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During their passage, that tumult of purposeful shadows had left no stain on the hallalls No trace of the burning-electrical-cord smell remained, either

For the third tione

THIRTEEN

BEYOND THE THRESHOLD LAY AN ORDINARY CHAMBER, not infinite in its di no lelooked out through the branches of a lacy ht Nevertheless, I could see well enough to deterht either in the center of this humble space or in any corner

The mysterious power that had transfor er in evidence

Apparently, this served as Fungus Man’s study A bank of four-drawer filing cabinets, an office chair, and a gray rain top were the only furnishings

Side by side on the wall opposite the desk hung three black-and-white, poster-size photographs that appeared to have been printed on a draftsital plotter They were head shots, portraits of leeful sloom

All three were familiar, but I could at first put a name to only the one with the smile: Charles Manson, the vicious manipulator whose fantasies of revolution and race war had exposed a cancer at the core of the flower-power generation and had led to the dee of Aquarius He had carved a swastika on his forehead

Whoever the other two as coination, as ht, iaze This glow relare of ani dead

In part to alter the quality of those eyes, I switched on the overhead light

The dust and disorder that characterized the rest of the house were not in evidence here When he crossed this threshold, Fungus Man left his slovenliness behind and becaon of neatness

The file cabinets proved to contain meticulously kept folders filled with articles clipped from publications and downloaded from the Internet Drawer after drawer contained dossiers on serial killers and land’s Jack the Ripper to Osama bin Laden, for whom Hell had prepared a special suite of fiery rooms Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer Charles Whitman, the sniper who killed sixteen in Austin, Texas, in 1966 John Wayne Gacy: He liked to dress up as a clown at children’s parties, had his picture taken at a po­litical event with First Lady Rosalyn Carter, and buried numerous dis­membered bodies in his backyard and under his house

A particularly thick file had been assembled for Ed Gein, who had been the inspiration for both Norman Bates in Psycho and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the La soup from

a human skull and had fashioned a fancy belt froers of the black room had not daunted me, but here was a known evil, entirely cohtened with dread and my hands trembled, until I slammed shut a file drawer and resolved to open no more of them

Memory freshened by what I’d seen in those folders, I could now put naraphs that flanked Charles Manson

A portrait of Tih had been convicted and executed for the bo in Oklahoma City, where 168 people were killed in 1995

To the left hung Mohammed Atta, who had flown an airliner into one of the World Trade Center towers, killing thousands I had seen no evidence that Fungus Man sympathized with the cause of radical Islah, he apparently admired Atta for the terrorist’s cruel vision, brutal actions, and accomplish­ments in the service of evil

This roo seen enough, too et out of the house I yearned to return to Tire World, breathe the scent of rubber ready for the road, and think about what to do next

Instead, I sat in the office chair I ahtly when I put ht have rested

On the desk were a computer, a printer, a brass lamp, and a day-date calendar Not a speck of dust or lint could be seen on any surface

Fro to understand how it could have become the black rooain

No residual St Eles of the file cabinets No otherworldly presences revealed themselves

For a while, this room had been transformed into… a portal, a doorway between Pico Mundo and soeles or even Bakersfield Perhaps for a while this house had been a train station between our world and Hell, if Hell exists

Or if I had reached the bloody red light at the center of that other­wise perfect darkness, perhaps I would have found alaxy, where bodachs ruled Lacking a board­ing pass, I had instead been flung into the living room and the past, then into the carport and the future

Of course I examined the possibility that what I had seen could have been ht be as crazy as a laboratory rat that has been fed a diet of psychosis-inducing toxins and forced to watch TV "reality" shows that explore in detail the daily lives of washed-up super rock stars

Froht belunatic, however, I am always quick to dismiss any doubts about my sanity

I saw no reason to search the study for a hidden switch that ested that the formi­dable power needed to open that mysterious doorway had been pro­jected not froht be

Most likely Fungus Man was unaware that his sanctuued repository for his ho bodachs to a holiday of blood Withouton one of his grisly files, and not be conscious of the o hordes of demonic entities

From nearby caht to es of a sound

I rose from the chair and listened, alert

Tickless seconds passed A rattle-free half minute

A rat, perhaps, had stirred in the walls or attic, made sick and rest­less by the heat