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"I wonder, too," Carol said Playfully, she slapped Paul’s shoulder "You knohat your trouble is, babe? You don’t have any scientific curiosity Now co DEATH on the board, he hadn’t replenished his supply of letter tiles He drew four of the same box, put them on the rack in front of hiain, teetering over a great abyss

"Well?" Carol asked

Coincidence It had to be just coincidence

"Well?"

He looked up at her

"What have you got?" she asked

Nuirl

She was hunched over the table, as eager as Carol to hear his response, anxious to see if the macabre pattern would continue

Paul lowered his eyes to the row of letters on the wooden rack The as still there Impossible But it was there anyway, possible or not

"Paul?"

He moved so quickly and unexpectedly that Carol and Jane ju them back into the lid of the box He swept the five offensive words off the board before anyone could protest, and he returned those nineteen tiles to the box with all the others

"Paul, for heaven’s sake!"

"We’ll start a new game," he said "Maybe those words didn’t bother you, but they bothered me I’m here to relax If I want to hear about blood and death and killing, I can switch on the news"

Carol said, "What word did you have?"

"I don’t know," he lied "I didn’t ith the letters to see Come on Let’s start all over"

"You did have a word," she said

"No"

"It looked to me like you did," Jane said

"Open up," Carol said

"All right, all right I had a word It was obscene Not soame of Scrabble, with ladies present"

Jane’s eyes sparkled mischievously "Really? Tell us Don’t be stuffy"

"Stuffy? Have you nolady?"

"None!"

"Have you no modesty?"

"Nope"

"Are you just a co rapidly "Common to the core So tell us ord you had"

"Shame, sha their inquiry They started a new game This time all the words were ordinary, and they did not co, related order

Later, in bed, he made love to Carol He wasn’t particularly horny He just wanted to be as close to her as he could get

Afterwards, when the murmured love talk finally faded into a companionable silence, she said, "What was your word?"

"H not to knohat she aotten what it was"

"Nothing i we just did in this bed, surely you don’t think I need to be sheltered!"

"I didn’t have an obscene word" Which was the truth "I didn’t really have any word at all" Which was a lie "It’s just that I thought those first five words on the board were bad for Jane"

"Bad for her?"

"Yes I mean, you told me it’s quite possible she lost one or both of her parents in a fire Shea terrible tragedy in her recent past Tonight she just needed to relax, to laugh a bit How could the game have been fun for her if the words on the board started to reht be dead?"

Carol turned on her side, raised herself up a bit, leaned over hi his chest, and stared into his eyes "is that really the only reason you were so upset?"

"Don’t you think I was right? Did I overreact?"

"Maybe you did Maybe you didn’t It was Creepy" She kissed his nose "You knohy I love you so reat lover?"

"You are, but that’s not why I love you" "Because I have tight buns?"

"Not that"

"Because I keep ive up"

"You’re so da about other people How typical offun for Jane That’s why I love you"

"I thought it was my hazel eyes"

"Nah"

"My classic profile"

"Are you kidding?"

"Or the way my third toe on otten about that Hht That’s why I love you Not because you’re sensitive It’s your toes that driveled to kissing, and the kissing led to passion again She reached her peak only a few seconds before he spurted deep within her, and when they finally parted for the night, he felt pleasantly wrung out

Nevertheless, she was asleep before he was He stared at the dark ceiling of the dark bedrooaht about the word he had hidden froa EATH to the D in BLOOD, he’d been left with just three letter tiles on his rack: X, U, and C The X and the

U had played no part in as to follow But when he had drawn four new letters, they had gone disconcertingly ith the C First he’d picked up an A, then an R And he had knoas going to happen He hadn’t wanted to continue; he’d considered throwing all the tiles back into the box at thatthe word that he knew the last two letters would spell But he hadn’t ended it there He had been too curious to stop when he should have stopped He had drawn a third tile, which had been an 0, and then a fourth, L

CA ROL

BLADE, BLOOD, DEATH, TOMB, KILL, CAROL

Of course, even if he was able to fit it in, he couldn’t put CAROL on the board, for it was a proper name, and the rules didn’t allow the use of proper na was that her name had been spelled out so neatly, so boldly on his rack of letters that it was uncanny He had drawn the letters in their proper order, for God’s sake! What were the odds against that?

It see to happen to Carol Just as Grace Mitowski’s two nightht about the other strange events that had transpired recently: the unnaturally violent lightning strikes at Alfred O’Brian’s office; the ha sound that had shaken the house; the intruder on the rear lawn during the thunderstorether But for Christ’s sake, how?

BLADE, BLOOD

DEATH, TOMB