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He blinked his eyes once, twice, and suddenly he realized that he wasn’t in the doorway anymore He had walked inside all the way to the foot of the bed without any conscious awareness of the action of the passage of tione

The patient’s head was heavily bandaged and the visible face was just bruised meat, the skin painted black and purple, the lips puffed, the swollen eyes closed There was no trace of drea of the machines Mike had to watch the man’s chest for a full minute to convince himself this person was even alive Only his face, his throat, and his fingers were visible The arm nearest his supporting it off the bed so that the fingers of that hand were inches fro man Mike stared in fascination at the hand The nails were neatlyno calluses or scars; on the back of the hand there were curls of red hair For no good reason he could think of, Mike raised his own hand and held it near to thethe hairs, which were a little darker than his own The width of the palth of the fingers, though, were very si John Sweeney, but he always iined that he and his dad would look alike, and this man’s hand looked like it could be his own in twenty or thirty years Big and strong, despite the injuries The red hair gone darker with age

FUGUE

The face that had looked at him from the bathroom mirror in Crow’s store was an older version of hiaunt skin stretched over sharply etched brow and cheekbones Thin, hard lips in an unse eyes Alien

Mike almost reached out and touched this e compulsion to see what color those eyes were Would they be blue shot with red and ringed with fiery gold? Mike was afraid they would be

He did not know that he was going to touch this man’s hand, would never have deliberately done so, but it was as if so his fingers reached out and curled around the pinky and ring finger of the comatose man

FUGUE

Mike Sweeney, for all intents and purposes, evaporated into mist at the point of contact The room in which he stood, the house around the room, the world around the hospital just melted into a featureless blur, faded to darkness, and then winked out

FUGUE

He was not Mike Sweeney any that was not Mike Sweeney shifted and groaned Tiless If there was air he did not breathe it, or could not feel hiht, then either he was blind or could not process the concept of vision He re sound and turned quickly, freezing at once into shocked i paced around him in a wide, slow circle It was snohite, with just a scattering of brick-red flecks on its haunches and eyes that burned with orange fire The rack was huge, glistening withat him with calm intensity Mike knew that aniht on the road when it had stood between hione off the road and plowed itself deep into the field Mike had wanted to check it out, to see if anyone had been hurt, but this deer--an albino stag--had coht and had stood between hi his way With all that had happened later that night, and all that had happened since, Mike had barely remembered the animal until now, and yet here it was

But where was here?

Mike turned his head and saw that he stood on a gravel driveway leading up to the battered hulk of an abandoned house Above the house the sky was bruise-blue fading to blackness in the distance Lightning burning continuously around hi the air with ozone, but there was no thunder--just the constant strobe-flicker of lightning above and beyond the house It was a house he knew, though when he had seen it the shutters had been freshly painted and secure, not hanging fro like jagged ray on the outside of the each broken pane and ink black inside the les had been shed like scabs fro down to a porch whose boards had all buckled and warped

Aware that the stag atching hi the deadness of the place He looked doet farm road to where a barn had stood, but it was just a charred frame from which the last few tendrils of smoke curled without enthusiasm Beside and beyond the burned-out barn were cornfields whose leaves were pot-holed by insects and whose corn hung fat and pendulous, swollen with disease and rippling with ely, the air around hiht he heard the blend of s of a guitar It ca had stood, and Mike turned quickly back, and his one, antlers, dark spots, footprints, and all

"You the one," said a voice that seemed to come from the middle of the air It was deep, soft, flavored with a Southern accent "You the one we all got to pay close mind to now, you know that?"

Mike didn’t knohere his ht into sound He tried to move but felt himself frozen in place

"Go ahead, son…you can speak" The voice now cahtly stru, so…safe

Just like that, Mike could Cool air rushed into hison?" he blurted

"You drea son You lost in the dreaht the immobility, but when he tried to turn it was easy; all restrictions were gone He turned to see a black ht of wooden stairs that led to the big wooden porch of the old farray and his hair was styled in an old-fashioned Afro, nappy with dirt and rainwater The h his face was kindly his eyes were unblinking and covered with a thin filry and confused "Who are you?"

The ers; on the forefinger of his left hand was a glass slide made from the neck of a whiskey bottle, and he drew this down the neck of the guitar to turn the notes into a wail

"Who are you?" Mike asked again, his tone wavering between demand and plea