It was astonishing, anyway.

If he’d gone over to Pete and Barbara’s... He realized he ought to give them a call and apologize. He left his work room and wandered through the house, turning on a few lights. In the bedroom he got rid of the shorts and put on his sweatsuit and socks. As if his skin resented the loss of cold, it tingled and itched. Larry rubbed himself through the soft fabric while he walked to the kitchen.

Tacked to a bulletin board beside the wall phone was a card on which Jean had written emergency numbers along with those of repair people and friends. Larry found the number for Pete and Barbara.

Do I really want to call them? he wondered. It had been an open invitation, not the kind of thing that required much of an apology. No big deal that I didn’t show up.

They’re sure to ask me over.

I’ll probably go. And that’ll be the end of today’s writing.

For godsake, I’ve written enough for one day. Enough for a week.

But if I stick with it, I can bring the story all the way up to the present. And be done with it. Nothing more to tell, once I get to where we hid the coffin in the garage. Tomorrow I’ll be able to finish the corrections on Madhouse, get it into the mail on Monday, and spend next week finishing Night Stranger. Then start on The Box.

Only if I don’t go over to Pete and Barbara’s tonight.

He wondered if Barbara was in her nightgown. And he realized that he didn’t much care.

He stepped away from the telephone and opened the refrigerator’s freezer compartment. His eyes roamed its contents. A lot to choose from. The lasagna would be easy. Just throw it in the microwave for a few minutes.

Too much trouble.

He shut the freezer door and checked the refrigerator. There he found a pack of hot dogs. He opened it, slid out a wet frank, and poked it into his mouth. Holding it there like a pink cigar, he put away the package. He took out a bottle of Michelob beer, twisted off its cap and returned to his work room.

He wrote. The hot dog and beer distracted him for a few minutes, but when they were gone he sank deeply into the story. He was there, over at Pete and Barbara’s, first on their patio and then in their house, telling it all just as it had happened. Almost. Censoring, as if by reflex, every mention of Barbara’s appearance and his own reactions to her. Then he was in the van with Pete. Then in the gully behind Holman’s.

As he tapped out, “ ‘I’ve got to take a leak,’ ” he realized that he did need to do exactly that. He went to the bathroom. As he urinated he thought about what would come next in the story.

Finding the campfire of the coyote eater.

Shivers crawled up his back.

He flushed the toilet, walked to his work room and stared through the doorway at his waiting chair.

I’m not sure I want to write about that tonight, he thought. Not about the coyote eater, not about what happened in the hotel.

He turned away from the work room. He wandered into the kitchen and looked at the clock. A quarter past ten.

That’s no time of night to be writing scary shit, he told himself.

I’m so close to the finish, though.

Hang in there for a couple more hours, you’ll be done with it.

Right, hang in there.

With a little help.

He dropped a few ice cubes into a glass, filled the glass with vodka, and added a touch of Rose’s Lime Juice. He took a sip. Sighed with pleasure. Drank some more. Then carried the glass to his room, slumped against the back of the chair and gazed at the screen.

Once this stuff hits the system, you won’t be able to write.

Hell, this isn’t writing. This is typing.

The beer had been enough to turn his typing a trifle sloppy. This should really mess it up.

Who cares? he asked himself. Just fix it when you revise. Or don’t. Give the copy editor something constructive to do for a change. If she has to correct real errors, maybe she won’t mess with the good stuff.

He took a few more swallows, then set the glass down and faced the dead campfire, the bones, the severed eyeless head of the coyote.

He was glad to have the vodka in him. Though the words flowed, he felt slightly disconnected, more an observer than a participant. He described the Larry character’s fear and revulsion, but hardly felt them at all.

Then they were out of the ditch. Then in the van. Then about to enter the dark lobby of the hotel.

His glass was empty. He took it into the kitchen. This time he didn’t bother adding lime juice to the vodka. He felt very fine as he sauntered back to his computer. He took a drink. He filled a pipe and lit it. He looked at the last sentence on the screen.

“Side bu side, we stoppped across teh threshold and entered the black mouth og the hotel.”

Grinning, he shook his head.

“Take care of that later,” he muttered.

He puffed his pipe, checked the keyboard to make sure his fingers were positioned correctly, and continued.

He wrote, and sipped vodka and smoked his pipe.

Somehow, a while later, the stem flipped over between his teeth and the briar bowl turned upside down, dumping ashes down the front of his sweatshirt and onto his lap. Luckily, no embers fell out. Larry brushed the gray dust off his clothes, put the pipe aside, and took another drink.

When he looked at the screen, he saw double.

“Oh, am I fucked up,” he muttered.

With a little effort, however, he was able to line up his eyes and read the amber print.

“ ‘Take you’re hand off of that steak!’ ”

“Pete let go teh thing real fast. ‘If’s off! Christ! Don-t shootl’ ”

Larry muttered, “Oh, shit.”

Concentrating hard, knowing he could lose a lot if he messed up, he fingered the save key and followed his usual procedure for exiting the computer. He put the disks away, then turned off the machine.

“Better hit the ol‘ sacko,” he mumbled.

Larry woke up, but couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes. He felt as if the back of his head had been split open with an axe. His dry tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. He was shuddering with cold, and his bed felt like concrete. As he struggled to free his tongue, he reached down. He found the blanket near his waist and pulled it up. That helped a little, but not much. The real coldness was under him.

I am on concrete!

Larry forced his eyes open.

Though the light was faint, he knew that day had come and he knew where he was.

In his garage.

His heart suddenly pounded hot spikes of pain up the back of his neck and into his head.

He was curled on his side, the coffin near enough to touch.

Oh, Jesus H. Christ!

Turning his face away from the coffin, he bolted up. The pain in his head brought tears to his eyes. As he staggered backward, his bare foot landed in a mat of vomit. It flew out from under him. His bare rump smacked the garage floor.

Sitting there, he clutched his head with both hands and blinked his eyes clear.

He saw that he was naked.

He saw that the blanket heaped on the floor near the coffin, the one he had used to cover himself, was the same old brown blanket that had shrouded the corpse.

It was on me! Touching me!

A whiny noise started coming from him. He slapped a hand across his mouth and gazed down at himself. Nothing on his skin.

What’d you expect? he thought. Cooties?

“Oh Jesus,” he said, his voice coming out high and girlish.

He moved his left foot out of the glop and stood up.

The withered cadaver was still inside the coffin, the stake still in its chest. Thank God.

At least he hadn’t pulled the stake.

What hadhe done? What was he doing here?

He didn’t know. But he knew that he had to get out. He had to shower, and fast, to rid himself of the horrible crawly feeling left by the blanket.