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passageway tunneled through its base to get over to the other side. It had always, even before now (now being that rumor), given her the creeps to have to pass through there late like this, when there was no one much around any more. It was so black while it lasted.
    But if she went back without the charcoal, her mother wouldn’t let her in. Or, if she did, would probably disbelieve her about the store being closed and would take the broom to her some more.
    The more embodied fear always overcomes the more formless one, even when it is the lesser of the two. She reluctantly resumed her descent toward the causeway ahead, instead of turning back for home.
    When she got down to it and was about to enter, she took a deep breath, stored up enough air to see her through to the other side. It was black and impenetrable. The slant of the ground outside prevented what reflection there was from street lights in the distance from entering, beyond a slight indentation at its very mouth. You’d think they’d have a light hanging in it at least, or just outside up over the entrance. Well, they’d tried to many times, but the kids who played around here in the daytime had always ended up by busting it in a day or two, so finally they didn’t try to keep one going any more.
    Her footsteps began to echo hollowly the minute the unseen rounded roof had closed over her, and the stonework all around made it a little damper and mustier. Once, a year or so ago, somebody had been found dead in here, with a knife in him and his pockets— But she didn’t want to think of that now.This was no time for it.
    She had quickened her gait unconsciously, from the moment of entering. Her eyes, brilliant and large at all times, must have been enormous in the gloom, though they couldn’t be seen. Gracias a Dios , it wasn’t very long, just about the width of the boulevard that ran atop it. She was halfway through to the other side now. Her footfalls went bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, like the thumping of gourds, the stones above giving the sound back to the stones below.
    There—she could see the other opening ahead of her; she was coming Out. She began to breathe again, and, only in doing so, realized she hadn’t been until now. It wasn’t very much lighter out ahead than it was in here; a few motes of dark blue or gray mingled with the smooth-textured black to make it seem threadbare, that was all. But the deep resonance of her tread began to dwindle a little, and the air to become a little less damply oppressive. Those were the chief signals of approaching emergence, rather than vision itself.
    And then, as she hurried to meet the open again, she happened to glance over to one side of her. For no reason, or for whatever reason it is that draws the vacant glance when there seems to be no cause yet there is. Her throat swelled with suddenly congested breath. What was that? The stonework must be wet over there, there must be some slight seepage of water trickling down between their seams. For she caught a sort of reflected gleam, an iridescent winking, as though light from outside the tunnel mouth—
    But there wasn’t any light outside the passage, nothing that could strike that far in, create such a high light against the stone tunnel facing. It was not expansive, in a sheet; nor yet was it continuous, in a perpendicular thread, such as watet might have made. If it was water, it was in the shape of two drops, side by side. Two elongated, almost slitted drops; rod-shaped; like bacilli seen through a microscope. Faintly wavering, as if with inner heat carried upward behind them, in a fuming sulphurous yellow green. Yet not distinct, not clearly etched against the blackness, nothing like that. Rather a diffuse, a thin-surfaced glistening that, but for the blackness itself, which gave the eye, her eye, nothing else to rest upon, would have escaped her notice entirely.
    They weren’t eyes, were they—other eyes? So steadily maintaining their twoness, their