ast December, while shaving one day, he had discovered the first threads of gray in his beard. The discovery had thrown him into a savage depression, and he had stayed depressed for weeks. He hadn't touched a razor between then and now, as if it was the act of shaving that had somehow caused the gray to show up. He was thirty-eight. He refused to entertain the thought of being that old, but sometimes it crept up on his blind side and surprised him. To he that old - less than seven hundred days shy of forty terrified him. He had really believed that forty was for other people.

That bitch, he thought over and over again. That bitch.

He had left dozens of women since he had first gotten laid by a vague, pretty, softly helpless French substitute when he was a high school junior, but he himself had only been dropped two or three times. He was good at seeing the drop coming and opting out of the relationship first. It was a protective device, like bombing the queen of spades on someone else in a game of Hearts. You had to do it while you could still cover the bitch, or you got screwed. You covered yourself. The way you didn't think about your age. He had known Donna was cooling it, but she had struck him as a woman who could be manipulated with no great difficulty, at least for a while, by a combination of psychological and sexual factors. By fear, if you wanted to be crude. That it hadn't worked that way left him feeling hurt and furious, as if he had been whipped raw.

He got out of his clothes, tossed his wallet and change onto his desk, went into the bathroom, showered. When he came out he felt a little better. He dressed again, pulling jeans and a faded chambray shirt from the flightbag. He picked his change up, put it in a front pocket, and paused, looking speculatively at his Lord Buxton. Some of the business cards had fallen out They were always doing that, because there were so many of them.

Steve Kemp had a packrat sort of wallet. One of the items he almost always picked up and tucked away were business cards. They made nice bookmarks, and the space on the blank flip side was just right for jotting an address, simple directions, or a phone number. He would sometimes take two or three if he happened to be in a plumbing shop or if an insurance salesman stopped by. Steve would unfailingly ask the nine-to-fiver for his card with a big shiteating grin.

When he and Donna were going at it hot and heavy, he had happened to notice one of her husband's business cards lying on top of the TV. Donna had been taking a shower or something. He had taken the business card. No big reason. Just the packrat thing.

Now he opened his wallet and thumbed through the cards, cards from Prudential agents in Virginia, realtors in Colorado, a dozen businesses in between. For a moment he thought he had lost Handsome Hubby's card, but it had just slipped down between a couple of dollar bills. He fished it out and looked at it. White card, blue lettering done in modish lower case, Mr. Businessman Triumphant. Quiet but impressive. Nothing flashy.

roger breakstone ad worx victor trenton

1633 congress street

telex: ADWORX portland, maine 04001 tel (207) 799-8600

Steve pulled a sheet of paper from a ream of cheap mimeo stuff and cleared a place in front of him. He looked briefly at his typewriter. No. Each machine's typescript was as individual as a fingerprint. It was his crooked lower-case 'a' that hung the blighter, Inspector. The jury was only out long enough to have tea.

This would not be a police matter, nohow, no way, but caution came without even thinking. Cheap paper, available at any office supply store, no typewriter.

He took a Pilot Razor Point from the coffee can on the comer of the desk and printed in large block letters:

HELLO,

VIC

NICE WIFE YOU'VE GOT THERE

I ENJOYED FUCKING THE SHIT OUT OF HER.

He paused, tapping the pen against his teeth. He was starting to feel good again. On top. Of course, she was a good-looking woman, and he supposed there was always the possibility that Trenton might discount what he had written so far. Talk was cheap, and you could mail someone a letter for less than the price of a coffee. But there was something ... always something. What might it be?

He smiled suddenly; when he smiled that way his entire face lit up, and it was easy to see why he had never had much trouble with women since the evening with the vague, pretty French sub.

He wrote:

WHAT'S THAT MOLE JUST ABOVE HER PUBIC HAIR LOOK LIKE TO YOU?

TO ME IT LOOKS LIKE A QUESTION MARK.

DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?

That was enough; a meal is as good as a feast, his mother had always said. He found an envelope and put the message inside. After a pause, he slipped the business card in, and addressed the envelope, also in block letters, to Vic's office. After a moment's thought, he decided to show the poor slob a little mercy and added PERSONAL below the address.

He propped the letter on the windowsill and leaned back in his chair, feeling totally good again. He would be able to write tonight, he felt sure of it.

Outside, a truck with out-of-state plates pulled into his driveway. A pickup with a great big Hoosier cabinet in the back. Someone had picked up a bargain at a barn sale. Lucky them.

Steve strolled out. He would be glad to take their money and their Hoosier cabinet, but he really doubted if he would have time to do the work. Once that letter was mailed, a change of air might be in order. But not too big a change, at least not for a while. He felt he owed it to himself to stay in the area long enough to make at least one more visit to Little Miss Highpockets ... when it could be ascertained that Handsome Hubby was definitely not around, of course. Steve had played tennis with the guy and he was no ball of fire - thin, heavy glasses, spaghetti backhand - but you never knew when a Handsome Hubby was going to go off his gourd and do something antisocial. A good many Handsome Hubbies kept guns around the house. So he would want to check out the scene carefully before popping in. He would allow himself the one single visit and then close this show entirely. He would maybe go to Ohio for a while. Or Pennsylvania. Or Taos, New Mexico. But like a practical joker who had stuffed a load into someone's cigarette, he wanted to stick around (at a prudent distance, of course) and watch it blow up.

The driver of the pickup and his wife were peering into the shop to see if he was there. Steve strolled out, hands in the pockets of his jeans, smiling. The woman smiled back immediately. 'HI, folks, can I help you?' he asked, and thought that he would mail the letters as soon as he could get rid of them.

That evening, as the sun went down red and round and hot in the west, Vic Trenton, his shirt tied around his waist by the arms, was looking into the engine compartment of his wife's Pinto. Donna was standing beside him, looking young and fresh in a pair of white shorts and a red-checked sleeveless blouse. Her feet were bare. Tad, dressed only in his bathing suit, was driving his trike madly up and down the driveway, playing some sort of mind game that apparently had Ponch and John from CHiPS pitted against Darth Vader.

'Drink your iced tea before it melts,' Donna told Vic.

'Uh-huh.' The glass was on the side of the engine compartment. Vic had a couple of swallows, put it back without looking, and it tumbled off - into his wife's hand.

'Hey,' he said. 'Nice catch.'

She smiled. 'I just know you when your mind's somewhere else, that's all. Look. Didn't spill a drop.'

They smiled into each other's eyes for a moment - a good moment, Vic thought. Maybe it was just his imagination, or wishful thinking, but lately it seemed there were more of the good small moments. Less of the sharp words. Fewer silences which were cold, or -maybe this was worse ~ just indifferent. He didn't know what the cause was, but he was grateful.

'Strictly Triple-A farm club,' he said. 'You got a ways to go before you make the bigs, kid.'

'So what's wrong with my car, coach?'

He had the air cleaner off; it was sitting in the driveway. 'Never saw a Frisbee like that before,' Tad had said matter-of-factly a few moments ago, swerving his trike around it. Vic leaned back in and poked aimlessly at the carburetor with the head of his screwdriver.

'It's in the carb. I think the needle valve's sticking.'

'That's bad?'

'Not too bad,' he said, 'but it can stop you cold if it decides to stick shut. The needle valve controls the flow of gas into the carb, and without gas you don't go. It's like a national law, babe.'

'Daddy, will you push me on the swing?'

'Yeah, in a minute.'

'Good! I'll be in the back!'

Tad started round the house toward the swing-and-gym set Vic had built last summer, while lubricating himself wed with gin and tonics, working from a set of plans, doing it after supper on week nights and on weekends with the voices of the Boston Red Sox announcers blaring from the transistor radio beside him. Tad, then three, sat solemnly on the cellar bulkhead or on the back steps, chin cupped in his hands, fetching things sometimes, mostly watching silently. Last summer. A good summer, not as beastly hot as this one. It had seemed then that Donna had finally adjusted and was seeing that Maine, Castle Rock, Ad Worx - those things could be good for all of them.

Then the mystifying bad patch, the worst of it being that nagging, almost psychic feeling that things were even more wrong than he wanted to think about. Things in the house began to seem subtly out of place, as if unfamiliar hands had been moving them around. He had gotten the crazy idea - was it crazy? - that Donna was changing the sheets too often. They were always clean, and one night that old fairy-tale question had popped into his mind, echoing unpleasantly: Who's been sleeping in my bed?

Now things had loosened up, it seemed. If not for the crazy Razberry Zingers business and the rotten trip hanging over his head, he would feel that this could be a pretty good summer too. It might even rum out that way. You won, sometimes. Not all hopes were vain. He believed that, although his belief had never been seriously tested.

'Tad!' Donna yelled, bringing the boy to a screeching halt. 'Put your trike in the garage.'

'Mom-mee!'

'Now, please, monsieur.'

'Monsewer,' Tad said, and laughed into his hands. 'You didn't put your car away, Mom.'

'Daddy is working on my car.'

'Yeah, but-'

'Mind your mom, Tadder,' Vic said, picking up the air cleaner. 'I'll be around shortly.'

Tad mounted his trike and drove it into the garage, accompanying himself with a loud, ululating ambulance wail.

'Why are you putting it back on?' Donna asked. 'Aren't you going to fix it?'

'It's a precision job,' Vic said. 'I don't have the tools. Even if I did, I'd probably make it worse instead of better.'

'Damn,' she said morosely, and kicked a tire. 'These things never happen until after the warranty runs out, do they?' The Pinto had just over 20,000 miles on it, and was still six months from being theirs, free and dear.

'That's like a national law too,' Vic said. He put the air cleaner back on its post and tightened the butterfly nut.

'I guess I can run it over to South Paris while Tad's in his daycamp. I'll have to get a loaner, though, with you being gone. Will it get me to South Paris, Vic?'

'Sure. But you don't have to do that. Take it out to Joe Camber's place. That's only seven miles, and he does good work. Remember when that wheel bearing went on the jag? He took it out with a chainfall made out of old lengths of telephone pole and charged ten bucks. Man, if I'd gone to that place in Portland, they would have mounted my checkbook like a moosehead.'

'That guy made me nervous,' Donna said. 'Aside from the fact that he was about two and a half sheets to the wind, I mean.'

'How did he make you nervous?'

'Busy eyes.'

Vic laughed. 'Honey, with you, there's a lot to be busy about.'

'Thank you,' she said, 'A woman doesn't necessarily mind being looked at. It's being mentally undressed that makes you nervous.' She paused, strangely, he thought, looking away at the grim red light in the west. Then she looked back at him. 'Some men give you the feeling that there's a little movie called The Rape of the Sabine Women going on in their heads all the time and you just got the ... the starring role.'

He had that curious, unpleasant feeling that she was talking about several things at once - again. But he didn't want to get into that tonight, not when he was finally crawling out from under a shitheap of a month.

'Babe, he's probably completely harmless. He's got a wife, a kid -~

'Yes, probably he is.' But she crossed her arms over her breasts and cupped her elbows in her palms, a characteristic gesture of nervousness with her.

'Look,' he said. 'I'll run your Pinto up there this Saturday and leave it if I have to, okay? More likely he'll be able to get right to it. I'll have a couple of beers with him and pat his dog. You remember that Saint Bernard?'

Donna grinned. 'I even remember his name. He practically knocked Tad over licking him. You remember?'

Vic nodded. 'The rest of the afternoon Tad goes around after him saying "Cooojo ... heere, Cooojo."'

They laughed together.

'I feel so damn stupid sometimes,' Donna said. 'If I could use a standard shift, I could just run the jag while you're gone.'

'You're just as well off. The jag's eccentric. You gotta talk to it.' He slammed the hood of the Pinto back down.

'Ooooh, you DUMMY!' she moaned. 'Your iced tea glass was in there!'

And he looked so comically surprised that she went off into gales of laughter. After a minute he joined her. Finally it got so bad that they had to hang on to each other like a couple of drunks. Tad came back around the house to see what was going on, his eyes round. At last, convinced that they were mostly all right in spite of the nutty way they were acting, he joined them. This was about the same time that Steve Kemp mailed his letter less than two miles away.

Later, as dusk settled down and the heat slacked off a little and the first fireflies started to stitch seams in the air across the back yard, Vic pushed his son on the swing.

'Higher, Daddy! Higher!'

'If you go any highter, you're gonna loop the loop, kid.'

'Gimme under, then, Dad! Gimme under!'

Vic gave Tad a huge push, propelling the swing toward a sky where the first stars were just beginning to appear, and ran all the way under the swing. Tad screamed joyfully, his head tilted back, his hair blowing.

'That was good, Daddy! Gimme under again!'

Vic gave his son under again, from the front this time, and Tad went soaring into the still, hot night. Aunt Evvie Chalmers lived close by, and Tad's shouts of terrified glee were the last sounds she heard as she died; her heart gave out, one of its paper-thin, walls breaching suddenly (and almost painlessly) as she sat in her kitchen chair, a cup of coffee by one hand and a straight-eight Herbert Tareyton by the other; she leaned back and her vision darkened and somewhere she heard a child crying, and for a moment it seemed that the cries were joyful, but as she went out, suddenly propelled as if by a hard but not unkind push from behind, it seemed to her that the child was screaming in fear, in agony; then she was gone, and her niece Abby would find her the following day, her coffee as cold as she was, her cigarette a perfect and delicate tube of ash, her lower plate protruding from her wrinkled mouth like a slot filled with teeth.

Just before Tad's bedtime, he and Vic sat on the back stoop. Vic had beer. Tad had milk.

'Daddy?'

'What?'

'I wish you didn't have to go away next week.'

'I'll be back.'

'Yeah, but -'

Tad was looking down, struggling with tears. Vic put a hand on his neck.

'But what, big guy?'

'Who's gonna say the words that keep the monster out of the closet? Mommy doesn't know them! Only you know them!'

Now the tears spilled over and ran down Tad's face.

'Is that all?' Vic asked.

The Monster Words (Vic had originally dubbed them the Monster Catechism, but Tad had trouble with that word, so it had been shortened) had come about in late spring, when Tad began to be afflicted by bad dreams and night fears. There was something in his closet, he said; sometimes at night his closet door would swing open and he would see it in there, something with yellow eyes that wanted to cat him up. Donna had thought it might have been some fallout with Maurice Sendak's book Where the Wild Things Are. Vic had wondered aloud to Roger (but not to Donna) if maybe Tad had picked up a garbled account of the mass murders that had taken place in Castle Rock and had decided that the murderer - who had become a kind of town bogeyman - was alive and well in his closet. Roger said he supposed it was possible; with kids, anything was possible.

And Donna herself had begun to get a little spooked after a couple of weeks of this; she told Vic one morning in a kind of laughing, nervous way that things in Tad's closet sometimes appeared moved around. Well, Tad did it, Vic had responded. You don't understand, Donna said. He doesn't go back there any more, Vic ... never. He's scared to. And she had added that sometimes it seemed to her that the closet actually smelled bad after Tad's bouts of nightmare, followed by waking fear. Like an animal had been caged up in there. Disturbed, Vic had gone into the closet and sniffed. In his mind was a half-formed idea that perhaps Tad was sleepwalking; perhaps going into his closet and urinating in there as a part of some odd dream cycle. He had smelled nothing but mothballs. The closet, finished wall on one side and bare lathing on the other, stretched back some eight feet. It was as narrow as a Pullman car. There was no bogeyman back in there, and Vic most certainly did not come out in Narnia. He got a few cobwebs in his hair. That was all.

Donna had suggested first what she called 'good-dream thoughts' to combat Tad's night fears, then prayer. Tad responded to the former by saying that the thing in his closet stole his good-dream thoughts; he responded to the latter by saying that since God didn't beheve in monsters, prayers were useless. Her temper had snapped - perhaps partly because she had been spooked by Tad's closet herself. Once, while hanging some of Tad's shirts in there, the door had swung quietly shut behind her and she'd had a bad forty seconds fumbling her way back to the door and getting out. She had smelled something in there that time - something hot and close and violent. A matted smell. It reminded her a little of Steve Kemp's sweat after they finished making love. The upshot was her curt suggestion that since there were no such things as monsters, Tad should put the whole thing out of his mind, hug his Teddy, and go to sleep.

Vic either saw more deeply or remembered more clearly about the closet door that turned into an unhinged idiot mouth in the dark of night, a place where strange things sometimes rustled, a place where hanging clothes sometimes turned into hanging men. He remembered vaguely about the shadows the streetlight could throw on the wall in the endless four hours that follow the turn of the day, and the creaking sounds that might have been the house settling or that might - just might -be something creeping up.

His solution had been the Monster Catechism, or just the Monster Words if you were four and not into semantics. Either way, it was nothing more (nor less) than a primitive incantation to keep evil at bay. Vic had invented it one day on his lunch hour, and to Donna's mixed relief and chagrin, it worked when her own efforts to use psychology, Parent Effectiveness Training, and, finally, blunt discipline had failed. Vic spoke it over Tad's bed every night like a benediction as Tad lay there naked under a single sheet in the sweltering dark.

'Do you think that's going to do him any good in the long run?' Donna asked. Her voice held both amusement and irritation. This bad been in mid-May, when the tensions between them had been running high.