his eyes. Insane fury steamed from his body, as did a pure and concentrated version of the stink that flowed through the front door. Commanded to look, Tim looked. He saw the murderous rage of the grievously wounded.

“I made a mistake,” he said, somehow managing to keep his voice from trembling. “I thought she was dead. I didn’t know you had saved her.”

The rage came toward him unabated.

“You loved her. You still do. She is very much worth loving,” Tim said. “I made a lot of mistakes. I’m still making them. It’s almost impossible to write the real book, the perfect book.”

The voice that Willy had heard spoke in his head, not in words but a crude rush and surge of twisted feelings.

“Because no one knew she was alive. Almost no one knew that she’d ever existed at all.”

Another ragged bombardment of rage blasted into him.

“Except the ones who did know, yes. And I could have called the shelter, that’s right. But I was writing a novel! In my book, your daughter was dead. If she’d been alive, she would have ruined the book—she was just a fantasy, anyhow, a reward I gave my nephew.” He stared back at Kalendar, a little stronger for having spoken.

The next wave of emotion tones nearly knocked him over. They seemed to struggle within his head and body, like bats, before dissolving. Tim waved his hands in front of his face, reeling with shock and disgust. “What do you want, anyhow?”

He braced himself for another onslaught, but Kalendar held his hands before his face and glared at him through his fingers long