George Right

D

Collection of Horror Stories

Dear Reader,

Thank you for your interest in my book. If you haven’t heard about me before, it required some courage from you to buy a book by a new author, and I really appreciate it. However, you will need more courage to read my stories. Forget the Twilight Zone. Twilight is left behind. You are entering total darkness.

Some stories here are supernatural, some are not. You decide which ones are more frightening. Anyway, you won’t be the same after reading this book. You will be telling yourself: “Well, that’s only fiction… or maybe not?”

If you like (or hate) this book, please don’t keep it a secret. Share your feelings with your friends, write a review in your social network or even in printed media. Also, your feedback is welcome at my e-mail etsenberg@gmail.com. I have more horror, SF and fantasy stories to offer, so if you are an agent or publisher interested in cooperation, please contact me using the aforementioned address.

I wish to thank my editors George Lohmann (Despair) and Joanne McClurg (all other stories). Without their generous help, this book would have never appeared.

George Right

DOWNTOWN

In different places it has different names. Metro. Underground. Tube. Subway.

Some stations look like magnificent palaces. Others more resemble a tile-revetted public toilet. Some, with many platforms and levels, bound by a network of passageways, corridors, staircases and escalators, are a real labyrinth. Others have only one entrance, which is an exit as well. The car designs, fares, personnel uniforms—all these can differ. Only one thing is invariable: the subway grows into the flesh of big cities, the network of its tunnels penetrates them from the center to the most remote blocks, like a blood system—and plays the same role. Any clot that corks a separate blood vessel leads to a paralysis of the whole area. If the subway stops completely, life in a city becomes impossible. And millions of people who daily descend under the earth through the opened mouths of stations in order to become a part of streams flowing through tunnels, got used to it long ago and take it in stride. At least, the majority of them.

Some, however, feel an uprush of fear.

What is the reason of this fear? Claustrophobia? But is a subway car more close and confined than a bus aisle, office space, or an apartment room? Tabloid press rumors about mutant rats, runaway maniacs or monsters hiding in tunnels? But does anyone take such rags seriously? Lastly, the idea that hell lies under ground? But, after all, in our time even the most naive believer knows that heaven is not in the physical sky, and it is impossible to reach paradise by a plane or a rocket—so it is impossible to get to an underworld through a mine or a subway tunnel. So what is the reason for the fear?

Employees of the New York subway, as well as of any another, of course, wave such fears aside with irritation. The subway, they will tell you, is the safest form of transportation. Accidents, especially with those with casualties, are extremely rare here, in contrast to the roads above where cars crash every day. As for the crime level, it is not the 1980s now, thank God, and the subway was put in order long ago. And even if something extreme were to happen, there are detailed schemes and mechanisms for helping and evacuating passengers. And as to ostensibly strange and inexplicable cases—that is a pile of crap, and you should not addle your brain with superstitious bullshit, but familiarize yourself with the real facts.

These facts are presented in the New York Transit Museum at the corner of Schermerhorn Street and Boerum Place, or you can find them yourself on the Internet. The New York subway has 468 stations in operation and 24 routes. The total length of the routes is 842 miles, approximately equal to the distance from New York to Jacksonville, Fla. a whole, it is a rather complex enterprise which can easily confuse a newcomer. The modern subway is the result of unifying three previously independent railway systems, so it operates two different types of trains. Some routes are designated by letters, while others are designated by numbers. Trains of different routes can travel the same lines, while trains of one route can go by different railways, depending on the day of the week and the time of day. On average, the New York subway transports more than four million people daily. So its employees are busy enough doing important work and annoying them with silly questions is a waste of time.

Especially since the absolute majority of those millions of passengers who daily go down under the earth safely comes back to the surface.

The absolute majority, yes.

When Tony Logan descended to the 42nd Street station, it was almost 1 a.m. already. Tony’s mood was extremely foul. To have to stay at office till midnight is not too pleasant by itself, and moreover, when it appears to be in vain… The buggy computer destroyed the work of several days (oh yes, all of us learned to make regular backups, and all of us remember it too late), and all attempts to restore information had also failed. Now the project will surely not meet the deadline, and then… “And then it probably won’t be necessary to work late any more,” Logan thought gloomily. “There simply will be no work.”

The weather wasn’t pleasing either. Since the September morning sun had been warm, Tony had thoughtlessly left home having put on nothing warmer than a shirt. But the evening dragged clouds in, and by night it became so cold that Logan almost had to run to warm himself. His office was nearly on the bank of Hudson, and in Manhattan south of Central Park and west of Eighth Avenue, there are no subway stations. Tony needed route Q, and usually in good weather he went on foot to Times Square along the surface, and in bad weather waited for a bus under a bus stop roof—but now both options were unattractive, so Logan was glad to dive into the subway heat near Port Authority, though it meant walking underground a whole block, and navigating by numerous signs. The 42nd Street station, where as many as ten routes meet, is a good example of a station, or, perhaps, a cluster of stations, forming a real labyrinth where, without signs, it is easy to lose one’s way.

Logan, being upset, missed necessary turns and exits several times. At one point he was bewildered to find himself at a dead end. He turned back, looked around, and noticed two familiar signs “Uptown & Bronx” and “Downtown & Brooklyn.” For some reason, there were no designations of routes. Logan, who lived in Brooklyn, turned left.

Having walked a little farther, he reached a staircase leading downwards, and began to descend absentmindedly. Mentally he was still far from his surroundings. Nevertheless, when something crackled unpleasantly under his foot, he noticed that the staircase looked dusty and dirty… as if it had not been in use for a long time. Tony even had a momentary thought of climbing back and checking whether he had passed, without having noticed, any sign announcing that that portion of the station was closed. However, as much as he remembered, in such cases there was always something more solid than just a sign which can be easily missed—namely, the tense yellow tape, a steel or wooden fence or other barrier. Since the New York subway, as well as the whole city, never sleeps, any maintenance or construction work is carried out on the fly. Sometimes it’s necessary to close a whole station for awhile. So, considered Tony, here probably was a recent repair, and there was not enough time to clean away the trash—though this staircase did not look newly repaired in any way… Well, then, perhaps this passageway had been closed for a long time and now it is open because some other passageway was closed for maintenance.

He came down to a platform. Nowhere, as far as he could see, was anybody waiting. Probably, the train has just left, Logan thought with disappointment. At such time the next one will arrive no sooner than in fifteen minutes…

But isn’t this the wrong line? Do Q trains go from here? There is only one way to the right of the platform… No, it is obviously not the place where Tony usually took the train. Or have they opened some alternate way, and he has not paid attention to a service change announcement? The station, in fact, looked no less abandoned than the staircase, and it was lit rather dimly… The clock over the platform, however, worked and showed 12:55 a.m. No, he probably missed a sign and has gone down to some other line. Tony approached the sign hanging over the edge of the platform. Not only were any route letters or numbers lacking, but even the mention of Brooklyn had disappeared. The inscription said simply: “Downtown”.

Tony tried to remember whether any route not going to Brooklyn passes through the 42nd Street station. Yes, number 1 comes to an end in lower Manhattan… Then, just the same, he had come to the wrong place. He moved back toward the staircase, but at this moment the train appeared from the tunnel.

Logan shuddered in surprise. He had gotten used to the fact that a train approaching a station announces itself by noise and headlights, but this one appeared in the black throat of the tunnel somehow suddenly. There must be an abrupt turn, Tony guessed. And in the following instant, he gladly distinguished on the flat muzzle of the forward car the capital letter Q in a red circle.

Yes, probably, after all it is a temporary change of service causing the train to come to an alternate platform. Therefore the signs were not changed. Well, for a New Yorker, such things are not surprising.

The train stopped and opened its doors. Tony stepped into the air-conditioned cool and arranged himself on a seat, only after that noticing that, except for him, there was nobody in the car. Well, at one a.m. it’s probably not too surprising, though usually there are at least two or three passengers in any subway car, especially here, in the center of Manhattan. And, by the way, has anybody came out to the platform from any car of the train? It seems, no… And this is really strange for such a busy station as 42nd Street, even at night. However, Tony, after all, had come in immediately, instead of looking around and waiting for exiting passengers… But, maybe, something is wrong with this train, and it goes straight to the depot? Then why did it open its doors? Well, let’s assume, to let the last passengers out, but not to take on new ones. But this should be announced loudly, and a subway employee should pass through the train, checking whether everybody has left…

While Tony reflected on it, the doors closed and the train began moving. Oh, that’s all he wanted after all today’s other troubles—not to arrive at home, but at the depot! Logan stood up and, grasping a handrail, moved to the left, to the nearest end of the car. Having stopped before a door, he began observing the neighbor car. It looked empty, too—but not absolutely. In the distant end some Black man sat. Black not only meaning his skin color—all his clothes were absolutely black, too. Black and… disheveled, or something like that. Tony could not make out the details from such a distance. Probably, a homeless man in rags? More often homeless New Yorkers are dressed decently enough—not richly, of course, but also not in old, torn clothes. A few times, though, Logan also met quite classic beggars in tatters. He thought then that they probably selected such an image intentionally, and not at all because they did not know any charity organization supplying tramps with free food and clothing.

All right. Whoever that guy was, the fact that there were other passengers on a train calmed Logan. He returned to his former seat, wearily closed his eyes and relaxed, intending to doze. He needed a long ride, to Sheepshead Bay station, so he could fall asleep for a half-hour without risking missing his stop. Especially because stops are announced, which usually wakes you up and, understanding that it is still too early, you fall asleep again…

“Announced?” asked his brain, which was already ready to sink into a black abyss. Before doors were closed, did he really hear the classic phrase uttered by a recorded female voice? “This is a Brooklyn-bound Q local train. The next stop is…” No, not at all. Well, not all New York subway trains have this automatic feature, but the Q trains are so equipped. Probably, a malfunction of the loudspeaker. A loose contact…

Tony dozed off. He had some nasty dream: he still realized that was riding a train, however the tunnel was not a tunnel, but something like a huge gut, and the train did not roll on wheels, but crept, convulsively extending and contracting. It crept unexpectedly quickly for this way of moving, but nevertheless it was not fast enough—as in the clammy suffocating darkness behind it, something else moved. Moved, gradually decreasing the distance. Tony did not know what it was, but he knew that if it were to catch up, then… then… it would be more awful than any accident that ever happened in underground tunnels. Much, much more awful… He already felt its icy breath; he would like to shout, but fear had closed his throat with a spasm. And the train—or whatever it was actually—instead of rushing to safety suddenly began to slow down, as if purposely allowing the anonymous horror to overtake it…

Tony opened his eyes and abruptly raised his head. The train was actually braking, approaching the next station. And it was cold in the car. The air conditioner here was definitely overused. Maybe he’d better move to the next car? Though it may not be warmer there… also he would have to warm a new seat. Tony ruffled up, hiding his hands under his arms.

The train stopped. Doors opened behind Logan. In the opposite window he saw a ceiling-propping column, behind it—the counter way sunk in twilight and behind it—a hardly distinguishable platform. What station is it? It was almost impossible to discern an inscription on the distant wall, but it still seemed to Tony that he saw a figure 8. “Eighth Street — New York University”? But Q trains do not stop there. N and R, which use the same line—yes, but not Q. However, if there was really a change of service… Or has he nevertheless taken the wrong train? But no, it is unlikely the Eighth, there is a two-digit number. 28th? Q does not stop there, too, and more to the point—this vertical dash can not be “2” anyway. 18th Street? But it is somewhere on the red lines, and Q goes on the yellow ones…

Tony jumped up, wanting to leave before this train delivers him the devil knows where. But the doors had closed already. He swept his eyes over the car in search of subway maps which always hang in every car. But in this one they did not. Ubiquitous advertising was on the walls, but no maps. Electronic boards showing the current station also were absent.

But he found that he was not alone anymore.

Close to the opposite end of the car, a child sat. It seemed to be a boy, and not older than nine years. He was dressed in a thick jacket and a knitted cap—perhaps too warmly for September, even considering an evening cold snap. But the main point—why is a little child alone in the subway after one o’clock at night? What are his parents thinking and does he have parents at all?

The child sat motionlessly, probably slept, too. His cap was drawn so low that it covered his eyes and his chin hid in a jacket collar. Logan reflected on whether it was necessary to interfere. Probably, the boy was lost or had run away from home. On the other hand, Tony did not enjoy the prospect of the additional fuss if it was necessary to call the police or other authorities. Besides, modern children have learned to keep as far as possible from strangers… If such a demure little thing says “this bad man bothered me,” try to prove then…

All right. He will simply ask the boy whether help is necessary.

Tony passed along the car, continually catching the handrails (and why does this train shake so much? He didn’t remember such jolting on this line), and stopped opposite the child.

“Hey, kid!” he called, not too loudly so as not to frighten. “Are you all right?”

The child did not answer and did not react at all. From above Tony could not see his face—only a cap from under which a thin peaky nose, similar to a bird’s beak, stuck out. And something in this nose was… wrong. Repulsive.

Logan sat down on hunkers before the silent child, clinging by hand to an empty seat to the left. Even in such a position, Tony did not see clearly the face hidden by a cap and a collar. Only a bone white nose-beak bent from top to bottom, and sharply prominent cheekbones with deep shadows under them. The boy was probably very thin, even emaciated.

Tony called him again, but the child still did not move nor in any way showed that he heard. Logan felt real dismay at the silence of this strange child in an empty night train. Most of all he would like to stand up and go away—not even to his former seat, but to another car. Nevertheless, he reached out and, having mumbled, “Don’t be afraid, I only want to see whether you are okay,” pulled the cap from the boy.

And was struck dumb with an open mouth.

The head appeared to be almost absolutely bald, only here and there, like mold stains, weightless white shreds grew. The mushroom-like skull was fitted with a dry skin, all in senile pigment spots and so thin that it seemed likely to tear at any moment; under the skin knotty blue veins boldly bulged. An unnaturally big forehead, standing out like two hillocks, hung over the small wrinkled face which had gathered in folds around the fallen-in mouth and deeply sunken eyes. These eyes, the muddy sick eyes of a decrepit old man, were open and looked directly at Logan, without moving and without blinking.

“S-sorry,” Tony stammered, put the cap on the knees of the sitting child, and hastily stood up. He felt too awkward to remain here, so he decided to go to the next car. Ignoring a sign forbidding transiting cars on the move, he opened the car door and stepped into the space between cars. The tunnel roar deafened him, and the cold wind angrily jerked his hair and shirt. The clanking metal of two narrow semicircular platforms shook underfoot as if aiming to dump him on the rails, and low-sagged soft handrails on each side hardly could prevent it. Tony hastily seized the door handle ahead and tried to turn it, but the door refused to open. In an instant panic attack, Logan fancied that he could not go back either, and would have to ride between cars until the nearest station… at the best case. He desperately jerked the handle again, and this time the door yielded—previously he had simply pulled in the wrong direction, Tony realized, walking into the new car.

There was nobody here, either. Well, okay, no passengers is better than… And, after all, this small person, apparently, is really a child, not an old dwarf, Logan thought. There is such an illness… genetic, as far as he remembered…

Then he still needed to inform the train operator. The seriously ill child was alone at night and, seemingly, in complete prostration…

Tony approached an intercom and pressed the button. No voice answered him, but from the speaker a small noise was heard, showing that communication had been established.

“Here… that is, not here, but in the next car, an old boy… that is, I wanted to say, a little boy is sick with old age…” Tony confusedly began. And what, by the way, if the train operator had not heard about such an illness and decides it’s a prank? “It seems to me, there is a person here who needs help. Do you hear me? Hello?”

Still nobody answered. But from the speaker came… sounds. At first, Tony thought the noise was just interference. But no, it did not resemble the usual static and cracklings. More likely such a sound can be produced only by something wet… sticky… mucous… if it slowly moves, coming unstuck and sticking together again.

“Hello?” Logan once again shouted, but the only response was the same sounds.

“Nevertheless, it’s interference,” Tony told to himself. “This piece of crap is faulty.”

And what works normally in this train?!

Maps of the subway and of the current route, seemingly, were absent in this car, too. There was only the advertising pasted between windows. What was, by the way, advertised here? Logan had gotten used to ignoring posters in the subway, without giving them a look even in boredom, but now he suddenly felt curious. He looked at the nearest poster.

“CORPSES. THE EXHIBITION”

Tony shuddered when his eyes stopped at the large letters. Then he remembered hearing about this exhibition. Its founder was some German pathologist who built a large-scale exposition of embalmed human bodies, displaying them in various poses and dissections, whole and in parts, showing the structure of muscles, sinews and visceral organs… Probably, really informative, especially for medical students, but Logan absolutely was not a fan of such shows and would not go there even if the entrance fee were paid to visitors, not by them. Giving one more look at the poster—which displayed a color image of a skinless pregnant woman whose laid-open belly contained a lengthways-cut fetus within the stretched ring of her cleaved uterus (why didn’t various activists either for or against abortions raise a cry?)—Tony fastidiously frowned and went farther along the car.

His glance indifferently slipped across the next poster, an eyesore probably to each passenger of the New York subway. A schematic red figure struggled against closing car doors. “Hold your urge to hold the doors. Wait for the next train.” And something about you making everyone wait and how many trains are regularly late because of such irresponsible passengers… Oh yes, of course. Who would object to waiting ten minutes or even more for the next train? No, better let everyone be several seconds late, than I for a quarter of an hour.

Tony was already going to move on, but something forced him to turn back again. Something was wrong with this poster. And in the following moment he understood what exactly.

The head of the red figure was almost completely cut off by the subway doors. Blood splashes were scattered around. Blood also splashed down the closing edges of doors forming a kind of guillotine.

Haw. It seems that someone understood that plain warnings didn’t work and decided to strengthen the emotional impact. Though, of course, real doors of subway cars are not capable of such things…

By the way, the exhibition advertising differed from the usual, too, Logan realized. First, there was this ripped up woman instead of cheerful dead sportsmen. Secondly, the title was a bit different. It seems that that exhibition was called “Bodies,” instead of “Corpses.” But, what’s a slight difference in wording?

At this moment the train began sharply braking, and Logan, having missed a handrail by his hand, clumsily plopped down on a seat. Outside the windows, dimly lit numbers “14” on breast boards of eagles passed. “Fourteenth Street?” Q trains definitely stop at the 14th Street station, but Logan could not remember these eagles. Some nasty story was connected with this station… Oh yes, a major accident with casualties in the early nineties. Tony was in elementary school in Connecticut at that time, but remembered how his parents had discussed this accident. More precisely, not the smash-up itself, but the fact that the train operator—or were they still called motormen that time?—was sentenced to fifteen years of prison for it. So, by now he should be released…

Doors opened, and Tony heard the incoming knock of heels. More precisely, one heel; then there was a short pause and a slow shuffling, and then new abrupt clatter followed. Logan turned his head and saw a girl entering the car. Yes indeed—the poor creature had broken a heel and now limped, shuffling her foot. For some reason she held the heelless right foot sideways, putting it on edge, as if the foot was sprained and could not return it to its normal position. That, certainly, was not possible—in this case any attempt to put her body weight on it, increasing the strain, would cause terrible pain.

In other respects, however, the girl was quite usual—even more, attractive. Slender, in a light summer blouse with a miniskirt (probably, she also believed the morning sun when she left her house, Tony thought sympathetically), long nut-brown hair, a bit twisted on the ends, a nice profile. She passed by Logan in her limping gait and sat down opposite and obliquely to him. Now he noticed that, while on the right side her hair passed behind an ear, at the left, on the contrary, it hung over her face, almost completely hiding an eye and a cheek.

“Excuse me, Miss,” Tony called her, “is this the Q train?”

The girl answered nothing and did not even look in his direction. The doors closed, and the train got under way.

“Probably, she thought that I was trying to pick her up,” Logan thought, “so she’s ignoring me. Really, my question sounded silly: the person already on a train asks someone just getting on what train it is. If it were on the contrary…”

Nevertheless Logan felt more and more uncomfortable on the train and the desire to talk to a normal person became stronger than thoughts about possible negative reactions. “Well, what will she do, eventually—call the police through the intercom? Hm, let her try,” Tony mentally grinned. “Though she could have a taser… or even a gun…”

As a result he chose a compromise: he did not sit near the girl but only moved to a seat opposite her.

“I must apologize for troubling you,” he said as politely as possible, “but I’m confused. There are no maps and stops are not announced here. When I entered, it seemed to me that this was the Q train, but now I’m not sure. I don’t recognize the stations. Was there any change of service? And what happened, by the way, to the electricity, do you know? Why are stations lit so badly? Budget cuts? You know, I seldom ride so late, but it seemed to me…”

The girl still was silent and did not react in any way. Exactly as that senile child. The long hair obscuring the left half of her face rocked slightly with the car movement. “Maybe she’s deaf?” Tony thought. “However, deaf people are usually able to read lips…”

All right. If she prefers to ignore him, he has no right to force the issue. And he will get off at the next stop. Will get off and wait for a normal train, however long it takes.

Nevertheless, the girl looked at him with her only open eye. Probably, she was waiting for whatever he would say or do further. Tony, feeling that to stare back at her would be rude, muttered, “Never mind, excuse me” and looked away. But, after looking around for some time (“CORPSES. THE EXHIBITION!”), he felt that she was still looking at him. Not expectantly, not savagely, not even enticingly. Simply looking. And there was something unnatural about her gaze. Something that made Logan feel even more creepy. She doesn’t blink, Tony realized. She has never blinked…

Forcing himself (why is it so difficult to look in the eyes of a stranger?), he again focused his eyes on her face. And then understood that his imagination played a trick on him. The right eye of the girl was closed. Possibly, she had decided to sleep until her stop, too…

However, Logan never before saw anybody that slept sitting bolt upright, without throwing the head back or drooping it on the chest.

And he felt an irrational confidence that her left eye was not closed—not at all, but watched him from under hanging-down hair.

Following an unaccountable impulse, he moved to his former place to get away from this supposed gaze. He was almost sure that she would turn her head to follow him. But the silent girl remained sitting as before.

The train began to brake sharply again before a station. Tony was going to rise, as soon as the train stopped. But the girl moved first. Paying no attention to inertia which should have tumbled her down, especially considering the current instability of her gait—she, shuffling the turned foot the same way, moved towards Tony. He froze in his seat, looking at her with absolutely irrational fear. The girl, however, passed by him and turned to the doors, obviously going to exit.

Was it his illusion, or had her right eye really remain closed?

Now Tony could not answer this question any more because the girl stood with her left profile to him, which was still concealed by hair.

The train stopped and the doors opened. The girl stepped onto the platform outside, and at the very same time wind from a tunnel rushed into the car and for an instant blew her hair aside.

A spasm seized Logan’s throat.

He saw damp meat… wet, shapeless, exuding ichor… a hole with torn edges in place of an eye, from which some tatters hung down… naked gums and teeth where there should be a cheek… a dangling torn-off lip similar to a fat dead worm…

All this lasted less than a second. In the next instant, the girl was already on the platform. And no force in the world could make Tony follow her.

“You did not see it,” he told himself. “She just has, well, a birthmark covering the whole cheek. A very ugly birthmark. Therefore she wears her hair this way. And all the rest you simply imagined. My God, in a such a short time it was simply impossible to make out such details!”

But, nevertheless, he remained on his seat, as if he were glued. He still heard receding clattering-shuffling sounds.

Doors slammed. Dirty, dimly lit letters floated by the windows: “Myrtle Ave.”

What the hell? Myrtle Avenue is in northern Brooklyn. And there are neither Q train stops nor parallel routes on it. It seemed like farther to the east there was a subway station belonging to the brown line. But, the main thing, if the train is in Brooklyn, it had to pass over the bridge! Manhattan bridge or, at the worst, Williamsburg, if it is indeed a “brown” station. But Tony could swear that the train had remained underground all the time. After all, it is impossible to be mistaken about this even at night. It is possible of course to cross the East River by a tunnel, but those routes definitely do not go through any Myrtle…

“It’s a bad dream,” Tony thought. “I’ve fallen asleep in a subway train and am having a nightmare…” It was impossible to wake up, however. And, as if wishing to prove the reality of the situation, the train once again began to brake sharply, almost tumbling Logan down on a seat. This time the appeared to be very short.

“Is he crazy?” Tony angrily thought about the train operator. “Why is he braking this way all the time?”

“And what if that’s true,” a wild thought flashed. “The crazy train operator drives the train goodness knows where, paying no attention to routes and the schedule… However, even a madman can’t go where rails aren’t laid.”

In the following moment, Tony read the name of the next station with relief: “DeKalb Ave.”

Well, at last. So, Brooklyn after all, and it’s unimportant how he arrived here. Five routes meet at the DeKalb Avenue station and here Tony can change to the normal Q train. He could hardly wait when the doors opened and allowed him to jump out onto the platform.

He had time to take some steps. Had time to notice that the platform was empty and garbage lay about everywhere. Had time to see the “Downtown” sign, though in Brooklyn stations they do not use such a sign…

And then the lights went out.

Tony stopped dead, then turned towards the train that still was at a stop, lit from within, with hospitably opened doors. Strange, but light from the windows for some reason did not disperse the surrounding darkness at all.

“No, thanks!” Logan mentally said to the waiting train and walked through the darkness, extending his hand forward. He could see the train sideways from him and he was assured that he wouldn’t fall down from the platform. Even if there is an power failure in the station, somewhere here should be a staircase… he saw it while the station lights were still on…

His hand encountered something soft.

More precisely, someone. Logan understood that he was touching a person dressed, apparently, in something woolen.

“Sorry,” Tony confusedly muttered, hastily withdrawing his hand. “Do you know what happened to the electricity? And where is a staircase?”

The person answered nothing and seemed to not move at all.

And then Tony remembered that a few seconds ago, there was nobody on the platform. And he had not heard any steps since then.

Logan recoiled.

And then from the darkness sounds came. No, not from where somebody silently stood. From the other side. A heavy breath and a sound as if a body was being dragged on a stone floor. And these sounds were approaching.

Tony quickly turned and rushed to the open doors of the nearest car. It was very clear to him that these doors would close immediately. He would be only a fraction of second late. A fraction, still sufficient time to push his head between closing doors… and to experience the same fate as the red figure on the poster. This abrupt fear was so strong that, already having reached the doors, Tony almost recoiled back, but nevertheless forced himself to jump in, feeling during this moment, as if he was jumping from one skyscraper roof to another. With great relief he fell on the nearest seat.

“Well, and why were you so frightened?” inquired common sense, which appeared, as usual, after instinct. “There is a power failure at the station. Workers probably are simply dragging a cable or something like that.”

Yes, certainly.

But why don’t these workers use flashlights in the dark?

And then Tony realized that he was still hearing those dragging sounds and they were approaching again. Now he mentally begged the doors to close as soon as possible. But they still remained wide open.

And then Logan saw a man creeping into the car.

He snuffled and puffed, but crept rather fast, pushing off the floor with his hands…crept without rising his head, so Tony could not see his face. He saw only a shining bald pate and a dirty gray coat which was puffing up on his back.

And just when the man was halfway in the car, the doors slammed and chopped his legs off at the groin.

The train moved. Tony screamed.

The maimed man turned in the aisle and crawled straight towards Logan.

There wasn’t any blood. There was none on the floor, nor on the remnants of the creeper’s trousers. The doors apparently were free of blood, too—while Logan, who was sitting with his back to the dark platform, hardly could make them out from such foreshortening. He understood that he once again had become a victim of his own imagination. The man’s legs had not been chopped off tonight, this man had not them for a long time…

If it was a man at all.

Tony looked in dismay at this stump quickly creeping along the aisle between seats. He could not imagine a disabled person who would behave this way. At home, having fallen from a wheelchair or a bed—certainly, a legless man has no other option than to creep on a floor on his hands. But in a public place, in a subway, and before, obviously, on the street—otherwise how did he get here? The most terrible impression was made by the fact that the creeper did not lift his head at all and almost dragged his face along the dirty floor…

As if having heard Tony’s thoughts, the freak, now separated from Logan by no more than one and a half yards, began to raise his head.

But before Tony, who was frozen in horror, had time to see his face, the light shut off in the train, dipping all cars into the absolute darkness of underground.

Tony could not stand it. He jumped up and blindly rushed away down the aisle, hearing behind him the same sounds of a dragged body. His extended hand ran across a door at the end of the car. In his panic, he could not grasp the handle and began to rummage blindly on glass and plastic. Sounds behind were quickly approaching and Tony thought that he would be seized by his ankle any moment. But his fingers caught the handle, which moved with a click. Tony stepped again into the roaring intercar space blown by an icy wind—but this time in complete darkness. Now he was moving in the opposite direction—not to the head of the train, but to its tail. And at that moment, the next, especially sharp lurch of cars, ruined his balance, knocking the support out from under his feet! But fortunately, already falling into darkness, Tony managed to grab an invisible handrail. For some seconds he stood, grasping the handrail with both hands and waiting in horror for the sound of an opening door behind his back. Then Logan thought that the legless man simply could not reach the handle from the floor, and felt himself grow slightly more confident. He made himself unhook his right hand from the handrail and reach for the door to the next car. On the second or third attempt, he caught the door handle which was wiggling in the dark and entered the next car.

He still would like to get as far as possible from that… creature, and, spreading wide his raised hands and catching first the left and then the right handrails, he came up almost to the end of the car. Nothing hindered him. At last he turned aside and flopped on a seat—which he could not see, but was assured that it was empty. This time his intuition had not deceived him.

He tried to summon his common sense—though now, in the dark, it turned out especially hard. “It’s a shame to run from an unfortunate cripple,” Tony told himself. “Perhaps the poor fellow simply needed help… But then why didn’t he ask for it? Did he lack not only legs, but a tongue as well?”

And what if this man was simply drunk? Or mentally sick? Anyway—what harm can be caused to a strong and healthy guy by a legless man wriggling on the floor?

But at this moment, one more source of unease, besides darkness and uncertainty, broke through these reasonable thoughts. A smell. Tony distinctly smelled a faint, but heavy, stench. It it were stronger, he surely would vomit.

After suspiciously sniffing for some time, he understood that the smell came from himself.

More precisely, from his hand. The hand which had touched someone in the dark. It seemed to him that his fingers were covered now by some dirt. Slippy and rotten, judging by the smell.

However, that creature was not necessarily the reason. Quite probably that sticky muck was on a handrail or door handles which it had grabbed.

Tony began to rub his hand against the next seat, though firm cold plastic could hardly substitute for a towel…

“Anyway, this isn’t a nightmare,” Logan gloomily thought, holding his hand away from his nose. “My sensations are too bright and distinct.” He did not remember himself ever smelling anything in a sleep, and his sense of touch in dreams always was significantly dulled. Still smelling the rotten stench—and hoping that now it mostly came from the seat—he stood up and, stretching his hands forwards, crossed obliquely the aisle in the dark and took a seat at the very end of the car.

It solved the problem only partly.

Having sniffed, he again noticed an unpleasant smell—but not the scent of decay. Different. Now the smell of something burned was clearly felt in the air.

“A fire in this hellish train will cap it all!” Tony thought, turning his head in search of flames. But there was still an impenetrable darkness all around. And the smell… no, it did not contain the caustic bitterness of fresh smoke. More likely such a smell can be produced by something that has burnt out already. Something cooled down long ago… cold…

Logan suddenly remembered the Black man, sitting in the far end of a car. Apparently, it was this car… and he sat somewhere right here. Or on an opposite seat? Tony tried to remember, but he could not. And now Logan had the clear feeling that, just slightly moving his hand, he would touch that person. But he did not want to do it—oh no! Even at the thought of touching whoever was sitting next to him, his hand became as heavy as not even lead but… what is heavier? Uranium? Let it be uranium.

The train began to reduce speed again until it stopped at a station sunk in impenetrable darkness. Or probably in the middle of the tunnel? But if it was the tunnel, why open the doors?

And then Tony heard clatter of heels on a platform. This time without any shuffling. The unknown woman went steadily as if the station and the train were brightly lit. She entered the car through the door nearest to Tony. Heels clattered several more times, approaching. Then the sound ceased. But by almost inaudible movement of air he understood that she had eased onto a seat to the left of him.

So, there had been nobody on the nearest seat before—the Black man had either left earlier, or had been sitting opposite… But that was before. And now…

“She’s simply blind”, Logan tried to convince himself. “So it’s all the same to her if there is light or not. She doesn’t even know about the power failure.” Oh yes, one more almost feasible version. But, even if he believed in such a concentration of sick and disabled people on one night train, Tony had observed blind persons before. In the dark they, of course, are more confident than sighted people—but still less confident than a person able to see in the light. A blind woman would tap her way with a cane and the noise would be audible. She would not go stamping along like a person who knows precisely where she’s going… or who does not care about it at all.

The train again started off.

Tony sat next to the invisible woman without daring to move and almost trying not to breathe. He didn’t know whether she knew about his presence. He didn’t know what would happen if he drew her attention. And, despite all rational hypotheses, he absolutely, definitely did not want to check it.

And then he felt a cold touch on his hip.

Tony didn’t scream. Perhaps, because the fear of betraying his presence was stronger. Or simply because he understood—he wasn’t touched by fingers or anything similar. Not by an object at all. It was a liquid. A liquid had flowed under his hip from the next seat.

“Blood,” he thought. “She’s bleeding profusely”.

However, the liquid was not warm. It was hardly anything… physiological. Perhaps, she simply had a bag and in it—a self-opened can of beer. Or cola. Or any fruit or vegetable juice. Or… even more simple: a wet umbrella and a raincoat. Since the evening sky had been overcast, it could be raining now… However, isn’t it too much water even for a very wet umbrella? Not just individual drops, but a whole pool flowing into the next seat… Tony felt the liquid seeping farther along his leg. Doesn’t she feel that she’s sitting in a pool? And why the hell is he resignedly suffering it? If it is not simple water, his trousers are already spoiled. At least they should be washed… He should express his indignation to this person, whoever she is! Or, at least, stand up and change his seat!

But in this impenetrable darkness he didn’t dare do that either.

The train again began to brake and entered the next station dipped in gloom. However, this time the dark was not absolute. Beyond the car windows, an ominous, dim crimson shimmer shivered and fluctuated. And when the doors opened, Tony saw its source.

Right on the platform a fire burned. As if a cave fire of the Stone Age. Or… the brazier of an executioner in an inquisition dungeon. But no—there was no brazier, no designated border of a fireplace. Probably, some garbage dumped on the platform was burning there—and, judging by ashes around the fire, had been burning for a long time already. The flame gave oddly little light and seemed dense and heavy; it slowly waved, without shooting sparks; streams of a black smoke reached for a ceiling, indiscernible in darkness. The strangest thing was that the fire burned absolutely silently, without any crackling, and, because of this, seemed even more ominous.

Tony, distracted for an instant by this show, not so much heard as felt his neighbor stand up. Heels clattered to an open door. Logan saw her dark silhouette against a flame, and then she stepped outside, turning away from the fire, and was gone in the gloom which absorbed her completely, together with the knock of her heels. Tony could not distinguish any details other than that her clothes, apparently, were really wet and hung sticking around her body.

But he saw something else. The Black man sat directly opposite to him.

However, fire flaring behind Tony’s back allowed him to discern only the general silhouette of a heavy figure. Not a single facial feature; Tony could not even see if the man’s eyes were open or closed. But he, in his turn, Logan understood, should see my face well enough…

Tony did not know what inspired more dismay—the prospect of remaining seated opposite the silent black figure or exiting at such station. Nevertheless he forced himself to rise sharply—and at the same moment almost fell to the floor. His right leg gave way like rubber; he could not feel it. Obviously, it was numb due to sitting a long time in an awkward pose when he did not dare to move near that wet passenger… Having lost his balance, Tony reflexively threw his hand forward while already knowing what would happen next—and indeed, at the following instant his hand stuck the Black man’s shoulder with some force.

Logan not so much heard as felt an unpleasant crunch under his fingers.

“Oh my God,” Tony thought, “I’ve broken his collar bone!”

“S-sorry,” he stammered. “Are you all right?”

Logan was not very much surprised when he heard no answer. But just in case he moved back and to the side.

Doors slammed and, beyond the car window, dirty smoked letters, dimly lit with crimson shimmer, crept: “Worth Street.”

Logan would not swear that he knew the nearly five hundred stations of the New York subway, but was still confident that there was no Worth Street Station among them. Be it in any distant suburb of Bronx or Queens which he never visited, he still could doubt—but not in Brooklyn. In Brooklyn there is no street with such a name. presents in southern Manhattan (how could he appear there again?!), but on it there is no subway station. For this he was ready to be charged by life.

However, at the same moment he thought that in current circumstances it is better to refrain from such guarantees.

The fire passed behind with the mysterious station, and Tony again found himself in a roaring, shaking darkness. He took some steps teetering in the aisle (his leg still didn’t obey him very well), then plopped down on a seat, fortunately, not occupied by anybody. Then his left hand touched his wet trouser leg—no, it definitely was not sticky—and with fastidious care he brought his fingers to his nose.

Definitely not blood and not beer. And not urine. Water, he thought. Simply cold water…

With an oozy river smell which could hardly belong to rain drops.

The situation with his right hand was even worse. He could not say any longer that he smelled the burnt stench from the fire at the station. His palm was soiled by something that he, of course, could not see, but by smell and touch it resembled a thick layer of soot.

In the windows light began to dawn. The train at last rode to a lit station. However, this station also looked rather strange. The platform was curved like an arc under vaulted, semicircular ceilings; the arches which led somewhere into darkness were semicircular also. Capital letters “CITY HALL” floated beyond the car windows. But it obviously was not City Hall on route R in Manhattan, which Logan knew well…

The train, still dark within, opened its doors. Now it was easier to choose between darkness and light. Moreover, Tony’s sixth sense told him that the train wouldn’t go farther. The City Hall-R station could be intermediate, but this one was definitely final.

Tony darted a cautious glance towards the Black man—but saw nobody. Logan again was absolutely alone in the car. Could the dark silent figure just seem to have existed in the dim light? No, impossible. After all, he not only saw it…

And the black soot on Logan’s palm confirmed it.

“Probably, that guy rose and went to the next car and his leaving was not audible because of train noise,” Tony told himself, wiping a dirty hand against a handrail. “Though why would he have needed to move? Well, what the hell is the difference! Anyhow, before the doors slammed again, I need to get out of here.”

Tony hastily left the car. He was not too surprised to see nobody else on the platform. Only its central part was lit and even it was dim; both ends of the curved station, more resembling a corridor of an ancient dungeon, were sunk in gloom. Everywhere, as much as it was possible to discern under such illumination, a thick layer of dust lay, and from the semicircular arches either small stalactites or dirty rags of something like an old torn web hung here and there.

Logan looked back at the train. It still was at a stop, dark and silent, grinning with its black holes of opened doors and blindly staring with its cataracts of windows. Seemingly, nobody more would exit from any car. Was there anyone inside? The gloom did not allow Tony to make anything out from outside and he did not have much desire to go along the cars and look in. The poster with the beheading doors appeared again in his mind.

“Superstitious bullshit,” Tony told himself without, however, any real confidence. “Anyway, from outside it’s a train like any train. Simply something has happened to the electricity…”

Here, however, he paid attention to one more detail. Letters on the cars, designating the route… What he has taken for Q, was not Q at all. The “tail” was missing. It was the letter O—or number zero.

Neither route exists in the New York subway system, as Tony perfectly well knew, because the letter would be confused with the digit…

Behind Logan’s back a nearly silent, insinuating rustle sounded.

Tony sharply turned back. At first he saw nothing—because he was looking at his own height. But then he lowered his gaze to the floor…

An absolutely black shapeless thing crept towards him. It was a size of a medium dog. A fat dog whose limbs and head were torn off. It now flattened, sprawling on the floor, then rose, inflating, and in silent entreaty stretched its black stumps towards Logan; now stiffened for some seconds, then again jerkily came nearer. Its movements had no rhythm; it just simply moved along the dirty floor, coming closer and closer…

Tony looked at these convulsive movements in mute horror although, apparently, the creeping thing could more likely cause pity than fear. But Logan could not even imagine what it was. It resembled no animals known to science, nor even creatures from legends. In the following instant it pulled itself toward him again—and wrapped itself around his feet…

And then Tony burst out in relieved laughter.

A bag. An ordinary black plastic bag from a supermarket, dropped by someone on the floor and moved by wind…

Only Tony did not feel any wind. But he told himself that he just did not feel air on his face and hands. Along the floor, however, there could be a weak draft—proving, by the way, that this station does have an exit…

Having shaken the bag from his foot (it as if has stuck, it was necessary to jerk the foot sharply several times), Tony turned to the nearest arch which led upward. But, having moved closer, Tony saw that the sign hanging under the vault did not say “Exit.” It said “Downtown”—again without any route specifications.

After having walked the station from end to end, Logan was convinced that all the signs there said the same thing. It looked like there was no way from here to upper Manhattan (and whether only to Manhattan?).

The train still stood with open doors as if it was waiting to see whether its single passenger would return to its dark belly. But Logan resolutely went to the nearest arch. The staircase in the heart of it led into darkness, too—but at least upward. On the second step lay some newspaper—more likely even, a separate newspaper sheet. It had lain here for a long time, obviously, for it has grown a thick layer of dust like everything else here. But Tony still discerned familiar Gothic letters “New York Times” and a part of large headline under them: “Blood Bath…”

He stopped. As much as he remembered, no large accidents had occurred recently in the city or even in the world. And it looked somehow not like the respectable “New York Times” to use headlines more typical of the tabloid press…

Tony tried to clean off the dust with his shoe. Now he could read the whole headline:

“Blood Bath in Normandy! American Soldiers Torn to Pieces!”

What damned Normandy?!

Logan hunkered down to peer at the paper (he didn’t want to handle the dirty thing). To discern the publication date under such poor illumination was difficult, but still,with straining eyes, he managed to do it. Not trusting himself, he reread it again and again.

June 7th, 1944.

Impossible, this museum specimen could not have lain here for almost seventy years! But it was not the only strangeness. Tony was never especially interested in military history—no less than journalism history—and, naturally, had no idea, how the front page of the “New York Times” reporting on “D-Day” looked. But he believed that one of the leading national newspapers, writing about the key operation of World War II, would have done it in a more inspiring patriotic tone. Especially since the operation was successful, and losses, in percentage to number of participants, were, as much as Tony remembered from school lessons, not so huge… But here it seemed the story was about total failure and defeat.

Under the headline there was a photo, unexpectedly sharp for an old newspaper picture. Two American soldiers had dragged their comrade from the water and had already pulled him out waist-high… still, seemingly, without realizing that below his waist there was nothing except entrails trailing from the water. And, judging by his thrown back head and his face deformed by pain, the poor fellow was still alive and trying to shout…

Was this really printed in the “New York Times?!” And if not, why had this fake been made?

Logan was unable to read the main text of the article in the dim light. He stood up and began to climb the stairs, with each step going deeper into gloom.

When he reached the top of the staircase, he stood in total darkness. But there was no option to retreat—Tony wanted to get out from underground as quickly as possible and at any cost—and he moved forward, extending his hands. This time he came across not a silently stiffened figure, but the cold metal of turnstiles. However, to the touch it was not only cold. It was dusty and deeply corroded. Tony had a strong doubt that these turnstiles would respond to his MetroCard; however, he needed to exit, not to enter. Under the pressure of his body, the metal cores turned with a hollow squeak and released him to freedom.

He slowly moved farther through darkness and after several seconds, though trying to go carefully, stumbled against the bottom step of one more staircase. This one probably led to the street; ahead the gloom was not so impenetrable. Tony began to climb again and soon reached the surface.

But it was not an usual exit from the subway—framed with a metal lattice or a stone border, or hidden in a glazed box, with inevitable green-white or green spheres on each side. It was simply a hole in the earth; the staircase did not reach its edge. It would be possible to assume repairs were under way here if the pit were surrounded with any protection, Tony mused. But there were no fences, barriers or tense yellow tape; only a hole in the middle of sidewalk, as if a trap for night passersby—especially on such a dark moonless night… All right, to hell with this hole and with all lawsuits to be filed against the city by people who fall down here! Tony was immensely glad to get out at last to fresh air, even cold air…

Cold, yes—as Logan expected (there was no rain, however). But not so fresh. Tony saw through the gloom the outline of buildings, slightly faded by fog, and understood that he was outdoors—but the air around was musty, as in a damp cellar where nobody had entered for fifty years.

All right. The central part of New York is not an Alpine resort. The narrow streets of Manhattan, as if cut through a continuous mass of skyscrapers, can smell unpleasant—though usually it happens on a hot and stuffy afternoon, and a fog here is a real rarity, it is not London… However, of course, if after a warm day it has sharply become cold… But the main thing, after all, is to figure out how to get home to Brooklyn. Tony, of course, was not going to dive back in the underground hole. And even if he were to find a normal entrance to a normal station—there, in principle, should be several nearby—he had had enough subway for today! There was some bus from Manhattan to Brooklyn, but does it go at night? Tony strongly doubted that. Looks like it is necessary to fork out for a taxi… Logan had no intention of staying here till morning, really!

But first—where is he, after all? Tony, whose spirit had just been encouraged by the end of his underground adventures, looked around with increasing confusion. If he, indeed, had gotten out from City Hall station, even through some closed and abandoned exit, nearby there should be New York City Hall itself, and a courthouse, and the bulk of the Municipal Building topped with a gold statue to the northeast of them, and to the west—Broadway with the Woolworth Building. With such recognizable reference points, it is impossible to lose one’s way. However, Tony did not see anything familiar.

In the gloom directly before him, impassable thickets sprawled. Thick, curved, knotty branches stuck out extensively in a hilly-clumsy place disfigured by ugly fissured outgrowths. Naked branches, similar to picked bones, intertwined at inconceivable angles, squeezing tree trunks in suffocating embraces like monsters’ tentacles tightly linked in a last painful agony. Here and there, hung down dirty rotten tatters of exfoliated bark and long shreds of polyethylene (probably blown onto branches by the wind). But nowhere, despite the early autumn, was a single leaf.

Never in all his life had Tony seen such ugly plants. They resembled not at all the numerous trees surrounding City Hall. And, nevertheless, these terrible thickets were enclosed by a high and strong metal fence (also nothing like City Hall Park’s low fence); however, branches had intertwined with it long ago and sprouted through it. In some places, corroded fence rods were bent and broken under pressure from the branches. In other places, the rods had grown into the wood, piercing thick branches and curved trunks, bulging them like bursting abscesses and strengthening the impression of a deadly fight without winners. If there were any buildings behind all this mess, it was impossible to distinguish them in darkness through the interlacing of branches. Tony felt almost physical discomfort from this view—it resembled everted guts stricken with cancer with plural metastasizes. Trembling with cold (and, probably, not only with cold), Logan hastily walked along the fence to the left—as he believed, to the west.

But the narrow street where he soon found himself resembled Broadway as little as these terrible dead tangles resembled City Hall Park. There were no skyscrapers on this street. Only gloomy brick houses like those built in city slums before the Second World War—or maybe even before the First. Somber, ugly dark cubes—Tony knew that even in daylight their walls would look dirty brown—six or eight floors, without any decoration or plaster, and with rusty zigzags of fire escape stairs hanging outside. Some windows gaped with broken glass or had been boarded up with plywood; in none of them was there a single spark of light. The street, as far as the eye could see, was absolutely empty, without either cars or pedestrians. But even the dark could not hide how much garbage was on the street. Not only on the sidewalks, but on the trafficway as well, as if nobody had driven here for a long time. Tony shuddered, nearly stepping on a dead pigeon. The carcass was almost decayed and from under the tousled feathers small bones gleamed whitely.

What area is it? The boondocks of Harlem or Bronx? How he could be there if just recently he was on DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn? And City Hall Station… no matter how it looks, there is only one City Hall in New York and it is in lower Manhattan!

Perhaps something is wrong with his mind? Hallucinations? Memory blackouts? He definitely didn’t want to believe in anything like this, but, after all, these events should have an explanation! What time is it now, by the way? Perhaps almost daybreak already? Tony looked at his watch but could not see the hands in the darkness. The cellphone! It shows time, too! And, by the way, it’s not a bad idea to make a call… only to what number? There was probably no lawful reason to call 911 and he did not remember any phone numbers to call a taxi.

Nevertheless, he reached into his pocket and, having darted a glance around—the last thing he wanted would be the arrival of any thugs interested in his cellphone, an expensive folding model—he pulled out the device. He unfolded the phone, woke it up by pressing a button, and looked at its right corner, where the time was displayed… 12:00 a.m.

What? It can’t be. He had sat down in that devil’s train nearly at 1 a.m. and now it’s probably not less than two… Anyway, definitely not midnight.

Had he, without noticing it, spent almost a day underground?

No, that’s impossible. How could he—without eating, drinking… or even going to a toilet? It is more logical to assume that the damned cellphone is buggy.

Then Logan’s gaze moved to the left corner of the screen, where the signal level indicator should be. He expected to see there, at the best, the usual five bars, or in the worst case—none, although, of course, in New York there could be no open air place not covered by cellular communication. But what he was unprepared for was total emptiness. In the left top corner was missing not only signal bars, but even the icon of an aerial.

Well, of course. The popular Japanese thing had fritzed out. However, it was only Japanese in name, but where it was assembled actually… that damned globalization! Luckily, the warranty had not expired yet…

Nevertheless he opened his contacts list and examined the names. Logan lived alone and had no close friends—so, perhaps, among people in his telephone directory, there was nobody who could be called in the middle of night without a very serious reason. Not that he expected to receive any help, but simply wanted to check whether the phone actually worked or not. Probably to key in any random number and then to apologize for a mistake is better than to disturb those who know you…

So he made his call, taking for a basis the number of one of his colleagues and having changed a pair of digits. He heard no ring. Nothing at all. But Tony knew that it was not the silence of an inoperable phone. Simply the call was taken on the other end before the first ring. The call was taken, but no answer was given.

“Hello?” Tony said uncertainly. “Hello, Jim?”

It was the first name which came to his mind and he thought at the same moment how funny it would be if the unknown call recipient was actually Jim.

However, whoever it was did not respond. There still were no sounds on the phone. But Tony nevertheless felt that someone was listening.

“Sorry,” he said, “I mistook the number,” and hung up.

All the same, most likely, it was a malfunction of the cellphone. Tony folded it and began to put into his pocket.

The phone rang.

In the deserted night street its melody seemed a siren roar to Logan, and he, having shuddered in fright, hastily pressed the green button with a receiver picture only to stop this noise.

“Hello?” he said in much lower voice.

Silence.

“Are you the one I just called? Excuse me, I’ve already said it was an mistake. I think my phone is malfunctioning.”

Tony waited a little more, but, still receiving no response, said, “Good night,” and disconnected. And then he looked at options to lower the phone’s loudness.

But before he could change anything, the phone rang again.

“Hello!” Logan bellowed with irritation.

He got no answer again.

“Well, fine,” Tony thought, “I can be silent, too!” He demonstrated this ability during the next minute, and then, still having achieved nothing, again moved his finger to the red button. But before he had time to hang up, he heard… sounds. As if something rotten and slimy moved, sticking together and coming unstuck again. The same sounds as in the train intercom.

Logan reflexively pressed the button, breaking the communication.

Hastily having left options mode, he entered “Received Calls”. He was almost assured that he would see the same number he has typed before, but wanted to be sure.

He was mistaken. No, it was not another number. There was no number at all. Only a name: “Edward Luciano.”

Tony did not know any Edward Luciano and, naturally, did not have him in his contact list. Among his acquaintances there was nobody with an Italian name at all. Besides, the number should be highlighted anyway… What the hell is it? A virus? Tony had heard about viruses for cell phones… Just in case he chose “Options—Block.”

The phone rang again, vibrating in his fingers.

Logan shook so violently that he nearly dropped the device. Then he pressed the switch-off button and waited until the screen went out. Having thought a little more, he pulled out the battery and SIM card and stuffed them in different pockets.

The phone was silent and showed no signs of life. Tony looked at it mistrustfully, thinking that if it made a sound again, he would throw it in the nearest trash can, and the hell with how much he had paid for this miracle of technology. First, though, a trash can needed to be found…

But the phone, placed back into a pocket, behaved how a disconnected electronic device should. After spending a few more minutes in suspense, Tony calmed down and walked in the direction which would be south if this dirtied foul place were Broadway and if the gardener nightmare behind him were City Hall Park.

However these surroundings, as far as it was possible to make out in the dark, were not becoming any more attractive—in fact, just the contrary. The street, narrow and dirty as a suppurating wound from a slashing blade, passed between two rows of crowded and ragged houses which appeared absolutely uninhabited. There were even more broken windows and the intact ones—at least on the lower floors, which Tony could see most clearly—were nearly opaque with dust. Logan, who never before had looked in someone else’s windows, tried to wipe some of them, but it did not help—they were as dirty inside as outside. The walls had no graffiti, though, in an area like this, they should be everywhere. Fire escape stairs here and there lacked wells, allowing rusty steps to break right in emptiness. House numbers mostly were absent, and where they were still present, they seemed a senseless series of digits. House number 183 followed 1547, then two houses with no numbers, and then 804—without observance not only to an order, but also to a principle of even and odd sides. And all this was within the single, infinitely long block. Tony went on in hope of finding a crossroads and reading the street name on it, but the walls of this stone gorge had not a single gap. Occasionally, at odd intervals, were street lamps and they had different designs—some light poles were concrete, others wooden, and the lamps were either modern ovals, or glass spheres or obviously archaic polyhedrons. But the main thing—none of them were lit, the covers often were broken, and the poles—lop-sided, with torn off wires. But the darkness still was not absolute—which is, however, natural enough for a city, especially on cloudy nights when low clouds reflect city lights. But Tony saw neither lights, nor clouds, nor stars. Only darkness hung over the city—darkness in its pure state, homogeneous and impenetrable.

He came upon a dead pigeon again. Then one more. And here a decaying seagull lay with spread shabby wings, like a dead eagle of a fallen empire. Strange—usually seagulls keep to coasts and do not fly deep into the city… Perhaps, the coast is very close?

Tony raised his eyes from the carrion—and shivered. Towards him along the street a person walked.

Logan knew perfectly well that at night in bad areas, especially when you were alone, it was possible to have most unpleasant meetings. However the figure going right on a trafficway didn’t resemble a street thug at all. But looking at the figure still made Tony feel a little odd. First of all, this person wasn’t dressed according to the season: he had on a baggy winter jacket and a fur cap with long ears tied under his chin. He also wore a scarf wrapped around his face up to his eyes. And, seemingly, despite all it, he still could not get warm, as he hid his hands under his arms. His gait was also strange—the figure hobbled on half-bent legs, spreading knees wide sideways and turning out his feet almost 180 degrees. The head was also turned to the right at such an angle that Tony wondered this creature did not break his neck. At first Logan thought that the stranger purposely had turned away from him, but, seemingly, he had been walking this way for a long time without noticing Logan at all.

Nevertheless, though the looks of the stranger brought unaccountable fear, Tony decided to talk with him. It was the first live being he had met on the surface and he needed to find out what this rotten place was and how, damn it all, to get from here to a normal part of Manhattan.

“Sir!” Logan called, surprised at the hoarse sound of his own voice. “Excuse me, sir, could you tell me…”

The figure continued to hobble forward, looking to the right (and even to the right rear) and without showing in any way that he heard. He? A thought came to Logan’s mind that, actually, nothing proved that it was a man. These shapeless clothes could hide a woman as well…

Tony resolutely crossed the road and stopped in front of the walking figure, wishing to look in his—or her—face.

It did not help much. The face was completely concealed by the scarf from below and by the cap from above, and the narrow gap between them was covered by sunglasses (at night!). Even on the nose, something white, apparently, had been stuck. But Tony noticed a smell which made him frown with disgust. Probably, a tramp who had not had a bath for a couple of months… or who had not even taken off these wrappings since last winter… However, in this smell there was something worse than the usual stench of a body dirty for a long time. The smell brought to mind associations inconceivable in Logan’s ordinary life, something almost medieval: plague and cholera pits overflowing with bodies… field hospitals full of abandoned patients under a scorching sun…

But still, overcoming disgust—since there was nobody else to ask—he repeated the question:

“Do you hear me? What is this place? Seems I got lost.”

The figure hollowly murmured something under the scarf, but Tony could not distinguish the words. Was it English at all? In New York more than two hundred nationalities live…

“Sorry?” Logan asked again.

More unintelligible muttering, as if the creature’s mouth was filled by some viscous stuff. But this time, apparently, the words were different. It came to Tony’s mind that, probably, this being was not talking to him, but simply talked to himself, and, moreover, had done it for a long time already and would do it further… Not just a stinky tramp, but also a madman? Why not… especially taking into account that since Tony got on that ill-fated train, everything around him looked pretty crazy.

But while Logan was sure that he would be ignored again, the creature suddenly jerkily pulled his hand from under his arm and stretched it towards Tony.

Logan recoiled in horror, looking at what had come up from a dirty sleeve. It was not a hand in the usual sense. It was a swollen, shapeless, ulcerated stump, on which five wet hillocks stuck out like ugly flattened slugs—all that remained of fingers. Logan’s gaze jumped again to the wrapped face, and he understood that what he had accepted in the darkness as a scarf were actually bandages, sodden with pus and God knows what other discharges. He was not sure whether under these bandages (when were they last changed?) remained any skin, or if they had long ago grown into the sick meat.

The thought that it could touch him made Tony move back quickly, without looking behind him; he saw a dreadful stump directed towards him and heard a hollow illegible mutter from under the rotten bandages. A second later he stumbled against a curb and, helplessly waving his hands, crashed down, hitting his head against the sidewalk. A flash sparkled in his eyes and all sank in blackness.

Tony came to his senses, looking around in panic. Disgusting images appeared to him: sticky touches of the leprous creature—or what this disease was?—and his stinking breath right in Logan’s face, in his mouth… probably, even a kiss through dirty bandages (what if it nevertheless was a woman?) Was it simply a delusion of his scared imagination—or an echo of what really happened during his unconsciousness?

Anyway, the street was empty again. And there remained the same darkness—unless the fog had become thicker. But, possibly, Tony had been unconscious not too long. Strange, but he did not feel a pain in his head. However, having carefully touched it, he felt something wet and sticky.

“I’m going to see a doctor,” he promised himself. “As soon as I get out of here. And not only about a head injury. I’ll get tested for infections…”

But first, he needed to get out of here.

He stood up and turned right, walking along the street. However, the longer he walked, the more he doubted in his chosen direction. Underfoot was old crumbled asphalt. On the road, there were more dead birds, and not only pigeons. Here was a black raven, regarded by romanticists as a symbol of death, lying with its feet drawn into itself, there a worm-eaten albatross, and there… Logan smelled the largest of them earlier than he saw it: it was either a heron or a stork—in such a state of decay, it was impossible to know anymore. Tony knew that such birds live in New York parks, but never saw them flying in the city…

Meanwhile, from the fog, dark silhouettes of houses appeared, continuing to change. Here, they were of different height and architecture and were not arranged in monolithic rows along the sides of the street, but stuck out separately. Here, this one jutted forward to the very edge of the street, there, that one receded deep into the dark. Their locations resembled the curve of decayed teeth of a mutant from a horror movie. The blank walls with no windows occurred more and more often, and buildings with windows looked even worse. Tony doubted that such shabby ruins could exist even in the poorest and the most remote parts of New York, let alone the business area of Manhattan. Municipal services were simply obliged to demolish all this very long time ago before it crashed on somebody’s head… It seemed the majority of these buildings, though obviously multifamily, were not stone; in the cold air, the heavy, damp and musty smell of decaying wood was clearly present. Moreover, outlines of either some dilapidated villas or farm houses loomed ahead; but while such buildings usually stand in rural open space, here they were literally piled up, leaning against each other in terrible narrowness, interlocking by lopsided walls and fallen-in roofs and, probably, only for that reason had not yet collapsed completely.

Looking around, Logan almost stumbled against some object lying directly in the middle of the street and merging with the blackness of the asphalt. For a terrible instant it seemed to him that it was a swollen corpse—more precisely, a trunk without legs, arms or head. But it was only a very full black plastic garbage bag. All the same, looking at it was unpleasant. It seemed that it was just about to burst and spew out its fetid contents. How long had it been lying right in the middle of the road?

At this moment a quickly approaching noise—some rhythmical scratch and gnashing rustle—came from behind Tony. He turned back—and saw just few feet from himself the rapidly approaching blunt muzzle of a radiator, a heavy rectangular bumper, the blind cataracts of extinguished headlights, the dark glass of a windshield… He hardly had time to jump aside. The long vehicle rushed past without reducing speed, with a filthy sound—skwashhh!—squelching the garbage bag. Tony opened his mouth to shout out his opinion of the driver (certainly, Logan was guilty himself of walking in the street, but…)—but the abuse stuck in his throat. It was not the fact that the driver didn’t honk or even try to brake that amazed Tony most of all, but what kind of vehicle it was. A school bus. An ordinary yellow school bus that can be found on plenty of New York streets, as well as in any other American city… But not in the deadest hours of night.

Although, of course, anything could make a school bus driver go out at night. Perhaps, the bus urgently needed repair… or the driver simply used municipal transport for personal purposes… Yes, all these hypotheses were possible if there were no passengers in the bus. Those passengers for whom it was intended—children.

But, though there was no interior light, Tony had clearly discerned the white spots of faces pressed to windows from within. Yes, exactly—not simply half-turned somewhere inside, but pressed, flattened out against the glass faces and palms, as if children desperately and hopelessly tried to escape outside from a glass captivity of the bus, from the dark and narrow closed space in which they have been confined long, oh, very long already… so long that they had no more strength to struggle or even simply to move, and could only press their faces in mute despair against cold windows… The bus had already passed, but Tony still saw in his mind their flattened noses turned on one side, black holes of open mouths, dark stains shading their sunken eye sockets…

“Nonsense,” he told himself. “Just something I glimpsed in the dark. I saw it for no more than a second! It is simply some late excursion. Or the bus got delayed somewhere by a traffic jam… or a power failure…”

But why at night, moreover in a fog, had the headlights been switched off? And why, by the way, had he heard only a metal scratch and a garbage rustle from under the wheels—but not the sound of a working engine?

He looked after the departing bus. The tail lights did not burn, either. And in the back window a stiffened, warped face shone whitely. There was something especially wrong with it, and, an instant later, Tony understood, what exactly.

In this face there were no eyes at all.

A disgusting musty smell which had spread in the air distracted Logan’s attention. He looked askance at the squashed bag—something whitish and lumpy had been squeezed out of it, and Tony had not the slightest desire to examine, what exactly. When he raised his eyes again, the bus was not visible anymore. Either it had turned somewhere—meaning that there finally was a crossroads ahead—or it had completely sunk into darkness and fog.

After returning to the sidewalk—no more adventures in the street, however deserted it looked—Tony hastily walked in his former direction. Though he felt less and less desire to go farther, at the same time, having gone so far already in this direction, he did not want to turn back. When you do not know where to go, the silliest idea is to beat about. And besides, in the depth of his heart, he was not sure at all that the place where this bus came from was any better than where it was heading.

Soon his decisions were rewarded: ahead in the fog a crosswise sign loomed—a crossroads at last… Tony, hurried already by cold and fear, still quickened his pace; probably, he would even have run, but he did not like at all the idea of his noise echoing all through the empty street.

And then he understood that he did not have much desire to approach the sign.

Something hung from it. Just from that part which designated the cross street. For an instant, Logan had a wild thought that it was a monkey which had seized the sign with its tail. But, after stepping closer, he realized that it was a cat. A cat which had been hung by its own tail… Dead cats and dogs always caused insuperable disgust in Tony, but he still needed to read the sign, and so he came even closer.

Now he saw that the situation was even worse. It was not a tail. The unfortunate animal hung by its own gut, stretched from the ripped up belly and, apparently, nailed to the sign. And, judging by the look and smell of the corpse, it had hung here for many days already…

How had anyone gotten the cat up there on the sign—by a fire ladder? Tony had heard about firemen rescuing cats, but not…

He painfully swallowed a lump which had risen in his throat and forced himself, straining his eyes in the dark, to read the sign. Amazingly, the street along which he had come, appeared to be Broadway. However… despite all Tony’s efforts, he could not discern the first letter. It was either erased or splotched by dirt, resulting in “ROADWAY”. A senseless tautology, if taken literally… On the sign for the cross street, there was no name at all. Only a black arrow with the inscription “ONE WAY.” The usual road sign designating one way traffic. But Tony could not stop thinking about the literal meaning of the words. “The only way”… Logan completely disliked persistence of this instruction and turned in the opposite direction as a matter of principle.

Especially since the cat hung closer to the sharp end of the arrow.

Shortly afterwards, he praised himself for making the correct choice: though the new street was just the same—deserted and dirtied (perhaps, there was even more litter on it) without a single working street lamp or a lit window—but, seemingly, from a kingdom of wooden ruins, Logan was returning to a stone civilization. Houses on both sides of the street were becoming higher and more modern, and ahead a bus stop with a billboard appeared. Tony had seen this poster many times: at the left, the face of a little girl, and on the right, the face of an old woman—both, of course, smiling. Apparently, it was something about medical insurance, along the lines “we care for your health at any age…” The billboard, naturally, did not interest Logan at all—he wanted to see a listing of the numbers of routes stopping here. He, now, with great pleasure would take any route if only it would take him away from this terrible place.

M13, the sign said. M13? Tony could not remember such a bus. In Brooklyn, yes, there is a thirteenth route; it passes through the cemetery area of Cypress Hills—but in Manhattan? Alas, where there should be a route diagram, Tony found only an empty frame.

And then he almost physically felt someone’s glare. A glare full of hatred and rage.

Tony involuntarily held his breath, afraid to turn back. There was no sound behind him. Tony stood dead still for several seconds, and then, having realized that to stand with his back to danger was even worse, turned sharply back.

Behind him there was nobody. Only this stupid poster.

Nerves, Tony told to himself. Some hell on wheels had plagued him this whole damned night… And then he looked at the advertising more closely.

The faces were the same he had seen many times before, but their expressions were absolutely different. The girl stared into nowhere with the vacant look of a mentally retarded child; her face was wreathed in a senseless smile, her tongue hung out, and saliva flowed down her dropped chin. The face of the old woman was completely mad, too—and much more terrible. It was deformed by a grimace of fierce hatred; the muddy running eyes glared with a fury as stunning as a blow to the solar plexus, and the smile was actually a spasmodic grin which had bared rare teeth and naked gums where teeth were missing.

“It’s impossible to feel a picture’s gaze,” Tony told himself. Oh yes, and the gaze of a living person—is it really possible? Science, anyway, does not know about beams or anything else that eyes could emit and influence another person…

But anyway—who could order and place such a poster? Even if the mentally retarded girl could be explained as a paroxysm of political correctness, that mad old woman…

Tony tried to dismiss his uneasiness and to appeal again to his common sense. Certainly, there can not be such a poster, as well as there can not be such a Broadway and such a business area of Manhattan… But since they do exist, and since a bus does go here—probably, after all it is more reasonable to wait for the bus and ask the driver about the route…

If only this bus would not be even worse than that school bus.

He stepped under the bus stop roof where the darkness was even more dense, and shivered in fright. It seemed to him that in a corner someone was squatting—someone thickset and twisted, with broad shoulders… and with no head.

In the following instant Tony, who already felt arrows of icy horror piercing his stomach, understood that he was looking at a wheelchair. A simple one, without a motor. Empty.

Well, a wheelchair abandoned at a bus stop is probably not the most usual object… but also not the most frightening, is it? There could be plenty of reasons why it had been left here… however, none of them came to Tony’s mind. Anyway, he did not believe that a miracle of healing had happened here. Anywhere, but not here.

He moved closer to the wheelchair. In the darkness he could discern only its black silhouette, and hardly even that. Tony extended a hand and touched the back. His fingers immediately came across some slits… long vertical cuts. The wheelchair’s back was not simply cut—it was slashed to pieces. And.. the torn matter was sticky.

Tony hastily jerked his hand back. His fingers came unstuck with an unpleasant sound, as if the mutilated wheelchair did not want to release them. He reflexively tried to wipe them against the seat… But there it was even worse.

A whole pool, yes.

Cold, thickening, but still not dried up completely.

Tony looked around in panic—and his eyes again found the billboard.

The faces had changed again.

The girl’s face now expressed a spitefully malicious triumph. The triumph of a very bad, very spoiled child who for a very long time, probably weeks and months, had thought over and prepared a delightfully vile dirty trick—and who had succeeded with it at last. And the old woman… on her face an expression of incomparable horror stiffened. A horror from which even young and healthy people lose control over their intestines and bladder—and old people usually just do not survive such horror. Actually, Tony was not sure at all that he was looking at a picture of a living person, instead of a posthumous grimace disfigured by an agony.

And at this moment he felt almost the same horror. Horror at the sight of faces on paper, which live—and die…

But from the depth of his consciousnesses came a saving thought—“What if it was not paper at all? Modern technologies, a superflat display—OLED or electronic ink… But no”—he pushed his face up to the billboard—“It’s not any kind of display, it’s the most ordinary poster…”

“Rotten hell!” he thought. What an idiot he is! He was simply looking at the other side of the billboard from within the bus stop! Obviously, different posters were placed on different sides!

Yes, of course. Everything has a reasonable explanation. And we will ignore questions about who needs such advertising—either one, or another variant of it…

And now go and look at other side of the billboard.

“What for?” Tony objected to himself. He knew, yes, knew already that it was the same picture which he had seen approaching the stop. Because anything else is simply impossible. So, there is no need, absolutely no need to look there. Only he will not wait for the bus at this stop. (Tony once again looked askance at the wheelchair.) No, he will not.

He wiped his hand against a glass wall. Despite the darkness, long traces of bloodstained fingers appeared quite distinctly. And now he noticed that they were not the first on this wall. And it was unlikely that all his predecessors simply wiped soiled hands. Some, seemingly, limply fell with bloody palms against the bus stop wall, and some vainly tried to catch hold of smooth glass when they were dragged…

“Perhaps, it is just ordinary paint,” Tony told himself. “Local guys having fun…” Nevertheless, he quickly walked farther along the street without looking back. The bus still could come from ahead—if indeed there was one-way traffic and if the M13 bus operated at night…

“That’s the wrong question,” a malicious internal voice noted. “Certainly it operates at night. The question is whether this bus operates in the daytime…”

Ahead in the gloom two shining eyes appeared. Yellow. Round. Unblinking.

“Headlights,” Tony told himself. “This must be the bus. But it stops only at bus stops.”

But one could not say that Logan regretted it. To tell the truth, with each second he desired even less to meet this bus, whether it intended to stop or not. Partly because again he did not hear any engine noise. And also because he could not even discern a silhouette. The headlights—if they were headlights—were approaching absolutely silently.

Tony understood that if he turned back and ran, this thing would overtake him somewhere right near the stop. But ahead one more crossroads loomed. If he managed to get there first, he would have a chance to turn…

But he still did not run. He yet remained too sane a person to run away from a bus. He just quickened his pace. Even so, the headlights neared not as quickly as could be expected of a bus. But also not so slowly as he would like.

As he walked closer, he felt he wouldn’t be in time to reach the crossroads.

“What nonsense,” he told himself, “this just a bus, or, well, maybe, some other vehicle… And even if there are any nasty guys inside, they hardly have any business with me…” But at the same time, another voice in his brain named an absolutely different reason not to run: he should not show that thing that he is afraid.

Now he discerned a vague silhouette in the darkness and fog. It really seemed to be the bus. Without any light, except the headlights—without even a route indicator in front. And still approaching completely silently, without even a garbage rustle under its wheels.

Only several yards remained to the crossroads. And only a few more—to the bus. Tony broke down and ran.

They reached the crossroads simultaneously. Logan jerkily darted round the corner, quickly moving to the left. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the long dark frame (unlike usual New York buses, this one obviously was not white), square holes of black windows, dimly glowing symbols “M13” on one side, and lower—an inscription along the side: “ARE YOU FREE FROM SIN?” The bus was so close that Tony felt a wave of warm air coming from it. For a moment Logan was certain that the irreparable had happened, he had given himself away, and now this thing would turn and pick up his trail…

No. It just passed by. Of course, it is simply a bus following its route, and it is silly to addle his brain with any nonsense… Curiously enough, the stern inscription on the side of the bus convinced him more than anything else: it was simply an advertising of some religious organization. Tony had seen it several times in the daylight, in a normal city. And, unlike other posters in this weird night, it looked the same then as now.

But had he just imagined it or had he really seen at the last moment vertical pupils inside the headlights? Pupils which turned in his direction?

And that warm wave that had poured over him… in it there was no smell of gasoline and oil which could be expected from a working machine. It resembled much more the hot stinking breath from the chops of a big animal. And more likely a scavenger than a predator.

Tony ran for about hundred yards, then slowed to a walk, panting and telling himself that there were no grounds for panic. Everything has an explanation, even in this crazy place. Perhaps, after sunrise, he’ll even laugh at his fears. (The thought that he would have to stay here until morning did not pain him as much as earlier—not because Tony began to like this place any better, but because he had started to get used to the inevitability… or to that which more and more seemed inevitable.) He darted a glance along the street stretching into fog—as empty and dark as as previously, then listened—it was absolutely silent. However, this silence was not calming. It seemed deliberate, unnatural—he realized that he was not hearing even his own footsteps, as if fog, like cotton wool, absorbed sounds. Tony stopped and forcefully stamped his right foot, wishing to overcome this oppressive silence. Old asphalt under his foot cracked, crumbling to pieces, and Tony fell knee deep in the wide open hole.

“Shit!” he muttered, having fallen to his left knee and trying to pull out his right leg. This, however, was not so easy. Apparently, underground water approaching close to the surface had affected the street from below, and his leg plunged into a dense viscous dirt, dirt which, without asphalt above, would be a real bog… Logan, still feeling more rage and vexation than fear (now his trousers were ruined for sure!), pulled his leg harder, then, without having succeeded, rested both hands against the asphalt—and felt it continue to break and crumble under his palms, like thin ice on a swamp surface…

“Hooey!” Tony thought. “I can’t sink in the middle of a New York street!”

But he felt the real horror only in the following instant when he realized that his leg had not simply got stuck in a cold dense bog—but was being pulled downwards. He felt something blunt and strong (fingers? tentacles? jaws?) close on his ankle and drag it deeper…

His leg was already sunk to the groin. “Help,” Tony desperately shouted, though several seconds ago the notion of calling for aid in this area would have seemed a bad idea to him. Even now, having heard the hoarse sound of his own voice, he looked around with more fear than hope.

And saw in the fog two burning eyes—headlights. Approaching.

“Bus M13,” Logan thought. “It’s followed me. Or I’ve just called it and now it’ll come for my soul…” Tony realized, though too late, that, while running away, he had again jumped out from the sidewalk to the middle of the street. And now this damned bus does not need to do anything supernatural, it will simply squash the helpless victim in a trap…

Tony lay down on the street, seizing the unbroken portion of asphalt, and furiously heaved his body in an attempt to free his right leg. It looked as is he might even win back some inches, but the headlights behind him were inexorably closing. There was no engine noise so far, but the crunch and rustle under its wheels became clearer and clearer. One more jerk—horror on the verge of madness gave extra force to Logan—and he succeeded in freeing his leg almost to the knee. At that moment, right behind him, something crunched with an especially vile sound—probably, the bus had crushed a dead bird—and Tony understood that he wouldn’t be in time. He screwed up his eyes, expecting the blow…

But no blow followed. Wheels rustled to the right of him and stopped. Logan opened his eyes without believing that he was still alive.

The vehicle stood opposite him and it was not the M13 bus. It was much smaller white truck. With improbable relief, Logan recognized a USPS truck, with a blue eagle head and the motto on the side.

Tony did not ask why a postal truck was driving at night. Express delivery—what could be easier and more commonplace? Everything has a reasonable explanation and that thing holding his ankle is simply heavy dirt. The driver of the truck will now help him to get out and will explain how to reach normal transportation. Maybe the driver will even agree to give him a lift, though this is against the rules… And all this idiotic phantasmagoria, at last, will end!

The driver’s door lock clicked and a foot in a laced boot stepped onto the roadway. And at the same moment Tony noticed that the motto on the side of the truck differed a little from what he had gotten used to.

Instead of “We deliver for you,” was written “We deliver you.” To be more exact, “We de·liver you,” with either a dot or a tiny hyphen separating “de” from “liver.”

We rip out your liver.

And the eagle’s head looked too predatory and spiteful. Logan at once remembered the myth about the eagle tormenting the liver of Prometheus.

The door opened more widely with an unpleasant scratch. The driver, a bulky bald Negro, got out of the truck. And turned his face to Logan.

Or what he had instead of a face.

Seeing it, Tony screamed… or rather, squealed, without controlling himself at all. A high cheekboned white skull looked at him. At the same time, there was black flesh on each side of the head and Tony distinguished the silhouette of chubby cheeks and a fat neck. But between them there was only the deathly whiteness of bone, long ago and completely cleared of flesh either by knife or by decomposition. However this skull had a nose—bone white too, but a nose, instead of a triangular hole appropriate to a decayed corpse.

“What’s wrong with you?” the dreadful driver inquired in a sepulchral, but almost friendly voice. And Tony, as frightened as he was, noticed that on this terrible whitish mask there was not only a nose, but also lips moving to shape words. Nevertheless he could not squeeze out of his throat anything articulate and only spasmodically twitched, trying to free his leg.

“Oh, I guess, my face,” said the Black man (or whatever he actually was). Tony had a flashing thought that this…this being was looking for an occasion to be aggressive, and he pitifully waggled his head.

“Everything is all right, sir,” the driver continued just as amiably. “Many people are frightened when they see me for the first time. It’s a skin defect called ‘vitiligo’. Don’t worry, it’s not infectious.”

“My God, what an idiot I am,” Tony thought, again relaxing with immense relief (which allowed his leg to be pulled several inches deeper at once). Certainly, vitiligo, a pigmentation disorder. He had seen people with this skin condition before, but they were white. On a black face it looks particularly terrible… Especially when the spot is shaped exactly like a skeleton’s face. Moreover, taking into account the existing circumstances…

“Sorry,” Tony murmured confoundedly.

“You need help,” the driver said more affirmatively than interrogatively.

“Yes, my leg is stuck, and, in general, I’m in a stupid situation…”

“Now we’ll relieve you of it.”

But the motto? What about the motto? Could it be a one more trick of imagination which caused him to not see the preposition “for”?

No. There was no “for.” And “de” was quite distinctly separated from “liver.”

The driver stepped towards Tony and Logan saw his right hand that had been hidden by the truck door before. No—the hand itself was okay. No pigment spots and the fingers were not decayed. But these fingers clenched the handle of a huge butcher’s hatchet, devilishly sharp even by sight and with a brown-stained blade.

“What… are you going to…?” Tony, who had instantly lost all his newly found calmness, plaintively exclaimed.

“To relieve you of it,” repeated the Negro, taking one more step towards him, and Logan understood that “it” meant not his trouble, but his leg.

There was not the slightest chance of releasing himself in the remaining seconds. But when the driver had already raised his weapon, Tony seized the largest piece of asphalt and with all his might threw it right in the terrible white-black face.

The sound of the blow turned into a wet crunch. The jerked back and fell, hitting his head against the edge of the opened truck door (it slammed with a scratch)—and then finally tumbled down on the asphalt, still clutching his hatchet. Logan heard a new crunch and at first thought that it was one more sound of a breaking skull. But then he saw a new crack that ripped the asphalt from the edge of the hole into which Tony had slumped to the front wheels of the truck, having passed under the driver’s motionlessly stiffened body.

And in the following instant something moved under the asphalt, heavily rolling towards the vehicle—or, maybe, towards the bald head from which, probably, blood exuded? Tony felt the grasp on his ankle weakened. Having gathered all his strength, he jerked once again—and his right leg broke loose with a viscous damp sucking sound. Without a shoe and all bedaubed with mud, but those were insignificant details. Logan jumped up and rushed farther along the street. He did not even try to pick up the postman’s hatchet (let alone getting behind the wheel of his truck), as he was not sure at all that the asphalt under him wouldn’t break again.

Or that this guy won’t come to senses at the most inopportune moment as always happens in movies.

“Well, it’s unlikely,” Tony told himself (while still maintaining his pace). “His skull was broken in two places at least, and however sturdy he seemed…”

A familiar scratch came from behind. And then—a door slam.

Tony looked back over his in shoulder in panic and saw headlights again. Actually, they were not switched off even when the truck was standing. But now… they, seemingly, were approaching again.

Logan ran to the nearest house and hastily tugged at the door handle. Screws pulled from the mouldering wood, leaving the handle in his hands. The door had been locked. Having rejected his “trophy,” as useless as a weapon, Tony rushed off farther along the street. How many seconds are left to him?

From the fog a traffic sign appeared. A rhombus with an inscription “DEAD END.” Holy crap!

However, he guessed there was a certain extense of free space beyond the sign. While it still could be nothing. There could be a fence blocking his path…

Without stopping, he threw one more glance back. The headlights were definitely closer. Tony again looked forward and saw a metal fence. But, no, it was not too high. And the main thing—there was a semicircular gate in it and it was open. And beyond the gate something like a town in miniature appeared in the fog: rows of low stone structures stretching into the gloom and silent pale figures erect between them…

Crypts. Tombstones. Monuments.

If this nightmare were in Manhattan, Tony remembered, south of City Hall would be the Trinity Episcopal Church cemetery—the only one active on the island. But it is is apparently much closer and very small, not comparable to this huge necropolis lost in the fog. Here, perhaps, it is not hard to lose one’s way, especially at night… And why is the cemetery open at night? Though it is, of course, good that it is open, considering the vehicle which has almost overtaken him already… But still, though Tony did not consider himself superstitious, he, as well as the majority of people, somehow did not find the idea of night visits to cemeteries appealing. Especially—after everything that has already happened this night.

Here truly—dead end. Tony thought again about the literal meaning of this ordinary expression.

And, having run closer to the gate, he got an additional reinforcement to his fears.

It was one more dead bird. A swan, like those populating city ponds and Sheepshead Bay. It was impaled on several rods of the cemetery’s fence, piercing it through. Feathers, once white, were stuck together with blood and cadaveric putrilage, shabby wings and the semi-decayed neck hung powerlessly downwards. The rotted head had fallen off and lay near the foot of the fence with a wide open blackened beak.

No “No entrance” sign would have dissuaded Tony from entering more convincingly. But still, choosing between a dead swan and a live maniac with a hatchet… Tony hastily ran in the gate and turned into the first lateral walk, and then—into a narrow passageway between a crypt and a marble angel. Hunkering down, he hid.

All was silent. Indeed—silent, as a cemetery… Probably the maniac had lost his trail or not followed him here at all. Logan remembered some scraps of a horror film in which, contrary to the most widespread genre cliches, the cemetery was the safest place, since the evil spirits could not pursue characters there because of its consecrated soil. Certainly, Tony had never before believed either in evil spirits, or in consecrated soil… But he hadn’t believed either in USPS trucks driven by fans of cutting out livers and other body parts.

Fans who could not be stopped even by a broken skull.

Tony waited a little longer, then, trying not to make a sound, slowly stood up, noticing for the first time the discomfort of his right foot being wet and clad only in a sock. He did not dare to go back; such a big cemetery for certain had more than one exit.

He carefully moved along a passageway between tombs, fearfully looking around. This whole place made the heart sick, and the darkness and fog, which were getting even denser, did not add enthusiasm at all. The cemetery was old, very old. It did not resemble an active one—at least, one where somebody looks after tombs. Gravestones and monuments were decayed, fissured, fouled with dirt and some wet muck—more probably a mold than a moss. Many slabs and stone crosses were dangerously tilted and looked ready to fall. It was almost impossible to discern inscriptions, especially in the dark, but those which Logan nevertheless managed to read confirmed the antiquity of the burial places: the beginning of 19th century, the middle of the 18th, even one thousand six hundred-and-some years, combined with the obviously Dutch surnames…

But the worst of all were the statues. At first, Tony paid attention only to their condition, as pitiful as all the rest here—fouled, lop-sided, collapsing. Here a stump of a broken off hand stuck out, there a hole of a broken- off nose blackened, and here a long-ago fallen head had grown into the ground. (Tony shuddered, almost having stepped with his unshod foot on a face poking out of the earth; at first it seemed to him that it belonged not to a sculpture at all.) But then he began to look closely at faces.

No, these were not the muzzles of demons. Silent sculptures represented figures quite traditional for old cemeteries: angels, grieving maidens in long gowns, and sculptural doubles of the dead towered in the fog. But the expressions! These stone faces were not grieving at all. Angels grimaced in mischievous triumph and twisted their mouths into mocking grins of sadistic pleasure; faces of maidens wore expressions of all kinds of perversity and corruption and, moreover, they were mostly not maidens, but dissolute old women, and the older and uglier their faces were, the more lusty and obscene. Faces of sculptures and portraits on headstones, representing those buried under these stones, were disfigured by eternal horror and pain.

And even worse—Tony could not shake the growing sensation that all of them were continuously looking at him. Looking from all directions. No, stone heads did not turn when he passed by, he did not see and did not hear any movement. But when he turned his head he met blind eyes full of rage, scorn, or unbearable torment, for which even death was not the resolution, but only the beginning.

“What are you staring at?!” Logan lost his temper, looking in the face of an angel who was stretching stone stumps towards him—the left hand of a sculpture had fallen off at the elbow, the right one—at mid-forearm. “I’m not afraid of you! You’re just a piece of marble!”

The statue remained silent and motionless, as a statue should. Tony turned away and walked on.

Behind him a rustle sounded.

Tony sharply turned back.

The angel was moving. His head was turning and sloping, and stumps were drawing toward the man. Then Logan, frozen with horror, saw a crack separating a head from a neck, and two others, running through the stomach and knees of the statue. He hardly had time to jump aside, when the stone figure, falling to pieces already in air, crumbled with a roar across the passageway. The head rolled to Tony’s feet and stopped dead, face upwards.

Logan took a breath. Of course, simply everything has decayed and is collapsing here. No mysticism. But all the same, he had to get out of here as quickly as possible before the next ton of marble falls right down on his head…

But only—Tony once again looked downwards—he was ready to swear that when the angel was whole, the expression on the marble face had been different. A spiteful triumph, instead of powerless fury. And the mouth had not been open then.

Put a finger in. Reach right in here, doubting Thomas.

“To hell with you,” Tony thought, hastily walking away. “Night and fog play tricks on the mind. There is nothing to stare at all in these figures… It is best to get out of here as fast as possible… But where is that damned exit?” He had walked a long distance already. How long can a cemeterial avenue be? It was not a straight line as could be expected, but probably was nevertheless not so curved as to misguide him… or it just seemed to him in the absence of distinguishable reference points? What, if he wanders here in circles? Or even not in circles—he definitely had not passed again by the same crypts and statues—but in some devilish labyrinth…

It seemed to Tony that he heard steps.

He stopped dead. No. All is silent. Perhaps, his own echo… He walked farther.

More sounds again. Surely, echo, what else? The sound is reflected from all these crypts and gravestones…

Only why did he hear only his left, shod footsteps, and the “echo” had sounds from both feet?

He stopped again, listening attentively in fear to darkness.

Bommmm!

Tony shuddered so violently that he almost bit his tongue. From the fog came the second sound of a large bell ringing, and then a third… The lingering, dreary, and at the same time aloof and indifferent sounds floated from the darkness, bringing even more dread than mysterious steps among tombs and spiteful faces of statues.

“Somewhere this cemetery there is a church,” Tony thought. “Well, it is absolutely logical. But this bell is unlikely to be a call to a vigil. If any vigils were kept here during last two hundred years… (still, why is the obviously abandoned cemetery open, moreover at night?) And if it is the striking of a clock bell, isn’t the number of strikes too much? Five, six… If it is six o’clock in the morning now, it should be dawn already… Seven… Eight…”

Bommmm…. The sound of the last, twelfth blow slowly faded away in the gloom.

Not morning at all. Midnight.

“What the crap?! It should be, at least, 4 a.m. already!”

“If only I could understand where this damned church is,” Tony thought, but in a fog he could not identify the direction. The sound seemed to come from everywhere. “If there is a priest there or… at least anybody—though it could be a mechanical chiming clock…”

And by the way—he had already seen the postal employee. Who says that the priest would be any better? Perhaps an upside down crucifix is mounted over his altar and to it, tied head-down by his own torn out veins… or guts… hangs a stray night traveler. A traveler who counted on a help from a church and whose blood drips into the ritual vessel below… This picture so clearly appeared before Tony’s eyes as if he was really looking at it. He desperately needed to get out of this cursed cemetery while he still can!

Steps. Definitely not an echo. Shuffling, but at the same time resolute. Approaching. And again he could not tell—from where.

Tony rushed, having turned into a narrow lateral path. Probably—straight to who (or what) was wandering here at night. But better that, than to stand still, struck by fear. A sharp stone splinter stuck into his right foot, but Tony did not slow down at all. From gloom and fog silent figures of statues emerged—if, of course, they were simply statues. Logan tried not to look at them.

At last he felt himself absolutely chilled and exhausted—and the rows of abandoned tombs and collapsing gravestones still showed no end. Tony dropped into a walk, then limply leaned against a cold wall. Listened. No, apparently, there is no pursuit behind. Well, so it is possible to rest, and then…

Scraping, scratching sounds.

And now Logan had no doubts about their source—they came through a wall. Tony hastily recoiled, looking at what he had leaned against. It was the sealed door of an old crypt.

The sound came from within.

Till now Logan’s body had adequately reacted to danger, be it true or imaginary—namely, answered with mobilization of all forces. But now his knees became weak and he had to lean again on the crypt door in order not to fall down. His ear was flat against a rough cold surface, eliminating any chance to write off the scratching to a flight of imagination or acoustic strangenesses of a fog.

“Some animal has gotten inside,” his common sense supposed in despair. “A dog… or a cat… had dug through a hole into the crypt, and now cannot get out…”

“But isn’t it impossible to dig into a crypt from outside? Isn’t there a stone floor?”

“I don’t know,” Tony answered himself. “I never was in a crypt. Besides, if everything here is so decayed, a wall could fracture… And then it would fill up with earth, and…”

The thing inside moved more actively, as if it has scented the person from whom it was separated by only few inches. Well, why shouldn’t a dog scent… Only it was scraping obviously not at the height of a dog or, especially, a cat…

“Who is here? Sir?”

That reached through the door. The voice sounded obtuse (and how it could sound through such obstacle?), but definitely belonged to a woman. More likely even—to a young girl. Tony did not have enough strength even to recoil from the door—the horror paralyzed him so that he could not move, and the comprehension of his state only increased the fright.

“Sir, I beg you, help me. There was a terrible error. I was buried alive…”

“After all everything here has a reasonable explanation,” Tony exhaled with great relief. True, he believed that such gothic stories belonged in the time of Poe. Modern diagnostic aids exclude… On the other hand, he did not know, what kind of cemetery it was. Judging by the crosses—Christian, but there are different sects of Christians, too. If this girl is from any sect which does not approve of modern medicine, like Jehovah Witnesses…

“Sir, please! Let me out! I am so cold…”

I’m cold too, mechanically noted Tony, while after all this activity he should be warmed…

“I’ll call for help,” he promised aloud. His knees did not shiver any more. “As soon as I reach a pay phone., my cellphone…”

“Sir, do not leave!” in the voice from the crypt a genuine horror appeared. “Do not leave me! It is so dark and terrible here…”

“But I don’t know how to let you out,” Tony answered. “I can’t open this door,” he even pulled it several times for persuasiveness. “Is there another one?”

“Another? Whence could another door in a crypt appear?” Surprise in her voice was replaced again by begging tone: “I pray, sir, I need your help…” While talking, she did not stop scraping and scratching from within.

“She called me ‘Sir,’” flashed in Logan’s mind, “before I had started talking. How did she know that I am a man?”

He silently looked at the barrier dividing them. At spots in the layer of dust and dirt where he had leaned. At the moss-covered bottom of the door which had tightly grown into the ground. It seems that it has not been opened for a very long time…

“When?” he asked in a flat voice. “When were you… eh… locked here?”

“On the eighteenth of November,” reached from within.

The year was not required. Even if it was last year—it was quite obvious that in the crypt sealed ten months ago there could be nothing alive anymore. Though, most likely, this funeral had taken place much, much earlier…

“I’m sorry,” muttered Tony, moving back away from the crypt.

“No!” arose following him. “Do not leave me here… with them!”

And then Tony saw—not only heard, but also saw—the very heavy door grown into the earth violently shaking from blows from within. As if a hundred pound linebacker thudded against it, instead of a fragile girl.

Logan stumbled against a tomb behind him, but managed to keep his balance. And then he ran like mad again.

He did not try to keep to avenues and paths any more, feeling confident that they would never bring him to the exit. At the best case—they would bring him to the dismal church in the center… if only it was possible to say such a case was the best. He jumped over graves or ran directly on them, expecting every moment that the earth under him would open and bone fingers would seize his feet and drag him downwards. But this horror only made him run even faster. Then he stumbled and fell, his trouser leg seized by a hand sticking out of the earth. But before Tony had time to yell, he realized that it was the hand of a statue. At first he thought that it was one of the broken off fragments, but the hand sat in the earth so firmly that he understood that, seemingly, someone had buried an entire statue here. Tony did not ask any more questions about by whom and for what purpose a sculpture was buried here; having freed the torn trouser leg (this time the left one suffered), he ran farther.

And suddenly from the fog ahead, the black rods of a fence, and a bit more to the left—a semicircular arched gate, appeared. “It’s locked,” Logan thought hopelessly.

But the gate was open. Nothing prevented him from leaving the cemetery. And even no dead birds could be seen nearby.

To the right of the exit some poster hung on the fence. Tony thought that it was, most likely, a schedule of cemetery open hours. This question did not interest him much—and its words probably could not be read in the dark—but, nevertheless, he mechanically ran his eyes across the piece of paper.

It was not a schedule. There were only two sentences—large and distinct enough.

Sentences appropriate for an exit from a shop, but not in any way for a cemetery.

“Thank you for visiting us. See you soon!”

“Probably, some pranksters must have stolen a poster from a shop to hang it here,” Logan thought. “Pranksters, yes. Teenagers having a good time. They got into a cemetery at night, hid in the old abandoned crypt—probably, there is really a fracture in its back wall—and are frightening casual passersby. Now, I suppose, they are rolling with laughter, remembering how I rushed away…”

Oh yes. Only what is the probability, that in a huge desolate cemetery a casual passerby will approach a certain crypt? What, in general, is the probability of meeting a casual passerby here at night? Personally he has not met any. Though, apparently, has heard one…

If that was a passerby.

And the statues. And all the rest. And the fact that on Manhattan there is, and can be, neither such a cemetery, nor such a Broadway, nor such a City Hall…

But then Tony, who at last found himself on the other side of the gate, saw in the street stretching away from the cemetery something that allowed him again to sigh with relief. White-blue letters shone “CHASE.” Though Logan was not a client of this bank, this picture was so natural and ordinary that it was difficult not to believe that the nightmare had ended, he was again in the real world. And, in general, the street along which he hastily walked had a normal appearance at last—no ominous stone slums and decaying wooden wrecks, only the usual multistory buildings with shops and offices in the ground floors… At night, of course, all of them were closed with metal shutters hiding front windows, but signs over many of the shops still had eye-catching neon lights.

Passing by the branch bank—one of few offices where windows and doors were not closed by shutters since ATMs operate round the clock—Tony gave it a captious look. What if it also is like those posters… or the postal service motto… But no, the lit sign differed in no way from the familiar. Through dark glass the hall with ATMs was seen; if Tony had had a Chase plastic card, he could have entered there. For an instant an absolutely wild thought flashed in his mind—to break the glass and to wait for the police to arrive, and let the officers completely return him into reality. Eventually, he would need to contact the police, to tell them at least about the postman with a hatchet. But, no, certainly, this is a silly notion. He simply needs to find a pay phone, since his cellphone does not work right. If he reached normal bank offices, he will reach normal phones as well.

Tony darted a last glance at the dark Chase windows. In the right one there was an employment announcement. “Well,” Logan thought gloomily, “if they kick me off my current job, maybe I can get a job as a bank teller… “—though such a career did not entice him. Or, probably, they have also programmer vacancies here?”

He peered at the announcement—and stood rigid, feeling his belly again fill with sharp ice crystals of fear.

The announcement said not “NOW HIRING,” but “NOW FIRING.” Discharging from employment. And that is the best case. “Firing” can also mean “shooting”.

And, by the way, the literal meaning of “chase” is “pursuit” or “hunting”.

Whom exactly was discharged or shot here, Tony could not discern in the dark and didn’t even especially try. He quickly walked farther, looking around like an animal at bay. Only now he was paying attention to the absence of light in the windows of the upper floors where, normally, there should be inhabited apartments. Certainly, it was a late night, but it never happens that there is not a single lit window anywhere… And signs… with growing despair and fear he read the signs above those offices and little shops that had encouraged him so much.

“Low Office”

“Fool Market”

“General Sore”

“Moans”

“Trash Harm Food”

“MEDICAL SCARE CENTER”

“DECORATION.” At least this sign seemed normal to Logan, but, having looked narrowly at the non-illuminated letters, he understood that actually it was “DEGORATION”. Though behind windows it was dark and no movement could be seen, he hastened to cross over to other side of the street.

Farther ahead, there was a crossroads without traffic lights (for unknown reasons since Logan got out of the subway, he had not seen any traffic lights). Carefully, like a soldier in films about street combat, Tony looked around the corner—and saw on the right in the cross street the lit letters “CAR SERVICE.”

Taxi! And the office was open at night—anyway, there was light behind the windows! Would he really leave this place at last?

Taught by bitter experience, Logan peered closely at the sign. No, “CAR SERVICE,” and nothing else. He turned the corner, crossed the street and walked fast toward the taxi office. His intuition was telling him that at the last moment something would prevent him from leaving, but he drove away these panicky thoughts.

Nothing prevented him from reaching the desired location. Tony belatedly remembered how he would look to the dispatcher—in dirty and torn trousers and one shoe, with hands soiled by the devil knows what… However, don’t night taxis exist to help people who have gotten into trouble? At worst it would be necessary to show in advance his solvency (Logan anxiously touched a trouser pocket: the wallet was in its place). He had already taken hold of the handle of a door with matte glass through which a dim light shone, had already even started to pull this door (it moved easily), but suddenly, obeying an abrupt impulse, once again looked at the sign.

And Tony understood that the office that he so aspired to get to was not CAR SERVICE at all. Over the door was written SCAR SERVICE, but the first letter was not lit.

Slowly and carefully he closed the door and hastened away almost on tiptoe, hoping very much that his attempt to enter had remained unnoticed.

“Though it could be, of course, just a tattoo and piercing parlor behind that door,” Logan thought. “Aha, and all the other signs mean only that in this area business is done by excentric people with a perverted sense of humor. Do you really believe that?”

Something made him to look back. Perhaps, it was the mad hope that now his troubles would vanish, and he would see a normal street with normal signs… or, at least, something that would help him to explain what was going on…

Instead he saw the door into which he had almost entered was opening. It was opening as slowly and silently as he closed it. For some reason this frightened him even more than if it had sharply swung open and on a threshold a huge fat Asian with a curved knife in hand had appeared.

Tony rushed away without waiting until the door opened completely. Fortunately, a crossroads was nearby, not more than twenty yards. Logan dove around a corner to the right and immediately slowed to a furtive walk, sensitively listening to the night.

All was silent. It seemed he was not pursued… however, that door had opened silently and if he had not looked back… Though—was it certain that behind the door there was a real danger?

But Tony was no longer in the mood to argue abstractedly about the logical validity of his fears. He hastily looked around. Right opposite him there was a sign for the next business. “Nails.” Manicure & pedicure salon. There was no light there. Of course—such salons are not open at night. But nevertheless Tony distinguished well enough the dark letters forming the word “Nails”—this time the word was perfectly right, without any surprises. He also saw the classic picture which was always present at the window of such shops—a woman in an armchair, with polished finger- and toenails.

Only the expression on the woman’s face disturbed him.

Tony stepped nearer to the dark glass. Yes, no doubt—the drawn face was deformed by a grimace of an intolerable pain. And only then he moved his gaze again to her nails. Actually, there were no finger- and toenails—they had been pulled out and steel nails had been hammered into the blood-stained meat which he at first accepted as red varnish.

Everything had been drawn with great skill and attention to detail—much more carefully than an ordinary advertising picture. The artist, seemingly, enjoyed the process.

And, probably, drew from nature.

And, Tony heard sounds causing frost to settle again in his entrails.

Though, actually, in these sounds there was nothing awful. Nothing connected with pain, death or even mystery. These sounds are perfectly familiar to millions of Americans and, to tell the truth, pester many of them.

The simple melody played by ice cream trucks.

Surprisingly, devised to attract children and not at all to frighten them, this melody always seemed ominous to Tony. He did not know why, but he heard something insinuatingly eerie, mystical, otherworldly in it. Certainly, being a sane person, he never had been actually afraid of ice cream trucks (though, even in his childhood he had not been a real fan of their goods, and almost never bought from them). He only thought sometimes, hearing this tune, that in a horror film it would come in handy. Clowns, also apparently intended only to amuse, for a long time held a firm place in such films. Why are ice cream men worse?

And it seemed now he would learn why.

Certainly, these trucks aren’t out late at night, especially with the sound on. But this one was.

Judging by sound, it moved—slowly as they usually do in search of clients—on that street from which Tony had just escaped. Logan flattened himself against the glass of the ominous nail salon, hoping that the truck would pass by without turning into this street.

But it turned.

Tony saw it. To the sight, it was the usual angular white truck with a serving counter on the right side surrounded by posters with pictures of different kinds of ice cream. Even the headlights burned, as they should. And the sign on the roof said “ICE CREAM”—not “I SCREAM” or anything like that. But Logan still mentally begged it to go farther along the street without stopping.

The truck passed him by a couple of yards and stopped. The music played several more bars and ended. Only the taillights silently flickered.

“Well, and what to do now?” Tony thought. “To go back to that street with the hospitably opened door of Scar Service? To go forward in order for that truck to follow me again? But to be at a stop, apparently, is the silliest…”

“Mister,” a quiet hoarse voice, almost a whisper, came from the truck, “you want ice cream.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“No,” Tony squeezed out. “Thanks, but I already feel cold.”

“Cold,” repeated the voice as a sad echo. “Always cold. Nobody wants ice cream. A bad business.”

He became silent, and Logan wanted already to sympathize politely about his problems, but the ice cream man started talking again:

“Then a hot dog?”

“Hot dog?” Tony was surprised. Usually they are not sold from ice cream trucks, though, of course, there were trucks that sold all kinds of food… “Is it indeed hot?” Logan felt that now he wanted to eat something warm and with meat. Perhaps at least this would help him to get warmed up at last. Though one hot dog is probably not enough for this purpose…

“It’s my hot dog,” the driver answered in the same sad and low voice. “I took it for myself. But I can sell it to you. And I’ll eat ice cream.”

“Mmm…” Logan was not inspired by this suggestion, “I think, you’d better keep your meal for yourself.”

“Don’t worry, mister, I haven’t touched it yet,” simply answered the driver. “It’s a good hot dog. Even still in a bag. Only one dollar.”

“Perhaps, I’d better take it or he won’t get off my back,” Tony decided. “Eventually, I always can throw it away, and one dollar isn’t a lot of money.”

“All right, give it,” he approached the window. There was not any light in the truck, but Tony could hear the driver move from the front of the truck to the serving window. Then he began to rummage in the depths of the truck body; Tony heard a muffled gnash, like a sound of a blunt knife on something firm. Though, probably, it was just a squeak of an opening box.

“Tell me please,” Tony decided to use the situation, “What is this place? Looks like I’ve lost my way. Is it Manhattan?”

“It’s Downtown,” hoarsely reached from darkness. Logan had a quick thought that the ice cream man is, seemingly, chilled—possibly, from recently eating too much of his own goods.

“Downtown of Manhattan?” specified Logan. Brooklyn has its own downtown, which, however, is not a bit like what Tony has already seen this night…

“Downtown of New York,” the ice cream man obstinately answered; a low buzz similar to the sound of a working microwave reached Logan’s ears. Tony decided not to engage in geographical disputes and asked a more practical question.

“How I can get from here to Brooklyn?”

“You can’t get anywhere from here except in the morning.”

“And what time is it now?”

“Midnight.”

Have they all agreed together on the time or what? Tony angrily thought, but aloud he only politely said:

“I’m afraid your clock is slow.”

“I don’t have a clock,” the ice cream man objected and rustled with something. “Your hot dog, mister.”

Though Tony was not a prudish adherent of formalities, this vulgar “mister” without a surname began to irritate him. They haven’t spoken this way in God knows how many years, he thought. Wasn’t he taught to say “sir” when addressing a customer?

From the dark window (why doesn’t he turn on the light?) a plastic bag emerged. Tony, reaching in his pocket for his wallet, remembered his newly gained wisdom of thinking about the literal meaning of words. What if he indeed was going to be fed a piece of dog? Although Koreans and Chinese eat dogs, they also eat insects…

With some caution he took the parcel. No, inside was apparently quite an ordinary hot dog, warm to the touch and generously covered with ketchup splotching the package from within. Tony, holding his purchase in the left hand, began to roll back the bag neck with the right one—carefully in order not to touch his meal with dirty fingers. Feeling how hungry he indeed was, he brought the hot dog to his open mouth and…

A moldy smell stopped him. And just in time to understand that the dark red was not ketchup at all. Now Logan saw that the “sausage” sticking out between two halves of a roll was crowned with a dirty chewed nail.

Tony reflexively flung away the “hot dog,” struggling with an emetic spasm which had rolled up his throat. The chubby cut-off finger fell to asphalt separately from the moldy bread. Logan backed away from the truck, but a hand shot the window with surprising quickness and seized his wrist.

“Hey, mister!” The voice was still hoarse and low, but all melancholic grief had disappeared from it at once—now it was a spiteful hissing. “Who’s gonna pay?!”

But neither the intonation of this voice, nor that he had almost become a cannibal, made Tony stare in mute horror at the hand holding his wrist. The wooden-rigid fingers of the ice cream man were not simply cold—they were literally ice cold. And his hand—it was clearly visible even in the dark—was absolutely white. Not just pale, but white.

Because it was all covered with hoarfrost.

Tony, acting reflexively, not rationally, pulled his hand at first upwards, and then sharply and with all his force—downwards, striking his opponent’s wrist against the window edge. Subconsciously he expected that it would weaken the ice cream man’s grasp, but the effect surpassed expectations. The crunch of breaking bone sounded—and, obviously, not only bone—and then the frosty hand simply severed, still hanging on Logan’s wrist like an ice handcuff. There was not any blood, and could not be—only dark frozen shards scattered every which way.

Tony raced down the street in sheer terror. Raced like a cat with a burning rag tied to its tail by gooder children—only the role of a rag was played by the hand of the frozen corpse dangling on his wrist. There could be no doubt that this hand had been dead before separating from a body, and no rational hypotheses helped any more. Tony shook his arm while running, trying to get rid of the dreadful “bracelet,” but the dead fingers held firm. As if they had been frozen in this position, as if he had not seen and felt how they moved, and rather quickly…

Was the truck pursuing him? Tony ran without looking back, but, anyway, behind him there was neither light of headlights, nor a familiar melody. Possibly, that… that thing could not drive the truck with one hand. Nevertheless, Logan turned at the first opportunity, and having reached the following corner, turned again, already almost convincing himself that he once more had safely escaped the chase.

But, hardly had he left behind the third crossroads, when his shadow forward in the light of headlights approaching from behind him.

“The ice cream truck,” Tony helplessly thought. “Or the postman with a hatchet. Or the bus. Something or someone has caught up with me…”

He was absolutely exhausted and had no more energy to run. And how could he escape from a vehicle? The last few times it had been possible to escape because he had found somewhere to dive. But now ahead was only a straight street with closed rows of houses on both sides…

Tony stopped and turned towards what was overtaking him from behind.

“My God,” he exhaled in the next moment, “At last!”

A police car was slowly approaching him.

Logan had no idea what the officers could do about a dead cannibal driving on the streets and how to explain events to the them without being considered a complete loony, but it was not the most important thing. The main thing—for him personally—was that the nightmare would end now. Let those who are obliged by their duty deal with all the problems. He was ready to rush towards the police with open arms, but understood that it was not a good idea. How would a cop react, seeing in the middle of a night street a suspicious person in dirty clothes with a torn off hand on his wrist? It was better to remain on place and to behave as calmly as possible. Otherwise he could get a bullet from his saviors.

Meanwhile, however, the patrolmen did not seem concerned. The car came nearer without a siren or flashers and without any commands through a loudspeaker. Though, probably, they still simply have not made out the details. Tony stood motionless, stretching his face in the most friendly smile—which, in fact, did not require any special efforts from him.

“And maybe I am indeed a loony,” Tony thought, continuing to smile happily. “And they’ll take me away, give me a nice little injection, and the next morning, I’ll wake up in a warm cozy mental hospital in the normal world.”

The car slowly approached closer. Tony saw that there was only one cop inside, and he was white. Logan never considered himself a racist, but at this moment he was pleased that in a dodgy situation he would be talking with a person of his own race. Then the car drew up next to him. Tony saw on its doors the familiar abbreviations NYPD and CPR. And… the car passed Tony at the same leisurely speed.

Tony could not trust his eyes. Didn’t the cop see what was dangling from his wrist?! This, after all, was not Halloween night! Or simply had the cop not made it out in the darkness?

“Hey!” Logan shouted, swinging his hands and running after the car. “Officer! Wait!”

The car stopped. Tony heard the door lock click, but the policeman did not exit the car. Logan, out of breath, ran up to the front door.

“Officer… thank God! I understand how what I am going to tell you will sound, but…”

Words got stuck in his throat.

For he saw that the letters “CPR” written on the door represented something different than what he was used to. Not “Courtesy — Professionalism — Respect.”

But “Cruelty — Profanity — Rampage.”

The door swung open and the policeman stepped out onto the sidewalk.

When somebody shoots his own temple, he is actually exposed to a significant danger. The danger is that he will survive. And more often than not, the survivor will suffer consequences that disrupt very different brain activities (not to mention purely cosmetic effects, of little matter to a corpse, but not palatable for a survivor). Professionals dealing with gunshot wounds—including, certainly, policemen—know this very well. Therefore, when they decide to end it all with the help of a bullet, they select a more reliable way. Shooting not to the temple, but to the mouth, while directing the barrel upwards and slightly back, to the soft palate. This way, the brains are knocked out in the most literal sense that gives an absolute guarantee of resting in peace.

Or not so absolute.

Anyway, the condition of policeman who got out of the car refuted this guarantee.

The top of his head was gone. The upper part of his skull had been blown away entirely, having left on its place a grinning hole, with everted edges of sharp bone shards to which shreds of hair were stuck. Lower down, whitish lumps of brain, similar to dead slugs, and black gore clots were caught in his remaining hair. The right eye had fallen somewhere inside the skull, leaving a dark pit in its place; the left eye had slid down the cheek and hung on it as a round drop spotted with bloody streaks, still held by a string of nerves stretched from the eye socket. From his nose something hung down like dense bloody snot—probably, also brain remnants. The upper jaw was broken up, and to the right, cracked teeth on bared gums stuck out from under a crooked upper lip. The lower jaw was intact, but powerlessly drooped and slightly rocked when the cop was moving. The chin was wholly covered in blood with small lumps stiffened in it.

But the uniform and the badge were in perfect order. At least, as much as it was possible to judge in the dark.

And the handle of a pistol—most likely the very same—stuck out from an unbuttoned holster.

“E-everything is all right, officer,” Tony squeezed out of himself, moving back. But it was too late—the incarnate horror in an uniform stepped towards him. It moved quickly enough, contrary to zombies in movies.

And then the corpse started talking. It was not very good at it because of the condition of its jaws, so it had to help itself, propping up the lower lip with its left hand. Judging by how dexterously it managed to simulate an articulation, it already had had enough time to adapt to this manner of speech.

“You have the right to scream,” it said, putting its right hand on the holster. “And it can and will be used against you.”

Having heard this version of the Miranda warning, Tony took one more step back. And at the very same time something cold and wet—he felt it even through his trouser leg—touched his leg from behind.

Tony shouted and jumped aside more than two yards; he had not known before that he was capable of such standing side jumps. But the landing was not so successful—under his foot was some slippery rubbish which caused Logan to fall to hands and one knee and tear his palms against the asphalt. In the next instant he understood that, stepping back, had simply bumped into a leaking fire hydrant. But he understood also something more important: the dead cop twisted his head around awkwardly, seemingly having lost his prey.

“His eye!” Despite the nightmarish situation, Logan’s common sense nevertheless got into gear. “It isn’t connected anymore to the eye muscles, therefore, it can look only in one direction. And, to look around, it has to turn its head… or to turn its eye with its fingers…”

However the policeman, it seemed, had not figured out the last method of seeing and did not notice Tony on the ground. But Logan understood that this would grant him only a short respite. There was no place to hide on this street, so sooner or later this… this thing will manage to see him. And the farther Tony runs, the more likely he is to be seen. He did not know, of course, how accurately the cop in his present condition could shoot… but he had no desire to test it.

Therefore Tony, with a heroic effort, overcame his instinctive desire to get as far as possible from the cadaver. He rushed on all fours directly at it.

Several hours before, even in a ghastly dream, the idea of attacking a policeman would not have come to Logan’s mind. But then even in a ghastly dream he could not imagine such a policeman… And no act in all his previous life had demanded even a tenth of such boldness—and not at all because it was necessary to overcome a taboo of a law-abiding citizen…

Tony had flung himself at the cop’s boots (they were covered either with dirt or blood), still remaining out of its sight. And then he jumped sharply up right before its face, seized its terrible eye, and pulled with all his might, simultaneously clenching his fist. The sphere of cold slime burst in his hand, like a huge rotten grape.

Logan immediately jumped back, at the same moment fastidiously shaking the lumps of the squashed eye from his palm. The cop’s fingers fumbled at Tony’s shirt and scratched his shoulder, but could not hold him. Tony ran down the street towards the nearest crossroads, zigzagging from side to side since he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t be targeted by sound. But, apparently the blinded cop tried to get back into the car—probably to call for reinforcements—bumped into the half-open door (Logan heard it slam), and then, unable to find the handle, began to punch the glass.

Tony turned at the crossroads and realized that he had already been here, but this time he ran in a new direction.

However, he quickly regretted his choice.

Ahead, blocking the left sidewalk and half of the narrow street, a garbage truck stood. Stood with extinguished lights, without any signs of life. Very recently, of course, such a sight would not have frightened Logan at all and would hardly have drawn his attention. Well, he would have been surprised that the driver had left the truck turned slantwise across the street, abutting its nose against the building at the left and causing an obstruction for both traffic and pedestrians. Though, here and now, there were neither pedestrians nor traffic…

Now Logan trusted no municipal motor vehicles anymore.

However the danger behind him was more real, and there was no way to turn anyway, so Tony continued to run forward. During the next few seconds, he understood that the garbage truck had been abandoned long ago. Its body, once white, was eaten with rust, its cab gaped with the blackness of broken windows, and tires hung on rims like the rotten flesh on bones of a corpse. More surprising was that nobody had moved this wreck out of the way… however, this did not surprise Logan now. And then he saw that, before turning into garbage itself, the truck had spilled its contents out onto the road. Black plastic bags lay behind it on the street and on the right sidewalk. One bag still hung down behind from the truck. The appeal not to litter on a door—one of the few places on the truck body where the paint had escaped the effects of corrosion—looked in this surrounding especially incongruous.

And having run yet some yards more, Tony understood that these were not the usual garbage bags.

They were twice as long as normal and each was bound by rough ropes from outside. And the outlines of the things inside resembled human bodies.

Logan stopped so sharply that he almost fell. And at the same moment he heard the sound of a police siren behind.

In despair he rushed forward again. The only possible path was through the black bags. Logan hoped that he could jump over them, but in one place they lay too densely, and he had to step his unshod right foot on one of them. Under his foot something soft squelched and the bag made an unpleasant sound, similar to an exhalation of a choking asthmatic. Two more jumps—and Tony darted to the left, trying to hide from a probable pursuit from behind the garbage truck.

And understood that he tried in vain.

Ahead, the street came to a dead end at the brick wall of some huge uninhabited structure—either warehouse or factory. On both sides of the street there were only closed doors of offices and shops. There was no place to run anymore.

But that was not what filled Tony with the greatest horror. He was struck dumb looking not at the wall blocking his way, but above and behind it.

The fog was vanishing, its muslin thinned and torn like a decaying shroud. And, appearing from gloom, over a wall, over jagged silhouettes of roofs behind it, over all Downtown there rose two giant pillars of Twin Towers, their windows glowing in dim, unsteady crimson light.

The sound of the siren again howling behind Tony jarred him out of his stupor. His eyes feverishly swept around. Under the truck? No time to hide in its bed… maybe in the cab—but he wouldn’t be well concealed there… But, having darted a glance towards the cab, Logan saw that the truck nose not simply abutted its right corner against a wall, but had pushed through the glass storefront of some shop. And to the right, behind the glass, motionless figures stood and stared straight at Logan.

But Tony wasn’t frightened, since he understood at once that they were mannequins. The idea of standing among them was born instantly. During his university days, he and a fellow student once had had a lot of fun in Madame Tussaud’s New York museum. In a dimly lit room representing a party, where wax figures were not lined up along walls, but settled down in easy poses around the room near visitors, the young men had posed motionlessly. When some visitors began to photograph them, the students suddenly moved and enjoyed the reaction. Probably, this trick would work now, too—the creatures pursuing Tony wouldn’t guess that he stood right before their very eyes. His clothes were not in the proper condition to look like those on a mannequin, but inside the shop it was much darker than in the museum. But the shop door, naturally, was closed. Would it be possible to squeeze through the broken glass storefront, between the garbage truck cab and the rapaciously grinning splinters of glass?

But there was no time to reflect further. He did not hear the siren any more, but the shimmer of police car lights already lit up the street, shining feebly from under the truck. Tony darted to the store’s front window and had time to notice that the broken glass had a thick layer of dust. However, it was no wonder, considering the aged condition of the truck… And only thanks to this dust was Tony able to discern in the dark the sharp glass tooth ready to rip his throat. A wider splinter lower down was ready to stick into his belly, leaving no chance of climbing in through the narrow gap without damaging his intestines.

At this instant, Logan felt the dead fingers on his wrist weakening their grasp. But against the backdrop of the night’s nightmarish events, this movement did not frighten him. On the contrary, he thought with spiteful pleasure, he had been given an opportunity. He seized the wrist of the rigidly frozen hand and used it like a stone to strike the glass splinters blocking his way. Glass collapsed with a wallop on the sidewalk. Tony had the impression that it would be heard not only in the police car, but in the neighboring blocks as well. It was, however, too late to change plans. He slipped into the store display window to the right and stiffened behind the glass between the mannequins of a young girl and a little boy. But that damned hand marked him nearly as much as his torn and dirty clothes… Tony made a new attempt to unclench its fingers and realized that they had no will of their own. Obviously, they had simply begun to thaw, making the grasp weaker… Tony wanted only to unbend them, but they started to break with a crunch, though their skin did not tear anymore. He hardly had time to fling the maimed hand somewhere deep into the dark interior of the shop, because the police car appeared from behind the garbage truck, driving directly on the black bags. And Logan was struck dumb staring at it.

It was not the car which Tony had already seen. Probably the eyeless cop really had called for reinforcements, or perhaps the arrival of this car was simply a coincidence. It had rolled off the production line, at the latest, in the early seventies, but it wasn’t that which caused Tony to stare at it without trusting his eyes. The car’s lights had been broken long ago and the fluctuating orange light did not come from them. The car was burning. The whole back half of it was conflagrant. Tony looked in horror at the tongues of flame licking the gas tank cover and waited for the explosion at any second. But there was no explosion. The car slowly moved forward, as if nothing was happening (even in spite of the fact that its back wheels had become shapeless charred rims, stinking of burned rubber). Its driver seemed unaffected by the events right behind his back. (This time, as far as Tony could make out through a dirty glass, it was a black man at the wheel, but Logan was not sure that it was the color of his skin from birth.) Even in the front seats the heat should be intolerable; what would happen to an arrested person in the back seat was terrible even to imagine. Tony stood not breathing, trying to resemble a mannequin more than the real mannequins.

The car slowly passed by and moved farther without stopping. But Tony understood that the danger had not passed at all—now the police car would go to the wall and turn back. The light from the flames shone through a glass door onto a dusty poster lying on the floor. Once, probably, the poster had hung on this door or in a store window nearby. Before the shimmering light dimmed again, Logan managed to discern large letters:

STORE CLOSING

EVERYTHING MUST GO!

DISCOUNTS up to 80 %!

Till February, 29th

The last February 29th was more than two years ago. However, Tony would not be surprised to learn that this shop had been closed more than four years earlier. Or eight. Or… This garbage truck alone has probably been standing here for years… If the concept of a year in general makes sense in this place, where it is always midnight.

The approaching light of a fire came again through the muddy glass at the left. The car was returning. Tony grew numb again, staring straight ahead.

Something rustled behind his back. Somewhere at floor level, not too loudly. A rat, Tony told himself. But his imagination drew another picture: the torn off hand, painfully moving its broken fingers, trying to creep towards him… And after all that he had already seen, such a thought no longer seemed delirious.

Logan tried mentally to hurry the burning car, but it, on the contrary, went all the more slowly and finally stopped just opposite the storefront. There was no engine sound, but only the crackle of the flames. And Tony, struck with horror, noticed out of the corner of his eye what he had missed previously looking at the other side of the car: on its blazing back seat someone sat. Someone… or something…, it was only a skeleton charred black… but could a skeleton sit up straight? Would it not fall to pieces? However Tony was afraid to give himself away by moving even his pupils and forced himself not to look in that direction. Though, of course, if the cop could see his pupils, he also should see more appreciable signs distinguishing Tony from a mannequin… beginning with the condition of his clothes… however, if mannequins gather dust in the window of a shop abandoned for years…

“Anything, anything but him noticing me!” Tony mentally begged. In the next moment, however, he thought that his plea was too precipitate.

The car moved again. It slowly went around the garbage truck and disappeared from sight. Still, for some time behind the rusty truck gleams of flame could be seen, but then the street sank again into gloom. Perhaps it was a trap, and the police would still return? Logan waited a few minutes more to be sure. Nothing happened.

“Wheeew,” Tony, at last, dared to relax, feeling, how his whole body ached because of a wooden immovability. And how very cold he was still—however, he shivered not only from coldness. Now he would like to move, talk, even to joke. “Thanks for covering, guys,” he said to the mannequins. “Why,” he wondered, “were they left here after the shop closed and even their clothes had not been taken off? By the way, a good idea!” Women’s and children’s clothes wouldn’t fit him, but there were male mannequins too. At least he could bundle up and replace his trousers… if only the sizes matched… what a pity that mannequins had no shoes…

He resolutely stepped to the nearest male figure, tried to remove its jacket… and understood that it was not a mannequin at all.

Logan’shands were lying on the shoulders of a corpse. The dead face was stiffened in a grimace of last pain; streams of dried up blood stretched downwards from the corners of a wide-open mouth; rolled up eyes blindly stared with two whitish cataracts. “Why doesn’t it fall?” Tony thought perplexedly, jerking his hands back. However, his recent experience reminded him that dead persons can not only stand, but can also drive cars… But intuitively he felt that that this body was really dead. Rigor mortis? The body was rigid indeed, but it would probably fall down even from a little push…

Tony moved his eyes downwards. And saw something gleaming between the legs of trousers which he had been going to put on. This unfortunate person had been impaled on a smooth metal stake. Brown stains—possibly, not only of blood—had befouled the trousers and dried on the bare feet of the corpse. The base of the stake had been thrust into the round support for a clothes rack. And, looking again in horror at the face of the dead man, Logan more guessed than saw the sharp end of the stake resting against the palate in the black hole of a mouth.

Tony rushed from one standing figure to another, already knowing that everywhere he would find the same. A half-dozen corpses were in this store window and no fewer than that were on the other side of the door… Men. Women. Children. Everyone was impaled on a stake which had been carefully adjusted for height and had passed precisely through a throat, instead of emerging somewhere between ribs or from under a collar bone, as quite often happened during such executions. Whoever had done it, the executioners, obviously, had approached their business with great diligence and attention to details.

When did it happen? The shop had been abandoned years ago, but the bodies looked fresh, even rigor mortis had not passed yet… however, how well could Tony know what happened to dead bodies here?

Something rustled again behind him. But this time he stood with his back to the street.

Tony turned back sharply. And saw that one of the black bags—which, it seemed had avoided the wheels of the police car—was bending in half and sitting up in the middle of the street. The rotten ropes tying its legs and torso stretched and snapped; only a disheveled noose remained on its neck. If, of course, that thing inside the bag had a torso, legs, and a neck—but Logan did not doubt it anymore. Then one more bag began to move, and one more…

Everything must go, oh yes.

Tony looked around in panic. He did not know whether they could get out of the bags and whether they had any interest in his person, but the notion of waiting and checking seemed absolutely mad. However, the idea of breaking through them filled Logan with insuperable horror. He wanted to run—but where? The garbage truck and these bags blocked the way back. In the other direction there was a dead end… Unless he headed deeper into a shop, but who knew they wouldn’t follow him there? If only he had some kind of weapon… he has already ascertained that local…inhabitants…can be harmed. The stakes! Could he use one of them as a weapon? They weren’t aspen, but those impaled on them seemed to remain dead. However, those things in the bags had stayed motionless for a long time, too…

But there was no more time to think. The first figure in a bag had already risen to its feet and in small, but frequent short steps—as much as the bag allowed—was moving towards Logan. The others moved, too… even those pinned by the burning car—they could not stand up, but squirmed on asphalt, and then began to creep, like huge black caterpillars.

Tony darted to the corpse of a ten year-old girl. Stakes on which the adults were impaled were too bulky, but this one was just the right size… Clutching the girl’s stiffened corpse, Logan dragged it upwards, hoping to free the stake, but instead the stake was pulled out of its base, remaining in the body. Either it was stuck inside there or was held by spasmodically clasped muscles of the corpse… Tony threw the dead girl on the floor, then, having grasped the brown-stained bottom end of the stake, turned her upside down and put his shod foot on her chin. The black figures were approaching and he did not think any more about fastidiousness or, still less, about pity, but feverishly pulled on the stuck stake. It, at last, came unstuck with a disgusting sucking sound and, rasping metal against a bone, moved a little. But the first of figures in bags was already near the storefront window. Logan, dragging behind himself the girl’s corpse which was gradually slipping from the stake, ran a few steps deeper into the shop. A couple of jerks more, and Tony managed to liberate the dirty metal stick completely—just in time to swing it and drive the sharp end into the breast of an oncoming figure.

The stake went in with notable resistance, but nevertheless easier, than Logan had expected, and pierced the figure through. Probably that thing inside a bag was already fairly rotten. But pulling the weapon out appeared to be more difficult. Tony hardly had time to do it in order to jam the stake into the throat of another figure which had already approached him sideways. It tumbled down backwards, but the first one, though pierced already, still stood. Logan smashed its head in, swinging the stake straight from the shoulder like a bat, and then jabbed in a stomach the third “bag” which had stolen up to him from the right. A loathsome crunch sounded—apparently the spike went into the backbone—and the figure jackknifed and then slipped from the stake down to the floor. A heavy sickening stench spread from the pierced bags. Ahead, new figures were already approaching, and Tony, having again snatched the stake as a cudgel, began to thrash them on their heads—as it turned out to be faster than piercing them. He heard a wet crash as skulls broke, but some of them fell only after the second or third blow. Tony turned on the place like a madman, dispensing blows to the left and to the right. Soon his arms and shoulders, unused to such work, were aching with a leaden pain. He understood that could not last long; however, the majority of figures in bags already lay motionlessly on the floor of the shop and in the street in front of it. Some more blows—and Tony could take a breath. It seemed the first wave had been beaten off. However, those that could not stand up had already crept up close to the shop, but to finish them off, perhaps, would be easier…

Something seized Logan’s right ankle.

Tony looked sharply downwards, automatically bringing up the stake for a blow. His ankle was clenched by fingers of the girl whom he had removed from the stake. She had crept up to him sideways, leaving a bloody-mucous trace from lumps of her spilled bowels. The dead face, on which the motionless grimace of the last agony remained, was raised upwards. Logan jammed the stake directly in this face, striking the right eye (the metal punched an eye socket and scratched against the skull from within). Then he pulled out the stake and struck again—this time splitting the wrist of the hand clenching his ankle. Cold fingers weakened their grasp; to be on the safe side, Tony stamped them twice with the heel of his only remaining shoe and jumped aside, hastily looking around.

Other “mannequins” remained motionless—apparently, the stakes really did not allow them to revive. But the things that lay on the floor in bags began to move again.

Tony understood that any injury inflicted on them gave him only a temporary respite. It is impossible to kill what is already dead. So, the only remedy was to flee. Perhaps, somewhere within the shop, there was an exit to the next street. Or at least office premises with windows overlooking the street. He ran into the shop’s gloom, expecting every moment that in this total darkness he would run across something… or somebody. He slammed into an empty clothing rack which fell with a clang to the floor—but nothing more obstructed his path, except a little debris on the floor. At last, the stake he was holding before him struck a wall. Tony quickly moved along the wall, feeling with his left hand for a door—but instead of a door handle he came across a little switch. He flipped the switch in full confidence that it was useless; however a electric crackle sounded, and over Logan’s head a light switched on. No, not the full illumination of a retail store, but only a single dim ceiling bulb, flickering unsteadily and accreted with a thick fur coat of dust and dirt. But this light still was enough to make out a door farther in a wall… and the dead man blocking the way to it.

It stood directly ahead of Tony, at arm’s length. Its appearance was awful. The face was almost gone: cankered by sores, it had turned into one bloody mess, noseless and lipless. Separate shreds of skin and hair hung down from the head—and here and there bones showed through meat. The clothes dangled in a dirty tatter, the bared teeth grinned spitefully, and gnawed fingers clenched some blood-stained weapon… Without thinking an instant, Tony swung his steel stake into this dreadful face.

It scattered in pieces with a tinkle of glass. Logan stood dumbfounded looking at a bare wall in front of him and at splinters of the broken mirror on the floor.

Only now he understood why he could not be warmed in any way.

Two workers in bright yellow jackets and orange helmets stood on a platform covered with a longstanding layer of dirt and garbage.

“F-faugh, what a mess,” the younger of them said, moving the beam of his flashlight away from what lay ahead of them. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to eat meat again.”

“Yeah, the rats did a real job on him,” the older worker imperturbably confirmed. “If he had no ID on him, he’ll be hard to identify. Well, it’s not our problem any more. Let the cops sort it out. I never understood people who go there of their own will.”

“I think they’re just nut jobs,” declared the younger man and, at the same time, could not help casting one more look there, where his colleague continued to shine his flashlight. “What do you think he died from?”

“Took a wrong train.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind, just kidding. Heart, probably… or something like that. It doesn’t look like a crime. But like I’ve already said—let the police do their job.”

“What I can’t understand, is how he got here at all. I heard the lower level of the 42nd Street station was closed before I was born.”

“Yeah, in 1981.”

“There you go. Even the stairways here are almost entirely gone and the entrances are sealed. Unless through the tunnel… but who’d let him in it?”

“He got in somehow,” the older man shrugged his shoulders. “There always are morons who think it’s fun and games to get into an abandoned station. Looking for adventure, you know. Though what’s exciting about this place? Only dirt.”

“So, it’s true…” murmured the younger man.

“What’s true?”

“That corpses are sometimes found in abandoned subway stations. I heard it, but thought it was an urban legend.”

“People, you know, in general, are liable to die,” the older man noted philosophically. “Some do it in the subway. Nothing unusual. All right, let’s go. We aren’t paid for talking.”

Notes

“City never sleeps”—the informal motto of New York

In September, taking into account summertime, astronomical midnight in New York comes at 12:56 a.m.

Entire stations or separate levels and platforms through which the train goes are closed many years ago. In particular, “City Hall”—the station on which in 1904 the opening of New York subway has taken place—was closed in 1945. Not all of these stations are on one line. In most cases the operating stations with the same names also exist.

Edward Luciano—a motorman, the causer of the largest accident in the history of New York subway (occurred at November 1st, 1918; 93 casualties).

Courtesy — Professionalism — Respect—the motto on vehicles of New York Police Department.

THE BOY WHO DID NOT BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS

There was a blizzard that morning, but by afternoon it had calmed down and only big white snowflakes slowly and solemnly descended in the motionless air. In the center of the city, the pre-holiday fuss still continued: cars, stalling and skidding in fresh-fallen snow, approached the brightly shining shops; impatient horns honked; music played; sparkling and multi-colored garlands twinkled, and glass doors let out more and more happy shoppers with beautifully wrapped boxes containing gifts… But here, on the outskirts, it was very quiet and absolutely lonely. Angie, sinking almost knee-deep in snow, slogged along a long lane which consisted mainly of closed gates of warehouses and blind eroded walls of old brick buildings. It was gradually getting dark— early, as it always happens in the end of December—but the girl didn’t think about turning back. She knew that nobody missed her in her home. Mother, as always, lies on a sofa and watches soap operas on TV. Near her, a huge package of chips stands, into which she periodically dives her thick fingers gleaming with oil, and then she chews noisily, dropping crumbs on the floor, the sofa, and her greasy shapeless T-shirt which she always wears at home. She stops eating only to smoke a stinky cigarette during the commercial break; then she coughs long and deep-chested, heaving with all her bloated body, then says “holy shit!” and returns to her chips. On her mounded belly the TV remote control rests. When a soap opera ends on one channel, she switches to another one.

Father will drag himself home by midnight, if not later. This depends on how much his and his buddies’ money will allow. The only good aspect of being on welfare is the fact that father doesn’t have enough money to drink as much as before. But his friends often treat him. Actually, his drunkenness was what cost him his job, though he blames “that fucking Jew,” the manager Reichmann. Father’s friends, of course, agree with him. It is even good if they managed to save enough money by Christmas in order to close down a bar properly. Then father will crawl home rather the worse for wear and will hit the sack immediately. But if, on a holiday, he can’t get totally drunk, he will come home angry and will fight. Usually he fought with mother, but Angie also got her portion. At first during such nights the girl tried to hide under a bed or in a closet, but when father could not find her at once, he flew into an even worse rage, and when he finally reached her refuge, she got thrice as many blows as usual. So it was better to endure submissively some slaps on her face, standing barefoot on a cold floor and repeating “I’ll never do it again, Daddy”. What exactly she “will not do”, Angie didn’t know, and neither did he. For him, it was just as important to carry out the “education” ritual.

Yes, the greatest Christmas gift for which Angie could hope was that her father would arrive home too drunk to fight and would sleep until the next afternoon. She didn’t dare even think about receiving something else, like even the cheapest toy. Only once, when her parents seemed to be in good mood, had she given a hint at wanting a gift. Not at all in a form of the request—she simply had begun to talk about what gifts her schoolmates received. But mother, of course, understood the hint very well. “Shut your mouth, girl,” she bellowed, “don’t you know your father was shitcanned from his job and we’re on welfare? We don’t got enough money for food (mother weighed well over two hundred pounds even then, and now she was approaching three hundred), and you’re dreaming about fancy toys! Do you think you’re a fucking princess?”

The princess. Angie had seen her in that big store downtown. Certainly, she couldn’t buy anything there, even a cola drink from the vending machine. But she could wander there slowly for hours, examining the displays and shelves. What toys weren’t there! There were electric cars possible to ride in and small motorcycles for children—not to mention walking robots and dinosaurs, and radio-controlled planes. But looking at boys’ toys was no more than just curiosity. Angie indifferently passed by the section of video games and the boxes with plastic models for assembling, spent some time near teddy bears, thinking up names for them (after all it would be silly to call them all “Teddy”!). And then her heart sweetly faded. She entered the section called “Barbie’s World”.

Here, there were Barbies for every fancy and taste, of all skin colors and occupations, in strict business suits and in flippant beach apparel, in evening dresses and in jeans, brides and young mums, teachers, stewardesses, even a mermaid with a fish tail and a Barbie in a wheelchair… But most of all Angie liked Barbie the Princess. Dressed in an airy, as if flying, white dress, with a small gold crown on her blond hair, the princess seemed an embodiment of all those light and joyful things about which, for Angie, it was silly even to dream. But she still couldn’t stop dreaming. If… if only she could once leave the store, folding the cherished box to her breast…

But even simply to stand here looking at the princess for too long was dangerous. The store security guard could approach and inquire, whether everything was alright with the girl and where her parents were. Angie was frightened to death that she would be taken to the police; she was sure that in this case her father would either beat her to death or maim her. Once she managed to convince the security guard that everything was great with her, and since then she avoided standing too long near the shelf. She tried to memorize how the princess looked, and then to go keeping this image before her eyes…

“Little girl, hey there!”

Angie shuddered in fright: it seemed to her that it was the security guard again. But in the next second she recovered from her dreams and understood that she was standing in the middle of a snowbound lane. And the person who addressed her was Santa Claus, arisen as if from nowhere. Dressed in a snow-powdery red jacket with white welt, a red cap with a white pompom, red trousers, boots and mittens. His face was also red (though, certainly, not as much as his clothing), with a broad white beard, and on his shoulder he held a bag—red of course, and obviously not empty.

“Ho-ho-ho,” said Santa Claus, smiling broadly in his white moustaches, “hi, little girl! Merry Christmas! Why are you backing away? Don’t you know me?”

“Sorry,” Angie said quietly, “I’ve never seen you before.”

“What,” white eyebrows frowned with astonishment, “you don’t believe in Santa Claus?”

“Mum says that Santa is…“ “…is a fucking bullshit,” the exact words almost escaped Angie’s lips. “That he doesn’t exist,” she finished aloud.

“Ho-ho-ho!” his eyebrows spread above. “Then who do you think am I, eh?”

“I don’t know,” Angie muttered even more quietly. “Santa Claus came to our class. And Ricky, he’s a big bully, pulled his beard. And Santa’s beard was held on with a string.”

“Well, but I am real,” Santa resolutely objected. “And my beard is real, too. If you don’t believe me, you can touch it,” he even bent down to make it easier for the little girl.

Angie timidly stepped forward, then once again, and carefully touched the beard. Santa only smiled encouragingly, and she gently pulled. Having grown bolder, she tugged more strongly, and at last, spurred on by her own impudence, she jerked the beard sharply.

“Ho-ho-ho!” Santa exclaimed louder and more abruptly than before. “What a strong girl you are! So, do you believe me now?

“You are really real?” the girl whispered.

“What do you think?”

Angie felt tears well up in her eyes—tears of joy and offense simultaneously. “Then why… didn’t you… come befo-ore…”

“Well, well, sweetheart,” Santa took her cap off and soothingly palmed her head. “No need to cry. I’m sorry I didn’t come before. But, you see, there are so many children in the world and all of them need gifts! There’s not enough time, I have to rely on my helpers, and sometimes they let me down. But look what I brought for you now!”

He took the bag from his shoulder and for some time with a conspiratorial air dug inside it. And then he winked to Angie and took out…

“Barbie the Princess!”

“Barbie the Princess,” confirmed Santa, handing over a box with the doll to the girl.

“Now she’s mine? Forever?” Angie couldn’t believe in her happiness.

“Certainly, forever. What gifts aren’t given forever?”

“Thanks, dear, sweet Santa!” She tried to embrace him without letting go of the doll.

“And there’s even more!” he interrupted her. “After all, I owe you gifts for seven years…”

“For eight,” Angie could have corrected, but didn’t dare.

“…so now you will get them all, too. But they’re on my sleigh. You should come get your presents and feed my reindeer. Do you want to do that?”

“Of course I do!” The girl began to jump with delight.

“Then let’s go!” He turned and start walking on the virgin snow in the lane. Angie hastened at his heels, trying to step into the big pits of his footprints.

Without reaching the exit to a street, Santa turned into a narrow alley and for a long time the girl saw nothing except concrete walls on both sides and the wide red back with a bag right ahead. Then the walls ended, and they came out to a small ravine; in summer a stream flowed on its bottom, but now only deep snow lay there. On the other side of the ravine, black-and-white trees froze in condensing darkness. Angie understood that they had reached the forest adjoining the border of the city.

Santa began to descend resolutely into the ravine, and the girl had to follow him. It was not difficult to go down, but when they were clambering up, she quickly was out of breath and was even hot in her old jacket which was already small for her. Santa only darted a quick glance over his shoulder and continued to walk quickly through the snow between trees.

“Is it far?” Angie asked plaintively, barely keeping up with him.

“No,” he answered without turning to her, “we’re almost there.”

“It’s dark already,” the girl said uncertainly.

“Are you afraid of the dark?” he looked at her again. “Ah, you little scaredy-cat! I fly in the dark all night on Christmas Eve! By the way, I can take you for a ride in my sleigh over the city!”

“Really?” Angie’s doubts receded again.

“Sure. Maybe I’ll even allow you to drive the reindeer.”

Meanwhile they had already gone so deep into the woods that they would not have seen its border from here even in the daytime; now in the gloom it seemed all the more that the forest stretched for incalculable miles in every direction.

“Why did you… leave the sleigh… so far away?” the girl asked, panting.

“Well, after all we don’t want someone to come across it and take all he gifts for himself! OK, we’re almost there. That glade.”

The glade was surrounded by high fragile bush. Santa made a way with a crunch and the girl followed him, anticipating seeing the magic sleigh and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Suddenly Santa stopped, and Angie almost ran into him.

The glade was empty and covered by untouched snow.

“Where is the sleigh?” the girl murmured.

“It’ll be here soon. Meanwhile, undress.”

“What?” Angie was shocked.

“Undress. You’re hot, aren’t you?”

She has indeed sweated and now willingly took off her jacket. Santa stretched out his mittened hand and took it from her.

“Come on,” he ordered.

“What?” The girl felt fear again and involuntarily pressed the box with the princess to her chest.

“Now!” Santa’s voice became hoarse and sharp. “Take off your clothes!”

“But…” Angie moved back, “I don’t want…”

“But you want the doll? You still want the doll, you ungrateful little bitch?!”

“Take it!” Angie stretched the box out before her, continuing to move back. “Take it back, just let me go!”

“Santa Claus gives gifts to good girls,” the grinning mouth said, “and now you’ll find out what he does to bad girls.”

“Help!” cried Angie, turning to run away. The brute hands seized her and threw her down in the snow.

“It’s him, no doubt,” federal agent Douglas once again looked towards the glade where the crime lab team was already finishing its work. Nearby a pair of ambulance orderlies with a stretcher shifted from one foot to the other in the cold, expecting a command to take away the body. “The Snowman. Damn, we’ve been chasing this son of a bitch for three years already. Well, maybe this time we’ll get something we can use.”

“Are you sure it’s him, sir?” trainee John Rockston raised the collar of his uniform jacket and put his hands into pockets: he felt chilly, too. And he wasn’t sure the only reason was the cold and not the impression of what he had seen. Textbooks and photos are one thing, but when you actually see this yourself for the first time… “Could be, just some local guy flipped his lid…”

“A local wouldn’t lead a victim so far,” Douglas objected. “There are enough basements and empty warehouses in the city. But the Snowman needs snow. A lot of snow and open air. And all the other details… There are, of course, imitators of another’s modus operandi. But the Snowman never made the headlines. Only some brief mentions in the local media. He’s a bastard, but not a fool at all. He chooses a time when editors prefer cheerful and sweet-tearful materials, instead of bloody horrors. Americans don’t like their holidays to be spoiled. And, as after New Year’s Day the murders stop, the topic loses its urgency. Till next Christmas.”

Crunching through the snow, the chief of the city police approached them with a clipboard in his hand. His physiognomy was peevish and skeptical, as always when he was speaking with feds. Douglas tried to ignore it and inquired in a efficient tone:

“So, have you identified the victim?”

“Yes,” the police chief nodded. He held the clipboard before himself, but didn’t look at it. “Angelica Lawrence, 9. Disappeared two days ago. From, as they say, a problem family. The father is an alcoholic, on welfare, the mother’s not much better… Typical white trash. They didn’t even notify the police that their daughter was missing. The girl went to school normally, but it’s vacation now… it’s pure luck that a local man came across her before everything here was covered with snow.”

“That’s it,” Douglas turned to the trainee, “a typical victim of the Snowman. Most often they are children with problems at home or at school. Actually, that’s no surprise. Who else would walk alone during the holidays instead of being with family and friends?”

“Don’t be so sure, sir,” the trainee objected, “I liked to wander alone when I was a kid. And not because of any problems. It was just better for thinking.”

“There are, of course, exceptions,” Douglas agreed. “Of the eight victims, two were from completely normal families and had no problems with other children.”

“Known to us,” the trainee specified.

“What?”

“We know about only eight victims, sir. We don’t know how many victims could still be lying somewhere under the snow.”

“Yes, but there hardly could be many more victims. With his modus operandi, he simply wouldn’t have had time… unless he started to kill earlier than two years ago. Did you have enough time to read the case materials?”

“Yes, sir,” John understood that Douglas was testing him and began to narrate accurately and passionlessly, as at an exam: “The murders begin before Christmas and end not later than New Year’s Day. Most often he chooses a new town every time—not so small that any new person or car would attract attention, but also not so big that it would be the difficult to find a lonely open place. Sometimes he commits two murders in a single town—probably if he is sure that the disappearance of the first victim hasn’t caused an alarm. The victim is always white, age from seven to eleven; gender is not significant to the Snowman. He gets the victim to some place where there is a lot of snow. Apparently, children go with him voluntarily. Then he forces the victim to strip off all clothing and shoes, ties the victim’s hands and, possibly, tapes his or her mouth. In this condition he makes the victim walk up and down through the snow and rolls him or her in snowdrifts for a while—not less a half hour. Obviously, it turns him on. Then he rapes the victim. Then kills, knifing about dozen times. The exact number and places of wounds vary. He doesn’t leave any inscriptions or other ‘hallmarks.’ He always takes away with him the victim’s clothing and other things.”

“It all matches, doesn’t it?” Douglas nodded to the police chief.

“Exactly,” the latter confirmed. “Probably this bastard is also a fetishist.”

“Modern psychiatry reckons a considerable share of sadists among fetishists,” noticed Rockston. “For those guys, not just suffering in general, but concrete attributes are important. Snow or the victim’s blood may be examples of this. But I’m not sure that he carries the victim’s things away for that reason. Probably, he’s just afraid that we’ll find trace evidence on them. He’s very careful. We still don’t know his blood and sperm types.”

“Do you mean he uses a condom?” the police chief asked.

“Exactly, or, maybe a foreign object, even a dildo. Is it possible to buy such a thing in your town?”

“Most likely, he carries everything he needs with him, avoiding being seen in local shops,” Douglas interjected.

“By the way, why necessarily ‘he?’” the police chief narrowed his eyes. “Couldn’t that freaking dildo have been used by a woman?”

Federal agents looked at him respectfully, despite his tone.

“We considered such a possibility,” the senior agent confirmed. “In favor of it being a woman is how easily our criminal manages to entice children. Serial molesters sometimes fail with clever kids who, remembering the admonitions of adults, not only refuse to go with the molester, but also immediately run home or to the nearest policeman and describe the bad guy. But the Snowman hasn’t had a single screwup like that. And, also, many adults still warn children only about men, forgetting about women. But, still, it’s not likely to be a woman. You saw the footprints, chief. The shoe size is definitely not female. Certainly, it is possible to wear oversized boots in order to fool us, but a woman in such giant boots risks drawing attention, and to run in such clodhoppers if something goes wrong would be difficult as well. Besides, our criminal’s weight is about 220 pounds, and the force of his knife strikes demonstrate a lot of physical strength. All this is, of course, not proof, but still essential arguments against a female perpetrator.”

The police chief shrugged his shoulders with irritation, probably, going to say something like “if you’re so smart, why is the freaking asshole still out there?” But at this moment the chief of criminalists approached.

“We’ve almost finished,” he informed. “I ordered the body to be loaded into the van.”

“Anything interesting yet?” Douglas inquired.

“We’ll see in the lab,” the expert shrugged. “Till now, everything as usual. No torn off buttons, scraps of clothes, and so on. The girl didn’t cut her nails for a long time, so it may be possible to find something under them, but there’s not much hope. It’s the standard scenario: at first the victim is too frightened and obediently follows the guy’s orders, hoping to buy her life this way. And when she finally understands that she has nothing to lose, she is already tied and is helpless. He, of course, has taken the rope with him again, as well as the tape he used on the victim’s mouth.”

“Too bad… Well, John,” Douglas turned back to the trainee, “let’s go back to the car.”

“Cold weather with frequent snow, most likely, will sweep across New England until the weekend. Delays of flights and trains, and also snow drifts on the roads, are possible. So we would recommend to you to refrain from travel within the next few days if, of course, you don’t want to meet the New Year in mid-course…”

Nicolas swore and switched off the radio. Nobody and nothing can be trusted, absolutely nothing. All will finally deceive and betray you. Even the snow, which always was his friend and gave him so much pleasure, now turned against him. His usual method was to choose a new town without any system, just far enough away from the previous one. But this time he has had to drive from one snow drift to another for two days already, and has covered practically no ground. If he continues in the same manner, even his off-road vehicle will probably get stuck right in the middle of a deserted highway. Besides, he has lost too much time already. In a new town, after all, it is necessary to reconnoiter, to find a suitable place and to think over the emergency variants… Damn, he can’t lose the next day! It’s almost New Year’s Day, and who ever saw Santa Claus after the New Year? Flying deer definitely wouldn’t go amiss now… Probably, he should have not left Greenwood so hastily. The girl wouldn’t be found till spring; her parents didn’t care about her… But his intuition had forced him to move on and he had gotten used to trusting his intuition. Perhaps, all the matter was that he hadn’t gotten her far enough into the woods. But the snow was deep and the child looked too sickly—she would have become exhausted too early… Not without a reason she was scorned in her class. She had, of course, told kind Santa all about it. When he saw that they were broken down enough not to dare to shout—though he always chose such places where a shout couldn’t be heard, but care never hurts—he always took the tape from their mouths and made them talk about themselves. A diploma in child psychology is a useful thing, but theoretical science is dead without field practice. Most serial killers, with each new victim, come closer to making mistakes and being captured. But Nicholas, on the contrary, learns each time more and more about his prey and becomes all the more elusive. And what a pleasure is to look and listen to them standing, naked and helpless, knee-deep in snow, shivering from cold and fear, and murmuring in their pitiful breaking voices about their pathetic lives! Only remembering it caused so fast and hard a response in his pants that he had a strong desire to stop the car right now and resort to a handjob. But no, now’s not the right time… There will be long months ahead when these memories will be his only source of pleasure, so he’d better not waste their sharpness now…

Nevertheless Nicolas stopped his Ford. A fork appeared ahead—just the right time to check his coordinates and make further plans. He pulled out a map from the glove compartment and spread it over the dashboard. So, if he turns right now, Malcolmtown is five miles down the road. Population 16 thousand. And among them, of course, there will be enough bad boys and girls.

“So, what do they have at the lab?” Douglas inquired after Rockston hung up. They sat in Douglas’ office, and outside the window the white veil of a blizzard streamed.

“Good news, sir. Near the nail on the right middle finger they found a hair. More precisely, a piece of hair. White. Now they’ll analyze it and get everything possible out of it.” John paused and then added, “Though it seems to me, it’s not what they think. I think I know who it is.”

“So who?”

“Santa Claus.”

Douglas sniffed loudly, but then understood that the trainee was not kidding.

“You mean, a guy in Santa Claus costume?”

“Exactly. In fact, I’ve had this idea since this morning when we investigated the crime scene. Blood and snow, red and white. Colors of Santa Claus.”

“An unorthodox association,” Douglas grinned.

“To tell the truth, in my childhood I was afraid of Santa Claus,” John admitted, a bit ashamed.

“Afraid? Why?”

“I didn’t like the idea that some odd guy could get to me through a flue while I slept,” Rockston said with a smile, and then continued more seriously: “And why are people afraid of ghosts? Not because ghosts are spiteful or capable of doing real harm. According to most legends, a ghost can’t do any more harm than a hologram. And nevertheless, nine of ten people would yell in horror at seeing a phantom of their own beloved mommy. So why? Simply because it is something otherworldly. Supernatural. And that kind of horror is worse than any physical fear. Santa is like that and it would be more logical to ask why others are not afraid of him, than to ask why I was afraid…”

“All right, excursions into psychology can wait,” Douglas interrupted impatiently. “Really, the Snowman dressed as Santa would explain why he entices children so easily. And a man in such a costume during this time of year doesn’t cause any adult suspicion, not to mention that Santa’s attributes mask his true appearance. Do we have any more arguments?”

“At first, I thought that red and white could actually be his fetish. But then I understood that it’s also very convenient. Blood is not visible on red clothing, at least, not from afar. And he, obviously, hides his victim’s stuff in a bag with gifts. The role of Santa is so ideal for a child killer that I’m surprised we haven’t seen this earlier.”

“Because this role has one big flaw—from the point of view of the killer, of course. It’s available only several days a year. And a serial killer, even the smartest one, is governed not by his reason, but by his needs. He can tell himself a hundred times that it’s reasonable to wait till Christmas, but if he gets an urge in July, he will kill in July. Our guy probably has a huge amount of will power… Or maybe he is stimulated by Christmas attributes. Anyway, well done, trainee! Damn, I should have thought of it myself earlier! But I guess in my childhood I was brainwashed by tales about good Santa… So, if you are right, that sample studied in the lab now is not a real hair, but a synthetic fiber.”

“Yes. So it won’t be too useful to us. At the best we will define the fiber’s manufacturer, but it probably can be bought for different purposes nationwide…”

“Then let’s return to the initial problem: where he is now. Your assumptions, trainee?”

Rockston understood that his professionalism was being checked again. He stood up and approached a blackboard where a map of New England was pinned.

“There were no new disappearances in Greenwood. Local police and teachers have already phoned around all parents who have white children of the suitable age. That means he’s left the city. Theoretically, in two days he could reach any place in the country and even in the world. But in practice he is obviously limited, as before, to those areas where snow lies. He could reach an airport, but flights are canceled too often now because of snow. As he has only one week per year to indulge himself, he won’t risk spending it in a waiting room. I can assume also that he in general avoids flying, so that his name wouldn’t be on passenger lists. So… he travels by car. We can be certain that it’s an off-road vehicle, but even a SUV can’t go fast in this weather. We know that the son of a bitch is very careful and, probably, won’t drive unsafely without an extreme need. That means, he hardly does more than twenty miles per hour on average, and mostly in daylight. It gives him about eight hours per day. In total, a maximum of 320 miles for two days. In the east he is limited by the ocean, in the south—by thaw. He is still somewhere here,” John traced an oval with his finger on the map.

“That’s right,” Douglas frowned, “in any of dozens of towns in this area. And we can’t ask for a stop and search of all Santa Clauses there. We have no proof, so we have no probable cause. Besides, we would become whipping boys as the idiots who emotionally traumatized children. Remember the teacher who was fired after he told his class that Santa Claus didn’t exist? We’re living in strange times, John. Once this country was the land of the free and the home of the brave. And now it is the land of lawyers suing for emotional trauma, defamation, and discrimination. Sometimes I don’t understand who won the Cold War. If we won, what happened to our freedom of speech? Why we are afraid to call things by their proper names…”

The phone rang. Douglas took the call. What he heard apparently pleased him more than the previous topic.

“Looks like, John, you were right in substance, but mistaken in details,” he said, having finished the conversation. “It is not synthetic. It is a human hair, from a beard or moustaches. And it was dyed. The original color is dark, but not black.”

“That means… he has a real beard!” Rockston exclaimed. “Perhaps this bastard thinks he’s a real Santa Claus.”

“Do you understand the importance of this news, John?”

“Certainly, sir. Nowadays, there aren’t a lot of men with Santa-shaped beards, either dark or not. And it’s impossible to grow a beard in one day. So, many people know his bearded appearance, and he probably even has it on his photo IDs… Since he isn’t gray-haired, how old is he?”

“About forty five. It’s surprising that he started to kill only two years ago… If, of course, we have found all his victims. However, these bastards don’t always start killing at a young age. Or maybe fantasies and pornography were enough for him before. We also know now that he is white, though that’s not surprising. Even nowadays black Santas are still exotic. Most likely, he doesn’t smoke and generally lives a rather healthy lifestyle… apart from his main hobby, of course.”

“He isn’t an actor,” John reflected aloud, “I thought that he could be an actor, but an actor can’t have a real beard…”

“I thought through one hypothesis,” Douglas replied. “Even before your idea about Santa—which, by the way, isn’t yet proved, though it is hard to think why else someone would dye a beard white. So, anyway, I tried to understand why he never had any failures. And I came to the conclusion that he understands children’s psychology very well. So well that he knows a child literally at a glance, even before communicating with the kid. So, most likely, he’s an experienced professional—either a child psychologist or some other occupation that deals with children, for example, a teacher… The first step, trainee?”

“To check all people of corresponding professions who were targeted in the investigation of sexual misconduct towards children. Including those acquitted and never come to trial.”

“Correct. It made a rather long list, but all of them happened to have alibis. Obviously, our bastard is too careful to leave witnesses and victims alive. But since he is a professional, we can look for traces of his professional work. For a teacher it is more difficult, but he’s not a teacher; he starts hunting prior to the beginning of Christmas vacation. But if we assume that his job is closer to a science, then what?”

“We can look for publications in scientific journals! On the topic of problem families, or conflicts in a school setting, or violence against children.”

“Bravo, John. However, there are too many such publications. There may be even more psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts in this country than lawyers… Still, we have checked up on some of them, carefully, since we lack probable cause. Nothing remarkable was found. On the other hand, there are no guarantees that he really has published works…”

“And that he is a psychologist at all. If he simply puts on Santa’s costume…”

“And here you’re wrong, John. One doesn’t exclude another. A five-year-old kid can be deceived by any guy with a white beard and in a red jacket. But the Snowman works with older children. And among these youngsters, not all will agree to follow a stranger if he doesn’t impress them… Perhaps, the real beard plays a considerable role here—but it isn’t the only factor.”

“Perhaps. So, we should look for journal authors who have a big beard and are between forty and fifty years of age. As you worked on this already, I believe, you identified some authors?”

“Yes, but, as I’ve said, there are too many of them. But now, knowing about the beard and age, we can narrow our search.”

“I would offer additional criteria, sir. Most likely, he writes articles alone, instead of co-authorship. And, possibly, he was born in a northern state. Perverts, of course, happen to be rather odd, but it seems doubtful to me that a heat-loving southerner would enjoy sex in freezing temperatures. Also, there is an off-road vehicle registered on his name… He, of course, can rent cars, but he prefers to use his own in order not to show himself in rental offices.”

“Well, in these parts almost everyone owns off-road vehicles… But as a whole your ideas sounds reasonable. Sit down at the computer, John. Let’s see how they teach you to work with information nowadays.”

The third thing which Gregory Prime hated was lies.

In the beginning of his life he simply couldn’t imagine that such a thing as a lie might exist. The idea that it is possible to say something that is not true seemed so absurd to him that it didn’t deserve consideration at all. Indeed, why then speak at all? In adult terms, his conceptualization of that time would sound like this: a conversation is the purposeful exchange of information, so any corruption of the information contradicts the very essence of a conversation. Later, about an age of three, he found out that the lie nevertheless does exist and immediately he felt a deep contempt for it. For this reason, he hated fairy tales since they were just a pack of lies.

Both Greg’s parents had higher technical education (his father was an engineer in a power company and his mother was a chemist in a pharmaceutical laboratory) and were atheists who adhered to materialism. At the age of three, the boy already knew the structure of the atom, what positive and negative particles were, and what a water molecule consisted of. And, certainly, he knew that no wizards and witches actually existed. The single attempt to intimidate Greg when he was mischievous, by saying that an evil sorcerer would take him away, caused so furious a reaction of horror that Mrs. Prime renounced forever using such methods. She apologized to the boy, repeating that it was a silly joke and there were, of course, no sorcerers at all.

When other children of his age tried to involve Greg in playing out some fairy tale plots (they, seemingly, actually believed in magic), he looked at them disdainfully, as at ignorant savages. At first he generously tried to explain the truth to them, but they, apparently, were too stupid to accept the education. Later, when he was four, Gregory understood that not true is not always a lie. It can also be an honest fiction, and fairy tales belong to this category. Then he began to read them, even with pleasure, perceiving them the way adults do: as entertaining stories which, however, don’t have and can’t have anything in common with reality. However, he preferred science fiction, for its scientific character.

But, recognizing the right to fiction in literature, Greg was still sure that in real life only the truth should be told. And especially that the truth and only the truth is told by his parents. People around him disappointed him more and more often—condemning lies verbally, they told lies all the time. Religion was one of the most unpleasant forms of lie—fairy tales, including terrifying stories about the omnipotent absolute tyrant, were straight-faced passed off as the truth. But, of course, Greg’s parents explained to the scared boy that no god actually existed and that Christian beliefs were in no way better than Ancient Greek myths about Zeus who threw lightning bolts from Olympus. No religious dogmas have scientific confirmation; on the contrary, science found more than enough refutations of them. However, Mrs. Prime also had added that Greg should respect the feelings of believers and not say to them that they value stupid fairy tales. But the boy couldn’t agree with her in any way: why he should respect another’s stupidity and lie? Then Mr. Prime came up with a more compelling argument: “You see, Greg, not all of them can be persuaded; they just will not listen. So it is useless even to try—you’ll only make them angry, but will not be able to set things right.” The boy already knew this from his own experience and had to agree.

Yes, anyone else might lie, but his parents always told him the truth. And, consequently, Greg didn’t even think to doubt their word about Santa Claus.

What they said about Santa Claus came, of course, from the very best motives. It never entered the heads of Mr. and Mrs. Prime to what long-term horror they doomed their son—the horror of the committed materialist who learns from an absolutely authentic, in his opinion, source about the real existence of a magic being.

Greg did not give a damn that this being was kind and gave gifts! It destroyed the whole scientific picture of the world! He desperately tried to save the situation, grasping at any rational explanation for this undead creature. Maybe Santa Claus is actually an extraterrestrial? In science fiction, aliens could do much more than humans and all that is thanks to their science. But aliens travel on spaceships, not on reindeer. And besides, if Santa is an alien, why isn’t NASA interested in him? If he is some unexamined natural phenomenon, why don’t scientists explore him?

Gregory shared these hypotheses with his parents, but they still didn’t understand and only laughed at the scientific meticulousness of their son. Mrs. Prime with a smile told Greg that science didn’t explore magic. Greg was ready to assume… no, not that parents lied him—he still couldn’t even think about that. But maybe they, so clever and educated, nevertheless fell into deception themselves?

But alas—unlike god whom nobody ever saw, the existence of Santa Claus was confirmed by facts and independent authoritative sources. Beginning with the gifts which weren’t under the Christmas tree in the evening, when the house doors were locked from within and the alarm system was activated, but which appeared there in a mystical way in the morning. And the unknown being not only inexplicably got into the house, but also guessed right every time what exactly Greg wanted to receive! The gifts, however, pleased the boy—unlike the thought about the one who had brought them… Greg, of course, understood that those dudes in red suits with false beards in a supermarket or a school performance at Christmastime were only disguised human beings. Officially they were called assistants of Santa Claus—well, this proved nothing, as priests are called attendants of god, too. But the real Santa Claus was also shown time and again on TV; he had a house in Lapland, and it was possible to write a letter there and even to receive an answer. Greg hadn’t written, but saw with his own eyes such an answer which one of his schoolmates bragged about.

And if it were only broadcasts for children! Greg understood that in such programs everything could be shown. But quite serious, adult newscasts reported that Santa Claus had taken off from Lapland! The permission for his sleigh to fly over U.S. territory was issued by the Federal Aviation Administration! Its movement through airspace was traced by NORAD! And NORAD, gentlemen—it is very serious. Even more serious than the civil aviation agency. It is the North American Aerospace Defense Command, those guys who sit in the superstrengthened bunker deep under the Rocky Mountains and watch for Russian or Chinese nuclear missiles launched towards America—and, in this worst case, will strike back in time. From such people, one doesn’t expect kidding! And nevertheless—Greg saw himself in the news how on their radar, the very same radar which separates peace from nuclear war, crawled a mark with the inscription “Santa”!

And there was more to come. All adults, even those who were very skeptical about everything shown on TV (such as, for example, the Primes’ neighbor Mr. Stevens), confirmed the existence of Santa Claus. About god they didn’t have the same unanimity. Even the elementary school teacher carefully noted that some people believed in god and some not, and there was no strict proof of either position, so it was necessary to listen to mum and daddy and also to your own heart (this mendacious expression enraged Greg—he wanted to shout out: “The heart is simply a muscle that pumps blood!”) But about the reality of Santa Claus she spoke absolutely categorically.

And, of course, Greg’s schoolmates believed in Santa, too. They, however, weren’t an authoritative source in any way. Unless only in the matters of female anatomy—some of them considered themselves adult enough to look at pictures of naked ladies in the boy’s toilet. Once they allowed Greg to look too, and he definitely could not understand what they found interesting in it. Well, he was, of course, surprised that women don’t have a cock, but he could see that in the first photo—so why examine all the others so attentively? In general, his schoolmates remained the same stupid savages they were as toddlers when they believed in witches and sorcerers. They only increased in size and thus became more harmful and more dangerous.

His schoolmates were the second thing on Gregory Prime’s personal hate list. He was a straight-A student in all subjects except sports, and that speaks for itself. The other boys rarely condescended to such mercifulness as demonstrating forbidden photos to him. Much more often they exercised in persecution of the “egghead,” “geek,” “nerd,” and “four-eyes” who couldn’t hit them back. Their mockery was as stupid and primitive as they themselves, but for some reason still very hurtful. The brainless pithecanthropes who did not even know the word “pithecanthrope!” But Greg had to adapt. He had not to show how much he despised them, even to simulate friendship with some of them. Thus, he had to lie, and for this he hated them even more. And all this still didn’t save him completely. Only provided intervals of calm life between days when they remembered again their joyous pastime, “make Greg Prime cry.” And after that his so-called “friends,” just as if nothing had happened, called him again to play their primitive games. And he did.

But the schoolmates were still not the worst problem. This problem was extremely unpleasant and plaguing his life, yes. But at the same time—clear, explainable, terrestrial, material. They undermined his everyday comfort, but not the basis of the universe.

Gifts-giving Santa was much more terrible. He was an embodiment—and, strictly speaking, the only authentically known embodiment—of everything magic, mystical, illogical, supernatural, antiscientific, irrational.

In short, Santa Claus embodied that which Gregory Prime hated most of all.

“Three,” John summed up, “three most probable candidates. I admit, I expected that it would be only one. I didn’t think that there were so many bearded men among psychologists…”

“And that is only if our filters are correct,” Douglas dampened the trainee’s ardor, displaying the selected files on his computer screen. “If we dig in the right direction… So, Dr. Aron Rabin, Dr. Joshua Sullivan and Dr. Nicolas Wash. Well, let’s go,” Douglas moved the phone up to him. “Hello! May I talk to Dr. Rabin? Dr. Rabin? Good afternoon, I am Special Agent-in-Charge Douglas of the FBI. No, everything is all right. We were interested in your article in the third issue of the American Psychoanalytic Association journal. The person whom we are searching for probably had a similar case of a childhood trauma, and your consultation may be useful to us. No, it’s not urgent. Currently it’s only a hypothesis which still may not prove out. I would be grateful, if you tell me your schedule for the next few days, to let us know when is a good time to contact you… Thank you for cooperation, sir! No, it’s not him. He is at home, and his schedule is too busy for traveling—which can be, of course, easily checked, and he understands it… Hello! May I talk to Dr. Sullivan? And when will he be available? OK, I see. No, I don’t need to leave a message, thank you. Good-bye. In a business trip, will return after New Year,” Douglas informed John in a satisfied tone. “How do you like that?”

“It’s him!”

“We still must check on the third one.” The phone again gave out a melodious trill, dialing the number. “Hello! May I…” Douglas began and suddenly stopped. Having listened for some time, he still silently hung up. “An answering machine,” he explained. “The text is standard—’leave a message…’”

“Perhaps, he simply went shopping.”

“Maybe. Or maybe not. So, we have two candidates.”

“Damn, they even have Fords of the same model!”

“No wonder, it’s one of the most popular models of an off-road car. Well, now the routine starts again—to find leads to the cars across the area interesting to us. We will notify local police, and they will phone round to gas stations, roadside shops, and so on. I hope, in bad weather when there aren’t too many cars on the roads, these two will be noticed quickly enough. Well, and, of course, we’ll still call Wash periodically in case he returns.”

Nice little Malcolmtown. Nicolas walked on streets through growing dusk pricked by small snowflakes. It wasn’t the hunt yet, only a reconnaissance as military men say… Actually, the town was not as nice as he would have liked. The outskirts are densely populated and there is no suitable deserted area through which it would be convenient to lead a target to the woods. But there is a large park in the town. Large enough for his purposes. He must only make sure that this park isn’t frequently visited by townspeople during the winter. Probably it is not—the park looks rather untended. Apparently, the local authorities have enough other things to take care of. Only the central avenue in the park had been cleaned and even it is powdered with snow again. And all around deep snow lies. A lot of snow.

He, as usual, had left his car in the woods outside of town. One more advantage of a SUV—he could avoid being seen in motels. However, this time there had been a minor mishap. He was seen refueling near town. Certainly, he didn’t refuel at a gas station—there are superfluous eyes there, too, especially in bad weather when customers are rare. Filled gas cans lay in his trunk, so he proudly passed by the station without stopping, despite the red-blinking fuel warning light. He had to stop two miles later. But, while he was filling the tank by the roadside, a truck passed by in the opposite direction. Of course, the driver didn’t pay any special attention on him. He was not in the costume—he never put it on ahead of time. The driver didn’t reduce his speed and, even better, didn’t stop and ask whether any help was needed. Those damned kind Samaritans who eternally poke into other people’s business! The former good boys who hoped to deserve a gift from Santa. But this driver was not one of them. A bad boy. You were a bad boy and Santa will not come for you…

Santa will come for other bad children.

Finally two hypotheses remained to Gregory. According to the first, less logical but more attractive one, Santa Claus was an outstanding swindler who had managed to deceive the whole world. Certainly, he was not a usual scam artist. He obviously had mastered fantastic technologies unavailable to anyone else. Perhaps, he was an evil genius, as in comic books—though generally Greg was very irritated that in comics so often clever people are villains and, moreover, act like idiots, allowing stupid heroes to defeat them. And, considering that Santa had existed on the Earth for a very long time already (actually, Greg couldn’t get a precise answer from anybody, how long exactly), he could be a medieval alchemist who had found a philosophers’ stone and achieved immortality. Alchemy, of course, was a pseudo science, but nevertheless it was closer to science than to magic; mum said that all modern chemistry grew from it. This hypothesis, however, didn’t explain one thing—the purpose of the swindle. On the contrary, the bestowing of gifts seemed to be an absolutely lossmaking business. But if this guy doesn’t want anything bad, why does he lie, pretending to be a magic being? And why doesn’t he share his discovery with the world? Greg heard many times that there’s no such thing as a free lunch; it was simply surprising that adults who repeated it to him in a mentor tone didn’t even think to apply this thesis to Santa Claus. And what if one day he submits a bill to the whole world, with all the interest that had accumulated over centuries? In that case, mankind will be in big trouble. And the one who stops the mendacious old bastard in advance will save the world.

The second hypothesis, however awful it was, coincided with the classical explanation. That is, Santa Claus really was a supernatural being. Maybe the one thing in the universe which was breaking the well-knit and logical materialistic harmony… Greg couldn’t, didn’t want to acknowledge it. But nevertheless he knew that a real scientist should test a theory with an experiment.

During pre-Christmas days on TV and in printed media there were stories about boys and girls who didn’t believe in Santa Claus. And then, having stated their doubts, were convinced of the existence of Santa—either by a very serious and authoritative adult, like the editor of “New York Times,” or by Santa himself. And though the reliability of these stories, especially of the second type, was doubtful by itself…

“Santa Claus, I, Gregory George Prime from Malcolmtown, Maine, USA, don’t believe in you,” Greg loudly proclaimed to the darkness of the big room where the Christmas tree stood. For some reason he was sure that it was necessary to address Santa at night. As, obviously, one would speak to vampires, werewolves, and other undead creatures—if they really existed… “But if you exist—come and talk to me. Don’t sneak into the house late at night when I’m asleep. Come yourself, don’t send any assistants. I’ll meet you in the town park.”

For the plan that Greg has conceived, his home was not appropriate in any way.

“What an unpleasant thing is waiting,” John Rockston sighed, sitting down on the edge of a table and looking at the snow flying outside the window. “Especially if you know that, maybe, this very minute the bastard is already leading the next child into the woods.”

“We can’t do anything more now,” responded Douglas. “The crime lab didn’t dig out anything new; we can only hope to catch him with our nets.”

“Almost twenty four hours passed since we set them. If he hasn’t passed by any watching eyes during this time…”

“Than he, probably, has had time to settle down in some town already,” finished Douglas. “I know. And then, if he isn’t recognized in the streets—and photos are available only to policemen who are not too numerous in small towns—then we, most probably, will catch him only after one more murder. This is life, John. This is our job. Only in movies does the cavalry always manage to appear at the last moment… Well, time to make the next call to Wash.”

But, before Douglas had time to pick up the receiver, the phone rang.

“Douglas here. When? And he…? How long ago? Yes! Yes, of course, we’ll come personally!”

He hanged up and joyfully turned to the trainee.

“Sullivan is staying at a Portsmouth motel. Under a false name, by the way.”

“Arrested?”

“Not yet. He arrived as early as yesterday evening, but the manager got around to checking the license plates only now. He isn’t currently in the motel—obviously, somewhere in the city. The police have already begun to search for him. Grab your coat, let’s go.”

“To reach Portsmouth in such weather…”

“We have the use of a copter.”

Douglas hastily took his jacket from a hanger, loudly zipped it, and took out his gloves from the pockets.

“Trainee, what are you waiting for?”

“Sir, we were going to make a call to Wash.”

“Mm… you’re right, we should… So, what’s there? Answering machine again?”

“Yes.”

“Certainly, the fact that Sullivan stayed at the motel under an assumed name doesn’t yet remove suspicion from Wash… Though, most likely, he’s simply relaxing somewhere down south now.”

John put on his warm jacket, too.

“Sir, after all, isn’t Claus the same name as Nicolas?”

“Yes. But that means nothing. If the guy has a screw loose, hardly it was because of his own name.”

“Yes, but it could become an additional factor.”

“Well, theoretically it could. But now our main target is Sullivan. Ready at last? Let’s go. Lock the door.”

Just after Rockston turned the key in the lock, the phone rang again in the office. John made a movement to open the lock.

“No need,” Douglas stopped him, “after the fourth ring a call will automatically switch to my cell phone… Hello?”

This time he was on the phone slightly longer and even pulled a map out of his pocket, trying to unfold it on a door with one hand. Rockston helped him.

“Wash’s car was seen,” Douglas informed after hanging up. “Also yesterday evening. Here,” he pointed on a map, “near Malcolmtown. However, the information about it came from here,” his finger sharply moved to the south. “It seemed odd to a Malcolmtown truck driver that some guy fueled his car from a can instead of using the nearby gas station. And he, I mean the truck driver, looked attentively at him and remembered the number of his car. Actually, he didn’t remember it completely—he either forgot the last digit, or couldn’t make it out because of snow—but all the rest match. And today he talked about it in a diner where he stopped for dinner. The owner of the diner had already been contacted and made a call to the police.”

“That guy was in the Santa Claus costume?”

“No. The driver even isn’t sure if he had a white beard. ‘Perhaps he did, or maybe it was just snow-covered.’ And even if it was Wash, to refuel from a gas can is not a crime. He may simply had found a gas station with a good price and stocked up with fuel there. Anyway, it’s less suspicious than using an assumed name.”

“Not only killers register under assumed names,” John objected. “For example, adulterers do. And not only them. There are some people who are just intensely private and avoid leaving any personal information anywhere.”

“You use your head, trainee,” Douglas nodded approvingly. “But we should make a choice. The local police will of course investigate in both places, and I would like to believe they will do it assiduously enough… though, to tell the truth, they don’t like to listen to us until their noses are stuck right into the shit. So you and I should not lose the control over the situation and have to choose one of two opposite directions. What do you think we should do?”

John frowned for a second, then stated resolutely: “We should return to the office, sir. To look once more through the databases.”

“OK.”

With several mouse clicks Rockston came to a conclusion.

“I would bet on Wash, sir.”

“Why?”

“Look at their driver’s records. Wash had not a single driving offense. And Sullivan was ticketed for illegal parking, for speeding…”

“And we know that our son of a bitch is very careful,” Douglas caught the idea and added with a laugh: “Seems to me, it’s the first case in my career when good lawful behavior serves as a basis for suspicion. But you are probably right. We’ll fly to Malcolmtown.”

“Are you sure he is still there, sir?”

“The truck passed him late yesterday afternoon, and we believe that he doesn’t drive in the dark during a snowfall. That means he could leave the town not earlier than this morning. But by this time the state police had been already notified, and he would have been already intercepted by officers posted either here or here,” Douglas showed on the map. “He’s still in town. And, probably, isn’t wasting any time. Let’s go.”

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Prime? Sergeant Jills here. Is your son at home?”

“Just a minute, I’ll look… No, apparently he went out to play. What happened? Did Greg do something wrong?”

“No, don’t worry. May I talk to your husband?”

“He hasn’t come home from work yet. Sergeant, what’s the matter?”

“If your son returns, please, try to keep him at home.”

“OK, but will you explain to me what this is all about?!”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Prime. We simply got information that there’s a man in town, who… er… pesters children and shows them obscenities. This tip may be false—most likely it is—but currently we’re are checking it out.”

“A flasher? I am a big girl, sergeant, and you can say what you mean.”

“Yeah, something like that. Also our information says that he can be dressed as Santa Claus.”

“Well, if so, he’ll hardly manage to entice Greg. Though my husband and I didn’t tell him Santa doesn’t exist, it seems to me that he understands that himself already.”

As usual, Nicolas noticed the future victim the first.

After several hours of fruitless waiting (there were some possibilities, but, having carefully estimated the probability of witnesses, he decided not to risk it) all, at last, went extremely well. The boy was obviously alone and went straight to the park. For a moment, a suspicion flashed in Nicolas’ mind that someone could be waiting for the kid in the park—the boy stepped there so purposefully, not like just a stroller. But no, it was hardly probable. The snow showed no one else’s footprints. However, a friend of the bad boy could appear later. But even if so—the park is big enough, and he will have time to lead the boy far away from the meeting point. And then, after finding out all that this nasty little thing knows, maybe he will come also for the uninvited visitor, who is for certain of the same age…

Standing behind a high pine, Nicolas studied his future prey, fixing the smallest details. It’s very important to get a rapport at once, to cause reckless trust… It’s a pity that no psychology could allow him to guess a name—this would have worked perfectly. However, the proper choice of a gift works wonders, too. So, the boy is obviously from an advantaged family—not rich, but advantaged. At the same time, both his parents most likely work and give him less attention than he would like. When he left home, nobody saw him off, otherwise his scarf would have been adjusted… There is for certain a computer in his house and most probably not only one, so a video game would not amaze him—he has plenty of them. His face is obviously not silly, and his inward life is complex enough for, taking into account the previous conclusions, the existence of some important misunderstanding between him and his parents; they think that they do the best for him, but actually it turns out to the contrary… He is not overweight, but his figure, gait, and general appearance demonstrate a lack of athletic skills, so hockey sticks and baseball bats are absolutely not for him. He’s a typical four-eyes straight-A student—who is of course offended by his classmates—but not a cowed timid boy at all; oh no, the resolute air of this clever little face doesn’t promise anything good to his enemies! If only he had a possibility for vengeance! Perhaps a real pistol would be the best gift for him, but it is, of course, not appropriate and, moreover, not in the interests of the good Santa. Toy weapons also don’t suit—he is not one of those dreamers who could be content with illusion instead of reality. Soldiers, dinosaurs, and so on are also not right here—he still may have some liking for such toys, but improbably dreams of them. Here is obviously a scientific and technical mentality, an aspiration to accuracy and attention to details, a bent on logicality and validity, a desire that all be real or, at least, as close to real as possible. He undoubtedly likes to read, but at the same time he is too young to prefer books to toys. That indicates an exact model of some machine, and aggression, let’s not forget how much aggression is hidden in this excellent student who cannot fight and is tormented by those whom he despises… A tank? No, a tank crawls, and he dreams to raise over his enemies whom he considers much below himself—so, of course, a plane, a heavily armed plane, a bomber!

“Good evening, young man!” No baby talk, no lisping—he hates it, but a solid adult reference should be pleasant for him…

And at this moment Nicolas understood that he had made some error in his judgment. Because in the eyes which turned to him, he read not only an expected surprise, but fear and hatred. And these feelings didn’t disappear when the boy understood that it was Santa Claus before him. More likely, even to the contrary.

But anyway it was too late to back off. And there was no need for it. Even if Nicolas hasn’t considered something, can’t he easily cope with a nine-year brat?

Blades rhythmically whirred overhead. Outside the cockpit, it was dusk already; the pilot switched the illumination on, and the instrument panel lit up with soft amber light. Below the helicopter and very close to it, black trees on white snow ran back; from such a perspective one could see that they grew sparser than it seemed from the ground level. From above, low gray clouds hung even closer; periodically they, curling, surrounded the cabin, and then the whole world outside disappeared. Or snow pellets densely covered the windshield, which was not much better.

“Visibility as good as hell,” the pilot complained, “and will be only worse further. I don’t know how we’ll fly to Malcolmtown. That is, we will—by instruments, but I don’t know what you hope to accomplish out there.”

“Is it possible to descend a bit more?” John asked without any real hope.

“Where? We’re already flying almost on top of the trees. If we encounter a radio mast, it’s bye-bye. We need either to climb over the clouds or to land and continue by car.”

“It’ll take two hours to get there by car,” objected Douglas. “And he kills usually just at this time, at sunset. Every minute can cost lives.”

“Oh yeah—ours,” the pilot grumbled. “As you want, gentlemen—I’ll deliver you to the place, but then I guarantee nothing.”

“All right, we’ll see then,” Douglas waved away.

“That’s what I doubt.”

“You have come after all,” Greg said.

“I always come to those who need me,” Santa answered.

“You are not a disguised actor? Not ‘an assistant?’ You are indeed the real… magic Santa Claus?” Gregory faltered on a hated word.

“Absolutely real. And if you are so mistrustful, look what I have brought for you…”

“Do you swear on your life that you’re telling the truth?” Gregory interrupted, ignoring the hand diving in the bag.

“I do,” Santa smiled, and Greg internally rejoiced. Done! Now his position is faultless! If this creature has lied, he deserved death according to his own words. And if he has told the truth then a weapon can’t harm a magic being, so an attempt is not an evil deed.

That’s what he’ll say, of course, if the weapon doesn’t work.

Meanwhile Santa took from his bag a plane. With an air of triumph, he rotated the propellers of all four motors, moved the small barrels of defensive turrets, showing that they also turn, and offered the model to the boy.

“Strategic bomber Boeing B-29 Superfortress,” skillfully stated Greg, examining the gift from all angles. “From such a plane a nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The bomb was called ‘Little Boy.’ ‘Little Boy’ killed 70 thousand people.”

“You are very clever,” Santa said. “And you know a lot. Much more than other boys of your age. (Greg couldn’t keep himself from making a contemptuous grimace). And do you want to learn something more? I can show you my sleigh and explain how it works. After all it is interesting to you how it can fly, isn’t it?

“Is it the truth?”

“Of course it is! Let’s go, I landed in the middle of the park.”

Greg followed Santa, thinking that if this being indeed would show and explain all this, the main plan should be postponed. But not canceled completely, certainly not. Simply it is necessary first to find out the enemy’s secrets, as clever military commanders always do.

He was carrying the plane by the fuselage, and the wind, blowing in short gusts, rotated its propellers. Greg imagined how the motors of the “Enola Gay” roared approaching its target. It appeared to him so clearly that he really distinguished a sound coming from the sky… But it wasn’t the even buzz of a bomber. It was the choppy whirring of a distant helicopter.

Santa, seemingly, heard this sound, too, and it perturbed him.

“Come faster!” he exclaimed, turning back over his shoulder. “There!”

The red mitten pointed to an arbor standing on a bank of the frozen pond. The arbor was big and old, with the peeled off stone columns and a crack meandering through the domed roof. No benches remained inside it. Sinking in the snow, Santa and the boy ran to it and dived under the roof just seconds before the helicopter rumbled deep-voiced over them, invisible in low overcast.

“Why did we hurry like that?” Greg exactingly asked, panting. The entire floor of the arbor had been covered by deep snow—a bit less in the center than along the edges.

“We had to,” Santa conspiratorially winked, “I shouldn’t be seen by adults now.”

The noise of the helicopter gradually went away and at last completely faded out in the distance.

“Well, so when will we go to the sleigh?” the boy reminded.

“Later,” Santa murmured, “the sleigh flies only when it is completely dark. And now…” he paused, listening, and, having heard no suspicious sounds, finished… “now you must undress.”

“What?”

“Undress, be a good boy,” demanded the voice which suddenly became hoarse, “you’ll see, you will like it.”

“Oh, just a minute,” Greg answered with unexpected ease, though his heart beat already at some ultrasonic frequency and his fingers shivered when he unbuttoned his jacket. He carefully placed the plane on snow.

“Well, how long are you going to dawdle?” asked a dissatisfied voice.

“Just now,” mumbled Gregory, resting his chin against his breast, “my button is stuck…”

The being in red bent down to him, ready to tear off the hindrance if necessary. At the very same time the boy jerked open his jacket, snatching out from the left inner pocket a bottle from which he had already taken out the glass stopper. The colorless liquid with a caustic smell splashed directly in the red face bent over him. Hydrochloric acid from a set for young chemists (which was intended for older schoolboys, but Greg had persuaded his mom) was not very concentrated—but it got into Santa’s eyes and was quite sufficient to make him howl wildly with pain, crawling both hands about his face. At the next second a keen knife jerked from the right inner pocket sparkled in the air—it was Greg’s main weapon upon which he put special hopes. He understood that his childish strength—and the length of his self-made knife—may be insufficient to punch through the red jacket and the flesh to the vital organs. Therefore he raised his hand and slashed the throat of the blinded and howling enemy with the sharp edge. Blood jetted fanlike, sprinkling the snow, Greg’s clothing, and his face. The boy grasped the knife in his other hand and slashed Santa’s throat from the other side.

His opponent who didn’t even howl, but now only squealed, still made himself move one hand from his eyes and tried to seize the boy. Gregory quickly jumped aside. The enemy heavily moved forward, blindly ran into a column, started aside and, having lost his balance, fell down from the arbor porch to the snow outside. Gregory leaped onto his back like a wildcat. The previous wounds were only superficial, but now Greg, having seized with one hand Santa’s hair from which the red cap had fallen, with the full force of his other arm, pricked and cut the hated neck. The enemy vainly tried moving his hands back to get rid of the little devil tormenting him. When one of his hands, which already lost a mitten, brushed Greg’s face, the boy with all his strength sank his teeth into the enemy’s finger (his mouth was immediately bit by acid).

The prostrated enemy didn’t shout any more but only rattled and gurgled. His movements became more and more languid. At last, having ascertained that the opponent was already weak enough, Gregory arduously turned the heavy body on its back and unbuttoned the blood-sticky red jacket. Under it there was a gray sweater; Greg cut it, then a T-shirt, and bared pale skin and the left nipple from which a long black hair grew. The heart, as much as he knew, was a bit lower. A cut throat is good, but the procedure should be completed. Not without reason he had refused his initial idea to use an ordinary knife and, using a hammer and a file, had made a thin silver blade from the biggest spoon in his parents fine dinner set (luckily his parents hadn’t noticed its disappearance ahead of time). A wooden handle from a toy sword suited to this knife excellently.

Certainly, no books explained how to kill Santa Claus. But if silver helps against werewolves and vampires, why won’t it help in this case also? Certainly, Gregory didn’t believe in werewolves and vampires. But mum said that legends contains particles of the truth in a fantastic form. Stabbing the heart played an important role in these legends, too.

Greg felt in the snow his fallen eyeglasses and put them back on his nose. Then, having sat astride the belly of the dying enemy, he clasped the knife handle with both hands, raised them high over his head and plunged the knife into the naked breast. The body under him convulsively jerked and uttered one more rattling. The boy with an effort pulled out his knife and struck once again. And then again, and again, and again…

Then there were policemen running through snow, led by sergeant Jills; and two strangers in FBI jackets; and a doctor who hastily examined and palpated him right on the scene and clicked his tongue with astonishment, looking at the red-and-white corpse; and mum who nearly fainted and to whom several voices simultaneously hastily explained that the boy was unscathed and all this blood was not his; and some guys with a microphone and a videocam at whom all others shouted and tried to banish them, while they shouted back about the right of Americans to the information…

Blood was cleaned off Greg (at least as much as possible on the first try ), and they embraced him, squeezed, tapped on his shoulder, shook his hands and all the time spoke, saying that everything was OK, that everything would be OK now, that he was a good brave boy, that he had done perfectly well and that he shouldn’t blame himself for the death of this man because he was a very-very bad man who had killed many children already…

Gregory Prime didn’t listen to all this chatter. He understood the main thing—the real Santa Claus does not exist and so harmony returned to his soul at last. The pleasant feeling of this harmony was only amplified by two circumstances. First, his plane, his battle trophy, which miraculously wasn’t harmed during the fight—and whatever one may say, the bomber was excellent. And secondly, while lovingly moving his finger on its wings and fuselage, he continued recalling how warm blood fountained from his enemy’s throat, how his groans choked with rattle, how the knife elastically stuck into the hated body and how it, clamped by Greg’s legs, convulsed under the blows…

Fake Santa was right—he liked it.

Oh yes, he really liked it.

CAVE OF HORROR

“A carnival is in town,” joyfully exclaimed Jane.

Mike received this news without any enthusiasm. Even in his childhood he hadn’t been a fan of carnival rides, especially those that fling their passengers upside down, back and forth, and in other bone-rattling directions. Once, when his classmates dared him to go for a spin on a roller coaster, he very painfully hit his tailbone in the bottom point of the trajectory. There were, of course, calmer rides but Mike found them just boring; actually, usually only little kids rode them. Even an early age he preferred playing board games or assembling model cars or airplanes to visiting an amusement park. All the more he didn’t see any sense in visiting a carnival now, at his respectable age of twenty-two.

His girlfriend, alas, had the opposite point of view. And therefore, having indifferently muttered in reply, “So what?” Mike already knew perfectly well what was coming next.

“Let’s go there Saturday!” Jane met his expectations.

“Maybe we could go to the movies instead?” Mike offered without any real hope.

“We always go to the movies. And besides, what’s playing? Are they showing anything interesting this week?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t looked yet. Maybe something good is on.”

“I’m sure they’re showing the same old junk. Mikey, don’t be so boring! I want to go to the carnival! We can go to the movies anytime, but the carnival is here for only a little while.”

“Where are they from?”

“Dunno. From somewhere far away. They must have rides we’ve never been on!”

“Aha, that’s it—‘from far away.’ These traveling carnivals are even worse than stationary amusement parks. In each new place they put together all these rides, then take them apart them again. As a result, at some point something becomes loose, a screw isn’t tightened and… Last year the newspapers reported there was an accident on a ride in Connecticut. Three people were injured and about twenty more dangled on the very top for two hours, waiting until they could be rescued from there.”

“So what, traffic accidents happen much more often—does that mean we shouldn’t drive cars?”

“If we don’t go by car, we’ll have to go on foot. But if we don’t climb on some doubtful rotating machinery, we can spend the money for something better.”

“Just admit that you are afraid,” Jane continued to badger him. “And not of accidents. You’re afraid of the rides!”

“Why do you say I’m afraid? I simply don’t understand what pleasure it is to dangle upside down…”

“Well, don’t ride with me. Just stand nearby and wait if you are such a little coward,” she affectedly sighed. “You can hold my purse.”

“Listen to you being all brave!” Mike lost his patience. “Remember our trip to New York? You dragged me to Coney Island and there—to those, what were they called—‘Air races’ with airplanes that flipped over… And who was vomiting even before that ride stopped?”

“I shouldn’t have eaten those cakes before I got on the ride,” Jane waved away his complaint. “And I took it into account for the future. But does it mean that I should stay off rides the rest of my life because I got sick once?”

Mike had understood from the very beginning that resistance was useless and, as one could expect, two days later—11 a.m. Saturday—he and Jane entered the carnival area, which was enclosed by a high chain link fence.

Long ago in this not too cozy suburban place had been a meat factory combined with a slaughterhouse; however business was bad and it eventually burned out in the most literal sense: one night it was destroyed by flames. There was gossip that the fire had been set either by some animal rights fanatics or by the factory owner himself who decided to cash in at least on the insurance. It was also rumored that there were several casualties, though only one was known for sure—the night watchman. Possibly, rumors were promoted by the large number of charred bones found in the ashes—which was no wonder, considering the type of factory it had been. The burned-out buildings were beyond repair and for a time, despite the fence and strict “keep out” signs, they remained an attractive place for the town’s boys who were looking for adventure, creepy stories and dismal souvenirs like chains and meat hooks or the aforementioned charred bones—until one of these boys fell down into the basement and broke his backbone. His friends were frightened and ran away and the boy lay there in dirty ice-cold water for almost a day before the search began. When he was finally rescued, he was still alive and conscious—but the way he looked made even hard-boiled police officers shudder: while the kid was lying there paralyzed and helpless, rats gnawed his face and almost completely chewed off his fingers.

What became of the ill-fated boy was unclear. Some said that he died in the hospital of blood poisoning. Others said that doctors saved him, but, as they added, mournfully shaking their heads, “It would have been better for him if he had died, much better.” It was known for sure only that soon after his accident his family left town.

This terrible story—and the mass outrage of the town’s parents caused by it—made the city authorities demolish the scorched ruins at last. The grounds remained vacant for many years, enclosed by a chain link fence; the tin plates fastened to it which promised a penalty for trespassing and for garbage dumping rusted and peeled off so badly that their stern warnings became almost unreadable. Several times the site was offered for sale, but the town’s businessmen, knowing its history, weren’t eager to set up their businesses there. Over the years, however, the gloomy story of the meat factory was remembered less and less and many young people of the new generation, including Jane (who had just reached her eighteenth birthday), never even heard about it. And now, apparently, the grounds were leased to the traveling carnival.

The idea to come here in the morning also belonged to Jane, as she hoped that mornings would have fewer visitors. And she had been right—the carnival was almost deserted. Most likely, the reason was not so much the almost-forgotten reputation of the grounds as much as the cloudy and windy weather and the lack of advertizing. There were no lines to get on any of the rides, but it was necessary to wait for another reason: the workers didn’t want to run their whirligigs and cars half-empty and wouldn’t start the rides before a number of customers had gathered.

This didn’t discourage Jane. Nothing prevented her from chatting cheerfully with Mike, who of course wasn’t content with the role of purse keeper and willy-nilly accompanied her on her dizzying rides. The young people consistently paid their tribute to all spinning and twisting units, excluding only the simplest carrousels for little kids (but, certainly, including “Sky Ship” on the long bar which made the loops so disliked by Mike; at the top point, hanging upside down in an open cabin, Jane shrieked, and then began to laugh loudly; Mike only nervously squeezed the safety bar and thought “when will this end?”); practiced in accuracy, shooting with air-rifles and crossbows and throwing balls in a ring; tried to walk inside transparent plastic spheres floating in a pool (it turned out, naturally, not so much walking as falling); made a “space flight” in a cabin with a screen, which was shaking and heeling in all directions according to the action on the screen; ate cotton candy and popcorn; were photographed dressed as pirates and cowboys with the corresponding scenery in the background; wriggled in front of fun house mirrors and…

“Well, looks like we’ve done everything here,” Mike uttered, glancing towards the exit.

“Wait,” Jane objected, once again stopping at the carnival map near the cash booth. “Hmm, it does look like everything,” she disappointedly concluded.

“So, let’s leave?”

“First I need to pee,” declared Jane; she didn’t trouble herself with euphemisms like “to powder my nose.” Having found the restroom icon on the map, she resolutely moved in the chosen direction.

Mike didn’t have the same need. While cola was sold at the carnival, it was ice cold, and on this overcast day Mike hadn’t wanted any, while Jane drank up a big plastic cup. So he remained in place, absent-mindedly looking around. By 3 p.m., the carnival gradually had become filled with visitors. They were mostly parents with little children or they were small companies of boys about twelve or thirteen years old. Adult guys with their girlfriends, like Mike and Jane, were still rare—they would come closer to the evening… Reacting to the increase in visitors, disguised barkers appeared in the thin crowd. One of them, a fat clown with a red smile drawn on his white face, seemed to feel Mike’s gaze from a distance of several yards and suddenly turned to him, conspiratorially winked and beckoned him with a finger.

Mike politely smiled as if to say, “Thanks, mister, but I already visited your tent.” The clown nodded as if he understood, turned and moved away, but then looked back and beckoned again.

“What does he want from me?” Mike wondered and even looked back, checking whether there was somebody behind him to whom the clown had been gesturing. But he didn’t see anybody looking towards the clown. Mike looked towards where the clown had been, but didn’t see him any longer—probably the barker had disappeared behind the backs of the walking visitors or entered the nearest tent. Very well, let him disappear. There was something unpleasant about this character, though Mike couldn’t say what exactly. However, he had disliked clowns since his childhood, finding their appearance not at all funny but ugly.

Jane had disappeared somewhere, too. Why is she dawdling so long? Probably there is a line waiting to get into the restroom. Mike slowly moved in the same direction his girlfriend had gone—and in the same direction, as he understood a second later, the clown had beckoned him. Mike gazed around in order not to miss the girl and realized he would feel calmer if he could see to which attraction the clown enticed people. Fun house, probably? But it was in the opposite direction… For an instant it seemed to Mike that he saw the clown directly ahead once more, but in the next moment the barker disappeared again.

Without having seen either the red-lipped fat man or Jane, Mike reached the restroom area located in the farthest corner of the carnival. There were mobile booths, not a stationary building. And there was no waiting line there. Actually, there was not a single person.

Mike looked around. Just a moment ago the crowd around him had rustled, rides’ mighty electric motors had roared, girls had shrieked as they rose head over heels to the sky, wild buffoonery tunes had played—and suddenly he found himself absolutely alone, in a completely desolate part of the former waste grounds. Actually, why former? Here it didn’t look former at all… No, the fun was still near; choral squeals, persuasive melody and the clap of air-rifles reached his ears—but he was separated from all this joy by the wall of a long shed with a stenciled black inscription “Employees only” across the door, a trailer with lowered window blinds nearby, a long truck next to it (probably one of those which carried the equipment), one more behind it… This part of the grounds overgrew with rigid bushes which were cut only partially; toilet booths were, of course, on the cleared patch, but right behind them the thickets shot up above human height. To the left of the booths, a recently embedded wooden post stuck out, which, however, had neither a lamp nor a loud-speaker. In the grass under Mike’s feet a plastic bottle unpleasantly crackled—apparently it had lain here for years. Slightly farther a yellowish scrap of an old newspaper could be seen… But where was Jane?!

“Mike!”

He startled and looked about. The girl appeared from behind the booths.

“Good that you came. I knew that we hadn’t visited everything here yet!” she stated with a happy look.

“Yeah, exactly, we hadn’t visited the toilet,” Mike grinned.

“Forget the toilet! Come here.”

The young man took several steps, bypassing toilets at the left, and saw behind them a narrow pass which led somewhere into the thickets. But Jane pointed to the post. Now Mike made out a small sign hanging on it. On a plywood sheet a thick black contour of an arrow was drawn, and inside it it was written in deliberately sloppy red letters: “CAVE of HORROR” Below the arrow was a very naturalistic print of a blood-stained palm. The arrow pointed directly to the pass.

“One more attraction? Here?” Mike skeptically looked at the narrow path between prickly bushes. Usually such paths lead, at best, to a garbage dump.

“Yes. Let’s go!” she impatiently grasped his hand and pulled him along.

“What for?” Mike resisted. “Like, you’ve never seen anything similar before. They’ll just ride you in a car through a shed filled by plastic skeletons and vampire dummies, flashing red lights and howling loudspeakers… it seems to me, such a primitive display doesn’t affect even children anymore. In the movies all that looks much more plausible.”

“Well, now that we’re here, shouldn’t we look? Maybe it has some good special effects!” Jane was quite decided about it and the young man, having sighed, followed his girlfriend.

As far as Mike understood, the surrounding fence should have been very close, but the path appeared longer than he expected—for some reason it was wedged through the interlacing prickly branches in a very winding way. But then, at last, bushes parted—and the couple indeed saw a chain link fence. Behind it, the same bushes densely grew, too. But on the inner side a wide spot was cleared, and there stood one more building.

It looked like all of them in any carnival. A long shed decorated with paper-mache stones in an effort to make it look like a cave; the forward wall was covered with garish images of corpses, skulls, bats and freaks with blood-stained hatchets. Above this all—the attraction’s name in convex red letters, stylized to blood streaks and obviously highlighted from within in the evening. Below—the rails on which cars enter the “cave” at the left and exit it from the right.

There were only two cars and they were just preparing for departure; the forward one was occupied by a mother with a boy about eleven, who surely was a big fan of horror movies and the initiator of the ride (the woman herself had a displeased look); in the back car a single young guy, swarthy, with long black hair, was taking a seat. The attraction worker—thin, with a loppy dark mustache, dressed in an old-fashioned black suit—a living image of a provincial coffin maker from an old movie—was waiting, with his hand on a knife switch, until the last passenger sat down.

“Wait!” Jane shouted, quickening her pace. “Wait for us!” The cars were four-seater so there still was room for them.

The “coffin maker” raised his head and looked at her and Mike; the girl, approaching, stretched to him a ticket bought at the cash booth which granted the right to ride all attractions in the carnival during this day. But he only shook his head:

“A separate ticket is required for us, miss.”

“Separate? What the hell? We paid for everything…” Jane began to argue, but the worker mildly interrupted her:

“Those are the rules, miss. There are some formalities. You have to sign a paper,” he smiled an apologetic mournful smile, clearly showing that personally he, of course, considered all this as nonsense, but this was the will of his bosses. Mike noticed that there was something old-fashioned in his manner of speech, too.

“Paper?” Jane became puzzled. “What paper?”

“You see, our attraction is really frightful,” he highlighted the word “really” with his voice. “Some clients consider that it is too frightful. Therefore, in order to avoid complaints…”

“Well, all right,” the girl gave up. “Where can we get tickets and sign this paper?”

“At the cash booth, miss,” he pointed with his hand, emphasizing that he meant not at all the main cash booth of the carnival. “At our cash booth.”

Jane and Mike turned right and indeed saw a booth with a window. The “coffin maker” meanwhile turned the switch and the cars, having abruptly started, disappeared in the black mouth of the “cave.”

Mike and Jane approached the cash booth and bent to the window. The person sitting inside seemed unpleasant to Mike from the very first look. Unshaven and tousled, he looked too slovenly even for his modest position and his left eye, significantly squinting somewhere aside from under the heavy eyelid, only strengthened the unpleasant impression.

“Twenty dollars,” he responded to a request for two tickets. “And you have to sign here,” he offered them two sheets of paper.

“I am visiting the attraction ‘Cave of Horror’ of my own will, having received this warning and assuming all risks,” Mike’s eyes slid through his copy of the text. “Except for cases of technical malfunction of the attraction, the administration and employees of the carnival bear no responsibility for possible moral, mental or physical damage which may become a consequence of my visit to the attraction, as well as for the case of my disappearance…”

“What kind of bull is this?” Mike exclaimed indignantly.

“Oh, never mind,” Jane waved his objection away with the look of a life-wise person. “It’s an advertizing gimmick, don’t you understand? To frighten us in advance… Do you have a pen, mister?” she addressed the cashier. He gave her a pen with an indifferent gesture.

“Wait a moment, don’t sign!” Mike exclaimed. “What do you mean by ‘advertizing gimmick?’ Do you understand that these pieces of paper relieve them from any responsibility for any accident there inside?”

“Oh, what accidents?” Jane objected. “That’s not a roller coaster or a ‘Sky Ship’ after all. You said yourself—they’ll give us a ride in a car between dummies… what can happen to us?”

“You never know! Short circuit, for example. Or some scarecrow could fall on our heads…”

“But it says here—’except technical malfunction!’ And also, do you really think that if somebody really disappeared here, they would have gotten away with it, whatever pieces of paper we’ve signed?”

“And how often here do, well, disappearances happen?” Mike asked the cashier, trying to give a derisive tone to his voice.

“Time to time,” the squinty-eyed man unperturbably answered. Jane burst into laughter and put a flourish on the sheet.

“Come on, Mikey,” she jabbed her elbow into his side. “Don’t be chicken.”

“I’m not chicken at all!” Mike was indignant. “I simply don’t like this silly piece of paper or all this foolish business. To pay them twenty bucks moreover… it’s actually a swindle—when we bought the tickets, we weren’t warned that there are rides for which they can’t be used…”

“Well, let me pay for you,” Jane pulled out her wallet from a pocket of her jeans. The unsaid end of the sentence—“if you are such a cheapskate”—was as clear as if it were written in the air in an oval near her head, like in comics; so Mike muttered “no need” and with an angry look wrote his signature.

At the very same time a heart-breaking scream came from within the “cave.”

The pen jerked in Mike’s hand, leaving a virgule on the paper.

“Aha, and you said—even a child wouldn’t be scared!” Jane vindictively reminded him.

“Well, of course—recorded screams from loudspeakers,” grumbled Mike. “Only it was too loud and unexpected. If it was so loud here, I bet those inside were totally deafened.”

Actually there was something else that confused him. The shout full of horror and pain sounded too natural. Well, however, if the owners of the attraction had hired a good actor… Yes, that was the main strangeness—an actor, not an actress. Such cries are always female: the girl in monster’s claws is the tritest cliche of the genre… But this shout was male.

Having received the money and the signed papers, the cashier issued them two tickets. On a low-quality gray paper it was printed:

CAVE OF HORROR

You will SCREAM!

We guarantee it.

Below small letters added:

Discount at revisit. Bring your friends!

Mike hemmed, derisively shaking his head, and the young people went towards the building. Just when they approached, the exit doors of the “cave” swung open, and the car rolled out. Only one car.

The one in which mother and son sat. The child’s face and rounded eyes shone with excitement. The woman, on the contrary, was deadly pale and looked as if she was barely constraining nausea.

“You shouldn’t show such things!” she said between her teeth to the “coffin maker” as she tried to get out from the seat; her long dress hindered her. “Especially to children!”

“Ma’am, you signed the paper that you were warned and have no claims,” the worker sadly reminded. “And it seems to me your son doesn’t have any complaints, too”

“Wow, it was cool!” the boy immediately confirmed.

“Keep the ticket,” the worker smiled at him. “You will be able to ride again at a discount. And if you also bring a friend…”

“No riding again!” the woman angrily interrupted. “And you, Cyril Parker, I’ll talk with you at home! About what you read and what you watch if you can like… such…” she, at last, coped with her dress and stepped from the platform to the ground. Immediately after that she turned towards Mike and Jane. “Get out of here before it’s too late, you two,” she uttered categorically. “It’s… disgusting. Now I probably won’t be able to eat for several days…”

But Mike didn’t look at her. He was looking at the second car which, at last, left the “cave” at high speed, crashed with a clang in the already vacated first one and stopped.

The car was empty. And all splashed with blood.

On the seat where the guy once had sat, sleekly gleamed a whole pool which seemed almost black. And from the board of the car something hung down, long and fibrous… Hair. Black tufts stuck together with blood.

That’s not real blood, Mike reminded to himself. Just paint. All this is scenery, part of the attraction. But where did the guy go?

“Ma’am!” Mike called the woman who was already stepping away, without looking back, dragging her child by hand; even her back expressed outrage. “Where is the young man who sat behind you?”

“But isn’t he…” she turned back; her glance fell to the second car, and her eyes widened, though from such a distance she hardly could have made out the details. “I don’t know what’s going on here,” she murmured. “You had better demand your money back.”

“Didn’t you hear his scream? It was he who screamed, wasn’t it?” Mike insisted.

“There were many screams… Come on, Cyril!”

And they disappeared among high bushes.

“Okay then,” the young man turned to the “coffin maker.” “Let’s consider that you almost frightened us. Now where did you put that guy after all?”

“I am afraid that he has gone,” the “coffin maker” made a helpless gesture with an apologetic smile. “This happens sometimes.”

“What do you mean by ‘has gone?’ Where has he gone?”

“It is a cave of horror, you know. Sometimes people don’t come back from there. Especially if the car detaches or gets trapped in the tunnel.”

“Bravo!” derisively praised Jane. “‘Never break character,’ huh?”

The “coffin maker” smiled again, this time silently.

“I don’t like all this,” Mike muttered.

“Chuck it, Mikey!” the girl exclaimed. “The guy is a shill, don’t you understand? He probably exited through a back door. Or stayed inside, quickly put on makeup, and will frighten us now as a ‘blood-stained corpse.’ A clever idea,” she praised the “coffin maker.” “I’ve seen ‘rooms of horror’ with live actors, but never those who pretend to be casual visitors.”

The worker continued smiling silently.

“Yes, but I don’t want to ruin my clothes with that mess,” Mike nodded at the “blood-stained” car.

“Do not worry about it,” hastily said the “coffin maker.” “We will clean it up. And you meanwhile please sit down in the forward car.”

Jane didn’t make the worker ask her twice and stepped over a low board. Mike willy-nilly sat beside her. The “coffin maker” lowered the safety bar which latched and pressed them into their seats, as if they were going to ride on steep hills instead of a flat floor.

“Don’t try to stand up or to grab anything during movement. Inside it is forbidden to take photos or to make other records,” he warned them and turned the knife switch. The car lurched forward, having unmercifully jarred the passengers, and several seconds later dived into thick darkness.

At first they moved in total darkness and silence; the silence was unnaturally dense, wadded, absorbing even the sound of the electric motor. Then suddenly from the darkness ahead a desperate shriek came, this time female; now both Jane and Mike shuddered. Almost immediately from somewhere at the left a groan full of pain and hopeless despair responded to it; it slowly faded away and then on the right someone moaned as if trying to beg for something through a gag—probably, it was a very young girl… or even a child? And then Mike smelled a heavy, sticky stench and at the next moment—still in the same utter darkness—his face plunged into something like a dense web.

Mike had arachnophobia since his childhood and would rather have put his bare hand into a dirty toilet bowl than touch a web; his throat immediately spasmed in disgust and he desperately jerked his head, trying to escape from the nasty thing. As if having caught this movement, the car abruptly stopped, then rolled back a bit and stopped again. At the next instant a bright flash lit up what they had just ridden into.

And it was not a web.

Over the rails a long-ago decayed and dried-out corpse hung heels over head; most likely it was a women, or maybe a young girl—at such stage of decomposition it was difficult to discern an age. In any case, the victim had once had magnificent, voluminous, and long hair. Now only thin, fragile locks covered with dust remained; that was “the web.” The victim was tied by barbed wire which deeply gnawed into the decayed flesh; here and there yellowed bones showed through ruptures in the browned skin. But the most terrible was the overturned face covered with a wrinkled parchment of dried-out skin: the mouth, open in a silent scream, showed rotten jaws; in place of the decomposed nose, there was a triangular hole divided by a vertical partition; gaping eye sockets resembled nibbled burrows. And the main thing, everywhere—in the mouth, in the nose, in the eye sockets—writhed small white worms. The head actually swarmed with them.

Yes, they weren’t just motionless fake worms as it would be natural for a dummy. They were moving—in those three or four seconds when the light shone, Mike and Jane saw this clearly. And then the car jerked forward again, and they had to pass through her hair once more, now seeing distinctly what it was. And, no matter how they tried to turn their heads away, the dusty locks touched their faces again (mostly Mike’s; Jane was only lightly brushed on her cheek). And then the light went out again.

From somewhere of the cave depths new groans sounded.

“Damn”… murmured Jane in the gloom while the car carried them further. “You were right, we shouldn’t have…”

Someone’s cold and wet hand touched her shoulder. The girl screamed. And the other hand at the same time touched Mike’s shoulder.

The car stopped again and then suddenly turned in place—obviously, here the rails passed through a turntable. Again a directional light flashed, pulling out from the darkness what they had just disturbed.

It was a corpse, too, but this time, seemingly, male (though its back was turned to them, so it was difficult to say with full confidence) and not dried out but, on the contrary, inflated. The dead person had been rather fat even during his lifetime, but now his swollen body covered with cadaveric lividities and, apparently, ready to burst and splash out the purulent swill which had accumulated under its skin, looked especially disgusting. It was also suspended heels over head—or, more exactly, heels over neck, because the head was absent. Two meat hooks, hanging down from a ceiling on long chains, pierced its ankles from behind, having snagged the sinews. The dead man hung on these sinews stretched from its flesh by the weight of the bulky body like on terrible slings and long stains of dried-up blood—extending from the hooks covered with brown crust down along his legs which were like huge sausages—showed that he had been still alive when his flesh had been pierced.

His hands, which had touched Mike and Jane, still slightly waved, weaker and weaker. Then they stopped. The car stayed motionless, too. Then the light again went out.

“Move, damn it…” Mike murmured. As if having heard him, the car began to vibrate slightly—and suddenly the motor died again with an unpleasant metal clang. A clear smell of burned insulation added to the cadaveric stench. Engine failure? As if that wasn’t enough!

“Hey!” the young man shouted into the darkness. “Hey, there’s a problem! Get us out of here!”

The light flashed, lighting up again the headless body hanging ahead of them, absolutely motionless. And suddenly the hands of the cadaver stretched to the terror-numbed passengers, blindly rummaging in the air and narrowly missing their faces. From somewhere above came a grinding noise and the chains shook and began to move, dragging the ugly hulk even closer…

Jane recoiled, then tried to jump out of the stuck car, but the tightly fastened safety bar, as durable as on “Sky Ship,” held her to the seat. Mike hammered his fist on the metal nose of the car as if hoping to jolt the motor to life. Certainly, it was useless. But when the hands of the corpse were just about to touch them, gear wheels clanged above, pulling the chains up and the body crept upward, still clenching and unclenching its fingers in vain attempts to seize the people remaining below. Right then the turntable turned the car again and the recovered motor carried them forward.

Only now Mike realized how fast his heart was beating. “Phew, nonsense!” he confoundedly thought. “After all it’s just a doll! Very realistic, but…”

Actually, exactly these attempts of “the cadaver” to seize them should have acted to calm him at once. A headless body can’t wave hands. At least, not at this stage of decomposition. So, all this is not real. To tell the truth, after the first corpse he had subconscious doubts—that body looked so… natural…

But the stench? Obviously, also a trick. As well as the smell of the burned insulation, intended to convince them that the motor was malfunctioning.

The darkness was pierced by screams again, this time a man’s, and light appeared left ahead—not bright white but dim crimson. The light came from a niche inlaid with stones; the car passed it by at reduced speed, but this time without stopping, and the passengers saw a scene which probably represented a torture chamber of the Middle Ages. An emaciated man was stretched on a vertical rack and the executioner, naked from the waist up and in a round red cap hiding his face, methodically ripped off the prisoner’s skin with big pincers. And it wasn’t a static scene at all… The head of the unfortunate man was already skinned completely, having become a wet-gleaming crimson globe; Mike saw in horror how the absolutely round eyes, deprived of eyelids, were moving in eye-sockets, watching the passing car; from a lipless mouth, together with shouts, blood splashed out—apparently, the man’s tongue had been ripped out. The executioner meanwhile flayed the victim’s hand, pulling the skin off like a long glove. When the car had almost passed by, the executioner momentarily interrupted his business, suddenly turned back and waved to the passengers with the pincers. Jane screamed, having realized that his red cap actually was the skin just ripped off the head of the victim and turned inside out…

Again they moved in complete darkness with an accompaniment of screams and moans; then from the right, very close to them, came a sound like a dental drill. But, when black curtains opened near the car, it appeared to be a much larger tool.

A young man, probably even a teenager, was nailed to a wooden cross. More precisely, not even nailed. Screwed. He got more than Christ: in his arms and legs not less than two dozen huge screws were fastened. And the one who did it—a well-fed man in blood-splashed coveralls—wasn’t going to stop: at that moment he used an electric drill to bore the victim’s knee caps. The victim couldn’t even shout: a wooden gag was hammered into his mouth and fixed with nails through his bottom jaw.

The car moved further. A new scene: a kitchen table covered with a cheerful cloth, to which a heavily pregnant young woman was tied by thin wire which ripped the skin of her wrists and ankles. Her bottom jaw was completely torn off; the fallen-out tongue—unexpectedly big from the point of view of those who have never seen before a human tongue as a whole—resembled a fat dead mollusk. And a slovenly hairy and bearded man furiously used a long, sharp-ended kitchen knife to stab, stab, stab her huge pregnant belly. With each blow, from the torn-apart hole which once was the woman’s mouth a blood clot splashed out. But this was not the most terrible. It was clearly visible as under the skin of her belly, tightly straining it now here, then there, large bulges convulsively moved. The fetus was still alive—though, in principle, even a single stab should have been fatal—and each time when the knife pierced in, the fetus writhed and wriggled. Now a hand, then a foot stretched the mother’s belly so much that it appeared just about to burst—especially taking into account that it already had cuts which drew as crimson holes; and at the moment when the car started moving again, Mike distinctly saw through the skin the features of a face with a wide-open mouth, pressing from within…

Nausea was rising to his throat, but the young man still couldn’t look away. When they dived into darkness again, Mike closed his eyes and decided not to open them till the exit. But when almost at his ear a strange sucking-squelching sound was heard, he couldn’t restrain himself and looked.

At first the beam of light was very narrow, and Mike saw only a tender girl’s belly, pierced by a steel spike. This way the girl was nailed to a concrete column. Sweat flowed down her pale skin, mixing with blood below the spike. Then the beam slipped up, and the passengers of the car saw why the victim could neither scream nor even groan: her mouth and nostrils were tightly sewn up with rough thread. In order to let the unfortunate being breathe, her throat was pierced by a tube, like for a tracheotomy; this tube was the source of that sound. She began to breathe faster when she saw that the car stopped very close to her; her eyes looked at Mike and Jane with entreaty. It seemed to Mike, according to the movement of her shoulders, that she tried to stretch hands to them… and then the beam became wider, and the passengers of the car saw with shudder that she had no hands. Her right arm was chopped off almost up to the shoulder, the left one—a little above the elbow. Her legs had been cut asymmetrically as well—only there the longest stump was the right one, reaching the knee. The skin on the ends of the stumps was pulled together by the same rough thread. The victim stretched the remnants of her limbs in a vain attempt to touch Jane who was sitting closer to her; Jane involuntarily recoiled as far as the narrow car allowed. However, the stumps lacked several inches of reaching her anyway.

And then steps were heard from behind. Someone approached in a shuffling plod. Mike and Jane turned their heads round. At first they could not discern anything; then in the gloom a bulky silhouette appeared. From somewhere below smoldering crimson light beamed up; the face of the figure remained shadowed, but it was possible to clearly distinguish heavy boots, dirty jeans under an apron (once white, now covered with brown spots) and, the main thing, an ax on a long handle at the end of a brawny arm. An ax from which something seeming almost black in such lighting was dripping…

Strangely enough, seeing this person who was without any haste approaching the motionless car, Mike felt calmer again. A maniac with an ax, what a trite cliche… they could think up something more original… He looked at the heavy figure with a smile, even when the latter came very close and brought his ax over his head…

And then the ax fell upon Jane.

Everything happened in fractions of a second. The girl desperately screamed. Mike clumsily jerked, moved by opposite reflexes—to intercept the heavy edge falling on his girlfriend and to move as far away from it as possible… but in any case from such a position—pressed to a seat by the safety bar and turning his head back—he could do nothing. A bump, a wet crunch of a split bone, Jane’s shriek…

Mike stiffened; his brain refused to process the events. Probably, about three seconds passed until he understood that his girlfriend was still sitting next to him, alive and unharmed. She had shouted just with fear. At the last moment the ax had changed its direction and fallen upon the mutilated victim on the column, having truncated the longer remnant of her leg by several inches. From a stump blood gushed, and from the tube thrust in her throat hoarse hissing came—the only sound that replaced a scream from her…

The butcher turned again to the passengers of the car, raising his ax. Now most of his face got into the beam of light directed at the nailed victim. Mike’s eye was first of all caught by grinning big yellow teeth and an unshaven chin. Jane squealed again. She really, really wasn’t sure that the next blow would not hit her.

And Mike wasn’t confident in it anymore, either.

The ax began to fall again. But at the very same time the car sharply moved ahead. The sound of the blow—this time ringing, as the ax hit the steel rail—came from behind the car.

The butcher hollowly muttered something and ran after them.

He moved not too quickly, but the car also, after the initial jerk, rode only slightly quicker than a fast-walking person. The light was left behind; now around them there was darkness again which was filled with painful groans and agonizing screams, and behind thumped the tread of the butcher who was gradually reducing the distance. At last his steps began to sound very close, right behind where Jane was sitting—it seemed, the ax could crash down from the darkness at any moment. But the car accelerated again, leaving the maniac behind. The latter, however, sped up—his boots began stamping faster, approaching again. “It’s all fake,” Mike told himself. “He’ll purposefully almost catch up to us, and at the last moment fall back again…”

The ax with a clang hit the board of the car only few inches short of Jane’s elbow.

“Shit!” she yelled. “That could have been my arm!”

Yes, Mike understood suddenly. After all, everything had happened in the darkness. This man, an actor or whoever, couldn’t see that Jane’s arm wasn’t there…

The car accelerated anew, but then the heavy footfalls began to overtake it again.

“Look!” suddenly cried Jane.

Mike, who had twisted his head back in vain attempts to see the butcher, looked forward—and saw the blood-red letters “EXIT” flashing in the darkness. The car rushed straight towards them. “At last,” Mike thought with relief. Then the speed decreased, but only a couple of yards remained to the exit. An instant more—and…

The floor under them yawned, and they flew down.

A second later—a second filled with their joint scream—they understood that it was not a free fall but only a descent on a high-speed elevator. Then a short overload—the pay for zero gravity during the first instant of the descent—pressed them hard to the seats, and the car rolled forward to the bottom of… a pit? a mine? a well? They heard the elevator go up again, having left them in utter darkness.

The slaughterhouse basement, thought Mike who, unlike Jane, had heard this story in his childhood. And he even clearly pictured what they would see when the light turned on again: the paralyzed boy lying in a dirty pool, being eaten alive by rats. The boy, whose body already had been turned into entirely bloody meat— knobby, pitted, bearing only a faint resemblance to a human being—and lots of sharp teeth continuously tearing it, ripping off new small pieces…

But from the darkness no rat peep reached. Only some quiet, spasmodic scraping. And Mike felt—though he couldn’t realize why—how this low, subtle sound made his hair move on his head.

Light, unsteady and wavering, came on, and they indeed saw a boy. But not that one—according to the legend, the victim of rats was white, while this boy was black. Tears flowed down his cheeks, but he couldn’t scream. He was impaled on a long vertical stake which came out from his mouth. All that he could do was to gnaw this thick round wooden pole covered with blood and contents of his intestines; it was his teeth which made that sound. The stake, more than two yards high, was gnawed starting from the top—but now the boy had slipped down it almost to the floor. However, he had no chance to touch the floor with his feet—the base of the stake was too wide.

The flickering light became more and more bright, eventually lighting up not only the stake, but also the vault around. It was indeed a big vault with high concrete arch and blank walls. There were neither corridors nor doors leading outside. The rails ended only few yards ahead. And on these rails stood… other cars. Of the same design, but very old, rusted, overgrown with dust, dirt, and webs. And these cars weren’t empty. In horror Mike and Jane looked at the pale-yellow skulls (on one of them earphones still hung, on another one a baseball cap remained), at the tatter of clothing hanging down from the ribs… it looked like nobody could get out from under the safety bars pressing them to the seats…

“So this is where those who disappear come!” thought shocked Mike… and immediately called himself an idiot. The carnival had arrived in town just a few days ago—how the hell could there be skeletons and rust?! Stage set, everything here is only trickery!

As if in reply to his thought, something began clanging above. The young people jerked up their heads and saw how from the high ceiling of the vault, unwinding on the fly, right upon them heavy chains with hooks on the ends were falling. It seemed that these hooks would fall directly on their heads, but they flew sideways—two at the left and two at the right—and hollowly tinkled against the car boards. And then… then suddenly from under the car bottom an ugly hand leaned out—covered with scars and lacking phalanxes of two fingers (probably, there was a hatch below which had opened absolutely silently)—and began to fasten the hooks to steel loops under the bottom which Mike and Jane hadn’t even noticed when they were taking seats in the car. As soon as the last hook took its place, the chains stretched and jerkily dragged the car up. Having come off the floor, it began to rock back and forth, which was only promoted by the uneven movement of the chains. Halfway up, the mechanism got even more out of sync; the left chains began to pull faster than the right ones, tilting the car more and more to one side; Jane who appeared above screamed in fear again, grabbing Mike’s hand. The young man looked down and understood that they were rocking right over the stake sticking out below. If the safety bar which held them were to suddenly open…

But the safety bar didn’t open. Chains dragged the car upward, into the blackness of the open hatch—and there, at last, leveled and then, having carried the car slightly forward, settled it on the rails. The hooks clanked, detaching. The car rode again through darkness—but not to the exit (the deceptive burning letters weren’t seen any more) but to the next victim.

It was again a woman or a girl—it was impossible to say more definitely. She stood, held by braided rubber restraints on a plane slightly slanted back (to Mike’s mind came the term “exhibition mount”), spread like a laboratory frog. Comparing to her, the guy who was skinned alive could consider himself lucky. She had no face any more. It was cut off completely, to the bone—while flesh on each side of the head was left untouched; the bared skull in this meat frame looked especially terrible. But worst of all was the fact it was a skull of an alive person. The balls of lidless eyes, all in blood streaks of the burst vessels, randomly moved in bone eye-sockets, vainly trying to avoid the beam of a spotlight striking directly into them; through a hole on the place of her former nose frequent breath was heard; the bottom jaw powerlessly drooped, however, when the car approached, it twitched—the unfortunate being tried to say something, but the remains of her chewing muscles were not enough for this purpose. Her tongue still moved in the mouth, but neither Mike nor Jane could understand the lowing-howling sounds… Her body had been treated the same as her head: all frontal flesh was cut off. In the bright light of the spotlight it was clearly visible through the ribs how her heart was beating and her lungs were inflating and deflating. All abdominal organs were also exhibited; they didn’t fall out—probably, due to the back-slanted position of the body. Arms and legs had undergone the same vivisection; the scraped-out white bones glistened in the surrounding of yellowish fat layers and crimson muscles…

Mike saw how some thickening was slowly moving in her intestines, and convulsively bent over a board in a spasm of vomiting. The car jerked and rolled further, without giving him time to finish. The young man tightly shut his eyes and promised himself again, now even more definitely, not to open them until they get outside.

And he honestly kept the promise even when from the right a disgusting smell of burned meat stank (the terrible heartrending groans couldn’t muffle the hissing of fat dripping in fire, and Mike felt close heat by his cheek) as well as when on the left children—four or five simultaneously—began to squeal stridently. But when Jane cried “No! No! Stop!” he nevertheless opened his eyes.

This time the victim was neither at the left nor at the right. He lay directly on the rails. A very young fellow—about seven years younger than Mike. His hands and feet were buried in two massive concrete cubes on both sides of the track, and the car was just about to roll its wheels over his stomach and chest. The bleeding furrows indented into the boy’s flesh indicated this would not be the first time a car ran over him. Of course, a carnival ride car is not a railway car and not even a road vehicle, so it improbably weighed more than five hundred pounds together with the passengers—but that was also not so little, especially when it rolled over already broken bones and unprotected crushed belly…

The boy raised his head and looked at the car with muddy pained eyes in which useless entreaty was read. Naturally, they had no opportunity to stop. Jane shouted once again “Stop it!” but at the next moment they felt a slight jolt, and under the wheels it disgustingly crunched and squished. The guy screamed—in a thin, absolutely childish voice. They were not just spectators anymore—now, although involuntarily, they became accomplices…

Fortunately, ahead the exit appeared. This time, seemingly, it was the real one—daylight loomed from there. Yes, the gates of the cave were opening to set them free…

But at this moment chains clanged again, and something fell from above. It fell and waggled on chains ahead of them, blocking the way.

It was a girl. More precisely, part of a girl. Mike’s gaze slid down her body—from her wrists pierced through by meat hooks, to her face, suffused with tears and framed with sweat-stuck curly locks, but still beautiful, to her dirty bra, and below… below she was not even cut but torn in half. From the bottom ribs a long tatter of skin and shreds of exfoliated meat hung down, and between them was the wet sack of her stomach, similar to a deflated balloon, drawn down by the heavy tangle of her guts. Below it there was nothing at all. And the car was just about to stick its nose in this tangle and then the passengers would have to literally nuzzle into what was above…

But at this moment the car braked hard. Mike and Jane swayed forward; their faces appeared in just two feet from the torn girl.

Her eyelids rose and the bitten lips moved.

“Please”… she whispered. “Help me…”

“How?” Mike squeezed out from himself.

“Kill me…”

“How?” the young man repeated, looking around in embarrassment. But she either couldn’t speak more or didn’t know the answer. The car started again, but at the same moment the chains rapidly dragged the victim up into the darkness. Her dangling guts missed Jane’s face only by inches.

And several seconds later the car rolled out of the cave under the sky of cloudy day, quickly passed along the cave’s forward wall and finally stopped.

There was nobody around—neither near the platform nor at the cash booth. There were no new visitors and even the mustached “coffin maker” was absent. Probably he appeared (from where?) only when new clients approached. The safety bar automatically clicked, opening.

Jane stepped out to the platform the first. Mike initially remained in his seat, believing that it was necessary to wait for the worker, but then followed his girlfriend.

Clouds were crawling on the low sky. A gush of cold wind tousled grass, dragged trash over it—a paper cup, a torn plastic bag… some gray piece of paper, too—probably a used ticket. There was still not a single living being around and there was no sound, not even from the “cave” behind them. Jane stood motionless.

“Let’s get out of here,” Mike said almost dragging her to the path through bushes. In his mouth the sour taste of puke still remained.

“Do you… you think what I think?” the girl asked while they were winding among prickly thickets.

“It can’t be real!” Mike exclaimed. “Skillfully made dummies with motors… yes, very skillfully, I’ve never seen anything like… for a moment I did believe…” considering the vomited lunch, to deny the last would be silly.

“Dummies?! Did you see their faces? Their eyes and everything else?”

“Well, probably, some are dummies, and some are live actors…”

“Actors, sure. Well, blood, ripped skin, screws, the stake—all right, all are makeup and special effects. But the chopped-off limbs? How can you fake that?”

“Mirrors. Especially since it was dark there. We saw only what was illuminated.”

“And the last one? We passed directly under her! There were no mirrors there—nothing that would make it possible to hide the bottom half of a woman!”

“Listen”, Mike stopped and turned to Jane. “Even assuming that they really do such things in front of lots of witnesses… do you think that anyone can live after being torn in half? Unless he’s an earthworm, of course…”

“That’s not funny.”

“And I’m not laughing. I don’t know how this trick was done, but…”

“Well…” murmured Jane after a pause, “of course, yes… it must be some trick… but… it was so real…”

“I told you—we shouldn’t have gone in there,” Mike muttered. “Now we may have nightmares about it…”

They finally got out of the thickets. No one was visible here either. But once they passed the toilets, a door slapped open behind them.

At another time, Mike wouldn’t have looked at the person leaving such a place, but now he shuddered and rapidly turned back.

In front of the booths the clown stood. The same one, with the drawn red smile. He stood motionless and silent, looking at them.

Certainly, there was no reason to stop and it would be more logical just to continue on their way, but Mike suddenly stepped forward.

“And?” he aggressively inquired. “What?”

The clown kept his silence and didn’t move. In Mike’s mind flashed the foolish thought that he was a dummy, too.

“What are you staring at?” Mike raised his tone and moved ahead with the look of a person ready to fight—though actually he never was combative. Jane turned back, too, stepped after him and grabbed his elbow to prevent a scrap.

The clown with the sudden gesture of a magician took out from nowhere a small notebook and offered it to the girl.

“Oh… thank you very much,” she said, taking the notebook and pushing it into a pocket of her jeans. “Let’s go, Mike,” now she dragged him away to where music rattled, shooting gallery guns clapped and visitors happily squealed on rides. Several seconds had passed and there were already a lot of people around them.

“What did he give you?” Mike asked.

“My notebook! Probably I lost it in a toilet booth…”

“In a booth? Or in the ‘cave?’”

“Why the ‘cave?’ He came out of a booth!”

“Personally, I didn’t see he come from there,” Mike muttered.

“So what—did you see him in the ‘cave?’ You think he was lurking after us? Mike, that’s ridiculous! He simply found my thing…”

“And how did he know it was yours?!”

“He didn’t. He just assumed. He found it, then saw us. So he thought, maybe we just lost it?” It was as if they had traded roles: now Mike was suspicious and Jane looked for rational explanations.

“Not we. You. He gave it right to you.”

“Are you jealous?” the girl smiled.

But Mike didn’t accept her tone.

“Is there your name there?” he inquired.

“No. But the handwriting is female. You see, everything is simple.”

“Yes. As simple as in the ‘cave’… Why was he silent? Is he mute?”

“Maybe he is…”

“Hm, by the way,” Mike suddenly reflected. “Perhaps they employ disabled people for work in the ‘cave?’ There were freak shows in the past, so why not now… That is, all violence which we saw is, of course, staged. But maybe the amputated limbs aren’t. And… perhaps, I know how the last trick was arranged. A dwarf! Her head is normal, but the body is so small that can be hidden completely inside a rubber imitation of the torso. Maybe she even has no legs… And the guts are, of course, rubber, too.”

“I didn’t see any seam on her neck. Where the real head should stick out from…”

“With skillful makeup you won’t see it even in half an hour. And we looked for just a few seconds, with the light in our eyes.”

“Yes…, you’re probably right,” said Jane without real confidence in her voice.

They passed by a food booth and this time Mike bought cola to get rid of the taste in his mouth.

“But I still don’t like that this guy looked in your notebook,” he said, throwing the plastic cup into a trash can. “Okay, there was no name there, but what about anything else that would allow him to find you? Address, phone?”

“Mine aren’t there, but yours are,” Jane smiled. “So now you’ll be harassed by mute clown calls.”

“Not funny,” Mike said. “I really don’t like this. Check if he tore out a page as a souvenir?”

“What nonsense! Why would he need it?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t like this odd guy. By the way, he beckoned to me right before I came to find you… Seriously, check your notebook.”

“Well, if you insist…” she pulled out the notebook from her jeans pocket and began to riffle through it. Suddenly, her hand trembled and her look changed.

“What’s there?” Mike immediately inquired. “He took out something? Or, maybe he wrote something in?”

“No, simply… here it is,” Jane’s fingers pulled a gray rectangle from between pages. “CAVE OF HORROR. You will SCREAM…”

“What’s that—he gave you a ten-buck ticket for free?” Mike frowned even more.

“Well, maybe a promo action…” said the girl and suddenly interrupted herself: “No, we’re idiots! That’s my own ticket—see the torn stub?”

“How could it be in the notebook that you lost before we bought tickets?”

“Simple—I put the ticket in my pocket and it got between the pages when I put the notebook in my pocket too.”

“Sure. Sounds logical. Only I clearly remember that I had both our tickets. And after that guy tore them, I put them…” Mike dipped his hand into his own trouser pocket—first the left one, then the right, then checked both back pockets which he usually didn’t use. The tickets weren’t anywhere.

“Damn…” he checked the pockets once again. “I probably lost them somewhere. But I remember that I didn’t give you yours.”

“But you don’t remember where you put it?”

“And you? Do you remember that you took it from me?”

“No”… the girl acknowledged. “Apparently, both of us did it mechanically.”

“Give it to me,” the young man pulled out the gray piece of paper from Jane’s hand. “I think it’s not your ticket.”

“Then whose is it?”

“I don’t know,” Mike turned the ticket over. “What do you think is this?”

On the reverse side of the ticket, closer to the torn edge, there was a small red-brown spot, already dried up.

“Are you saying that it’s… blood? Real blood?”

“I don’t know,” Mike repeated. “Perhaps, clown’s makeup.”

“But he never had this ticket in his hands.”

“That’s just your assumption. You don’t have anything to stain it in your pocket, do you?”

“Perhaps it was sold already in this condition,” Jane proposed. “The cashier or the mustached man… could have stained it. Maybe, even with blood. Couldn’t one of them have cut a finger after all?”

“They could…” the young man thoughtfully turned the paper again.

Discount at revisit. Bring your friends!

In a resolute gait, Mike returned to the trash can where he had thrown the plastic cup and dropped the ticket there.

“What are you doing?” Jane exclaimed indignantly.

“And why do you need a stranger’s… well, let even your own used ticket? You aren’t going to go in that damned cave again, are you? Even for a discount…”

“In my opinion,” the girl slowly said, looking somewhere beyond her boyfriend, “we haven’t seen everything there.”

Mike couldn’t deny it. He remembered how he had closed his eyes—but he was ashamed to admit it. He had intended to inquire derisively “did you squeeze your eyes shut?”—but right then he remembered how he had vomited in full view of Jane and decided not to ask for trouble. But she apparently meant something different.

“There were more shouts and groans than… those we passed by. Some came as if from far away or through a barrier…”

“A record. And why the hell ‘far away?’ You saw the building from outside. It’s not so big.”

“Maybe. But there were switches.”

“What switches?”

“Rail switches. Didn’t you notice?”

“I hardly saw even the rails in the darkness…”

“But I saw them. Cars can be sent on different routes. I’m sure so they do. Perhaps they show a less terrible version to children. At least to children with parents…”

“Judging by the reaction of that woman who rode before us, I wouldn’t say so.”

“It seems to me, if she had seen what we saw, her reaction would have been even stronger. And she definitely would have filed a complaint, despite the signed paper. And also… do you remember how he hinted to the boy? Like, come again, only not with your mother but with a friend… then you’ll see something really worth…”

“He said nothing like that. He only mentioned the discount, that’s all. That’s also written on the ticket.”

“Exactly. If it is written already, why emphasize it verbally?”

“Advertizing rule. Repetition doesn’t hurt.”

“But why do you think he didn’t repeat the offer to us?”

“Because we had already heard it,” Mike answered not too consistently, feeling the increasing desire to end this stupid conversation.

“And then, they have strange concept of advertizing. The ride is so hidden that it’s hard to find. It isn’t on the carnival map.”

“Probably, you simply didn’t notice it.”

“Look yourself if you are so smart!” Jane set off at once and turned back. They were already near the exit from the carnival and Mike had no wish to return to the post with the map.

“All right, all right, let’s assume, it isn’t. Then all this is just a part of the concept. A mysterious cave of horror…” Mike, however, understood himself that that sounded unconvincing and offered another version: “Or perhaps they still had trouble with vigilant moms. So they really try to keep a low profile, relying on word of mouth to bring in customers.”

“Could you reach many customers that way? And how much, you think, all these fantastically realistic dummies cost? If they are indeed dummies…”

“I don’t know. It’s not our problem,” they finally went through the gate and it seemed to Mike that the air became fresher, which was, of course, total nonsense. “Listen, enough of this idiotic ‘cave’ for me. I don’t want either to speak or think about it anymore. Let’s not ruin the rest of our evening.”

Jane, it seemed, obeyed and didn’t return to the subject again, but during the evening Mike noticed more than once that the girl’s thoughts wandered away somewhere. As for himself, the damned “cave” left him a nasty emotional aftertaste which was much harder to get rid of than the sourness in his mouth. He was angry both with himself and with Jane—who had dragged him to this devil’s attraction and now was falling into thoughtfulness when it was time just to carelessly relax. As a result, he brought her home even before the10 p.m. curfew set by her strict mother.

They sat in his car in front of Jane’s house. The girl didn’t hurry to say goodbye, but kept silent. The pause lingered.

“Listen,” Mike suddenly said, “you didn’t answer my question.”

“Which one?”

“You aren’t going to go back to that damned ‘cave?’”

“Why do you think I am?” Jane asked

“You said yourself—we supposedly didn’t see everything there. Though as for me, we saw more than enough. And also you were annoyed when I threw out your ticket.”

“Well, and if I did want to get a better view of everything there, so what? The first time around, all that was so unexpected… but now, knowing what to look at, where there should be seams or mirrors as you said…”

“Don’t even think about it!”

“Why? You said yourself—none of that can be real?”

“Of course it can’t.”

“So why not go back?”

“And why do it? Why do you need it?”

“Just curious.”

“Curiosity killed the cat…” Mike grumbled.

“But I am not Cat, I am Jane,” the girl tried to laugh the matter off. “Well, really. Admit, you also suspect something screwy there?”

“I don’t suspect anything! And if I did, I would tell the police, instead of trying to investigate it myself.”

“So there is something to investigate?”

“No! That is, nothing in the criminal sense. But magicians don’t like it when people try to learn their secrets. There’s a reason it’s forbidden to photograph and so on there… And,” Mike smiled, “I don’t want to think that my girlfriend is a pervert who likes such nasty things.”

“Afffraid?” hissed Jane in an eerie voice; however, though she also tried to joke, she didn’t sound careless. “All right, all right, calm down. I won’t go there to sniff anything out. It’s just a carnival ride with actors and dummies. Are you satisfied?”

Mike muttered something in reply. To tell the truth, he wasn’t completely satisfied with her words.

They spent Sunday together, too, and this time everything went much better, including the weather. They went to a lake and, though the water was still too cold to bathe, they could luxuriate in sunshine ashore all day long. The “cave” and the day before, as if by a silent arrangement, were not mentioned again.

During the weekdays of the next week they didn’t meet—only exchanged few short evening phone calls. In the cafe where Jane had a summer job, one of the waitresses fell ill and the other girls had to split her shifts among themselves; Jane wasn’t against earning some extra money, but came home late and completely exhausted. Mike, in turn, spent days in his father’s auto repair shop where a 1967 Thunderbird had been brought; the car was in very poor condition—the last owner got it almost at a junkyard and the young man was busy with restoring it to life, as enthusiastic as when he assembled glue-together models in his childhood. He didn’t think about the carnival any more and thought about his girlfriend much less than she would have liked. Therefore, when late Friday night his phone rang and on its screen the familiar number appeared, Mike’s first thought was “Oh shit, we didn’t agree on any weekend plans!” Jane always called either from home or from her work phone—she had no cellphone.

But it was not Jane but her mother.

“Mike? Is my daughter with you?”

“N-no, Mrs. Trenton.”

“Are you sure? Perhaps she doesn’t want me to know that she is with you so late? Tell me the truth, Mike, I’m very worried. It’s almost midnight already…”

“No, I really don’t know where she is. The last time we talked was Wednesday and she said nothing about Friday plans… Maybe she’s still at the cafe? The night shift? You know, they currently…”

“No, I phoned there already. Clare was back to work again today, so Jane had no additional hours anymore. She finished work at six o’clock.”

“And she told nobody where she was going?”

“No, she didn’t. Mike, have you two quarreled?”

“Quarreled? Not at all. Why did you think so, Mrs. Trenton?”

“Jane was, well, strange this week. I thought that’s because she was tired at work… but now it seems to me she was thinking about something that disturbed her. Do you know what it could be?” The last sentence seemed accusatory to Mike.

“No…” he answered, feeling cold spread in his belly. Mrs. Trenton caught at once the uncertainty in his voice.

“Are you sure, Mike?” she asked again, this time in a threatening tone.

“If you suspect that she is pregnant or something like that, my answer is ‘no’. At least, not by me,” he answered more harshly than he wanted, and right then reflected: what if Jane indeed had someone else? But instead of natural (while unsupported by any facts) jealous rage, he suddenly felt that it wouldn’t be the worst option. But, alas—alas!—the matter was not at all a mythical rival. Because actually…

No. It cannot be. It is simply a silly carnival ride, that’s all. Not to mention that he threw out her ticket… but why couldn’t she have spent ten dollars for a new one?

“Carnival”, Mike said, surprised himself by the hoarse sound of his voice.

“What?” Mrs. Trenton, who was expatiating how much she was worrying because Jane never dared to disappear this way, without having warned her mother, and actually there was nobody with whom… —interrupted herself in the middle of a sentence. “What did you say? What carnival?”

“Last Saturday we visited the traveling carnival. There is an attraction there, ‘Cave of Horror…’ Didn’t Jane tell you anything about it?”

“No… and where does it concern…?”

“It seems to me that she went there again. I told her not to do it, but…”

“Went to get some rides? And has not returned till now? When does this carnival close?”

“I don’t know. It seems to me that it’s not just an attraction. I think you should call the police.”

“You don’t know those policemen! They won’t move a finger until several days pass! Phooey—a girl doesn’t come home at night, big deal! They don’t realize that Jane never before… What do you mean by ‘not just an attraction?’” Mrs. Trenton interrupted herself again. “Is there anything… dangerous? Illegal?”

“Hmm…” Mike was confused, having thought how his story would sound to police officers. Indeed, like a child, he had been frightened by some actors and dummies and imagined devil knows what without any proof… pure nonsense!

But Jane had really disappeared!

“Wait for me,” he told the scared woman. “I’ll come in a few minutes and we’ll go together to the police.”

Since Mrs. Trenton’s divorce nine years ago, her opinion of men hadn’t undergone any noticeable improvement. And though she reconciled, as with an inevitable evil, with the fact that her daughter had a boyfriend, Mike in her company always felt himself under suspicion, like a recidivist thief who looks for a bank security guard job. But now she was subdued by his resolute tone and look and met him as a savior who definitely knew what to do in order to find her daughter safe and sound in the shortest time.

However, the resolute spirit of the young man apparently made no impression on Sgt. Hopkins. The sergeant looked tired and unfriendly, as though all his years of serving law and order weighed as a heavy burden on his shoulders this evening. Having listened at first to Mrs. Trenton who, naturally, couldn’t report anything certain, he asked her to wait behind the door and invited Mike to his desk.

“You should hear yourself,” Hopkins muttered after listening to the story till the end. “Read too many comics? Are you saying some gang abducts and kills people in a carnival, right before the very eyes of hundreds of visitors?”

“First, not of hundreds,” the young man objected. “I’ve said, most people don’t even guess this building is there. And second, that’s just the point—nobody would ever think that such things can really happen!”

“What you described indeed can’t be real. You know what the term ‘fatal injuries’ means?”

“Of course. What we saw is certainly a fake. But Jane thought that we didn’t see everything. Cars can go by different routes. There may be some special rooms… for special clients… you know, the perverts for whom movies with real murders and rapes are made. There could be something like that! And while we’re wasting time here talking…”

“I’ve heard only your fantasies so far. This carnival has all its proper licenses. All their rides have the corresponding certificates of safety…”

“It is possible to kill and torture even with quite safe objects! Not to mention that documents may mean one thing, while actually something else…”

“Who told you that anyone was killed or tortured there?”

“But Jane went there and disappeared!”

“For now she is only late in returning home. Formally I don’t have sufficient grounds to declare her missing. Informally… yes, when a girl for the first time in her life doesn’t come home on time, and not only her mother and female friends, but also her boyfriend knows nothing about it—most often it does mean something. And, alas, frequently it means something bad. But even if so—there are no grounds to conclude that it’s connected with the carnival. You said yourself that she promised not to go there again?”

“Yes, but…”

“But what? It’s eighteen minutes past midnight now. The carnival is already closed. Give me the slightest reason to enter and search private property without a warrant.”

“The guy,” Mike said. “With long black hair. About twenty five years old. Looked a bit like an Indian. Is he registered as missing? We saw him ride into the ‘cave,’ but what returned was only an empty car splashed by something red.”

“No, he’s not”, Hopkins immediately answered.

“Are you sure? You didn’t even check any records.”

“Mike, don’t teach me to do my work. Our town isn’t very big. Any disappearance here is a rare event.”

“So what—during the time when the carnival is here, nobody disappeared in the town? Except for Jane.”

“I am not obliged to discuss confidential information with you .”

“So someone is missing! Sergeant, I’m just trying to help!”

Hopkins skeptically looked at Mike for some seconds. Then unwillingly muttered:

“Don’t even think of repeating this. If the press kicks up dust, it can spoil the case. Yes, we are investigating one disappearance, but it doesn’t fit your description. It’s a child.”

“A boy of eleven?”

“How did you know?”

“Is his name Cyril Parker?”

“No.”

“Is he black?”

“No, white. So you guessed right only the age.”

“When did he disappear?”

“No more, that’s enough! I told you more than I should as it is. Go home and go to bed. Maybe your girlfriend will show up in the morning. She could even be at home right now.”

“And if she isn’t?!”

“Then in the morning I’ll visit the carnival as soon as it opens and I’ll check out what this ‘cave’ of yours looks like, though I’m absolutely sure that it’s a false trail. Are you happy?”

Mike brought the weeping Mrs. Trenton home (her house, of course, was still dark and empty), but didn’t intend at all to go to bed himself. He drove back home only to take the auto repair shop keys. In the shop he also didn’t stay long and left it with tin snips and impressive-looking sledge hammer. His father had a pistol, but, alas, it was in the locked safe. Having told himself once again that this idiotic heroism was either nonsense if his suspicions were foolish or suicide if they were justified, Mike threw the tools on the right seat and drove to the suburb, to the infamous grounds where the carnival was now settled.

Having exited from the highway, he parked the car on the empty lot in front of the closed gate. The light of a lonely lamp which remained behind still reached here, but the carnival was sunk in the darkness of a moonless night; all multicolored illumination which brightly shone here in the evening was off, and behind the chain link fence, the silhouettes of motionless attractions only vaguely loomed. Symbolizing careless fun in the afternoon, now they caused an uncomfortable feeling of something hostile and ominous. All these metal bars and arms of swings and whirligigs resembled either huge spider legs or monsters’ tentacles spread waiting for a victim.

Mike stood for some time in front of the gate, allowing his eyes to get used to darkness. He had a small flashlight in the pocket of his jeans jacket, but he wasn’t going to turn it on without an urgency in order not to betray himself. From the darkness behind the gate not a single sound reached; the carnival seemed completely died out. Did the workers live in their trailers or pay for rooms in a local motel? Mike remembered that he saw standing trailers near the “cave”…

He didn’t try to cleave through the locked entrance. If there was any alarm or surveillance system, it was for certain exactly here. On the other hand, by cutting the metal fence from the side of the “cave” he would risk drawing attention by noise; moreover, it would be hard to reach the fence in that place, as everything was overgrown with bushes there both inside and outside… so the best option was to break into the carnival somewhere in the middle of the fence. With this thought, carrying the tin snips in one hand and the hammer in another, he went along the fence, trying to step through dry grass as quietly as possible.

Having turned a corner, he started moving away from the road. After passing several dozen yards he stopped. No light reached here, and Mike suddenly felt himself shivering. It would be the simplest to write it off to a cool night, but Mike didn’t try to lie to himself—he understood that he was scared… actually, damned scared to meddle here, especially alone and with so imperfect weapons. But if Jane was indeed there and those police goofs weren’t going to get off their asses…

He only vaguely imagined what to do when he reached the bloody “cave.” The best would be to find evidence for the police and to call for help… But what if he gets inside and finds out that the dummies are really just dummies? What then? Will it prove that all his suspicions are nonsense or will it mean only that what he is looking for is hidden too well?

He put the sledge hammer on the ground, took the snips handles with both hands and started to cut through the steel fence. The snips clicked, sounding like a shot in the night silence.

And almost immediately a bright light flashed and a grating voice ordered: “Don’t move!”

Mike stiffened with a furiously beating heart; only in the next moment he realized that the light beam came not from within the fence but from the right.

“Drop that thing and hold your hands so that I can see them. Now slowly turn to me.”

The flashlight now shone directly in the young man’s face, blinding him, but Mike still distinguished a silhouette of a man in the uniform and a police peak-cap. However, anyone can put on a uniform…

“Sergeant was right,” a voice stated with satisfaction from the darkness. “He was sure that you would imagine yourself Rambo and would go play hero. All right, boy, you are under arrest for attempted trespassing. You have the right to remain silent…”

“Not me!” Mike exclaimed, not even trying to constrain irritation. “Arrest them!”

“Okay, okay”, the officer said in a conciliatory tone, unfastening handcuffs from his belt. “I hope, you have enough brains not to resist? And, if you have a gun, you’d better say so right now.”

“No gun,” Mike muttered. “And are handcuffs necessary? I’ll go with you anyway.”

“Of course you will. Put your hands here.”

Twenty minutes later the young man sat again in front of Hopkins. The handcuffs, at last, were removed .

“Well, what should I do with you?” the sergeant sighed. “Initiate legal proceedings? Or hope that Mr. Dobbins won’t find out anything?”

“Dobbins?” this name seemed vaguely familiar to Mike.

“Sure. Robin Dobbins, the owner of the carnival.”

“Rob Dobbins! Of course!” Mike exclaimed, shaken. “Sergeant, don’t you remember?! The boy who was mutilated by rats in the slaughterhouse cellar! In the very same place! His name was Bob Robins! And don’t tell me that’s an urban legend!”

“No, it’s not,” Hopkins slowly said. “I remember that nasty story. So what?”

“What do you mean by ‘so what?’ Don’t you understand? His friends left him there helpless while rats were eating him alive… no wonder, if it blew his mind! And now he’s back to take revenge on our town!”

“I repeat—you’ve watched too many stupid horror films,” the sergeant shook his head. “First, his name is Dobbins, not Robins…”

“He slightly changed it, that’s all. Have you ever seen him? Or have any of your people?”

“No, we didn’t need to. But…”

“I think nobody here saw him!” Mike triumphantly exclaimed. “He is too disfigured to show himself, and besides he can’t walk. All contact with the town authorities go through his deputy…”

“And this all, of course, again is not supported by anything except your rampant imagination. All right, boy. You’ll sit in the cell until morning and that’s for your own good. I understand that you’re off your nut because of your girl. But you should chill out if you don’t want to spend serious time in jail.”

When the heavy cell door slammed behind Mike, he unwillingly stretched himself on a narrow jail bed. He didn’t think that he would manage to fall asleep, but the young healthy organism soon prevailed over all ruefulness.

When he was awakened, however, it was still dark in the cell; dawn was just breaking. At first Mike stared with muddy sleepy eyes at Hopkins who stood over him, then jumped up from the bed:

“Has she been found?”

“Not yet,” the sergeant shook his head. “But you know what I’m going to tell you? However dumb your story was, you managed to arouse my doubts. I made a call to the missing boy’s teacher without waiting for morning. Cyril Parker is the boy’s classmate.”

“Bring your friends…” remembered Mike. “He was his friend?” he asked aloud.

“Actually, no. We already questioned his friends… The teacher said that John—the missing boy—and Cyril did not get along well. Not that it was a serious hostility. But John periodically teased Cyril and the latter seemed unhappy about it. It never came to fighting. Maybe because John was stronger…”

“Sure. The meek creature got revenge in a different way. He invited his enemy to the carnival…”

“We don’t know that yet. We’ll question Cyril, but—you know, minors have rights… we can’t do it right now. I’ll try to get a warrant. Since we still have no proof, I’ll take you to our artist. Do you remember the faces of workers at this attraction? Can you describe them?”

“Some of them, yes.”

“Great. Let’s go. If at least one of them is in our files…”

Mike spent the next hour with the police artist, giving descriptions and correcting the sketches until he was completely satisfied with the similarity of the drawings to the originals. The artist asked him to wait in the room and left with the pictures. Mike believed that now he would be released from the police station, but the expectation lingered.

At last, hasty steps approached from outside and the door swung open. On the threshold appeared Hopkins with a big yellow envelope in his hand. He looked very irritated.

“It seems you’re looking for serious trouble, boy.” the sergeant said angrily, approaching Mike who was seated at a table. “You wanted to pull a prank, huh? Do you understand that giving false testimony is a criminal offense?”

“False? Sergeant, everything I told you I’ve seen with my own eyes, I swear! How can it be a prank if Jane has disappeared!”

“Probably you know a bit more about her disappearance than you’re saying, huh? And you try to throw us off the scent, inventing all this nonsense. But you could have thought up something less stupid!”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about!”

“You don’t understand?” Hopkins pulled two sheets of paper out of the envelope and placed them on the table in front of the young man. The left one was a police artist drawing made from Mike’s description, the right—a printer copy of a photo. “Damned similar, aren’t they?”

“Sure! The clown! So you know him?”

“Pogo the Clown. His real name is John Wayne Gacy. Tortured, raped and murdered 33 people. And this?” He put another photo on the table.

“The cashier! Spitting image! Even the eye squints the same way!”

“His eye is glass. This is Henry Lee Lucas. The most terrible serial killer in the history of the USA and probably, of the whole world. 11 cases of murder were proven in court, but actually there were at least three hundred. Lucas himself spoke about six hundred.”

“So what are you waiting for?! The whole gang is there! Arrest them!”

“There is one little problem,” Hopkins stretched his lips in a scornful smile. “Gacy was executed in 1994. Lucas died in prison in 2001. And it’s the same story with all the others you allegedly identified. All of them are American serial killers and none of them is still alive. The one you called “the coffin maker,” for example, has been dead since 1896. Now admit that you simply found their photos on the Internet and…”

“Sergeant, I don’t understand either, but I told you the truth! I never was interested in serial killers! The only one I know about is Jack the Ripper…”

“Actually, nobody knows much about him. There are several versions, but…”

At this moment another police officer with a folder in his hand glanced in the open door of the office and called the sergeant. Hopkins talked to him in a corridor and then returned to Mike who was waiting in perplexity. Now Hopkins also had a perplexed look. He offered to the young man one more photo:

“Recognize him?”

“Yes!” Mike exclaimed. “It’s the guy who didn’t return from the ‘cave!’ I didn’t invent anything, honest!”

“He’s not from our town. He hasn’t been heard from for about for a week, but they just started searching now…” for some time Hopkins silently looked at the young man, then continued: “Here’s what I think. Over the years of my service, I’ve seen many liars and if you are one of them, then you must be the most skillful of all. Because I could swear that you really believe in what you say. Though, of course, the men you saw cannot be dead killers. But it can be some sect of crazy imitators copying their idols. I’ll try to get the warrant now. And you talk to our artist again—only this time describe the victims to him. Perhaps we’ll get more matches…”

This time the artist didn’t even manage to complete all adjustments when Hopkins appeared again.

“We’ve got the warrant. Let’s go, we’ll take a look at your ‘cave.’ Actually, civilians are not taken along on police investigations, but you were inside there and your information may be useful. But be careful—if trouble begins, don’t even think about getting into it, you understand? Your mixing in won’t help us; it’ll only create more problems.”

Two police cruisers rapidly flew through streets—lit up by the rising sun, but still empty at this too early Saturday hour—and braked to a halt in the parking lot with old crumbled asphalt where Mike’s car still stood. The young man and Hopkins got out of one car and the two officers exited the other.

More than three hours remained till opening of the carnival, so its territory looked through the fence as lifeless as at night—though motionless attractions didn’t seem like multi-limbed monsters any more. This time the officer who had detained Mike at night (his surname was Lawrence), did himself what he had prevented the young man from doing—cut the chain on which the lock hung and they entered the carnival. Mike immediately darted forward, but Hopkins pulled him back by the shoulder: “Show the way, but keep behind us”.

They quickly passed by empty rides, locked buildings and closed booths. Near the post with the carnival map, Mike stopped to make sure again of what he already knew: the “Cave of Horror” wasn’t on there. Hopkins paid attention to it, too.

“There,” Mike confidently pointed the direction.

They reached the toilets; the policemen glared at the trailers and the “Employees only” shed—no signs of habitability were there either. Mike pointed to the pass through the prickly thickets. The policemen exchanged doubtful glances; then at the command of Hopkins the four men moved in single file on the narrow path (Mike went the third, after the sergeant). Lawrence, going first, pulled out his gun from its holster.

“If shooting begins, fall to the ground at once,” Hopkins whispered, for an instant turning back to Mike. Ahead the exit from thickets already loomed. The young man felt an ice lump squeeze in his belly…

“Well, so where is…?” Lawrence’s puzzled voice sounded.

Hopkins who had come to the open space after him, again turned back to Mike, and now in the sergeant’s eyes there was anger again. But the young man didn’t even notice it. In full shock he stared at the sight before his eyes

Right ahead there was exactly what he had expected to see a week ago when he had found this path in the thickets the first time. An illegal dump. The patch free from bushes was filled up with garbage—and, seemingly, this garbage had begun accumulating there long before the arrival of the carnival. Dirty old tires, rusty cans, broken glass and crushed plastic bottles, sodden cardboard, black plastic bags, torn and crumpled paper… Not a single trace of the “cave.”

Mike turned his head to the right, there, where there had been a cash booth. It also wasn’t there. In its place only a metal barrel stuck out—rusted through and deeply grown into the ground.

“And how do you explain this?” the sergeant inquired.

“Yes, how do you explain it?” coldly asked a new voice.

All four turned back. On the path behind them stood a lanky gentleman about forty five, dressed in a three-piece suit with a tie. The gaze of his watery-blue eyes passed from one face to another and stopped on Hopkins, having identified in him the man in charge.

“Who are you?” asked the latter not too kindly.

“Robin Dobbins. And if armed police break the lock and trespass on land I’ve rented, I want at least to know what’s the matter.”

There was nothing wrong with his fingers, as well as with his legs. His right cheek was lightly marked by a small scar, but it didn’t resemble traces of bites at all. It looked much more like a consequence of some fight in his youth.

“Here is the warrant, Mr. Dobbins. May I see, in turn, your ID?”

Dobbins pulled the driver’s license card from his jacket pocket. The sergeant studied the document and returned it to the owner.

“So?” the owner of the carnival inquired.

“How long ago was the building here dismantled, Mr. Dobbins?”

“What building?”

“Cave of Horror”.

“We have no such attraction. And never had. Did you see the carnival map?”

“We know that it isn’t present on the map. But this young man claims that he was there. And moreover—he saw a missing person we are searching for disappear there.”

Dobbins contemptuously looked askew at Mike, then again moved his glance to Hopkins:

“And if he tells you that at my carnival he was abducted by aliens, will you also believe him?”

“And why, in your opinion, do I know that missing guy by sight?” Mike exclaimed.

“The police should find it out from you, not from me,” Dobbins parried.

The sergeant pulled a photo from his pocket.

“And have you seen this person?”

“I don’t remember,” shrugged Dobbins. “Quite probably, he might visit our carnival, but, you understand, I don’t meet and I don’t see off every visitor. You can talk to the cashier when he comes, but I don’t promise he’ll remember either. Hundreds of faces per day pass before him… and moreover, he looks mostly not at faces but at hands with money.”

“And did this man ever work as a cashier for you? In general, was or is anybody from these ones among your employees?”

“N-no, never. In any case, definitely not in recent years. If you want, let’s go to my trailer, and I will show you all documentation on attractions and the lists of employees. I have a legal business, and I don’t deal with anything shady.”

“He’s lying!” Mike shouted in despair. “They simply smelled trouble and dismantled the ride!”

“Seems to me, this guy is obviously out of his head,” said Dobbins. “Do you see any traces of a ride here? Perhaps we also specially grew this grass?”

The grass, yellowed by the sun, indeed didn’t look like yesterday-planted. As well as the dry firm soil did not resemble recently laid turf.

Hopkins looked at the old slumped garbage, then at Mike’s confused face.

“Nevertheless let’s wait until this place is examined by our dog,” the sergeant uttered. “Thomson, stay here. Don’t let anybody destroy evidence. And we’ll go with Mr. Dobbins to look at the documents.”

Again having exited from the bushes on the other side of thickets, Mike paid attention to what he hadn’t noticed at once: the wooden pole stood in the same place, but there was no “Cave of Horror” sign on it.

The sergeant followed Dobbins to his trailer, having left Lawrence “to keep an eye on surroundings and on our impressionable young man as well.” By his tone and the look which accompanied this remark, Mike understood that now he was suspected in something worse than false testimony.

“Think of me how you want,” he fatalistically murmured, “but I really was in this ‘cave.’ And Jane, too.”

“Sure, sure,” Lawrence nodded.

Mike sat down on the grass, rested his elbows against his knees, squeezed his temples with his fists, and stared at the ground. He didn’t know how much time passed until he heard hasty steps and a dog panting. A big black dog, which probably had been given something of Jane’s to smell, virtually dragged a police canine officer after it; the lead was stretched bar-taut. Lawrence made a sign to the canine officer, obviously, wishing the dog to sniff Mike. The dog obeyed the command, but without any enthusiasm—thus confirming that during the last few last days Mike hadn’t met the missing girl—and then again pulled the lead towards the path through the bushes. In just seconds the officer and his dog disappeared in the thickets. If it had not concerned his girl, Mike could have looked at Lawrence in triumph.

And then from the bushes a dreadful howl came.

“Shit!” Lawrence muttered, bringing a walkie-talkie to his mouth. “John, what’s there?”

“No big deal,” reached the voice through the howls. “Just this damned dog… I don’t know what happened to him. He refuses even to approach this glade. Balked and no way. Even shat from fear, can you imagine? Never I saw him like that before. Now he just sits and howls.”

Hopkins came out of the trailer.

“What’s this concert?” he frowned.

Lawrence explained.

“What a damned nuisance…” the sergeant murmured. “All Dobbins’ papers are OK, and they don’t contain the slightest hint of any ‘Cave of Horror.’ And… I can’t say this guy seemed to me a paragon of courtesy, but, in my opinion, he isn’t lying. So it looks like it’s time to put handcuffs on our boy again. But there is still something strange. I just got a call from the station. All whom you, Mike, described as victims, are indeed in the lists of missing persons. And their cases usually didn’t get much media coverage so it isn’t clear where you could learn about them… But you know, Mike, what’s the most interesting? All of them disappeared at different times. Some a year ago, some six, and some even thirty years ago. But they look, according to your words, the same as at the moment of their disappearance. How do you explain it, Mike?”

Mike knew how to explain it. He knew it as clearly as the fact that it was useless to din it into Hopkins. He knew that neither dummies nor imitators have anything to do with it, and that he nevermore would see Jane. Because his girlfriend was dead… worse than simply dead. Much, much worse. If THEY are capable of living after death, what could prevent them from dooming their victims to the same? Isn’t it the ultimate dream of every sadist—the victim incapable of escaping even through death?

Behind the bushes in the anxiety born of hopeless horror the dog still howled.

HOUSE

“Monsieur, Count de Montreux wants to see you.”

Jacques Dubois fastidiously frowned.

“Tell him that I can’t receive him.”

But the visitor, having resolutely moved the servant out of his way, had already entered the office. The thin lines of his thoroughbred face, a faultless suit, the subtle scent of an expensive lotion—everything about him spoke of his belonging to an old noble family which had nothing in common with the just-bought baronies of the nouveau riche; such attributes are formed by centuries. Even now de Montreux carried himself with dignity which did not well match the purpose of his visit.

“If you came to ask for a delay, count, you are wasting time,” Dubois stated. “The term of your mortgage has expired, you haven’t paid the money, and the house becomes mine by right.”

“Nobody challenges your rights, monsieur,” de Montreux answered, “I only ask you to understand my position. My ancestors lived in this house throughout three centuries. I understand your desire to obtain a fine old mansion and you are rich enough to do it. But besides my estate, there are others…”

“I like yours; let’s finish with this.”

“Monsieur Dubois, I’m not asking you to cancel my debts. You will receive the money, only a bit later, as soon as my circumstances recover…”

“Your circumstances will never recover and if you don’t understand that, you’re even a bigger fool than I thought.”

“How dare you to speak to me that way!”

“I dare, Monsieur Armand Philippe Count de Montreux! I, the pitiful insignificant commoner on whose ancestors your ancestors could set the dogs just for entertainment, now speak with you as I like, and you will listen to me! You ruled France throughout centuries, gambled away huge fortunes out of boredom, and arranged Caligula-style orgies. You possessed everything—power, honor, women—but now your time is gone! You stupidly squandered the wealth stolen by your ancestors in crusades and feudal wars and wasted the life earnings extorted from those who earned their bread by the sweat of their brow—and now power has passed from you to those who actually deserve it. The third estate is everything, have you heard those words? In your aristocratic arrogance you didn’t wish to lift a finger to save the situation; you despised commerce—oh certainly, to ply a trade is much less honorable than to rape peasant girls. Look at yourself, Count de Montreux! Even now, having reached utter ruin, you spend your last few francs on expensive suits and lotions! No, I feel not the slightest remorse taking your house from you. I receive it justly, I pay for it with money honestly earned, not inherited from a court lickspittle or from a robber in knight’s armor.”

The face of the count turned pale, his hand squeezed the knob of his cane, but de Montreux restrained himself. He turned abruptly and went back to the door. On the threshold he stopped and said almost indifferently:

“You will have no rest in my house. Neither you, nor your whore.” Then he promptly left.

“Whore,” thought Dubois, grinning, “yes, whore, so what? You’d think that his aristocratic maidens are pure virgins. In the whole history of France there was only one virgin, and even she was burned in a fire…” Dubois believed that in the field of wit he also did not yield an inch to the frequenters of aristocratic salons. His thoughts turned to Jeannette. He really had picked her up on the street—at the very beginning of her career, before the charm of youth could fade under the burden of her profession. Jeannette had lived with him for half a year already—and lived very well, as all these ruined countesses could only envy; she probably even herself remembered with surprise now the times when she had been a street prostitute. Recently she, perhaps, had gotten too spoiled and began to affect whims, but Dubois even found a special pleasure in it: to a man who from his early childhood had gotten used to making his way in life with teeth and claws, humility quickly becomes boring.

Dubois took a watch on a gold chain out of his pocket, darted a glance at the dial and stood up from the table. Tomorrow at this time, he thought, Jeannette would possibly feel herself almost a countess de Montreux.

The carriage passed through the gate decorated with the de Montreux coat of arms; the wheels crunched on the access avenue gravel. Having drawn back the window curtain, Jeannette was examining with curiosity her new dwelling, or, as Dubois called it, “the country house.” The old three-storied mansion resembled more a fortress than a residence; its massive walls, accreted by moss at the bases, its narrow—especially in the eastern wing—windows, hiding in deep niches, its heavy shutters and doors gloomily contrasted with the cheerful summer sky and bright sun. Even the lush green of the garden  inspired an ominous feeling, as if it was marsh grass hiding a deadly quagmire.

“It doesn’t look too cozy here,” said Jeannette doubtfully.

“The main building was constructed in the sixteenth century,” Dubois answered in an expert tone, “and those were rather troubled times. Since then, of course, the house has been repaired and reconstructed more than once. But, nevertheless, this is the authentic home of a noble family. You will live here like a countess.”

Jeannette answered nothing; she had no illusions about her future and understood that sooner or later she would bore Dubois and he would take a new “countess”—or even perhaps he would take a truly noble wife to live in his authentic aristocratic home. However, during the last half a year she had saved some money and also hoped for a generous parting gift; and then, of course, she would find another nouveau riche for whom the physical properties of a woman would be more important than her reputation.

On a porch they were met by Pierre Leroi, the majordomo employed by the new owner. Other servants gathered in the hall. Dubois dismissed them with an impatient gesture and said to Leroi, “Show us the house.”

“Yes, monsieur,” bowed the majordomo, “but maybe madam wishes to rest after the journey?”

Jeannette smiled. She had been called “madam,” as if she indeed was the wedded wife of the owner of the estate.

“Madam will rest later,” Dubois said. “Guide us.”

“As you wish, monsieur.”

They passed through a tenebrous hall with age-darkened portraits on the walls and a huge fireplace similar to an ancient tower, and then ascended a creaking wooden staircase to the second floor. Having passed some rooms whose furniture, apparently, hadn’t been changed since the time of Louis XV, they stopped in front of a massive oak door.

“The count’s office,” the majordomo declared and pulled on the heavy bronze handle. However, the door didn’t open.

“Strange…” murmured Leroi, “I remember that I left the door unlocked.”

“Don’t you have a key with you?” asked Dubois with a note of irritation in his voice.

“Yes, certainly…” the majordomo unlocked the door.

At the last moment in Dubois’s brain a thought flashed that something was definitely wrong here, and he almost rudely moved Jeannette aside. In the next instant the door silently opened. In the middle of the room, facing the door, sat count de Montreux in an armchair. The shot had demolished half of his skull; his surroundings were splashed with blood and grayish drops of brain. The hand with the pistol powerlessly dangled from an armrest.

“What is it?” asked Jeannette with apprehensive curiosity, uncertainly trying to peer over Dubois’s shoulder. He pushed her aside from the office.

“Nothing you should look at. De Montreux… he shot himself to annoy us.”

Jeannette gasped in horror.

“Don’t worry. Certainly, it’s unpleasant, but nothing terrible has happened. People die every day in the thousands,” Dubois turned to the majordomo. “How the hell did he get in here?”

“I do not know, monsieur,” Leroi made a helpless gesture. “Certainly, the count had keys to all the doors and the main entrance is not the only way into the house. He could even have entered before the arrival of the new servants and hidden somewhere…”

“How could nobody hear the shot?”

“You see the heavy doors and thick walls here. If nobody was nearby, there is no wonder it was not heard.”

“Damn, these aristocrats always were poseurs… Well, he might as well not have arranged such a spectacle for me; I am after all the thick-skinned bourgeois, the disgraceful and insensate money-bags— isn’t that how they think of us? This man lived a worthless life and died a worthless death. All right, Leroi, take care of the formalities.”

The formalities didn’t take too much time. Police Inspector Leblanc and Doctor Clavier arrived; the investigation of the scene left them no doubt that Montreux had committed suicide, and the corpse was taken away.

“How many previous servants remained in the estate?” Dubois asked the majordomo.

“Three, monsieur. The gardener, who is too old to look for a new place, the cook, an old woman, hoping that the new owner will pay better than the former, and the groom, who is also the               coachman—this fellow is indifferent to everything.”

“So the others wished to leave the house when they knew that it would pass to me? Hm… a strange devotion taking into account that they were underpaid. The last thing we need now is new servants also running away because of this ridiculous incident. Bring them here all together.”

Dubois addressed the servants with a short speech in which he said that he very regretted that the sad incident had happened, but nobody could be blamed for the death of count de Montreux.

“Neither I nor anybody else forced the count to live beyond his means and get into debt. When a man jumps from a cliff and smashes upon the stones, the man, not the stones, should be blamed. I will be an absolutely different owner than de Montreux; none of my people will have a reason to complain about a scanty or delayed salary. I always pay my bills.”

Whether the words about salary worked, or the servants simply weren’t as sensitive as Dubois had feared, none of them expressed a desire to leave. The servants had just left when suddenly Jeannette, finally convinced of the invariance of Dubois’s plans, took courage and declared that she couldn’t stay “in this awful house.”

“Bullshit, Jeannette, what nonsense!” the businessman wearily waved his hand. “De Montreux tried to achieve exactly this—for us to refuse to live here. You surely don’t want his mad idea to be a success?”

“Jacques, don’t speak so… about the dead…”

“Dead he is even less dangerous than alive. Jeannette, we live in an enlightened era in an educated country. Don’t stuff your pretty head with superstitious foolishness. De Montreux shot himself here, so what? Any house built more than a half century ago has witnessed the deaths of its owners.”

“But this death… so terrible…”

“On the contrary, it was instant and painless. I am surprised by people’s abnormal reaction to violent death. Natural death from an illness is often much more painful, however it excites nobody; but if a shot thunders anywhere, people immediately crowd together to shake in horror.”

Jeannette didn’t dare to insist further, understanding that it would only anger Dubois; but his cold logic couldn’t dispel her melancholy and heavy presentiments. However, Jeannette’s maid (she had a maid now like a real aristocrat), a humorous hoyden named Marie, didn’t share the anxiety of her mistress and eventually even managed to make her laugh. But in the evening the fear began to overtake Jeannette again. The last reflection of the sun faded in the west; murky night fell on the house. The wind wandered in the foliage of the large garden; a lonely branch scraped a window as if someone unknown asked: “Let me… let me in…” From the windows of the bedrooms, there was only a view of the night forest; not a single spark was visible in that direction. Somewhere in the house old floor boards squeaked.

At last the door was opened, and Dubois entered Jeannette’s bedroom where she was shivering with fear.

“Darling, how glad I am that you came!”

“I didn’t come to talk,” Dubois purred, untying the belt of his dressing gown.

Suddenly the moon came out of the clouds, illuminating the room with ghastly light; and at the same moment a high-pitched and lingering sound, dreary as the cry from a restless soul, reached from somewhere afar.

“My God, Jacques, what is it?!” Jeannette exclaimed in horror.

“A dog howled, nothing more,” Dubois answered in an irritated voice, lowering himself heavily onto her. But in a few minutes he had to acknowledge with shame and disgust that he couldn’t perform: the damned howl had distracted him and prevented him from concentrating. Upset and red with rage, Dubois left Jeannette’s bedroom.

The next morning, having looked out of a window, Dubois noticed the groom walking through the yard with a bucket in his hand. The master called the servant and asked whether there were dogs on the estate.

“No, monsieur!” the fellow answered, coming closer to the window.

“No? But the village is quite far; what dog then howled last night?”

“Dog, monsieur?”

“Yes, of course; didn’t you hear the howl?”

“It was not a dog, monsieur. It was a wolf howling in the forest.”

“Wolf?” Dubois was surprised. “Are there wolves in this area?” He suddenly remembered that a wolf was on de Montreux’s coat of arms and, sneering, he assumed he was going to hear a rural legend about a werewolf howling every time somebody from the count’s family died. But instead of a legend the fellow simply answered:

“There are, monsieur, though not so many of them. Usually they don’t bother us, especially now, at the end of summer, when there is still is enough food in the woods.”

“Well, so I’ll have something to hunt,” Dubois said. Hitherto he hadn’t participated in this landowners’ entertainment, but he intended to make up for lost time.

Several days passed. Life in the estate became routine; nobody remembered, at least aloud, the tragic incident which had marred the arrival of the new owner. Dubois received mail reports from his managers, according to whom his business affairs were excellent. Even the wolf howl didn’t disturb inhabitants of the house anymore. However, the feeling of vague anxiety still hadn’t left Jeannette completely; she found it difficult to explain its reason herself, while Dubois believed that the cause was the baleful architecture of the ancient building and ordered it to be lit better in the evenings. However, he made no other changes in the archaic furnishings, wishing to keep the style of “an authentic home of a noble family.” He was especially tender with Jeannette these days, and, in order not to look ungrateful, she hid from him her lingering feeling of discomfort.

But early one morning Dubois was awakened by a loud knock at the door.

“Monsieur, a very unpleasant incident!” he heard the majordomo’s voice.

“What happened?”

“The gardener, monsieur… Usually in the mornings he came to the kitchen to drink a glass of milk and to chat with the cook. But today he didn’t come, and the cook was worried whether he fell ill…”

“Briefly, what’s the matter with him?”

“It looks like he is dead, monsieur…”

Swearing angrily, Dubois got out from under his blanket. Walking down the corridor, he saw Jeannette standing in a dressing gown at the threshold of her bedroom. Her face was pale and fear could clearly be read in her eyes.

“I hope, this time it’s not a violent death?” Dubois inquired.

“I do not know, monsieur. Direct signs of violence are not perceptible. You’d better look yourself. The doctor and police were sent for already.”

Mentally damning such an idiotic coincidence, Dubois followed the majordomo through the garden; his shoes and the tail of his gown immediately became wet with dew. On a bench in front of the gardener’s cabin an old woman, the cook, cried and loudly blew her nose; one of the young maids tried to calm her. Dubois entered the cabin.

The old man lay in his underwear on the floor about a meter from his bed, twisted, with his bony white fingers grasping his breast. His blue face was distorted in a grimace of horror; on his lips foam had dried. “It’s better to touch nothing till the police arrive,” Dubois thought.

Soon Doctor Clavier arrived After greeting the owner of the estate and expressing an appropriate regret about the “sad incident,” he passed into the room of the gardener. Then Leblanc appeared.

“It’s unlikely there will be work for you, Inspector,” Clavier informed him.

“You believe, it is a natural death?”

“No doubt. A heart attack which is certainly no wonder at his age.”

“But the servant from the estate who fetched me said that the old man was strangled.”

“No, nothing like that. Though such mistake is quite understandable just from looking at the body. In some way he really died of asphyxia, but it was caused by completely internal, not external, reasons.”

“Well, Doctor, I rely on your competence. To tell the truth, untangling a murder case would be the least desirable thing for me. Monsieur Dubois, I regret very much that I have to pay a second visit to you due to such an unpleasant occasion. I hope that will not happen again. As my acquaintance, a lieutenant of artillery, says, shells don’t land twice in one place.”

Certainly, the death of the gardener made a depressing impression upon everyone in the house, and most of all on Jeannette. But Dubois did not let her even open her mouth.

“The old man died in his sleep from a heart attack; there is absolutely nothing unusual,” he said in a peremptory tone. “We just have to hire a new gardener, that’s all.”

Jeannette sadly sighed.

Three days passed. On the morning of the fourth day a postman delivered a letter to Dubois. Having read it, the businessman declared to Jeannette that business affairs required his presence in Paris. Having heard this news, Jeannette turned away and bit her lip; it seemed she was just about to burst into tears.

“I will return tonight,” Dubois said, “at the latest—tomorrow afternoon.”

“And you will leave me alone in this awful house for all that time!”

“Alone? What are you talking about? The house is full of servants. Doesn’t Marie entertain you anymore? And there is nothing awful in my house!”

“Jacques, please, don’t leave me! I am so wretched here… without you.”

“Jeannette, but I must go! The outcome of an important bargain depends on it.”

“A bargain is more important to you than me!” Jeannette wanted to exclaim, but held her tongue. Dubois certainly would have answered: “Of course it is.” He would have said this even to a wife, and she after all was only a concubine. Bought for trinkets, for expensive dresses, for the maid Marie… and, already unable to conceive her life without all this, thus was obliged to obey her master.

Dubois ordered the carriage prepared for travel and went to his office once again to look through some papers. After a while, having finished reading, he discovered with surprise that the carriage was still not ready. “How long is he going to dawdle?” the businessman impatiently muttered, meaning the coachman, and went out to the yard to clarify this question personally. The door of the stable was half-open; when nobody responded,to his loud call, Dubois, obeying an instinct, returned to the house and took a pistol with him back to the stable. His own alarm however seemed to him ridiculous: “Have I really begun to catch Jeannette’s fears?” But any desire to laugh disappeared when he looked inside the stable through the half-opened door.

The coachman lay inside near the entrance with his head smashed; it seemed that after a crushing blow he had managed to crawl away to the doors before death overtook him. His murderer, the black stallion who never had demonstrated a violent temper before, was snorting, his eyes wildly staring, his blood-stained hoof kicking and beating the ground. In the next instant it broke its tether and charged directly at the startled Dubois. The latter, however, brought up his pistol and shot the horse almost point-blank. It fell and thrashed in agony; blood splashed from the wound in pulses. Dubois turned away in disgust.

This time Inspector Leblanc wasn’t content with the doctor’s statement about the obvious lack of traces of murderous intent. He gave Dubois a gloomy and distrustful look and declared that he would make a careful investigation and would interrogate everyone in the house.

“Goddamn!” the owner of the house exclaimed, “Are you saying that this was a murder!”

“I’m saying nothing, monsieur,” the policeman answered coldly, “I only know that it is the third sudden death on your estate in just a few days. You see, three shells which land in one place are suspicious.”

“But there is no connection between these deaths… and there is no sense in them. All of them are quite explainable. It’s abundantly clear that this is just an unhappy coincidence.”

“By the nature of my occupation, I don’t believe in coincidences,” Leblanc dryly noted.

This time, Leblanc’s investigation took several hours. The inspector was still unable to find evidence that the incident was anything other than an accident. At last he left the estate obviously dissatisfied, having said upon departing: “Be careful, monsieur Dubois”. This phrase could be understood doubly: “beware of the unknown killer” or “beware of the truth being found out.”

After Leblanc’s investigation was finished, it was too late to go to Paris. Besides a new coachman would have to be found. Dubois was compelled to abandon the trip, indignantly feeling that the good bargain was slipping away through his fingers. But his troubles weren’t limited to his business dealings. Several servants simultaneously declared an intention to quit their jobs. Dubois nevertheless managed to dissuade them; he promised to increase their salary, understanding that if the servants fled, it would increase the ill fame of the house and he would have to pay even more to the next ones. In addition, the coachman’s death caused a scene with Jeannette, who declared a categorical unwillingness to live “under one roof with death” (she probably found this expression in one of the trashy novels which she was recently reading in large numbers). Dubois at first tried to persuade her, then shouted at her, then finally settled the issue with an expensive necklace which he had been going to give her in a more suitable situation. He thought at this moment that, had the most virtuous spouse been in Jeannette’s place, the dispute still would have been solved in the same way, so contempt toward prostitutes is completely unjust: all women are equally venal.

Soon a letter informed Dubois that his worst presentiments had come true: his rival had used Dubois’s canceled trip to his own advantage and what should have made profits turned into losses. It seemed that everything pushed Dubois to leave the house and to return to the city; however he was stubborn and wasn’t accustomed to shrink back before obstacles—on the contrary, the more serious the impediments seemed, the stronger became his determination to overcome them; without this trait, he wouldn’t have risen from a newsdealer boy to a successful businessman.

In the evening of the same day when the distressing news came, the estate owner and his paramour sat in the dining room waiting for dinner. Dubois mechanically bent and folded a napkin: half-and-half, again half-and-half… He always did such things when he was irritated. Suddenly the footman whose duties included serving at the table ran into the room out of breath.

“Monsieur, monsieur! The cook…”

“Don’t say she’s dead!” Dubois exclaimed.

“Not yet, monsieur… but she is very bad.”

The old woman was in a really bad way: she was suffocating, her face had turned blue, and her body shuddered in spasms. On the floor lay a big spoon with morsels of food. Obviously, the cook had choked trying her own dish; Dubois, however, didn’t understood it at once—at first he thought of poison. One of servants tried to help the cook while another ran for the doctor. But when Clavier arrived, everything was already over. The list of deaths grew longer.

This time Leblanc, apparently, was full of determination to arrest someone. He reviewed the incident very carefully; it became clear that at the moment of the cook’s misfortune, only the footman and one of servants had no alibi. The inspector, however, didn’t detain them and asked Dubois and the doctor to discuss the situation.

All three passed to Dubois’s office, which previously had been the place of de Montreux’s death; the businessman wasn’t distressed at all by the aristocrat’s demise.

“I am sure that we are dealing with a crime,” Leblanc stated without preface. “More precisely, with a series of crimes.”

“Are you implying that I’m killing my own servants?” Dubois arose.

“No, it is quite obvious that it is not you. In the last case, you simply couldn’t have done it—if, of course, the whole house is not in collusion and doesn’t protect you specially. But an arrangement between a murderer and his victims is absurd.”

“As well as murders without a motive!”

“You see,” the doctor cleared his throat, “purely theoretically you could have a reason… I’m not a specialist in mental disorders; here, in rural areas, people seldom go mad. But just recently I’ve read one article… Sometimes a man who has done a certain act subconsciously regrets it and tries to correct his deeds. Thus, he acts as a somnambulist, without being aware of his actions and without remembering them. So, as you were indirectly involved in the death of count de Montreux…”

“Nonsense,” Dubois cut him off. “In your theory, I subconsciously try to execute his curse and lose my rest? But I don’t feel any guilt, either conscious or subconscious. I see no reasons to stand on ceremony with these dried-up branches of the old aristocracy.”

“Anyway, you have an alibi,” the inspector interjected, “and we may not consider the exotic hypothesis of the doctor.”

“Your hypothesis seems to me no less exotic,” noticed Dubois, “you speak about murders, but, after all, these events are just accidents.”

“It was not too difficult to arrange last three deaths,” the inspector objected. “In order to cause a night heart attack of an old man, it’s enough to frighten him badly. The same is applicable to the choked old woman. And it was possible to mix a drinkable potion which would agitate the horse into a frenzy.”

“Do you think one of the servants is behind all this?”

“No, not they. And not your… um… girlfriend. Yet Romans, investigating a crime, first of all asked a question: cui prodest—to whom is it favorable? You, obviously, have enemies, don’t you?”

“As well as any businessman. But none of them would settle scores in such a Gothic novel style. Besides, if someone wants to destroy me, why would he kill my servants?”

“That’s true, your business rivals are not suspects. These deaths seem more like revenge, and revenge with definite aims. It would seem that someone aspires to expel you from this house, simultaneously bringing down its price because of ill fame. For this purpose, he kills servants who previously served de Montreux’s family and then betrayed them by serving you…”

“In other words, a de Montreux wants to buy back the family home cheaply? But the late count was the last in his line, no relatives remained. I found that out.”

“In such affairs, there never can be full confidence. The relative could be distant and have another surname; it could be just a friend and, at lastly… even Armand count de Montreux himself.”

“The dead man? You saw his body.”

“Now I am not so sure that we saw the body of the count. You remember, the face was disfigured by the shot. Certainly, there is a question as to whose corpse was palmed off on us… but that’s another matter. But look, how all the facts fit. The count knows the house better than anybody else, and he has keys to all the doors; he can easily get into any place on the estate. And, certainly, his emergence alone is enough to literally frighten to death the gardener and the cook.”

“It’s too romantic to be true,” Dubois made a wry face.

“Because of the loss of his house, the count could have developed an idee fixe,” noticed Clavier. “And then, quite probably, he would began to act exactly in such a way.”

“Are you saying that a revenge-thirsting maniac is walking around my house? In that case, why does he limit himself to servants and not kill me?”

“And who told you that he wouldn’t do that?” the inspector said with police directness. “Before killing you, he just wants to make you quake with fear, that’s all.”

“So what do you think I should do?”

“I would recommend that you leave… for some time. You see, here I can’t guarantee your safety. In rural areas, there is not a large number of police… we can’t assign a gendarme to each inhabitant of the house.”

“In other words, you decline all responsibility?” Dubois sneered.

“No, certainly not. I will do my utmost… but after all, formally, we don’t even have a legally defined crime. There is only a series of accidents—and a hypothesis which would seem even more fantastic to my superiors than to you.”

“Don’t bother, I understood. Well, I can take care of myself.”

“But remember that the danger threatens not only you.”

“If you cannot protect us, at least refrain from condescending to tell me what to do. Besides, as you say, these are only hypotheses in which I don’t much believe. But if this unknown avenger, be it de Montreux or anybody else, intrudes in my house, I will shoot him.”

“In any case, you should warn all inhabitants of the house about the danger.”

“So that they all run away? Superstitious rumors are one thing and a real threat of murder is absolutely another one. No, they are frightened enough even without that.”

“In that case, monsieur Dubois, I must warn them myself.”

“Inspector, you have no formal grounds to consider these deaths criminal. Thus, you have no right to alarm my people, thus causing …”

At this moment came a knock at the door. It was Leroi.

“I beg your pardon for interrupting you, monsieur,” he said, “but the matter is that the servants… they are preparing to depart.”

“What, all of them?” the businessman shouted angrily. “Try to dissuade them!”

“It’s impossible, monsieur, I tried. They want to leave the estate immediately, before the night. So will you allow me to settle with them?”

“And what if not?”

“They say, monsieur, that they will leave now and will return for their money later.”

“Damn! You see, inspector, your efforts aren’t required any more. All right, Leroi, settle with these superstitious idiots and then go to the village and hire somebody for couple of days until new permanent servants can be found.”

“Yes, monsieur. But I am afraid that nobody in the village will agree to work in this house, even for a threefold payment.”

“I need servants, not your guesses! Go!”

“You see, monsieur Dubois,” the inspector said when the majordomo left the room, “all circumstances favor your departure.”

“Like hell! If someone wants to expel me from this house, he won’t achieve it!” the businessman rose from his chair, letting the others know that conversation was ended.

Jeannette met him in tears.

“Jacques!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around his neck. “Let’s leave this damned place! Let’s leave right now!”

“One of my enemies would like it very much. And that’s why we remain here. Don’t be afraid of anything. While you are with me, nothing may threaten you,” for greater persuasiveness he showed Jeannette the loaded pistol, which probably frightened her even more.

It happened that not all the servants left the house: unexpectedly from somewhere Marie appeared. However, Dubois’s satisfaction with this fact almost instantly disappeared: the maid’s usual cheerfulness was gone, and she probably could only increase the despondency of her mistress now. Then Leroi returned—as he had expected, with nothing: no villager would agree to work in de Montreux’s house or even approach it after sunset. For the night, Dubois ordered everyone to lock their doors, and he himself, contrary to his normal practice, remained in Jeannette’s bedroom till morning.

That night in the forest the wolf howled again.

In the morning, having left Jeannette in the care of her maid and having strictly ordered the majordomo to keep watch over both of them, Dubois went to the village and bought several of the strongest padlocks and bolts; then, having employed a temporary worker for an absolutely unreasonable fee, he came back to the estate. Together with Leroi, they went all over house, replacing locks and nailing up doors. Dubois even tapped walls in search of secret passages—a week ago even a thought about something similar would have seemed to him absolute paranoia. Eventually the house began to resemble a fortress not only from outside, but also from within; the locked and boarded up doors gave it a completely dismal and uninhabited look. The worker received his payment and went away with obvious relief; his appearance said: “No locks will save you from de Montreux’s curse!”

Whether it was caused by natural irritation because things were developing so unsuccessfully or the gloomy atmosphere of the house and the events which had happened in it, Dubois for the first time felt really uncomfortable in his house and all day stayed in Jeannette’s company. He managed to brighten up and, perhaps even more importantly, to amuse his concubine so that she stopped asking to leave the house and behaved as though she believed that after the arrival of new servants, everything would go in a different way. At last Jeannette went to her bedroom. Dubois sat on a sofa, leaning back and clamping a cigar between his thick hairy fingers, when suddenly the silence of the house was pierced by a terrifying female cry. The owner of the ill-starred estate jumped up as if stung, pulled out a pistol from a table box, and rushed to a corridor.

Jeannette, mortally pale, lay motionless on the threshold of her bedroom. Having knelt down beside her, Dubois saw with relief that she had only fainted. Suddenly, at the other end of the corridor the scared majordomo appeared.

“What happened?” he shouted.

“She is alive,” Dubois answered and only at this moment thought about the reason for her screaming and fainting. He glanced in the bedroom and felt growing cold inside him.

Marie, whose carefree temperament even the ominous events of the last few days couldn’t trouble, hung under the room ceiling. The overturned chair lay on a floor. Having looked at the terrible face of the strangled girl, Dubois understood that death had already come and any attempts to aid her were useless.

“Damned bastard!” the businessman shouted. “Where are you hiding?! Come out—or are you afraid to meet me face to face?!”

“No, no, monsieur,” said Leroi. He tried to speak calmly, but his voice quavered. “There is nobody here, except us. That’s a suicide, no doubt, a suicide…”

Dubois turned to him. Having seen his face, the majordomo started back.

“Suicide?! Why the hell, in your learned opinion, should she have hanged herself?!”

“Who knows… girls at such an age… some amorous troubles…”

“Go for the doctor,” Dubois restrained himself. “And if upon your return you don’t find me alive, know that it won’t be a suicide.”

Soon after Leroi’s departure, Jeannette came to her senses.

“Is it true that Marie is dead?” she asked. “It didn’t seem real to me.”

“Yes, unfortunately, it’s true,” Dubois answered.

“Poor Marie… Well, now we will leave here. Leave immediately.”

“We will leave…” he absentmindedly responded, looking around like a badgered animal. The businessman who pulled off million-franc deals and managed the lives of many people, for the first time in many years was really frightened. All the previous deaths had reasonable explanations; but Marie’s death was so absurd, irrational…

The doctor, however, demonstrated no special surprise—as well as the inspector with whom he, obviously, already shared his information.

“Poor Marie,” Clavier echoed the words of Jeannette. “If only I had known that she would go there…”

“What are you trying to say?” Dubois impatiently exclaimed. “Is this a suicide?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“But the motive?”

“Yesterday Marie asked me to examine her… She was pregnant.”

Dubois suddenly felt idiotic desire to exclaim: “I had nothing to do with it!” Instead he addressed Leblanc:

“But, Inspector, if your hypothesis about the avenger is true, he could hang the maid, imitating suicide.”

“I quite agree with the doctor,” Leblanc answered, finishing inspecting the body. “You see, when a person is hanged against his will, either his hands are tied or he is previously made unconscious. Obviously, in both cases the victim can’t grasp the rope. On the contrary, suicides usually reflexively do it at the last moment, which leaves on their hands the corresponding traces present in this case… Certainly, without a motive it wouldn’t be absolute proof, but the doctor’s information…”

Dubois pity for Marie disappeared instantly.

“She shouldn’t have done it in my house!” he angrily exclaimed.

“I do not think that she specially wanted to cause you trouble,” the doctor shook his head. “Possibly, it was a sudden impulsive decision. Probably, the oppressive atmosphere of the house was a factor…”

“Leave my house alone! ‘The oppressive atmosphere,’ ‘the house of death’—all this is idiotic malarkey, and I will prove to all of you that it is possible to live a fine life here!”

As soon as the visitors left, Jeannette asked with anxiety:

“Jacques, you aren’t going to remain here?”

“Certainly, we will remain.”

“But you promised!”

“I thought that we were dealing with a devilishly capable and artful killer. But it appears that nobody killed Marie, so there is no danger.”

“No danger?! Five deaths in two weeks!”

“It’s just an extremely unpleasant coincidence. Well, not absolutely a coincidence… Each subsequent incident plays on the nerves of people, thereby increasing the probability of new tragedies…”

“You can argue as much as you want with a clever look on your face, but I won’t remain here any longer.”

“Jeannette, it is necessary to endure just a day more. And then new servant will arrive, and life will return to normal. We should not flee now; it is necessary to stop this growing fear…”

“I’m leaving, Jacques, I will leave immediately. If you don’t want to go, I’m going alone.”

Dubois lost his patience.

“You may go anywhere. I don’t need hysterical women. If you leave now, everything will be over between us.”

“Jacques, don’t speak so… I want to be with you… but only not in this house. I am scared, Jacques… so scared…”

“You are under my protection!”

“There are things over which even you have no control…”

“Well, enough of this superstitious bullshit! I ask… I demand that you stay. No? Have you thought about what you are losing? Still no?”

He stepped closer to her and slapped her cheek. He had done it before, though very seldom, when it was necessary to correct her. Previously it had helped.

Jeannette turned away in tears.

“Farewell, monsieur Dubois,” she said.

“Leroi! Leroi!” the enraged businessman cried. The alarmed majordomo arrived.

“Go to the village and hire somebody who will take the mademoiselle to the city. Right now.”

“It’s useless, monsieur. Now, at night, nobody will agree to render you services. Maybe, we’ll wait till the morning?”

“I said now! If you can’t hire anybody, you will drive her yourself! Enough, get out of my sight! Both of you!”

Dubois remained in the huge house alone. Black moonless night shrouded the estate, the gloomy forest, the road passing through the forest… The candle crackled and went out, leaving the owner of the house alone with darkness. Again from afar a wolf howl reached; this time, as it seemed to Dubois, not in anxiety but in triumph and at the same time a dreary threat sounded in it. He imagined how it would be for a lonely traveler to listen to this howl in the cold and unfriendly night, and that made him shudder.

The carriage rolled through the night forest. On the left and on the right, huge trunks of old trees, which probably remembered yet the first count de Montreux, towered in gloom; their long clumsy branches here and there intertwined over the road. The cold night breeze whispered in foliage and moved in bushes; suddenly somewhere an eagle owl dully screeched. Leroi, who handled the reins, involuntarily shivered. It seemed improbable that somewhere there was Paris decked by lights, that in cabarets and restaurants people were having fun, that it was the pragmatic nineteenth century in the outer world. Here, in the forest, everything was as if impregnated with the spirit of antiquity, the spirit of times gone long ago—or more likely, of non-time at all, of a stiffened and hardened eternity. Leroi, probably, would not have been surprised much if from the nearest turn a knight in armor or a medieval monk in a hooded cowl had appeared. He already regretted that he had agreed to bring his master’s concubine to the city at night—or, as he suspected, the former concubine; if he had simply informed Dubois that nobody would undertake this task, then, probably, his master would have told Jeannette: “Reach Paris yourself as best you can.” She, facing such a prospect, probably would have tried for a reconciliation—maybe the master expected exactly that? Anyway, it was too late already for such thought, unless Jeannette herself would ask to turn back…

At this moment, a wolf howl distinctly sounded from behind. Here, in the forest, it sounded much more ominous than in the house. Jeannette put her head out of the window.

“Faster, Leroi! Do you hear?”

“Nothing to worry about. In these parts usually people hunt wolves, not vice versa,” he answered, whipping up the horses, however.

In a few minutes the howl sounded again, this time much closer. Leroi marveled; if it was not a hearing deception, the animal moved with tremendous speed. Then he decided that it was, most likely, another wolf. The horses began to show appreciable anxiety.

The wolf raised a howl a third time—very close, literally just behind a turn. “Faster, faster!” Jeannette shouted, but the horses didn’t need further urging. Leroi felt that he couldn’t cope with them. Spurred on by ancient horror, the horses galloped at full speed; the coach groaned and shook on its springs. A low leaning branch scratched the carriage top, like a hand trying to hold the escaping prey.

“What are you doing, we will crash!” Jeannette cried. At the next moment a spasm seized her throat: having looked back, she saw the predators.

Seven or eight large wolves chased the carriage; they seemed terribly huge to the frightened Jeannette. The biggest one ran ahead of the others; it was a magnificent beast with fur of a rare silvery shade. Its eyes shone red in the darkness, which is usual for animals of this species, but it seemed to Jeannette that in those eyes hellfire sparkled. The wolves ran absolutely silently, like ghosts, and the distance between them and their potential victims, despite the horses’ mad run, decreased every minute. Leroi didn’t try to manage the horses any longer; he just sat, grasping the reins and staring into the darkness with eyes wide open from fear.

The dull crash sounded, and the carriage, which had lost a wheel, jerkily fell sidewards. The door swung open, and Jeannette, who had no time to grab any support, fell out on the road. The crazed horses dragged the overturned carriage further.

When Jeannette came to her senses after falling, she saw the wolves had surrounded her in a semicircle. The leader wrinkled its nose in a snarl, baring its canines which dimly shone in the light of stars. Jeannette felt hair stand on her head; paralyzed by horror, she couldn’t resist, couldn’t shout—she only looked at the slowly approaching beast…

“I am sorry, monsieur Dubois,” Inspector Leblanc said, “but you should participate in the identification. The body is very mutilated…”

“Yes,” Dubois said, dully staring ahead, “yes, of course.” After a a short pause, he asked: “And did Leroi escape?”

“It is hardly possible to call it escape,” the inspector answered. “He was found near the wreckage of the coach. The wolves didn’t touch him, but what he endured had a pernicious effect on him… He was sitting, absolutely gray-haired, stupidly staring at one point; in this condition he still stays now. The poor man lost his mind.”

“It looks like all this doesn’t much fit your hypothesis about an avenger,” gloomily noted Dubois. “Would you say that the wolves were trained?”

“Yes, it would sound ridiculous… Wolves generally aren’t tamable. Though, on the other hand, there are breeds of dogs very similar to wolves. And an attack of a wolf pack on a coach is so unusual at this time… They actually behaved more like dogs: bit the victim to death, but didn’t gobble her up. Besides, the wheel—why did it suddenly fall off? It might be an accident… or the axle might have been weakened The examination doesn’t allow me to say unequivocally now.”

“You don’t abandon your idea?” Dubois was surprised.

“I don’t know, monsieur Dubois; I simply don’t know. If this is a crime, then it is devilishly, improbably cunning and difficult to accomplish; otherwise, it is an improbable chain of coincidences. We have to choose between two improbabilities. Well, are you ready? The doctor waits for us.”

When the uneasy formalities were finished, Clavier expressed a desire to talk to Dubois. The latter mechanically nodded.

For some time both kept silence.

“She was very valuable to you, wasn’t she?” the doctor began at last.

“Yes… probably she was,” the businessman answered, “though I never thought about it before.”

“Now will you leave?”

“No!” Dubois gritted his teeth. “Now I especially won’t leave under any circumstances! Nobody in the world will expel me from my house!”

“Excuse me, monsieur, but this has become a kind of obsession. Certainly, all that you had to suffer…”

“Spare me this nonsense, doctor! I am as clear-headed as always. The laws of probability are on my side. Coincidences can’t proceed eternally—that means, I am not in danger. Or do you, like the inspector, see in all this a malicious intention?”

“Leblanc still considers that we deal with an ordinary criminal?”

“Not with anyone ordinary; however, he isn’t sure about the possibilities. He theorizes that in the last tragedy dogs could have been used as murder weapons.”

“As far as I can judge, they were wolves.”

“Then why… why didn’t they eat her?”

“Well, here a very simple explanation is possible. Wolves are very sensitive to smells; the smell of perfume could stave off their appetite. Excuse me for such details…”

“On the contrary, you calmed me. Now I precisely know that we deal only with coincidences.”

“You see, monsieur Dubois… that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. As well as Leblanc, I don’t believe in too a large number of coincidences… but in this case I also doubt that an ordinary human being could arrange all this.”

“Then who?” Dubois grinned. “The angered ghost of count de Montreux?”

“You are wrong to treat it so lightly.”

“What?!” Dubois stared at the doctor in astonishment. “You don’t really mean to say that you believe in such bullshit?! You, a man of science!”

“Yes, certainly, we live in the nineteenth century when it seems that in the temple of science only a few last bricks need to be laid… But it is a superficial view. I am afraid that what we built is only an entrance to the real temple. Factually, we still know almost nothing about fundamental things: life and death. It is considered nowadays that a human being is a machine: the heart is a motor, the stomach is a fire chamber, the arms and legs are levers, and so on. But then why can’t we assemble this machine from separate parts? Why, having stopped, can’t it be started again when what stopped it is eliminated?”

“Obviously, the parts instantly spoil and nothing more,” Dubois answered with irritation.

“But why does it occur? Why are the complex and diverse chemical processes of life quickly and irreversibly replaced by the chemical processes of decomposition? Why does an injury to the brain turn an absolutely healthy organism into inert decaying protoplasm? The heart after all has its own nerve system; it doesn’t need orders from the brain to work. Theoretically the body could live without the head as it lives without a foot or a hand; but it doesn’t occur.”

“I am sure that science will find answers to these questions.”

“I am sure of it, too; but how can we know what these answers will be? Why not assume that there is a certain substance, call it soul or mind, which is connected to the body, but is capable of leaving it? And if this substance interacts with its own body, it can interact also with other objects of the material world.”

“Really and truly, doctor, you disappoint me. Do you think that it is enough to say ‘substance’ instead of ‘ghost’ to turn medieval nonsense into a scientific hypothesis? No, doctor. In my life I haven’t faced anything that couldn’t be explained rationally.”

“Six deaths in a row, monsieur.”

“Each of which has a reasonable explanation! Eventually, what do you want from me? To leave? Jeannette tried to leave and that killed her. Perhaps I should bring a church repentance? Should I   sprinkle the house with holy water and put a garlic wreath on my neck? No, I did something better. I replaced locks and secured the doors and I have a weapon at my hand. If really there is someone behind all this, I will with great pleasure fire a bullet into this bastard.”

“Whatever, monsieur, whatever; but I am still sure that here you are in danger.”

“Bullshit, tomorrow new servants will arrive, and everything will go as it should.”

“If I were you, at least I wouldn’t spend tonight alone in the empty house.”

“I am capable of protecting myself. If it is a ghost,” Dubois grinned, “it can’t cause me harm; and if it’s a living man, I’ll quickly make him a ghost.”

By evening the weather worsened; the incoming autumn declared its rights. The cold wind tore wet leaves from trees and flung small raindrops against the windows. Dubois stayed late in his office with some papers; but business affairs didn’t occupy his mind. Though he wouldn’t admit it even to himself, fear was overtaking him. The thought that in this office the last count de Montreux committed suicide now disturbed the new owner of the manor; the understanding of his full loneliness in the empty and cold house oppressed him. It came to a point when, having caught movement out of the corner of his eye, he shuddered and grabbed for the gun and only in the next moment realized that he was frightened by his own shadow on a wall. Dubois swore. At the same time, an especially strong burst of wind blew; glasses shuddered, and somewhere in the house a shutter swung open with a bang. For several seconds Dubois sat motionless with his heart beating fast, listening attentively to the sounds of the night house, but he heard only wind howling in chimneys. Then he stood up and, with a pistol in one hand and a lamp in another, went to check the suspicious window.

He didn’t find anything unusual there; obviously, the shutter had indeed been opened by the wind. Dubois closed it again and, without returning to the office, went to his bedroom. There he carefully locked the door with two turns of a key, engaged a latch, examined the window, put two loaded pistols on a little bedside cabinet and only after all that went to bed, having left the oil lamp lit. Dubois couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, listening to the whining of the wind and rain noise beyond the window, but, at last, a heavy drowsiness possessed him…

About midnight the businessman suddenly opened his eyes as from a kick. The storm had ended; it was astonishingly quiet in the house. And in this silence, the remote creak of floor boards suddenly was heard. Dubois tried to convince himself that there was nothing unusual: in an old house something always squeaks and crackles. However, the sounds were too rhythmical and, seemingly, their source approached. In horror Dubois realized that he was hearing confident steps; someone strode through the house. Here creaked, opening, an office door; then it slammed—the stranger left there. Now the steps moved to the bedroom.

Dubois understood that it was necessary to take a pistol, but he could not move and lay in full helplessness. Steps stopped on the other side of the door. The new lock snapped, opening. Then the latch moved by itself. Dubois felt hair move on his head. The door silently opened. Behind it, there was nobody.

But the steps came nearer to the bed and stopped. Dubois smelled the disgusting stench of a decaying corpse. A cold whiff of air touched his face and at the next instant slippery ice-cold fingers seized the businessman’s neck. Dubois wanted to cry out, but a spasm blocked his throat. He desperately, but unsuccessfully, tried to move his hands; his heart beat furiously, he suffocated…

Dubois was awakened by his own shout. Still in the power of his nightmare, he jumped up on the bed, swinging hands, and knocked the lamp down from the bedside cabinet. The lamp fell and broke; burning kerosene spread on the floor, and tongues of flame licked the window curtain and the bed sheet which hung to the floor. Dubois, at last, awoke completely. In three jumps he crossed the bedroom and, having pushed the latch aside, jerked the door handle. But the door, of course, didn’t open, as the lock was locked on two turns and the key lay on the bedside cabinet. Having realized this fact, Dubois helplessly turned back: the cabinet was already on fire. For some seconds the businessman helplessly looked around in search of any object which could help him, but then he understood that he had to snatch the key out of the flames barehanded. When he, at last, rushed to the cabinet, the fire reached the pistols lying there. A shot banged; a strong and hot kick in the breast threw Dubois back onto the locked door, and he slowly slipped to the floor. The flame with a cheerful crackle was devouring the room furniture.

“Yesterday in the suburb of L. there was a strong fire, as a result of which the family estate of counts de Montreux completely burned out. The last owner, the Parisian businessman Jacques Dubois, was the only victim of the fire. It is supposed that he died because of his own imprudence.”

WINDY DAY IN WEST

The straight gray tape of the highway was rewinding under the Ford’s wheels at 75 mph. The hot southern wind drove across the road clouds of dust and tumbleweed spheres similar to skeletons of balls. Pete Palmer had needed to close the driver’s window that morning and since then the wind had only increased. A continuous haze hung over the yellow-orange desert. “The way things are going, I’ll have to slow down,” Pete thought. “Visibility is miserable even now.” It was 3 PM; he had been en route for 74 hours and had left his car only to do the deed. He ate and slept right in the car.

“Hello, friends, Dan Daniels with you on the hour,” sounded from the car radio. It was some local station. “What weather, huh? There hasn’t been a scorcher like this for years. Well, the weatherman says this heat will last at least several days more. So we have to do the best we can. I like lying in a cool bath and sipping martinis with ice. Too bad my studio doesn’t have a bath. Between you and me, I’m sitting here in my underpants only. Right now, I’m like the characters in the song you’ll hear next—it’s the hit of the month, ‘Hot Guys Is What I Like!’”

“Moron,” muttered Palmer and switched the radio off. The noise of the motor merged with the rustle of sand grains hitting the glass.

He finally noticed a figure on the roadside. He had nearly missed seeing it, not so much because of the dusty haze, but because he didn’t expect to see anybody out here. He had passed the last town about an hour ago—if a gas station with a poster “Last Gas For 100 miles” could be called a town—and, according to the road map, the next populated place was no closer. Unless there was some nearby ranch not designated on the map? Anyway, the person was here and held out a hand with the thumb up, expressing an eager desire to leave.

Just a minute ago Pete hadn’t considered picking up hitchhikers. Certainly, this guy stuck in the middle of the desert in stifling heat and a dust storm could hardly be envied, but those were his problems. Nevertheless, Palmer eased off the accelerator, wanting to look at the hitchhiker before passing him by.

It happened to be a girl. The wind fanned her short fair hair and billowed her loose T-shirt over worn jeans. A small backpack stood near her feet. On her T-shirt there was the question “ARE YOU SURE?” She wasn’t a beauty. Otherwise Pete would have definitely passed her by.

The Ford rolled briefly while the driver’s foot hovered between the gas and brake pedals—and, at last, Palmer chose the latter. “Yes,” he said. “I am sure.”

The girl, still not believing to her luck, hastily ran up to the car. She didn’t ask anything, just simply opened the door, dusted the sand off her jeans, and plopped into the passenger seat.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Where are you going?” inquired Pete, turning right and examining her more attentively.

“Ahead!”

“Means you’re going my way,” Palmer nodded, pressing the accelerator again.

The girl was silent and Pete thought that didn’t suit him. He could keep silent alone, which he actually did for the last 74 hours.

“Rather odd that nowadays a girl isn’t afraid to get in a stranger’s car this way,” he said. He dissembled a bit, as the appearance of his passenger actually didn’t make her an especially desired victim for a rapist. She was short—which could by itself interest the maniacs who craved subtlety and defenselessness; however her build was not subtle, but, on the contrary, too corpulent, with some excessive flab around her waist, while she still could not be called fat. And at the same time her breasts weren’t very well developed. Her round face was also quite ordinary and, besides, freckled. All in all, not very pretty. However, who knows what can get in the mind of a psychopath…

“You don’t look like a maniac, mister,” the girl said.

“As if you ever saw any,” Palmer grinned.

“Only in the movies,” she admitted. “Though my dear daddy can be worse than any maniac when he gets drunk—and the last time he was sober was three weeks before Christmas. Well, an explanation number two—I believe in destiny.”

“Believing in destiny isn’t worse than believing in anything else,” Palmer shrugged his shoulders. “It’s possible never to get in a stranger’s car during your whole life and then to slip and die in your own bathtub, isn’t it?”

“Exactly.”

“But just the same I wouldn’t let my daughter hitchhike, not even to the other end of town. These days—not for a moment. My God, I never was a goody two-shoes myself. I lost my virginity when I was 17 and my girlfriend was the same age. But at least we really thought we would get married. When I was young, if a man smiled at a kid and started talking to him, everyone around melted—look how he likes children! And in most cases, that’s how it really was. And now in the same situation, the kid is immediately whisked away, because everyone thinks this guy is a fucking pedophile. And goddamn it, in most cases they’re right again!”

“Do you like children?” the girl asked.

“No,” shortly answered Pete.

“But what about your daughter?”

“I don’t have a daughter.”

She became silent again.

“How did you get out here?” Palmer asked. “In the middle of the desert?”

“A guy who gave me a lift put me out of his car here.”

“Did he molest you?”

“No, he didn’t. But he was an asshole. I don’t know why I got in his car—I guess I just got sick and tired of waiting for a ride in this heat. He stank of sweat and smoked cheap cigars. At first we didn’t talk at all—he listened to country music.”

“He had thick hairy fingers and a cowboy hat. And he drives a shabby blue pickup,” added Pete.

“You saw him?” the girl was surprised.

“No, but if you see one guy like that, you’ve seen them all.”

“Well, that’s what he’s like, only the pickup is gray instead of blue. So, he listened to country, and sometimes he even tried to sing along. And then the music ended and the news came on. It was about that Dorothy Springles, the one who got her own husband locked up for rape.”

“I know.”

“Today the court said ‘no’ to his appeal or something. And this guy started yelling about ‘underfucked feminist bitches’ and stuff. And he finished by saying that the dumbest thing Americans ever did was to allow cunts and niggers to vote. It looked like he even believed that it happened simultaneously. Well, and… I spoke up. To tell the truth, I was way more polite than he deserved,” the girl glanced fearfully at Palmer, having thought too late that he could agree with the pickup driver. But Palmer didn’t express an opinion in any way. “Well, then he stopped the car and told me to get the fuck out. That I was a stinking bitch and so on. I wanted to tell him which of the two of us was stinking, but I didn’t dare. He was at least three times bigger than me and there wasn’t anyone around for 50 miles.”

“How long did you wait there?”

“Well, probably, more than an hour. A little more and I would be a dried up mummy filled with sand.”

“So you decided, just in case, to keep mum with me.”

“Exactly.”

“All problems between people come from two causes,” Palmer said. “First, they don’t tell each other the truth. And second, they do tell it.”

The girl looked at him respectfully.

“Are you a writer?”

“Nope, I’m not a writer. And not a maniac. And I don’t drop girls on the road in the middle of a desert—at least, not yet.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“By the way, I didn’t get your name.”

“Bettie.”

“Not very pretty,” slipped off Palmer’s tongue.

“What?” she seemed more surprised than offended.

“Sorry. Pay no attention. I’ve been having a bad time recently.” (“In the last 74 hours,” he added mentally. “Or in the last 50 years—depending on how you look at it.”)

“You can call me Liz if you want”

“Frankly speaking, I don’t like ‘Liz’ any better than ‘Bettie,’” he admitted. “But don’t sweat it. That’s just me. You aren’t angry?”

“Everything is okay, mister.”

“Don’t call me ‘mister.’ Call me Pete.”

“Okay… Pete.”

“That bothers you?” he immediately asked, noticing an uncertainty in her voice. “You think I’m trying to seem like one of the boys, as if I still were young? It’s unnatural for you to call such an old fart ‘Pete?’”

“You don’t look at all like an old… umm…”

“Don’t lie to me, Bettie. I know perfectly well how a 50-year-old looks when you’re 17.”

“Actually, I’m 18 already.”

“Is that so?” grinned Pete.

“Yes,” Bettie answered, thinking aloud. “I turned 18 last week,and I decided that I have had enough. Enough of a permanently drunk dad, enough of a mother who dad turned into a dumb animal long ago, enough of a brother all the time trying to pinch my butt or to watch me change clothes—enough of the whole nice little town of Bricksville, let it burn in hell. I broke my piggy bank, packed a backpack and went to the road. By evening I was already 200 miles away from home and I hope never to come any closer to it again.”

“And where are you going?”

“Dunno. Maybe Sacramento or Frisco. Or maybe I’ll find a waitress job in some roadside diner this side of the Rockies. I don’t have any definite plans. The main thing is to get far away from Bricksville and then we’ll see.”

“Can you do anything? Well, except housework.”

“Not much,” she admitted. “But I’m a fast learner.”

“Have you at least graduated from high school?”

“Yes… and my grades weren’t too bad. Though I hope that when Bricksville burns in hell, the fire gets the school first.”

“I see,” Palmer nodded. It suddenly seemed to him that the girl was looking at him with hope and he hastened to dispel it.

“I’m asking for no reason. Don’t think that I can offer you a job. For that matter, I’m unemployed myself now.”

“But your ride is cool,” mistrustfully noted Bettie.

“I’ve been unemployed for only 74 hours. 74 and a half now.”

“Bad luck for you, I guess,” she said sympathetically.

“It was bad luck for me when I was born.”

“Just the same, I don’t think everything is so bad,” she carefully offered after a pause.

“At your age I thought so, too. When you’re 18, it seems that you’ll be young forever. But you’ll hardly have time to sigh before you’re 36, and then 54. Anyway, you start to die much earlier. Did you know, that after 25, a human loses a hundred thousand brain cells per day? After 40 this process sharply accelerates and after 50 the brain starts to dry out noticeably. There’s no arguing with the fucking science… We try to deceive ourselves too long. At 40, we try to tell ourselves that we’re the same as always, though actually we’ve been sliding downhill for a long time. And at 50 you notice that you aren’t just sliding but accelerating with the wind in your ears. Hold the handrail, ladies and gentlemen, the next stops are Arthritis! Sclerosis! Cancer! Infarct! Stroke! Parkinson’s! Alzheimer’s! Do you understand, Bettie?”

“I think I do,” the girl answered without any real confidence, “but…”

“You don’t understand a damned thing. And then, when you realize that ahead of you is only misery and after that—darkness and void, you start to look back at your past, searching for at least some meaning. But there isn’t any, Bettie. Have you ever thought about how the life of an ordinary man is absolutely awful?”

“Maybe in Bricksville.”

“Forget your fucking Bricksville! As if in New York, Paris, or Venice things are different! Every day a man goes to work, doing some nonsense like advertising chewing gum or selling canned cat food. He may pretend that it interests him, or honestly admit to himself that he hates his idiotic job —it doesn’t change things a bit. For all his life, beginning in school, he diligently works like a squirrel in a cage to provide himself with money. What does he spend this money on? On food which several hours later is flushed down a toilet bowl, on buying things whose main purpose is to show how much money was spent on them, on vacation trips where he is baked on a beach like a pig in an oven or runs like a sheep in a herd following the guide and shooting views which were already photographed 300 million times by other sheep. Work and other routine activities leave him no more than a couple of free hours a day, and how does he dispose of them? He kills them watching stupid TV shows or playing poker. Then, if he is in the mood, he fucks his wife and if not—he just falls asleep immediately. In the morning, sleepy and angry, he again goes to work. And this goes on day after day. Somehow, he believes that all this is just a prelude to some bright and fine future—until it becomes obvious that the only future for him is a wooden box with decaying meat which will be pushed in the ground or into an oven, far enough from the eyes and noses of those who face the same fate later. And nothing will remain of him, absolutely nothing. Even the cat food which he sold all his life won’t be named after him.”

“Children will remain,” Bettie objected.

“Sure, and from them—their children, and from those—their… Don’t you see that all this is one big nothing? A million zeros added together makes a zero!”

“Maybe if you had children, things wouldn’t seem so gloomy.”

“I didn’t say I don’t have any—I said I don’t have a daughter.”

“So you have a son?”

“Yes. He’s twenty years old and recently he got a job in a supermarket.”

“Is he troubled about anything?”

“Seems to me he’s happy.”

“Then everything is okay with him?”

“Completely, if you don’t count his Down syndrome.”

“Oh… I’m sorry.”

“That’s all because of a guy named Gene Chromosome,” said Palmer. “Have you read Kuttner?”

“Who?”

“Kuttner… or Gardner, I always mix them up. One wrote mysteries, the other science fiction. So the sci-fi writer had a series about Hogbens. Really funny stories. Hogbens are mutants, powerful almost like Superman, but living like typical bumpkins. When the grandfather tells the kid about mutations, the kid says: “I got a notion some furrin feller named Gene Chromosome had done it.” Basically, I don’t know whether we ourselves understand much more than that. There weren’t any such birth defects in my family or in my wife’s—if she didn’t lie as usual.”

“Sounds like you don’t get along with her too well.”

“For the past 74 hours I’ve been trying to understand why I endured the bitch for the last 20 years.”

“Is her name Bettie?”

“What? My God, no. Her name is Margaret, and, God help me, I like the name despite hating that stupid fat shrill hysterical bitch. I even married her partly because I liked her name. Very romantic, huh, Bettie? I liked her name more than her boobs. Though, to tell the truth, her boobs were pretty good back then—she wasn’t fat yet. She stopped watching her weight after Max’s birth. How do you like this idea—naming a moron ‘Max?’ She would even have named him Sylvester!”

Bettie said nothing.

“And all these 20 years,” continued Pete, “she nagged at me, claiming Max was my fault because I fucked her when I was drunk. Damn her, she drank more than I did that night! She wanted fucking romance—a dinner with candles and champagne. She put away one and a half bottles alone. I drank only a little—I actually don’t like champagne. At the end she was laughing nonstop and tried to get her foot under the table into my fly. We weren’t married yet, but neither of us bothered with precautions. Shit, that’s not romantic! As though there could be anything romantic in fucking anyway… Did you ever fuck, Bettie? Never mind, you don’t have to answer that. We got married soon, without knowing that she was pregnant. And in just a few months I found out about her temper. But it turned out she was pregnant and I thought that was affecting her and after the birth she would calm down… And then Max was born and everything really went to hell. She handed him over to a state home and then regularly blamed me for it. By the way, I never saw Max since then. She went to see him, but I never did. He’s disgusting to me. But, still, she handed him over herself. Every time I got fed up with her moaning, I told her to bring him back home. She said she would do exactly that and went off to blubber in her room. That’s how it always ended. Then she started hitting the bottle. Once she even was put in the hospital with an alcoholic psychosis. But, unfortunately, they released her and she came home.”

Palmer fell silent.

“Listen, mister…” Bettie began shyly.

“Pete!”

“Okay, listen, Pete… what happened 74 hours ago? You didn’t…like… kill her?”

“A good question!” laughed Palmer. “No, don’t think I have. Though it would be worth it, I swear to God.”

“What do you mean…’you don’t think?’”

“Well, maybe she died of a heart attack when she found out she wouldn’t see me or my money any more.”

“Well, I’m not a lawyer, but probably you still have to pay her alimony.”

“What fucking alimony, Bettie? Did you forget that I’m unemployed with no income now? You want to know what happened 74 hours ago? Already almost 75… Well, I’ll tell you. That bitch whom I even don’t want to call by her beautiful name was lucky that it didn’t happen in our home. Otherwise, maybe I would have killed her. But it happened at my job. I didn’t change my place of work for 30 years, Bettie. It changed itself—at first it was a small firm selling paint, then it was bought by a company which had a network of hardware stores, then the company was acquired by a corporation, and now all this is merged into a huge conglomerate which makes and sells thousands of things—from machines for construction work to toilet paper. And 26 of these 30 years I spent under one man—William T. Gills. At first I was his ordinary employee. Then he noticed he could work me like a horse pulling a plow and made me his deputy. I was young and naive, so I was damned proud—oh really, I’m making a career, advancing past other employees who are older and have more experience! I went all out to justify Mr. Gills’ trust. By the way, I always called him ‘Mr. Gills,’ and he called me ‘Pete,’ though he was a year younger than me—but when he was just 25, he had a half-bald head and glasses, so he looked older. Anyway, this son of a bitch, of course, used my eagerness totally to his advantage. I can imagine how he chuckled to himself. I did all the work for him, he received praise from upper management, and I got nothing. Then he was promoted—do you think I got his position? Hell no—he already understood how useful I could be to him. He dragged me with him and again I became his deputy, only at the new level. And so it went all these years. This bastard used me and I always played the supporting role. Once I tried to call him ‘Willie’ and he said nothing, but looked at me in such a way that I immediately returned to ‘Mr. Gills’. The whole following week I felt ashamed and worthless remembering it… Recently he was the general manager of the regional office of the corporation, and I was, accordingly, his deputy. And so three days ago two events happened. First, I turned 50. And second, Gills got one more promotion—to the very top, to the head office on the East Coast. There were rumors about it earlier, but he liked to keep matters secret till the last moment. And I had a feeling that this time he wouldn’t drag me with him—and I was really sick of looking at his smug face for such a long time. I thought maybe this time I’d leave his shadow at last and become the general manager. So this bastard called me to his office… you, probably, think that he gave me the sack, and someone else got the job? No, Bettie, I got it. The top of my 30-year career. “Congrats on your anniversary with the company, Pete,” he said. “And I have a gift for you—this office is now yours.” And do you think I was happy? Fucking shit, like hell I was happy! Because I suddenly understood that it was the end. The last promotion in my life. I would leave this office only to retire. For 30 years I ran like a squirrel in a cage, and for what? The same fucking vanity, foolish and senseless fuss. I would keep on doing the same work from then on until they kicked my ass out to make room for someone younger. The salary would increase, but the headaches would increase, too—I couldn’t work Gills style, foisting everything off on deputies. And while I stood there, thinking about it and listening to that whistle with which the train approaches the Cancer or Alzheimer’s stations—guess what Gills thought, looking at my sour expression? This fucking son of a bitch got the idea that I felt sad about parting from him! “So it goes, Pete,” he said consoling me, “it’s sad for me to leave you, too, but in the new position I need somebody younger.” And here I did what I dreamed about for many years. I smashed his face with all force I had. I think I knocked out at least five of his teeth, maybe even more. I wouldn’t be surprised if I broke his jaw. I was beside myself with rage. When I hit him, he plopped in his chair which rolled back until it hit a wall. He sat and looked at me with bulging eyes, glasses half off, and blood on his chin. I cursed him for about four minutes. If his chair hadn’t been on castors, I would probably have continued beating him. But he was too far from me and, besides, there was a table between us, so I was limited to words. I don’t even remember what I said, but never in my life did I swear like that. Then I went out, sat in my car, and drove west. Before leaving the city, though, I stopped twice—once at my bank to withdraw my money and to close my accounts, and the second time at the post office to write and mail a letter to Margaret. I told her what I thought of her. Then I sent some more letters like that—to all addresses I could remember.”

“And since then you’ve been going in one direction?”

“As you see, 18 years were enough for you to understand when enough is enough and I needed the whole 50.”

“I think there’s a difference. What will you do when you reach the West Coast?”

“I don’t have any idea, Bettie, and what’s the fucking difference!”

“But I hope… Pete, you aren’t going to commit suicide?”

“Oh no. I didn’t piss off everyone just to go and die. I’m free now and I intend to use it. You know, the day before yesterday I wiped my ass with a hundred dollar bill. But it was stupid—toilet paper is much more convenient. Things should be used according to their purpose. If a human were intended for death, in old age he would be wearing a coffin, like a crab with a shell. How do you like this idea, Bettie?”

“There aren’t any coffins in nature. Nature intends dead bodies to feed other animals.”

“Then to hell with it, nature and its mania for killing. Did you ever think that we live only while we kill? Even the most devoted vegetarians are compelled to kill plants. This world is very fairly arranged, isn’t it?”

“Pete, you really don’t know what you’re going to do next?”

“I already told you that I’m not going to think things out ahead of time. I’m fed up with planning long-term strategies. I don’t intend to play by their rules any more. In any case, I have money. Do you want me to give you 1,000 bucks?”

“No.”

“My God, I don’t consider you a whore! I would be the worst bastard if I treated you like that! I want to give you this money just for nothing, you understand?”

“Pete, I could use the money of course, but I can’t accept a gift like that, especially not when you’re in this condition.”

“In what damned condition? I am as okay as it is possible to be.”

“You are NOT okay, Pete. And you know it. You haven’t been okay for three days now…”

“Listen, girl, I’m sorry I told you all this. It seemed to me you would understand because your life made you fed up. But if I was mistaken, if you’re like all the rest, let’s forget our conversation once and for all.”

“Pete, to you I am only a little girl, but listen to me. I decided to end my former life to begin a new one; you simply destroyed everything you had in your life and now you’re trying to hide from the problem.”

“There is no problem! That’s enough about it!”

“There is a problem. Pete, you need help. You don’t have a job. The police may want you for hurting your boss. You left your wife. You offended everyone you know…”

“Bettie, shut up, or I’ll put you out like that guy!”

“Pete, I’m not saying this to hurt you. I want to help you before you get in more trouble. Really, Pete, it would be easier for me just to shut up, but then it would be even worse for you. Everything can still be fixed… well, almost everything. You need to talk to a doctor…”

“SHUT UP, YOU BITCH! SHUT UP, FUCK YOU!”

He was so angry that he almost swerved the car off the road. Then the rage subsided and Palmer regained control again.

“Bettie, I’m sorry. You’re right in some ways. My nerves are really shot. You know, after living 20 years with a hysterical woman… Don’t take offense, all right?”

Bettie kept an insulted silence.

“Well, if that’s how it is… But I really didn’t mean to shout at you.”

Silence hung. The motor evenly hummed.

“Let’s, maybe, listen to some music,” said Pete and turned the radio on.

“… terday,” a familiar voice sang. “All my troubles seemed so far away…”

“Good old rock’n’roll,” Pete said. “Yes, Johnny, you’re right—yesterday my troubles seemed so far away. And the day before yesterday, too. I should have walked out long ago. No, Johnny, the world didn’t go bad today. The world always was rotten, only now it’s easier to see.”

“Why she had to go I don’t know—she wouldn’t say,” sang the radio.

“Some problem,” Palmer sneered. “When a chick leaves you, it’s nothing. Problems are something more serious. You found that out eventually, huh, Johnny?”

“… love was such an easy game to play…” radio insisted.

“Love amazed you,” frowned Pete. “If you had written ‘life’ instead, it would be a lot more interesting. At first it seems life is an easy game—you just have to obey the rules. And then you understand that you’re trapped and winning this game isn’t an option at all. If that guy shot you before you understood this, you were lucky, Johnny. That guy also decided not to play by the rules any more. You know, Bettie, I understand those guys who climb up on a roof with a rifle and shoot passers-by until they’re killed by the police. I’m not saying that I justify them, or that I’m going to do the same myself—my God, no! But I really understand them…”

The radio began playing “Nowhere man.”

He’s a real nowhere man

Sitting in his nowhere land

Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

Doesn’t have a point of view

Knows not where he’s going to

Isn’t he a bit like you and me

“Yes,” nodded Pete,” very much like you and me. Especially me. You’re right, Bettie, I really don’t know what to do next. It seemed to me that it was enough just to break loose, but now I can’t think what to do with my freedom. You see, once I read that if a grasshopper is covered with a jar and kept there long enough, then even after the jar is removed, it will still jump only up to the jar’s height. Looks like that’s the same with me.”

Under a wheel a tumbleweed crackled.

“You’re still young, Bettie,” Palmer continued. “You can still jump above the jar. Though what the hell does it matter? Everyone will still end up at one of those stations I mentioned. It may be silly to rebel, knowing you won’t win. But it’s even sillier to obey, knowing you won’t get any reward.”

I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy

Running everywhere at such a speed

Till they find there’s no need

sang the radio.

“I also think all of them went crazy,” Pete agreed, “however there’s some charm in going at great speed without any need. Don’t you agree, Bettie?”

The girl was silent.

“Bettie, say something just for a change. It’s wrong to sulk for so long.”

“Keeping an eye on the world going by the window, taking my time,” warbled the radio. Palmer turned his head and saw that Bettie had dozed off. The road and the music had lulled her.

Please don’t wake me,

No, don’t shake me,

the radio asked.

“All right, I won’t,” agreed Pete. “Sleep, Bettie. When you’re young, it’s easy. At your age, I passed out when my head touched the pillow.”

He became silent and concentrated on the road. However, there weren’t many things to look at. The visibility was really limited. Sand tongues stretched across the asphalt, as if the desert was trying to creep away to the north, escaping from the heat.

Then a spot appeared ahead. A car—a police cruiser; Palmer distinguished the typical black and white pattern. The cruiser stood on the shoulder of the lane going in the other direction. Pete reflexively reduced his speed. However, if the cop wanted to make trouble for Pete, he had already had enough time to check his speed.

And it seemed he had—the officer got out of his car and made a gesture to stop. Palmer swore and braked ten yards short of the cop. Let him walk.

The policeman came to the Ford, clutching his hat to his head with one hand and trying to cover his face from the wind. He was very young—probably just a rookie.

“Good afternoon, sir!” he shouted approaching. “May I ask you for help? You see, my vehicle…”

As he was talking, he came close and bent to the driver’s window, which Palmer had half opened. And here something strange happened with the cop. He didn’t look like Gills in any way—the latter was bald, well-fed, round-faced, bespectacled, and almost 30 years older. And the cop had a thin bony face and brown hair peeked out from under his hat; on his chin Pete noticed a small cut—probably, the guy thought that a real man should use an open razor. But nevertheless the officer’s expression vividly resembled that of Gills at the moment when Pete’s fist smashed his face. Completing the similarity, the cop recoiled from the car, as if indeed thrown back by a blow; however, then the similarity ended. In the next moment the policeman already stood on half-bent legs, bulging his butt back and stretching forward his straight arms clasping a gun. The barrel shook slightly—probably this was the first time the boy actually had aimed at a human being—but nevertheless the round black hole looked right at the bridge of Palmer’s nose.

“Exit the vehicle!” the cop cried out in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice. The wind tore his hat off and rolled it across the road but he didn’t even notice it.

“What?” Pete stupidly asked.

“Exit the vehicle, slowly and so I can see your hands! One wrong move and I’ll blow your head off!”

“All right, officer,” Palmer shrugged his shoulders, pressing the lever of the door lock, “but what’s the matter?”

“Ah, you son of a bitch!” the cop nearly choked from indignation. “You think strangling a girl is nothing special, huh?”

“Probably, I look like a sketch of some murderer,” Palmer thought. “Everything will clear up soon.” However a cold feeling of alarm suddenly spread in his belly and made him turn his head to the right.

Bettie wasn’t sleeping. Her eyes were open… not just open. They were goggled and empty. Her face was purple. Her tongue fell out of her mouth. On her chin saliva had dried. But the most awful were the dark stains on her neck. The imprints of fingers. His fingers.

“No,” said Palmer, “my God, no.”

At work, it had been similar. He remembered hitting Gills and he remembered leaving the office. But those four minutes when he stood and swore at Gills had simply dropped out of his memory. However, when he had left, Gills was still alive.

“Bettie, I didn’t want…”

He got out of the car backwards, without taking his eyes from the corpse. He hardly felt his own body; everything seemed just a nightmare. The strong hand of the policeman seized his wrist, closing the cool ring of a handcuff around it.

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney…”

“BETTIE!!!”

But you can’t hear me,

You can’t hear me,

the radio sang.

Over the desert the hot wind blew.

In the story The Beatles songs “Yesterday”, “Nowhere man”, “I’m only sleeping”, “And your bird can sing” were quoted.

THROAT

Steel locks clanked hollowly behind my back, cutting me off from the world of the living. In modern prisons, guards don’t jingle keys on thick wire rings anymore—everything is done by automatics; the locks are controlled from a central location. No chance to escape, nor even that tiny hope that the prisoners of the past had… For a moment I felt something like an attack of claustrophobia. Behind me there was a tightly locked steel door, ahead of me—a corridor without windows, with pale green walls and caged lights on the ceiling. Yes, here even they are behind bars… At that moment they burned steadily, but I knew that there were moments when they dimmed or started to flicker. It means that one more inhabitant of this place leaves it—leaves in almost the only way possible here…

Alas, I had no way back. The jailer looked at me expectantly—without anger, but also without sympathy—and I obediently went forward, deep into death row.

The guard stopped at a gray door without a number and put his card into the slot. I knew that this card wouldn’t work in anyone else’s hands—some kind of biometrics scanning… The lock clicked, but the jailer didn’t hurry to open the door. Instead, he decided to remind me of the rules once again.

“He’s chained, and the furniture is screwed to the floor. Just the same, be careful. Don’t let him provoke you, don’t get too close to him, and don’t give him anything in a way that could allow him to grab you. For example, don’t bend down if he wants to mutter something in your ear. He’ll sink his teeth in it without a second thought. Don’t forget who he is.”

“I studied the case materials well,” I answered, bored by the third such lecture already.

“I’m sure,” this time there was hostility in the jailer’s voice. “But you think that if you are on his side, he is on yours. And that’s a big mistake.”

I understood the reason for his irritation, but I didn’t try to remind him once again that I was doing my duty just as he was doing his and it was not a matter of personal sympathies.

“If anything goes wrong, call for help immediately,” the guard finished, having gotten no reaction from me. “I’ll be right behind this door.”

Then he opened the door at last and I went in.

The small room was divided by a metal table. The person in orange coveralls, sitting on the other side of the table, was indeed chained to the chair armrests: his left hand—with a regular handcuff, while the chain for the right hand was longer, allowing him, if necessary, to take something from the table if it were moved close enough to him. I didn’t see his ankles, but I didn’t doubt that they were in shackles, too.

Except for all these accessories, his appearance was most ordinary. He seemed to be in his early fifties (actually he was 48), a receding hairline, grizzled, with an unremarkable face (such faces are a real nightmare for policemen, as no witnesses can describe them clearly), down-turned corners of his lips, faded eyes under puffy eyelids…

However, his ordinary appearance was, well, ordinary. No maniac looks like a maniac—otherwise catching them wouldn’t be that hard. And even after all charges are proved, his neighbors, colleagues, even family members still cannot believe his guilt. “Oh, that can’t be true, such a decent person! Perhaps a little unsociable, but…”

Nevertheless, this unremarkable middle-aged man with the appearance of a tired accountant from a third-rate office was the one whom journalists had named Jack-is-Back, alluding to Jack the Ripper. As a twist of fate, when he was caught at last, his surname appeared to be Jackson. “Jack’s son,” literally…

However, actually he had almost nothing in common with the Victorian serial killer, except for his extreme cruelty. Jackson didn’t kill prostitutes. There were no sexual motives in his actions and no motive of punishment for sins. On the contrary, only decent people were his victims. Gender and age were not significant to him. By the way, he even wasn’t unsociable—quite the opposite, he willingly made new acquaintances, easily ingratiated himself with people, making impression of a nice and harmless, though a little sad, person—and then…

Before he was stopped, he managed to kill twenty eight people—eviscerated them alive. Sometimes, he killed whole families. The most shocking episode was in Philadelphia, where he murdered a man, his wife, his elderly parents who had come to stay for a while with their son, and three children—a boy of eight and girls of five and three. After that the public went nuts, demanding that the police find the murderer. And not even just find, but “wipe the bastard out before some lawyer rats get him off the hook…”

Yes, members of my profession are often reproached as immoral. They say that, for enough money we are ready to defend anybody. I cannot say that these claims are absolutely groundless—though, in my opinion, justice demands, that, as there is the prosecution side, there must also be a defense side. And we have professional ethics, too. But after all we are still human beings, not just professionals. Nobody in my law office wanted to take this case. And not because—well, not only because—there wouldn’t be a hefty fee (Jackson refused to take a lawyer). Nor even because the case looked absolutely hopeless: the evidentiary basis was more than convincing, the police had committed no violations about which to complain, and Jackson had admitted full guilt to all the charges against him. But the main reason was that nobody really wanted to save such a freak from the electric chair. Yes, there are murderers, and even repeated murderers, who deserve leniency—but obviously not in this case.

And then the boss foisted this case off on me, as the youngest attorney in the firm. Say, it’s your chance to prove yourself. And if you fail, well, nobody expected miracles from a beginner anyway…

No, I, of course, didn’t feel much sympathy for my client. But, after all, a job is a job.

“Hello, Mr. Jackson,” I professionally smiled, taking the laptop from my attache case and unfolding it on my side of the table."I am your lawyer. My name is Mike…”

“I refused a lawyer,” Jackson dully interrupted. “Besides, the sentence was passed already. What more do you need from me?”

“You probably don’t know yet, but there were recent changes to the state law,” I explained in the same confident tone. “Now in hearings on all death sentence cases, the participation of a lawyer is obligatory. And as the law has no retroactive effect only if it would worsen the situation of the convict, your case is subject to review.”

“So you think that will improve my situation,” he grinned.

“To tell the truth, your situation is very serious,” I declared, continuing nevertheless to radiate confidence. “All the evidence is against you and we have no basis to suggest…”

“I killed all these people,” he interrupted me again."And, if there is a new hearing, I will repeat my confession there. So can we just avoid all this bother?”

“In a democratic state, a confession is not the final proof of guilt,” I reminded him. “There could be circumstances which compelled you…”

“Do you have hearing problem or don’t you understand English? Nobody compelled me, tortured me, or threatened me. I killed twenty eight people absolutely willfully and purposely. And I confessed to it of my same free will after my arrest.”

“But not before!” I noticed.” If you, as you say, didn’t want to hide your crimes, why didn’t you give yourself up?”

“Because I wanted to continue to kill,” he simply answered.

Damn… Well, after all, that’s my job.

“Could you explain, why did you… and why do you want to continue to kill, Mr. Jackson?”

“Because I am a monster who likes to disembowel people alive.”

Certainly, it was said in the same tone as “be damned and fuck off.” I tried to make my voice more heartfelt and looked into his eyes:

“But there is another reason, isn’t there?”

He kept silent, trying to look indifferent as before, but nevertheless for an instant he withdrew his eyes.

“You can tell me only,” I pressured. “As an attorney, I cannot reveal what you say.”

He continued his silence and when I had already decided that he would say nothing, he suddenly muttered:

“You won’t understand. Or will think that I am crazy.”

“A psychiatric examination ruled you completely sane,” I reminded.

“Well, of course.”

“But, as far as we’re concerned, it may be our only defense. You see, I’ve studied your biography. It was completely ordinary until three years ago when you had a car accident resulting in craniocereberal trauma and clinical death. You stayed in this condition for nearly eleven minutes. It is considered that irreversible brain damage occurs after six minutes. But it is, of course, an average. Specific features of a certain organism may… Anyway, doctors pulled you out from the next world. Then—several months of rehabilitation. Tests, tomograms, all that stuff. Eventually you completely recovered, healthy both physically and mentally. And a week later you started to kill.”

“Well, there you are. Those doctors ruled me sane, too.”

“Doctors can be mistaken. No, I don’t want to say that you are crazy, Mr. Jackson. But it is more important for us not whether you are insane or not, but what the judge will think about it, do you understand me? Such a major head injury usually doesn’t pass without consequences, and we have grounds to demand a new psychiatric examination. And there… I’m not saying that you should feign illness. Just, possibly, be more frank than before with the doctors, tell them more about your secret fears and fantasies, and…”

“What for?” he sneered. “To avoid the electric chair?”

“If you wish, yes,” I replied with some note of irritation. That’s bad, nonprofessional, I should watch myself better…

“And if I do not wish?”

“You mean you want to be executed?”

“I do.”

“So, you regret your actions? Does your conscience bother you?”

“I did what I had a duty to do. And if I regret anything, it’s that I didn’t have time to do more.”

Well, it looks like psychiatrists really missed the obvious. The duty, the mission, “voices in my head ordered me…” There are countless instances in criminal cases where a murderer feigned madness to escape punishment. But here, seemingly, the madman feigns (and successfully!) mental health in order to be executed. I haven’t heard about such precedents before. How did he manage to deceive doctors, I wonder? Probably because forensic psychiatrists got too accustomed to dealing with the opposite situation…

And if all this is true, it not only gives me a chance to win a hopeless case, but also converts me from a person obliged to protect a bloody bastard into the savior of a sick man who, of course, cannot be blamed for becoming ill.

“Could you please explain what your duty consisted of, Mr. Jackson? And who imposed it on you?”

But he preferred to close up again, like a mollusk on a seabed to which a hand was stretched.

“What are all these conversations for? I’ve told you already, I don’t need your help. If the law requires you to fulfill any formalities for my protection, do it, but without me.”

“Yes, of course,” I pretended that I turned off my laptop and was going to leave."That only reduces my workload and I’ll do as you say if you insist. Just, you know, I had a thought—not as a lawyer but as a human being—that you will be executed… quite a nasty procedure, by the way. It is officially considered that death by an electric chair is immediate, but it is not always so. It sometimes happens that they have to turn the current on a second and even a third time… skin bursts and smokes, eyes literally jump out of the sockets, severe spasms break bones…”

“I know all this. If you want to frighten me…”

“No, no. I only want you to realize clearly what awaits you. But OK, maybe all this doesn’t disturb you. However… you still know something very important, don’t you? And your secret will die with you. Isn’t that deplorable?”

“Tell me also that if I explain everything to you, you will fulfill my duty,” he sneered.

“Certainly not. I won’t tell you that.”

“And you are right, as I wouldn’t believe you. However… the secret… everyone should indeed know this secret. But it’s useless even to try to explain. Nobody will believe me. Not even because they can’t, but because they won’t want to believe.”

“Well… but can’t you try? At least tell me only. Perhaps, I won’t believe, either, but in any case, what do you lose?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Kept silent. Then suddenly he resolved to speak.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked, looking somewhere aside.

Certainly not. I am not a superstitious idiot. But aloud I, of course, said differently:

“Well… as there is a lot of unknown in the world, I don’t exclude the possibility of their existence. And you? Do you believe in them?”

“No,” he dumbfounded me. And then added: “It is possible to believe only in what you do not know. And I saw them and communicated with them. Moreover—I was one of them.”

Yes, yes. My diagnosis is proving to be true.

“You, in general, got everything right,” he continued. “Everything really did begin with that accident. And I was indeed brought back from the next world. Only not by doctors.”

“By whom then? Angels?” I probably managed to dispel any sign of irony from my intonation."Or maybe demons?”

“No, not at all. By people. Dead people.”

“Zombies, you mean?”

He looked at me as at a fool, and then sighed and asked:

“What do you know about ghosts?”

“Well… it is considered that ghosts are souls of people who died a cruel death. And as a result, they got stuck between the two worlds, ours and… next one. Thirst for revenge, the need to fulfill an unfinished duty and so on can hold them here…”

“Well, well. And in your opinion, are ghosts unhappy?”

“It seems, yes. They are troubled by this unfinished business. Therefore they wander and groan at nights…” I couldn’t restrain myself and said the last phrase with a theatrical howl. Jackson frowned in annoyance and asked the next question:

“And what is, as it is considered, the main desire of any ghost?”

“To go to eternal rest,” I answered immediately.

“Indeed, I heard that since my childhood, too,” he nodded. “And haven’t you ever reflected, why?”

“Why what?”

“Why should ghosts so aspire to this rest? What’s so bad in having an active afterlife? Why are all people so sure that ghosts want to replace it with… with what? With the final death, the non-existence—which the same people fear so much during their lifetime?”

“Probably, not after all,” I assumed; it never came to my mind before to think about such things. “As far as I understand, the rest is a transition to a better world…”

“Who told you that it is better?”

“Well,” I shrugged my shoulders, “it’s just an expression…”

“And you didn’t reflect where it came from?”

“Probably from people’s hope for a better life at least after death. Though from the Christian point of view… and not only Christian… in the afterlife there can be either paradise or hell. But, probably, existence in a ghost form is some kind of purgatory… that is, when a soul stuck between worlds gets the opportunity to move on, it means that its sins are forgiven, and it is awaited in paradise…”

“Yes, paradise. Eternal pleasure, huh? Well, in some sense it really is… but it depends on for whom. In your opinion, what does the soul do in paradise?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I shrugged. “All these descriptions from the Middle Ages… such as walking in a garden and playing harps… always seemed to me too naive and primitive. In my opinion, such ‘pleasure’ will make you howl from boredom in just a week—let alone all eternity… Modern theologians, as far as I know, put it more vaguely, like paradise is the place where the soul reunites with its Creator… In any case, I am not an expert in this matter. I am, in fact, an agnostic.”

“Agnostic”, nodded Jackson. “A very apt word. It means—one who does not know. And those whom you call ‘experts’ should be called the same. Though they imagine that they know something, naive idiots…”

“And you?” I asked directly. “Do you know?”

“I know. I was there.”

“In paradise? Ah, yes, the clinical death… Well, not only you…”

“Yes, certainly. Even books are written about it. Flight through a tunnel and so on… But don’t forget, I was there for eleven minutes. I moved further down the tunnel than others, further than those who could return, certainly. And I saw what is there.”

“And what is that?” I became interested.

I saw, how Jackson’s face—which, according to the press, remained passionless when he told the court about his brutal murders and listened to his own death sentence—suddenly was distorted and turned pale, even gray, in just an instant. I have read about such things in fiction books and I always thought it was just a literary cliche, but now I saw it happen in reality. And it was not simply such a horror which can’t be feigned, which can be produced only by reminiscence of real events (and what might those events be if only a single memory of them turns the face into a terrible mask of a corpse?!)—no, this grimace demonstrated also an insuperable disgust risen as a lump in the throat.

“There is He”, dully said Jackson.

“Who? God?” I didn’t understand. However, the look of my vis-a-vis suggested an opposite assumption: “the Devil?”

“Call Him what you want,” Jackson returned to his former grumbling tone. “He deceived you into the belief that there are two beings. All dualistic religions keep repeating that, enticing new unfortunate idiots. But actually, He is one. Creator. Founder. He, or more likely It… The soul should return to its creator, huh? But why in the world do all of you think that it happens for your pleasure?!” now Jackson almost shouted. “That It is interested in anyone’s pleasure, except Its own? And the main thing—everything is on the surface! Sometimes his servitors speak out clearly—however, even they are blind and don’t understand WHAT they serve… they don’t understand that there will be no reward and no exception for them either… Flock, oh yes. The favorite Christian image, what could be clearer. And if only anyone reflected—WHAT are sheep to the shepherd, or to be exact—to the owner of the flock? WHAT role does he prepare for them?”

“Are you saying…”

“We are Its food. For this purpose It created us, and it is the only meaning of our life. And sinners, saints, believers, non-believers—all these have no value. These are senseless labels with which we amuse ourselves in our pen. Really, who is interested in the beliefs of livestock?”

“Well, it’s, of course, a curious hypothesis…” I allowed.

“It’s not a hypothesis, you idiot!” Jackson bellowed, and his chains tinkled. “I saw it with my own eyes! Or what I had instead of eyes… there. The tunnel really exists and I flew through it almost up to the end. But do you know what it is actually?”

“What?”

“It’s… it’s a throat.”

For some time he sat silently, looking at the smooth surface of the table in front of him. Then he continued:

“Actually, our fate is even more awful than a sheep’s. For He devours alive not our bodies, but our souls. More precisely, even that’s not so. A soul is immortal. This was not a lie. And He—It—feeds not on souls, but on their suffering. That horror and despair which souls produce in the process of digestion… eternal digestion,” Jackson made a pause again. “I saw it. There, where the throat leads… in the stomach. There is… as if braided brown space, all consisting of a torn, dirty, shaggy web. And in this web people hang… millions, billions of people. Can you imagine old, exhausted corpses of flies—the victims of an ordinary spider? It looks similar from afar, but up close it’s much worse. They hang there… semi-digested, dried, with tatters of flesh hanging down from their bones, many of them already have no extremities, or just gnawed stumps sticking out… Certainly, that’s not real, corporeal bones and flesh—our consciousness simply perceives the mutilated soul this way. But, eventually, if we feel it to be so, what’s the difference to us what their true nature is? And they shout. All of them eternally shout…”

“So ‘semi-digested’ or ‘eternally’? If ‘semi-’, there should come also the moment when completely…”

“It is not necessarily true at all. Do you know what an asymptote is?”

“Seems to me, something mathematical…”

“Yes. The state to which it is possible to infinitely approach, but never to reach. The same is here. A certain core of a soul always remains. That core that is capable of feeling horror and pain…”

“And how did you manage to get out of there?”

“I, naturally, turned back when I saw all this. As well as billions before me. But usually the people who have fallen that deep can’t return. Even if doctors manage to reanimate the body, the soul remains there. And on a hospital bed the next comatose ‘vegetable’ appears… But I was very lucky. There were those nearby who helped me.”

“Who? You said something about ghosts.”

“You see, it’s also true that those who die a cruel death get stuck between the worlds. They don’t fall into the throat. I don’t know why and neither do they. Perhaps, from His point of view they are something like unripe or, on the contrary, spoiled fruit… Or the suffering which they endured when dying reduces their, so to say, productivity after death—then they are an analog of a squeezed orange… But, for some reason, suicide doesn’t prevent souls from falling down Its throat. Here the legends are wrong—very few people are actually capable of committing suicide in a painful enough way… Most ghosts of course, prefer to keep close to our world, though in it they are almost powerless. They are shades and nothing more, almost incapable of interacting with living beings or with any material objects. The vast majority of ghost stories stating the opposite are myths. But ghosts still have the possibility of observing, traveling, and communicating with each other. That’s not too bad, especially considering the alternative… But there are also those who venture into the throat. Not because of curiosity—there is nothing curious there. They simply try to rescue souls falling there. Most often, their relatives and beloved ones, but sometimes also strangers as well. Ghosts try to push souls back to the world of the living—which is of course possible only when the body still can be reanimated—or to turn into a ghost, which is possible even less often if the death was usual. Besides, it is dangerous. If the ghost gets in too deep, it is sucked into the bowels like all other souls… It cannot spit or vomit.”

“Why don’t those who return after a clinical death report the same experience as you?”

“I’ve said already—they come back from halfway, having seen nothing. The majority—due to the efforts of doctors only. But even those who were pushed out… there is no time for explanations there. If you begin to explain the person who is being sucked into a whirlpool what awaits him at the bottom—you both will be drawn in. My case is special… I was pulled out from there, from where usually nobody is. On the one hand, I happened to be stronger than others. Strength of mind, in literal sense… not that I have especially strong will and so forth, but simply as, you know, there are people resistant to poisons or to radiation… one on a billion… it’s not a personal merit, just so I happened to be born. On the other hand, those who saved me took a terrible risk themselves… having taken my oath that if I return to the living world, I will fulfill their commissions. So it lasted longer than usual, and there was enough time for conversation.”

Suddenly he literally shot a glance into my eyes.

“I know what you think. That all this are simply hallucinations produced by lack of oxygen in a dying brain. Exactly how scientists explain all stories told by people after clinical death, huh? But here is proof for you. Do you know who Daniel Dorn is?”

“I know who Diana Dorn is,” said I, remembering again who was in front of me. “Your first victim. But there is no Daniel in the case materials…”

“Because he perished five years earlier,” Jackson interrupted. “He is her father. He was one of those who pushed me out. And he… didn’t get out himself. It’s like in physics—force of action is equal to the force of counteraction… pushing someone upward, you fall deeper yourself.”

“Well, in principle, you could learn this name without any…”

“Yes, of course,” Jackson grinned."The name. The address. The arrangement of rooms. And in particular—the security system code. In a city where I never was before, where I had no acquaintances and whereto I had to travel through half of America. Couldn’t indeed the cranky blood-thirsty maniac find a closer victim? And aren’t the surnames of Kraut and Poplavsky also familiar to you? After all, the police still could not answer the question how I’ve got into their houses so easily.”

“You mean that you killed your victims…at the desire of their relatives?”

“Not all of them. Only the first three cases—yes, I paid my debt. And then I understood that I should continue. I realized that to try to explain anything was useless, I would have only gotten into a sanitarium. And also I understood how religions would react to my revelations. The idiots thinking that it is possible to make an agreement with Him… There is nobody to agree with there. And not at all because He is infinitely cleverer than we are. On the contrary, I doubt that He—It—has any intelligence in general. Perhaps It had long ago when It created the world… but even that is unlikely. And now It is simply a glutton…” he paused again. “So I realized that I can not save everyone or even a large number. But I tried to rescue at least some good people whom I met. And the only rescue from the fate all of us face is…”

“Painful death.”

“Yes. Well, or shameful one; it works, too. But I couldn’t give it to them—it requires the hatred and contempt of a large number of people…”

Oh yes. As, for example, in case of execution of a bloody maniac.

“Didn’t you think about mass acts of terrorism?” I asked aloud.

“Certainly I did,” he nodded. “But during powerful explosions, the majority perish instantly, so it won’t work. However, death from poisoning with certain gases can be painful enough… but I could neither buy nor make them. I am not a chemist.”

“I see,” I said.

“You don’t believe me,” he sighed.

“In any case, what you told me sounds rather…”

“It is not necessary to choose politically correct formulations. Let’s use elementary logic. If my story is a lie, then I deserve execution as a monstrous serial killer. And if it is the truth—you understand why I want such a death. So simply don’t interfere, OK? Do the formalities that the law requires of you, but nothing more. Eventually, it’s just simpler for you, in all senses, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“So, do we agree?” he stared into my eyes with hope.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Jackson.”

When “the New Ripper case” was heard for the first time, the court hall had overflowed; moreover, even outside in front of the building, a fair crowd gathered, shaking placards like “Fry the bastard!” over their heads. The second process attracted much less interest. Very few people doubted that it was a mere formality and with his guilt so incontestable, the sentence would be confirmed. Even most of the relatives of victims—excepting those who were called as witnesses for the prosecution—preferred not to come, probably having found it too hard to relive painful memories. Though I do not doubt that they were going to attend the execution.

The prosecution portion of the hearing rolled as on rails to its obvious ending. Evidence, protocols, testimony… “Does the defense have questions for the witness?” “No, Your Honor.” “Produce the next witness…” What questions could there be to the undoubtedly proven facts? The artist carelessly struck a pencil on paper, drafting portraits of the participants of the hearing. Once I caught his derisive, but sympathetic glance as if to say, “Bad luck, guy. Though the case is headline-making, you definitely won’t become famous for it…”

And here is, at last, my statement in pleading. I stood up, winked to the artist and, without hurrying, opened the papers.

“‘The independent expert psychiatric appraisal which has been carried out… having considered the presented audio- and videorecord of the conversation…” (yes, yes—I recorded video, too, using a tiny directed camera lens in my top button, in the best traditions of spy movies) “using the techniques of analysis… on the basis… complex case… the conclusion… paranoid psychosis of traumatic genesis. Thus, on the question of whether the subject was sane at the moment of he committed certain criminal acts and whether he can bear responsibility for them, the answer is—negative.’”

Noise in the hall. Jackson looks at me with round eyes. Then he tries to move forward, but guards hold him:

“Son of a bitch! You promised me!”

The accused, known before for his equanimity—by the way, it’s one of the signs of his disorder—has real hysterics. I smile indulgently to the judge. Informal, but quite indicative confirmation of the expert opinion…

The prosecution inertly demands yet another psychiatric examination. The judge rejects. Oh yes, certainly—experts can make mistakes (though the opinion I presented is decorated with very authoritative signatures). But any doubt is treated in favor of the accused. Especially when the matter is not feigned illness to save his life, but feigned health to go to the electric chair. In this case the pathology is obvious even without sophisticated medical terms…

The sentence. Everyone stands up.

“… not guilty of capital murder by reason of insanity and he shall be placed for compulsory treatment in the Greenhill psychiatric hospital until such time…”

“You bastard!”

It’s not Jackson shouting now. This is a woman in a black scarf, the mother of one of the victims. And she shouts not at the murderer but at me. She believes that I saved the torturer of her child from his deserved punishment. Though, actually, a lifelong stay in a mental hospital is not a wonderful existence. And it is certain that Jackson will stay there for life; with his experience of successfully faking mental health nobody will believe him ever again. I think, at least thirty years… these institutions provide good care and very careful supervision, so they definitely won’t allow him to die ahead of time. Some men try to calm the woman, then remove her from the hall. I can understand her feelings, but I’m only doing my duty, aren’t I?

The artist gazes hard at me and his pencil flies fast across the paper. I do not doubt that behind a door TV reporters already wait.

* * *

“… right from the crime scene. The police department representative just confirmed that the body found belongs to Mike Goldman, a young, but already well-known lawyer who became famous for achieving a not guilty verdict in the case of serial killer ‘Jack-is-Back Jackson.’” This event caused controversial reaction not only because so many people wanted Jackson executed, but also because Goldman achieved the verdict by making and using recordings of a private conversation against the will of his client. However, his actions were recognized as lawful since they were carried out in the interests of the client who was lately recognized as incapacitated. For the current cruel murder, the police have no official suspects yet, but the most likely motive is revenge by some friends or relatives of Jackson’s victims; it is known that some of them continue to blame…”

“Bob, they’re taking him away right now! Shoot!”

“Get away from the stretcher!”

“The people have a right to…”

“Officer!”

“Okay, okay, we’re leaving…”

“V-vultures…”

“Cool! I managed to take a close up of his face!”

“Oh, what’s the use? They won’t allow it to be aired due to ethical-fucking-reasons. Politically correct assholes, it’s impossible to work nowadays… Well, show me what you have. Damn, turn the screen towards me, I can’t see! Hmm…”

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, nothing’s wrong… But have you ever seen on the face of a corpse with fifteen knife wounds such a satisfied smile?”

DESPAIR

Yes, it is the absolute top, pinnacle of despair!

Michael Shcherbakov

What if, unsuspectingly wandering in the dark vaults of the universe, you find truths so horrible and disgusting, that even the knowing of them will turn your whole existence into an everlasting nightmare?

“Rilme Gfurku”

All the routes do lead the frozens

Into void and eternal cold.

Fleur

In the beginning there was nausea. Not the sharp nausea from poison, which rises to the throat by emetic spasms yet giving at the same time hope for subsequent relief, but rather the viscous, dreary nausea of weakness after a long leaden sleep in a stuffy room—a nausea that fills the chest with caustic wadding, the mouth with dry muck, and the brain with pulsing lead. On the one hand, in such a condition the last thing you want to do is to get up and move at all. On the other hand, you understand that if you continue to lie down, the headache will grow even worse. So it is necessary to overcome your instinct and to get up. And it would not be a bad idea to open a window, even if it were winter outside.

Those were his first conscious thoughts. After comprehension came astonishment: he understood that he actually didn’t remember what season it was. While astonishment was turning into anxiety, and anxiety into fear, he realized that he didn’t remember what the day before was… or the day before that… or… He vainly tried to snatch from his memory any fragment of his life, but came across only emptiness. Or (this sensation arrived a bit later) the blank wall which cut his past off. However, the situation with his present was no better. He didn’t know where he was or how he got there.

He did not know who he was or even what his name was.

With an effort of sheer will he suppressed the growing panic. I need to analyze, he told himself. He can think: that’s good. I think, therefore, I am… This phrase came from somewhere. He did not know where but most likely it was not born in his brain. That meant that in the blank wall cutting off his past there were some cracks through which something can leak through, and if he consistently expanded them… scratched wider… tore them apart…

He opened his eyes.

Sight confirmed what touch had already told him: He lay on a rather rigid cot with neither bed sheets, nor blanket, nor pillow—only something like oilcloth, a dirty, sticky oilcloth under his naked body. He was, however, not absolutely naked. Here and there on his body were some rags and flaps, but they were not cloth. It was difficult to inspect them in more detail. He needed to bend his chin down to his chest, which immediately made his neck ache and, besides, the light in the room was too dim. The light came from a rectangular ceiling fixture covered with dust, burning obviously at half power and unsteadily: a shivering, agonizing light.

Accumulators are giving out: another alien, off-the-wall thought came to him. Accumulators? Why accumulators? Shouldn’t the house be connected to the local electricity grid?

Nevertheless, even such light allowed him to understand that the room was very small. Except for the cot, there was only a wardrobe on the opposite wall and a little table near a wall between them. On the fourth wall there was a door, and one more door to the right of the wardrobe. No windows at all. And it smelled musty, as if nobody had lived here for many years.

At last he sat up on the cot (a painful pulsation was felt at once in his temples and the back of his neck) and then stood on the floor, feeling with displeasure the dust and dirt under his bare feet. Even worse, when he took a step something revoltingly and damply crackled under his heel—something, seemingly, alive. More precisely, alive a moment before he stepped on it. A cockroach? Likely it was a cockroach… brrr, repulsive! He squeamishly dragged his heel through the dirty floor, trying to wipe off the remains of the creature. Then he approached the wardrobe and opened its door. Some plastic hangers were inside, but no clothing.

He stepped to a door near the wardrobe. Intuition told him that behind it there was not a corridor, but a bathroom. When he opened the door, a light automatically came on with a loud click that forced him to shudder. It was indeed a bathroom. It was very tiny but was more brightly lit than the room he had just left. On the left there was a toilet bowl, on the right a washstand, and directly ahead but behind an opaque blue curtain—the bath. Once everything here probably sparkled with radiance and chrome, but those days had long since passed. There was no stone or tile. They had been replaced with plastic. In brighter, though still unstable, light, the dirt on the floor and suspicious stains on the walls were even more clearly visible. It smelled of mold.

He turned to the toilet bowl—and frowned. Brown stains were on the seat and in the bottom. The stains, however, had dried up long ago. An association between an open toilet bowl and the bottom jaw of a skull suddenly flashed in his mind. For some time he stood, expecting the fulfillment of the usual physiological ritual, but not a drop came out. He just didn’t need to urinate. But he wanted to drink—more precisely, not to drink, but to get rid of the brackish taste in the mouth.

He turned to the washbasin. It was in no better condition than the toilet bowl. At the bottom was either sand or scales of rust, and the tap was spattered with some dried residue. No, he definitely would not drink from this tap. But he could at least rinse his face and hands. He turned the faucet handle. A squeezed hiss, like from a throat of a dying asthmatic, came out, but no water. Instead, gray dust fell from the tap. Then the sound changed, as if the air met an additional obstacle. He had already reached to return the faucet to its initial position, but at that moment the tap sniffed and spat out a whole handful of cockroaches. They hit the basin bottom and scattered in all directions. Some, however, began to stupidly rush and spin in one place.

His first reflex reaction was to jump aside before the insects, gushing over the edge of the basin, would start falling on his feet.  However, he immediately realized that it was necessary to close the tap which was still spilling out new cockroaches.  Hardly had he time to do it when he felt the disgusting tickling touch from insects crawling on his ankles. He executed something like a convulsive dance, shaking them off, and then jumped aside to the toilet bowl, looking with disgust at the creatures running on the floor. If he were wearing shoes, he would squash them all, but now he could only move back as much as was possible in a tiny bathroom and hope that they wouldn’t climb on him again.

Ridiculous, he thought. I, a human being, driven into a corner by some bugs. After all, they are not even poisonous. Nonetheless, he could not overcome his fastidiousness. These creatures always caused an insuperable loathing in him. Always? It seemed that one more remembrance broke out from his unknown past. But cockroaches, probably, were afraid of the man, too. Soon they spread out—some slipping from the room, some running under the curtain—but where the others went, he did not notice.

He raised his eyes from the floor and looked in the mirror over the washstand. It was dusty and dirty too, but in the middle there was an irregular oval seemingly of pure glass, as if someone had hastily wiped a window. The man looked at himself from a distance, then stepped closer, studying with displeasure the unfamiliar sickly pale rumpled face with deep shadows under the eyes and dissheveled tufts of hair sticking out over a bandage. A bandage, yes. His head at forehead level had been sloppily bandaged by something like a used compress. No—he leaned into the mirror even more closely—it was not a gauze bandage with an open weave, but some continuous, dense yellowish-gray fabric with torn, fringed edges. And some bandages somehow stuck—probably dried on—and rags were on many other places of his body, on his neck, his right shoulder, his left forearm, the left side of his breast, his stomach. And scars were on his fingers like marks from rings.

It seemed that something began to clear up. He had been in an accident, received a head injury (not only a head injury), and therefore he could not remember anything. But in that case, where was he? In a hospital? The architecture of the building looked to be government issue. But if it were a hospital, it was closed and abandoned, maybe fifty years ago.

There was no blood on the bandages, nor any pain under them. He touched them, at first delicately, then more firmly. An attempt, however, to tear off at least the long rag crossing his abdomen from top down failed. At first he just simply pulled it, increasing the effort until he felt pain, then sharply jerked several times, each time producing a new impulse of pain. But the bandage held firmly—as if… as if it had grown into his body. No, that was nonsense, he told himself. It will be necessary simply to soak it off. There should be water somewhere around here.

He again lifted his eyes to the person reflected in the mirror and then suddenly recoiled. A huge cockroach ran up the mirror just centimeters from his eyes (it seemed to him—for just a moment—directly on his face). And now he had clearly seen that something was wrong with this insect. First, the cockroach was neither red nor black, but pale, sickeningly whitish. Second, it was too big for a household cockroach. And, more importantly—it had seven legs. Not six, as all other insects, and not even eight, as spiders do—but seven. There were three on the left side and four on the right.

The disgusting creature suddenly stopped in the middle of the mirror, as if to study itself to be convinced that this was no illusion. Overcoming his revulsion, the man looked at the insect for some time. No leg had been torn off. The limbs really grew asymmetrically and, apparently, were even of different lengths. The man helplessly looked around in search of anything with which to kill the freak, then angrily reminded himself that he had much more important problems. He turned to the bath. After all he had already seen, he had no real hope of a working shower, but he still drew aside the curtain.

And stopped dead. The wall over the bath was crossed by a wide inscription obviously made by a finger, generously dipped in something dark red. Only one word: “DESPAIR.”

From sloppy letters, long ago dried, the stains limped downwards. Involuntarily tracking their direction, he lowered his eyes to the bath—and for the first time truly wanted to cry.

At the bottom of the bath, reddened from the dried blood (yes, he could not cowardly convince himself anymore that it was not blood), a naked corpse lay face down. It was a man, not old and in rather good physical shape—though it had not saved him. There was no doubt that it was a corpse and not very fresh. The bluish-pale skin was covered with stains of a whitish mold. Yet there was no cadaverous stench for some reason. There also were no visible wounds on the back of the body. But the amnesiac had no doubt that severe wounds mutilated the front side of the body. It looked as if this unfortunate man literally drowned in his own blood since the drain had been stoppered. How much blood is in a human adult—is it some five liters? Not too much, but it is possible to choke even in a soup bowl. Or had he died from blood loss earlier? The wounds, however, from which so much blood had flowed out, could be deadly in themselves.

The absence of a stench, however, led him to think that the corpse might not be a real corpse but, for example, a dummy. And that all this in general was just an idiotic prank arranged by a bunch of wild friends. He might have been given something to drink that knocked him unconscious, brought to some abandoned house (but why would there be electricity in an abandoned house, and in what era were houses built without windows?), the things here smeared with paint, a doll put into a bath… But the mutant cockroaches? Are there, among his friends, experts in genetic engineering?

However, even all this would not explain the memory loss. A person who was drunk might not remember at all where and with whom he drank, but he does not forget all his previous existence! Anyway, did he even drink at all in that life? Perhaps he was a committed nondrinker? He could not remember even that.

Nevertheless, he bent down and with uncertainty pushed at the recumbent body. The cold slippery skin, covered with fine hairs, moved slightly under his fingers. No, it was definitely not rubber or something similar! He fastidiously jerked back his hand and, after quickly looking around, wiped it on the curtain—which did not look at all clean.

After his push the right hand of the corpse had turned a little, and now it was clearly visible that its fingers were bloody, especially the index finger. But the fingers were not entirely covered in blood. Mainly just the fingertips were stained. Probably, clamped between the body’s side and the bath wall, the hand had not bathed in the main bloody pool at the bottom. So what did it mean—this man dipped his fingers in his wounds? Dipped to make this inscription? If a dying person has a chance to leave a final message, at least in such a way, it would be more logical to write the name of the murderer or something to that effect.

The man dare not touch the corpse again, especially not to overturn it. It was all too clear what he would see: skin entirely covered with blood, terrible slash wounds—judging by the quantity of blood, the poor fellow was really mangled—and, probably, the viscera literally falling out through the openings. No, no! Whatever happened, he should get away from there as fast as possible so he would not become the next one dead!

He jumped back into the room and jerked the handle of the door leading, he believed, to a corridor. A bloodcurdling thought flashed in his mind—what if the door were locked? And indeed, it had no inclination to open either out or in. But before the panic could completely engulf him, he looked at the door more attentively and understood that it simply should be slid to the right. His new attempt met with no difficulties. Behind the door there was indeed a corridor, barely lit by the same dim flickering lighting fixtures. There were no windows there, either.

At this moment he remembered that he was naked and decided to find some clothes. The choices were poor. He must try to fashion something from either the oilcloth off the cot or the curtain in the bathroom. The situation was complicated because he had no cutting tool and to tear synthetic material would not be easy. As he discovered, however, someone had already cut half of the oilcloth away. Could it have been for the same purpose? In any event, he rolled something like a skirt for himself from the remaining half. It would cover him unreliably. If he needed to run, it certainly would unwind and fall off. However, if he really had to run, he would have more serious problems than his naked ass.

He did already. He tried to drive this thought from his mind, but it only grew stronger. It will come to no good no good it cannot come to any good… “Despair.” Despair, anxiety, and fear. Yes, the whole atmosphere here (where?) contributed to it. But there was still something besides the realization that he had awakened (regained consciousness!) devil knows where, remembering nothing, in the neighborhood of a dead person who had choked to death in his own blood. Having rummaged through the short scraps of his memory, he understood with surprise that the “something” was his previous thought about genetic engineering. It was as if… as if he had inadvertently touched a painful tooth which had now subsided and was having no effect. Why? Why does this thought generate such fear? Perhaps these bandages are the result not of an accident but of biological experiments? Some operations made against his will? Though, how does genetic engineering come into the picture? As much as he could remember, geneticists did not cut the victim, they operate at the microscopic level. Or not genetic engineering per se, but something related to it? Something that (no! no! don’t do it!) he could not remember. He tried again, despite the fear that spread like a sticky cold. No. He could not recall. Emptiness.

He approached a little table which until now had escaped his attention and found out that it was not simply a table. Half of it was occupied by a built in screen and, maybe, some other devices. Had there been any communication facilities? Now it was already difficult to tell. Everything had been destroyed, broken out, and shattered with a wild frenzy. Only a lonely torn off optical path stuck out from the mess. Suddenly the man leaned forward and peered through the dim light. In the niche which remained from where the screen had been, among the fragments of electronics (photonics, broken out from the emptiness, “electronics” is an outdated term) something lay that did not resemble a circuitry element. He lifted this small object, rounded at one end, and brought it up to his eyes. In an instant he understood with disgust that he was examining a torn off human nail with flesh attached. Could the one who destroyed things here have done it with his own nails? And the intense pain of a nail and flesh being torn off had not stopped him?

The amnesiac hurled away his trophy and gloomily thought that having a weapon could not hurt. However, the harmful subconscious immediately replaced “could not hurt” with “would not help,” but he tried to drive away this thought. At least a chair… after all, shouldn’t there be a chair in this room? But alas, there was none.

Again he went to the corridor sunk in flickering twilight, only now realizing that the corridor was not straight, but smoothly bent, forming a large ring. Which direction to choose — left or right? Whichever direction he chooses, he could not see around the curve of the corridor. He listened. He listened. Neither from the left nor from the right came any sound. Only occasionally the oppressive silence was broken by the electric crackling of flickering lamps. He went to the right. Underfoot there was the same dirty floor—for how many years was there no cleaning done here? However, he no longer regretted that he had to go barefoot, as it allowed him to move almost silently. The blank wall continued on the left and doors similar to those which he had left repeated on the right. Judging by distances between them, not all of the doors hid such small rooms. But he had no desire to enter and to come across… The devil only knows what it is possible to come across here. His goal was to get out of here as soon as possible, so he should go directly to the exit. Shouldn’t there be an exit somewhere here?!

The dim shivering light was distorting his sense of reality, hindering his ability to orient himself, and giving the impression that all this was just a dreadful nightmare in which he would walk eternally in the dirty gloomy corridor that had neither beginning nor end. For a moment he was so assured of it that he began to pinch himself but without the desired result. However, as he remembered it now, actually pinching oneself to wake up is a myth, since painful sensations can be in a dream, too. While in dreams they are usually weaker than in reality but the sleeper does not realize it. A pinch is not very painful anyway. But if he were thinking so logically about a dream, then he probably was not sleeping. However, what if he indeed had already made a full circle through this corridor and had begun a new one? Immediately came more questions. What if the exit were behind one of these identical doors? Or perhaps the exit did not exist at all? No, that’s delirium! But was not all that surrounded him since he came to his senses similar to delirium?

These thoughts entangled him with a sticky cold fear that he tried to expel in vain. Everything here should have a logical explanation. Everything here should have… Yes, certainly. But who guaranteed you that you will like it?

He shook his head. He had to somehow mark the door from which he had emerged and then he would know if he had made a full circle or not. To mark? With what? His own blood?

No way, he calmed himself from the hysterical thought which had rushed to his head. To leave the door open—what could be easier? And maybe he had actually done this? Did he close the door when he left the room? The first time—surely, would be a natural behavior for a person who knew that he was naked. But the second time… He couldn’t remember.

A moment later, however, he was given proof that he had not completed a circle yet. On the next door on the right, all in the same manner, in brown-red with long stains (in blood, recognize it already, in blood), was written: “KILL YOURSELF NOW.”

“Encouraging,” he muttered. It was the first word pronounced by him as far back as he could remember. Usually such a phrase refers to a whole life, but in his case… Goddamn, probably, no more than ten minutes had passed, though it seemed to him that he had wandered in this terrible building not less than an hour. He did not like the sound of his own voice, a hoarse croak. He probably had been silent very long before he spoke.

Or maybe, on the contrary, he had damaged his throat with shouting?

He shrank in belated fright, listening. Perhaps even this flat muttering will attract unknown creatures from a corridor twilight? Or even directly from this door.

But everything still remained silent. Khrrr… click… khrrr… crack! He shuddered from surprise. One of the ceilings fixtures ahead had suddenly gone out and this section of the corridor was engulfed in darkness. Nothing was visible behind this section because of the curvature of the corridor. It was very easy to imagine that…

He waited tensely, peering into the darkness. No, he told himself, the fixture had simply failed. With such voltage, obviously far from standard, it is no wonder. He looked at the door again. The one who leaves such appeals can hardly be a friend. And if an enemy were trying to frighten him, then it would be foolish to take his cue from what the enemy had done. But if a real threat lay behind the door, an enemy would probably not warn him about it, even in such an exotic way. The man pulled the handle. With the door obediently sliding into the wall, he went in.

It was probably some sort of laboratory. That’s it—“was.” The same furious destruction, as with the little table in the first room, only on a larger scale, had been repeated here. The whole floor was covered by the remains of the mauled, smashed devices torn out of racks. It was now difficult to tell what kind of research they had been intended for. Fragments of a turning chair which, probably, the unknown vandal tried to use as a sledge hammer, lay there, but then the chair, made of plastic, proved to be too light and fragile for such a job.

The amnesiac took some cautious steps, being afraid to wound his feet. But, apparently, there were no splinters from test tubes and subject glasses here. That being as much as it was possible to understand in such chaos and with such illumination. So, it was suited probably more for physics, than for biology or chemistry. Though who would know? Maybe only remote control of the equipment in some hermetic chamber was carried out from here. Among fragments of plastic cases and boards some metal plates, cores, coils, windings occurred—but, apparently, there was nothing that could be used as a weapon. And all this demolition was carried out long ago, as fragments had time to grow with dust—the dust which had almost hidden the brown stains on a floor. In a corner a massive metal bed of a certain installation towered, which apparently proved to be too difficult to destroy. And on its side there was the next inscription, made in the same fashion: “DARK IS FASTER THAN LIGHT HA HA HА.” From the last stick of the last letter “A” a stream with a drop on the end led downward. Directly on this drop sat a whitish cockroach. No, it was more likely a fat round spider, as if it had crept out to drink the blood. But actually both the stream and a drop dried up a long time ago.

Gingerly bending down—he liked spiders no more than cockroaches—the man nevertheless approached more closely, wishing to examine the arthropod to discover whether it were a representative of another ugly mutant, or just a normal spider? What is ugliness here: a deviation or the norm?

He moved nearer slowly, in order not to frighten off the creature, but precaution was excessive. The spider did not move. It was dead long ago. And has dried on the bloody drop just as if it had not enough mind to move away when it has started to get thick. The man lifted a fragment of some transparent polymer from a laboratory table—possibly a former screen part—and poked the dried up whitish little body with it. The spider fell to the table, the drawn in legs up. The number of legs, as befits to all spiders, was eight. Three on the right side and five at the left.

The man returned to the corridor. This time he intentionally left the door opened. For orientation, he told to himself, though more likely in order not to see the inscription on it. But, just as he thought of it, the inscription with all its stains appeared in his mind’s eye: “Kill yourself now.” Whatever had been before in this laboratory, he did not yet see reasons for suicide. For optimism, however, too…

Suddenly he shuddered, overtaken by a new wave of sticky fear. Physics, a laboratory, mutants—all of it merged together, knocking out the wall which had cut his memory by one more concept: radiation. What if this were the case? If this strange building (a research center? a clinic?) experienced a certain nuclear failure, then all here was abandoned long ago, and all this musty air was penetrated by a slow death. If even insects and spiders, which are more radiation resistant (from where did he know this?), have mutated, then a human here was doomed for certain. That’s why “kill yourself now” would mean less suffering. Death from radiation sickness meant long and horrific torment.

But what was with the personnel, hastily leaving the building after the accident, destroying the equipment? The rage against machinery which betrayed them, of course, was understandable. Even a scientist can break down, but when each second was valuable for rescue…  And all these bloody inscriptions? A naked corpse in a bath? Maybe he was someone who had found his way into the forbidden zone after the accident and understood too late what he had done?

But, maybe, there had been no evacuation? Maybe they were all just written off? The authorities wished to hide the truth about the accident and had let nobody out. Or not radiation, but some biological shit, and all of them were infected—infected and dangerous. But was radiation capable of preventing decomposition? Some virus may be capable…

But what about himself? Who, in that case, was he? One of the personnel left here or a guinea pig? How could he have survived here for so long, from the moment of the accident, after, seemingly, years have passed? What did he drink, what did he eat? Cockroaches? This thought made him squirm.

Are there other survivors? And what does a meeting with them threaten? Who has left these inscriptions? At first he thought that the word “despair” was written before death by that person in a bathroom. But he had been bleeding profusely, in such a condition that he could not come here from there or vice versa. And all the inscriptions looked to be made by one hand. Then would it be logical to assume that it was the hand of a murderer? But where were the new victims, whose blood was used for the writing? Dragged somewhere, maybe still alive? What for? And why the inscriptions, why smash the equipment? Madness, madness…

He suddenly felt himself very tired—not so much physically, though his head remained heavy, the infinite, hopeless weariness raising from these attempts to consider the situation rationally, the process of thinking per se painful. “Nobody has survived” had escaped suddenly, as an agonizing exhalation, from the depths of his mind. The accident affected not only this building, everything was much, much worse, no people remain in the whole world, nobody, only mutant spiders and cockroaches, and he never will get out from here, never, never.

He mutely moaned through clenched teeth, leaning against a wall covered with something sticky, shocked with the power of the despair which had captured him. Despair, yes. Were these inscriptions made under such conditions? “Kill yourself now.” No, he should struggle! He would not allow this place to win, whatever it actually was. It was necessary to search for an exit. (“No!”, his frightened subconsciousness peeped. “Don’t search. No, don’t search anything!”) It was necessary to search, he firmly repeated to himself, and, having gathered himself up, made him step into the darkness of the unlit part of the corridor.

For some instants he moved forward, carefully rearranging his feet and expecting every moment that something cold and slippery from the gloom would suddenly seize his ankle. The darkness seemed to go on longer than he expected. There was, probably, a cascade switching off of several lamps successively. But at last ahead an unsteady light began to dawn around the bend. Some more steps and…

Something cold and slippery occurred under his foot and stuck its teeth into his sole.

Overwhelming fear kept him from jumping aside, freezing him in place, a behavior beyond reason. However, the paralysis, lasting a pair of infinitely long seconds, allowed him to understand that the jaws unclenched under his foot were too languid and didn’t try to bite him at all. He had simply stepped on the face of a corpse.

“Kill yourself now.” Did someone really yield to such advice? Or, more probably, someone was helped.

At that moment the head of the dead person turned (not by itself, a late understanding came, it happened simply because he pressed on the face with his weight), and his foot, having slid off, was stuck into a floor. But instead of dirt and garbage familiar already, he felt under a sole something different. During the following instant he understood that he was standing on the long matted hair stretched around the dead head. Is that a woman?

Probably, he should explore the body more carefully, at least to the touch, and better to drag it to the light. But the disgust, and also the fear that the thing that killed the woman could still hide somewhere here in the gloom, flooded any rational thought. The man darted off and rushed to the light, as if being pursued by hellish demons. His makeshift skirt fell down, but his reflexes managed to catch the falling oilcloth.  Several instants later he was already taking a breath, standing under the next flickering light fixture. Nobody pursued him. Only his heavy breathing was heard in the dead air.

Having calmed himself, as much as possible under the circumstances, he put his attire in order and again moved forward. Soon his efforts were rewarded, at least partly—the passage leading, obviously, to the ring center occurring on the right. But he had no time to be glad about this, as he noticed something else, something far less encouraging.

It was the bloody prints of bare feet, which went along the circle corridor in the opposite direction and turned into this pass. And not only feet… Here and there between footprints the large blots darkened, somewhere merging in the whole paths, similar to the traces of huge worms. So the idea that someone had simply passed through a bloody pool had to be rejected. In that case, each succeeding trace would be paler than the previous, which did not happen here. No, blood streamed from the legs of the walking one, but he(she?) persistently went forward, overcoming the pain.

All right, the man thought, whatever happened with this person, it happened from where he came, not to where he was going. He turned into the pass.

Here the light glowed particularly dimly, some light fixtures periodically dying out completely. Then—probably when some condensers had time to accumulate a charge—with a click they would flash on for a short time. These flashes did not so much help, as blind him, preventing his eyes to adapt to the twilight. The man felt under his foot a small flat object which has slipped to the floor. Stooping down, he picked it up and stood up under the nearest light fixture, hoping to examine the find.

It was a small, palm-long, rectangular plate, most likely metal, or maybe of firm plastic. Defining its makeup was difficult, since it was densely and completely covered with dried blood. Here and there short curly hairs had dried on it—more likely from a body, rather than from a head.

When the finder made it out, his throat was squeezed by a short spasm of disgust, and he went to fling the plate away, but he forced himself to think more rationally. It could be used as a weapon. And he obviously was not the first to think of this. One of the plate corners had been made keener.

The man began to scrub the blood from the object with his fingernails. His fingers almost immediately felt some grooves on one of the sides. It seemed an inscription had been embossed on the plate.

At last the plate was entirely cleared. It was a tablet of golden metal (but obviously not of gold, judging by its weight). The inscription was definitely not handmade and consisted of a single word: “HYPERION.”

He tried to remember what this word meant. First his consciousness struck the same blank wall. Hyperion… hyper… hyper… It seemed it was some character from ancient Greek mythology. (A minute ago he had not suspected even the existence of ancient Greek mythology.) But this explanation didn’t satisfy him. It had arisen too hastily, as if trying to protect him from the undefined fear that splashed from the bottom of consciousness, fear of something doubtfully concerning the ancient Greece.

And the place where he was now could be anything but an antiquity museum.

The next flash sparkled ahead, snatching out from the gloom another body lying on a floor.

The one still living cautiously approached the dead. There was no doubt that the one on the floor was dead, no doubt that he had been the one who left the blood trails. The body had writhed in a pool of blood, now dried, his back upwards, with his hands tucked under his stomach, possibly triying to press a wound.

But this was not what made the startling impression on the amnesiac. The person on a floor was almost naked, his only clothing consisting of an improvised skirt rolled from something like a dirty oilcloth.

Just the same. Probably even, it was the other half of his own.

So, it means, he has regained consciousness in the same room, and went… I went along the ring to the right, and he, probably, to the left. And there THIS was done to him…

The ice cold pierced the to the soul of the one who was still alive, like an edge which had slashed the belly of his predecessor. One small mistake, if only he had turned in another direction… But then he thought, that man may not have necessarily gone to the left. He could have gone to the right as well, but had not turn into the pass and move further along the ring.

The nausea was rising to his throat, and the light, sharply flashing and dying away, did not assist the exploration at all. Nevertheless, it was necessary to inspect the corpse. If he hoped to receive at least a few answers and, most important, to avoid the same destiny… If it, of course, can be avoided here at all.

He tried to turn the dead body over, but it resisted to his efforts. He thought that the blood-stained skin had stuck to the floor, so he pulled more forcefully. With a wet clack the corpse came loose from the floor and turned on to one side, and then lethargically rolled over on its back.

The abdomen has been ripped practically from the solar plexus to the groin. Sticky gleaming bowels fatly flapped, falling out from a wound; a black slime poured down on already befouled floor. The one alive broke down, benting over in spell of vomiting. However, real vomiting did not occur. Painful spasms shook and wrenched his body, but only a thin thread of a sour saliva came from his mouth.

For how long had I eaten nothing? flashed in his mind. But he didn’t feel hunger. On the contrary, thinking about eating in such place nearly caused a new set of spasms.

Having recovered his breath, he forced himself to look again at the corpse, now with a ruthless brightness lit by a new flash, then again becoming a hardly distinguishable silhouette in the gloom. The flashing light fixture was uncannily reflected each time in the gaping eyes of the agony-deformed face. Both the face and the breast were soiled by blood, but, without touching them, it was hard to know whether there were wounds there. However, upon a closer look the amnesiac understood that at least earlier there had been. On the skin of the dead man there were dried bandages, like on his own.

But nobody tried to bandage the main wound, and it would have been impossible without sewing it up. He looked again at the ripped abdomen. How could this poor fellow walk in such condition?! It looked like he had to hold a tangle of falling out entrails by his own hands.

A new flash lit up those sanguineous hands, with fingers stuck together, and a new thought pierced the brain of the amnesiac. No, it seemed that this unfortunate man had not even tried to clamp and close the wound in any way. His crooked fingers squeezed mucous loops of his own guts, and dug his nails into them. This person obviously caused himself an excrutiating pain. But why? Had he absolutely lost reason due to torment? Did he not control himself in agony?  However, the reaction to a pain belongs to the level of unconditioned reflexes, even if he seized his own entrails unwittingly. He should have immediately jerked back his hands.

Suddenly in purple medley something boggled and began to move. The survivor thought that now he would go mad for sure, if he had not done so already. It seemed to him that the intestines of the dead man had begun to live their own life and were creeping outside. At this moment the light had again gone out.

The man jerked back in horror, ready to run helter-skelter, ramming against a corridor wall. The suddenness of this blow nearly made him fall down. He recovered balance, seizing the wall (his shoulder ached from the hit), and, having turned towards the unknown danger, he stiffened for a moment. In the resulting silence he heard a disgusting wet-sticky sound, as if someone had licked a dirty floor with a big clammy tongue.

The light flashed again. The dead person lay in the same place without any movement, as any dead body would. The sound was shed by something wriggling on a floor near the corpse. At a glance it could indeed have seem like a spilled entrail living its own life. But it was some wormlike creature about a forearm in length, its black annulate body fatly shimmering, leaving trails of blood on the floor. At the first flash it seemed to the man that the creature was creeping directly toward him. He helplessly flattened himself against the wall, though, possibly, he could have crushed this creature with just one foot. The light went out again but, when it was lit the next time, it became clear that the creature was just creeping by, paying no attention to a panic-stricken man. As much as he could make out, it had neither eyes, nor mouth.

That’s the point, he thought. This creature had gotten into the man’s guts, and he… In an attempt to get rid of it he probably cut himself open—with the corner of this plate inscribed with the word “Hyperion.” This thought made the amnesiac squirm. For a moment he imagined very clearly himself doing it. Madness, certainly… madness was trying to render such “aid” to the victim, trying to tear the creature from his own bowels, and then moreover to walk somewhere… But, probably, the torment caused by the wretch creeping in his guts was absolutely unbearable. How had it got inside? Had it crept through the mouth? Through his anus? The laughter was absolutely inappropriate, but he nervously giggled. No, most likely—like any parasite—it had gotten in as a tiny imperceptible larva. It even more asserted itself in his mind: Even if a meal would be found in this place, he should not touch it. However (one more remembrance breaking through), there are, apparently, some microscopic worms, capable of getting into the body directly through the skin.

“Kill yourself now.” Kill yourself in an easy way before such things happen to you. This version looked even more believable than the radiation one.

But how could “the easy way” disappear later? Why hadn’t this person tried simply, for example, to slash his wrists? Too slow? But he surely suffered even longer. Nevertheless he had hoped to survive? Or was it simply the pain absolutely depriving him of the ability to think sensibly?

Everything is useless, came to him (from behind of the wall?), an improbably depressingly-tired thought—a thought which seemed as ancient as time. Everything… is useless… there is no exit from here… even such one… And then came to him a rolling, accumulating dark wave—despair, despair, DESPAIR!!!

The man lashed himself on a cheek to come to his senses. He stuck his teeth into his lip, until he felt the salty taste of blood. Calm down, he ordered himself. It is necessary just to keep a head on one’s shoulders and to think logically. For some reason this logical idea caused a new spasm of icy horror in his stomach. But he forced himself to knock down irrational fear and continue: “I know now about at least one real danger — articulated parasites. Is it the only one? Quite probably, the man in the bath, and the woman in the corridor—or was it yet another man with long hair?—have died of the same cause. From where did these wretches come? All from the same a biological experiment? And we… We were unlikely its organizers, as all of us appeared here without clothing. But this doesn’t mean that our situations were identical. Perhaps, not all have lost their memory. This person, so deliberately walking somewhere with the ripped stomach… Most likely he knew all along where he was going, hoping to receive help there.”

Having bypassed the corpse, he continued to walk in the same direction and had soon reached, apparently, the ring center. Here the corridor branched, bending around the thick column which pierced the floor and the ceiling. Having approached more closely, the man saw in this column a closed door and two triangular buttons nearby. The lift? Very probable. But to use the lift when power supplies were semidead would be silly.  Fortunately, by moving around the column by the left corridor the man found an exit to a staircase. The staircase was spiral; it wound around the huge cylinder which enclosed the lift column and the passes bending around it. This cylinder, obviously, was enclosed within an even bigger one, based upon the form of an external wall. Again, there were no windows here, and the illumination was made by the same light fixtures, here vertically located on the external wall. The corridor from which he had just come went into this wall, finding room between the staircase volutions. Now he could observe it from the outside. Strange architecture… Light fixtures here glowed dimly, too, but their light was not white, but reddish, making the picture ever gloomier.

Now where? The stairs completely blocked the space between the internal and external walls, giving him no chance to see how far upwards or downwards this spiral went. The common experience, which had been not affected by amnesia, prompted him to conclude that an exit from a building, however freakish it was, should be downwards, so the man already made some steady descending steps, but then stopped. What if this whole complex were underground? The absence of windows supported such idea—especially if the project were dangerous and confidential.

He turned in indecision. And saw on the first of the stairs, going from a platform upward, the next bloody inscription:

“DO NOT GO THERE!”

Now he was not so sure that these inscriptions were left by somebody hostile. Most likely it was the same victims of unknown experimenters or the accident which had overtaken them. However—he reminded himself logically—that still does not mean at all that he should trust them unconditionally. These people (whether any of them were still alive) could be mistaken, could be, after all, simply mad. Someone destroyed devices with frenzied fury, did he not? And, by the way, what had been written in the crushed laboratory—some obvious nonsense on the theme of darkness and light.

Nevertheless, he turned again and went downwards. He nearly ran, as the staircase was steep enough, but then he decided that it was necessary to do all with care here.

The staircase was also dirty and abandoned, like everything in this terrible place. Perhaps, it was even dirtier. Most likely in those days when all were working here, the personnel used the lift, and the staircase was intended only for emergencies. That’s why its illumination was so dim.

He passed some platforms with exits, each time stopping and listening before walking past the next door, but he decided to continue to the bottom. If there were a cellar, then he will ascend a level upward. At this point a foolish thought came to him that this downward course, going goodness knows where, by a dirty staircase illuminated by an ominous red twilight reminded him of the descent into hell. Yes, so he had remembered the concept of a hell—as well as the fact that he had never believed in it. “Nonsense,” he told himself again. “Everything is absolutely material here. Even those goddamned mutant creatures.” Yep, “goddamn.” However, the freak arthropods and even guts-settling articulated worms were rather small for the standard hellish demons.

At last he reached the bottom. The last platform abutted against half-open door leaves of the high sliding gate which led not into the cylinder but outside. Maybe the door mechanism had jammed in such a position, or the cause could be the deficiency of energy. The remaining gap, however, was wide enough to climb through. Behind the door it was absolutely dark.

And on the right half of the gate one more inscription had been made in the same way and manner: “DO NOT THINK.” What was it suggesting that he not think about remained a riddle as part of the door was hidden by a wall. The man tried to move the heavy leaf, but he might as likely pull on a cliff. All right then, as it is clearly known, appeals not to think about something simply result in just the opposite.

He stood for a while, listening, sniffing the air—nothing fresh, the same musty abomination of desolation as everywhere else here. At last, working up the courage and clasping his only weapon—the tablet with the acute angle—he pressed himself through the gate into the darkness.

The faint hope that any automatics would turn on the light remained futile. If ever such automatics existed here, they did not work now. Should he return and look for another way to the outside? But what suggested to him that such a way existed or that it would be more safe?

He stood a little longer, hearing in the darkness only the fast terrified beating of his own heart, and then, reaching forward with his left hand and groping the floor with his bare feet, he nevertheless moved forward.

After several—seconds? minutes?—he was not sure that he could calculate time correctly in such conditions, though he already understood that he was in a really large room, his fingers having touched a wall. The wall was dusty, but under the dust the smoothness of plastic or some similar material was evident. He moved to the right, sliding along the wall by his hand, came across some vertical metal bar, and bypassed it, before his hand again fell into emptiness. He went forward, until his hand rested against a next obstacle.

At first it seemed to him that he had been keeping the direction, but having looked back at a moment ago, he had not seen the doorway gap through which a light from the staircase should seep—neither there, where he expected to see it, nor anywhere. With growing trepidation he understood that he was wandering in a labyrinth and had already moved far from the entrance. And, maybe, the emergency illumination died out completely. What a damned place is this! Why would there need to be a labyrinth here?

He tried again to knock down the panic by shear will. It is possible to find a way out of any labyrinth. It is necessary to just go always along the right wall… or along the left one, the main thing is to choose it once and not change this decision once made. But when he tried to follow this principle, he found that he was walking around a huge cube. The principle works only for topologically connected labyrinths—provided he remembered correctly what topological connectivity was.

In despair he rushed forward, crashing in the darkness against the next wall and began to punching it. Based upon the sound, the wall was very thin (it even slightly caved in under his blows), and behind it there was an emptiness. He tried to cut the wall with the tablet corner, but, while thin, the barrier turned out to be too firm.

“It is not a labyrinth,” he thought. “It is a warehouse, and I am wandering between containers!”

This discovery, however, had not much improved his situation. He still had no idea how to get out from where he was in complete darkness—even again to the staircase, let alone to the outside. He tried to shift the next container in his path, but it was, of course, too heavy. Or maybe the issue was that metal bars which he periodically encountered probably served to fix containers on a place. Had he understood it it or just remembered it? That’s not important! The bars! The warehouse was obviously not full, and the containers, apparently, weren’t placed in a strict order, but the bars should stand at equal intervals and, most likely, form a rectangular grid. So if he went from one bar to another, counting them, then…

Suddenly something round rolled under his foot, and he almost fell down. He heard it, having turned out from under his foot, trundle on the floor in the opposite direction. What was it? Some small cylinder—maybe just garbage. Nevertheless he made some steps toward the sound, then went down on all fours, putting the tablet down momentarily, and began to rummage the floor with his hands—carefully, in order not to push whatever it was again. Where are you, you little bastard? Aha, here!

He felt his find. A smooth circle on one end, and something like a button on the side. Could it be a flashlight? He pressed the button, and a soft light flashed in his hand, lighting up suspicious dark stains on the floor and the wall of the next container with a lengthy number. Luck, luck at last!

He sprang to his feet, immediately receiving a blow by something long and firm on the head. A flash sparkled in his eyes, and he powerlessly tumbled down on the mucky floor.

Having come round, he lay for several seconds, stupidly looking at the flashlight which lay nearby and continued to shine. The beam, almost parallel to the floor, quite vividly illuminated all the dirt and dust. The top of his head ached, and he thought for certain there was quite a large lump. Then it hit him like a bolt of lightning: he should not be thinking about his head, but instead about the one who has struck him! But everything was still silent and it did not seem as though anybody was going to attack him again. The man very carefully turned his head and saw several pipes almost directly above him. They were not too thick, about two inches in diameter, with one end going into a wall of the nearest container. This wall seemed not to be solid, but perforated. He took the flashlight—still no one hindered him—and, having shone the light on the container, saw that it was indeed perforated. Then he sat up on the floor and moved his eyes and the beam to the opposite side, wishing to understand where the pipes led. At that very same moment he caught his breath in horror.

The beam of light tore from the darkness a silent figure, standing closer than two meters from him. The figure was dressed in (a shroud, it seemed to him at first) a white lab coat (apparently its only covering) and stood motionlessly, with its head inclined to the left shoulder in an unnaturally angle. Long black hair completely hid the face. The hands hung powerlessly. On deathly pale naked legs and feet ran streams of blood, coming from under the coat, but now dry.

It seemed that she (she, the amnesiac understood; it was a woman) was silently examining the uninvited intruder, smiling under a curtain of hair with a grin promising nothing good. He would have cried under this inscrutable look, but a spasm seized his throat. His fingers began to fumble convulsively on the floor in search of the tablet left somewhere abouts. But the next moment he had already realized that his horror and shock were caused only by unexpectedness. This woman was not likely the one who had struck him. He realized this because he had, at last, noticed the pipes, which had in several places ripped through her coat into her breast and solar plexus. She was punctured by these pipes, like an insect specimen pierced by several pins at once.

At the same moment the man understood that nobody had beaten him on a head. He had struck against these pipes himself when he sprang to his feet, being directly under them. He stood up and approached the dead woman. The free ends of the pipes, brown with blood, stuck out of her back no less than a meter. A pool has accumulated on a floor under them. From behind, the coat had been soaked red much more deeply than in the front, and the man rejected the idea of putting on these blood-stained rags (for, of course, he would at first have to remove the corpse from the pipes). He did, however, have the logical thought of searching the coat pockets.

There were only two of them. The right one was empty, but in the left he found a folded sheet of paper. The man unfolded it and brought to the flashlight. It was a list, written by hand (fortunately, this time not in blood):

Dr. Kalkrin — s-e

Dr. Hart — heart attack

Prof. Poplavska — madness

Dr. Silberschmied — s-e

Dr. Nakamura — s-e

Dr. Lebrun — coma

Prof. Ward — fire in lab, supp. s-e

Prof. Streicher — killed h-self in ment. clinic

Dr. Giroldini — death in road accident, supp. s-e

Dr. Wong — stroke

Prof. Kovaleva — took the veil, silence vow

The amnesiac twirled the paper in a hand. The mysterious “s-e” probably meant suicide (“Kill yourself now!”). But what does this list of the lost scientists mean? Not all of them, in fact, have died physically, but, anyway, all were lost for science. Whether is it possible, that all these corpses, which he saw in this place, are the people on this list? And he, in that case, is one of the survivors? For example, professor Poplavska… But no, it is, apparently, a female surname (he looked again at the dead woman standing near him). Then maybe, Lebrun, who had regained consciousness after a coma… Though this place was hardly similar to a functioning hospital… Yes, yes, he already thought of it… But whether a certain hybrid of coma and lethargy were possible, where a patient forsaken without any help for several months would not be capable of just surviving, but would also come round without aid? It seemed to be something out of pure fiction, though he, after all, still did not know what the experiment was essentially, even if it actually were an experiment.

And the others—a fire in the laboratory, a road accident—all this was not very similar to that, to what he saw here. However, he saw only four—more precisely, three, because on the fourth he had only stepped. But, if it were known about the deaths of the scientists, why were the bodies left here? Maybe the list on this piece of paper reflected merely the official version?

Or maybe all of them were left here simply because all those who knew about this place have died, gone mad, or fallen into a coma? No, that would be nonsense, such a huge building cannot be the initiative of a small group, something not reflected in governmental or corporate documents. But what could he tell for certain? He, who cannot remember even his name?

He moved the beam around on the floor, searching for his missing tablet, found it, and stood for a while, without knowing what to do with the paper. He lacked pockets, and carrying three objects was inconvenient. Perhaps he should learn this list by heart? Was it valuable? It was the only item in the pocket of a woman who died a terrible death. Perhaps, this information cost her her life? On the other hand, the murderer had not touched this paper.

But was there actually a murderer? It didn’t look like the victim has resisted. Her feet stood on the floor, her legs not bent back as they would have been had she—already dying—been pushed forward, further and further on to the impaling pipes. And the main point: How could the murderer position himself so that the pipes would not hinder him to do what he did? They would bear against his own chest.

But it is was even more difficult to imagine that she had done it to herself. She, applying considerable force, would have impaled her stomach and breast pressing on the pipes pushing forward, sliding on the metal piercing her body, while she still could. What an excruciating pain she must have felt! Is there truly something in this world capable of making a person do such a thing? Even the worm in your guts didn’t seem a sufficient cause.

This flashlight—was she the one who had dropped it? After all, the murderer very unlikely would have thrown it here, so far from the exit!

But the dead body made nothing clear. Maybe if he were—what is it called?—a pathologist—and he had the proper tools… But, though he still did not know who he was, he was, for some reason, quite confident that he was definitely not a physician.

At last he wound the sheet around the handle of the flashlight and picked up the tablet from the floor, then continued to search for the exit.

The flashlight shone dimly. Apparently its accumulator was almost discharged, so he definitely had to hurry. But with at least this light source the warehouse didn’t seem something like a haunted dungeon anymore. The containers were not specially placed in order to confuse the person who appeared here, so he quickly enough found the exit back to the staircase. This, however, did not suit him already, and he moved along a wall in search of an exit to the outside. But, to his surprise, having gone around the whole warehouse on its perimeter, he had not found any more doors. For some time he stood there perplexed. Some containers were obviously too large to drag them down the spiral staircase already familiar to him. How could they get here? He looked with doubt at the waning flashlight and nevertheless moved deeper into the warehouse.

The thought which had flashed through his mind proved true and after a while he found them: the big square hatches in the floor—more exactly, not really hatches, but the platforms of lifts by which cargo was hoisted from below. So, this was not yet the bottom level of a vault? There are probably tunnels under the building. Anyhow, he couldn’t go there. He had not found any buttons to activate the lifts. Any attempts to open some of the containers had also failed. He had to return to the staircase.

As he had planned to do before, he ascended to the next level and entered the passage leading into the cylinder. Here it was also absolutely dark. But no sooner had he taken a pair of steps than light switched on with a strained click, and brighter than before, so that he shuddered unexpectedly, but understood at the next moment that in some places the automatics still worked. He turned off the flashlight to save the battery charge.

Having rounded the lift shaft, he found himself in a corridor. Here something clicked too, but light did not come on. Perhaps, it will work in the next section, the man thought and made some careful steps forward. There was clearly a reason to move cautiously. The floor underfoot was not simply dirty. It was somehow greasy, in places slippery. It was not blood—neither dried up nor even fresh. It was something different. And the smell. To the general atmosphere of mustiness and desolation something else was added here. Something heavy and unpleasant. Not the odor of decay, no. More likely such an odor came from something alive—something even the most excited fans of nature would not care to have as a pet. More precisely, they would not want to encounter at all.

The man stopped in indecision. Now he also heard sounds—muted sounds, hardly distinguishable, wet, rasping and stirring.

He lifted the flashlight, holding it like a sword hilt. But he didn’t switch it on. He took one more step, knowing (from where did this knowledge come?) that he would enter the radius of a sensor responsible for illuminating the next section. This hope proved true. It clicked, and then light was turned on.

The light illuminated a corridor looking completely different from the other premises of this strange building, while initially, obviously, it had been built and finished in the same manner. But while in other places only dust and rubbish had accumulated, here everything looked much worse.  From the ceiling here and there hung some sort of fringe, disheveled rags of something like a dusty web, with stalactites of pale flesh hanged down. On the walls jellylike stains fatly shone and mold blots shagged. On the floor, covered with dead insects in some places, having swelled and broken through an artificial covering, slimy ugly mushrooms, similar to pieces of aborted embryos, puffed up. But this was not the nastiest. Oh no, it was only a background which was almost not borne in the mind of the amnesiac. Because he, paralysed by horror and disgust, stared at what he had nearly nestled against in the dark.

Just a meter from his face, across a corridor, hung a crucified corpse. Certainly, this was not the first dead person he had seen this day, but all the previous, however terrible their end had been, were really lucky compared to this unfortunate person—more precisely, unfortunate woman. Though there were no clothes on the body, the amnesiac could not immediately recognize its gender. Her skin was almost completely grazed. Only on the lower body did semi-torn off scraps of skin hang down from the scarlet flesh. Maybe the torturer did not have enough time, or something has distracted him. But especially gruesome was the look of the round head, with rolled out balls of lidsless eyes and, grinning in a final shout, lipless jaws. She had no legs, only a medley of blood-stained tatters of flesh, from which yellowish bones stuck out, was left from her hips, and everything below, seemingly, was not even chopped off, but simply broken out from knee joints. The belly of the martyr has been ripped, and entrails, having fallen out through the cut, hung down like an ugly knobby utter. Thin but obviously strong wire dug into her outstretched arms, tearing the wrists almost to the bone, the left arm tied this way to a bracket on which, probably, an observation camera had once been established, and the right arm to ventilating lattice in the opposite wall. (The ventilation was not working here as seemed to be the case for the whole building.)

It was hard to say how long her agony lasted, but now within this tormented and mutilated body life could be found again. The purple-shining peeled flesh was already accreting in places with some spongy rubbish, but more to the point, the whole body was pitted and corroded by small gnawed holes. Numerous creatures similar to a hybrid of a worm and an insect crawled out of these holes, crept on the dead body and disappeared inside again. They had triangular heads, articulated fore-chelas—only one pair—and soft twisted bodies. Their length did not surpass three centimeters, but on the corpse (and the more so, obviously, in it) there were plenty of them, and their swarming made that sound which the amnesiac heard. Unlike ants or termites, they moved slowly and clumsily, quite often slipping from the dead flesh and plopping down to the floor. Under their awful nest, a whole pile of dead creatures had already accumulated.  Those still alive were scraping and wriggling among the corpses of their companions.

The corridor was not too narrow to bypass the crucified corpse, still it was hard to imagine a more daunting obstacle to moving further. The amnesiac moved back. Some arthropodic worms fell out of the open mouth of the dead woman and, as if sensing material for a new nest, began crawling towards him as fast as their ugly constitution allowed. This became the final straw, he turned and quickly rushed away. The passionless automatics recognized that the light was no longer necessary and the darkness again hid the horror that was now behind him.

But for an instant before the light had gone out, he had time to see something else. On a lift door—situated just so the crucified woman could have seen it and, quite possibly, written in her own blood—was one more message, a phrase least of all corresponding to all seen in this corridor and in this damned building in general: “NO DEATH.”

He regained self-control only when he had almost lost his breath from running so quickly up the staircase. He dropped to his knees and rested his hands against the step before him, panting noisily. His heart pounded so hard it felt as though it would break through his ribs, tear through the skin and plop down on the dirty platform as a wet gob of meat, making the same sound with which the quasi-worms had slipped from a corpse and plopped to the floor.

He tried again to pull out of the sticky whirlpool of panic and to reason logically. Whatever it was that he had just seen, there was one thing quite clear: She had in no way committed suicide. And the one who had killed her—the one who enjoyed killing people IN SUCH A WAY—was, quite probably, still alive and somewhere in this building. And for that matter who is to say that he was only one.

At last, having recovered his breath (and with surprise at having understood that he didn’t sweat at all), he raised his head and stumbled across the inscription “DO NOT GO THERE.” Aha, here he was already. That meant that he had run again to his initial level. But now this time he was not going to take these inscriptions seriously. Kill yourself now. No death. That was madness. That was it, most likely, it was simply madness. Probably, it was indeed written by the murderer, by a balmy maniac, with a screw loose. Anyway, a person who was the least bit sane could hardly do what had been done to that woman. Person or persons, he thought to himself, considering the possibilities. There would be still a chance to deal with one maniac barehanded, but if…

He looked at his hands. Oh yeah. The flashlight which was still wrapped up in a piece of paper, lay on a stair nearby, but the tablet was not there. Now he remembered, how during his run the “skirt” began to fall down, and he had mechanically seized it. Yes, of course, he thought gloomily, the civilized man in all his glory—dropping his only weapon to obey the useless conventions of decency. It would be necessary to go back down to look for the tablet. But he could not force himself. It seemed to him that the ugly worms with legs had already crawled up the staircase following him from below. And all the same, what could he do with this pitiful tablet? It was in no way comparable even to the most unpretentious knife. It could not inflict a deep wound, and even a surface wound would be possible only if the enemy did not resist. All was hopeless—all. He will never get out of here. He felt a sudden desire to write directly on the floor, “NO EXIT.” If he had been bleeding at that very moment, he, perhaps, would do just that.

He shook his head. No, it is necessary to struggle with these attacks of despair. It is necessary… to struggle… He took the flashlight and stood up. Upwards on the staircase? Or first to investigate the rest of the ring on this level, where he has regained consciousness? He had found three corpses here, yes. But now he was convinced that danger could await anywhere. And he recalled that the first corpse had been found in a bathroom on the other side of a door where he had lain insensible and helpless. Arguing in this manner, he should have been finished off already there, at the same time as the other victim. Or may it be that he was the chosen one? Perhaps he would not suffer the same fate that the others had suffered and that was why he was still alive. Even if it were so, however, he might have been chosen for something even worse?

He heaved a deep sigh. Speculating was useless. He stepped into the aperture leading into the cylinder, without any idea why he had made this particular choice. Maybe it was just because he had no desire to clamber up an abrupt staircase again. This time he bypassed the lift shaft from the other direction and moved along a corridor which he had not explored yet.

Here he saw no corpses—aside from several dead cockroaches on the floor (or spiders or whatever they actually were). Suddenly it came to him that, perhaps, in the beginning of his exploration, that he would not have discerned these tiny bodies in the twilight on the dirty floor. It was not less dirty here, but… So did it mean that the light, yet still flickering painfully, became slightly more bright and stable? Only in this corridor, or on the whole level? For some reason this discover did not make him happy at all. Perhaps, somewhere the big sections of light fixtures, or other equipment, zoned out—and at the expense of them more energy began to supplement what remained? Then all this illumination is only for a short while. But even such variant was not the worst. Maybe… maybe, this whole place was awaking—not as a patient recovering from a coma, but as a vampire rolling in his tomb.

He reached the end of a corridor and found himself in an external ring again. He stopped dead.

From the left the sounds of bumps arose.

He stood still, again with a sharp regret that he remained without a weapon (the flashlight did not suit this role in any way). But now he wanted to go back for the tablet even less. Thinking a little, he came to the conclusion that there was a barrier between him and the source of these sounds. Otherwise the blows would have been heard more clearly. Having put a hand on an internal wall of the ring corridor, he felt how it shuddered slightly in time with the blows. However, the vibration obviously came from elsewhere. It was hardly probable that someone would be beating his own head against the wall, though now he would not be surprised even by this. More likely someone or something was breaking to the outside through a closed door. But what would happen when it escaped?

Nevertheless the man went to the left, towards to sounds. Any direct danger would be better than uncertainty. If another victim was breaking to freedom, as was he, he would help. If, on the contrary, it was the murderer who had gotten himself into a trap… or any other creature, for example, the next mutant, but far from insect size already, then he would try to strengthen the door or whatever contained this thing. But how would he understand it? Talking through a door? And what if the murderer, however mad he was, could convincingly pretend to be a victim?

Meanwhile the blows grew closer and closer. He took some more steps and saw a door.  It did not differ from the one which he had gone out not so long ago, except for the mutilated and, probably, tightly jammed lock. Obviously, someone had tried successfully to jam it because he concluded that this door should not be opened. And that someone had probably tried for a good reason?

However, he had apparently overestimated the durability of the door which shuddered and caved in under blows from within. It was not simply hit with fists and feet but was apparently rushed all over. It even seemed to the amnesiac that it was already possible to distinguish on the surface of the door a rough convex resemblance to a human silhouette, and he didn’t feel himself assured at all that he wanted to meet whoever was so fiercely breaking out.

While he stood in indecision, however (there was absolutely nothing to prop up against the door other than his own shoulder), one more desperate blow moved the door outward from the door jamb several centimeters, and the following one threw it to the floor. And then something dreadful fell out into the corridor.

A suitable word had escaped from the dark depths of amnesia: mummy. And specification: from old horror films. The figure was, almost from head to foot, in some sort of dirty bandages. Here and there they had been torn and bloody. There were no other clothes, or footwear. From under bandages on the head in several places long ugly strands of black hair rose up.

The amnesiac involuntarily recoiled.

“Who are you?” he hoarsely exhaled, throwing up again the useless flashlight, as if it were a sword.

The figure, which had found balance, sharply turned toward him. It seemed to be as frightened as he was.

“And you?” she asked. The voice was female. And the body outlines, actually, also female.

“I would like to know it myself,” he muttered and then had a subsequent thought that, probably, he had better pretend to be more informed—or at least try to stay in control of the order of questions and answers.

“You don’t remember anything?” she understood, her voice disappointedly going down. “Me too. For how long are you here?”

“Thirty, forty minutes,” he shrugged his shoulders, “or maybe hours. I am not sure that I correctly perceive time here. And that’s from the moment when I came to my senses. But before…” he again shrugged his shoulders.

“Like me. I regained consciousness in a closed room, in bandages. For some time I waited for someone to come and explain. Then I began to shout and call out. Then I understood that nobody would come. I began to bang on the door. That’s all. And you? You were outside, weren’t you?”

“My door was open.”

“But what is there? I mean, around?”

“Nothing good.” He grew dark. “I don’t know where the exit is, if you speak about it.”

“It is after all not a hospital?”

“Yes, in hell there might be such hospitals.”

“But also not a prison? I mean…” She looked around. “It is too dirty here, even for a prison. And I have beaten out a cell door. Where are the jailers? Where is the alarm? It looks like there was no one alive for many years here.”

“We are.”

“Yes. Listen, we have to name each other somehow.”

“Just ‘Hey!’ won’t be enough?”

“Personally I don’t want to be called just ‘Hey!’ And then, maybe we will find someone else.”

Or it will find us, the man gloomy thought, but answered aloud : “Well, considering circumstances, you can call me Adam,” and adjusted his only clothing.

“Then I am Eve,” she easily agreed, “considering circumstances.” Apparently she only now recognized that she did not even such clothing. However, she also did not look naked under all those bandages. Whether she was confused, under bandages, also remained unclear.

He remembered about the piece of paper which he still held in his hand.

“Listen, does a surname ‘Poplavska’ tell you anything? Professor Poplavska. Think.”

“No.” She shook her head. “And who is it?”

“Then, maybe Lebrun? Hart? Or lastly, Kovaleva?” (“No, this place is absolutely not similar to a monastery,” he added to himself.)

“You, after all, know something? Who are all these people?”

Without a word he gave her the sheet. For some time she studied the list.

“You think we are some of these scientists?” She returned the paper.

“Or victims of their experiments. I do not know. I know nothing.”

“Where did you find it?”

“Eve, in your bath… by chance… was there a dead body?” he asked instead of answering her.

“Dead body? In a bath?” She wonderingly stared from under her bandages, then got it: “You mean there was one in yours?”

He silently nodded.

“And are there a lot of them here?”

“I’ve seen five yet. But I have not visited everywhere.”

“And all in baths?”

“No.”

“And how have they died?”

“A way we had better not,” Adam muttered. Before his eyes a vision of the crucified woman appeared again, and he shuddered. However, Eve, apparently, had encountered a lot of trouble, too. “Painful?” he asked compassionately, nodding toward her blood-stained bandages.

“A little. I was probably wounded when I rammed the door. Oh no, I just noticed!”

“And old wounds?”

“No, probably, all healed. I even tried to remove the bandages, but…”

“They don’t come off,” Adam nodded. “The same story.”

“I am so afraid about my face,” she admitted. “There’s no pain, but what if under the bandage I’m deformed.”

“We should not think about beauty now,” he grumbled, thinking to himself: “Women!”

“All right, let’s think about how to get out of here. What do you know so far?”

He briefly told her what he had had time to see, not going into details about the description of the corpses. However, Eve shivered. She probably had a vivid imagination.

“Hyperion,” she said. “Something terrible whiffs from this word.”

“I think, not from the word, but from something hidden behind it. Something we cannot remember.”

“We cannot or don’t want to.”

He had to recognize that she was right. Each time when he tried to remember, fear rose from the bottom of his soul like disturbed silt.

“All right,” he said aloud. “Let’s go upward. At this level there is certainly no exit.”

“But you haven’t explored it completely, right? There can be other survivors—as both of us have recovered ourselves here.”

“I do not want to stay here anymore.” Yet recently he was not so sure, but now, having found a partner, he decided to let well enough alone. “If we don’t find an exit, we can always return. And if we find—we’ll send rescuers or whatever.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” agreed Eve. “I get the jitters from this place. And I wouldn’t like to look at corpses at all.”

“I’m afraid,” Adam thought to himself, “you will see them not only on this level,” but he kept silent.

They reached the staircase and, having stepped over the bloody warning, began to ascend.

The route upward occurred to be much shorter, than downwards—only two levels. After entering the top one, they found themselves between the lift and some other sliding doors.  There weren’t any corridor here. Sometime these doors were closed, obviously, but someone had taken them apart, hammering them, as judged by crumpled edges, a certain rough wedge between halves, and then widing a gap by means of a lever. At the first Adam was delighted that he did not have to do the same work (especially taking into account that the stormer has carried away his tools), but then he understood that if their predecessor had gotten out to freedom this way, the rescuers or whoever from the external world must have come here already. Judging by a dust lying everywhere, the break in had to have occurred a very long time ago.

It was dark inside, but not completely. Some sparks were shining in a gloom. Could it be stars? Was it night outside? Adam switched on the flashlight and resolutely stepped forward. Eve followed him.

But it was not the night outdoors, not even a window to it. Shining points indeed suggested stars, but with stars seen through a window there usually are no inscriptions. Obviously, it was an image on a screen—more precisely, as revealed by the slipped beam of the flashlight, on a wall which simultaneously played the role of a screen. Below, the beam picked out of the darkness an instrument console stretching along a wall opposite to the entrance, and before it there were two high armchairs with headrests.

Having pointed the beam to the left armchair, Adam saw a hand which motionlessly overhung from the armrest. He expected to see something like this.

Adam and Eve approached more closely. In each armchair sat a person—a man in the left one, a woman in the right, both only in underwear. The head of the man had powerlessly fallen to his breast; the head of the woman, in contrast, was thrown back. The dim flashlight beam highlighted her white face, ripped from top to chin with deep furrows, like wounds from claws, and empty bloody holes instead of eyes. Eve involuntarily screamed and seized Adam’s shoulder. He raised the head of the dead man by the hair. The face of this corpse had been scratched too, but not so cruelly. But his mouth and chin were covered in the dried blood. Teeth dimly reflected the light, but not all of them. Some of them had been ripped out, one still sticking out of his gum at an angle.

“What’s this?” Eve fastidiously exclaimed, having stepped with a bare foot on something soft, cold and sticky. Adam lit on it and bent down.

“In my opinion, a human tongue,” he asserted, looking at the floor.

“What… cut off?”

“More accurately bitten off.”

“And his arms! Look, what happened with his arms?”

Adam pointed the beam at first one, then on the other arm of the dead man. Their appearance was horrifying. They looked as if they had been gnawed by an enraged animal, whole pieces of meat torn from the forearms, the lacerated veins and sinews clearly visible. Blood had covered the armrests and formed a big pool under the armchair.

“They… have gone mad and butchered each other?” assumed Eve with a wobbling voice.

“In my opinion, worse.” Adam shook his head, squatting before the armchairs and exploring with the flashlight the blood-stained fingers of one and then the other corpse. “Each of them has done it to himself. He has gnawed his own arms and bled to death. And she…she tore apart her face to the bone with her nails, squeezed her eyes out and, I guess, forced her fingers through the eye-sockets directly into the brain.

“Good Lord! What the hell happened here?” Eve’s voice was close to hysterical. “Maybe… there’s shit in the local air which makes people mad?” She made movement to run away, but Adam caught her hand.

“If so, it would have spred all over the building long ago, since the doors are opened.”

“And it did! As you told me, mangled corpses are everywhere here!”

“But we are all right. If something were in the air, it has disappeared long ago.”

“All right? This you call ‘all right?’” She poked with the spread hand into her bandages.

“At least, more all right than they are.” He nodded toward the corpses. “By the way, they have no bandages. And when it happened to them, they were obviously in some kind of clothing, which the blood did not pass through.”

“Indeed. After all they ruled everything here.”

“I do not know. But, anyway, those who have undressed them have shown a certain respect for the bodies, setting them back in armchairs, instead of simply throwing them on the floor.” He turned and shone the light on the console which was not revived by any spark. “No such regard was given the panel. Here the console was smashed with the same frenzy, as in other places. Only with the screen could they do nothing because the substance of a wall itself shows a picture, and it is, apparently, firm enough. Well, I do not know what has happened here, but at least it is clear what this place is.”

“And what is it?

“A spaceship. We are not on Earth.”

“Do you think so because this picture is similar to a star map?

“It is a star map. But not only because of that,” he put the light on armchairs again. “See these belts? Shoulder, waist… If it were a ground-based installation, it would not be necessary for operators at the panel to be fastened.”

“There is no weightlessness here.”

“Perhaps, we fly with acceleration. Or an artificial gravity works here. Or some other physical principle which we don’t remember.”

“And may we have already landed?”

“Maybe. But unlikely.” Adam again looked at the big screen. He remembered almost nothing of astronomy but did not doubt that signatures under the bright circlets were the names of stars. And still this map was unusual. The density of stars decreased from edges to the center, and in the center there was a large enough spot, with outlines similar to a butterfly. It had no sharp edges but, the closer to the center the more light there was. On the periphery of the spot there still were some stars, but the middle was absolutely empty. At first this spot seemed to Adam just a defect of the screen—quite explainable, considering the condition of everything on the ship—but then he decided that this"defect” has too regular structure. Then his attention was drawn away by some blinking in the left bottom corner. There rhythmically flashed on and off a red circlet with a caption “Gliese 581.” Still more to the left and lower a yellow circlet gleamed, labeled “Sun.”

“Does the name “Gliese 581” tell you anything?” Adam asked.

“No… I don’t know. It seems to me, I can remember…”

“I think this is our destination. More precisely, was. But we flew by it a long ago and now are here,” he pointed with a finger to the center of “butterfly.”

“Have people really already learned to fly between stars? I don’t remember anything about it”.

“Nor I. But, seemingly, they have. We weren’t abducted by aliens, it is obviously a human ship, judging at least by these signatures.”

“Also what do you think has happened here?”

“I don’t know. Some insanity. The devil only knows what could cause it, but it affected various crewmen differently. Some began to destroy equipment and to kill each other. Others killed themselves, and no less fanatically. The third sort were luckier. They only lost their memory.”

“And the bandages?”

“Obviously, we were hurt in struggles with the first ones but nevertheless remained alive.”

“I’m not talking about that. There should be still a fourth category. Who bound us up? Who helped us? If somebody from the crew remained alive and healthy, where are they? Why don’t they try to repair the ship? Why have left us? I was even locked in the room.”

“I don’t think that anyone is still alive,” Adam shook his head. “Anyway, anyone normal. Everything is too neglected here. Perhaps, someone has helped us, but later was killed. Or maybe, our memory loss was not instant, and we still had time to bind up each other. Now no more help is within reach.”

“And why was I locked in?”

“To protect you from those who were still wandering outside.” Adam shrugged his shoulders. “If it were done by me, then it is clear why I hadn’t locked myself in. Probably, it could be done reliably only by breaking the lock, and I was afraid that I would not get out.”

“All the same, what if one of the madmen is still alive?

“I don’t know. Seems to me, there is nobody here except us, but nothing can be guaranteed. The ship is big.”

“And what about clothes?”

“About clothes?” Adam didn’t understand.

“Suppose we were undressed for rendering medical aid — though it’s hard to understand why clothing was not left in our rooms, especially if it was done by ourselves. I suppose also that madmen tore off the clothes of their victims. But you said the ones who had undressed the pilots showed respect for their bodies.”

“Well… I don’t know. Perhaps, this madness did not overtake everyone simultaneously.”

“And I am not sure at all that your hypothesis about insanity is right. And that all these deaths and destructions are made by human hands.”

“By whose then? Are you trying to tell that we have an alien on board?” He grinned skeptically.

“Why not? We apparently have visited this Gliese. And have found there a lifeform—or it has found us.”

“And a certain monster wanders till now in compartments and corridors?”

“If nobody could wrest it down—and it seems that indeed… And if it hasn’t died by itself.”

“No, wait. Okay, it is possible to explain some of the deaths this way—especially if this monster is sentient. An animal can hardly crucify a person on a wire. But these pilots have obviously committed suicide, and not in the most pleasant way!”

“We don’t know,” Eve objected. “The broken teeth and nails can be a result of struggle. And wounds too. That the shape of the bite marks are similar to human, proves nothing. We after all don’t know what it looks like.”

“Or they.”

“Yes. Or they.”

Adam was silent for some time, looking at the mutilated body of the dead man. Then he moved the flashlight beam aside, unable to bear the view anymore. But it was even worse: Somewhere from the darkest depths of his consciousness, where even in the most sober-minded person the irrational is hidden, a feeling, almost a certainty, was rising that the dead man who had disappeared in a gloom, now, using his invisibility, would move, would start to rise silently in an armchair, would stretch the gnawed hands toward a victim for which he had long last waited.  After all, it was not without reason written (in blood) across the staircase leading to the control room: “DO NOT GO THERE.”

Adam tried to drive away the delusion and to force himself to think rationally.

“Perhaps you are right about landing on Gliese or somewhere else,” he said slowly. “All these creatures—spiders and cockroaches—still could mutate from those on Earth, though I cannot imagine where they could come from on a starship. It obviously had to be disinfected before it started. But the others—these hybrids of worms and insects—there is nothing similar on Earth.”

“Do you remember so well—what is on Earth?”

“No. But there is a difference between “forgot” and “never knew.” Anyway, I vaguely feel it. And I am absolutely sure that these creatures are not from our world. Possibly we took them aboard as samples of local fauna, and then something happened so that they could creep away all over the ship.  I don’t know whether there is anything big among them. But even small insects can serve as transmitting agents for the disease which somehow affects the brain.”

“And now? You think we became immune already?”

“I don’t know.” He heaved a deep sigh. “I know nothing—except one thing: We have no chance of getting out from here.”

“Perhaps it is still possible to turn the ship towards Earth,” said Eve without much real hope in her voice. “Or at least we could send the distress signal.”

“How?” Adam hopelessly moved the beam around the crushed panel. “Even if we find tools… Do you have even the smallest clue how everything was arranged here? We even don’t remember that people in general are able to fly to stars.”

“Well, we may find not only tools but also instructions,” Eve objected with considerable doubt. “And also, we managed to remember something, though…” She became silent.

“What ‘though’?”

“I’m afraid.”

“No wonder.”

“No, not about that. I’m afraid to remember. Sometimes it seems to me that I have already almost gotten at my past and then at once such horror strikes me, as if someone in my head were shouting: ‘No, don’t do it. Don’t remember. Don’t think about it!’ Haven’t you felt the same? I mean, since you have come to your senses?”

“Yes,” Adam confessed. “Nothing mystical here, we just came in for a lot of trouble, especially you. Natural defense reaction… Hmm, ‘Don’t think,’” he remembered. “It is written on a warehouse door at the bottom level. By the way, doesn’t it seem to you that if the crew struggled against monsters, they would have left more intelligent writings? Even assuming that they had really nothing to write with except blood, then especially it was necessary to write only the most useful and informative things. And here; ‘Don’t go there!’ Well, here we have come, and what?”

“We have learned that we are on a spaceship.”

“Also what is dreadful in it? Though… Yes, certainly. To learn that we are billions of miles from Earth, on a dead starship, uncontrollable flying further and further in infinite emptiness.  If this starmap is anything to go by, even stars aren’t present here. But if we had not learned it, how would our position have become better?”

“Perhaps we would die in ignorance,” Eve sighed.

“Like these two? And the others? I hardly think any of them died easily. And in general, forewarned is forearmed.”

“All right,” Eve interrupted. “All these conversations only lead to despair! (He shuddered, having heard this word again.) Let us search—for tools, instructions, others survivors—anything!

They left the control room, listening to the silence of the ill-fated ship even more tensely. But still no sounds reached them, except of the electric crackling of agonizing light fixtures.  However, now Adam had no doubt anymore that their light had lately become slightly brighter. He did not know how it could be explained and what it was fraught with, like everything that took place on this damned ship. He shared his observation with his companion, but she only shrugged her shoulders and assumed that the light seemed brighter to them after control room’s gloom.

They descended a level. Here it seemed there were also some control posts, but they had been crushed in the most ruthless way too, so their purpose could be only guessed at. Here and there among the spoiled fragments dead cockroach mutants lay while their living brothers crept about lethargically.

“What if neither madmen nor monsters made all this destruction?” Eve asked suddenly. “What if it had been done purposefully?”

“By whom?” Adam grinned wrily, fastidiously trying to find a place where to put his foot. “Suicide terrorists?”

“Crewmen who have understood that this ship shouldn’t return. Never should get to Earth… or any habitable planet. Therefore they have directed it into starless space, and then…”

“But what for?”

“So that what has happened here would not be repeated on Earth.” She shrugged shoulders.

“Because of these creatures? No, ridiculous. Even if they are infectious, there are quarantine measures. The ship could be held in an orbit while scientists tried to understand the situation.”

“And if these measures are insufficient? Probably, when they… that is, we…took these wretches aboard, it was done not to spread them all over the ship! You say that most of all this is at the second level from the bottom. Probably, our zoo was on that level—or the samples repository, or how it is called? And we were sure that no bacterium would slip out of there.”

“Well, suppose someone has committed an error, didn’t close a door in time, ignored disinfection. But it doesn’t mean that this muck is capable of getting through the walls of the ship and the space vacuum!”

“I do not know. Perhaps the point is not in chemistry or the physical passage through walls.”

“But in what?”

“Any remote influence from which our protections do not save us.”

“Worms-telepathists?” he skeptically hummed but at the next moment thought seriously about this idea. “Necrophages causing an uncontrollable penchant for violence in larger creatures and thus providing themselves with stocks of dead flesh…and apartments.” He remembered the crucified corpse of the woman transformed into the huge…ant hill—hive?—and that made him shutter. “Generally, such hypotheses explain much. For example, why do these corpses not decay here. If this fauna produces some preservative… But still, why destroy all the devices of the ship, leaving no hope for the last survivors? After all, if we survived and remained normal, the protective mechanisms do exist!”

“Perhaps they weren’t assured that we remained normal. We were unconscious, and they didn’t have time to wait till the end. But there is also an even worse possibility.”

“Worse than flying somewhere into intergalactic space on a ship purposely deprived of all chances for a return?”

“Yes. If we didn’t remain normal. If these creatures are already in us.”

Adam stood examining his own sensations. He was half expecting to feel parasites gnawing roads through his to bowels, but felt only sticky cold fear spreading in his stomach. And this fear had no plan to disappear, irrespective of the presence of material confirmations.

“You didn’t see the worm that had crept out of the guts of that guy,” he said hoarsely, trying to convince not as much her as himself. “And those that have legs… They are large enough—we would feel them, if…”

“And what if they simply wait for their time?” Eve objected. “Larvae can be small. And they may not be as stupid as they may seem. They know that we are the last ones onboard. And they will let us live until we meet new potential carriers and transmit the infection further.”

“All the same,” he obstinately curved his lips, “it can’t be that the humans, who had already learned to build the interstellar ships, weren’t able to contend with just some parasites!  And they don’t have any real mind. I mean the parasites. You see, they don’t even hurry up to escape from a foot, so that I have to look so as not to squash this muck! And how many of them have perished already?”

“Probably, it is difficult for them to adapt in this unusual environment. But some nevertheless manage to do it, all too well.” Eve suddenly squatted, picked up a plastic shard and used it to move a pair of dead “cockroaches,” and then overturned one of their living comrades. The latter torpidly stirred with no chance to return to a normal position. Eve, with a crunch, smashed it on a floor. “I cannot understand where such creatures could come from,” she said. “Have you noticed that they have different number of legs?”

“I told you that long ago!”

“I mean even those that seem to belong to one specie. And this one has even legs but of different lengths. What evolution could generate such things? And paired extremities are after all not a casual whim of Earth’s nature. It is really convenient, it is the expediency fixed by generations of natural selection for species absolutely dissimilar to one another. What must such a world look like where such clumsy beings with unpaired limbs of different length achieve evolutionary advantage?”

“As the world of nightmares,” Adam muttered and, after some thought, added, “of a schizophrenic. Listen, maybe we haven’t come to our senses at all? Couldn’t it all be hallucinations? I would give anything to wake up now in a cozy mental hospital.”

“Then you are also a hallucination,” noticed Eve, “from my point of view, of course. And I am from yours.”

“It is better to be a hallucination than worm-eaten from within. I… I am afraid of cockroaches,” he said almost plaintively. “And spiders, too. And I do not favor worms much either.” He helplessly looked at his body stuck here and there by bandages adhering tightly, as if expecting to see something moved and creep under his skin. And maybe the bandages cover exactly this, the holes gnawed by larvae. “Why the hell did you suggest a hypothesis which we can’t check up on? As if it weren’t already sickening without that.”

“Aha, and who just said forewarned is forearmed?” Eve reminded him, but without any acrid celebration in her voice. The anxiety and fear gnawed at her from within worse than any worms. “Let’s go further and do anything, or I will indeed go mad.”

They went into a corridor which was bending around the lift shaft, and moved to the door beyond.

“By the way, did you notice one other odd thing?” Adam asked. “In such a big ship the doors have no labels. Certainly the crew should know what is where, but nevertheless here it is easy to mistake a door, especially in ring corridors.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “it was unlikely designed this way.”

He drew his face near to a door, carefully exploring it with a flashlight.

“Just as I thought, the label was here,” he ascertained. “Its traces still can be distinguished. Someone has torn them from all the doors. What for?”

“And why was the equipment destroyed?

“You think to prevent our return? Well, the absence of labels is not much compared to the destruction of the control panels. All the same, sooner or later we will explore all premises. My version about mad fury is more likely true. Or…”

“Or what?”

“Or someone wanted us to take in the situation as late as possible. Not never—he should have understood that the absence of inscriptions on the doors wouldn’t stop us—but as late as possible. I don’t know. Folly. Nonsense.”

“Perhaps not such nonsense,” objected Eve. “The longer it takes us to understand, the farther we will fly in this direction and the less will be our chances to return. So, there are such chances all the same!”

“Do you believe in it?” Adam heaved a deep sigh and took the door handle. “Well, let’s look in here.”

There was nothing good.

Adam heard a painful squeezed throat sound behind him and understood what it was. He had been in such situations himself before. Eve’s stomach was wrung with an emetic spasm, but nothing left her mouth, except this sound. In this room light shone, and even bright enough. Here were neither devices, nor furniture, except the remains of a broken chair on a floor. The room was semicircular. Its concave wall, opposite to the entrance, as Adam has guessed, was a panoramic screen made with the same technology as the starmap in the control room. Possibly this premise was a hybrid of a library and cinema hall. For certain, when everything was working here, access to the information resources of the ship was possible from other places, too, but here the conditions for watching were the most comfortable. A slit in a wall at the left, from which ragged white tatters hung out, now associated mostly with an aperture for toilet paper, but obviously there was a time when it has been possible to receive listing of the necessary data here. No control panels were visible anywhere. Probably vocal or other touch-free interface had been used here.

But Adam and Eve paid no attention to all these technical details at first. Their eyes were struck by numerous blots of blood which blurred the screen and lateral walls—here and there together with other blood some whitish nubbles had dried on the walls—and a twisted corpse on a floor under the screen. It was male.  His clothes consisted merely of underpants and boots. His head had turned into brown mass where between wisps of blood-clotted hair sharp shards of skull bones stuck out, reaching no higher than the temples. The whole top part of the skull was smashed completely, the skin covering it is was ruptured, and the lacerated brain had partially flowed out to the floor through this terrible hole. On the floor near the head, which was turned to one side, semicircular slimy drops of both beaten out eyes lay, threads of nerves still stretching from them into the split eye-sockets.

The fingers of the dead man were covered by the brown crust of the dried blood, and apparently not only blood. Directly over him on the screen one more inscription obliquely stretched—more precisely, not just one more. Letters, curved and twisted, of different size, crawled against each other and in general looked as if they had been written by a very drunk person with Parkinson disease. In many places the same whitish nubbles and hair stuck to them all. But nevertheless the writing was possible to read.

“DARKMICROCOM=MAC,” Adam spelt out. “My God, looks like it was written with his brain.”

“In what sense?” Eve still felt faint, but already could speak.

“In the literal sense. He crushed his head against the wall, or was helped to do it, and then somebody, dipping a finger into the broken skull, as into an inkwell…”

“I think, nobody helped him,” Eve objected with a wobbling voice. “Everything was done by him, including the inscription. That’s why it’s so twisted.”

“Is a person in such condition still really capable of writing? Picking out a piece from his brains with each letter?”

“The human brain has a great safety factor.” This information had resurfaced from somewhere in Eve’s memory. “The whole hemisphere may be lost, but the personality still can remain, and even without considerable damage, though some abilities or concepts can be lost.”

“Here, obviously, there was damage. Perhaps when he started to write he meant something comprehensible, but by the end it turned into totally jibberish.”

“In my opinion, it not jibberish.” Eve shook her head, listening to her uncertain memories. “Dark… microcom… It seems to me, it means “microcosm.” Microcosm is equal to macrocosm. That’s what he tried to write. A long time ago I’ve heard this phrase, but I cannot remember what it means.”

“Something medieval,” Adam remembered. “If I remember correctly it’s an alchemist’s idea that human nature is identical to the nature of the universe. Only they understood it not to the effect that the laws of physics are uniform for everything, but more literally and primitively, and they wound lot of mysticism round it. Oh, what a shit! I cannot recall anything about the starship construction. Even my name I don’t remember—but this useless bosh…”

“He apparently didn’t consider it useless,” Eve said inaudibly.

“Well, it for sure hasn’t helped him,” Adam sniffed. “By the way, concerning the usefulness…” He walked to the corpse. Eve remained on a threshold.

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“First take his boots. We’ll divide them fraternally—left to you, right to me?”

Eve wanted to answer that it was a stupid joke but understood that her companion in misfortune was absolutely serious.

“It will likely be inconvenient to walk in one boot,” she said. “Besides they are obviously too large for me. Take both if you want.”

“Okay,” Adam removed the boots from the corpse and put them on, noticing that the dead man had no socks. He also worried about the size, but the boots fit perfectly.

“It is still not clear,” he noticed, “where all clothes disappeared to. So far all we know that only the pilots in the control room have died dressed, otherwise their bodies would be all in blood. Also that then somebody has taken away their suits, without being squeamish about the blood on them. While all the others, including ourselves…”

“By the way, we haven’t found those other two yet,” Eve reminded him.

“True, but the ship is big. And, for that matter, it’s not a fact that there were two of them. They took two suits, but this yet tells us nothing about their number.”

“Perhaps they are still alive?”

“Hardly. If they, like us, had survived the accident, they could have left instructions for others who survived—intelligent instructions, not such rubbish.” He nodded toward the wall. “For example, ‘the rallying point is…’”

“And do we leave instructions for someone?”

“Hm…” Adam was confused. “That’s true. It hasn’t crossed my mind.”

“So, may we begin?”

“I don’t think so,” he shook his head. “If someone wanders through here, except us, we don’t know who it is and in what condition—and what the encounter might produce.”

“So they reasoned the same.”

“Well, maybe. By the way…” Adam bent down and pulled a fragment of a skull which was sticking out from the smashed head of the dead man.

“What are you doing?”

“We need a weapon. At least such as it is.” He discovered that it was not possible to break out a bone, so he straightened again and fiercely stamped a foot with the boot on the head of the corpse lying on the floor. It cracked loudly and made a squashing, chomping sound. Eve turned away in disgust. Adam bent down again. This time he managed to break out a large enough piece of an occipital bone with a sharp jag, and having put the flashlight on a floor, began to clear his trophy of brain, flesh and hair. Suddenly he thought about how it looked from the outside—the interstellar ship, the highest achievement of human mind and a science, in contrast to the half-naked savage making a bone weapon from the skull of a fellow tribesman. And after all, both of them obviously have a university education—maybe, even doctor degrees.

“How many does he make?” Eve asked, still without looking in his direction.

“Mmm… The eighth. Not including us.”

“And how many are on your list?

With his foot he knocked off the piece of paper from the flashlight handle, stepped on the edge, straightening it, and peered, counting the lines.

“Eleven. So what? Clearly that’s not a list of crewmen. However big the ship is, it for sure doesn’t contain monasteries and highways.”

“But this list somehow is related to us and to what is going here! Perhaps it is the crew of the previous expedition. Or our backups. Or we could be their backups. We were sent afterwards, after what had happened to the main crew, according to the list.”

“So you want to say all this began on Earth?”

“I don’t know. I cannot remember. But I feel that this ship was doomed from the very beginning. No, not even feel—I know… knew earlier… I cannot… When I think of it, I am overrun by such despair! But I cannot also stop thinking!” Eve clenched her head with her hands, painfully sticking nails into her temples between the bandages. “So, have you finished here?”

“I am going to check—about parasites. Now I have a tool to do an autopsy. Certainly I am not going to cut myself though it alone would give full confidence.”

“Erm… Adam! What are you up to?” Eve had turned towards him, looking at him in round-eyed fear. “Are you crazy? This is the way, probably, all this begins!” She took a step back, ready to run away.

“What’s the matter?” He was surprised. “You… decided that I was going to dissect you? Faugh, how absurd! Though…”

“Though what?”

“Well no, it’s purely theoretically—really, to check whether we are infected inside, it would require one of us to take… but no, I’ve said, theoretically! I’m not a murderer! I’m going to dissect him!” He nodded at the dead man. “If in his guts I find the same creature as in that man in the corridor, things look bad… and if no, that means, it has crept inside by chance.”

“Even if you find nothing, it may mean the larvae are invisible to the naked eye.”

“Thanks, you calmed me. But even if it is clean inside, it still says nothing about us. But all the same…” Adam squatted and scooted the corpse back over. “I never considered that I would ever disembowel my colleague with his own bone,” he said to himself. However, strictly speaking, he didn’t know what thoughts he had had in his past. But, indeed, they were unlikely to have been anything like these.

He thrusted the bone jag into the unnaturally pale belly covered with curly hair. The flesh at first caved in deeply without piercing it, and from the mouth of the corpse, a heavy sigh escaped. Adam shuddered and was dumbstruck, but the next moment he realized that he had just squeezed air out of the body. He pressed more strongly and the skin split its sides, making a terrible crimson mouth. No blood came out, it had clotted long ago.

Adam felt again an attack of nausea, but now he easily overcame it. After everything seen earlier… The ripped up flesh hardly gave in, as if it were rubber—or maybe his “surgical instrument” just lacked sharpness. He had to exert considerable effort. Yes, it was not at all the same as cutting meat with a knife on a plate (from this thought Adam felt a lump rising in his throat again, and decided that, if somehow he got out from here, he would become a vegetarian). At last he drew the cut to the groin and, grabbing the edges, stretched the flesh apart sideways. Of all things, there was a lot of fat inside, while the dead man didn’t look at all fat. So, this wet bag is, obviously, the stomach, he concluded, and here are the guts, similar to a clot of huge slippery worms. The real worms—terrestrial or, the most important, local—however, were not visible anywhere. But to be fully convinced of their absence, it was necessary to cut and glance into each section of the intestines.

“So was it there?” Eve lost patience. At times she threw fastidious looks in his direction, but did not dare to come nearer.

“Looks like nothing yet—no larvae, eggs or whatever. Now I will open his intestines. What the hell is that?”

From a cut made under the stomach something whitish emerged. Adam’s hand trembled, but he realized that it didn’t look like anything alive. He ripped the slimy tube further and with two fingers pulled from it a crumpled and stuck together lump of a paper.

“It seems we have mail,” Adam muttered.

“Do you really think so?” Eve all the same overcame herself and stepped inside the room.

“No, of course not. He hardly expected that he would be dissected, but for some reason he has swallowed this piece.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to tear it?”

“You’re asking me? Perhaps he did it in a fit of rage and in the same fit smashed his head against the wall. Or maybe he didn’t want someone to reconstruct the sheet from scraps.”

“Again something was hidden from us? Can you unfold it without tearing it?”

“I will try. By the way, apparently, this paper is firmer than the usual one. Perhaps it’s even not a paper at all, it just looks similar. Shit, we don’t even remember what they write on now.”

He managed to unwrap the wet sheet on a floor. Eve, trying not to look at the ripped body, sat down on her knees nearby and pointed the flashlight on to the sheet to see it better.

Letters were quite distinguishable—this time printed, not hand-written. The text had neither a beginning, nor an end.

“…neral theory of a dark matter-energy of Bernstein-Wong (Nob.pr. for physics 2063), which showed that the dark matter actually was not some type of hypothesized exotic matter but is in fact a certain phase of the standard one, with the phase transition being completely reversible [3]. The common view that objects in this special phase are capable of motion with speeds greatly exceeding the speed of light is not quite correct. Actually objects in the “dark” condition obey the equations of the Generalized quantum theory [5], from which, in particular, it follows that such an object does not have fixed coordinates in the continuum (or even a fixed projection to the continuum); rather its location is a superposition of all the possible coordinates, the probability of a particular value of the coordinates actualizing, being described by a certain three-dimensional distribution function Φ, which depends on the curvature of the continuum at each point and on the configuration of the dark energy field. Travel of the “dark” ship, accordingly, is in fact a reconfiguration of the field of dark energy performed in a way so that at the moment of the collapse of the ship’s wave function (which occurs at field’s switching-off), the function Φ possess an above-threshhold value in the vicinity of the destination point. It has been shown by Kozelsky (2065) that for any nonzero Σ it is possible within a finite time (using a finite amount of energy) to carry out the field reconfiguration so that the ship would return to the standard phase within any prescribed set of coordinates with an error of no more than |Σ| [6].

The postulates of the theory have been experimentally confirmed by Kalkrin’s group (2070, 2071), these experiments becoming the starting point for the “Hyperion” program. In 2077 the unmanned probe “Hyperion-1”, equipped with the Kalkrin generator, explored the system of the star Gliese 581 and successfully returned to Earth.

It should be emphasized that the General theory of dark matter-energy, despite its experimental (and even industrial) verification, still does not supply answers to several pertinent questions. In particular, the essence of dark energy remains disputable. The problem of the cosmological constant, according to which the observed density of dark energy as is evidenced by its gravitational interactions is 120 orders of magnitude below the estimated value, remains unresolved. Bernstein explains it with the assumption that most of the dark energy does not manifest itself gravitationally. For an explanation of this cosmological constant problem, a number of hypotheses were offered [3] [7] [8], none of which are universally accepted. In particular, works of Miller (2065) and Birnbaum (2069) [9] [10] are devoted to the criticism of these hypotheses. Chang (2067, 2069) has offered the alternative explanation, according to…”

“Dark is faster than light,” Adam muttered, having read up. “So it is not such nonsense.”

“Apparently we are on a ship with the Kalkrin engine.” Eve drew a practical conclusion. “But it said here, after all, that the flight to Gliese 581 was successful?”

“Unmanned,” Adam reminded her. “After that they sent the manned spacecraft… and then something went wrong. As far as I understand it, we didn’t return in time from dark phase to usual space. Which is, in fact, no wonder, if all this madness and destruction began. Probably they even broke the computer which would have returned us automatically.  But the field generator continues to work, carrying us away all the further. That is, changing probability of our location in such a manner that…”

“And to return to the normal world, it is simply enough to switch it off?” Eve interrupted.

“Yes, but we will appear in the middle of nowhere. Remember the ‘butterfly’ on the screen in the control room? It is a graphic representation of function Φ. We will come up somewhere within it, most likely, near center. I do not know, how much the picture there corresponds to linear scales but if it corresponds, we will appear, at least, hundreds of light years from Earth. And, probably, in tens—from the nearest star. And if the scale is logarithmic, it is even terrible to imagine, where…”

“In other words, there is no hope to call for help.”

“No. And it is also impossible to send a radiogram from the dark phase.”

“Linear…” Eve muttered suddenly.

“What?”

“A picture in the control room. If it indeed is linear—at least approximately—and if we were to draw a line through the Sun, Gliese 581 and the screen center, it turns out that the Sun is father from us than Gliese. And if all that happened had occurred on the way back, and we had slipped Earth, it would have been on the contrary.”

“That is you want to say that we didn’t land in Gliese 581 system?

“Indeed. It is difficult to believe that we landed there, and then continued to fly in the former direction. And the image on the screen—after all, this star there has been emphasized.”

“Where then have these wretches come from?”

“I don’t know.”

Adam kept silent, then again took the skull shard. “Anyhow, they are here. And I should finish the check.”

Further picking in the intestines of the dead man, however, did not resulted in any discoveries. Adam found some more pieces of paper, but they were too small and raveled out under his fingers. Apparently this man had torn a part of the list to pieces before swallowing it. Probably a professional criminologist with the appropriate equipment would manage to restore the full text, but it was beyond Adam capabilities. He already felt sick from what he had done, and, above all, from growing perception of hopelessness regarding all their efforts.

Any traces of parasites in the corpse, however, were not found.

“I still think that in the system of Gliese 581 there is life,” Adam said, rising. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have been sent…”

“Life in the system of Gliese 581 was found out by the probe ‘Hyperion-1,’” suddenly said a calm male voice.

Both Adam and Eve shuddered. Eve darted a wild glance at the dead man.  It seemed to her that it was he who had spoken. But the grinning jaws of the corpse remained motionless, while the voice continued.

“From the seven planets of the system, potentially habitable are the third, the fourth and the fifth. The orbital scanning by the probe ‘Hyperion-1’ has shown that the average temperature on the surface of the third planet is about 360 degrees Kelvin because of the greenhouse effect, and the quantity of free oxygen in the atmosphere is not enough to support aerobic forms of life. At the same time, the atmospheric composition and radiation level do not exclude the presence of anaerobic forms on the third planet…”

“Who are you?” Eve shouted, raising her head up to a ceiling.

“Easy,” Adam answered in a low voice. “The vocal interface of information system somehow activated.”

“…remains unclear,” continued the voice. “The atmospheric composition and practical absence of a magnetic field on the fourth planet make it, most likely, unsuitable for life. No signs of lift were actually revealed. Conditions on the fifth planet are more favorable. The average temperature of the surface is 280 degrees Kelvin (considerably varying during a year because of the high ellipticity of the orbit. However, a year lasts only 67 days, which, together with the considerable mass of the planet and its atmosphere, mitigates temperature fluctuations). A sizable part of the planet is covered by ocean, free from ice in tropic latitudes. The presence in the atmosphere of twenty-six percent oxygen testifies to its biogene origin. Direct proofs of presence of life on the planet were received by landing modules A and B, which found bacterial flora in the water and soil, respectively. Orbital observation allows the assumption of the presence of extensive vegetative tracts on a land of tropical belt and large forms of life in the ocean, though, according to opinion of doctor Nakamura, a possibility of other interpretation of the received data still remains. Further research of both planets with disembarkation on surface is necessary. However, the gravity on the third planet is 2.7 g, and on the fifth is 3.4 g, which hinders human work on the surface. Consequently, though the starship ‘Hyperion-3’ is designed for eleven crewmen, nobody…”

Something clicked and the voice broke off.

“Hyperion-3,” Adam loudly and distinctly said. “Information on the ship ‘Hyperion-3.’ Expedition course. Crewmen. Diagnostics. Emergency situations onboard.”

But his appeals remained without an answer. The damaged system died as unexpectedly as it had begun.

“Damned metal crap.” Adam wearily exhaled.

“Yes,” Eve responded dead-pan. “Damned. We were damned from the very beginning. Kalkrin, Wong, Nakamura… everybody concerned with this project…”

“Not everybody,” Adam objected. “In the listing other scientists were also mentioned. Bernstein, Kozelsky… who else… Miller…

“Probably they are theorists,” Eve answered. “They didn’t participate directly in the ‘Hyperion’ program.”

“And what? What’s wrong with this? I don’t believe in any mystical nonsense. Though… well, let us assume, nevertheless, that those landing modules have brought some sort of infection to Earth. Well no, that’s nonsense. We wouldn’t have been sent anywhere in that case.”

“Explain more clearly why our ship is called ‘Hyperion-3,’ when there’s no mention of the second—only about the first probe.”

“Well, probably the second was sent to survey another star. Therefore it doesn’t relate to the topic.”

“I do not think that interstellar expeditions are such a cheap pleasure, nor is life in space such a frequent phenomenon that mankind would stray from this course. If the first probe has found an inhabitable planet, plus also one more where at least anaerobic life can exist, for certain the subsequent programs would be focused in this direction. And ‘Hyperion-2’ was sent there. Only it hasn’t returned.”

“And, without having understood the reasons of it, they sent us? As you say, it’s a too expensive pleasure.”

“Perhaps we were a rescue party. Or it seemed to them that they have found the reason, but it was only a consequence.”

“All right.” Adam heaved a deep sigh. “Do you have any ideas? Well, other than that all is hopeless?”

“Well, we still didn’t complete the exploration of the level where we regained consciousness.”

“Okay, let’s go.” He somehow mopped up his hands on his “skirt” and armed himself again with the bone weapon. He gave the flashlight to Eve, wishing to keep one hand free.

They went downstairs again and walked along a corridor which before had led Adam to Eve’s jail. Only now he turned not to the left but to the right.

And almost at once he found himself before a door with a red cross on it.

“The infirmary,” he ascertained. “Well, at last. It absolutely slipped my mind that it should be somewhere on the ship. I hope there are antidepressants there. I for sure wouldn’t refuse of them.” With these words he opened the door.

“Oh m-my…” Eve exhaled, convulsively turning away.

Here light was shining, too, lighting up medically white walls, empty cabinets with open transparent doors and racks with the broken equipment. On a couch along a wall there lay a naked female corpse, decapitated and disemboweled. And in the middle of the room, tied to armchairs, two more bodies sat opposite one another. They were dressed in once blue, but now brown, stiff from blood, overalls (but they had no footwear, only socks). At the left was a man, and at the right a woman. Her gender, however, could be guessed at only based on her figure, for her face was hidden by blood-stained bandages.  More precisely, the remaining part of her face.

“Well, so we have found those who have undressed the pilots,” Adam murmured.

“You… do you see, with what they are tied?” Eve squeezed out from herself, trying not to look.

“Yes,” Adam calmly answered. “Entrails! But not their own—hers,” he nodded towards the couch.

Indeed, no wounds could be seen on the corpse of the sitting ones, at least while they were in clothes. But their heads were sawn practically in half—a rough, inept horizontal cut passing over the eyebrows. The dirty surgical saw by which it had been done lay on the floor between the armchairs. Also, both of the tops of their skulls, still covered with skin and hair, lay nearby. Whoever the unknown fan of trepanations was, he obviously had not taken pains to shave the heads of his “patients.” Judging by the blood which covered their faces, they were still alive when it was done to them.

But that was not the most horrifying thing of all. Most likely the one who cut off someone’s skull did not hurt the brain, only bare them—anyway, initially. But here lumps of brain, similar to big dead slugs, were scattered all over the infirmary. And this was not done all at once. The tools used for this purpose were very visible—ordinary tablespoons. One of them stuck out of a skull of the man, as if left in a appalling kettle. The second one lay under his powerlessly hung arm.

“The one who has done this…” Eve began, having first thrown a fast sidelong glance and then having turned away again.

“There was no mysterious murderer,” Adam interrupted. “They have done this by themselves.”

“What… what are you saying? You mean, tied themselves, then…”

“Not each one—himself. Each other. Look, their heads are firmly tied to headrests, but their right hands are free.”

“There is only one saw,” Eve observed, having taken one more look.

“Yes, obviously, they had to saw each other’s head in turns. But there were enough spoons to scoop out each other’s brains simultaneously. Well, otherwise it wouldn’t be possible.”

“Do you think,” Eve squirmed, “they ate this?

“Give me the flashlight.”

Adam approached the dead bodies and illuminated the drooping open mouths.

“No,” he concluded, “doesn’t look like it. They simply tried to destroy each other’s brain.”

“What for?”

“And for what reason did that guy above beat his head against a wall until his eyes flew out?”

Eve did not answer. She stood, heavily leaning on a door jamb, and again fought against nausea—a nausea from which there was no relief even in vomiting.

“I think, he didn’t beat himself against the wall simply because of rage… or pain,” Adam, who also felt rather nauseous, continued to reason. His eyes automatically fixated on the terrible mess in the open skulls. It was quite apparent, in answer to his own question, that a significant portion of the brain could be missing before one lost the ability to move a hand. But words helped at least somehow to prescind his thinking from the feeling of hopeless horror entangling Adam like layers of a heavy wet rubber sheet which were closing up his nose and mouth, stopping his breathing. “He wanted to destroy his own brain. And tore at it with his fingers after breaking the skull. But to do such with your own head is… not too efficient. With another one it is much easier. That’s why these two tried a more thorough approach.”

He looked around in search of bloody inscriptions which, probably, could explain at least something. But they did not present themselves. Here there was nothing.

On a sleeve of the dead woman, sitting to the left side of the door, it was still possible to perceive an emblem—a dark blue circle surrounded by a red ring. Along the top part of the ring the inscription “HYPERION” was curved. On the bottom there was a figure “III.” In the dark blue circle a hand stretched toward a beam-spreading star. The designer of such an emblem probably considered that the image had come out proud and encouraging. However, it seemed to Adam that this was the hand of one drowning, vainly grasping at air in a last desperate gesture.

On the left breast pocket of her overalls there was one more emblem, but it couldn’t be understood under a crust of blood. Adam had distinguished only the large letters ISA and remembered that it meant “International Space Agency.” Lower there was a rectangular stripe with a personal name. Lida… no, apparently, Linda… A surname was not distinguishable at all. He was going to try to clean off the stripe but heard splashing sounds from bare feet behind him.

“Where are you going?” He turned back. There was already no one in the doorway. “Eve! Stop!”

“I… I cannot” came from a corridor. “I cannot be stopped. It seems to me that I’m at the edge of remembering. I am so frightened! Anything, only not this horror! Not to think! Nottothinknottothinknottothink!” Judging by the sounds, she ran like mad along a corridor towards the lift.

“Eve! Come back!” Adam shouted. “You shouldn’t wander here alone! You have absolutely no weapon!”

But she probably didn’t hear him—or could not conceive words.

“No,” Adam thought gloomy, “I won’t abandon everything to run after her just because she has womanish hysterics. Right now I should exlore everything here.”

He put the skull shard on the lap of the dead woman and unbuttoned her left pocket. What’s here? A comb. Oh yes, to preen feathers is the most important thing for him now—especially taking into account that there is no mirror nearby. He put the useless thing back. And what is in the right pocket? It appeared to be empty. No, there is something. A pen. Nowadays it is seldom necessary to write by hand (he remembered this), but, obviously, such a thing is still included as part of the outfit of astronauts. Could a pen be useful to him? Who knows, but he had neither a third hand nor pockets. He considered dressing in the overalls of the dead man, but he felt no desire to put on those bloody rags—all the more so because all who did this before have died.

Adam realized that all this blood did not belong to one person, or even to two. These two in the infirmary were not the ones who had undressed the pilots. They had obviously removed overalls from other dead persons, and those, possibly, from others. And here now the relay reached the last survivors. Is it possible that the clothes somehow influenced what was going here? No, that’s madness. But what was not madness here? He had better not repeat any of the actions of these predecessors, madness or otherwise.

Adam turned to the male corpse. He pulled out the spoon from yellowish-crimson jumble in its skull. He could not look at it. He had the feeling that the spoon was biting into his own head, so he flung it into a far corner. Then he moved on to the pockets. The right one was plump.

There was something like a scroll inside, which was not just barely twisted but also folded so that it could be pushed into the pocket—a scroll with some drawing… or schematics.

Unfolding it Adam understood that it was not paper. And not fabric as it had seemed to him for just a moment. As the scroll was rolled open completely, Adam understood instantly just exactly what he was holding in his hands.

It was human skin which had been cut off from a stomach. The hole of the navel and the top shred of dark pubic hair were clearly visible. But the rest of the area of the skin was glabrous. The stomach was female.

And on this skin, while it still belonged to its mistress—a living mistress, who bled when it was being done to her—someone had cut out a certain rough drawing. The clotted blood had distinctly depicted its contours and some short inscriptions. At the first moment they seemed to Adam a cabalistic abracadabra, but then he realized that he simply held the drawing head over heels.

Now he understood that what he looked upon was a simplified schematic drawing of the ship. Not all compartments were labeled, and inscriptions resembled a wedge writing, but nevertheless they could be spelled out: “CONT R”, “LIV COMP”, “GEN”, “BIOS.” BIOS is, apparently, an abbreviation connected with computer technology. But why had it been labeled at the infected level with the crucified woman? Also what is “gen,” which is situated, judging by the schematics, exactly in the middle of the ship? Something concerning genetics? (He felt again an attack of irrational fear at this thought.) Well, no. “Gen” is, probably, a generator. The Kalkrin generator, the engine of “Hyperion.” On spacecrafts of the past the engines were situated at the aft end, but a dark starship had other means of movement. She travels by means of the field of dark energy shrouding the ship.

Adam casted almost a mechanical look at the headless body on the couch, then, stumbling on an idea, approached closer. He tried to bring together the edges of her peeled flesh and disemboweled stomach, and then put the “drawing” in from above. Yes, skin was definitely cut off from here. If this woman was lucky, by that time she was already dead.

Why, by the way, is the drawing turned upside down? Was she hung legs up?

Adam decided not to take this dismal picture with him (That guy kept it in his pocket… yeah, and now he is dead, his brains scooped out by a table-spoon.) Eventually, the schematic was simple enough to remember—provided he does not lose memory again.

He quickly examined the infirmary in search for scalpels or something similar, something capable of serving as a better weapon than a sharp piece of occipital bone. But alas it seemed that the majority of medical tools had also been destroyed by the vandals who were smashing the ship—or at least they were carried away somewhere. The saw with which the skulls had been cut open obviously did not suit for a fast effective blow. With a sigh he again took his bone tool, though he did not know whether he still believed there were murderers wandering the ship.

If only Eve were not succumbing to madness. Yet, it seems she is not so far from it.

He went out to the ring corridor, then beyond to the lift, and loudly called her several times. The silence of the dead ship was the only answer he received.

It was, however, not completely dead. The engine obviously was still working. And illumination—it was undoubtedly becoming brighter.

He reached the lift, almost running. Eve was not there. So where should he search for her now? All over the ship? “Eve!” he hopelessly shouted—with the same result.

He bypassed the lift shaft and glanced in the opposite corridor, which now shone from end to end. The dead man with ripped up stomach lay in his former place, and, as Adam could judge from such distance, in the same pose. The annulated creature, of course, had crept away long ago. He was curious about where it might have crept to now because it would be undesirable to step on such a thing unexpectedly.

“If I were a woman, flooded with despair and fear, would I run towards a corpse?” Adam asked himself and answered: “No. Then, all the same to the staircase.”

From an exit to staircase he called his companion again and had a depressing thought that if there were still someone else onboard, the two of them were doing everything to facilitate the enemy’s goal. Well, upward or downwards? She had unlikely decided to hide in the control room—though who knows what she can do in such a condition. After waiting a few more seconds, he moved downwards, without having the slightest idea what to do beyond that. Eve could have gone to any of compartments, in any of the premises.

He decided at first to pass all the staircases down to the end, continuing to call her. Then if that didn’t help, he would have to examine each level systematically.  At the same time he would also learn what was going in places where he had not yet explored. However, he had no doubt any more that anything good was going on there.

He found Eve almost at the very bottom, near the entrance to the terrible level where the woman-hive hung on wires. Eve lay on steps, twisted in an unnatural pose, with her head down, as a person would never lie down of his own volition. The picture became clear to Adam at first glance: She had run, being beside herself, had stumbled on the steps, and had broken her neck.

Or maybe someone had helped her. Though if so, she had gotten off lightly, considering the condition of the other victims.

Anyhow, Adam was again alone. Face to face with this awful ship, and this thought filled him with such desperate anxiety that he might as well plunge his head downwards on the stairs.

Tramping heavily, he descended to the body, sat down nearby and put a blood-stained hand on Eve’s shoulder, hidden under dirty bandages—and immediately realized that he had jumped to a hasty conclusion. The woman was trembling, but alive. Or was it a shiver of agony?

But no, she, leaning her hands on a step, slowly raised her head and looked at her companion in misfortune with a look of a small animal tortured by children. Blood drooled from her mouth to the bound up chin.

“You are wounded?”

“No,” she said in the voice of indifference.

“And what is this?”

“This?” She mechanically licked a lip. “Looks like I bit my lip.” She grew silent again.

“I have found a map of the ship,” said Adam primarily just to say something. What this map was, he of course did not specify.

“So what?” Eve responded in the same impotent tone.

“Well… now we know where the generator is. It is necessary to go five levels up…”

“So what?” Eve repeated.

“Perhaps there is a duplicating control system there. As we can do nothing from the main control room… There should be an emergency switching-off on-site, for example, specially for carrying out a repair.”

“It won’t help,” Eve shook her head.

“Well, of course, we will fall out in the middle of interstellar space. But, at least, we will stop spending fuel or whatever our generator works on. Also, we will stop heading away from Earth. And then, maybe, we will manage to understand and repair something."  The last phrase has sounded quite frankly false, and he understood it as such.

“Nothing will help us,” Eve wearily said. “Has it not dawned on you yet? My God, what a jackass you are.”

“All right then,” he resolutely stood up. “All your moaning irritates me to no end. I’ll go to deal with the generator. And you, if you want, can lie here on the staircase and wait, until the wormbugs crawl from there and make a nest in you.” With that he went up the staircase, without looking back. After a while from a splashing sound behind him he noticed that Eve was following him.

The scheme didn’t fail. The engine compartment turn out to be where expected. But the passage way to the generator was blocked by a tightly closed heavy door painted in diagonal black and yellow stripes. Instead of the usual handle this door had a matte image of a palm, gleaming red. On its smooth surface there were marks from an object hitting it with something sharp, but apparently the material appeared to be perfectly firm.

“A touch panel,” Adam guessed and bit his lip with disappointment. Obviously, access is granted not to just any crewman, but only to an engineer or someone like that. And how do they search for an engineer among all these corpses? And the most important, it would not work. Modern biometric scanners are smart enough not to work from a dead hand.

The only hope was that at least one of them had the admission. Adam still did not remember what his duties were onboard, but the probability wasn’t too great.

He put a hand on the panel, mentally preparing himself that it then would be necessary to ask Eve to do the same, and when it also would not work…

The melodious signal sounded, and he saw even through his hand how the panel was lit green. As soon as he moved his hand away, the door moved aside.

They entered an airlock beyond which was one more door, with the inscription “External Contour Authorized Personnel Only” and some annunciator which, however, didn’t light. And on the right, on a wall between two doors, there indeed was a reserve control panelboard.

Adam’s sight at once struck on the caption “Generator Emergency Turn-off” on the panel with a red button. But this button turned off nothing—it only removed the blocking from a protective casing. Without hesitation Adam pressed it. The casing folded back. Under it there was a big red handle—fully turned downwards.

Something was wrong. Adam could lose his memory, but something deeper than any intelligent memory—the reflex developed by uncountable repetition—told him that on any flying machine, from a glider to a starship, any switch “up” means “on,” “down” means “off.” Never vice versa.

Still without accepting it, he all the same flipped the switch to the top position—nothing changing—then returned it to the bottom one. Well, that’s right: near to the bottom position there were the letters “OFF.” And only then did Adam pay attention to the indicators on the board.

Main contour power : 0

Reserve contour power : 0

Remaining fuel: 0

System shut down

“Impossible,” he muttered.

“So!” Eve exclaimed with hysterical notes in her voice. “Now you have understood, at last?”

“Understood what?” he bellowed in response. “What should I understand?”

“That we are dead.”

“Our situation stinks,” Adam agreed, “but nevertheless…”

“What ‘nevertheless’? We are dead already. Got it? We have died, and this is our hell!”

“You are talking through madness.”

“My God, haven’t I said you are a jackass? How did you not listen? This is an eleven-person ship!

“Do you mean that list?

“The hell with the list! How many corpses have we found?”

“Eight plus in those in the infirmary… Eleven,” Adam understood, shocked.

“That’s it.”

“No,” he wildly shook his head. “That cannot be.”

“What can’t be is the possibility of stowaways on an interstellar ship. Even on a city bus you cannot enter without a card.”

“I don’t know. There should be a rational explanation,” Adam muttered, while before his eyes there was a bloody inscription which he saw only during an instant before it was absorbed by darkness: “NO DEATH.”

“For the time that you remember yourself, did you want to eat?” Eve put the squeeze on him.

“You scoff? In such conditions?”

“And to drink? And to the loo?”

“It just didn’t pass enough time.”

“Shit, we even cannot vomit when feeling sick! Also, we do not sweat when we run! Are you saying that’s not true for you?”

“Well…”

“And this?” She jabbed her hand into the panelboard. “How can the ship fly if the fuel has run out long ago? It had to run out. Gliese 581 is just twenty light years from the Sun.” She apparently remembered this fact. “And we? You saw how far we have gotten. The first starship simply could not be designed for such a distance.”

“Perhaps the image in control room is in error? Computer failure, especially considering how everything was crushed here? And actually we have fallen out long ago into normal space and are drifting there with subluminal speed. After all we don’t know what is actually going on outside.”

“And light? Where is the electricity coming from—if the power registers at zero?  I assume it doesn’t only concern the engine work.”

“The accumulators have simply not exhausted yet.”

“You said the light became brighter. Who charges them?”

“Solar batteries. Perhaps we are actually near some star.”

“By the way, if we drift freely, where is the weightlessness? Just don’t say to me that this thing rotates. Gravity in different places would be different for each, and we visited already plenty of…

“I am sure everything can be explained.”

“Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“To the infirmary.”

“You ran away from there.”

“Yes. And now I want to look more attentively on something and to show it to you.”

She turned away and went to the staircase, and now it was he who had to follow.

“By the way,” he caustically noticed, walking upwards on abrupt stairs, “if we are ghosts why do we stamp on this staircase? Why wouldn’t we soar through walls and ceilings? Perhaps some of our physiological reactions have been interrupted, but personally I can feel my body and it is quite material.”

“Perhaps as it should be,” she answered, without turning around. “Whatever gave you the idea that ghosts fly—cartoons? If the dead felt nothing, how could torture exist in hell?”

“I don’t believe in a hell.”

“I also didn’t believe before.”

A few minutes later they entered the medical room again. This time Eve resolutely approached the dead woman in the armchair and began to clean off the blood from the name tag. Adam shrugged his shoulders and began to do the same to the man.

“Linda Everett,” read Eve, having finished the work.

“Victor Adamson.”

“I would say, as is customary, ‘nice to meet you,’ but it does not exactly fit the situation.”

“Are you saying that… we are they? That is, our bodies?” Adam already had had time to get used to corpses and touched them without any special emotions, but now suddenly he involuntarily was repulsed from the one sitting in an armchair. “Only because their surnames are similar to…”

“Not only surnames, the placement of her bandages are the same as mine. And, I think, under the overalls is the same.”

“Bandages aren’t…”

“Aren’t the proof, I know. How about this? Would you hold his head even?”

Eve, having come toward him, lifted the top part of the dead man’s skull from where it was on the floor and put it where it had been before it had been cut off. The result was not ideal, but the head once again looked like a head, instead of a cup from a nightmare.

“I don’t know how well you remember your face,” said Eve, “but if you can believe my female observations, the similarity is formidable.”

The blood, which had covered the face of the dead man, made it not so obvious, but now, having peered more closely, Adam had to recognize the similarity with what he has seen in a mirror soon after awakening. Only on the forehead, where he had a bandage, the terrible crack of the saw-cut purpled.

“So you saw it before running away?

“Yes. And something clicked in me. All pieces began to match. Just don’t try to say that this was your twin brother on the crew,” Eve added. “Oh, what is that—a pen? Also fitting. Have you kept the paper with the names?”

Adam wanted to say no, but glancing at the flashlight in his hand, he discovered that its handle was still wrapped up by the sheet of paper. Obviously, he has taken it mechanically before leaving the information room.

“Write…” Eve began, but then interrupted herself. “No, it’s more likely a female handwriting. Dictate,” with a pen in her hand she approached a little table near a couch and was going to write on its white surface.

Adam unrolled the sheet. It was bedraggled and blood-splodged, but the letters still could be read.

“"Dr. Kalkrin — s-e. Dr. Hart — heart attack…”

“You see, I didn’t look at all at the list,” Eve commented, “so that you couldn’t say that I tried to simulate the handwriting. All right, now give me the sheet.”

Adam approached and put the list near the fresh inscriptions on the table. Comments were not required. It was obvious that both lists were written by one hand.

“Stop,” Adam said. “Something doesn’t match. After all, I did not find this sheet here, but instead in a pocket of a dead woman in a warehouse compartment. If you are here, how could it get there? And by the way, even if we assume that we are they,” he pointed a finger towards the corpses in armchairs, “these names can’t be ours because the overalls are not ours, that is, not their. They were stripped from the pilots in the control room.”

“So we assumed. But maybe right here we are wrong. We still don’t know what happened with the clothes of the majority of the crewmen.”

“As well as with the crew itself,” Adam reminded her. “And more. Let us assume we have died—and our souls are locked here, as on “Flying Dutchman”—oh really, flying… But where are, in that case, the others? Where are the other nine ghosts?”

“Perhaps they have gone to paradise and only we were so guilty that…”

“Paradise, hell—what bullshit! To be flying on an interstellar ship and to take seriously this medieval nonsenses!”

“Perhaps,” Eve didn’t listen to him, “perhaps, actually we were the ones who killed all the others! And at last—each other.”

“Aha,” Adam screwed up his face, “and I personally gnawed the pilot’s arms.”

“Why not? We assumed that either he did it himself in a fit or a certain extraterrestrial monster with a human-like jaw did it. But there is also the third, simpler and more probable variant—another human being.”

“And we remember nothing. Why? Even if we accept your version that we are damned, shouldn’t the punished know what they were punished for?”

“So it is that we are gradually learning it.”

“I do not believe it,” Adam obstinately repeated, looking at the sawn half-and-half face of his double. “Ridiculous. Nonsense. It can’t be.”

“Well, let us go to the control room. We will examine the pilots more carefully than before.”

“I guess you don’t want to offer an investigatory experiment—to gnaw a piece from the arm of a corpse and to compare tooth marks,” he squirmed.

“I don’t insist on anything, Victor.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“The engine doesn’t work, the fuel is empty, the ship is uncontrollable and the whole crew is dead,” she wearily listed. “And we are locked here without any exit and hope. So to believe or not to believe—that is your own problem.”

“Well all right.” Adam helplessly shrugged shoulders. “Then to the control room. Anyway I don’t know where to go and what to do further.”

And they ascended again to the control room. There was still no light there, but Adam had a firm feeling that the flashlight, while already almost discharged, would begin to shine more brightly. And this already didn’t match any reasonable explanations. The flashlight for sure was not recharged from any panels or batteries.

Adam stopped before the armchair of the first pilot (“The first is who is in the left seat,” had emerged from the depths of his cut-off memory), attentively examined with the flashlight the mangled hands of the corpse, and then directed a beam to his face, on which he had only thrown a passing glance during the previous visit (and Eve, apparently, had not look on this face at all earlier).

“What did you say about twins?” he asked hoarsely.

Eve stood near, distrusting her own eyes. Excluding scratches, the broken out teeth and the absence of a seam on the forehead, the face looking at her with its eyes gone was the same as the one in the infirmary.

“I dont understand anything,” the woman muttered. “Which of them is you?”

“I am I!” Adam aggressively shouted, striking his chest. “And these… I don’t know, who they are! Maybe…” he added in more judicious tone,” maybe, there really were brothers in the crew? Or, more possibly, clones…”

“Nobody would send clones in a distant expedition,” Eve objected. “There are different specialists required, not copies of the same one.”

“But clones, as well as natural twins, are similar only outwardly, while their specialities can be different.”

“All the same. Their presence onboard can create psychological problems.” Fragments of once read space psychology manuals emerged in her mind. “From the usual confusion, including ill-intentioned, to….”

“But even if your crazy version is true and I had died, I couldn’t die twice!”

“I don’t know. I know nothing anymore. All this seems a nightmare.”

“I am real, damn it!” Adam shouted and swiped the corpse in the face. Several of weakly held teeth fell into the dead mouth. One of them hung under the upper lip on a bloody thread. “Hear, you, carrion? Real! Real!” He thrashed again and again, while in his head there palpitated the comprehension of the fact that the faces of all the dead people found out here were either not visible, or mutilated, or deformed and soiled. And yet, even despite his insistence, he could pay attention to earlier similarity—if his subconscious did not resist until the latest moment, until he was rubbing his nose in it. “I am not a fucking phantom!!”

“Victor! Adam! Stop!” Eve tried to grasp his hands, but he dashed her aside. The living woman, caught off balance, fell into the lap of the dead one in the right armchair, and the corpse she encountered dropped its head on her shoulder, snapping its jaws. Adam struck the helpless corpse of the male pilot twice more, then powerlessly let his hands fall. In the broken face of the dead man it was already difficult to recognize his own, but this didn’t help. The fit of rage subsided as suddenly as it had begun, giving way to something much more terrible—a huge and inevitable, like a tsunami, wave of despair, the most dark and hopeless despair, which surpassed in many times over, he was absolutely sure of it, any sorrows of his former forgotten life. And feeling how this wave fell upon him with all its weight, he dragged himself away from control room—without seeing, where he was going, reeling to and fro like a drunken man.

“Adam!” Eve climbed out of embrace of the dead woman and overtook her companion near the exit from the control room. Almost by force she turned him around before he could rest his forehead against the partly closed door.

And at this moment of silence a sound was heard, which they least of all could expect—the opening of lift doors.

Adam and Eve, having nearly collided heads, stared at a gleam between the control room doors. In the shined aperture of the lift cage, leaning to its edge, a man stood—barefoot, in dirty and blood-stained underwear.

He was the one who could not be here in any way—just because he was the twelfth.

However, he did not stand for long, for just a fraction of a second, and then he tumbled forward and, without any attempt to soften his falling, fell to the floor. The thud with which his forehead struck the floor made both witnesses shudder.

Adam was the first to squeeze between doors and sat down near to the fallen. Then he lifted a hopeless look at Eve.

“Dead?” She understood.

“And long ago. He probably got stuck in the lift when the power went off. And died in this position, leaned on the doors which he couldn’t open.”

Saying this, Adam was looking at the face of the corpse—the face which he saw today already at least three times, including the reflection in a mirror.

But Eve was already looking at something else.

“My God… Just look at his hands!”

Adam looked. Then heavily stood up and glanced into the lift cage which remained opened because the legs of the dead man remained between the doors.

All the inside walls of the cage had been scribbled in red. And there weren’t anymore separate phrases with large letters. It was continuous text (not divided even by punctuation), covering the walls in a spiral, beginning from the height that the writer could reach and continuing almost to the floor. And on a floor there lay pieces of what he used instead of a felt-tip pen.

“He bit off his own fingers,” Adam ascertained. “Piece by piece. To write this. When blood ceased to flow, the next finger was used. And the last phrases,” he peered at wide and smeared, almost unreadable letters just inches from the floor, “it seems to me, he finished by using his tongue. Dipping it in the blood flowing from his wrists.”

“And… you think, it is the answer?” Eve asked, fearfully looking at the curve lines.

“I guess, yes.”

“I am so frightened. It seems to me that we shouldn’t read this!”

But Adam, of course, had already stepped in the cage. The text began, most probably, from a big blot, from which a dried stream was stretching downward almost through the whole length of the wall. At that moment the writer still had plenty of “ink.”

“despair darkness it really darkness dark energy despair only sense and essence of universe my god god doesn’t exist there is only despair which created the world what idiots we are we understood nothing when probe explorers began to hop the perch we trusted only to instruments even when it gobbled up ape too late to back away told computer error only changed number all the same biosynthesizer two idiots volunteers save prestige of program for science’s sake morons morons we would better be real morons though won’t help finally it will absorb all for it is alpha and omega law of increase of despair…”

For Adam it wasn’t at all incoherent gibberish. With each word read the wall in his consciousness fell with a crack and a roar of a ruptured dam, the truth uncontrollably rushed outside, and he spoke, spoke, even understanding that he shouldn’t do it, that he doomed Eve, that is Linda, to premature—though all the same inevitable—torment, but his own torment didn’t allow him to stop, and soon he even needed not to look at the bloody letters, just a view which filled with a pain the scars on his fingers.

“We named it dark energy. Energy of the vacuum which produces particles and antiparticles, the force interfering with the recession of galaxies. In general, all this is true. But its true name is Despair—the essence of the universe and its basic force. Once people considered that the primary law of the universe was the law of nondecrease of entropy. But, be it so, any evolution, any transformation from simple to complex, from interstellar gas to stars and planets, from inorganic molecules to live cells and organisms, would be impossible. Then it had been postulated that self-organizing processes can proceed in unclosed systems where there is an energy inflow from the outside. But that meant that the universe itself is a unclosed system, otherwise from where can it receive the energy? Now we know what this energy is and what law of the universe is really primary: the law of increase of the despair. It is possible to say that the despair is the force making galaxies to scatter in horror, though this run into eternal void will not help…

“But unless galaxies can feel anything?” interrupted Eve, whose consciousness still resisted memory. “They are not alive!”

“It’s only a terminology issue. Can we say whether a stone feels heat or cold? But after all they operate on it quite objectively, forcing it to crack or even to melt. But, really, inanimate objects are incapable of feeling despair to the full. Therefore, all processes in the universe develop, eventually, in the direction of the evolution of life and sense. For life, and in particular sense, is nothing else but despair capable of realizing itself and thus to complete the positive feedback and to realize the unique purpose and sense of existence of the universe—the achievement of absolute, infinite despair.”

“But after all despair is just an emotion! Arising in our brain in reply to strokes of misfortune. It is subjective! How can it be any fundamental cosmic force?”

“If a person is forcefully hit on his head, he sees a short flash—the proverbial stars before eyes. It is a subjective illusion, but it doesn’t mean that an objective light doesn’t exist somewhere. This is the analogy of that despair which we feel in common life. And now compare this flash to a necessity to look with the lidless eyes, with the eyes capable neither of blinking nor of looking away—to look at the Sun, no, at thousand, trillions suns, at all the stars of the universe simultaneously! In comparison with this torment, with the force of despair, on 120 orders of magnitude surpassing the force of gravitation, any of the most horrible physical suffering is only a desired strategy at least somehow to distract, to get relief at least for a moment! And we, we ourselves, drew it nearer! Developing science, improving our mind, aspiring to comprehend the world—that is, to comprehend the despair… Though wise men still in the ancient time smelled a rat and warned others, who increases knowledge increases sorrow. And the statistics accurately showed that the highest level of suicide is in the most advanced countries. But we didn’t come to these conclusions even when ‘Hyperion-1’ has returned. The next triumph of human science… automatics completed its mission faultlessly… and then the scientists who worked with the returned probe started one after another to commit suicide, go mad or slip into a coma. And besides this, they have felt only residual emanations of dark energy. But the instruments registered no threat to life for the whole flight time, and even the samples of protozoa, worms and insects onboard were okay. Their organisms were too primitive to feel despair. Therefore, certainly, the fate of scientists was hushed up ‘in order to avoid a sensation in the yellow press that would damage the image of the program’; explaining all as a series of tragic coincidences. But nevertheless, before sending humans to the stars, they have sent one more starprobe with a chimpanzee onboard. And ‘Hyperion-2’ has disappeared without a trace. If it had returned with a dead or mad ape, possibly, our flight would not have taken place. But it has simply disappeared, and it has come to nobody’s mind that the reason could be in the live being who had no access to the control systems. Everything was written off as a failure of the onboard computer. The launch of ‘Hyperion-3’ had been too widely advertized already, and a great deal of money had been invested in the project, so it was too late to give it up. But because of this series of accidents, some changes nonetheless have been made in the flight program. It was planned from the very beginning that people wouldn’t land on massive planets of Gliese 581. This role has been alloted to biorobots created and modified according to arising tasks directly onboard, in a biosynthesizer with the protoplasm stock, placed on the second from below level. The miracles of Earth gene engineering… The crew should only process the data collected and delivered to them. But under the pressure of skeptics who pointed out the dangers of the flight for people, it was decided that the most of this data would be processed on Earth. The ship had been already designed and constructed for eleven crewmen, but only two have flown. You still haven’t remembered, Linda? There are not twelve corpses here, but much more, this ship is full of them. But actually there is nobody here—except us!”

“You… you’re trying to tell me that all these dead persons are biorobots?”

“No, no, everything is much worse! Our technologies don’t allow us to create exact copies of a human! Biological models for which our synthesizer is designed are too primitive. But IT doesn’t need an intermediary in the form of a synthesizer, for IT is itself the life creating force. And it won’t release us.”

“It?”

“Despair! Aren’t you listing? Despair! It is capable of organizing life from lifeless matter, but that requires millions of years because it doesn’t have its own mind. But with such a gift as an already-existing protoplasm all happens much faster. All these creeping creatures are the life which has evolved here onboard! Consequently they are so ugly and clumsy. They didn’t pass through natural selection, apparently. The majority of them are even not capable of eating and breeding. But the main thing is both of us, Linda, we! The microcosm is a similar to the macrocosm! A soul actually exists, and it is not an ethereal angel with wings. It is a steady matrix of dark energy, or, that is to say, a structured despair. For the whole time that we tried to investigate dark energy in depths of space, it was in ourselves! But the accuracy of our instruments was insufficient to detect it. We after all searched only for the gravitational component, which is ten to the one hundred twentieth power weaker than the true essence. The Kalkrin generator was required to transport us to the phase of dark matter and thus to tune our despair to resonate with the great despair of the universe. The theory predicted that switching off the generator would lead to a spontaneous return to the initial condition, but it was true only for an inanimate probe. When there are animate beings onboard, the Kalkrin generator only starts the process which then becomes self-sustaining. In a dark phase it is not necessary for us to eat, to drink, even to breathe. The dark energy feeds us directly.”

“I breathe!” the woman interrupted.

“I too, because it is a reflex, but I am not sure that we really need to. It’s like a sailing ship which was equiped with an engine. And all systems of the starship is fed with the energy of our despair. Therefore, when it grows, light becomes brighter, and what has gone dead, turns on again.

“But corpses…”

“That’s just it! We cannot die! We have tried already numerous times! But every time when we kill a body, on the matrix of our soul a new one is recreated! The law of increase of despair won’t allow us to escape! Neither us, nor anyone else. Sooner or later all will fall into despair. At first, the crews of interstellar ships like us, then the whole civilizations, whose sense will reach an adequate level to enter into resonance with universal despair directly. Probably sooner or later even stars and galaxies will evolve to the same level, and in the whole universe nothing will remain except dark matter filled with infinite despair. Actually this process is already closer to the end than to the beginning: There is already four times more dark matter than what we consider normal.”

“And bandages?” asked Linda, clutching at a straw. “Well, let us assume we revived without clothes. It is logical, but didn’t somebody bind us up? And why did we need it in the first place?”

“They are not bandages,” Victor sighed. “It’s dead skin. Our subconsciousness tried to save us from the truth, representing it as just dried bandages. Look! Look at them attentively!”

The woman brought her bound up arm to her eyes. Now she saw that the edges of the “bandages” were actually ugly peeling scars, and on the cadaverous-gray surface of the “bandages” it was possible to make out pores and some separate not yet fallen out hairs. That means, her head also… her face actually wasn’t wrapped. It became these terrible rags.

“A soul it not just personality,” Adamson continued to explain. “The energy matrix stores the information about the body as well, otherwise resurrection would be impossible. Naturally there is no information about clothes there, nor about putrefactive bacteria. That’s why bodies don’t decay here. Small wounds don’t influence this matrix, but those that are really serious and cause especially severe pain are reflected in it. That’s why we revive with dead skin or, at least, with scars in place of such wounds. However, even this won’t help us die. We tried. Oh my God, how many times we’ve tried.

Linda shuddered and with a groan fell to her knees, clenching her head with her hands. Now she too could not escape the memories which rushed on her like a torrent. She now remembered how she had torn her own face and squeezed out her eyes—how with all her force had pushed off her feet from the floor, empaling herself through the stomach and breast on pipes, cut out the schematics of the damned ship on her own body, hung, stretched on wires, while the man now speaking with her skinned her slowly…

“Remember how you crucified me?” she dully asked.

“No,” he answered. These memories were probably too awful, and his subconscious still tried to hide at least them. “Could it be that I… though, of course, who else… what for?”

“I begged you myself—to torture me as long and painfully as possible. I couldn’t do it myself, I have tried already. I hoped that I would go mad. That such pain would destroy my mind, and I wouldn’t revive any more.”

“And I had agreed, though I understood that there would be nobody to render me the same service. But all the same it was no go. And then we tried to achieve the same goal by destroying our own brains. But it also didn’t help. Only the amnesia after revival was deeper. Maybe the point is that the nerve tissue of a brain itself cannot feel pain.”

“But why did we destroy all equipment? Simply out of despair?”

“Not only. The devices would quickly reveal the truth to us. We tried to prolong the pleasure of ignorance after the next revival. After all, in order to feel the whole power of despair it is necessary to realize it to the full extent.”

“And now? Are we realizing? I myself feel awful and frightened, but I wouldn’t again go in for that, about what I’ve asked you before.”

“Still not realizing to the full. Some time is required. It’s like an automatic tuning… but later even that pain will seem to you the lesser evil, than the despair! We already have gotten rid of tools because of fear of the pain which we would cause ourselves with their help later, and when ‘later’ came, we damned ourselves for having done so.”

“I’ve told you, we had not to read it!”

“Sooner or later the despair all the same would cover us—even without hints. It happened already many times, since the very first time when we didn’t know what was what yet. And beyond that, with each new death and revival this period is reduced.”

“Thus, we haven’t much time.” Linda stood up. “We should do something!”

“We can do nothing.” Victor shook his head. “We or anybody in the universe. Despair is not a god, not any sentient essence with which it would be possible to negotiate. The most cruel god can be cajoled with prayers and victims. But we deal with an absolutely stupid natural power—with the fundamental law defining the direction of all processes in the universe. Against it everything is impotent.”

“Last time we jammed the doors of several rooms where I usually revived,” Linda had remembered, “but I have all the same appeared in one of them. How does it do this?

“I think those are the features of the dark matter.  Remember that our coordinates are actually smeared out across the universe.”

“So, we can pass through walls?”

“Consciously, no.” Victor punched a wall to make his point. “But the death is probably similar to the transition into a quantum state, and revival to a collapse of a wave function—only not within the universe, but within the ship.

“Can our souls exist without bodies?”

“As far as I understand, no. Anyway, such a condition would be unstable. Therefore, each time new bodies are formed.”

“But it happens only on a ship entered into the dark phase by the Kalkrin generator. We cannot leave the ship, can we?”

“No. From our point of view, the space is closed within a field created by the generator.”

“And if we blow up the ship?”

“I don’t think that it will destroy the field. I’ve said already, it is kept stabilized during a long time not by the generator, but by ourselves.”

“But in an explosion we would be lost simultaneously! Till now we could not achieve that, even when we tried. Probably, in that case a field will slack? And, the main thing, the biosynthesizer with its protoplasm will be destroyed! New bodies will simply have nothing to arise from!”

“Well,” Victor responded slowly, “maybe we still have a hope to die—theoretically. For in practice we can’t destroy the ship. Only in idiotic old fiction were spaceships equipped with self-destruction systems. I would like to ask those authors of such bunk, whether their own cars, trains, planes were supplied with such systems? And if no, why the devil would the designers of spaceships should behave differently?”

“We have no fuel,” Linda reasoned, “but that is speaking about a reactor which fed the generator. But we still should have onboard landing modules for delivery of biorobots to planet surfaces and back. And they have their own engines. If I remember correctly, it’s a chemical fuel.

“Yes,” he nodded. “We didn’t want to cause a damage to planets’ biospheres . Therefore, no radiation, but chemical components should be enough for a good explosion. I do not know whether we can manage to do it. All right, there is nothing to lose all the same. Let’s go. The hangar deck is on the third level.

They didn’t risk using the now working lift, remembering (Victor especially), how it had ended last time. Driven by hope and fear—hope to die and fear not to have time to do it before the despair would fall upon them again with its full power—they ran down the stairs. When they at last rushed into the hangar deck after that racing on a spiral staircase, they felt themselves a bit giddy, while in former times these trained astronauts would not even notice such an easy challenge. It is probable that all that had happened contributed to such exhaustion.

There was an identification touch panel here, and Victor wasn’t surprised anymore that it identified him. The green indicator lit confirmed that the hatch to outer space was closed and access to the hangar deck was permitted, and then the door slid aside.

Cone-shaped landers stood on the floor ruled out in squares, kept by perforated pylons. The modules didn’t reach even a meter in height. Two were absent.

“Damn,” Victor said fatefully.

“We couldn’t fly away on them even if we had a destination,” Linda sadly agreed. “Now I have remembered. Bioengineering is my speciality. Biorobots, which we were going to synthesize, should have sizes, roughly speaking, from a bug to a big crab. Gathering of samples and recording doesn’t require more, while delivering of each superfluous gram into an orbit… especially taking into account the supragravity…”

“It is unimportant. In any case we cannot escape the field limits,” interrupted Adamson. “Above all, we have already tried to use probes,” he pointed to empty places, “and, obviously, with no success.”

“We still do not remember everything,” Linda realized. “And what if we get into a trap of our own perceptions? We come, we see that have already tried, and we leave, without trying more. Over and over again. And these probes, maybe, weren’t here at all. They were reduced, as well as the number of crewmen.”

“No, the probes couldn’t be reduced,” Victor objected. “Without them the whole expedition loses meaning. We tried to use them for explosion, but not here. Here they have only low-power engines allowing them to fly smoothly into the hangar and to take off from it. But outside there are rocket stages with fuel and real engines, to which the landers mate before departing.”

“Can we reach them? There is a vacuum outside after all? Though there should be spacesuits somewhere. Our mission plan didn’t involve our exit from the ship, but for an emergency…”

“I won’t be surprised, if in our present condition we can survive even in a vacuum,” Victor gloomy uttered. “But anyway it will allow us no more than to knock with a fist on a rocket wall. And even if we would blow it up out there, it won’t damage the starship. In a vacuum there is no blast wave. That’s why rocket stages are places outside. Perhaps, in previous times we forgot exactly about that! But if we manage to ram the ship with a rocket, especially near the biosynthesizer, it may work.”

“How can we operate the rocket?”

“Directly, no way. Only to program the lander computer.”

Linda approached the nearest landing module and scraped its smooth surface with her nails. Hair-thin grooves depicted outlines of several hatchlets, but they, of course, had no intention of opening.

“And how will we reach the computer?”

“Without tools we cannot get inside.” Victor shook his head. “But it is unessential. Besides the main control room there is still a reserve post of remote controls, right in this compartment.” He was silent for several seconds, remembering, and then resolutely turned and showed her a door in a distant corner: “There.”

“If it isn’t broken, too…” Linda muttered, following him.

Her suppositions were confirmed. The bulky stand had been broken open, and the torn out wire stuck out of the wall to the right of it.

“Didn’t think that we would have such ancient cables here,” said Linda. This part of her memory still remained in darkness too. “I suppose, nowadays conducting nanochannels directly through walls is used everywhere?”

“That’s because it’s a reserve system,” Victor explained. “Here everything is purposely made on a primitive but reliable element base—more difficult to break, more easy to repair.”

“You think we still can repair it?”

“I will try. I apparently have already remembered enough.”

With an effort he removed the bent cover of the stand and got into the electric interiors. Linda went backwards and forward in the small room of the post, unable to remain in one place. It seemed to her that she could physically feel how despair, like a black poison, spread through her body, corroding it from within…

“It seems, we have a chance,” Victor suddenly said. “I do not remember which of us broke this stand, but he did not made the problem too bad—probably because of a shortage of tools. In general, considering the raised durability and numerous reservation… contacts, of course, will be jury-rigged, but… at least for some time, I think, it will work.” He still picked inside for some time, then turned to Linda. “There is only one problem. Too long a piece of cable is torn out. Perhaps you remember where we have put it?”

“No,” she shook her head.

“Then there is no conductor of suitable length here. To feed the panel, at least a half-meter conductor is necessary.”

“I understand. I will do it. I will take the wire ends.”

“Actually I wanted to offer to draw lots.”

“To hell with drawing lots!  I am a bioengineer. I’ve passed pilot’s training, too, but you’re the first pilot. Onboard computers are your domain.”

“All right. But there will be high voltage, I don’t guarantee that you will withstand it.”

“Victor, this is ridiculous. I will die once again. What’s the damned difference? The circuit will remain closed. Begin it now, until I can’t bear it any more!”

“Okay, then hold it here and here.”

She knelt near the stand. Having ripped off the insulation, she wound the end of the wire round a finger of her right hand and clutched it in a fist, and put her left hand inside the stand. Adamson helped her to insert a finger into the socket. Then he somehow fit the stand cover back on—it did not, of course, lie in place completely, but it was still possible to connect the screens and keyboard. Even the buttons on the keyboard were real, as in former times, instead of an image on a touch surface of a screen.

“Switching on,” Victor warned and connected the perviously opened jumpers.

Linda’s body curved in an arch, and she tried to cry out, but a sharp spasm which had twisted all her muscles didn’t allow her to open her mouth. She could only low through the rounded nostrils. With a dry crackle the remaining scraps of her hair began to move on her head. The singeing reek began to spread in the air.

But Adamson could not let this distracted him. He could not even allow himself to think about her suffering. Screens lit up, self-diagnostics lines began to run. Victor hasty interrupted the test and disabled all warnings. He knew himself rather well that in such mode the stand would work several minutes at the best, until the first contact connected end-to-end would fuse or any other element would die from rating violations. A human body is nevertheless a bad replacement for the certificated cable.

Victor tried to activate the computer of the first probe. “Unable to communicate,” appeared on the screen. Where is the problem—in the stand, in the probe, somewhere in between them? There is neither time nor the possibility to find out! The second probe: “Unable to communicate.” The third… still too early to consider the stand fully operational. Especially while—yes, it was true—the smell of burning human skin began to mingle with the smell of the burning wafer-type components. Even to start the full diagnostics, it will take not less than three minutes.

Linda continued to low, her body curving so much that it seemed that her vertebrae were about to crack and break. Victor shot an instant glance at her and continued furiously to click the buttons. The fifth probe… No, it’s all useless… if only by any miracle the sixth, the last one, would revive… Yes!!!

Victor’s fingers danced over the touch panel. Despite its archaic look, the panel was not as primitive as it would have been at the beginning of the space age. Flight programming did not require entering tens and hundreds of lines of code, to point the purposes on the rotatable and scalable scheme was enough. A departure from a hangar and an attachment to the rocket are, in general, basic operations which do not demand a special program. Now a turn and…

“Now, Linda,” he said, pressing the confirmation button.

“The chosen route threatens the safety of the ship. The program is canceled.”

Stupid metal crap, he thought, while on the contrary, it was too clever.

Linda still lowed and, thus, was alive. She would better to die, Victor thought, die and resurrect again in blissful ignorance in her room.

“Stand it a little more,” he helplessly muttered, activating the settings on the screen. Adjust safety level… “Enter the password.”

The password! Holy shit! Well certainly, he knew the password… once… many deaths ago.

The terrible lowing broke, replaced by a choking rale. It smelled of burned flesh. But she was still alive.

And suddenly, as if having come up from the most black depths of despair, letters and numbers of the password appeared before Victor’s eyes. He entered them so hastily that he made a mistake. Once again, don’t hurry. Don’t pay attention to sounds and smells. Bingo! Maximal g-load, check, remaining fuel, check… turn off, turn off everything…

There was no place to check intentional collision with the starpship in the settings. It couldn’t be turned off. As Adamson had absolutely correctly noticed before, the situation when the crew needed to destroy its own starship couldnot come to the mind of any normal designer. To risk a probe, yes, even to destroy a probe, but not the ship!

Victor put his hand out to switch off the power. Nothing would work. They were doomed. Doomed again and again to sustain the universal burden of cosmic despair, to search an easement in physical torments, to die and revive for new suffering, forever locked in this damned ship.

Stop! He jerked back his hand. The space is closed in a cocoon of a field. The computer of a probe knows nothing about it! It wasn’t pre-programmed for launching from a dark phase—of course not, after all such a launch is senseless. It considers that outside of the hangar there is a usual continuum, where to accelerate with the ship astern means to move away from her.

Adamson’s fingers began again to dance on the panel and to hit the buttons. If only he could make it! The smell of burning details increased. The panel could be cut off at any moment. So, start with the maximum acceleration. He was right to cancel all restrictions on g-loads and fuel. Then, when the ship suddenly appears ahead of the rocket nose, the maneuvering engines would not have time to turn the rocket to avoid collision.

“Program confirmed. Launching sequence initiated.”

The red indicator shone, showing that the exit to the hangar was blocked, and one more screen, displaying the view from the probe’s camera, turned on. In normal conditions decompression of the hangar would take several minutes, but because of the canceled safety options the wide doors have slid apart at once, letting the air out into a space. However, outside there was not the usual blackness of space, but some qualmish gray-brown twilight, certainly without any stars. The landing module, turned by its mobile pylon head-on to the exit, ignited the engines.

Victor would prefer to track the process of attaching to the rocket and its further flight to the end, but Linda was still alive, and he couldn’t torture her anymore. The computer should do its job. Adamson again moved his hand to turn the stand off. At that instant, as it was required for any operations in near-ship space, spaceship orientation lights turned on outside, and in their light through a doorway coming nearer to the module, Victor saw on the screen a scattering of some small objects floating in space. He understood what it was—the tools which they had thrown out (the field was configured so that it created gravity inside the ship, but not beyond its hull, the pilot remembered). If the probe collided with them, could it affect its direction? Probably not because they are too small.

“That’s all, Linda.” He exhaled when the probe reached outer space, but before he had time to open the circuit, a short crackle of electric breakdown sounded in the stand bowels. But capacitors which had time to be charged kept the image on the screen for a few of seconds more. And during these seconds the lander camera showed one more item—drifting in the same cloud of garbage, much larger than the others: a body with outstretched arms and legs. And Victor even had time to make out whose body it was. The screen had gone out, but before his eyes there was still the grinning grimace of his own corpse.

Linda fell backwards, with a wooden knock hitting her nape against the floor. Her blackened fingers smoked. From her nose bloody slime was leaking. Victor bent down over the woman. She gave no signs of life. Dead after all? But even if so, it’s not even possible to say about the deceased, “She suffers no more.” Not anyway, until the rocket fulfills its task.

But if she was now revived in the nose part of the ship, will she perish when the rocket hits here, in the aft part? Probably not. But if the biosynthesizer with all protoplasm is destroyed, the series of regenerations will end, and on the dilapidated ship she will not survive for much longer.  As he had just ascertained, they nevertheless cannot live in a vacuum, though he was sure that he was then killed by a vacuum? Perhaps he couldn’t commit suicide for quite some time, until he managed to catch one of the tools flying nearby? Feeling sick from this thought made Victor understand that he, most likely, had guessed right.

Well, where is the explosion? Victor felt, as a hard weariness, the true companion of hopeless despair, bore heavily on him again. He leaned against a wall and closed his eyes, as it happened, just in time to hear the short obtuse rataplan of hits pass through the wall. None of them were strong enough to make the colossal ship shudder even slightly. Certainly it couldn’t be the explosion of the rocket. Collision with tools or whatever else they had thrown out? But where, where is the damned rocket? Could it really miss? If he had incorrectly estimated the curvature of that pseudo-space in which they are captured, however, the rocket still has nowhere to go, as there is too little space here, so sooner or later… but where exactly will it hit?

If Linda is dead, it would be possible to connect her body again to the wires and to try to establish communication again with the rocket. He had already taken her hand with this thought, but at that moment the body of the woman suddenly convulsively moved. She coughed so as if she had choked on her own tongue, again convulsively shuddered, and then heavily raised her head.

“We are still… here?” she hoarsely exhaled.

“What idiots we are!” Victor exclaimed, having surmised something from his last thought. “You shouldn’t grasp the wires! We could drag any corpse here and use it!”

“Never mind.” She awkwardly wiped her face with the back of her right hand, trying not to touch anything with the burned fingers. “It is better, than IT.”

“IT,” Adamson blightly nodded. “Perhaps, IT influences even our decisions, forcing us to choose what serves its law—the law of increase of despair.”

“The rocket. What is with the rocket? You didn’t manage to launch it?”

“I did, but… I got it. We are idiots twice,” Victor gloomily stated. “The ship has no self-destruction system. But unmanned rockets have! And when the computer has understood that collisions is unavoidable… We were reached only by small fragments.”

“And we can’t turn it off in any way?”

“No. And even if we could, it was the only lander with which I managed to establish communication. And the stand, I am afraid, won’t work any more.”

Linda sat on the floor, looking at her blackened fingers. The suffering grimace curved her mangled face, making it especially eerie—layers of dead skin, crawling against each other, rumpled in rigid folds and chapped here and there.

“Very painful?” Victor asked. “Perhaps you, well… a new cycle?”

“Death as the best medicine, murder as first aid…” she muttered. “No. I do not want it again from the beginning. Again to remember that all… to pass from hope to… especially, it becomes shorter… Listen. I know what to do. We will blow up this damned ship all the same. Anyway, the second level for sure.”

“How?”

“Hydrogen. Detonating gas.”

“And where will we get it, especially in such quantities?”

“We will force this rubbish to create its death by itself. We will introduce a virus into the protoplasm. Its cells are very flexible. Capable of serving as a material either for human tissues or for anaerobic biorobots, and emission of biogene hydrogen is a routine biochemical process. It is very simple to program. Currently protoplasm grows owing to dark energy, as the vegetative biomass of Earth—owing to solar one. Well, let it grow, the more, the better. The virus will build in all its cells. And will make them produce hydrogen.”

“You can create such a virus?”

“I am still a bioengineer.”

“Yes, but everything is crushed.”

“At the second level there is a reserve control post too.”

“If it is in the same condition, as this one…”

“What do we have to lose? Let’s go.”

“All right,” Adamson agreed in a colourless voice. “Let’s go—if you insist.”

“You don’t believe that we will manage to do it?”

“It won’t release us. I do not know, how, but it won’t.”

“Victor, don’t speak like that! It is IT that forces you to think this way! You have said yourself that it is an absolutely stupid force, not an artful enemy! We should fight it!”

“You can still … have any… hope?” The wave of apathy and powerlessness which overtook him was so heavy that he hardly forced himself to move his lips.

“Pain. I think, it’s the point. While I think of the pain, I can’t concentrate completely on despair. But it will become, of course, stronger. Let’s go, while we still can bear it.” Seeing that Victor does not move at all, she managed a mighty slap across his face and then another, before she moaned from the pain in her own fingers. Adamson grudgingly put his hand on the panel opening the exit. The hangar was already filled with air again and automatics allowed them to leave the dispatching post.

At the second level little had changed since the last Adamson visit—except for the disgusting life that had seemingly bred even more. But as with the previous time, Victor did not look at the mucous mushrooms and meat stalactites hanging down from a ceiling but instead on the mangled corpse crucified across a corridor. In its dead flesh all halfworms-halfbugs droopingly crawled about, it seemed, there were more of them now, as well as their dead bodies on the floor. Now he knew that this was Linda’s corpse and that he was the monster who had done it to her.

The memories about what happened here sharply splashed out on to his consciousness, causing a feeling of almost a physical blow. Adamson shuddered and squinted tightly, but that made the dreadful scene only more clear before his eyes.

“I remember it, too,” Linda said in low voice. “Let’s go.” She resolutely moved sideways by her own mutilated remains, having dived under the hand ripped up by a wire. Victor followed her, trying simultaneously not to look at the body and not to touch it. Underfoot dead insectoid creatures damply crackled and crunched. In many places the floor was already covered with a continuous carpet. His boots stuck and slipped in the slime. He was glad—as much as that adjective in general fit the situation—that he had put on the dead man’s footwear—that is, of course, his own. But Linda walked on all this muck barefoot and, apparently, even paid no attention to it. Meanwhile the corridor around them resembled less and less a construction created by humans, and more and more an interior of some monstrous gut, affected with polyps and ulcers. Light could no longer penetrate all that grew on light fixtures, so it was necessary to use the flashlight again. In one place their way was barred by something like a soft log. Linda stepped on it (the sound similar to a squelched sigh came out) and went further, and Victor stumbled in the dark. He shined the light at feet and made a wry face when he understood what it was. It was a corpse which had become now a part of the general goop which covered the walls, floor and ceiling. It was accreted so densely that it was already impossible to understand, if it was male or female, least of all the cause of death. It was possible to distinguish only a hole of an opened mouth, a black cavity in the continuous knobby crust which completely hid all other facial features. Victor feared that further passage was overgrown completely, and they would have to almost literally gnaw their way through to the post.

Nevertheless, they reached the desired door without any special problems. On the whole perimeter of the door through a slit between it and the wall some spongy substance had squeezed, and the identification touch panel had grown with a fetid black mold, but seemingly it still worked and, as much as it was possible to discern, was shining red. Adamson fastidiously wiped away the mold with his elbow, then habitually positioned his palm. However, nothing changed—the same ominous red light glowed between his fingers.

“Step aside!” Linda ordered and, almost having pushed him away, postioned her hand. “This is my domain.”

Confirming her words, the panel lit up green, and then a door, tearing at the spongy mess, moved aside.

The biosynthesizer control post turned out to be less fouled than a corridor near it. Most of the growth was on the walls near the door, while on the control panel itself there were only small puddles of oily slime here and there overgrown with mold. On the walls and ceiling, however, a lot of quasi-cockroaches were creeping, periodically breaking away and falling to the floor. Those falling on their back couldn’t recover and thus lay whitish bellies up, weakly moving their chela. “I’m about to vomit,” Victor thought, though he knew already that it was not possible.

But the most important—the panel worked! It had no indications of purposeful destruction.

“Looks like we didn’t get in here yet,” said Adamson. “Probably it was more disgusting than anywhere else.”

Linda touched the clammy seat of an armchair. When she took her finger away, sticky threads stretched out from it—and, having moved the armchair aside, she knelt in front of the panel. Screens revived, obeying her touches. Victor discerned a pimply chain of some complex organic molecule on one of them. Another screen, which broadcasted an image from an observation camera, showed something like a round pool filled in fat and viscous bubbling gook. “The protoplasm,” thought Adamson.

“Do you know exactly what to do?” he asked.

“I have thought over the general virus scheme already, and will finish off the details now. This system has all the necessary tools.”

“How long will it take?”

“Programming or synthesis?

“All process up to the end. Until we can blow up everything.”

“I don’t know. The minimum natural period of mitosis is about twenty minutes. We use catalysts to accelerate it, but all the same to infect the whole biomass, and then also to produce enough gas, requires at least several hours. Probably, days.”

“Days?! We won’t sustain it! I feel… I feel ITS power already now!”

“We don’t have choice. We have to endure. If we kill ourselves or each other halfway, it will be necessary to begin again from the beginning.”

Something stirred in Victor’s hair. He mechanically flipped it off onto the floor. It was a cockroach which had fallen from the ceiling. Adamson fastidiously crushed the creature with his boot.

He didn’t know how long he had been walking up and down the post, biting his lips and grasping his hair, while more and more horrible waves of intolerable despair fell upon him. Linda continued to conjure with the panel. It was easier for her, as she was busy, and besides she was distracted by the pain of her burns. When it became especially bad, she purposely pressed on her charred fingers. Adamson understood that she suffered less than he, and felt hatred toward her for it. During one moment this hatred became so strong that he was just about ready to grab her and tear, tear her flesh with his teeth and nails. Instead he heavily punched himself in the face several times, until he felt on his lips blood running from his broken nose.

“How long still?” he shouted. “How long will you snail about?”

“That’s it,” Linda exhaled in a dead voice. “I have started the synthesis. Now I will run tests and will be able to tell approximately how long we have to wait.”

Victor sat down on the filthy floor, digging his nails into his palms and pressing his temples with his fists.

“Hydrogen level…” Linda muttered. “No. It can’t be!”

“What?” Victor moaned. “You were mistaken? All is in vain? I knew, knew that…”

“No. On the contrary, there it bowl loads of hydrogen! The whole synthesizer is filled with detonating gas. But it is impossible! Only the few minutes passed, no virus breeds with such speed!”

“Then the instruments are wrong.”

“No. Not wrong… It seems… it seems… I know what happened. It’s like with the rockets. We didn’t remember that we have tried twice already. We have broken the panel to prevent the third hopeless attempt, but you nevertheless managed to make it work.”

“You mean to say the idea of a virus also came to you not for the first time?” Adamson questioned.

“Yes. After all it is natural that we think out the same ideas over and over again. Only this idea wasn’t hopeless. We just have to understand that we will succumb before the end of process. But it already went automatically. Our participation wasn’t required. The main thing was not to disturb it—not to destroy all that is here in the next fit of despair, especially without yet having remembered what was what.”

“So,” Victor said in shock, “that means, we… that is, I… had hung you in a corridor as… a ‘No entrance’ sign?”

“Yes, by this time we already knew that bloody inscriptions like ‘don’t go there!’ didn’t work. And when you saw this—you after all did not go further? And I wouldn’t go… no, I really hoped that the pain would destroy my mind, and for me all would finish, but if not… as it in fact happened…”

“And how much time is left till the end of the process?”

Linda looked at the screen again.

“It is finished. All protoplasm is infected.”

“So, we have lost a wilderness of time while you created the virus anew!” Victor again flew into a rage. “We could finish that all a way back!”

“Don’t shout. We are almost there. Let’s go.”

They didn’t need to return to the corridor. It was possible to pass to the synthesizer tank directly from the control post. After descending a short low-sloped stairway and passing a hanger, on which protective suits once hung (Where could they be now? On which of still not found corpses?), the astronauts found themselves before one more door covered by outgrowths. Under the outgrowths it was still possible to discern a sign of biological danger. That certainly couldn’t stop them anymore. In principle, behind each door there should be a leakproof airlock, but how then had all this living muck gotten outside? Was it thanks to the paradoxical properties of dark matter, or had they let it out themselves? Linda put her hand again on the scanner and they, having passed the airlock, went on to a balcony surrounding from within the large round premise which they already saw on the screen. At a closer look the life cradle made an even more repellent impression than on the monitor. Viscous bubbles were slowly overflowing and loudly burst two meters below their feet. In the air there was a dense heavy smell of some rotten concoction. Now Victor understood what these bubbles meant: Hydrogen was evolving—odorless by itself, of course.

“Well now,” Adamson inquired, “how will we set it on fire?”

“Oh,” Linda was confused, “actually I has absolutely forgotten about that. We had electrolighters but where are they now?”

“I suspect, overboard.”

“And here,” she inspected the walls, “there are no wires which we could reach.”

“If only this crap were metal!” Victor punched a balcony handrail. “There would be a chance to strike a spark. But there is only plastic around.”

“Chemically inert and fireproof,” Linda gloomy nodded. Then she suddenly gazed on the first pilot. “Wait. I have an idea. I will bring it now.”

With these words she ran out to the door, leaving Victor to grasp a round handrail in powerless anxiety. What an idea? The circle of the progress had been closed. On board the most advanced achievement of human science there is the same problem as in a stone age cave: the problem of making fire. Only here it is necessary not to survive, but to die. And to do it is much more difficult: Things at the hand of an ancient savage were not made according to the rules of maximal safety which excluded any casual spark. But let her come back and bring anything! He cannot bear this despair any more! A little more and he will jump into this shit gurgling below, even knowing that it won’t help him, but instead would only restart everything from the beginning.

When at last, panting, Linda ran back, Adamson didn’t even notice her. He desolately whined, reeling in place, with gritted teeth and closed eyes. She had to call him twice to draw his attention.

“Brought it?” he asked greedily.

“Here.”

She stretched out a comb toward him. A completely ordinary comb, without any high-tech frills, once scornfully left by him in a pocket of her overalls.

“What the hell is that?”

“Brush your hair.”

“Why the deuce?”

“I have too few hair left. And yours are almost undamaged. They should suffice.”

“А-аh,” he understood at last, taking the comb. “Electrostatics?”

“Exactly.”

He began to furiously tear at his elven locks with the comb. Probably, he thought, no schoolboy before a first date had ever preened his feathers with such a frenzy. What was his first date? Did it happen at all or had he been only interested in science? Obviously there were still too many blocked in his memories. But this is not important now.

“Victor.”

He stopped. His hair crackled slightly. Linda looked uncertainly into his eyes.

“We in fact were… not just colleagues? Between us… there was something?”

“I do not remember.” He honestly shook his head. “If it were… the despair has erased it all. I can’t remember even how you look actually. That is, I saw your corpses, but…”

“I remember very little too. But it seems to me that… I feel… Tell me, would you like, that between the two of us if it were started over again? If not all this…” she helplessly moved a hand in the air, pointing either to her spoiled face and body or to the tank walls.

He looked at the terrible scrappy mask which had become her face—a mask almost devoid of facial expression.  Only in her eyes an entreaty still lived.

“Yes,” he told her, thinking that it was only a noncommittal consolatory lie. However, he understood with surprise that it was not exactly a lie… and maybe, even not so at all. This part of his memory remained in darkness, but something very vague, almost intangible appeared there—something so much in contrast with the present hopelessness, with the hopelessness of the fate of the whole universe. “Yes, I would like it,” he repeated more firmly and even tried to smile.

She had answered this smile as much as her current face allowed and stretched a hand to him. He stretched his hand towards her, clearly understanding what it meant. Their fingers met.

The spark drily cracked, stinging them with instant mutual pain.

But already they could not hear the bang of the explosion.

In the beginning there was nothing, except blind horror. Then sensations began to come back, sensations of his own corporality, which frightened him even more than their absence. He understood that he could move neither a hand, nor a leg, nor a single finger—and at the same time he was not paralyzed. He felt his body—big and heavy, really huge, and at the same time he could not tell “here is that organ, and here is this one.’ He couldn’t even tell where his top was or where his bottom was. It was just a sensation of monstrous inert weight. But his eyelids still obeyed him, and he opened his eyes.

There was nothing around him except a gray-brown emptiness, and in this emptiness there was he. Or they. Or it… His head poked out of the huge spherical clod of the flesh which had been clumsily stuck together from human corpses, spongy stuff, slime and the remains of other forms of the life generated by the synthesizer. It was all henceforth a single whole, as if a certain mighty force had crumpled and rolled together playdough figures. However, some small wormlike and arthropodic creatures which had survived the accident had not become a part of the general building material and now freely crept on the sphere, getting into skin-covered hollows between concrescent bodies, corporal cavities and ragged holes.

Here and there from the common lump of the spoiled flesh, dead heads jutted, sometimes entirely, sometimes only half or less, which made their faces stretched and warped. In just a meter from the face of the one who erstwhile called himself Victor Adamson (and who remembered now the past much faster than after previous revivals) the peeled to meat head of Linda the hive stared with blind orbs and grinned with lipless jaws. And a little more to the left from it one more head—Linda the mummy—stuck out. But this head wasn’t dead. Her eyelids began to tremble and then painfully opened.

Even incomparable horror and despair didn’t deter Victor from realizing that in what happened there was no ominous intention to punish the rebellious sinners—only laws of physics which, as he had noticed correctly earlier, are more ruthless than any dark gods. When both retranslators of the despair were simultaneously lost and the material for their regeneration was destroyed, a spontaneous qualitative transition occurred. Sharp collapse of dark energy made the field shrink to the minimal volume and to the most energetically favorable spherical form. Thus all the inanimate matter of the ship, useless for the maintenance of despair, was thrown out beyond the field and dissipated in the continuum. In the closed volume inside there remained only that which yet could serve as a life carrier—the non-decayed flesh of dead bodies.

And now very little remained, which he still could use to oppose the despair (Despair, DESPAIR!) To chew his own lips—then tongue—and then IT will fall upon him with all its weight, one hundred twenty orders of magnitude surpassing the force of gravitation.

He looked in the eyes of the living Linda, goggled with horror almost as wide as dead Linda’s eyes nearby, and understood that henceforth he and she would always stay together, and that they would never die. And then he cried—cried so that it seemed his own eardrums should burst, and his lungs should tear and be splashed with blood out of his throat. But nothing came out from his mouth. First, he no longer had lungs. And second, he was surrounded by airless emptiness.

The first cockroach climbed out of the mouth of the flayed head of Linda the hive and, hobbling awkwardly, begin to creep towards his face.

Content

George Right
D
Collection of Horror Stories

DOWNTOWN

THE BOY WHO DID NOT BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS

CAVE OF HORROR

HOUSE

WINDY DAY IN WEST

THROAT

DESPAIR