|
|
|
|
|
|
|
erect, offered me a wan smile and turned toward the door. He paused just long enough to button the collar of his jacket, quietly opened the door and turned back to face me again. "Tell them to stay out of it, Mr. Wages. I know what must be done. If others become involved, the situation will only worsen." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
He stepped silently out into the empty gray stillness of the night, and the door closed behind him. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It took longer than usual for me to slip into my world of troubled sleep. And even when I did, the images that danced in the shadowy world of my subconscious were little more than amorphous and half-born nightmares. I saw Kelto's stoic and somehow unreal face and the unforgettable sight of Percy Kramer's violated fat white body hanging from the dead tree. Woven throughout were frightening and forbidding glimpses of the vast cold and barren polar plains. I was in total synchronization with a tortured psyche, yet I had no idea what it meant. Finally, there was the young woman, slim and yet somehow pregnant with hate and fear. She was laughing, and she had a knife. She was holding the knife out . . . no, at me. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I woke up twice, sweating, each time groping my way to the dresser in the darkness to grab a cigarette. Each time I |
|
|
|
|
|