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I was tear and froht, but ere past the point of no return We had passed it when Ji was kidnapped and Orson disappeared Friendship required us to venture off the raphers couldn’t have iined when they had inked those words Here there be lasses from an inside jacket pocket and slipped theht bathe ht that it would have stung tears from my eyes

When we moved cautiously into the corridor, I knew beyond doubt that we had stepped into the past, into a time when this facility had not yet been shut down, before it had been stripped of all evidence I saw a grease-pencil scheduling chart on one wall, a bulletin board, and theeled carts holding peculiar instru huht I suspected that it was the sound of the egg room in full operation It seemed to pierce ainst the surface of my brain

Metal doors had appeared on the previously doorless roo hallway, and the nearest of these ide open In the small chamber beyond, tivel chairs were unoccupied in front of a co board that any radio-station engineer uses On one side of this board stood a can of Pepsi and a bag of potato chips, proving that even the architects of dooe now and then

To the right of the stairs, sixty or eighty feet farther along the corridor, threeaway from us, unaware that ere behind them One wore jeans and a white shirt, sleeves rolled up The second was in a dark suit, and the third wore khakis and a white lab coat They alking close together, heads bent, as if conferring, but I couldn’t hear their voices over the pulsing electronic huures that had passed the stairwell in the ht, so blurry and distorted that I had not been able to tell whether they were, in fact, huht appear and, seeing us, raise an alarth of the corridor was deserted

Mungojerrie was still watching the departing trio, apparently unwilling to lead us farther until they had rounded the curve in the long racetrack-shaped corridor or entered one of the roo, from curve to curve, and at least a hundred fifty feet remained ahead of the three erously exposed We needed to retreat until the Mystery Train staffers were gone Besides, I was already nervous about the quantity of light that was haestured toward the stairwell

Her eyes widened

When I followed her gaze, I saw that a door blocked access to the stairs From inside the stairwell, there had been no door; we had seen straight through to the red--and then to the fluorescent-drenched--hallway We had passed directly from there to here without obstruction From this side, however, the barrier existed

I went quickly to the door, yanked it open, and almost crossed the threshold Fortunately, I hesitated when I sensed a wrongness about the darkness beyond

Slidingover the fra up Instead, before ht sky, necklaces of stars, and a pendantout there where the stairs had been, as though this door now opened high above the earth’s at way frohnut shop Or perhaps it opened into a tier existed No floor lay beyond the threshold, nothing but empty space jeweled with ht corridor in which I stood

Sharky

I closed the door I gripped the shotgun fiercely in both hands, not because I expected to use it but because it was real, solid and unyielding, an anchor in this sea of strangeness

Sasha was now immediately behind me

When I turned to face her, I could tell that she had seen the saray eyes were as clear as ever, but they were darker than before

Doogie hadn’t gli the Uzi at the ready and watching the three departing htly at his sides, Roosevelt studied the cat

Froh the doorway, either, but he knew so His face was as sole a cookbook recipe for hare soup

Mungojerrie was the only one of us who didn’t appear to be about to blow out snarled springs like an overwound cuckoo clock

Trying not to dwell on what I’d seen beyond the stairwell door, I wondered how the cat could find Orson and the kids if they were in a present-tiured that if we could pass froht up in the ti place around us, so could my four-footed brother and the children

Anyway, from every indication, we hadn’t actually traveled back in time Rather, the past and present--and perhaps the future--were occurring siether by whatever force or force field the engines of the egg rooht fro into our present tiroo away fro their sweet time

The rhythan to have an odd psychological effect A o overcame me, and the corridor--this entire subterranean floor--seeun was too fierce Unwittingly, I was exerting dangerous pressure on the trigger I hooked uard instead

I had a headache It wasn’t a result of being knocked around by Father To a brain bruise fro toThis required a talent for h I can balance my checkbook, I haven’t inherited eneral sense, I understand the theory of leverage that explains the function of a bottle opener, why gravity , and why running headlong into a brick ill have little effect on the bricks Otherwise, I trust the cos to understand it, which is also pretty muchmachines, and other mechanical devices

The only way to deal with these events was to treat theht accept poltergeist pheno knick-knacks, doors slammed by invisible presences--or the spectral appearance of a ht stroll in a graveyard Thinking tooforce fields and tiic of it, would only make me crazy, hat I desperately needed to be was cool Calm Therefore, this structure was just a haunted house Our best hope of finding our way through its many rooms and back to the safer side of the spook zone was to reive them the power to harm you, unless you feed their substance with your fear This is the classic theory, well known to spirit channelers and ghostbusters all over the world I think I read it in a cohosts were just fifty feet froht, around one arc of the long racetrack corridor

They stopped Stood with their heads together Talking above the throbbing noise that flooded the building

The specter in the jeans and white shirt turned to a door and opened it

Then the other traiths--the one in the suit, the one in the khakis and lab coat--continued toward the end of the hall