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Better not, she thought, or you’ll have two bleeding shins

But as she went through the front door, she wondered if a jolt of pain would work a second tin announced NONFICTION SECOND FLOOR An arrow pointed to a staircase on her right

The foyer funneled into a first-floor hallway off which lay two large rooms Both were filled with bookshelves The cha tables with chairs and a large oak desk

The wo flawless complexion, lustrous chestnut hair, clear hazel eyes She looked thirty-five but was probably twelve years older

The nameplate in front Of her said ELOISE GLYNN

Yesterday, when Holly had wanted to come into the library to see if the much-admired Mrs Glynn was there, Jim had insisted that she would be retired, that she had been "quite old" twenty-five years ago, when in fact she obviously had been fresh out of college and starting her first job

By comparison with previous discoveries, this was only a minor surprise

Jim hadn’t wanted Holly to come into the library yesterday, so he’d simply lied And from the look on his face now, it was clear that Elois Glynn’s youth was no surprise to hi the truth, though perhaps he had not understood why he was lying

The librarian did not recognize Jim Either he had been one of those kids who left little i the truth when he’d said he had not been to the library since he’d left for college eighteen years ago

Eloise Glynn had the bouncy irls’ sports coach that Holly reh school "Willott?" she said in answer to Holly’s question "Oh, yes, we’ve got a truckload of Willott" She bounced up froht where he’s at"

She ca briskly, and led Holly and Jie rooo, but two-thirds of his books are still in print" She stopped in front of the young-adult section and esture with one hand to indicate two three-foot shelves of Willott titles "He was a productivetheir heads in sharinned at Holly, and it was infectious Holly grinned back at hi for The Black Windmill"

"That’s one of his most popular titles, never met a kid didn’t love it, Mrs Glynn plucked the book off the shelf al to where it was, handed it to Holly "This for your kid?" "Actually for me I read about it on the plaque over in Tivoli Gardens

"I’ve read the book," Jim said "But she’s curious"

With Jim, Holly returned to the main room and sat at the table f from the desk With the book between the hi hih for hilue she could think of was love She had convinced herself that each small expression of love-each touch, sent that prevented hiingly written But what it revealed about Jian to ski the next startling revelation

The lead character was named Jim, not Ironheart but Jamison Jim Jamison lived on a farm that had a pond and an old wind a number of spooky incidents, Jim discovered that an alien presence, not a spirit, was quartered in a spacecraft under the pond and wasitself in the loithin the mill walls

Communication between Jim and the alien was achieved with the use of two lined, yellow tablets---one for Jim’s questions, and one for the alien’s answers, which appeared as if byof pure energy and was on earth "TO OBSERVE, TO STUDY, TO HELP MANKIND" It referred to itself as THE FRIEND

Marking her place with a finger, Holly flipped through the rest of the book to see if The Friend continued to use the aard tablets for communication all the way to the end It did In the story on which Jim Ironheart had based his fantasy, the alien never vocalized

"Which is why you doubted that your alien could vocalize and why you resistedwith the tablet system"

Jim was beyond denial now He stared at the book onder

His response gave Holly hope for him In the cemetery, he had been in such distress, his eyes so cold and bleak, that she had begun to doubt if, indeed, he could turn his phenomenal power inward to heal hiht that his fragile shell of sanity would crack and spill the yolk of ether, and now his curiosity seeone off to work in the stacks No other patrons had co At the midpoint of the tale, just after Jim Jamison and the alien had their second encounter, the ET explained that it was an entity that lived "IN ALL ASPECTS OF TIME" could perceive the future, and wanted to save the life of a man as fated to die

"I’ll be da, a vision burst in Holly’s mind with such force and brilliance that the library vanished for a moment and her inner world became the only reality: she saw herself naed and nailed to a wall in an obscene parody of a crucifix, blood strea: die, die, die), and she opened her mouth to scream but, instead of sound, swarms of cockroaches poured out between her lips, and she realized she was already dead (die die die), her putrid innards crawling with pests and vermin The hateful phantasm flickered off the screen of her mind as suddenly as it had appeared, and she snapped back into the library with a jolt

"Holly?" Ji at her worriedly

A part of him had sent the vision to her, no question about that

But the Ji at noas not the Jim who had done it The dark child within hi at her with a neeapon

She said, "It’s okay It’s all right"

But she didn’t feel all right The vision had left her nauseous and sole to refocus on The Black Windmill: The man Jim Jamison had to save, The Friend explained, was a candidate for the United States Presidency, soon to pass through Ji to be assassinated The alien wanted him to live, instead, because "HE IS GOING TO BE A GREAT STATESMAN AND PEACEMAKER WHO WILL SAVE THE WORLD FROM A GREAT WAR" Because it had to keep its presence on earth a secret, The Friend wanted to work through Jim Jamison to thwart the assassins: "YOU WILL THROW HIM A LIFE LINE, JIM"

The novel did not include an evil alien The Enemy had been entirely Jie and self hatred, which he had needed to separate from himself and control

With a crackle of inner static, another vision burst across her mindscreen, so intense that it blotted out the real world: she was in a coffin, dead but somehow still in possession of all her senses; she could feel wor in her (die, die, die, die), could s body, could see her rotted face reflected on the inside of the con lid as if it was lit and mirrored

She raised skeletal fists and beat on the lid, heard the blows reverberating into the yards of coain

"Holly, for God’s sake, what’s happening?" "Nothing"

"Holly?" "Nothing," she said, sensing that it would be aher