He had not expected to see the nightmare person in it, and he didn’t. The apartment was empty.

Somehow, he simply couldn’t imagine seeing that creature in full daylight, and the bright August sunlight was pouring in every window.

Of course, the creature had to be somewhere, and it had answered his phone in daylight – though that had been morning, when his side of the building was in shadow.

Still, he somehow hadn’t expected to find it here.

He moved cautiously through the place, checking the living room, the dining area, the tiny walk-through kitchen, then down the hall, a quick look in the bathroom, and into the front bedroom that he had used as his library-cum-office.

Nothing had been disturbed. The laptop computer was packed up and sitting beside the bookcase, and his main machine, a customized Compaq Deskpro 386, was on the desk.

The dustcover was off the monitor, and he tried to remember whether he had left it that way or not.

After a moment’s thought he decided he had. He usually did.

He went on to the bedroom, but nothing was out of place there, either.

There was no sign that the monster had ever dared to intrude here.

He wondered, for an instant, where it was just now, and then suppressed the thought. It wasn’t here, and that was enough.

He held onto the crowbar, though, as he began planning what to take with him.

The first thing to get was the laptop, he decided as he emerged into the hallway again, and second would be the Compaq. With those in his possession he would be much more in control of things, he thought. He’d also have something better to do than watch TV all night.

Someone knocked at the door.

He froze.

Another knock sounded.

“Who is it?” he called.

After all, he tried to tell himself, it didn’t have to be one of the monsters. It could be Lieutenant Buckley, or Einar come to check on his story, or any number of other people.

“Mr. Smith? It’s me, Bill Goodwin, from downstairs.”

He hesitated, unsure what to do.

The Goodwin boy was one of them, wasn’t he? He was the one who had alerted them all after spotting Smith coming out of the Orchard Heights basement, so that they could clear out the bones and paint over the blood in time.

But this might be a chance to learn more about what was really going on, if he could talk to one of them. And if it was just the one of them, in broad daylight – and Bill wasn’t that big, and he had his crowbar…

“Just a minute!” Smith called.

He crossed the living room and peered through the peephole.

It looked like Bill Goodwin, certainly, standing there in cut-off shorts and an old Metallica T-shirt. And he couldn’t see anybody else.

He hooked the chain-bolt, opened the door a crack, and looked out.

He still saw nobody else.

“All right, come in,” he said, opening the door wide.

“Hey, I didn’t mean…”

“Get in here!” Smith bellowed, startling them both.

“Okay, okay!” The boy ducked quickly inside, and Smith slammed and locked the door behind him.

Then he turned to face his guest, still holding his crowbar, and gestured toward the chairs over by the windows. “Have a seat,” he said.

He wanted the boy in the sunlight. He couldn’t have said why; it just seemed safer, somehow.

“Sure,” the lad said, dropping onto one of the chairs. “Hey, what’s with the wrecking bar?”

Smith settled slowly onto the other chair, never loosening his grip on the crowbar and never taking his eyes off his guest. “Just a precaution,” he said. “I think somebody broke in here while I was out.”

The other made a wordless noise of concern.

Whoever and whatever he was talking to, it looked like Bill Goodwin. It sounded exactly like him, even moved like him.

“How’re your folks?” Smith asked.

Goodwin, if it really was he, shrugged. “They’re fine.”

For a moment they both just sat, staring at each other.

“So what brings you up here?” Smith asked at last.

Goodwin shrugged again. “Oh, well, I saw your car in the lot, and you hadn’t been around the last couple of days, so I wondered if there was anything wrong, and if there was anything, y’know, that I could do to help out.”

Smith eyed him warily.

He looked human. His eyes were blue, not red. Smith thought he might have seen a slight silvery glint to his teeth when he spoke, but that might just have been fillings, and it was too quick to be certain of anything.

He looked right. He sounded right.

Still, something was slightly off. Smith puzzled over it for a moment, while Goodwin shifted nervously under his scrutiny.

“Hey,” Goodwin said at last, “If you’re okay, I guess I’ll go.”

“No, wait,” Smith said, raising a hand – his left, since the crowbar was still in his right. He thought the teeth might have glinted again, and he felt as if any moment he would sense what was wrong, why he didn’t believe he was really talking to the Bill Goodwin he knew.

“Fact is,” Smith said, “that I’m planning to move out of here. That… that whatever-it-was on Wednesday made me nervous, you know? And I could probably use a hand loading the car, when I get everything ready to go. Think you could help me out?”

“Sure,” Goodwin said, shrugging. “No sweat.”

That was it!

That was what was wrong, Smith realized. He couldn’t smell anything.

No sweat.

That is, he couldn’t smell anything but his own scent and his apartment’s normal dusty odor. Goodwin gave off no odor at all, so far as he could tell. No sweat, no deodorant, no aftershave, no hair oil, nothing. And there was no dampness to his T-shirt, no sheen of moisture on his forehead.

It was a hot day, outside and in, and Goodwin had just come up three flights of stairs and into a baking-hot apartment. He was a healthy young male, and not over-scrupulous about bathing. He ought to have an odor – nothing offensive, nothing anyone would ordinarily notice, but something.

And in that T-shirt, he ought to be visibly sweating. Smith knew that his own shirt was damp under the arms and across the back of his shoulders. He could feel a film of perspiration on his forehead, and imagined it would be visibly shiny.

Bill Goodwin’s shirt and forehead looked totally dry.

Before he could stop himself, Smith blurted, “What the hell are you, anyway?”

The Goodwin thing blinked at him. It started to grin, and its teeth gleamed silver, but then it stopped, pulled its lips back together.

“What?” it said. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Smith said quickly. On an impulse, he rose from his chair, transferred the crowbar to his left hand and stuck out his right, offering to shake. He wanted to know what the thing felt like, whether its skin was really as dry as it looked.

“I’ll be moving Wednesday, I think,” Smith said. “See you then?”

Startled, the creature stood and took his hand. “Sure,” it said, “Wednesday.”

The hand felt cool and dry and lifeless, more like a glove than like living flesh. “Thanks,” Smith said.

“No problem,” it answered. It hesitated, then started toward the door.

Smith came along behind it, the crowbar ready in one hand. Without warning, he threw the other arm around the Goodwin creature’s shoulders in a comradely gesture.

“I really appreciate this,” he said.

The T-shirt was completely dry. The skin at the back of the thing’s neck was as cold and dead as its palm, maybe more so.

As Smith pulled his hand away, as his fingers slid across the back of the thing’s neck, he hooked them into claws, nails scraping at the skin.

The Goodwin thing didn’t seem to notice.

Smith’s hand came away and he stuck it immediately in his pocket, and kept it there. He stepped back and let the creature open the door itself, rather than either putting down the crowbar or taking his other hand back out of the pocket again.