“Stop babbling, Ricky,” he said, and blasted his horn and rolled across Wheat Row to the north end of the square.

“You didn’t have to blow the horn, that was a green light,” Ricky pointed out.

“Humpf. Everybody else is going too fast to stop.”

Don, in the back seat, held his breath and prayed that the traffic lights on the other end of the square would turn green before Sears reached them. When they passed the steps to the hotel, he saw the lights facing Main Street flash to amber; the lights switched to green just as Sears put the entire palm of his hand down on the button and floated the long car like a galleon onto Main Street.

Even with the headlights on, the only objects truly visible were traffic lights and the red and green pinpoints of illumination on the Christmas tree. All else dissolved in swirling white. The few approaching cars appeared first as streamers of yellow light, then as shapeless forms like large animals: Don could see their colors only when they were immediately alongside, a proximity Sears acknowledged with another imperious blast of the Lincoln’s horn.

“What do we do when we get there, if we ever do?” Sears asked.

“Just have a look around. It might help.” Ricky looked at him in a way that was as good as speaking, and Don added, “No. I don’t think she’ll be there. Or Gregory.”

“Did you bring a weapon?”

“I don’t own a weapon. Did you?”

Ricky nodded; held up a kitchen knife. “Foolish, I know, but …”

Don did not think it was foolish; for a moment he wished that he too had a knife, if not a flamethrower and a grenade.

“Just out of curiosity, what are you thinking about at this moment?” Sears asked.

“Me?” Don asked. The car began to drift slowly sideways, and Sears turned the wheel very slightly to correct it.

“Yes.”

“I was just remembering something that used to happen back when I was a prep school student in the Midwest. When we had to choose our colleges, the staff would give us talks about ‘the East.’ ‘The East’ was where they wanted us to go—it was simple snobbery, and my school was very old-fashioned in that way, but the school would look better if a big proportion of its seniors went on to Harvard or Princeton or Cornell— or even a state university on the East Coast. Everybody pronounced the word the way a Muslim must pronounce the word Mecca. And that’s where we are now.”

“Did you go East?” Ricky asked. “I don’t know if Edward ever mentioned it.”

“No. I went to California, where they believed in mysticism. They didn’t drown witches, they gave them talk shows.”

“Omar never got around to plowing Montgomery Street,” Sears said; Don, surprised, turned to his window and saw that while he had talked they had reached the end of Anna Mostyn’s street. Sears was right. On Maple, where they were, hard-packed snow about two inches deep showed the treads and deep grooves of Omar Norris’s plow; it was like a white riverbed cut through high white banks. On Montgomery, the snow lay four feet deep. Already filling up with fresh snowfall, deep indentations down the middle of the road indicated where two or three people had fought through to Maple.

Sears turned off the ignition, leaving the parking lights on. “If we’re going through with this, I see no point in waiting.”

The three men stepped out onto the glassy surface of Maple Street. Sears turned up the fur collar of his coat and sighed. “To think I once balked at stepping into the two or three inches of snow on Our Vergil’s field.”

“I hate the thought of going into that house again,” Ricky said.

All three could see the house through the swirls of falling snow. “I’ve never actually broken into a house before,” Sears said. “How do you propose to do it?”

“Peter said that Jim Hardie broke a pane of glass in the back door. All we have to do is reach in and turn the knob.

“And if we see them? If they are waiting for us?”

“Then we try to put up a better fight than Sergeant York,” Ricky said. “I suppose. Do you remember Sergeant York, Don?”

“No,” Don said. “I don’t even remember Audie Murphy. Let’s go.” He stepped into the drift left by the plow. His forehead was already so cold it felt like a metal plate grafted onto his skin. When he and Ricky were both on top of the drift they reached down to Sears, who stood with his arms extended like a small boy, and pulled him forward. Sears lumbered forward and up like a whale taking a reef, and then all three men stepped from the top of the drift into the deep snow on Montgomery Street.

The snow came up past their knees. Don realized that the two old men were waiting for him to begin, so he turned around and began to move up the street toward Anna Mostyn’s house, doing his best to step in the deep depressions made by an earlier walker. Ricky followed, using the same prints. Sears, off to the side and stumping through unbroken snow, came last. The bottom of his black coat swept along after him like a train.

It took them twenty minutes to reach the house. When all three were standing in front of the building, Don again saw the two older men looking at him and knew that they would not move until he made them do it. “At least it’ll be warmer inside,” he said.

“I just hate the thought of going in there again,” Ricky said, not very loudly.

“So you said,” Sears reminded him. “Around the back, Don?”

“Around the back.”

Once again he led the way. He could hear Ricky sneezing behind him as each of them plowed on through snow nearly waist-high. Like Jim Hardie and Peter Barnes, they stopped at the side window and looked in; saw only a dark empty chamber. “Deserted,” Don said, and continued around to the rear of the house.

He found the window Jim Hardie had broken, and just as Ricky joined him on the back step, reached in and turned the handle of the kitchen door. Breathing heavily, Sears joined them.

“Let’s get in out of the snow,” Sears said. “I’m freezing.” It was one of the bravest statements Don had ever heard, and he had to answer it with a similar courage. He pushed the door and stepped into the kitchen of Anna Mostyn’s house. Sears and Ricky came in close behind him.

“Well, here we are,” Ricky said. “To think it’s been fifty years, or near enough. Should we split up?”

“Afraid to, Ricky?” Sears said, impatiently brushing snow off his coat. “I’ll believe in these ghouls when I see them. You and Don can look at the rooms upstairs and on the landings. I’ll do this floor and the basement”

And if the earlier statement had been an act of courage, this, Don knew, was a demonstration of friendship: none of them wanted to be alone in the house. “All right” he said. “I’ll be surprised if we find anything too. We might as well start.”

Sears led as they left the kitchen and went into the hall. “Go on,” he said—commanded. “I’ll be fine. This way will save time, and the sooner we get it over with, the better.” Don was already on the stairs, but Ricky had turned questioningly back to Sears. “If you see anything, give a shout.”

“So were Alma’s rooms,” Don said. He and Ricky could hear Sears’s footsteps on the boards of the lower room. The sound brought a new awareness flooding across Ricky’s features. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me. Your whole face changed.”

Ricky blushed. “This is the house we dream about. Our nightmares are set here. Bare boards, empty rooms —the sound of something moving around, like Sears just now, down below. That’s how the nightmare begins. When we dream it, we’re in a bedroom—up there.” He pointed up the staircase. “On the top floor.” He went up a few steps. “I have to go up there. I have to see the room. It might help to—to stop the nightmare.”

“I’ll go with you,” Don said.

When they reached the landing, Ricky stopped short “Didn’t Peter tell you this was where—?” He pointed to a dark smear down the side of the wall.

“Where Bate killed Jim Hardie.” Don swallowed involuntarily. “Let’s not stay here any longer than we have to.”

“I don’t mind splitting up,” Ricky hastily said. “Why don’t you take Eva’s old bedroom and the rooms on the next landing, and I’ll prowl around on the top floor? It’ll go faster that way. If I find anything, I’ll call for you. I want to get out of here too—I can’t stand being here.”

Don nodded, agreeing with him wholeheartedly. Ricky continued up the stairs, and Don climbed to a half-landing and swung open the door to Eva Galli’s bedroom.

“Ricky?” he said, and knew that his voice was no louder than the whispers behind him. The dim light guttered; and from the moment he could no longer see the walls, Don felt that he was in a much larger room —the walls and ceiling had flown out, expanded, leaving him in a psychic space he did not know how to leave. A cold mouth pressed against his ear and said or thought the word “Welcome.” He swung around to the source of the sound, thinking belatedly that the mouth, like the greeting, had been only a thought. His fist met air.

As if playfully to punish him, someone tripped him, and he landed painfully on hands and knees. A carpet met his hands. This gradually took on color—dark blue —and he realized that he could see again. Don lifted his head and saw a white-haired man in a blazer the color of the carpet and gray slacks above mirror-polished black loafers standing before him: the blazer covered a prosperous little paunch. The man smiled down in a rueful fashion and offered him a hand; behind him other men moved. Don knew immediately who he was.

“Have a little accident, Don?” he asked. “Here. Take my hand.” He pulled him upright. “Glad you could make it. We were waiting for you.”

“I know who you are,” Don said. “Your name is Robert Mobley.”

“Why, of course. And you read my memoir. Though I wish you could have been more complimentary about the writing. No matter, my boy, no matter. No apologies necessary.”

Don was looking around the room, which had a long, slightly pitched floor ending at a small stage. There were no doors he could see, and the pale walls rose almost to cathedral height: way up, tiny lights flashed and winked. Under this false sky, fifty or sixty people milled about, as if at a party. At the top end of the room, where a small bar had been set up, Don saw Lewis Benedikt, wearing a khaki jacket and carrying a bottle of beer. He was talking to a gray-suited old man with sunken cheeks and bright, tragic eyes who must have been Dr. John Jaffrey.

“Your son must be here,” Don guessed.

“Shelby? Indeed he is. That’s Shelby over there.” He nodded in the direction of a boy in his late teens, who smiled back at them. “We’re all here for the entertainment which promises to be very exciting.”

“And you were waiting for me.”

“Well, Donald, without you none of this could have been arranged.”

“I’m getting out of here.”

“Leave? Why, my boy, you can’t! You’ll have to let the show roll on, I’m afraid—you’ve already noticed there are no doors here. And there’s nothing to fear— nothing here can harm you. It’s all entertainment, you see—mere shadows and pictures. Only that.”

“Go to hell,” Don said. “This is some kind of charade she set up.”

“Amy Monckton, you mean? Why, she’s only a child. You can’t imagine—”

But Don was already walking away toward the side of the theater. “It’s no good, dear boy,” Mobley called after him. “You’re going to have to stay with us until it’s over.” Don pressed his hands against the wall, aware that everybody in the room was looking at him. The wall was covered in a pale felt-like material, but beneath the fabric was something cold and hard as iron. He looked up to the winking dots of light. Then he pounded the wall with the flat of his hand—no depression, no hidden door, nothing but a flat sealed surface.

The invisible lights dimmed, as did the imitation stars. Two men took him, one holding an arm, the other a shoulder. They forcibly turned him to face the stage, on which a single spotlight shone. In the middle of the spot stood a placard board. The first placard read:

It was a high-angled shot of Montgomery Street, taken from over the roof of Anna Mostyn’s house. Immediately after he recognized the setting, the characters appeared. He, Sears James and Ricky Hawthorne struggled up the middle of Montgomery Street: he and Ricky looking at the house for as long as they were in frame, Sears looking down as if consciously to give contrast to the shot. There was no sound, and Don could not remember what they had said to each other before marching toward the house. Three faces in fast-cut closeups: their eyebrows crusted with white, they looked like soldiers conducting a mopping-up operation in some Arctic war. Ricky’s tired face was obviously that of a man with a bad cold. He was suffering: it was much clearer to Don now than it had been outside the house.

Then a shot of his reaching in through the broken window. An exterior camera followed the three men into the house, tracking them through the kitchen and into the dark hallway. More unheard conversation; a third camera picked up Don and Ricky climbing the stairs, Ricky pointing to the bloodstain. On Ricky’s civilized face was the expression of pain he had seen. They parted, and the camera left Don just as he pushed at the door to Anna Mostyn’s bedroom.

Don uneasily watched the camera following Ricky up the stairs. A jump-cut to the end of an empty corridor: Ricky seen in silhouette pausing on a landing, then going up to the top floor. Another jump cut: Ricky entering the top floor, trying the first door and entering a room.

Inside the room now: Ricky came through the door with the camera watching him like a hidden assailant. Ricky breathing heavily, looking at the room with open mouth and widening eyes—the room of the nightmare, then, as he had guessed. The camera began to creep toward him. Then it, or the creature it represented, sprang.

Two hands gripped Ricky’s neck, choking him. Ricky fought, pushing at his murderer’s wrists, but was too weak to break his grip. The hands tightened, and Ricky began to die: not cleanly, as on the television programs this “commercial” imitated, but messily, with streaming eyes and bleeding tongue. His back arched helplessly, fluids streamed from his eyes and nose, his face began to turn black.

Peter Barnes said they can make you see things, Don thought, that’s all they’re doing now …

Ricky Hawthorne died in front of him, in color on a twenty-six inch screen.