The urge to flee came on him again for the last time, stronger than ever-he actually felt the comforting bulge of his car keys in his pocket. He would get in the Civic and drive to Chicago. He would get Ellie and go on from there. Of course by then Goldman would know something was wrong, that something was dreadfully amiss, but he would get her anyway… snatch her, if he had to.

Then his hand fell away from the bulge of the keys. What killed the urge was not a sense of futility, not guilt, not despair or the deep weariness inside him. It was the sight of those muddy footprints on the kitchen floor. In his mind’s eye he could see them tracing a path across the entire country-first to Illinois, then to Florida-across the entire world, if necessary. What you bought, you owned, and what you owned eventually came home to you.

There would come a day when he would open a door and there would be Gage, a demented parody of his former self, grinning a sunken grin, his clear blue eyes gone yellow and smart-stupid. Or Ellie would open the bathroom door for her morning shower, and there would be Gage in the tub, his body crisscrossed with the faded scars and bulges of his fatal accident, clean but stinking of the grave.

Oh yes, that day would come-he didn’t doubt it a bit.

“How could I have been so stupid?” he said to the empty room, talking to himself again, not caring. “How?”

Grief, not stupidity, Louis. There is a difference… small, but vital. The battery that burying ground survives on. Growing in power, Jud said, and of course he was right-and you’re part of its power now. It has fed on your grief.

… no, more than that. It’s doubled it, cubed it, raised it to the nth power.

And it isn’t just grief it feeds on. Sanity. It’s eaten your sanity. The flaw is only the inability to accept, not uncommon. It’s cost you your wife, and it’s almost surely cost you your best friend as well as your son. This is it. What comes when you’re too slow wishing away the thing that knocks on your door in the middle of the night is simple enough: total darkness.

I would commit suicide now, he thought, and I suppose it’s in the cards, isn’t it? I have the equipment in my bag. It has managed everything, managed it from the first. The burying ground, the Wendigo, whatever it is. It forced our cat into the road, and perhaps it forced Gage into the road as well, it brought Rachel home, but only in its own good time. Surely I’m meant to do that and I want to.

But things have to be put right, don’t they?

Yes. They did.

There was Gage to think about. Gage was still out there. Somewhere.

He followed the footprints through the dining room and the living room and back up the stairs. They were smudged there because he had walked over them on his way down without seeing them. They led into the bedroom. He was here, Louis thought wonderingly, he was right here, and then he saw that his medical bag was unsnapped.

The contents inside, which he always arranged with careful neatness, were now in jumbled disorder. But it did not take Louis long to see that his scalpel was missing, and he put his hands over his face and sat that way for some time, a faint, despairing noise coming from his throat.

At last he opened the bag again and began to look through it.

Downstairs again.

The sound of the pantry door being opened. The sound of a cupboard being opened, then slammed shut. The busy whine of the can opener. Last the sound of the garage door opening and closing. And then the house stood empty in the May sunshine, as it had stood empty on that August day the year before, waiting for the new people to arrive… as it would wait for other new people to arrive at some future date. A young married couple perhaps, with no children (but with hopes and plans). Bright young marrieds with a taste for Mondavi wine and Lцwenbrдu beer-he would be in charge of the Northeast Bank’s credit department perhaps, she with a dental hygienist’s credential or maybe three years’ experience as an optometrist’s assistant. He would split half a cord of wood for the fireplace, she would wear high-waisted corduroy pants and walk in Mrs.

Vinton’s field, collecting November’s fall grasses for a table centerpiece, her hair in a ponytail, the brightest thing under the gray skies, totally unaware that an invisible Vulture rode the air currents overhead. They would congratulate themselves on their lack of superstition, on their hardheadedness in snaring the house in spite of its history-they would tell their friends that it had been firesale-priced and joke about the ghost in the attic, and all of them would have another Lцwenbrдu or another glass of Mondavi, and they would play backgammon or Mile Bourne.

And perhaps they would have a dog.

Louis paused on the soft shoulder to let an Orinco truck loaded with chemical fertilizer blast by him, and then he crossed the street to Jud’s house, trailing his shadow to the west behind him. He held an open can of Cab catfood in one hand.

Church saw him coming and sat up, his eyes watchful.

“Hi, Church,” Louis said, surveying the silent house. “Want some grub?”

He put the can of catfood down on the trunk of the Chevette and watched as Church leaped lightly down from its roof and began to eat. Louis put his hand in his jacket pocket. Church looked around at him, tensing, as if reading his mind.

Louis smiled and stepped away from the car. Church began to eat again, and Louis took a syringe from his pocket. He stripped the paper covering from it and filled it with 75 milligrams of morphine. He put the multidose vial back in his jacket and walked over to Church, who looked around again mistrustfully. Louis smiled at the cat and said, “Go on, eat up, Church. Hey-ho, let’s go, right?” He stroked the cat, felt its back arch, and when Church went back to his meal again, Louis seized it around its stinking guts and sank the needle deep into its haunch.

Church went electric in his grip, struggling against him, spitting and clawing, but Louis held on and depressed the plunger all the way. Only then did he let go. The cat leaped off the Chevette, hissing like a teakettle, yellow-green eyes wild and baleful. The needle and syringe dangled from its haunch as it leaped, then fell out and broke. Louis was indifferent. He had more of everything.

The cat started for the road, then turned back toward the house, as if remembering something. It got halfway there and then began to weave drunkenly.

It made the steps, leaped up to the first one, then fell off. It lay on the bare patch at the foot of the porch steps on its side, breathing weakly.

Louis glanced into the Chevette. If he had needed more confirmation than the stone that had replaced his heart, he had it: Rachel’s purse on the seat, her scarf, and a clutch of plane tickets spilling out of a Delta Airlines folder.

When he turned around again to walk to the porch, Church’s side had ceased its rapid, fluttery movement. Church was dead. Again.

Louis stepped over it and mounted the porch steps.

“Gage?”

It was cool in the front hail. Cool and dark. The single word fell into the silence like a stone down a deep-drilled well. Louis threw another.

“Gage?”

Nothing. Even the tick of the clock in the parlor had ceased. This morning there had been no one to wind it.

But there were tracks on the floor.

Louis went into the living room. There was the smell of cigarettes, stale and long since burned out. He saw Jud’s chair by the window. It was pushed askew, as if he had gotten up suddenly. There was an ashtray on the windowsill, and in it a neat roll of cigarette ash.

Jud sat here watching. Watching for what? For me of course, watching for me to come home. Only he missed me. Somehow he missed me.