The pallid winter sun was near zenith when Jonathan Steele took his first break since resuming his search in the grey light of dawn. He was standing on a huge, sloping rock that lay half-buried in talus at the foot of a sheer cliff. A sluggish, shallow and opaque emerald river took up most of the canyon floor, and scarps on both sides seemed to touch the watery sky.

As he rested his pack against a rock outcropping, Steele's panting breath was a constant white fog that steamed his rimless granny glasses. It was his third day of searching the rugged Sawhenny Gap and, that morning, he realized he was losing his fear. There had still been nightmares, but they hadn't been as bad.

In fact, if there were one overriding feeling, it was surprise that it had been so damned easy to get into the place. He had just walked in. Like he was in one of those damned malls. And surprise that there was nothing in the Gap but rocks, a few bushes leaching out a livelihood from tiny pockets of soil, and the sluggish Little Sawhenny River. A lifetime of hating and fearing the place, all for nothing. Christ, you could bring kids here for picnics.

Don't you ever, ever go into the Sawhenny, Jonathan, or mommy will whip you. Till you bleed, you little bastard.

Yuh never git near th'Gap, boy. She's death t'mess with th'Gap.

But it had turned out to be so easy.

He smiled. How his knees had trembled almost uncontrollably as he'd made his way into the dreaded canyon. He'd almost collapsed from fright in the freezing waters of the Little Sawhenny. Each faltering step had been a victory over terrors of a lifetime.

Steele mopped his heavy lenses with a large red handkerchief he kept in a breast pocket of his camouflaged army jacket with its faded 101st Airborne patch. He took a shallow sip from his canteen. He was on strict self-imposed rationing.

He stretched, easing shoulders chafed by field pack straps. He hadn't dared leave the pack anywhere in the Gap. Scratching his ribs, he looked carefully around the defile. To his right the valley fell gently away till it disappeared around a rock outcropping. Beyond that was a natural tunnel formed by dense brush that lined the river where it went through the narrows that guarded the Gap. Uphill, the canyon stretched away into purple shadows. But he'd been the length of it, all the way to the spring that fed the little river, and there had been nothing out of the ordinary.

A fleeting shadow swept over rocks, sending his heart lurching into his throat. Then he laughed nervously as he spotted the dull brown hawk beginning yet another drifting survey of the canyon floor.

Yep, it had all turned out to be so easy. But the book was a reassuring weight in his backpack, and he wondered if it would have been quite so easy without it. It had not been so easy for Abner Kent, the time he got completely shitfaced on Gannett's Gold and lurched off towards the Gap, yelling he wasn't afraid a' no goddam Sawhenny Sam.

Maybe he really hadn't been afraid, at least not the night he went walking. And the next day, when they found him wandering up near Gannett's Still, you couldn't say whether he was afraid or not. He had lingered around Gilmour's Mill for awhile, babbling about what he called Moon Things and scaring the shit out of the few children the village boasted, not to mention their elders. Then one night he was gone, without a word to anyone. And nobody had seen him since.

Whether Kent had actually gotten into the Gap was anybody's guess and Steele had certainly found no evidence of it. Shrugging out of the pack, he unzipped the khaki canvas flap and gently withdrew his half of the book.

His strength surged at the sight of the ancient yellowed pages and the words written with black ink in massive hand seemed to shimmer on the paper. The book had been bound in heavy red leather but sometime, perhaps centuries before, some unknown ancestor had cut the leather spine vertically, dividing the book in half. The Knowledge was not complete. But Steele was sure he could fill in the missing pieces. What was once done could be done again. Not the same way, but it could be done.

If he could only find that cursed place. He turned the brittle pages carefully, scanning words long since committed to memory, as though the heavy black curlicues might present one critical clue he’d overlooked. Here, in this very place, amongst the rocks and bush, was the beast's prison. And he would not fuck up the way Ebeneezer had. He had just to find the rock vault to begin the process.

Steele sighed with frustration. It was cold, but there were beads of sweat on his forehead and he was beginning to despair. A cave and a cross; the entry for April 23, 1686:

We forced cursed beast to cave, and faste held him there. And we took my brother's bones, and tied them in a crosse, placed crosse by cavemouthe to hold these foul things not of thyse earth. And from thyse day forward and all days, a curse is on thyse wretched place.

Well, so far the curse only appeared to be on thyse wretched Jonathan Steele.

He had been from one end of the brooding Gap to the other, thereby accomplishing something he doubted any other Gilmour's Mill resident since the unfortunate Kent had ever even wet-dreamed of doing, and no less than three times at that. But that was the extent of his accomplishment. So what was it worth? A couple of free boilermakers at Gandy's, at least until the boys tired of hearing his 'bullshit' about adventuring in the Gap.

At last he slid the precious journal back and pulled the pack straps onto his shoulders. There would be enough daylight for one more pass of the Gap from end to end, if he really humped his ruc. Then he would have to give up. Elsie Pearse, his half sister, was in charge of the kennel operation, but she would not keep it up more than a few days, and if the villagers didn't find him around, they'd start taking their damn animals to some other vet. Maybe that turkey Newhouse up Weston way. And that could be bad business in an area where there weren't more than a couple of hundred people.

Perhaps there was nothing to it after all, just a fantasy written three centuries gone by a goddam madman whose brother had been a goddam madder man. Maybe he was wasting his time tramping around in this Christforsaken rockpile. Maybe he should not bother with one more pass. He’d seen it all already, hadn’t he? The thought that he should leave sent icy spiders scuttling across his mind and he looked up sharply, almost expecting to see a moon thing sitting on the rocks, licking it's fleshless lips and gazing at him with — what had Kent said? — huge, luminous red eyes. But there was nothing watching him, and Steele giggled again. Christ. Moon things. Jesus, it was giving him the heebies, for sure.

It was shortly after noon, with the pale winter sun dropping behind scarps, throwing the floor of the Gap into frigid gloom, when Steele stopped again, taking a long drink of water from his canteen, another souvenir of the 101st. He had one more souvenir of 'Nam with him and it was starting to ache. Steele's lower back had never been right since the war, no matter what the goddam shitfuck doctors tried to say; sometimes it got to hurting so bad there was nothing for it but a crock of Gannett's best Gold.

There was only about an inch of water left in the canteen, and running out would end the search. Steele would never fill the flask from the curiously green and shallow Little Sawhenny. Nobody from Gilmour's Mill had ever drunk from the Little Sawhenny. At least, nobody who was still alive.

Yuh get 'way frum thet shitwater, boy! Ain't ya never herd a' Eb's boy what drunk thet shit? Broke out in big sores, ayup, an' his nose fell off. Died with his guts a'hangin out, yep.

Steele slumped against the rocks, again easing his pack onto a shallow outcropping. He had tried for several years to convince the veteran's department that his pain was war related, and that he should be on full disability, but that turd Osgoode and his cohorts kept shooting the application down. As he stood bending and stretching and trying to ease the shooting pain that was nearly bringing tears to his eyes, Steele's black thoughts centered on the goddamned veteran's administration. Somehow his search had to be successful. He had to get Sam. Then he'd see about those bastards. And those village pricks. Laughing behind his back like that. And that incredibly sexy, completely out of reach Matte girl. She'd come, by God, when he had Sam with him. She'd come and lie her pert little ass down on his examining table, and pull up her skirt and haul down her little skivvies... Sam would make everything different. Everything. At last he'd have Puff the fuckin' magic dragon on his side. As the pain eased, Steele dug a dark chocolate bar out of his pocket. The chocolate would make him thirsty but he needed the energy. He'd be finished soon anyhow. Unless he found Sam.

As Steele sucked on the dark chocolate, trying to make the sweetness last as long as possible, a sudden motion caught his eye. A terrified marmot scrabbled in desperation along the upper reaches of a rock fall across the canyon even as a flash of dun brown high in the sky signaled the presence of the hawk. Steele looked up even as the bird tucked into its dive, a silent brown stone of death falling straight out of the murky heavens.

Steele whipped his eyes back to the racing marmot, his hunting instincts thrilling to the chase. Damn. The terrified animal was going to make it to safety under the cover of some heavy bush at the top of the rock fall.

And then the incomprehensible happened. The desperate marmot, safety only a few feet from its nose, skidded to a halt and doubled back, racing away from the sanctuary. It was all that the plummeting hawk needed. An instant later the bird struck with a flat thud; there was a shower of fur and a desperate squeak from the doomed animal. The hawk's bill whipped down once, twice, and then it was lifting off again, the dead marmot clutched in its talons, its shriek of victory echoing off the rock walls.

In that moment, as he contemplated in wonderment the marmot's apparent folly, Steele realized he had found what he was looking for. He raised his field glasses to his eyes and trained them on the brush. He had scanned that entire cliff face on several occasions, but now he saw what should have been obvious before — a weathered cross hidden in the brush. With a sigh of satisfaction, Steele slid the binoculars back into the knapsack, holstered the flask on his hip, and set off to the stream below.

As he splashed across the shallow opaque green water, there was a flash of silver at Steele's feet. How surprising there would be fish in this creek. He put it out of his mind and clambered up through the dense bush on the opposite bank towards the ancient rock fall that led up to patch of brush shown him by the hapless marmot. Well, in Alice in Wonderland the white rabbit showed Alice the way to the underworld. This was certainly no crazier.

As he reached the base of the rock fall Steele noticed a large flat rock off to one side of the fall and nearly hidden by dense brush. Here at the edge of the fall was a near vertical cliff face leading up to a ledge about 15 feet above. Steele's course would take him up the rock fall to the ledge and along the ledge to whatever the brush up there concealed. Even this close to what he was convinced would be the end of his search, Steele paused.

He had to know it all.

Parting the bushes, Steele found the surface of the rock still bore an ancient pentagram with runes at its apexes, carved deeply into the stone. The lines still showed rusty colour here and there and Steele repressed a shudder. This would be no time for a faint heart. The rock provided the final proof that he was on the right track. The journal had been jumbled, and probably deliberately misleading, leaving him searching for years through the surrounding hills, before he had finally decided his objective was actually in the Sawhenny Gap. Or before he got frustrated enough to entertain the horrid thought.

Now he was at last looking at the proof of his treasured journal. Endless nights sitting alone at his old oak roll top, pouring over the pages until his vision blurred, had at long last paid off.

It almost seemed anticlimactic to Steele that his search of so many years should end in a climb of less than a minute. But when at last he gained the ledge he knew his quest was at an end. Wonderingly, he stretched out a trembling hand and touched the weathered cross. The heat and cold of three hundred years had bleached it to the same colour as the bush in which it stood, providing a natural camouflage that had defeated Steele's earlier sweeps with his binoculars. Now that he could take a close look, Steele felt his pulse jump.

For the cross was in fact constructed of two massive old bones, the shaft obviously a human thigh bone and the crosspiece, secured to the shaft with a strip of mummified rawhide, was evidently a collar bone.

But from what sort of man!

Steele had taken enough anatomy in veterinary school to know that the man who had provided the bones — if it had been a man at all — must have stood close to seven feet tall and three feet across at the shoulders. An immense, gargantuan apparition with none of the rail-like thinness that seems to mark so many truly tall men.

"Jesus, 'Cage Bend," Steele muttered, making the obvious connection as his eyes went despite himself to the opaque water.

There was a sudden chill and Steele looked up in time to see black clouds scudding across the sky. He shuddered and drew his army jacket tighter around his body. He tentatively touched the ancient bone cross, then jerked his hand away as though burned. In the electric stillness he could feel hair rising on the back of his neck, and yet nothing happened.

The Gap was silent save for a faint scream from another hawk. Steele looked up to see a heavy mist roiling down through the gap and felt his skin crawling. This was just another winter storm. He hadn’t come all this way to just to quit at the very gates of success.

Steele forcefully grasped the heavy bone that formed the shaft.

And something slimy seemed to slither through his mind.

With a choked cry of "shit" he wrenched the cross from the pile of rocks and threw it behind him off the ledge.

As he threw the macabre object rotted rawhide readily gave way, allowing the bones to fall separately. The large thigh bone tumbled through the crisp mountain air, landing end-on the flat slab rock far below. The impact split it diagonally up the shaft. Several dried shards flew off and the main remaining shaft, now resembling a spear, came to rest in dense brush at the side of the flat rock, its jagged, needle-sharp point aimed skyward.

Upon that instant a lightning bolt lanced down from the sky, hissing through the suddenly misty air with a slicing smell of ozone and slamming into a dead tree down the Gap with a crack like a rifle shot.

Steele fell to his knees, terrified, screaming "No! No!"

"I didn't mean it!" he shrieked, his screams echoing off the rock walls all around him. "Stop! For Christ's sake!"

Then there the clouds vanished as though they had never been and Jonathan Steele was kneeling in front of a few bushes, his hands clasped imploringly over his head. Minutes passed as Steele knelt in supplication, sweat pouring in cold, salty rivers down the lean, cavernous planes of his face. At last his heart rate became normal and he became conscious of dampness inside his jacket..

With sudden resolve, Steele parted the bushes in front, halfway expecting to come face to face with a sheer rock wall. There was a gust of earthy fetor which swirled out and around his head, bringing the taste of half-digested chocolate into his throat, and he found himself looking into a cave.

It could not really be there.

Deep down, where it counted, he had never really believed in it. It had just been a sort of fantasy, a mental movie with himself as avenging hero, sending horror to haunt the wretched shitheads who had tormented him, ravishing the little Matte bitch on his cold steel examining. And yet here it was, dark and hot, with the reek of ages dead about it, a fairy tale cave from a book of long-dead nightmares.

Steele dropped his pack and fumbled in it for his flashlight and something else. Keeping his eyes on the fetid blackness of the cave that was like an orifice of a giant primordial monster, Steele's shaking hands removed a small flask and a scalpel wrapped in a piece of chamois. The scalpel and flask had nestled in the bottom of his pack for nearly five years as he scoured the Sawhenny Hills, waiting for this moment. There had been many times when he had been convinced he would never be unwrapping the shining steel for his own ritual. This was nothing from the book. But although it was improvised, it was the most critical part of all.

Holding the stoppered flask up to the light, Steele was gratified to see the solution was still clear. Turbidity would be a bad sign. What was to come, if the creature were really there, was an opportunity no man would get twice in a lifetime. Slipping the flask into his breast pocket and grasping the scalpel, Steele used the flashlight to push through the bushes and into the darkness of the cave.

Oh Christ, the smell!

It was like nothing that Jonathan Steele or any other living human had ever known. It seemed to be everywhere at once, in his nose, and mouth and stomach like the devil's musty wine and his mind felt alive with snakes. There, near the end of the cave, was a giant black mound. And was it moving just a tiny bit? Steele's hair was standing on end and he thought he was going to piss his pants.

Taking a deep breath of the rancid air, Steele thumbed the flashlight on, sending a beam of white light probing the dank recesses. And dropped it when the beam picked out the form of an immense dog-like thing, fully three times the size of the biggest goddam St. Bernard ever known!

Dire wolf!

The name slipped through his mind even as the flashlight crashed to the floor of the cave, popping out the lens and knocking the end cap off and plunging the cave into fetid darkness. Steele was at once on his knees, fumbling in the darkness for the flashlight, whimpering in terror.

Oh Jesus, he had seen it!

It was real, a horror from legend, real all this time, real and waiting!

Fumbling, gasping, whining with fear, Steele gathered up batteries, the case, the lens, the cap.

God, can yuh hear it wake, boy?

Were yuh told t'stay outen the Sawhenny?

Desperately, feeling his fingers tangle as though they had terrified minds of their own, he fumbled the light back together and again the beam picked out the mammoth creature. It lay as though dead in the cold white light beam, its massive wrinkled brow overhanging glazed yellow eyes with reptilian pupils that stared straight ahead and sent Steele's heart crashing back into his boots.

"Nice Sam," Steele choked out, his voice sounding ridiculous and tinny in the dank confines of rock. "Good old boy." Then he giggled helplessly. The monster showed no signs that the sound had disturbed its three-hundred year slumber.

Backing away, Jonathan Steele picked up a tiny pebble. Sweat beaded under his sandy hairline and began to course down his stubbled cheeks. His hand trembled so badly he nearly dropped the stone. Lordy, how crazy could he fucking be? Why didn't he scramble out of this cursed place, slide down the rocks on his ass and flounder down the Little Sawhenny to safety? And never, never tell anyone in that goddam village about any of this. Ever, ever.

That goddam village.

Those cursed shitfucks.

Steele whined deep in his throat, shuffling his feet as his terrified body sought to flee. If he took one step backwards, that would be it. He'd run, screaming and sobbing, all the way down the mountain to the village and the safety of his kennels. He pitched the rock underhand. There was a tiny thump and a puff of dust as it bounced off the rank fur on the animal's rib cage, but the beast didn't move.

As he forced himself to approach, Steele saw that the animal did not seem to be breathing at all, and yet the journal had told him the forces that propelled the animal in life held it prisoner now in eternal limbo. Fighting a constant battle with terror, Steele hunkered closer and closer to the massive flank of the beast. Soon the black forces that held it so would fade away and the hellish creature would be no more. But like a phoenix it could rise. If the right man were there to do what had to be done.

A man with the right stuff.

The 101st stuff.

And now Steele's moment of truth had arrived. Crouching by the side of the animal, his heart threatening to burst out of his jacket as he watched the glassy yellow eyes for the first hint of life, Steele reached out with his scalpel and poked the rancid fur aside.

For just a moment he shut his eyes tight, bracing himself, then in a flurry of motion laid the flashlight on the cave floor, slipped the flask from his pocket and drew the stopper with his teeth, then reached out and sliced a piece of flesh from the animal's flank, slipping the bloody fragment into the flask and dropping the scalpel even as he pushed the stopper back into place, grabbed the flashlight again and hurtled backwards towards the cave entrance. At the gateway to safety, Steele, unable not to watch, turned the light back on the animal.

As Steele crouched in the mouth of the cave, the beginnings of a look of triumph on his face, the dog suddenly heaved a massive sigh, twitched once, and was still again. Moments later the rancid fur began to ripple and heave, the motion quickly becoming so violent that the beast seemed to be rolling around on the cave floor.

In seconds the fur was shedding away, rotting flesh was peeling off whitening bones, a rancid pool of foul liquor was forming under the heaving carcase. Jonathan Steele, suppressing a cry of horror at what his incredulous eyes told him was happening, stumbled backwards out of the cave, barely managing to avoid a fall down the rock face.

In his haste to get away from the Gap with his precious relic, Steele did not look at the flat rock. He did not see that the heavy shard of bone from the cross had come to rest in the brambles by the rock, the thorny branches supporting it with its needle-sharp point aimed skywards.

And if the desperately fleeing veterinary had noticed, he would not have cared.

It was just past noon on a hot late spring day when Davey Fairchilde first set eyes on Gilmour's Mill.

And of course, Henry Fairchilde being Henry Fairchilde, the three of them had to bail out at the top of a rolling Vermont hill outside the tiny village, ogle the quiescent country scene, and breathe the clear country air.

The village nestled in a long valley between low, pine-forested mountains whose lower slopes were cloaked in Oak and Maple. The Mill, as its few dozen residents called it, was a collection of picture postcard houses and rustic stores set in a patchwork of verdant fields and shaded by massive elm and oak trees that sprang from every yard and vacant lot. The valley was dotted by farm buildings, each surrounded by trees and bushes, like oases in the middle of a lush green desert and patchwork fields were divided off by miles of hedges. The buildings of the village proper, like those of all old New England towns, clustered around a village common that featured the statue of some long-forgotten revolutionary hero and the obligatory cannon with its lead-sealed barrel. At the far end of the tiny settlement a church spire poked heavenwards, its 50-foot peak undoubtedly a landmark for miles around.

Davey, wandering a short distance away from Henry and Vicki, felt his spirits drop by the minute. This was definitely rural hayseedism on an unprecedented scale. The last hour of the drive in had been an endless montage of colorful little farms interspersed with long stretches of absolutely nothing, unless you counted cows and the occasional horse. What this wasn't was teen mecca.

And for a 14-year-old dungeon master, one of the best half dozen or so in Boston, it spelled a hellish long summer.

"Looks like a great old place for a summer, huh?" Henry said heartily, clapping a companionable hand on his foster son's shoulder, "Probably a lot of kids down there just your age."

Good Lord. If there were they'd probably be square dancers who just lived for the Saturday night hootenany and church social.

"Yeah, it looks great," Davey said. Great old place. Hay pitchin' and roof raisin'. Boy howdy, just can't wait. The whole thing was just unbelievable. He and Ferdie had been going to work on a new super dungeon with Filmore Newelly himself all summer. An inaugural trial game in the fall at The Guilded Scroll, which would undoubtedly have established him as the top dungeon master in all Massachusetts.

And then disaster. An announcement from Henry, with Davey's mother smiling delightedly on, that they would be summering in something called Gilmour's Mill, Vermont, while Henry put the finishing touches to his work on early Indian settlements. And within a month, here he was, ages away from the D&D action in Boston, standing on a rolling hillside overlooking something from a Norman Rockwell painting and contemplating a summer of joyous hay rides and barn dances. Meanwhile Ferdie George Hawly would be working with Filmore on the new dungeon, preparing for the glory to come. Ferdie's glory, that was.

And Newelly himself. That was a puzzler. The portly little book dealer had not seemed upset with the summer trip idea until Davey had told him he'd be summering in Vermont at Gilmour's Mill, wherever in hell that might be. Filmore Newelly had actually reeled backwards, falling into the old vinyl covered easy chair in the store's reading nook, his face pasty and sweating.

A second hand, light and cool, landed on Davey's other shoulder and he caught the delicate scent of his mother's sandalwood perfume.

"It'll be fine, Davey," she said. "They can't all be hayseeds."

"Oh, hell," Henry scoffed heartily, turning back to the old Valiant, "these kids will be just like any other kids. So we'll just have one hell of a summer. I'll get the book done, and Vicki, you can generate a great course outline for fall term so old Bamstable will be pleased and make you a department head, at least, and Davey, you can learn a little country living and get some of that city soot out of your system."

A fat lot Henry would know about country living. As far as Davey knew, the only country Henry Fairchilde, PhD, had ever seen was Christ knew how many feet into the dirt in search of bits of pottery and chipped flint. And now, dear God, he was to spend four months in the rolling Vermont hills while his foster father wrote the archaeological work that would make him a household name, at least if the household were full of dirt freaks, and his mother would write endless and useless bits of poetry with which to inflict students in her high school creative English classes.

As Davey climbed back into the rear seat of the Valiant he surreptitiously brushed potato chip crumbs off the cushions. Henry didn't mind, but Vicki was a cleanliness fanatic who only noticed debris on chairs or tables. For just a moment he thought of the chips as his last link with humanity, or life in the twenty-first century as he knew it. Down below, there would be no chips. And no video arcades. And no girls who weren't barefooted with cowflap stuck between their toes.

Something of his feelings must have shown because Vicki was frowning at him from the front seat.

"Davey," she said in her impending-storm voice, "this is going to do us all some good, you'll see."

"Sure, Mom."

"A few months away from that disgusting game..."

"It's just a game, Mom."

"It's not just a game. It's simulated Satanism. It's nasty. And so is that damned old man."

"Filmore isn't old."

"OK, c'mon, you two," Henry said jocularly, "let's not start another world war just when we're getting to our new home. Vicki, Davey's right, it's just a game. But it won't hurt to be away from it for a couple of months or so, will it, Davey?"

"No, I guess not."

The hell it wouldn't. Probably all his ideas for Archon's Maze on the fourth level would get stolen and incorporated. Well, not exactly stolen, just borrowed without attribution by Ferdie. Davey stared in morose paranoia out the open car window.

Henry's taking his side in the D&D issue was no great help. Henry was always taking his side when it was too late to do anything but what Vicki had wanted to do in the first place. It was a sort of ingratiating habit; cheap points in his campaign to be accepted by his foster son. Davey wished again his own father were behind the wheel. God, if it were Red Rudy they'd be turn about and out of here like right now.

He could just see Rudy's eyes narrow in disgust as he took in the country tranquillity below and hear him saying "Okay, troops, we came, we saw and now we're getting the hell out of here."

That's what Red Rudy would do. But Henry the Grey shoved the car into gear and it was anything but turnabout; moments later they found themselves bouncing down a steep hill on a rutted gravel and dirt road, dust swirling in a long plume behind.

"Jesus," Henry muttered, straining at the wheel, "we'd better slow down, this sucker is treacherous."

Henry pumped the brake pedal, producing a fishtailing motion on the gravel. For a moment Davey felt his stomach rise in weightlessness as the car crested a minor peak on the downward run and pitched forward at an even greater angle.

"Christ, slow down, Henry old man, slow down," Henry muttered needlessly, coming down even harder on the brakes.

The huge green gravel truck was upon them before any of them had the slightest inkling they were not alone on the road. An air horn blasted, sounding like a siren from hell right inside the Valiant, there was flash of green and yellow, a glimpse of huge churning tires beside their windows, and it was past them, roaring and clanking and engulfing them in choking dust.

An instant later there was a sharp snap that nearly made Henry lose control of the car and a spider-web of cracks suddenly appeared in the windshield midway between Henry and Vicki. "Jesus Christ!" from Henry.

"Migod, Henry, look out!" from Vicki.

"Hey, Henry, wasn't that the place back there?" from Davey.

The Valiant skidded to a halt in a shower of gravel and dust settled on them in a stifling lake of swirling brown particles. Vicki sneezed violently. Davey coughed and took a sip of tepid, flat Coke purchased an hour before in downtown Weston.

"Christ!" Henry exploded, hammering his hands on the wheel.

"Migod, Henry, we should tell the police about that, that fool!" Vicki said.

"What did you say, Davey?" Henry asked, succumbing to a fit of coughing.

"Just when the truck passed us, there was a mailbox that said Thurlow, I think," Davey said, his heart still racing from the close encounter.

"We better wait till this dust settles, we apparently aren't alone on this road," Henry said, easing the Valiant onto the road shoulder.

"We should at least write to that trucking company and tell them about that driver, Henry," Vicki said, still snuffling from the dust, "Did you see who it was?"

"Said something like Pearse Brothers Trucking or something," Henry said, beginning to back the car as the dust cleared.

"Yeah, Pearse Brothers," Davey said, adding needlessly "from Gilmour's Mill."

"I wouldn't mind sticking half a cubic yard up that son of a bitch's ass," Henry muttered, bringing a shocked look from Vicki. "Henry," she said reprovingly. Sticking gravel up someone's ass and worse was apparently only okay in poetry.

"Well, that's the way I feel."

There wasn't much chance of the truck driver finishing up with gravel up his personal pipes. Henry was probably the most non-violent person Davey had ever known. As the choking dust settled, adding yet another layer to the blanket that shrouded trees, bushes and rank weeds for at least 12 feet on either side of the road, Henry backed the car along the shoulder. In the stillness of the summer afternoon, broken only by the crunch of their own tires, they could hear a legion of birds in the trees and the droning of insects in the heavy vegetation that lined the roadway.

About 50 feet back a battered mailbox sat askew on a weathered log that had been coated with creosote and sunk upright into the earth. Strips of tattered reflector tape ran along each side and badly faded black lettering announced to an uncaring world that this was the postal residence of W. Thurlow. "Right," Henry said, getting out to open a gate that closed off a narrow drive that disappeared in trees, "It's got to be in there, somewhere."

In there somewhere. That about summed up the entire expedition for Davey. Somewhere in this virgin forest that probably housed the last Mohican, was a shack that belonged to Willi Thurlow, who was now too old for rusticana. Or finally too smart.

They crunched and jostled up the narrow drive, bushes scraping at the car, filling the interior with pollen and leafy debris. Vicki fairly exploded with sneezes.

The cottage came as a pleasant surprise. Nestled in a heavy stand of sugar maples at the far side of a spacious lawn, it presented a sort of alpine simplicity that appealed to Henry, loudly, to Vicki a little less loudly, and even to Davey who voiced quiet approval.

"Did I hear right? That city boy doesn't mind the country now?" Henry said heartily, carefully mounting the porch to test the boards. They were firm under his feet, freshly painted and solidly nailed down. It seemed old Willi hadn't led them astray after all. "Not bad, right? Right?" Henry called out, tramping up and down the porch. "Really not bad."

"It's nice, isn't it, Davey?" Vicki snuffled, gently taking her son's hand.

"Right, Mom, nice," Davey replied, offering her his flat Coke and trying to force some enthusiasm into his voice.

"Oh, Davey, I know you don't feel at all at home here, but you like Henry, don't you? And it means so much to him."

"Yeah, I like Henry okay," Davey said, disengaging his hand and moving closer to the cabin. "It'll be okay, I guess."

He didn't see the brief look of disappointment on his mother's face as his attention was caught by a note tacked to the cabin door. Jumping onto the porch he peered at the scrawled message.

"Keys are with the Croupiers on the next farm down. Sorry my friends couldn't meet you. Have a good time, Willi."

"We can't get in, Henry," Davey called.

Henry, blue baseball cap shoved back off his forehead, examined the message. He wiped at horn rim glasses that made him look like Clark Kent and mopped at sweat trickling down the side of his face. Two days' growth of whiskers rasped under his hand.

"Well, I suppose even Thurlow, trusting soul that he is, wouldn't leave things completely open," he said at last.

"Are we going over there?" Davey asked. Henry glanced at his heavy duty shockproof Timex wristwatch which he was fond of remarking could go on a dig to hell with him and keep on ticking.

"Hell, we've been waiting for this for months, a few more minutes won't hurt," he said finally, adding "let's have our lunch here, sort of a picnic, then go and get the damn keys, okay?"

Stiff and sore and covered with dust and Henry wanted lunch. Davey sighed heavily and went to help his mother dig the styrofoam cooler and blankets out of the Valiant and set up on the grass in the shade of the single huge Oak that grew nearly in the exact center of the front yard.

Whoever Croupier was, he evidently had been well-picked for the caretaker job. At least the front yard caretaker job. The lawn, which was about 60 feet wide and 100 deep, was carefully mowed and clipped. A narrow strip of grass running down the far side of the dirt driveway was just as carefully manicured. Down the right side of the cottage was a small tool shed. The back field was an untended jungle of timothy grass, thistles and weeds.

During lunch it was the stillness of the place that got to Davey. There was hardly a sound save the gentle breeze in sugar maple and oak trees, the chirpings and rustlings of small animals and birds, and the drone of insects.

They were halfway finished the cold roast beef sandwiches and potato salad when, far away in the rolling mountains, came faint rumblings that sounded like a distant battle. Glad of an excuse to do something, Davey wandered down to a point from which he could see, over the house, the low mountain range. Roiling black thunder clouds hung over a gap between two mountains. In fact, it was more a slash than a gap, as though some immense primordial knife had been laid across the range, ripping a jagged wound of bare rock through heavily-forested slopes. Lightning lanced down nearly continuously.

"That's one hell of a violent storm," Henry said, coming up beside him. "We better hope it doesn't move this way."

"It won't," Davey said.

Henry glanced sharply at his foster son. "Why do you say that?" he asked. "I mean, how can you tell?"

The question baffled Davey. How could he tell? The answer had just sprung to his lips, as though it were something he had known all his life.

"I, I don't know," he faltered, bafflement making him stammer, "I just don't think it will come down here, is all."

"Well, I hope you're right, but this isn't some dungeon you're making up. This is the real thing. Real country."

Point for Henry. Real country, not a D&D game. The real, honest to God, 100 percent thing.

The storm seemed to abate as suddenly as it had begun, clouds dissipating into thin, the blue vault of sky now stretching unbroken over the hills. In the trees around the cabin birds began singing again. That was strange. Had the birds actually stopped while the storm was going on? It seemed to Davey they had, but he couldn't be sure since he hadn't really been concentrating on them. This was something no doubt any country boy could tell him. Did birds stop singing when there was a storm on? And who cared?

He around to see Henry coming back, clutching a packet of instant film. This figured.

"Whaddaya say we get a shot of our first afternoon in Gilmour's Mill, Davey? You can keep the rest of the film for whatever," Henry said.

What Davey really wanted was a bath and a nice rest, but if Henry wanted pictures he supposed they'd be taking pictures. Henry was like that. Nothing forceful, ever, just plodding old Henry, but somehow things had a way of working out the way Henry wanted. Davey took the film and walked over to the Valiant to retrieve his old knapsack. From a side pocket of the sack he dug out his trusty Kodak Colorburst.

Henry stood in front of the massive Oak trunk and drew Davey's mother to him and the pair smiled into the lens. Cheese. The picture emerged with a rasping buzz and Davey laid it out on the blanket to develop.

"OK, my turn," Vicki said brightly, springing up with one fluid movement and taking the camera from Davey. "Honey, stand over there with Henry," she instructed, giving Davey a little push in the right direction, "and say cheese or something."

Compliant, Davey stood beside his stepfather. There was an awkward moment when Henry almost put his arm around Davey's shoulders, then he withdrew it and stood stiffly smiling at the camera. For an instant Davey wished he would have followed through and nearly said so, then the two of them said "cheese" instead as Vicki hit the shutter. The two were momentarily blinded by the flash. As their vision cleared, they saw Vicki lowering the camera and eyeing the tree uncertainly.

"What's the matter, hon?" Henry asked, looking around and seeing only the tree.

"I, I don't know," Vicki said, "I just have, ah, oh, I don't know, I just have feelings, I guess, about that tree."

"This tree?" Henry asked incredulously,"This here honest-to-God planted by the revolutionary army Oak tree? This beautiful piece of rural America?"

"Yeah," Davey chimed in, laughing in spite of himself, "this tree?"

"Well, I don't know," Vicki said a little crossly. "It just seemed for a moment when I looked at it through the, ah, viewfinder thing it looked different, that's all."

"This another of your predictions?" Henry said.

"My predictions come true. Some of the time," Vicki answered flatly.

It was true. Davey's mother had on occasion proven herself able to predict the future, or at least, the involvement of certain objects in the future. She had also been spectacularly wrong on many other occasions.

"OK, so what's the prediction?" Henry asked, walking over to his wife and taking the picture from her unresisting hand. "Not bad, but Davey's eyes were slightly closed, like blinking again," he added.

"No prediction," Vicki sighed, handing the camera back to Davey, "I just got a funny feeling when I was looking at the tree, that's all. Just a funny feeling."

"Yeah?" Davey said, interested, "like what sort of feeling, Mom?"

"I can't explain it, really," Vicki frowned, never taking her eyes off the tree, "It was just a feeling that, well, that I sort of wished the tree wasn't there, you know?"

"Wasn't there?" Henry said incredulously, "you can't be serious. That's a bloody beautiful tree."

"I know it is," Vicki sighed, adding "I got the same feeling in the car when that truck went by us."

"That's not surprising," Henry laughed, winking at Davey. "I wished the truck were somewhere else, too."

"No, it wasn't that," Vicki said. "Just when I was sitting there looking at those huge wheels rolling along right beside us. I... I thought of some little helpless animal caught under them, and, oh, ugh!" She shuddered.

"God, and you say dungeons and dragons is bloodthirsty," Davey said.

"Come on," Vicki said, changing the topic, "let's finish up. There's some canned peaches we can have for desert."

"Just wait till the summer gets on a bit, there'll be a lot of fresh stuff we can buy up for a song, I'll bet," Henry said enthusiastically.

But probably no cheeseburgers, fresh or otherwise. Davey wandered grimly back to the picnic blanket, casting a backward glance at the tree. He took his mother's predictions more seriously than did Henry because he tended to remember the ones that had been accurate rather than the majority which had been wrong. Red Rudy had taken them seriously, too. Including the one he told Davey she’d given him the first night he and Vicki had been together. The one that they'd go their separate ways.

After lunch came the usual. As Davey gathered the remains of the foot and packed it back in the cooler, he saw his mother bending over Henry, who was lying on his back with his head in her lap, and looking at him in her particular way. And Davey certainly knew what that meant. Sure enough, a few moments later, Henry clambered to his feet and made a major production of stretching his back muscles. Then he touched his toes a couple of times and took a few deep breaths.

"Well, I guess a little walk in the woods would help the old digestion," he said, "Why don't you check out the yard, Davey, while your mother and I sort of stretch our muscles?"

Uh huh. Muscle stretching. Oh yeah. Davey tossed the cooler into the car, watching Henry’s hand come to rest comfortably on Vicki’s beautifully-rounded buttocks when he thought they were out of sight.

Vicki giggled and playfully knock the hand away, saying "Henry, don't. Davey'll see."

Jesus. His stepfather wasn't such a bad guy, but did the pair of them have to treat him like a goddam baby?

Davey wandered off in the opposite direction, not wanting to risk blundering into his mother making love. When he got close to the tool shed it was evident that Croupier, whoever he was, brought his own lawn mower and clippers. The shed was unlocked, but heavy bushes blocked the door, suggesting nobody had entered in a long time. At last, just when he was despairing of ever finding excitement and life in the fast track, here it was. Something to do. It was hot, sweaty work, but eventually, by repeatedly jerking on the door, he was able to make enough of an opening to squeeze through.

The shed was dry , dusty and dingy. What light there was came from a single window at the far end, opaque with crusted dirt and heavily spider-webbed. The dust disturbed by his passage made Davey sneeze, sending swirling motes dancing in the shaft of daylight. Along one side of the shed ran a scarred, oil-marked workbench that smelled faintly of oil and metal. A stack of old magazines decorated the far end of the bench and Davey picked his way towards them over empty paint cans, a rusted out lawnmower and several boxes of what looked like motor parts. They turned out to be Playboy magazines, mostly from 1959. These could be worth something if he took them back to Boston. They also showed, along with a pinup calendar from "Abe's Service" dated 1959, how long it had been since the tool shed had seen use.

Moving over to the window, Davey found the spider webs covered with dust and bearing several ancient kills, mummified with age and hanging from heavy strands. The gentle breeze from the door had set the insect husks swinging like an obscene set of wind chimes. Davey shuddered. The occupant of the mammoth web was long gone, presumably to fatter hunting grounds somewhere else, and a damn good thing at that. The web, looking strong enough to catch small birds, was the biggest Davey had ever seen. Surely there were no spiders in Vermont big enough to have built this. Davey tentatively plucked a supporting line; in his fancy it gave an audible twang like the web in The Incredible Shrinking Man.

The absence of fresh webbing reinforced Davey's conviction that nobody had so much as opened the tool shed door to let in fresh prey in a long, long time. There was little in here of interest, save the Playboy magazines, and he'd be willing to bet he had just seen the sole bit of excitement on the whole property. Near the door, he found a short split bamboo fishing rod and small reel. There was no fishing tackle in evidence, but there was green cord line still on the rod. A quick tug showed him the line had deteriorated into uselessness; a goddam minnow would snap it.

Outside in the sunshine again, he checked out the back and found, as he’d suspected, there was nothing much to see. The field was bounded on all sides by heavy bushes and trees. There was a small back porch on the house, with a single naked light bulb overhead. The overgrown field ran right up to the porch steps, and they didn't look as well tended as the front stairs. Maybe old Thurlow had not paid the caretaker to do the back.

A rabbit flashed across rank grass in a blur of brown fur and vanished near a line of brush marking the far boundary. Where the animal had disappeared, Davey found a dry drainage ditch choked with dead grass and covered by overhanging bush. Interesting. The bottom was nearly filled with layers of dead leaves from summers past. It probably meant the field was a soggy mess in wintertime. Old Thurlow, who had just used the cabin in the summer, would never have known that, probably. Or cared.

He wandered back to the front in time to see the green gravel truck with the yellow hand-lettered "Pearse Bros. Trucking" legend barreling past in the opposite direction from the way it had been traveling when it trashed the Valiant window. It was making a lot more noise so it was probably empty. It disappeared in the direction of the hill, leaving a roiling dust cloud that billowed out over brush on the roadside. The clashing of the heavy truck was just fading and dust was still swirling when Henry and Vicki got back from their 'walk' in the woods. Vicki looked radiant and Henry looked smug.

As they got back into the Valiant, Davey wondered again what this trip would have been like with Red Rudy. He didn't know as much about his real father as he would have liked, the divorce came when he was only a child and, since then, Red Rudy had been just a voice on the telephone and odd visits that got fewer and further between as years went on.

With a surreptitious glance to make sure Henry wasn't looking, because this sort of thing seemed to bother him, Davey took a picture of Rudy out of his wallet. The photo had been taken several years before with Davey's camera on the day Rudy presented him with it. Davey could still recall how Rudy's face crinkled with amusement as he asked a fellow fisherman on the Chesapeake Bay wharf to take the shot for them. In the picture Rudy had his arm around Davey's shoulders and the two of them were squinting against the sun. It had been one of the very few times Davey had gotten to spend an entire afternoon with this father, and ever since then he had wanted to go fishing again, something that was not high on Henry Fairchilde's itinerary.

Oh well, he got along well enough with Horny Henry, and for that he supposed he should be grateful.

It took them only a few minutes to drive down the road to the next property along, a small, well-kept farm with a mailbox reading "Croupier" by its whitewashed gate. The gate had been left open, so Henry drove up a dry gravel driveway to park in front of a wide verandah that ran the length of the house.

Stilling the engine, Henry climbed out and doubtfully surveyed the carefully-tended farmhouse. It looked deserted. From somewhere in back they could hear the clucking of chickens. Walking up to the front door, Henry knocked heavily. There were echoes inside the farmhouse, but nobody came to the door.

"Damn," Henry muttered, stepping back. "Now what?"

"She's around back," Davey said.

"Davey," Vicki said, "how do you know that?"

"Yeah," Henry chimed in, "how do you know?"

Again, Davey was as puzzled as the adults. How did he know? He couldn’t come up with an answer. He just knew there was a woman around back.

He shrugged his thin shoulders and said unconvincingly "It just figures, I guess."

The trio, Henry in the lead, tramped around the side of the farmhouse. Halfway along, he took a nimble hop to one side, calling "watch out for the doggy-dip."

Davey, almost on Henry's heels, nearly landed in the massive scat and Vicki collided with him when he slammed on the brakes.

"There's an archaeological find," Henry called back, "A doo-doo-ologist might figure there's a damn big dog around here somewhere."

"Henry," Vicki said reprovingly, "don't be scatological."

"What about 'City Whispers'?"

"Come on, Henry, that was a poem."

"Uh huh."

They rounded the back corner to find that Davey had been dead right. In a small barnyard was a work-roughened woman of indeterminate age with steel grey hair pulled back into a severe bun and a lumberjack shirt tucked into shapeless denim overalls. She had arms that would do a weightlifter proud and the Fairchildes were uncomfortably aware of a roll of mottled flesh at the side of her overall bib where her flannel shirt was hiked up.

"Good lord, I'll be impotent for a month," Henry stage whispered, nearly loud enough to be overheard by the woman.

"Shush," Vicki shushed him, giggling nervously.

In the next instant they saw they had intruded on a scene that was hardly rustic tranquillity. Mrs. Croupier, if that was who this woman was, was holding a fat white chicken. The bird, reptilian fear gleaming in its beady eyes, was struggling fitfully, but the massive red hand wrapped tightly around its jerking legs sealed its fate.

Seeing them, the woman paused in her grim task. Henry fumbled out an introduction. The Fairchilds, himself, Henry, Vicki, his wife, and Davey his, ah, foster son.

"Ayup, bin expectin' you," the woman said cheerfully, "I'm Adeline Croupier. Jest hang on a mite an' I'll be right with you."

She waddled over to a sawed-off stump sunk in the earth of the yard. Vicki suddenly put her hands over her mouth in horror. She was a city girl born and bred, but she could guess what was coming. Perhaps the hapless chicken could as well, for its struggles intensified. Adeline, without further ado, slapped the hen on the block so the head thrashed around on the rust-colored wood, and grabbed a peculiar-looking hatchet embedded in the wood.

"Oh, God," Vicki squeaked as Henry grabbed her hand in a comforting squeeze and Davey stared on aghast.

"We call this our 'Foghorn Hacker'," Adeline said cheerfully over her shoulder, then swung the hatchet in a casual, whipping arc that terminated on the chicken's neck with a meaty thud. The head flew onto the packed dirt of the barnyard and there was a flash of yellow fur as a large cat took off with the bloody relic in its jaws.

"Yuh make dam'sure yuh eat thet all, Isobel," Adeline called after the departing cat. "It's all yer damn gonna get this time, lemme tell yuh."

Adeline held the bird, fresh, brilliant red blood splattered over snow white feathers, until it stopped twitching, then sank the axe back into the chopping block. Motioning to the Fairchildes to follow, she waddled back over to the porch and none too gently used her foot to move a huge, pregnant Great Dane out of the way.

"Get over there, Chloe, damn yuh," she said cheerfully, easing her bulk into a rocking chair in front of a TV playing General Hospital and methodically beginning to remove chicken feathers. Waving the bird in the direction of the TV, she said "We, thet's m'husband Richard an me, we call it our Foghorn Hacker after thet damn smartass bird on the Bugs Bunny show. Bird like that fool critter wouldn't last five minutes around this yard."

It took a moment for the three to realize she was talking about the hatchet she had used to dispatch the chicken.

"Yes, well," Henry said, trying to digest the last cheerful little fact, "Thurlow's note said you had the keys to the cottage for us."

"Ayup, thet I do," Adeline said brightly, "tol' thet fool man it wouldn't matter a damn bit an he left the place wide open, ain't nobody aroun' these parts gonna bother with it, but it wouldn't do. He jest had t'leave them keys. Ain't thet somethin'?"

As she spoke clumps of feathers landed, with a soft plopping noise that made Vicki's hair stand on end, in the an enamel washing pan that sat beside the chair

"Um, well, maybe if you could get us the keys we could sort of, well, get settled in," Henry suggested.

"Ayup, mean't get'm," Adeline said. "Jest as soon as I get this bird gutted n'bleedin proper I'll get 'im out. Yew city folk's're always in sech a damfool hurry."

Davey, wandering over to the Great Dane, said "do you mind if I pet her?"

"Nope, pet away, boy," came the affable answer. "Don't reckon yuh c'n ever harm a dawg by pettin'. Chloe, yew be nice t'thet boy, y'hear?"

"Chloe. Is that her name?" Davey asked, gingerly stroking a massive forehead. Chloe regarded him with soft brown eyes and her tail thumped slowly on the porch boards.

"Ayup. After some Greek goddess or something," Adeline said, hands never missing a beat. The chicken, looking more like something Davey was used to seeing in a meat market was emerging from the mass of feathers.

"She's going to have pups, isn't she?" he asked.

"Ayup, local vet feller, Jonathan Steele, fixed thet up fer us," Adeline said.

"Jeez, I'd sure like one of the pups," Davey said.

"Davey," Henry said reprovingly, "we havn't got room in the condo for a dog, especially the size of this one."

"Couldn't we build a kennel out back?" Davey asked.

"Davey," this time from his mother, "give us a break. We just wouldn't have room, like your, ah, father says."

"He'd be a real good guard dog for you, mom," Davey said, scratching gently behind Chloe's ears.

"Davey," Henry began, only to be shushed by a wave of Adeline's hand.

"Don't yuh go frettin' over't," she said, not unkindly, as she casually eviscerated the hapless chicken, making Vicki swallow bile in the back of her throat and Henry develop a pointed interest in mountain scenery. "Pups're already spoken fer, every one. Jonathan, ther, he's a kind of odd fella. Come back from 'Nam kind'a strange, then went away to school somewhere t'study gene-etics. Anyhow, he come t'get this dog awhile back an' said he was gonna take her an' breed her an' he'd pay us $150 each fer th'pups. Now, thet's a lotta money to us, so we told him it was okay. He's gonna come an' get Chloe when its close ta whelpin' time an he'll look after everythin' fer us."

"Well," Henry said, his relief obvious, "I guess that takes care of that. Sorry, Davey."

"Ayup," Adeline said, "Jonathan ther is gonna take Chloe over't his kennels about a month befer th'whelpin' t'look after her. Mebbe if yuh wanta' dog yuh c'n talk t'him. But he's gonna have t'get back from his little trip ther in one hell of a hurry he wants t'be in on th'whelpin. Thet damfool dog is gettin' bigger a lot quicker'n we figgered."

The chicken was now plucked and gutted and the pan filled to the brim with bloody feathers and offal.

"Yuh jest hang on fer a minute an' I'll be gettin yuh them keys," Adeline said.

Seeing the crestfallen look on her son's face, Vicki stepped closer to the porch. "Excuse me," she said, "do you know of any younger people, ah, teenagers the age of my son here, in the village?"

Adeline gravely regarded Davey. "Nope," she said, "Ain't hardly nobody, less'n yuh get up Weston way. Ther's a few young'uns, ril young'uns, here an' ther, but it's a small place, th' Mill, an' the little ones mostly stay on their own places. Young folks mostly left the place years ago, an there ain't but one teenager around anymore."

"There is one?" Vicki said hopefully.

Adeline seemed to be debating with herself and her answer, when it came, was slow and calculated.

"Only youn'un around about this boy's age would be young Alaine Matte," she said, "an' folks think she's crazy. Keeps to herself mostly, just ridin' around on thet big black horse of hers. Her folks, thet's Gaston Matte an' his Elouise, they keep to themselves too. Ain't nobody has too much t'do with 'em. My Richard, he talks to ol' Gaz sometimes, but thet's about all."

In the distance came the muted crack of thunder, and the Fairchildes looked up to see clouds in the gap between the mountains.

"Jesus," Henry said in puzzlement, "that's the second one I've seen today."

"What's up there?" Davey asked, leaving off petting Chloe.

Adeline suddenly dropped the chicken into the pan on top of the feathers.

"I'll get yuh th'keys," she said abruptly, getting up and stumping into the darkness of the house, letting the screen door bang shut.

"Good lord," Henry muttered, "what the hell did we say to her?"

"She's weird, Henry," Vicki said. "Let's just get the keys and get out of here."

"More bad feelings, babe?"

"Sort of."

Adeline was back before Henry could voice an opinion on the latest bad feelings, passing the keys over with a hand that a moment before had been pulling bloody chicken feathers and entrails. Henry took the keys with obvious distaste.

"What's up there?" Davey asked again, determined not to be shaken off.

"Davey, forget it, we've got to get going," Vicki said, edging towards the corner of the farmhouse and safety.

Davey was about to follow when Adeline stepped forward and laid a meaty hand on his shoulder. Henry stepped towards them, evidently intending to defend Davey, and stopped when Adeline gestured him away.

"Up there is the Sawhenny Gap, boy," she said slowly and clearly. For no particular reason Davey felt his flesh creep.

"Nobody, ever, goes near them parts, boy, 'cept mebbe fer old Everton Gannett up ther, an' he's about a crazy as thet damn Matte girl. Everton don't take kindly t'visitors so yuh better jest stay 'hell out a' there. Stay away frum th'Sawhenny Gap, boy."

Refusing to back away from the woman, Davey said "I saw that on our road map. It's spelled like it should be Saw-Henny."

"Well, yuh might spell it thet way, an outside folks might even say it thet way, but around here it's 'Sah-whenny', boy, an' don't yuh ferget it," Adeline said.

"Here, that's about enough," Henry said firmly, taking Davey by the other arm. "We don't need an awful lot of local stories to keep us company, thanks just the same."

"Yes, what's the matter with it?" said Vicki.

Adeline dropped her hand from Davey's shoulder and stared at Vicki, making the younger woman acutely uncomfortable.

"Well, now, there's stories," she said shortly, seeming ill at ease with the way the discussion was going. "But," she added, holding up her hand to cut short Henry's intended objection, "I ain't about to discuss 'em. Yuh got'cher keys, thet's all I promised t'do fer ol' Thurlow ther. Yuh wanna come back an visit some other time, thet's alright."

There was an uncomfortable pause during which Davey found his eyes straying to the TV set, now playing the Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner hour. By some weird chance the blocky figure of Foghorn Leghorn was cavorting across the screen.

Adeline, gravely regarding the smile on Davey's face, pointed to the bloody and rusty hatchet buried in the chopping block, saying "that's whut thet damfool bird would get hereabouts. Thet's whut any damfool bird gets sooner or later. Yuh stay outa' the Sawhenny hills, boy. Yuh stay out."

Foghorn had always been a childhood favorite of Davey's and, just for a moment as he met the steel blue eyes of Adeline Croupier, he was almost convinced the woman knew.

"Th'chop, boy," she said. "Thet's whut they get. Yuh stay out'a the Sawhenny."