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I met his stare and didn’t retreat from him I’ve learned that it’s not wise to show fear in these cases
His heavy face indeed had the quality of a fungus, but a meaty vari­ety Very portobello His bloodless lips drew back from teeth that had seen too little of a brush
He reached past ainst the back of my neck
Penny Kallisto’s hand had been dry and warm Robertson’s felt damp, cold This was not his real hand, of course, only part of an ap­parition, a spirit ie, that only I could have felt; but the nature of such a touch reveals the character of the soul
Although I refused to shy froht of the creep playing with the ten souvenirs in his freezer The visual stiht not always satisfy Perhaps he thawed them now and then to increase his tactile pleasure and to conjure a , caressing, planting tender kisses upon thoseperson merely by touch This is our world, not theirs Their blows pass through us, and their bites draw no blood
When he realized that he could not make me cower, Robertson lowered his hand fro his face into a gargoyleIf their charac­ter is sufficiently pernicious, if they give their hearts to evil until nancy, they are able to sue and vent it upon the inanieists I once lost a brand-new music system to such an entity, as well as the handso that I had won in that high-school coed by Little Ozzie
As he had done in the sacristy at St Bart’s, Robertson’s wrathful spirit storh the kitchen, and froy that were visible to ht similar to the concentric ripples that spread across water from the impact point of a stone
Cabinet doors flew open, sla even louder and with lesspoliticians Dishes erupted froh the air with the whoosh of a discus thrown by an Olylass, which exploded into an oven door, spray­ing sparkling shrapnel Other glasses spun wide of eists are all blind fury and thrashing torment, without aim or control They can harm you only by indirection, a lucky blow Even by indirection and chance, however, decapitation can ruin your day
Acco cabinet doors, Robertson flung bolts of power from his hands Two chairs danced in place at the dinette table, tapping on the linoleus
At the cooktop, untouched, four knobs turned Four rings of gas flalooed away from Robertson and toward the door by which I’d entered the house
A drawer shot open, and a cacophony of flatware exploded out of it, glittering and clinking in a levitated frenzy, as if starving ghosts were carving-forking-spooning a dinner as invisible as they were theh Robertson with no effect on his ectoplasht up my arms to shield ­net, pummeled me One fork speared past hto the floor behindto a dark music that only he could hear, Robertson punched-claisted the air, appearing to howl and shout, but thrashing in the utter silence of the idaire sprang open, dis­gorging beer, soft drinks, the plate of hae that splashed and clattered across the floor Ring tabs popped; beer and soda gouted froan to vibrate, violently knocking side to side against the flanking cabinetry Vegetable drawers chattered; wire shelves jangled
Kicking aside rolling cans of beer and scattered flatware, I contin­ued toward the door to the carport
A juggernaut ru death
I dodged to e of beer and a bent spoon
With its grisly freight of frozen body parts still nestled in the freezer drawer, the Frigidaire slid past h to ed outside, into the shadows under the carport, and slammed the door behind me
Inside, the tu
I didn’t expect Robertson’s tortured spirit to follow me, at least not for a while Once coeist will usually thrash out of control until it exhausts itself and wanders off in confusion to drift again in a purgatory zone between this world and the next
FIFTY-ONE
AT THE CONVENIENCE STORE WHERE I PURCHASED THE No-Doz and the Pepsi, I bought another cola, Bactine, and a package of large-patch Band-Aids
The cashier, a man with a face made for astonisheles Ti polite is not only the right way to respond to people but also the easiest Life is so filled with unavoidable conflict that I see no rea­son to promote more confrontations
At that moment, however, I happened to be in a rare badrate, the hour of the gun rap­idly drawing near, and I still had no na on Robertson’s col­laborator
"Do you know you’re bleeding?" he asked
"I had a suspicion"
"That looks nasty"
"My apologies"
"What happened to your forehead?"
"A fork"
"A fork?"
"Yes, sir I wish I’d been eating with a spoon"
"You stabbed yourself with a fork?"
"It flipped"
"Flipped?"
"The fork"
"A flipped fork?"
"It flicked ave ht," I said "A flipped fork flicked my forehead"
He decided not to have any further involveed the itees
In the men’s room at the service station next door, I washed my bloody face, cleaned the wound, treated it with Bactine, and applied a compress of paper towels The punctures and scratches were shallow, and the bleeding soon stopped