As Mike watched, the Soldier raised his hands and set them flat against the fine-mesh screen. His fingers and palms flowed through the screen like a candle melting in high speed. They re-formed against the glass and spread into waxy fingers, a shiny palm. The hand flowed out of the khaki sleeve like a slow-moving fountain of wax, the hand moving down the window glass. Mike raised his eyes to watch the face try to take shape, the eyes floating in the mess like raisins in a fleshy pudding. The hands slid lower.

Toward the opening.

Mike screamed then, shouting for his father, his mother. He stepped forward and slammed the baseball bat down on the top of the window sash, slamming the window shut just as ten melted streams of fingers were reaching the crack there. The arms and hands-melted more than a yard long by now-flowed sideways like fleshy tentacles, hunting for a gap-Mike heard his mother's voice, his father rising with a groan of bedsprings. Peg shouted down the stairs and Kathleen began crying. His father growled something and there came the sound of his bare feet in the hall.

The Soldier's fingers and face flowed away from the pane, back through the screen, re-forming into the simulacrum of a human form with the speed of a movie run in fast reverse. Mike shouted again, dropped the bat, and leaned forward to slam the window tighter, knocking the kerosene lamp off the table as he did so. The chimney shattered but the lamp landed on its base and Mike knelt to catch it before it spilled fuel all over the carpet and ignited it.

In that second, his father appeared at the door and the shape at the window disappeared, arms at its sides, going straight down as if it were standing on a freight elevator.

"What the hell!" shouted Jonathan O'Rourke. His wife rushed in to see to Memo, who lay there blinking wildly in the flickering light.

"Did you see him?" shouted Mike, lifting the lamp with its open flame. He held it dangerously near the ancient curtains. "Did you see him?"

His father glared at the broken lamp, the disarrayed table, the slammed window, and the ball bat on the floor. "Goddammit, this has gone far enough.'' He ripped the curtains aside so roughly that the rod came off and the entire assembly fell behind the table. The tall rectangle of window showed only night and rain dripping from the eaves. "There's no one out there, damn it."

Mike looked to his mother. "He was trying to get in."

His father pushed the window up. The fresh breeze was pleasant after the stink of kerosene and fear in the room. His father's heavy hand slapped the sill. "The damned latch is on the screen. How could he get in?" He stared at Mike as though his son was losing his mind. "Was this . . . this soldier trying to tear the screen off? I would've heard it!"

Now that the electric lights were on, Mike shut off the lamp and set it on the table with shaking hands. "No, he was coming through . . ."He stopped, hearing how lame it sounded.

His mother came over and touched his shoulders, felt his forehead. "You're hot, dear. You have a fever."

Mike did feel feverish. The room seemed to tilt and resettle around him and his heart would not slow down. He looked at his father as steadily as he could. "Dad, I heard something and came down. He was . . . leaning hard against the screen. It was bending in, almost ready to give way. I swear I'm not lying."

Mr. O'Rourke looked at his son a minute, turned without a word, and came back a minute later with his trousers pulled over his pajama bottoms and his work boots on. "Stay here," he said softly.

"Dad!" shouted Mike, grabbing him by the arm. He handed him the baseball bat.

Mike's mother patted Memo's hair, hushed the girls back upstairs, and changed Memo's pillowcases while they waited. There was a shadow of movement outside. Mike flinched away from the window. His father stood there, a flashlight in his hand, the bottom of the window almost to his chest. Mike blinked; he'd seen most of the Soldier's body, yet his father was much taller than the Soldier had been when Mike had seen him on Jubilee College Road. How was it that his dad seemed to be standing so much lower? Could the Soldier have been standing on something out there? That would explain the way he had descended vertically. . . .

His father disappeared, was gone another five minutes, and came in the kitchen door with a great stamping of his feet. Mike went out to meet him in the hallway.

His dad's pajama tops and trousers were soaked through, the boots smeared with mud. What little red hair he had left was now plastered over his ears. Beads of water glistened on his forehead and bald spot. He reached out a huge hand and pulled Mike into the kitchen. "There were no footprints," he said softly, obviously not wanting Mike's mother or sisters to overhear. "Everything's mud, Mike. It's been raining for days. But no footprints under the window. It's flowerbed for ten feet along that side of the house, but no footprints anywhere. And none in the yard."

Mike felt his eyes scalding the way they used to when he was little and had allowed himself to cry. His chest hurt. "I saw him" was all he could say through the constriction in his throat.

His dad looked at him for a long moment. "And you're the only one who's seen him. Outside Memo's window. That's the only place?"

"And once following me on County Six and the Jubilee Road," he said, instantly wishing he'd told his father earlier or not said anything now.

His dad's stare lengthened.

"He could've been on a ladder or something," Mike managed, hearing how desperate he sounded even to himself.

His father slowly shook his head. "No marks. Not a ladder. * Nothing." His big hand came forward, palm covering Mike's forehead. "You are hot."

Mike felt the shivering in him again and recognized the onset of flu. "But I didn't imagine the Soldier. I swear. I saw him."

Mr. O'Rourke had a broad, friendly face, heavy jowls, the remnants of a thousand childhood freckles that he had passed on to all of his children-much to the dismay of three of his four daughters. Now his jowls shook slightly as he nodded. "I believe you saw something. I also think you're getting sick from staying up nights to catch this Peeping Tom. ..."

Mike wanted to protest. This was no Peeping Tom. But he knew it was better to keep his mouth shut right now.

"... you get up to bed, let your mother take your temperature," his father was saying. "I'll move the cot downstairs to Memo's room and sleep in there for a while. I don't go on nights again at the brewery until a week from yesterday." He set the baseball bat aside, went to the locked pantry, fumbled the key from the crack over the sill, and brought out Memo's "squirrel gun"-a short-barreled shotgun with a pistol grip. "And if that . . . soldier . . . comes around again, he'll get more than a Louisville Slugger."

Mike wanted to say something but he felt actually dizzy from relief and the fever that he felt now as a pounding in his ears and a general lightheadedness. He hugged his father and turned away before tears came.

His mother stepped into the room, frowning but gentle as she hustled him upstairs to bed.

Mike was in bed for four days. At times the fever was so bad that he found himself awakening from dreams only to find that the awakening was a dream. He did not dream about the Soldier, or Duane McBride, or any of the things that had been haunting him: mostly he dreamt about St. Malachy's and saying Mass with Father Cavanaugh. Only in his fever dreams, it was he-Mike-who was the priest, and Father C. was a little kid in an oversized cassock and surplice who kept screwing up his responses despite the laminated card with printed lines lying right there on the altar step where the boy/man knelt. Mike dreamt that he was consecrating the Eucharist, lifting the Host high in the most sacred moment a Catholic could experience, much less actually perform. . . .