The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

Once, there was a tree…
And she loved a little boy.
And every day the boy would come
And he would gather her leaves
And make them into crowns and play king of the forest.
He would climb up her trunk
And swing from her branches
And eat apples
And they would play hide-and-go-seek.
And when he was tired, he would sleep in her shade.
And the boy loved the tree… very much…
And the tree was happy.
But time went by,
And the boy grew older.
And the tree was often alone.
Then, one day, the boy came to the tree and the tree said:
–”Come, Boy, come and climb up my trunk and swing from my branches and eat apples and play in my shade and be happy!”
–”I am too big to climb and play” said the boy. “I want to buy thing and have fun. I want some money.
Can you give me some money?”
–”I’m sorry”, said the tree,”but I have no money. I have only leaves and apples. Take my apples, Boy, and sell them in city. Then you will have money and you’ll be happy.”
And so the boy climbed up the tree and gathered her apples and carried them away.
And the tree was happy…
But the boy stayed away for a long time… and the tree was sad.
And then one day the boy came back, and the tree shook with joy, and she said:
–”Come, Boy come and climb up my trunk and swing from my branches and eat apples and play in my shade and be happy.”
–”I am too busy to climb trees,” said the boy. “I want a house to keep me warm”, he said. “I and want a wife and I want children, and so I need a house. Can you give me a house?”
–”I have no house”, said the tree. “The forest is my house”, said the tree. “But you may cut off my branches and build a house. Then you will be happy”.
And so the boy cut off her branches and carried them away to build his house. And the tree was happy.
But the boy stayed away for a long time…
And when he came back, the tree was so happy she could hardly speak.
–”Come, Boy” she whispered, “Come and play”.
–”I am too old and sad to play”, said the boy. “I want a boat that will take me away from here. Can you give me a boat?”
–”Cut down my trunk and make a boat”, said the tree. “Then you can sail away… and be happy”.
And so the boy cut down her trunk
And made a boat and sailed away.
And the tree was happy…
But not really.
And after a long time the boy came back again.
–”I am sorry, Boy”, said the tree, “but I have nothing left to give you – My apples are gone”.
–”My teeth are too weak for apples”, said the boy.
–”My branches are gone”, said the tree. “You cannot swing on them”.
–”I am too old to swing on branches”, said the boy.
–”My trunk is gone”, said the tree. “You cannot climb”.
–”I am too tired to climb”, said the boy.
–”I am sorry” sighed the tree. “I wish that I could give you something… but I have nothing left. I am just an old stump. I am sorry…”
–”I don’t need very much now”, said the boy. “Just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired”.
–”Well”, said the tree, straightening herself up as much as she could, “well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down… sit down and rest”.
And the boy did.
And the tree was happy

Things That Go Bump In The Night by me

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—Franklin Delano Roosevelt

                Fear is a visceral response of prey to a predator.  It is a mind-bending, gut-wrenching emotive force that Sylvia had come to know well.  And courage is not the absence of fear, but bravery in the face of it.  Sylvia didn’t know if she could muster anymore.

  The stairway was positioned between an adult bookstore and a tobacco shop.  It disappeared into the recesses of the shadows the further one climbed toward the second story.  Sylvia hesitated on the fifth step before the doorway at the top where the smells of tobacco and mildew contradicted one another.  She took a deep breath, climbed the last few stairs, and opened the door.  There was no question from where the mildew aroma originated.

 A doorbell chime proclaimed her presence.  The lighting was cheap and incandescent but bright, and, if one could block out the street noise, there was a buzzing, humming noise underneath it all that sounded like a familiar lullaby.  It took a few seconds for her eyes to adapt to the light and for her ears to block out the hum.  She took a deep breath crossing the threshold, trying hard to find some courage.

                The dilapidated room had peeling, eggshell-colored paint on the walls and threadbare.  There were no windows to speak of but the room was full of glass display cases, inside of which were guns, hundreds of guns.  There were guns of every size, shape, and variety, and shelf upon shelf of ammunition.  Sylvia started looking around.  The owner of the gun shop was wearing well-worn blue jeans and a ‘wife- beater’ undershirt. He had pleasant facial features except for a long scar from his right ear down to his chin. Sylvia could feel his eyes looking her up and down as she was browsing through the vast collection of firearms.   She could pass for Middle Eastern with long black hair which looked like it had been straightened, deep and penetrating hazel eyes, and very full lips on which there was no lipstick.  In fact, he doubted she wore any make-up at all.  She thought he was impressed by this since it appeared he used concealer on his scar, to no avail.  “Can I help you?” he asked.

                His voice startled her.  “I hope so,” she said.  “Do you have any .38’s?”

                Sylvia contemplated all the reasons people bought guns.   Sometimes it was of malicious intent,  sometimes for sport, sometimes for self-defense, sometimes for revenge.  She wondered what he thought she needed a gun for, and she thought he would probably be wrong.

                “Yes,” he said, “I’ve got a number of them.”

                She responded, “Show me.”  He led her over to the glass case along the furthest wall, inserted his key into the keyhole, and opened the case.  He then selected one that she thought looked perfect.  It was small enough to not be a nuisance, but large enough to be effective.  She turned it over in her hands several times, getting a feel for it.  Her eyes widened and she smiled at him, “This will be perfect.”  There were fingerprints on the glass case.   She instinctively pulled out her pocket hand sanitizer—she felt dirty.

                They sauntered over to the cash register.  He said, “I need your driver’s license to run a background check on you before I can sell you a gun.”

                Her heart skipped a beat and her mouth went dry.  She had not anticipated a background check and did not know if she would pass one.  But it was too late to turn back now.  She handed him her license.  She hoped her old criminal record was not attached to her latest identification.

                Five minutes passed.  Her heart was beating rapidly.  Then ten.  Her hands were clenched into fists.   Fifteen.  She had broken into a cold sweat.  “It’s taking longer than usual,” he said.   Her abdominal muscles were tightening and she tasted bile in her throat as though she might vomit.   Finally, twenty five minutes along, she passed the background check.  She paid for the gun and some ammunition, and politely took as well directions to the nearest shooting range, where she could take practice, although she was in truth a master at markmanship.  She had an enormous amount of practice and experience.  She looked at the gun and the ammo in the bag.  She certainly never wanted to be at the wrong end of that gun.  She observed as she left a black BMW parked across the street.  One didn’t see many of those around this neighborhood.,

                It was dreadfully cold out, even for January.  She shivered despite her heavy coat, not knowing if it was the temperature or the fear that someone may be watching her, a valid fear given the past few years.  Being a fugitive was getting old.  She climbed into her little red  Ford Escort.

                Sylvia kept scrutinizing the rear view mirror to see if she was being followed.  Fear gave way to panic, which in turn became paranoia.  She drove, fully alert, directly to her daughter’s day care center.

                The drive was memorable for a John Denver tune that played on the radio and reminded her of the “Final Destination” series of movies, part 1.  The closest parking spot was two blocks away, and Sylvia felt she would freeze solid before she got that far.

“How was school today?”  Sylvia inquired of Amber, trying to create a cool façade while tendrils of her warm breath floated skyward.

                “I liked my new school mommy, and I’ve already made some new friends.”

                “That’s wonderful honey.  What are your friends’ names?”

                “Carolyn and Jessie.”

                “Maybe sometime we could invite them over to play with you.  How does that sound?”

                “That would be great,” Amber answered, animatedly.

                As they pulled into the driveway, Sylvia noticed there was a black BMW parked next door.  Her hands became clammy and her heart rate accelerated.  She stared at it again. It certainly was not the very same one, was it?   Most certainly  a coincidence she thought to herself.  She tried to steady her hands as she helped Amber with her backpack.  She wished that Bill, her husband, was still here.  Everything was magnified in his absence. 

                Nine months passed since he was killed.  The three of them had been in the witness security program and were supposed to have been in safe arms, protected from harm.  The U.S. Marshals’  arranged new jobs and new identities for them.  They abandoned their friends, their families, and their jobs; all so that Bill and Sylvia would be able to testify against Abdul Hamid, an al-

Qaeda top-man.  They had been taken to a secret, secure, temporary holding location prior to the trial.  Somehow, one night, someone sneaked past all the levels of defense and executed Bill with one silent gunshot to the forehead.  Why this person did not kill Sylvia was not known.  Never in the history of the witness security program since 1970 had anyone who obeyed the rules been murdered, until Bill.  His murder had ruffled the feathers of the CIA, the FBI, the Attorney General, Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and especially the U.S. Marshals.  No one knew how security had been breached.  The trial had been postponed because of the compromise.  Hamid was very big game.

                Both Bill and Sylvia were American al-Qaeda operatives.  Both were born in America and raised in the Middle East.  Both were trained in hand to hand combat and related terrorist behaviors.  Both were integral parts of the latest subway bombing in France and Bill was also a specialist in interrogation and persuasion.  It was ironic that it was Sylvia who recruited Bill into al-Qaeda yet he was the one who ended up dead.   Sylvia figured she was a target that night also but someone had spooked the shooter after Bill was murdered, and interrupted a second assassination.  Now Hamid’s men would be coming after her, despite U.S. Marshal protection.    But she had fled because she could no longer trust the U.S. Marshals, for they had failed her.  She was now running from two enemies.

                Sylvia had the brains and Bill the brawn.  They made a perfect couple and a perfect team.  She was devious and he devoted. She was clever devising plans and Bill clever at pulling them off.  That was how things had gone down in Paris.  Hamid had provided the money and the means to make it happen.

Sylvia, with Amber, had escaped both Hamid’s men and the U.S. Marshals, presuming  that if Bill hadn’t been safe with them then neither would they.  Sylvia, naturally, was more worried for Amber’s safety than for her own.  So she became a very wanted fugitive, constantly running and looking over both shoulders.  She kept their new identities but had moved to a different city in an effort to avoid detection.  She removed all the cash from their bank account so that neither Hamid’s men nor the Marshals would be able to track debit or credit card purchases.  Everything had gone smoothly until she noticed an ominous black BMW twice in one day, and she was uncertain even about that.

                Now, what to do?  It might just be a coincidence.   After all, she was not certain it was the same BMW.  She could wait, and hope she was overreacting—or run, take to the roads one more time.  She was tired of running from hotel  to hotel; it was nice to have a sense of permanence at last.  A plan was taking shape in the back of her mind.  She was determined to evade both Hamid and the U.S. Marshals but she felt a terrible sense of foreboding.

                Right now, she had Amber to take care of so she fixed and ate dinner, then set about Amber’s bedtime routine.  First was a bath followed by a bedtime story.  Tonight, though, Sylvia had to talk to Amber about guns, now that there would be one in the house.  So Sylvia showed Amber the .38 and explained how it was not a toy and that she was never, ever to touch it no matter what.  Amber promised.

                “You know what’s next mommy,” said Amber, who hated things that went bump in the night.

                “Yes honey, it’s time to check for the monsters.”  So Sylvia retrieved the flashlight from the kitchen and went back to Amber’s room.  Together they looked under the bed, behind the Disney princess curtains, and finally in the closet.  “See honey, no monsters,” she said.   She tucked Amber in  with a good night kiss.

                Sylvia found a bottle of red wine and opened it with a corkscrew.   Then she poured herself a glass and went to her bedroom to read for a little while before going to sleep.   She tucked the .38 under her pillow.

                She must have nodded off quickly because when she awoke she was disoriented.  The glass of wine still set there half empty, the lamp was still on, and she had not pulled back the covers.  She knew she had awakened for a reason but she couldn’t remember why.  Then she heard Amber calling from her room, “Mommy.”

                She jumped up, tried to find the gun but it seemed to be gone, so she quickly abandoned that thought and ran to Amber’s room.  “What is it honey?  What is wrong?”

                “Mommy I saw a monster out my window,” she was crying.

                “Amber honey, remember we checked for the monsters and there weren’t any.  Do you remember that?”

                “But this one was outside the window,” Amber replied.

                So Sylvia went over to the window and immediately noticed it was unlocked.  She opened it, and shone the flashlight outside in every possible direction.  There was nothing there.  She had checked the window earlier had she not?  She really was becoming paranoid, she doubted she was being followed again for she had been too careful, but she could not take the chance she was wrong.  “Honey, “ she said as calmly as she could muster  to Amber, “there’s nobody out there.  Maybe you were having a dream?”  Then she re-locked the window, making sure that Amber saw it.

                “Mommy, will you lay down with me?” she asked.  Sylvia hated to give in, but given the events of the last few months, she acquiesced.  So she lay there until Amber was breathing deep and rhythmic, then she crept back to her own room.  She finished the glass of wine in a couple of gulps and lay down once more.   She found the gun under the pillow after all, it had just been pushed far back against the wall. She and Amber slept fitfully through the rest of the night.

                Sylvia awoke early, and went around the house to Amber’s window, and directly underneath it were fresh footprints and two cigarette butts.   Sylvia’s uneasy apprehension turned into raw, naked fear.  Someone had been outside Amber’s room.  But why had they not attempted to abduct Sylvia and Amber while they had the chance?    Now she was certain she was being pursued so she instantly started thinking about her course of action.  She hoped they could stay one more night, but then they would have to move again.  Today she would need to get a prepaid cell phone that couldn’t be traced.  She would have to buy a new car for cash so that the car couldn’t be traced easily either.   But why was the window unlocked?  Did she simply overlook it?  Or something even more terrible?

                She looked up and down the street.  She saw no sign of a black BMW.  But she was frightfully certain that either Hamid or the Marshals were getting close to her.   She needed to finish her plan and finish it fast.

                The first thing to do was to take Amber to school; she had kindergarten in the afternoons.  Being no fool, Sylvia took Amber to her classroom herself and then asked to speak with her teacher and her principal.  Once the principal arrived,  Sylvia wasted no time in manufacturing a scenario.  “Amber’s father may try to take her but I wanted the both of you to know that no one except myself has permission to pick her up.  No one.  Are we clear?”

                Both the teacher and the principal nodded their assent.  Had Sylvia mentioned the past about Bill to them?  She was  hopeful that she had not.  The past she held very tightly, it was all she had left except for Amber.

                Next, Sylvia sped to her realtor’s office.  The realtor expressed surprise at her presence.  Sylvia said, “I’ve had a sudden change of heart and need to sell the house as quickly as possible.  I can’t go into reasons right now but I want it offered at  seventy-five percent of what I paid for it.  Can you make this happen and make it happen quickly?”

                The realtor looked puzzled but readily agreed—here was an easy three percent commission.

                Next, Sylvia called the post office in the town she had decided to defect to in order to obtain a post office box number.  They were kind enough to give her a number and let her wire the money a little later.

                She drove directly to the Western Union office to wire the money ASAP, then she stopped by the cell phone store and purchased three “disposable” cell phones.  As she was leaving the cellular store, she saw a black BMW in her rear-view mirror.  She knew only that they were enemies and not friends.  She drove slowly as she mentally examined her options.  One, she could speed up and try to ditch them.  Two, she could continue her day as planned and just let them follow her.  Or third, she could turn the tables on them and try to catch them.  Of the three options, she decided on number three.

                She was in the left hand lane heading east while the black beemer was in the right hand lane, and traffic was tight.  She made a sudden left that the beemer had no chance of making, and then two more lefts and she was back on the street she began on.  She sped a little to see if she could catch up to her quarry.  She drove for a mile without a single sign of them.  Suddenly she was directly on their tail.  The driver of the beemer spotted her almost instantly and accelerated in an effort to ditch her.  She let them go, she had made her point.  Sylvia patted her purse lightly, the .38 was there.  She then went to a cheesy used car dealer and essentially changed cars.

                She turned around and headed back toward home.  As she approached the  house, she couldn’t believe her eyes.  A black BMW was in the driveway of the house next door to hers.  There was also a moving van pulled in behind the beemer.  “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”, she remembered.  She decided to assert herself and pay a visit to her new neighbor.  She walked across the lawn and up onto their front walk.  The movers were coming out for their next load.  She yelled through the open door, “Hello, is anybody home?”

                A very professional looking man came to the door; he was in a suit and tie and well-polished shoes.  If there was a flicker of recognition,  Sylvia didn’t see it.  The man was cool as a cucumber.  He had short cropped black hair that looked like it would be wavy if it were to grow out.  His eyes were so dark that Sylvia couldn’t discern his pupils, and his lips were so narrow that one could scarcely reference them as lips.  He more closely resembled a stick figure with a line drawn in for the mouth.

                “I’m Sylvia, your neighbor,” she said, stepping forward and offering her hand.

                “My name is Adam,” he said as they shook hands.  His grip was firm but not tight. He reeked of tobacco.  Sylvia suddenly had an eerie feeling that she had seen him somewhere before, somewhere recent, and not associated with the black beemer.  A small mystery.   She would probably wake up in the middle of the night with the connection—her memory frequently worked that way.

                “Well, she said, I just wanted to say hello.  I’ve got to go pick up my daughter from school.  I’ll see you around,” and she waved as she walked away.

                “Yeah, see you later.”

                Sylvia drove first to the courthouse to legally change her name.  She chose Cynthia since it sounded similar, and for a surname she chose Walker, since she was walking away from her old life.  Finally she drove to Amber’s school.  As soon as she approached, she sensed something was wrong.  All of the kids were out on the fenced in playground, all of them except for Amber.  She looked again, scanning the playground in grids, but Amber was not there.  Frantic, she rushed into the school building and went directly to Amber’s kindergarten classroom.  It was empty.  As she turned to go find someone who could help her, she saw Amber’s teacher coming toward her.

                She could barely get the words out, her mouth was so dry and she felt out of breath.  “Where is my daughter, where is Amber?” she mumbled, nearly sobbing. 

                “Oh well we knew with the issue of her father possibly showing up that we didn’t want to take any chances.  So she’s down in the principal’s office, here, follow me.”  Sylvia was so relieved she started  crying.

                She gathered herself together before Amber could see her this way.  They walked down the impossibly long corridor all the way to the principal’s office at the end.  Sylvia opened the door ready to give Amber the biggest, tightest hug she could, but once the door was opened, the office was revealed to be empty.  No principal.  No Amber.  Amber’s teacher stammered, “They were just here right before I came down the hallway to get you.”

                Sylvia’s heart leapt into her throat and beat rapidly there.  Where could they have gone?  They looked in the adjacent secretary’s office and across the hall to the superintendent’s office.  Amber was nowhere to be found.  They raced again outside to the playground to double check there, but neither the principal nor Amber was there.  Sylvia started sweating.  She was afraid, of course, that Amber had been kidnapped by Hamid’s men and would be used as a pawn to get to Sylvia.

                At just that moment, the school doors opened and the principal and Amber emerged.  “Where, where have you been?” Sylvia asked as she smothered Amber with hugs.

                The principal, an austere gentleman apologized, “Amber had to use the restroom.  We thought we’d be back before you arrived.”

                “That’s okay, just so long as you are safe,” Sylvia said with catapulting emotions.  She started feeling fatigued, achy all over especially the head, and basically was spent.

                Sylvia picked Amber up and carried her to their car.  “We’ve got to go to the grocery store, okay honey?”

                Amber replied, “Okay.”  Sylvia wanted to stock up on food for what she estimated would be a two day drive.  By the time they came back outside it was nearly dark.  She put all the groceries into the trunk.   Sylvia hated driving after dark, her night vision wasn’t as good as it used to be, but tonight, she would have no choice.  They would have to pack up and get going in the middle of the night. 

               

                She needed to move,  the days of January are short.  As soon as she pulled out of the parking lot, she saw a car pull out behind her.  In an instant, she knew what to do—duck, drive, and evade.  The car was neither black nor a BMW.  But she knew a tail when she saw one.  Was it the US Marshal’s or Hamid?  She supposed it didn’t matter, both were enemies. 

                Sylvia wasted no time in getting on the highway, she knew she could drive faster there and hopefully lose her tail in the process.  She pulled over to the furthest left lane, and then crossed back to the furthest right.  Glancing in the rear view mirror and then the side mirror, she did not see the car.  This was too easy.  Something was wrong.  Then, from nowhere, the black BMW appeared right behind her.  What on earth was going on?  Were both the marshals and Hamid on to her?  She knew she was in danger, but she had to get to Amber and then get out of town fast.  Her hands were sweating but the rest of her remained calm and collected.  She could do no good by panicking.  She accelerated to as fast as the car would carry her, weaving perilously back and forth through the lanes.  When she could no longer see the BMW, she exited toward the car rental agency, carefully looking backwards for either of the two cars following her.  She could barely hear her own thoughts.

                She pulled into the rental agency and quickly surveyed the streets.  Neither of the cars were within sight.  She couldn’t fool herself though, they knew where she lived, and they knew where Amber was.  Amber was her weakness.

                She rented a medium sized truck with a car trailer attached to the back.  The serviceman helped her secure her car to the trailer, then she drove home in the moving van.  The black BMW was not in the driveway but there were lights on at the neighbor’s house.  Perhaps it was in the garage.

                Sylvia explained to Amber that they were going to move to a different city after all.  Amber was upset at having to leave her new friends, but she took it like a big girl.  Sylvia started packing and carrying to the moving truck, trip after trip.  She would leave the large furniture behind and send for it later.

                At about one in the morning, Amber was sound asleep after having had her nightly monster check, and Sylvia had finished packing everything that she could pack on her own.  She wanted to lie down for just a little while before they left.  She promptly fell asleep.  Sometime later, she awoke with a start.  There had been a definite noise inside the house.  There it was again!  Something being bumped into in the middle of the night.   Sylvia was still wound up tightly from the excitement of the day.

                She grabbed the .38 from under her pillow and crept as quietly as she could out into the hallway.  The noise was coming from just in front of Amber’s room.  Sylvia took the cell phone from her pocket and dialed nine-one-one.  She looked again toward Amber’s doorway.  She remembered where she had seen the man called Adam before.  There was a partial silhouette in the corridor.  One of them must be with Hamid and the other with the Marshals.  She took aim, released the safety, and fired toward where the intruder’s abdomen should be.  There was a thud and then silence.  Sylvia stood still, afraid to move.  She stood there for what seemed to be an eternity.

                Suddenly her front door splintered open, someone was kicking in the door.  Sylvia turned toward the door and pointed the gun once more.  The lights came on and the man from next door was standing there.  He saw the gun in her hands and, simultaneously with Sylvia, looked down the hall where Amber lay still, bleeding from the head.  “Oh my god!” Sylvia screamed, then more quietly, “what have I done?”

                The man from next door, wearing only his pajama bottoms, rushed across the room to Amber and made a quick assessment.  “She’s fine, Sylvia,” he said, “The bullet’s just grazed her forehead and knocked her down.  She’s breathing just fine and the bleeding looks worse than it is.”  Sylvia heard sirens in the distance approaching quickly.  The man from next door, this man who called himself Adam, walked toward Sylvia as if in a dream.  She let him put his steady hand over her quivering one that was holding the gun. 

“I am a U.S. Marshal, we’ve been keeping eyes on you.”   Again, Sylvia remembered where she had seen the man before.  He was one of the U.S. Marshals that had been around the night Bill was murdered.  The man took his free hand and held Sylvia tightly.  She realized what was happening one second too late.  Adam took her hand still holding the gun, his trigger finger over hers, and pointed it at her head and pulled the trigger.  He was happy with this outcome.  To police, the scene would look like an accidental homicide followed by a suicide.  He left the gun in her hand and laid it on the floor in the fresh pool of blood which was still spreading.  He took the phone,  dialed Hamid, and said, “The job is done, sir.  Praise Allah.”

Joy by me

He who binds to himself a joy

Doth the winged life destroy

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in Eternity’s sunrise

--William Blake

                Some people seem to have it all.  Good looks, intelligence, sense of humor, and more.  E.J. did, but tried to hide beneath it all.  Still, he was sad.  He had only one real friend, Laurabeth, and the terms of their friendship had been evolving in recent days.  He looked through his bedroom window, a double-paned, insulated view onto the front yard of the house. 

Trees of glass cast long shadows onto the firm, frigid ground under a finite sky, its color the opposite of gray.  E.J. imagined standing outside, breathless from the cold, the air gone from his lungs.  He looked to the spot where the moon had risen yesterday, meeting the night near the horizon.  The sun hovered there now, shining fiercely as spiral ribbons of light spun the silhouettes into an impossible labyrinth underfoot.  Overnight winter storms had left in their wake an icy menagerie that dazzled one’s eyes, and tree limbs and power lines grunted and groaned under the burden of the ice.   A breath of wind would collapse them onto a brand new glacier.  But the sun was already melting the ice, its life would be short.  It brought to mind a short story E.J. had read in which a man trapped in a blizzard had but one match to light a fire.  Unfortunately, the fire he conjured melted the snow on the tree in which he sat under, dousing the fire and his life.

   E.J. crossed his bedroom and heaved another log into the fireplace, listened to it crackle like a cadaver flung into a crematorium, and then turned and stared out the window again, his breath flying up the pane.  He could almost smell the charred flesh.  With one hand he wiped away a touch of the frosty condensation, hoping there would be no school today.  With his other, dominant hand, he absent-mindedly spun a pen round and round, balancing it with a delicate grasp.  E.J. dropped the pen accidentally and it bounced off of the hardwood floor. He shuffled from one side of his room to the other, and clicked on the television to listen to the news as he heard Mother preparing breakfast in the kitchen.  The aroma of bacon and eggs overpowered the odor of smoldering skin and edged its way underneath the closed door to his bedroom, causing his stomach to rattle and rumble.  Whatever criticisms of Mother he had, cooking was not one of them.  She could have been a chef, if she had so desired.  E. J. stood back up after retrieving the pen, his pajama pants sagging around his midline, like the pants of a thug, distracting and distasteful for most, but sexy on E.J.

                The rattling and rumbling of his stomach escalated as the news headline crushed him like an  aluminum can pinned beneath a heavy foot.  Police had discovered a corpse near the river, where arctic  chunks of ice tumbled along the tortuous course.  The identity of the victim, however, was being withheld until next of kin could be notified.  It was known, though, that a murder had happened, and very few could recall the last time anything evil had occurred in New Hope though.  Further details were not yet available.

 E.J. sat, solemn and stern, for nearly five minutes, and then he noticed a marked car with chains on the tires approaching outside.  He again wiped the window and looked out to the brown-on-lighter-brown sheriff’s car in the driveway where two men with badges advanced, slipping on the ice, toward the house.  Before he could stop it, his eyes met Sheriff Bailey’s.  E.J. stared right back until the sheriff looked away.   E.J.’s heart fell, and his right leg was suddenly twitching and trembling like it always did when he was nervous or concentrating.  He didn’t know if he could stand without wavering, his knees were suddenly weak, something must be horribly wrong.  The sheriff was so close to E.J.’s window that he could see the six pointed badge insignia on his left arm.  E.J. noticed the sheriff’s handcuffs, and remembered something that he had once read about how history and memory are handcuffed to one another, and they share a common a tendency toward exaggeration, minimization, and distortion, as in the Bible, for one glaring instance.  History, according to E.J. was not measured in b.c. or a.d., but rather by pre-DaVinci Code and post-DaVinci Code.  He believed that DaVinci Code illustrated beyond any doubt that religion rests on fragile, crumbling pillars.  Camera’s don’t lie, books do, even the Bible.

                E.J. had a past.  Sheriff Bailey had been in town for a long time now.  When E.J. and mother moved, he was immediately labeled an outcast.  He was made fun of regularly and he always ate alone.  At least he had, until he met Laurabeth.  The sheriff though E.J. was unhinged mentally and made it a point to intimidate him every chance that presented itself. 

There was knocking at the front door, then ringing of the doorbell, followed by Mother’s unhurried, tedious footsteps across the hardwood floor of the front room.  Her footfalls were light like you would expect a librarian’s to be although the noises she made with pots and pans along with the closing of the cabinets in the kitchen could awaken the dead.  The house, located on the outskirts of town, was brick with a feeble foundation which, over time, had caused the floors to slant and slope.  Through the window, the glass trees shimmered in the sunlight like a thousand falling stars.

 E.J. heard the front door squeak open and slam shut, and then melancholy, muted voices echoed through the house.  At first, the words were imperceptible, but the volume of the conversation was swelling.  Rising, at last, until he could understand what was being said.  He felt a little guilty for eavesdropping, but not much because Mother eavesdropped on him regularly.  She was a strict, almost mean woman, with a volatile yet surpassable temper. 

                First, Mother’s  words, “E.J. was here all evening, studying and doing homework in his room.”

                Then, one of the men with badges saying, “Ma’am, we need to speak with your son.  It seems that, apart from her father, your son was the closest to the deceased.”  Deceased was a cold, clinical, detached word, E.J. thought.  Then he heard Laurabeth’s name, and suddenly it became very personal.  Unease tore up his stomach like a vice grip.  Laurabeth Miller was his best friend, in fact, the only friend he had made since Mother moved him to New Hope six years before.  He was an outcast, a loner, a misfit.  Laurabeth was the only one to see beyond the rumors and the lies.   He didn’t care much for most people.  He treasured his privacy above all else and people never understood his solitary nature.   

                He always disguised himself in black, as though ever ready for a funeral, wore tattoos and touted several piercings, and maintained a ghostly pallor in an effort to hold people remote.  Goth, people called it.  Even the wrinkled pajamas he wore now were black, solid and sinister.  E.J. hated wrinkles, and ironed his pajamas, then dressed in a pair of well worn black jeans and a surprisingly heavy black sweatshirt.

                Right now, at eighteen, E.J. was practically a man, having lived his entire remembered life without a father, which was no great loss according to Mother.  He did not know whether or not to believe her.  E.J. was in great shape, slightly on the skinny side, trim and toned.  He had dark blonde hair dyed black, savage emerald eyes, nice full lips, and a long narrow philtrum which had the effect curling the upper lip toward the nose forming a heart shape.   E.J. scanned his room.  He had shelves of chess trophies flickering in the morning light.  His bedroom carpet was sapphire and gray, and he had a twin bed which he made up first thing every morning, after ironing the sheets.  There wasn’t much room for tossing and turning, but he made do.

With those ferocious green eyes, he looked around his room again.   He had an impressive collection of vintage Alfred Hitchcock movie posters framed on his walls.  The bookshelves were full of mystery novels and short stories by the finest authors; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dame Agatha Christie, and Edgar Allan Poe being the principal three, nestled in among others by more current authors like Ruth Rendell and P.D. James.  On his desk sat his open laptop where he was working on a paper for his composition class and toggling back and forth with role playing games.  There was also an assortment of pamphlets offering curricula at various colleges, both near and far.  E.J. and Mother were discordant where college was concerned.  Mother demanded that he remain near home while he desperately wanted to go somewhere far away. It was as though the umbilical cord had never been cut. They also disagreed on what should be his major; he wanted to study criminal justice, while she thought he should do something more practical like accounting.

 E.J. was proud of his organized room, which fell somewhere between meticulous and perfect.  One wall displayed all of his books which were arranged methodically in neat rows, well dusted, sorted alphabetically and sectioned by author, and his closet was full of crates, containers, and racks. He counted his books every night to make sure that none were missing, and each morning before he left for school he had to check three times to make sure he had turned off his computer, lest Mother read something he was writing.  Mother had the rest of the house brimming with what he considered, politely, to be junk.  She belonged on Hoarders, as she held on to literally everything.  Each weekend she was at every yard sale, garage sale, estate sale, and flea market that she could find, haggling for each special purchase.

 As an example, the kitchen counters were crowded with so much trash that there was no space to set down a single cup of coffee.  This distressed E.J., who preferred things where they belonged and stuck steadfastly to his daily routine.  Every morning, he awoke at six and went for a run, regardless of the weather, and did his one hundred sit ups and one hundred pushups.  Then he showered under scalding hot water and brushed his teeth for exactly three minutes.  He usually took his medications for right after he brushed his teeth; however he had been skipping them for a couple of weeks because he was in a pleasantly hypomanic phase.  He then had two waffles spread with peanut butter.  He went to school by eight-thirty and was never even one minute late.  For lunch he always had a can of tuna (always the same brand and always packed in water not oil), a small salad (always lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers with ranch dressing), and a cup of Greek yogurt (always black cherry).    After school he did his homework until it was completed then would watch the science channel or natgeo.   

Finally, there was a knock on his door.  He suppressed his breath and opened it.  Mother stood there, feet planted squarely at the threshold.  She was short and stocky with snow white hair pulled up in a bun.  She was wearing her nightgown and housecoat along with fluffy slippers.  She started to say something, thought second of it, and stepped aside, deferring to Deputy Taylor and Sheriff Bailey.  Bailey spoke first.

                “Thank you, Ms. Simpson, sorry for imposing,” he said to Mother, then, turning to E.J. “son, we need to ask you some questions about Laurabeth Miller.  She’s been discovered dead down by the river.”  E.J. matched the sheriff’s suspicious gaze with one of defiance.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“Well it was no accident.  We understand you two were close friends so we would appreciate your cooperation.  When was the last time you saw her?”  The sheriff had a hawk-like face with pointed features and chocolate brown eyes that matched his uniform and standard-issued car.  He was nicknamed “Lucky” Bailey because he’d been shot into a bullet proof vest not once but twice.  After the shootings, his wife insisted they move out of the city and far away from such danger.  But at this moment, the sheriff felt a fragment of the thrill that he acutely missed from detective work.

                E.J. felt his heart thudding up in his throat and the blood pulsing in his veins and his mouth went dry.  “We were together yesterday afternoon,” he confessed, “walking down by the river.”

                “What time was that?” murmured the sheriff, jotting notes in his spiral-bound notebook as he spoke.

                “We went a little while after school so around 3:30,” E.J. said rather rapidly, “and I left her there probably an hour later.  She wanted to be by herself for awhile she told me.  I told her it was too cold to stay out too long.”  His voice quivered and again he asked, “What happened to her?”

                “I’m afraid we can’t go into details yet.  Doc Marshall is performing the autopsy as we speak.  We’ll know more once he’s finished.  I need to know where you were for the rest of the evening and if you have anyone that can confirm where you were.”

                “Mother knew I was here after she returned home from the library, I guess she’s my only alibi.”

                “I see.  Now did you part on good terms with Laurabeth,” asked the sheriff, “or did you have any kind of disagreement or argument?”  E.J. shivered a little at how close the sheriff was to the truth.  He and Laurabeth had planned on leaving town together, permanently.  That was what they were talking about down by the river.

                Here E.J. hesitated slightly.  “No, of course not, we were on the best of terms as a matter of fact.”  His leg was twitching again.

                Deputy Taylor, who wore an expressionless face and was about half as young as the sheriff and with less than half of his experience, asked E.J. a question,  “Did you see or hear anyone else in the area where you were?”  Of the deputies, Taylor was the most competent one.  Taylor tried to put the world around him into a frame, but E.J. did not fit there. 

                “No,” replied E.J., indignant.

                “I need to know what it is you talked about.  You were very likely the last person, except for the murderer, to see her alive.  I’d like to know more of what she was thinking.

                Mother, who had been uncharacteristically quiet to this point, interjected, “Are you implying my son played some role in this?”  Her pitch rose with each word.  She was a stout and strong woman with a pattern of wrinkles on her face that suggested she frowned most of the time.   “Because that is a ridiculous accusation and” E.J. cut her off.

                “Mother,” he insisted, “stop.”

The sheriff sensed his cell phone was going to ring just as it did.  “Yes,” Bailey said into the phone, “is that so?  Well that certainly does change things doesn’t it?”  The sheriff clicked off his phone, turned to E.J., and in a matter of fact tone, queried, “I don’t suppose you knew Laurabeth was approximately four weeks pregnant?”

                E.J. sat, and Mother paled in the face, at this announcement.  E.J. stammered and said, “No I did not know that and that’s something she would have told me.  Maybe she didn’t know yet.”

                The sheriff asked, “Are you the father?”

                “No,” E.J. angrily responded, “we were just friends, we never had sex, she didn’t want to have sex.  She said she’d had a bad experience.”  He hugged his hands tightly to his chest.

                Sheriff Bailey dispatched Deputy Taylor to the car to retrieve a DNA kit.  “I will need to swab your cheek to get a DNA sample to determine paternity.  If you are not the father, do you have any idea who the father might be?”

                E.J. was now enraged, barely keeping his temper in check, “No, she never mentioned she was seeing anyone and I’m certain she would have said so if she were.  We shared everything, or at least I thought we did, is there anything else?”

                Having taken the cheek swab, Sheriff Bailey declared, “I will put the lab technicians on this matter right away.  I should have the results in a day or two.  In the meantime,” he glanced at E.J. with a mildly threatening stare, “I don’t want you vanishing.”  E.J. nodded firmly his understanding.

                Mother, who had recovered most of the fleshy pink color in her round face, chimed in, “Sheriff, you sound as though E.J. is a suspect.  I can assure you he can’t even kill a spider or a fly, much less a human being.  He is a sweet and caring boy.  And I would sacrifice my life for his if necessary.”  And then she sat down on the bed aside E.J. asserting that the conversation was over and they were dismissed.

                The sheriff said, “I understand ma’am, but we must be thorough.  Unlike the judicial system, in law enforcement everyone is guilty until proven innocent.”

                After she shut the door behind them, she turned to E.J. and asked, “you haven’t been taking  your medications have you?  I can tell by the way you were getting mad.  You know the doctor said never to miss a dose.”

                He simply shook his head.

________________________________________#____________________________________________            

                “Isn’t that what the parents and neighbors always have to say about a killer,” thought the sheriff to himself, “they never say ‘I suspected him all along.’”   

                As they left, the sheriff commented to the deputy, “That boy is peculiar.  Something is wrong with him to live such an isolated life with no friends to speak of.  And he’s withholding something, mark my words, and so is the mother I suspect.  Let’s go see Doc Marshall and see what we’ve got our hands into.”  Sheriff Bailey had a keen sixth sense about these affairs, which is what made him such a good detective, and now sheriff.  He had seen a television program where researchers have identified nine different pathways from the eyes to the brain, and yet consciously we only use one of those.  It is the eight other pathways that experts believe to comprise the “sixth sense.”  At any rate, Bailey felt his pathways must be connected better than most persons; additionally he had a particularly inquisitive nature about him which suited his work.

                New Hope was a typical small town consisting almost entirely of a town square, on which sat the sheriff’s office and jail.  Four towering oak trees stood there and amidst the trees was a large and deep fountain which was barren for the winter.  The entire police force consisted of the sheriff and three deputies.  Adjacent to the sheriff’s office was the morgue.  It was an old fashioned brick and mortar building that was the sheriff’s destination.  Before they parted, Sheriff Bailey assigned the task of investigating the Millers’ and the Simpsons’ backgrounds to Deputy Taylor.

                Sheriff Bailey waited impatiently in the hallway for the doctor to emerge from the autopsy suite.  It was only the very exceptional case where Bailey would actually enter there.  He hated the putrid smell.  Finally, Doc Marshall emerged as if from nowhere, discarding his bloody hospital gown into a biohazards container.  Underneath he wore standard green scrubs, the top with a V-neck that showed exercised pec muscles.  You could nearly call it cleavage.

                “Doc, what have you been able to learn?” asked the sheriff.

                “Well sir, the simple answer is that she was strangled, no question there.  I’d put time of death between four and six pm.   She’s got petechial hemorrhages across her face, scleral hemorrhages in both her eyes, and a fractured hyoid bone in her neck.  Then there’s the matter of her fingertips being cut off.  Normally, decapitation accompanies a case involving severed fingertips to delay the identification process; no dental records plus no fingerprints makes identification damn near impossible.  However, in the absence of decapitation I can only theorize that there was a struggle, and the killer cut off the fingertips so that we wouldn’t be able to retrieve DNA evidence from under the nails.  Finally there’s the issue of the fetus.  It’s approximately four weeks gestation as I told you on the phone, and has multiple malformations.  She would almost certainly have miscarried.  There was no evidence of recent rape or sodomy.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

                “What about trace evidence, fingerprints, fibers?  Any luck there?”

                Sheriff Bailey started thinking aloud, “It’s probably the boy that’s done it, he’s just not right, and  he’s either lying about or withholding something.  More than likely he’s the father of the baby and went violent when she told him about it.  On the other hand he didn’t have any visible scratches.   He had motive and opportunity, although I’m surprised he would have had the presence of mind to cut off her fingertips.  Then again his room is full of detective stories that could have provided him with the ideas  to perform such an act.  I guess there’s nothing to do but wait for the paternity test and go from there.”

_____________________________________#_______________________________________________

                Two days passed without any further developments in the case.  The town was abuzz with morbid excitement and speculation and the sheriff had questioned and cross examined everyone involved to no avail.  Unexpectedly,  a scandal erupted.  The paternity test results came back and  E.J. was exonerated.  The father of the baby was not E.J. but was Laurabeth’s own father.  The sheriff was shocked sick to his stomach—he hadn’t even considered incest or sexual molestation.  Just when you think you’ve seen it all.  Besides, his sixth sense had failed him this one time.   Now all fingers seemed to point to Mr. Miller as the guilty party.  He was by appearance the most unlikely of villains.  He was clean-shaven, had short brown hair, pleasant blue eyes, a nice smile, a neat manicure, and an agreeable disposition.  He denied repeatedly any involvement in any crime.

The sheriff asked, “Did you know that she was one month into a pregnancy?”

Mr. Miller shook his head, shifted in his seat, and looked down at his feet.

 “Well the fetal DNA proves that you are the father of her baby.  Would you care to explain how that happened?”

 Mr. Miller kept his composure and confessed to abusing Laurabeth, “I don’t know why I did what I did.  She was just so beautiful and it felt so good,” and here he painted a profane and grotesque portrait with his words.  “And you know after awhile she even stopped complaining,” he added proudly, leaning toward the sheriff.  The sheriff, having searched the Miller home, withdrew from a plastic baggie a handful of photographs, all of Laurabeth, when she was six, when she was eight, when she was ten.   In all of the photos, she was naked or nearly naked with some lingerie on.  The sheriff looked at the pictures and then at Mr. Miller.

Sheriff Bailey was appalled and disgusted and thought Mr. Miller contemptible.  “Mr. Miller, you are a bastard and a coward, did you kill your daughter?  Was she threatening to expose you?”

“Absolutely not,” Mr. Miller alleged.

“Where were you in the afternoon and evening that she was murdered?” asked the sheriff.

Mr. Miller explained that he had had to work late that night, a story that would have to be verified.

  The sheriff read him his Miranda rights and took him into custody for child endangerment and possession of child pornography.  To the deputy, the sheriff said, “Did Miller have any priors?”

The deputy replied, “Yes , two calls from an ex-girlfriend for domestic violence.”

“What ever happened to Mrs. Miller?” the sheriff asked.

“It was very sad,” said Deputy Taylor, “she died during childbirth with Laurabeth.  Poor girl never had her mother’s protection or the chance to live with joy.  Life for Laurabeth must have been agonizing to endure.”

“Okay, well I want you to find this ex-girlfriend and get the details on the domestic violence complaints.”

Sheriff Bailey returned to the Simpson house to ask E.J. a few more questions. 

                The sheriff said gravely, “you must have known that she was being molested by her father, didn’t you?  You can’t be that close to someone and not know something like that.” 

E.J. adamantly refused,  “but we talked on the phone before we met down at the river.  She persuaded me to leave town with her but she wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.”

                After the interrogation, Sheriff Bailey asked Deputy Taylor about the Simpsons.  “At first,” he told the sheriff, “there was nothing to be found.  They seemed to have arrived here in New Hope from nowhere.  I interviewed all their neighbors and none could recall where they came from.  I finally tracked down their change of address card from the post office.  They came from a small town a few hours north called Elderwood.  And here is where the story gets interesting.  Mr. Simpson died a mysterious death.  He and Mrs. Simpson had been having marital difficulties according to a neighbor.  She said she had overheard Mr. Simpson threaten on multiple occasions to leave and take E.J. with him.  Then he died suddenly, and this was apparently never satisfactorily explained.  She always suspected Mrs. Simpson of foul play.  And she actually used the term foul play,” he laughed, “I got hold of Mr. Simpson’s medical records and he had a myriad of symptoms prior to death including a general odor of garlic, vomiting, bloody diarrhea, headache, confusion, and seizures.  The official cause of death though was never determined.  The case was abandoned and Mrs. Simpson and E.J. just disappeared.  There is a one year discrepancy between the time they left Elderwood and the time they arrived in New Hope.”

                The sheriff had a strong inclination as to what had happened, but he would have to get a court order to have Mr. Simpson’s body exhumed in order to obtain proof.  Exhumation turned out to be an uncomplicated mission once he explained his suspicions to the judge.  Sheriff Bailey had an uneasy feeling that, like in a good mystery novel, the coffin would turn out to be empty, but fortunately that was not the case.

                Later, Deputy Taylor sat down with the sheriff.  He said, “Mr. Miller’s ex-girlfriend states that he got violent with her and tried to strangle her on two separate occasions.  Charges were subsequently withdrawn.  I talked to her and she said she thinks he is angry with the world for the loss of his wife.   And that it seemed he took out this anger especially on Laurabeth.  She says she did not know about sexual abuse, only physical abuse.”

                The sheriff remarked, “well that’s very disturbing.  We have a strangulation homicide and a man angry with the world who tried to strangle his girlfriend twice.  I look forward to investigating his alibi.”

________________________________________#____________________________________________

After a few days, Sheriff Bailey received the results from Mr. Simpson’s hair and nails.  They were positive for arsenic.  The moving finger had come to point at Ms. Simpson rather than Mr. Miller, especially after his alibi was corroborated.  It was time to confront Ms. Simpson with the news.  The sheriff and his deputy once again headed to the Simpson house.  The weather was much better this time, about forty degrees with sunshine.  All the ice adorning the trees had melted, and the shadows of the trees looked like a scattered skeleton.  Both were occupied in their own thoughts, so neither the sheriff nor the deputy spoke during the short ride.   Ms. Simpson, as if prescient, opened the door before they had a chance to knock or ring the bell.  “Come on in and sit down.”  She paid intense attention to the sheriff as though she had been waiting for this conversation for her entire life.  The sheriff did not beat around the bush.

                “Ms. Simpson, you poisoned your husband when he threatened to take your child from you and you strangled Laurabeth Miller when you found out your son was going to leave town with her, didn’t you?”

                “Yes, that is right,” she cut him off as with a knife, without batting an eyelash.  Ms. Simpson was wearing polyester pants and a sweatshirt, which was unusual for the weekend.  She normally wore her nightgown and bathrobe all day during the winter months, unless she was off to a sale.  It was as if she had been waiting for them.  The sheriff read Mother her rights and put her in handcuffs before leading her out to the patrol car.  They then rode to the sheriff’s office in silence.  Once there she was taken to the interrogation room.

                “Ms . Simpson would you like a lawyer present for these questions? “

                “No,” she said coldly.

                “Tell me first about your husband.”

                “Well he was a horrible person.  Used to beat me all the time and threatened to beat E.J. too.  It got to the point where I believed he would disappear with E.J. and I would never see him again.  So I read up on poisons and selected arsenic because it is particularly nasty.  And there’s really nothing more to tell.”

                The sheriff asked, “Where were you for the year between the time you left Elderwood and the time you arrived here in New Hope?

                “We moved around, nothing special to tell there.”

                “Now tell me about Laurabeth.  What happened?”

                “Well, sheriff, I was in the kitchen but I could hear E.J. on the phone.  Toward the end of the conversation he mentioned that he would go away with her if that’s what she wanted.  I was upset to say the least.  I mean he is still my baby.   So I went down to the river and waited for E.J. to leave, then I confronted her.  She was belligerent  and we fought and I ended up strangling her as you said at the house.”

                “And then you cut off her fingertips?” the sheriff asked.

                She hesitated for a couple of seconds, giving it some thought. “Yes, she had scratched me and I knew you would find my DNA there.”

                After she had gone the sheriff turned to the deputy and said, “I would have bet money that the kid was the guilty one.  Maybe I’m getting too old for this.”  They laughed. 

 E.J. sat there in disbelief, dumbfounded and dazed as Sheriff Bailey recounted to him Mother’s confession.  “Can I see her now?”

“Sure,” said the sheriff, “but keep it brief.”   The sheriff led E.J. to the interrogation room, a dismal, gray tomb with peeling paint, one wooden table, and two folding chairs.  The sheriff waited just  inside the door.

                Ms. Simpson turned to E.J. “I am your mother and you are the only joy in my life.  I will hold onto that and protect you from anything and anyone.”  Her eyes were cold as ice and sharp as daggers.

_______________________________________#_____________________________________________            

                After a short trial, Mother was convicted on two counts of murder and imprisoned to life without the possibility of parole.  E.J. went to visit her shortly after her incarceration.

                “I have one question for you Mother,” E.J. sighed, then paused, and finally said, “why did you lie for me?”

                “Because I love you.  Consider this your free pass.   Live the rest of your life well.”

                “How did you know it was me?” he asked grimly.

                “I overheard you on the phone, talking about leaving. If it had been anyone other than you, then you and she would have just disappeared never to be heard from again.  So as soon as I heard she was dead, I knew it had to be you.  I know you better than you know yourself.  You inherited your father’s temperament.”

                “I couldn’t help it Mother.  Laurabeth told me she was pregnant and I got so angry that she betrayed ME,  I went absolutely nuts,” his face was bright red at the memory, contorted into a menacing grimace that actually frightened Mother.  “ I just grabbed her neck and kept telling her to shut up,” he said, distraught.  “ It’s like it wasn’t even me.  I didn’t mean to kill her.  She never said anything about her father having sex with her.  How will I get over this?  I remember every scent, sight, and sound.”  He was breathing hard like he had just finished a vigorous run.

                “By sheer force of will.  And because you have to.  It doesn’t matter now.  Are you taking your medications again?

                He said simply, “Yes.”

                E.J. left Oakville, never to be seen again.  He did, however, write faithfully to Mother each week.  The letters were usually lengthy and detailed.  He had started college by day, studying criminal justice and not accounting, and he worked a nighttime job as a security guard at a warehouse.  He didn’t ever leave an address for Mother to write back to although the postmark was always from New Haven, Connecticut.  Mother thought the choice of city was justified and ironic.  Each week she  patiently waited and looked forward to a few moments of joy.

Nemesis by me

Is our Earth’s sun one half of a pair of stars?  Is there a second star that comes around every 26 million years?  Some physicists and geologists think so.

                As early as 1984, the existence of such a star was proposed to explain the apparent 26 million year cycle of mass extinctions on earth, such as that of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.  It has been named Nemesis, the death star.

                The theory is that when the star passes closest to the Earth, it disrupts a cloud of comets, sending them hurtling through space toward our planet.  It has not been sighted yet because it is proposed to be a red or brown dwarf star, very dim, not emitting much light.  An infrared analysis of space has just begun which should find it if it exists.   Approximately two thirds of stars exist in pairs or binary star systems, and most of those occur in uneven sizes and strengths.

                An international consensus was reached in 2010, confirming that a comet impact at Chicxulub on the Yucatan Peninsula was responsible for that dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago, paving the way for mammals to thrive and humans to evolve.

                There are scientists who doubt the periodicity of the extinctions, and those who doubt nemesis’ existence, but it was not so many years ago that the same number of scientists doubted than an impact extincted the dinosaurs, a fact now proven beyond all doubt.

A Bad Heart by Ruth Rendell

They had been very pressing and at last, on the third time of asking, he had accepted.  Resignedly, almost fatalistically, he had agreed to dine with them.  But as he began the long drive out of London, he thought petulantly that they ought to have had the tact to drop the acquaintance altogether.  No other employee he had sacked had ever made such approaches to him.  Threats, yes.   Several had threatened him and one had tried blackmail, but no one had ever had the effrontery to invite him to dinner.  It wasn't done.  A discreet man wouldn't have done it.  But of course Hugo Crouch wasn't a discreet man and that, among other things, was why he had been sacked.

He knew why they had asked him.  They wanted to hold a court of enquiry, to have the whole thing out.  Knowing this, he had suggested they meet in a restaurant and at his expense.  They couldn't harangue a man iin a public restaurant and he wouldn't be at their mercy.   But they had insisted he come to their house and in the end he had given way.  He was an elderly man with a heart condition; it was sixteen miles slow driving from his flat to their house--monstrous on a filthy February night--but he would show them he could take it, he would be one too many for them.  The chairman of Frasers would show them he wasn't to  be intimidated by a bumptious do-gooder like Hugo Crouchm, and he would cope with the situation just as he had coped in the past with the blackmailer.

By the time he reached the outskirts of the Forest, the rain was coming down  so hard that he had to put his windscreen wipers on to top speed, and he felt more  than ever thankful that he had got this new car with all its efficient gadgets.  Certainly the firm wouldn't have been able to run to it if he had kept Hugo Crouch on a day longer.  If he had agreed to all Hugo's demands he would still be stuck with that old Daimler and he would never have managed that winter cruise.  Hugo had been a real thorn in his flesh what with his extravagance and his choosing to live in a house in the middle of Epping Forest.  And it was in the middle, totally isolated, not even on the edge of one of the Forest villages.  The general manager of Frasers had to be within reach, on call.  Burying oneself out here was ridiculous.

The car's powerful headlights showed a dark, winding lane aheadm the grey tree trunks making it appear like some sombre, pillared corridor.  And this picture was cut off every few seconds by a curtain of rain, to reappear with the sweep of the wipers.  Fortunately, he had been there once before, otherwise he might have passed the high brick wall and the wooden gates behind which stood the Crouch house, the peak-roofed Victorian villa, drab, shabby, and to his eyes quite hideous.  Anyone who put a demolition order on that would be doing a service to the environment, he thought, and then he drove in through the gates.

There wasn't a single light showing.  He remembered that they lived in the back, but they might have put a light on to greet him.  But for his car headlamps, he wouldn't have been able to see his way at all.  Clutching the box of peppermint creams he had bought for Elizabeth Crouch, he splashed across the almost flooded paving, under eaves from which water poured as from a row of taps, and made for the front door, which happened to be--which would be--at the far side of the house.  It was hard to tell where their garden ended and the Forest began, for no demarcation was visible.  Nothing was visible but black, rain-lashed branches, faintly illuminated by a dim glow showing through the fanlight over the door.

He rang the bell hard, keeping his finger on the push, hoping the rain hadn't got through his coat to his hundred-guinea suit.  A jet of water struck the back of his neck, sending a shiver right through him, and then the door was opened.

"Duncan!  You must be soaked.  Have you had a dreadful journey?"

He gasped out, "Awful, awful!" and ducked into the dry sanctuary of the hall.  "What a night!"  He thrust the chocolates at her, gave her his hand.  Then he remembered that in the old days they always used to kiss.  Well, he never minded kissing a pretty woman and it hadn't been her fault.  "How are you, Elizabeth?" he said after their cheeks had touched.

"I'm fine.  Let me take your coat.  I'll take it to the kitchen and dry it.  Hugo's in the sitting room.  You know your way, don't you?"

Down a long passage, he remembered, that was never properly lighted and wasn't heated at all.  The whole place called out for central heating.  He was by now extremely cold and he couldn't help thinking of his flat, where the radiators got so hot that you had to open the windows even in February and where, had he been home, his housekeeper would at this moment be placing before him a portion of hot pate to be followed by poulet San Josef.  Elizabeth Crouch, he recalled, was rather a poor cook.

Outside the sitting-room door he paused, girding himself for the encounter.  He hadn't set eyes on Hugo Crouch since the man had marched out of the office in a huff because he,  Duncan Fraser, chairman of Frasers, had tentatively suggested he might be happier in another job.  Well, the sooner the first words were over the better.  Very few men in his position, he thought, would let the matter weigh on their minds at all or have his sensitivity.  Very few, for that matter, would have come.

He would be genial, casual, perhaps a little avuncular.  Above all, he would avoid at any cost the subject of Hugo's dismissal.  They wouldn't be able to make him talk about it if he was determined not to; ultimately, the politeness of hosts to guest would put up a barrier to stop them.  He opened the door, smiling pleasantly, achieving a merry twinkle in his eye.  "Well, here I am, Hugo! I've made it."

Hugo wore a very sour look, the kind of look Duncan had often seen on his face when some more than usually extravagant order or request of his had been countermanded.  He didn't smile.  He gave Duncan his hand gravely and asked him what he would like to drink.

Duncan looked quickly around the room, which hadn't changed and was still furnished with rather grim Victorian pieces.  There was, at any rate, a huge fire of logs burning in the grate.  "Ah, yes, a drink," he said, rubbing his hands together.  He didn't dare ask for whisky, which he would have liked best, because his doctor had forbidden it.  "A little dry Vermouth?"

"I'm afraid I don't have any Vermouth."

This rejoinder, though spoken quite lightly, though he had even expected something of the sort, gave Duncan a slight shock.  It put him on his mettle and yet it jolted him.  He had known, of course, that they would start on him but he hadn't anticipated the first move coming so promptly.  All right, let the man remind him he couldn't afford fancy drinks because he had lost his job.  He, Duncan, wouldn't be drawn.  "Sherry, then," he said.  "You do have sherry?"

"Oh, yes, we have sherry.  Come and sit by the fire."

As soon as he was seated in front of those blazing logs and had begun to thaw out, he decided to pursue the conversation along the lines of the weather.  It was the only subject he could think of to break the ice until Elizabeth came in, and they were doing quite well at it, moving into such sidelines as floods in East Anglia and crashes in motorway fog, when she appeared and sat next to him.

"We haven't asked anyone else, Duncan.  We wanted to have you to ourselves."

A pointless remark, he thought, under the circumstances.  Naturally, they hadn't asked anyone else.  The presence of other guests would have defeated the exercise.  But perhaps it hadn't been so pointless, after all.  It could be an opening gambit.

"Delightful," he said.

"We've got such a lot to talk about.  I thought it would be nicer this way."

"Much nicer."  Such a lot to talk about?  There was only one thing she could mean by that.  But she needn't think--silent Hugo sitting there with his grim, moody face needn't think--that he would help them along an inch of the way.   If they were going to get on to the subject they would have to do all the spadework themselves.  "We were just saying," he said, "how tragic all these motorway crashes are.  Now I feel all this could be stopped by a very simple method."

He outlined the simple method but he could tell they weren't really interested and he wasn't surprised when Elizabeth said, "That's fascinating, Duncan, but let's talk about you.  What have you been doing lately?"

Controlling the business your husband nearly ruined.  "Oh, this and that," he said.  "Nothing much."

"Did you go on a cruise this winter?"

"Er--yes I did.  The Caribbean, as a matter fact."

"That's nice.  I'm sure the change did you good."

Implying he needed having good done to him, of course.  She had only got on to cruises so that she could point out that some people couldn't afford them.  "I had a real est," he said heartily.  "I must tell you about a most amusing thing that happened to me on the way home." He told them but it didn't sound very amusing, and although Elizabeth smiled half-heartedly, Hugo didn't,  "Well, it seemed funny at the time," he said.

"We can eat in five minutes," said Elizabeth.  "Tell me, Duncan, did you buy that villa you were so keen on in the South of France?"

"Oh, yes, I bought it."  She was looking at him very curiously, very impertinently really, waiting for him to apologize for spending his own money, he supposed.  "Listen to that rain," he said.  "It hasn't let up at all."

They agreed that it hadn't and silence fell.  He could tell from the glance they exchanged--he was very astute in these matters--that they knew they had been baulked for the time being.  And they both looked pretty fed up, he thought triumphantly.  But the woman was weighing in again and a bit nearer the bone this time.

"Who do you think we ran into last week, Duncan?  John Churchouse."

The man who had done that printing for Frasers a couple of years back.  He had got the order, Duncan remembered, just about the time of Hugo's promotion.  He sat tight, drank the rest of his sherry.

"He told us he'd been in hospital for months and lost quite a lot of business.  I felt so..."

"I wonder if I might wash my hands," Duncan asked firmly.  "If you could just tell me where the bathroom is?"

"Of course."  She looked disappointed, as well she might.  "It's the door facing you at the top of the stairs."

Duncan made his way to the bathroom.  He mustn't think he was going to get off the hook as easily as that.  They would be bound to start on him again during the meal.  Very likely they thought a dinner table a good place  to hold an inquest.  Still, he'd be ready for them, he'd done rather well up to now.

They were both waiting for him at the foot of the stairs to lead him into the dining room and again he saw the woman give her husband one of those looks that are the equivalent of prompting nudges.  Hugo was probably getting cold feet.  In these cases, of course, it was always the women who were more aggressive.  Duncan gave a swift glance at the table and the plate of hors d'oeuvres, sardines and anchovies and artichoke hearts, most unsuitable for the time of the year.

"I'm afraid you've been to a great deal of trouble, Elizabeth," he said graciously.

She gave him a dazzling smile.  He had forgotten that smile of hers, how it lit her whole face, her eyes as flashing blue as a kingfisher's plumage.  "'The labour we delight in,'" she said, "'physics pain.'"

"Ah, Macbeth."  Good, an excellent topic to get them through the first course.  "Do you know, the only  time we three ever went to the theatre together was to see Macbeth?"

"I remember," she said.  "Bread, Duncan?"

"Thank you.  I saw a splendid performance of Macbeth by that Polish company last week.  Perhaps you've seen it?"

"We haven't been to the theatre at all this winter," said Hugo.

She must have kicked him under the table to prompt that one.  Duncan took no notice.  He told them in detail about the Polish Macbeth, although  such was his mounting tenseness that he couldn't remember half the names of the characters, or, for that matter, the names of the actors.

"I wish Keith could have seen it," she said.  "It's his set play for his exam."

She was going to force him to ask after her sons and be told they had had to take them away from that absurdly expensive boarding school.  Well, he wouldn't.  Rude it might be, but he wouldn't ask.

"I don't think you ever met our children, Duncan?"

"No, I didn't."

"They'll be home on half-term next week.  I'm so delighted that their half-term happens to coincide with mine."

"Yours?" he said suspiciously.

"Elizabeth has gone back to teaching."

"Really?" said Duncan.  "No, I won't have any more, thank you.   That was delicious.  Let me give you a hand.  If I could carry something...?"

"Please don't trouble.  I can manage."  She looked rather offended.  "If you two will excuse me I'll see to our main course."

He was left alone with Hugo in the chilly dining room.  He shifted his legs from under the cloth to bring them closer to the one-bar electric heater.  Hugo began to struggle with the cork of the wine bottle.  Unable to extract it, he cursed under his breath.

"Let me try."

"I'll be able to cope quite well, thanks, if you don't watch me," Hugo said sharply, and then, irrelevantly if you didn't know nothing those two said was irrelevant, "I'm doing a course in accountancy."

"As a wine waiter, Hugo," said Duncan, "you make a very good accountant, ha ha!"

Hugo didn't laugh.  He got the cork out at last.  "I think I'll do all right.  I was always reasonably good at figures."

"So you were, so you were.  And more than reasonably good."  That was true.  It had been with personnel that the man was so abysmally bad, giving junior executives and little typists ideas above their station.  "I'm sure you will do well."  Why didn't the woman come back?  It must have been ten minutes since she had gone off to that kitchen, down those miles of passages.  His own wife, long dead, would have got that main course into serving dishes before they had sat down to the hors d'oeuvres.  "Get a qualification, that's the thing," he said.  In the distance he heard the wheels of a trolley coming.  It was a more welcome sound than that of the wheels of the train one has awaited for an hour on a cold platform.  He didn't like the woman but anything was better than being alone with Hugo.  Why not get it over now, he thought, before they began on the amazingly small roasted chicken which had appeared?  He managed a smile.  He said, "I can tell you've both fallen on your feet.  I'm quite sure, Hugo, you'll look back on all this when you're a successful accountant and thank God you and Frasers parted company."

And that ought to be that.  They had put him through their inquisition and now they would perhaps let him eat this overcooked mess that passed for dinner in peace.  At last they would talk of something else, not leave it to him who had been making the running all the evening.

But instead of conversation, there was a deep silence.  No one seemed to have anything to say.  And although Duncan, working manfully at his chicken wing, racked his brains for a topic, he could think of nothing.  Their house, his flat, the workpeople at Frasers, his car, the cost of living, her job, Hugo's course,
Christmas past, summer to come, all these subjects must inevitably lead by a direct route back to Hugo's dismissal.  And Duncan saw with irritable despair that all subjects would lead to it because he was he and they were they and the dismissal lay between them like an unavoidable spectre at their dismal feast.  From time to time he lifted his eyes from his plate, hoping that she would respond to that famous smile of his, that smile that was growing stiff with insincere use, but each time he looked at her he saw that she was staring fixedly at him, eating hardly anything, her expression concentrated, dispassionate, and somehow dogged.  And her eyes had lost their kingfisher flash.  They were dull and dead like smoky glass.

So they hadn't had enough then, she and her subdued, morose husband?  They wanted to see him abject, not merely referring with open frankness to the dismissal as he had done, but explaining it, apologizing.  Well, they should have his explanation.  There was no escape.  Carefully, he placed his knife and fork side by side on his empty plate.  Precisely, but very politely, he refused his hostess's offer of more.  He took a deep breath as he often did at the beginning of a board meeting, as he had so very often done at those board meetings when Hugo Crouch pressed insistently for staff rises.

"My dear Elizabeth," he began, "my dear Hugo, I know why you asked me here tonight and what you've been hinting at ever since I arrived.  And because I want to enjoy your very delightful company without any more awkwardness, I'm going to do here and now what you very obviously want me to do--that is, explain just how it happened that I suggested Hugo would be happier away from Frasers."

Elizabeth said, "Now, Duncan, listen..."

"You can say your piece in a moment, Elizabeth.  Perhaps you'll be surprised when I say I am entirely to blame for what happened.  Yes, I admit it, the fault was all mine."  He lifted one hand to silence Hugo who was shaking his head vehemently.  "No, Hugo, let me finish.  As I said, the fault was mine.  I made an error of judgment.  Oh, yes, I did.  I should have been a better judge of men.  I should have been able to see when I promoted you that you weren't up to the job.  I blame myself for not understanding--well, your limitations."

They were silent.  They didn't look at him or at each other.

"We men in responsible positions," he said, "are to  blame when the men we appoint can't rise to the heights we envisage for them.  We lack vision, that's all.  I take the whole burden of it on my shoulders, you see.  So shall we forgive and forget?"

He had seldom seen people look so embarrassed, so shamefaced.  It just went to show that they were no match for him.  His statement had been the last thing they had expected and it was unanswerable.  He handed her his plate  with its little graveyard of chicken bones among the potato skins and as she took it he saw a look of baulked fury cross her face.

"Well, Elizabeth," he said, unable to resist, "am I forgiven?"

"It's too late now.  It's past," she said in a cold, stony voice.  "It's too late for any of this.

"I'm sorry if I haven't given you the explanation you wanted, my dear.  I've simply told you the truth."

She didn't say any more.  Hugo didn't say anything.  And suddenly Duncan felt most uncomfortable.  Their condemnatory faces, the way they both seemed to shrink away from him, was almost too much for him.  His heart began to pound and he had to tell himself that a racing heart meant nothing, that it was pains and not palpatations he must fear.  He reached for one of his little white pills ostentaciously, hoping they would notice what they had done to him.

When still they didn't speak, he said, "I think perhaps I should go now."

"But you haven't had coffee," said Elizabeth.

"Just the same it might be better..."

"Please stay and have coffee," she said firmly, almost sternly, and then she forced a smile.  "I insist."

Back in the sitting room they offered him brandy. He refused it because he had to drive home, and the sooner he could begin that drive the happier he would be.  Hugo had a large brandy, which he drank at a gulp, the way brandy should never be drunk unless one had had a shock or were steeling oneself for something,  Elizabeth had picked up the evening paper and was talking in a very artificial way about a murder case which appeared on the front page.

"I really must go," said Duncan.

"Have some more coffe?  It's not ten yet."

Why did they want him to llay?  Or, rather, why did she?   Hugo was once more busy with the brandy bottle.  He would have thought his company must be as tiresome to them as theirs were to him.  They had got what they wanted, hadn't they?  He drank his second cup of coffee so quickly that it scalded his mouth and then he  got up.

"Thank you."  It was over.  He was going to make his escape and he need never see them again.  And suddenly he felt that he wouldn't be able to get out of that house fast enough.  Really, since he had made his little speech, the atmosphere had been completely disagreeable.  "Good night, Elizabeth," he said.  What platitudes could he think of that weren't too ludicrous?  "Thank you for the meal.  Perhaps we will meet again some day."

'I hope we shall and soon, Duncan," she said, but she didn't offer him her cheek.  Through the open door, the rain was driving in against her long skirt.  She stood there, watching him go out with Hugo, letting the light pour out to guide them round the corner of the house.

As soon as he was round that corner, Duncan felt an unpleasant jerk of shock.  His car lights were blazing, full on.

"How did I come to do a thing like that?"

"I suppose you left them on to see your way to the door," said Hugo, "and then forgot them."

"I'm sure I did not."

"You must have.  Hold the umbrella and I'll try the ignition."  Leaving Duncan on the flooded path under the inadequate umbrella, Hugo got into the driving seat and inserted the ignition key.  Duncan watched him, stamping his feet impatiently.  "Not a spark," said Hugo.  "Your battery's flat."

"It can't be."

"I'm afraid it is.  Try for yourself."

Duncan tried, getting very wet in the process. 

"We'd better go back in the house.  We'll get soaked out here."

"What's the matter?" said Elizabeth, who was still standing in the doorway.

"His battery's flat.  The car won't start."

Of coure it wasn't their fault but somehow Duncan felt that it was.  It had happened, after all, at their house, to which they had fetched him for a disgraceful purpose.  He didn't bother to soften his annoyance.  "I'm afraid I'll just have to borrow your car, Hugo."

Elizabeth closed the door.  "We don't have a car anymore.  We couldn't afford to run it.  It was either keeping a car or taking the boys away from school, so we sold it."

"I see.  Then if I might just use your phone, I'll ring for a hired car.  I've a mini-cab number in my wallet."  One look at her face told him that wasn't going to be possible either.  "Now you'll say you've had the phone  cut off."  Damn her!  Damn them both!

"We could have afforded it, of course.  We just didn't need it anymore.  I'm sorry, Duncan, I just don't know what you can do.  But we may as well all go and sit down where it's warmer."

"I don't want to sit down," Duncan almost shouted.  "I have to get home."  He shook off the hand she had laid on his arm and which seemed to be forcibly detaining him.  "I must just walk to the nearest house with a phone."

Hugo opened the door.  The rain was more like a wall of water than a series of drops.  "In this?"

"Then what am I supposed to do?" Duncan cried fretfully.

"Stay the night," said Elizabeth calmly.  "I really don't know what you can do but stay the night."

The bed was just what he would have expected a bed in the Crouch menage to be--hard, narrow, and cold.  She had given him a hot water bottle, which was an object he hadn't set eyes on in ten years.  And Hugo had lent him a pair of pajamas.  All the time this was going on, he had protested that he couldn't stay, that there must be some other way, but in the end he had yielded.  Not that they had been welcoming.  They had treated the whole thing as if--well, how had they treated it?  Duncan lay in the dark, clutching the bottle between his knees, and tried to assess just what their attitude had been.  Fatalistic, he thought, that was it.  They had behaved as if this were inevitable, that there was no escape  for him, and here, like it or not, he must stay.

Escape was a ridiculous word, of course, but it was the sort of word you used when you were trapped somewhere for a whole night in the home of people who were obviously antagonistic, if not hostile.  Why had he been such a fool as to leave those car lights  on?  He couldn't remember that he had done and yet he must have.  Nobody else would have turned them on.  Why should they?

He wished they would go to bed too.  That they hadn't he could tell by the light, the rectangular outline of dazzlement, that showed round the frame of his bedroom door.  And he could hear them talking, not the words but the buzz of conversation.  These late Victorian houses were atrociously built, of course.  You could hear every sound.  The rain drumming on the roof sounded as if it were pounding on cardboard rather than on slates.  He didn't think there was much prospect of sleep.  How could he sleep with the noise and all that on his mind, the worry of getting the car moved, of finding some way of getting to the office?  And it made him feel very uneasy their staying up like that, particularly as she had said, "If you'll go into the bathroom first, Duncan, we'll follow you."  Follow him!  That must have been all of half an hour ago.  He pressed the switch of his bedlamp and saw that it was eleven-thirty.   Time they were in bed if she had to get to her school in the morning and he to his accountancy course.

Once more in the dark, but for that gold-edged rectangle, he considered the car lights question again.  He was certain he had turned them out.  Of course it was hard to be certain of anything when you were as upset as he.  The pressure they had put on him had been simply horrible and the worst moments those when he had been alone with Hugo while that woman was fishing the ancient pullet she'd dished up to him out of her oven.  Really, she had been a hell of a time getting that main course when you considered what it had amounted to.  Could she...?  Only a madwoman would do such a thing and what possible motive could she have  had?  But if you lived in a remote place and you wanted someone to stay in your house overnight, if you wanted to keep him there, how better than to immobilize his car?  He shivered, even while he told himself such fancies were absurd.

At any rate, they were coming up now.  Every board in the house creaked and the stairs played a tune like a broken old violin.  He heard Hugo mumble something--the man had drunk far too much brandy--and then she said, "Leave all the rest to me."

Another shiver that hadn't very much to do with the cold ran through him.  He couldn't think why it had.  Surely, that was quite a natural thing for a woman to say on going to bed.  She only meant, You go to bed and I'll lock up and turn off the lights.  He had often said it when his wife was alive.  And yet it was a phrase familiar to him in quite another context.  Turning on his side away from the light and into fresh caverns of icy sheet, he tried to think where he had heard it.  It came from Macbeth.  Lady Macbeth said it when she and her husband were plotting the old king's murder.  And what was the old king's name?  Douglas?  Donal?

Someone had come out of the bathroom and someone else gone in.  Did they always take such ages getting to bed?  The lavatory flush roared and a torrent rushed through pipes that seemed to pass under his bed.  He heard footsteps across the landing and a door closing.  Apparently, they slept in the next room to his.  He turned over, longing for the light to go out.  It was a pity there was no key in that lock so that he could have locked his door.

As soon as the thought had formed and been uttered in his brain, he thought how fantastic it was.  What, lock one's bedroom door in a private house?  Suppose his hostess came in in the morning with a cup of tea?  She would think it very odd.  And she might come in.  She had put this bottle in his bed and had placed a glass of water on the table.  Of course he couldn't dream of locking the door, and why should he want to?  One of them was in the bathroom again.

Suddenly he found himself thinking about one of the men he had sacked and who had threatened him.  The man had said "Don't think you'll get away with this, and if you show your ugly face within a mile of my place you may not live to regret it."  Of course he had got away with it and had nothing to regret.  On the other hand, he hadn't shown himself withinn a mile of the man's place...The light had gone out at last.  Sleep now, he told himself.  Empty your mind or think about something nice, your summer holiday in the villa, for instance, think about that.

The gardens would be wonderful with the oleanders and the bougainvillea.  And the sun would warm his old bones as he sat on his terrace, looking down through the cleft in the pines at the blue triangle of the Mediterranean which was brighter and gentler than that woman's eyes...Never mind the woman, forget her.  Perhaps he should have the terrace raised and extended and set up on it that piece of statuary--surely Roman--which he had found in the pinewoods.  It would cost a great deal of money, but it was his money.  Why shouldn't he spend his own?  He must try to be less sensitive, he thought, less troubled by this absurd social conscience which, for some reason, he had lately developed.  Not, he reflected with a faint chuckle, that it actually stopped him spending money or enjoying himself.  It was a nuisance, that was all.

He would have the terrace extended and maybe a black marble floor laid in the salon.  Frasers' profits looked as if they would hit a new high this year.  Why not get that fellow Churchouse to do all their printing for them?  If he was really down on his luck and desperate he would be bound to work for a cut rate, jump at the chance, no doubt...

God damn it, it was too much!  They were talking in there.  He could hear their whisperings, rapid, emotional almost, through the wall.  They were an absurd couple, no sense of humor between the pair of them.  Intense, like characters out of some tragedy.

"The labour we delight in physics pain"--Macbeth had said that, Macbeth who killed the old king.  And she had said it to him, Duncan, when he had apologized for the trouble he was causing.  The king was called Duncan too.  Of course he was.  He was called Duncan and so was the king and he too, in a way, was an old king, the monarch of the Fraser empire.  Whisper, whisper, breathed the wall at him.

He sat up and put on the light.  With the light on, he felt better.  He was sure, though, that he hadn't left those car lights on.  "Leave all the rest to me..."  Why say that?  Why not say what everyone said, "I'll see to everything"? Macbeth and his wife had entertained the old king in their house and murdered him in his bed, although he had done them no harm, done nothing to them but be king.  So it wasn't a parallel, was it?  For he, Duncan Fraser, had done something, something which might merit vengeance.  He had sacked Hugo Crouch and taken away his livelihood.  It wasn't a parallel.

He turned off the light, sighed, and lay down again.  They were still whispering.  He heard the floor creak as one of them came out of the bedroom.  It wasn't a parallel--it was much more.  Why hadn't he seen that?  Lady Macbeth and her husband had no cause, no cause...A sweat broke out on his face and he reached for the glass of water.  But he didn't drink.  It was stupid not to but...The morning  would soon come.  "O, never shall sun that morrow see!"  Where did that come from?  Need he ask?

Whoever it was in the bathroom had left it and  gone back to the other one.  But only for a moment.  Again he heard the boards creak, again someone was moving about on that dark landing.  Dark, yes, pitch dark, for they hadn't switched the light on this time.  And Duncan felt then the first thrill of real fear, which didn't subside after the shiver had died but grew and gripped him in a terror the like of which he hadn't known since he was a little boy and had been shut up in the nursery cupboard of his father's manse.  He mustn't be afraid, he mustn't.  He must think of his heart.  Why should they want vengeance? He'd explained.  He'd told them the truth, taking the full burden of blame on himself.  The room was so dark that he didn't see the door handle turn.  He heard it. It creaked very softly.  His heart began a slow, steady pounding and he contracted his body, forcing it back against the wall.  Whoever it was had come into the room.  He could see the shape of him--or her--as a denser blackness in the dark.

"What...?  Who...? he said, quavering, his throat dry.  The shape grew fluid, glided away, and the door closed softly.  They wanted to see if he was asleep.  They would kill him when he was asleep.  He sat up, switched on the light, and put his face in his hands.  "O, never shall sun that morrow see!"  He'd put all that furniture against the door, that chest of drawers, his bed, the chair.  His throat was parched now and he reached for the water, taking a long draught.  It was icy cold.

They weren't whispering anymore.  They were waiting in silence.  He got up and put his coat round him.  In the bitter cold he began lugging the furniture away from the walls, lifting the iron bedstead that felt so small and narrow when he was in it but was so hideously weighty.

Straightening up from his second attempt, he felt it, the pain in his chest and down his left arm.  It came like a clamp, like a clamp being screwed and at the same time slowly heated red-hot.  It took his body in hot iron fingers and squeezed his ribs.  And sweat began to pour from him as if the temperature in the room had suddenly risen tremendously.  Oh God, Oh, God, the water in the glass...!  They would have to get him a doctor, they would have to, they couldn't be so pitiless.  He was old and tired and his heart was bad.

He pulled the coat round the pain and staggered out into the black passage.  Their door--where was their door?  He found it by fumbling at the walls, scrabbling like an imprisoned animal, and when he found it he kicked it open and swayed on the threshold, holding the pain in both his hands.

They were sitting on their bed with their backs to him, not in bed but sitting there, the shapes of them silhouetted against the light of a small low-bulbed bedlamp.

"Oh, please," he said, "please help me.  Don't kill me, I beg you not to kill me.  I'll go on my knees to you.  I know I've done wrong, I did a terrible thing.  I didn't make an error of judgment.  I sacked Hugo because he wanted too much for the staff, he wanted more money for everyone and I couldn't let them have it.  I wanted my new car and my holidays.  I had to have my villa--so beautiful, my villa, my gardens.  Ah, God, I know I was greedy but I've borne the guilt of it for months, every day--on my conscience--the guilt of it..."  They turned, two white faces, implacable, merciless.  They rose and came towards him, scrambling across their bed.  "Have pity on me," he screamed.  "Don't kill me.  I'll give you everything I've got, I'll give you a million..."

But they had seized him with their hands and it was too late.  She had told him it was too late.

"In our house!" she said.

"Don't," said Hugo.  "That's what Lady Macbeth said.  What does it matter whether it was in our house or not?"

"I wish I'd never invited him."

"Well, it was your idea.  You said let's have him here because he's a widower and lonely.  I didn't want him.  It was ghastly the way he insisted on talking about firing me when we wanted to keep off the subject at any price.  I was utterly fed up when he had to stay the night."

"What do we do now?" said Elizabeth.

"Get the police, I should think, or a doctor.  It's stopped raining.  I'll get dressed and go."

"But you're not well!  You kept throwing up."

"I'm okay now.   I drank too much brandy.  It was such a strain all of it, nobody knowing what to talk about.  God, what a business!  He was alright when you went into his room just now, wasn't he?"

"Half-asleep, I thought. I was going to apologize for all the racket you were making but he seemed nearly asleep.  Did you get any of that he was trying to say when he came in here? I didn't."

"No, it was just gibberish.  We couldn't have  done anything for him, darling.  We did try to catch him before he fell."

"I know."

"He had a bad heart."

"In more ways than one, poor old man," said Elizabeth, and she laid a blanket gently over Duncan, though he was past feeling hot or cold or guilt or fear or anything any more.