But an arm could. A hand with claws. Maybe a head on a long neck.

Dale shivered again. This was silly. Mom was right, they'd imagined this thing the way they'd imagined the mummy's footsteps a couple of years ago. Or the UFO coming to get them.

But we didn't see those other things.

Dale closed his eyes. But a final thought before drifting off brought him awake again, blinking, staring down into the dark between the beds below where his exposed hand still touched Lawrence's.

Damn. If our beds are this close, then it can get under mine without me seeing. It could raise those black legs on both sides of our beds and get both of us at once.

Lawrence was snoring softly, drooling a bit onto his Roy Rogers pillowcase. Dale stared at the far wall, counting the spars and masts on the ships repeated in the wallpaper there. He tried not to breathe too loudly. The better to listen. The better to hear something if it made a sound before it struck,

On Thursday the Old Man had to go back to Uncle Art's house to dig out some legal papers and Duane went along despite his father's unease at having him there.

The Old Man was edgy and irritable, obviously on the verge of falling off the wagon in a serious way. Duane knew that he had held on this long out of love for his brother and a real need not to disgrace himself in front of the family.

Part of the Old Man's anxiety had come from his indeci-siveness about what to do with Uncle Art's ashes. He had been appalled when the mortuary people had given him the heavy decorative urn which had ridden back from Peoria with them like a silent and unwanted passenger.

After dinner on Wednesday evening, before Dale Stewart called, Duane had gone in to peek inside the urn. The Old Man had come into the room at that moment, lighting his pipe.

"Those white chunks that look like bits of broken chalk are bone," the Old Man had said, puffing the pipe alight.

Duane had resealed the lid.

"You'd think that when they put a body in a furnace approaching the temperature of the surface of the sun," his father said, "that there'd be nothing left but ash and memories. But bones are persistent things."

Duane had sat on a seldom-used chair near the fireplace. Suddenly his legs had felt both heavy and weak at the same time. "Memories are persistent things, too," he'd said, wondering aloud why he'd chosen a cliche.

The Old Man had grunted. "I don't have the damnedest idea where to spread those. Barbaric custom when you think about it."

Duane had glanced at the urn. "I think you're supposed to scatter them at some place important to the person's life," he said softly. "Some place they were happy."

The Old Man grunted again. "You know that Art left a will, Duanie. But he damn well didn't tell me where to toss his ashes. Some place where he was happy. . . ." He fell into musing, puffing at the pipe.

Duane said, "The main reading room of the Bradley Library would be a good place."

The Old Man guffawed. "That'd make Art laugh, too." He removed the pipe and stared away for a moment. "Any other ideas?"

"He used to love fishing along the Spoon." Duane felt the scalding peristalsis of grief seize his throat and heart again. He went into the kitchen for a glass of water. When he returned, the Old Man's pipe had gone out and he was cleaning it, tapping ashes into the fireplace. Ashes.

"You're right," the Old Man said suddenly. "That was probably the place he most enjoyed. He and I used to fish there even before Art moved down from Chicago. He used to take you there all the time, didn't he?"

Duane nodded, using a sip of the water as an excuse not to talk. Just then the phone had rung with Dale's call and when Duane returned, the Old Man had gone into his workroom to putter around with the Mark V learning machine.

They'd gone to the river just after sunrise, when the fish were rising to the surface to feed with great ripples, making Duane wish he'd brought his pole. There was no real ceremony; the Old Man had held on to the vase for a moment, as if suddenly reluctant to release the contents, and then as sunlight first illuminated the cypress and willows above them, he'd sprinkled the ashes, tapping the bottom of the vase until the final remnants had dropped away.

There were bones, making small splashes that attracted catfish and at least one bass that Duane could see in the shallow water near the shore. The ashes stayed together at first, forming a gray film that followed the currents and whirled around the snags that Duane knew so well from fishing here over the years. Then the faster current downstream toward the bridge caught them and the line of gray was torn apart, whirled under, and mixed with the waters of the river.

Duane tossed a rock in, remembering the times he'd done that when he was bored as a little kid. Probably scaring all the fish away that Uncle Art had been trying to catch. His uncle had never complained.

Then he had brushed his hands and followed the trail up the steep bank toward the car, noticing as he climbed how thin his father had grown over recent weeks and how sunburned and lined the back of his neck was. With his new growth of gray stubble, the Old Man finally looked old to Duane.

Uncle Art's house had lost the smell of the man and now merely smelled musty and unused.

As the Old Man went through the drawers and file cabinet, Duane surreptitiously checked old note pads and went through the wastebasket. Like Duane himself, Uncle Art had been a compulsive note-taker, reminder-writer, and record-keeper.

Bingo. The crumpled paper in the wastebasket had been lying beneath a cigar wrapper and some other junk. It had probably been written on Saturday night, the night before the accident.

1) The damned Borgia Bell or Stele of Revealing or whatever it is survived after all. Mention of it in the Medici section of The Book of the Law.

2) Sixty years, six months, six days. Assuming that the absurd and impossible has become reality, that the events Duane's talking about are because the thing has been "activated" after all these centuries, then the sacrifice would have been made around the turn of the century. Sometime after New Year in 1900. Check in town. Find people who would remember. Don't talk to Duane until there are some answers.

3) Crowley says the Bell, the Stele, used people. And summoned "agents from the Dark World," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Re-check the accounts of "things in the streets of Rome" in the time of the Borgia pope and the Medici section.

4) Get in touch with Ashley-Montague. Make him talk.

Duane took a breath, folded the paper into the pocket of his flannel shirt, and went out onto the porch. The grass of the lawn was growing wild. Insects hopped. Somewhere along the edge of the treeline, cicadas made a loud buzzing that made Duane a bit dizzy. He sat in the metal chair, lifted his legs to the low railing, and stared out at nothing, thinking. It wasn't until the Old Man came out onto the porch and paused with his hand still on the screen door that Duane realized what he looked like in this chair, this posture . . . who he must have looked like.

The Old Man had found the papers. They took care closing the house up, knowing that it might be weeks or even months until they came to clean it out before the auction.

Duane didn't look back as they bumped down the lane.

Duane chose Mrs. Moon.

The librarian's mother was in her eighties, had lived in Elm Haven all of her life, and had resided across the street from Old Central on the southeast comer of Depot and Second since she was a young woman. Duane knew her only slightly, mostly from seeing her with Miss Moon on their walks when he was visiting town.