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but I got the feeling that he really wasn’t interested anymore. He had come back to…to do…one final experiment.
    “I told him he was out of his mind, but before I could ask him to leave he told me he was dying; some liver problem. The doctors had given him less than a month, and he wanted one more try on the Jake Walters thing. He was almost in tears; he was begging me; in another minute he would have been crawling to me, and I don’t think I could have stood that. So I did it. How the hell can you refuse something like that? I was scared, I’ve got to tell you that; I was so goddamn scared I almost couldn’t bring it off. It was the hardest one we ever did. There were so many things bothering both of us, and it was the first time I had ever seen his hands shake. But we finally did it; I don’t know how long it took, but when it was over he told me that it had failed and he wouldn’t be bothering me again. Then he picked up the reel of tape and walked out. I never saw him again. Two weeks later I got a letter from his friend Leland Smith, from somewhere in the Midwest, saying that Robert had come to see him and had died there.”
    At last I had come to the end of it. Judy came to me and hugged my head against her breast, and when she had gone my head was wet where her face had been. But she had handled it fine; we had both done fine. There were a few odds and ends, but maybe she would never need to know those things. Some things were better left unsaid. Like Vivian’s obsession that her child would be a demon from hell, a throwback to Jake Walters. Like the day I found Vivian standing over Judy’s crib with a plastic bag in her hand.
    Yes. Those things were better left unsaid.

3
    B UT IT WAS ONLY beginning. I dreamed about it that night, and in the morning I remembered parts of the dream: a collage of faces; Robert’s, Vivian’s, Judy’s, and the face of an ugly man I had never seen. I dreamed of the mountain ledge and Robert was there, smiling and pointing to that cave. Again I was up at exactly three-thirty with a headache and throbbing eyes. I was in for a bad day.
    I had some important appointments, so I showered in cold water and slowly consumed an evil potion that had been billed in a magazine as a sure cure for a hangover. It was a horrid mixture of V-8 juice, raw egg, and Worcestershire sauce that didn’t help me worth a damn. I was in bad shape all day. I barked at Sharon and she sulked for hours—par for the course, except now she had cause. I was even short with Al Harper, and later I had to apologize. Somehow I got through the morning, and in the afternoon, when I had to drive over to Richmond for a project inspection, the fresh air pouring in through the open window helped clear my head.
    Something about the Holland matter would not let me rest. At first I thought that it was the natural remorse that comes with reopening old wounds. But fresh air should work a healing trick, and this was lingering like a cancerous sore. It preyed on my mind with increasing intensity; even Sharon’s reassignment in the second week of December did not bring me any relief. What particularly bothered me was that I could not get near the cause. Often I would wake out of a deep sleep always at that ungodly hour of three-thirty, and would be awake until dawn. On those nights I reread parts of the Holland file, but if there was any help for me there I was missing it By the third week in December I had read everything in the file three times and was starting on a fourth reading of Robert’s hypnosis manuscript
Christmas. A drab affair. Judy seems to have come out of the Vivian thing in fine shape. Today she has her hair in a bun; she hasn’t worn it that way in more than a year. I think the Vivian thing is over for her. The process has begun to reverse and her interests are turning to other things. I wish I could say the same for myself.
    In the late afternoon we sat watching the bubble lights of our Christmas tree.