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breeze. The horses! she decided. That’s what she’d do, she’d go see
the horses.
    The agriculture/agronomy department had six
cows, some pigs, sheep, and chickens. They also had four horses—two
jet black hackneys and two palominos, one brown, one white.
They were special to her. Daddy had arranged with the dean for her
to be the stable groom again. It was a good way to keep her from
“moping another summer away,” she’d overheard him telling her
mother. But that was fine with her; she wouldn’t have to see the
psychiatrists, and she loved to care for the horses. She loved
brushing them and riding them. They were beautiful, and her only
peace.
    The campus had the agro site because many of
Exham’s students came from rich farm families. The site occupied
several dozen acres along the stretches of farmland on Route 13.
Thoughts of the horses made her smile. She couldn’t wait to see
them. Mr. Sladder, the night watchman, always let her in, even this
late. The other security guards were young and leering, but Mr.
Sladder was always very nice to her, and never crude. He was skinny
and old, and tended to ramble about his past, but Penelope didn’t
mind. He was just a nice, friendly old man, and one of the few
people who didn’t make her feel uncomfortable. Her psychiatrists,
of course, told her it was all subconscious “phallic
fear removal reinforcement” precipitated by her
“pseudo mandala”: she accepted the impotent old man because he
did not contribute to her fear of being penetrated.
    Was her period coming? A cramp spasmed.
Suddenly she felt so sick she had to pull over. The cramp darted up
like a spike, or, perhaps, a penis. A headache flared. Yes, it must
be her period. “The Red Tide,” some of the girls called it. Why
should women have to bleed from their wombs once a month? It wasn’t
fair. Men should have to bleed from their penises too, then. But
next her nose began to bleed, and that had never happened
before.
    Dizzy, she wiped her nose
with a napkin, then she felt fine again. Weird, she thought. When she got back
on the road, she realized her period wasn’t due for another
week.
    The agro site was pitch dark.
    She stopped in the gravel access. The office
lights were out; dark blotted the pens and white stables to ghosts
of themselves, and the front gates were chained shut. Mr. Sladder’s
little security car wasn’t to be seen. She looked past the wooden
post fences, past the stables. In the distance, fog rolled
along the wood line.
    Power failure, she thought. Maybe Mr. Sladder’s car was inside
the gate. But when she approached the compound, she knew something
else was wrong.
    She got out of the car.
Total silence yawned over the site. Of
course it’s quiet, she tried to assure
herself. It’s the middle of the night. But it was more than that,
wasn’t it? The site was too quiet.
    “ Mr. Sladder, are you in
there?” She reached in and honked her horn. The night sucked up the
sound. “Mr. Sladder!”
    Headlights roved across her back. Startled,
she turned.
    Mr. Sladder was creaking out of the little
white security car. He put a piece of gum in his mouth. “Nellapee?
Oh, you come to see the horses, did you? ’Fraid we gotta
problem.”
    “ What happened to the
lights?”
    “ Dag power went out. I just
come from the power station down the road. Thought some dag kids
mighta got in there, messed with the transformers or
somethin’.”
    “ Did they?”
    “ Nope. Place was locked up
tight. Come on, honey.”
    He unlocked the front gate and took her to
the office, leading with a big boxy flashlight. “Dag quiet out
here, ain’t it?”
    Penelope didn’t hear him. She was looking
out past the fence again. The fog seemed closer, thicker. It was
eerie.
    “ Be with ya in a minute,
darlin’. Got to raise me some heck with them morons down campus.”
He sat at the desk and dialed the phone. Was it the chair that
creaked, or his joints?
    Penelope stood timidly. The flashlight
seemed