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“I’ll see if I can’t track down a relative, some family somewhere. Every man’s got to have people someplace.”
    “You are so right, Agnes. It’s finding them that’s a real bitch sometimes. See you in a couple of hours.”
    “You stay down as long as you want to. You need it. I’ll look in on our friend Mr. Grimbridge again before I make my rounds. But you stay right where you are. I don’t expect anything else to happen tonight.”
    “One never does, Agnes, one never does.” The door was almost closed. “Hey, Agnes? Don’t you ever sleep?”
    “An old woman like me can count on plenty of that soon enough. No need to hurry things along.”
    “Take care of yourself.”
    “Don’t you worry about me.”
    The door closed and he was in darkness.
    The outdoor lights played tricks with the walls. Each time a car passed the curtains seemed to move. He let his eyes close in the hope of blotting it all out. A day in a life like any other, he thought. The oldest story in the world. The one where nothing fits together the way they told you it was supposed to way back when, if you eat your carrots and go to school and work hard and marry on the right side of the tracks. The only story since the beginning of time. But there’s no use complaining about it. That’s all there is, there ain’t no more. Live it or live with it. Or check out and never wake up again.
    And miss Agnes’s sweet talk? Not on your life . . .
    His eyelids met.
    The dream began.
    In it he was still here at the hospital, sleeping soundly in Room 22. The curtains were rippling lightly in the draft from an air duct. He groped for a blanket but there was none. He buried his hands under the pillow which smelled faintly of disinfectant. A high-pitched sound like a siren was determined to wake him. He was determined not to let it. He would not give up, but neither would the siren. It won. He sat bolt upright, groggy and enraged. He padded across the room, flung open the door. The siren was louder. It was inside the hospital. Nurse! he shouted. No one came. It must be the fire alarm, he thought. He proceeded down the hall to find it and shut it off. In the next corridor, a man in a gray suit was walking in the opposite direction. The siren was closer now. Yes, it was clear—it was coming from Room 13. The door was open. He dragged his feet toward it. Agnes! Agnes was slumped down against the wall, sitting on the floor. Her mouth was open and the warning siren, the scream, was coming from her throat. One of her hands was trembling against her chin, trying to close her mouth, and the other hand was pointing. To the bed. Grimbridge’s bed. Challis touched her. The screaming stopped but her mouth remained open, gaping in terror. He’s dead! she choked. Challis went to the bed. Grimbridge was there. His face was not right. Challis looked closer. The man’s eyes were shut. No, they were open—but he no longer had eyes. Dark, bloody sockets where his eyeballs had been before they were pushed back into his skull. And his nose, his mouth—it was as if someone had taken hold of his face with three fingers, two in the eyes and one under the nose, and attempted to pull it off like a mask. The features were distorted, the subcutaneous musculature separated from the bones of the head. Blood was all over, gouts of it, including smears where the killer had wiped his hands tidily before leaving, even as the nurse had arrived to witness the horror.
    A man, she managed, her voice breaking, a man just —
    “A man—a man just—!”
    The man in the suit. Neat, immaculate. Not at all like his image of a killer. A professional, perhaps. An assassin. An executioner . . .
    Challis ran after.
    No one in sight. Around the corner, an orderly came wheeling supplies out of a storeroom. Ahead, around the next corner, the sound of the exit opening and closing.
    Challis got there as the door sealed shut.
    He forced his way out into the parking lot.
    There. The man in the gray