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believe. It was there, in front of my eyes, but I couldn’t believe it.
    The nurse was standing, rigid with shock, by the side of Dan Machin’s bed. Dan himself was sitting upright in bed, in his blue-striped hospital pajamas, as normal and ordinary as you could think of. But his eyes were terrifying. His glasses had fallen to the floor, and his eyes were total blazing red, the eyes of a vicious dog caught in a searchlight at night, or the eyes of a demon. What’s more, he was breathing, in and out, in and out, with the deep groaning breaths that we had all heard in Seymour Wallis’s house only last night, those heavy endless breaths of a sleeper who could never wake. He was breathing like the house itself, like everything that had chilled and frightened us in the gloomy and ancient rooms,” and it seemed as if the hospital room itself went deathly cold with every breath.
    â€œMy God! What is it ?” Dr. Jarvis gasped.

TWO

    One of the worst things you can ever discover in life is that some of us have it and some of us don’t. I guess it’s just as well, in a way. If every young boy had the talent to fly airplanes, or drive racing cars, or make love to twenty women in one night, there wouldn’t be many volunteers for clearing out backed-up sewers on Folsom. But it’s still tough when you discover that it’s you who doesn’t have it, and that instead of living a luxurious life of fun and profit in Beverly Hills, you’re going to have to take a nine-to-five job in public works, and cook on a hot plate.
    I was born of reasonably well-shod parents in Westchester, New York, but when my father suffered a stroke, I left my mother with her house and her insurance money, and I headed West. I think I wanted to be a TV anchorman, or something grandiose like that, but as it turned out I was lucky to eat. I married a woman who was seven years older than me, mainly because she reminded me of my mother, and I was fortunately broke when she discovered me in bed with a waitress from the Fox commissary and sued me for divorce. My affair broke up, too, which left me high and dry and stranded, and having to look for the first time in my life at myself, at my own identity, and having to come to terms with what I could achieve and what I couldn’t.
    My name’s John Hyatt, which is one of those names that people think they recall but in actuality don’t. I’m thirty-one, and quite tall, with a taste for subdued, well-cut sport coats and widish 1950s-style pants in gray. I live alone on the top floor of an apartment block on Townsend Street, with my stereo and my house plants and my collection of paperbacks with broken spines. I guess I’m happy and content in my work, but haven’t you ever gone out at night, someplace quiet maybe, and looked over the Bay at the lights twinkling all across America, and thought, well, surely there’s more to life than this ?
    Don’t think I’m lonesome, though. I’m not. I date girls and I have quite a few friends, and I even get invited to pool parties and barbecues. Right at the time we went up to Seymour Wallis’s house, though, I was going through a kind of a stale period, not sure what I wanted out of life or what life wanted out of me. But I guess a lot of people felt like that when President Carter was elected. At least with Nixon you knew which side you were on.
    Maybe what happened to Dan Machin helped me get myself together. It was something so weird and so frightening that you couldn’t think about anything else. Even after he closed his eyes, just a few seconds after we burst into the room, and sank back against his pillow, I was still shivering with shock and fright, and I could feel a prickling sensation of fear across the palms of my hands.
    The nurse said, “He … he …”
    Dr. Jarvis stepped cautiously up to Dan Machin’s bed, lifted his wrist, and checked his pulse. Then he took a