Cold Fire

He went into the family room and switched on the TV. He tried several movies on cable, but none held his interest. He watched the news for a while, but his mind wandered. After he heated a microwave pizza popped open a beer, he settled down with a good book-which bored him He paged through a stack of unread magazines, but none of the articles was intriguing.

Near twilight he went outside with another beer and sat on the patio The palm fronds rustled in a light breeze. A sweet fragrance rose from star jasmine along the property wall. Red, purple, and pink impatiently shone with almost Day-Glo radiance in the dwindling light; and as the sun finished setting, they faded as if they were hundreds of small lightbulbs on a rheostat. Night floated down like a great tossed cape of almost weightless black silk.

Although the scene was peaceful, he was restless. Day by day, week by week, since he had saved the lives of Sam Newsome and his daughter Emily on May 15, Jim had found it increasingly difficult to involve himself in the ordinary routines and pleasures of life. He was unable to relax.

kept thinking of all the good he could do, all the lives he could save, the destinies he could alter, if only the call would come again: "Life line.”

Other endeavors seemed frivolous by comparison.

Having been the instrument of a higher power, he now found it difficult to settle for being anything less.

After spending the day collecting what information she could find on James Madison Ironheart, with only a two-hour nap to compensate for the night of sleep she had lost, Holly launched her long-anticipated vacation with a flight to Orange County. On arrival, she drove her rental car south from the airport to the Laguna Hills Motor Inn, where she had reserved a motel room.

Laguna Hills was inland, and not a resort area. But in Laguna Niguel, Laguna Niguel, and other coastal towns during the summer, rooms had been booked far in advance. She didn't intend to swim or sunbathe anyway.

Ordinarily, she was as enthusiastic a pursuer of skin cancer as anyone, but this had become a working vacation.

By the time she arrived at the motel, she felt as if her eyes were full of sand. When she carried her suitcase into her room, gravity played a cruel trick, pulling her down with five times the usual force.

The room was simple and clean, with enough air-conditioning to recreate the environment of Alaska, in case it was ever occupied by an Eskimoe who got homesick.

From vending machines in the breezeway, she purchased a packet of peanut-butter-and-cheese crackers and a can of diet Dr Pepper, and satisfied her hunger while sitting in bed. She was so tired that she felt numb.

All of her senses were dulled by exhaustion, including her sense of taste.

She might as well have been eating Styrofoam and washing it down with mule sweat.

As if the contact of head and pillow tripped a switch, she fell instantly asleep.

During the night, she began to dream. It was an odd dream, for it took place in absolute darkness, with no images, just sounds and smells and tactile sensations, perhaps the way people dreamed when they had been blind since birth. She was in a dank cool place that smelled vaguely of lime. At first she was not afraid, just confused, carefully feeling her way along the walls of the chamber, They were constructed from blocks of stone with tight mortar joints. After a little exploration she realized there was actually just one wall, a single continuous sweep of stone, because the room was circular. The only sounds were those she made-and the background hiss and tick of rain drumming on a slate roof overhead.

In the dream, she moved away from the wall, across a solid wood floor, hands held out in front of her. Although she encountered nothing, her curiosity suddenly began to turn to fear. She stopped moving, stood perfectly still, certain that she had heard something sinister.

A subtle sound. Masked by the soft but insistent rattle of the rain. It came again. A squeak.

For an instant she thought of a rat, fat and sleek, but the sound was too protracted and of too odd a character to have been made by a rat.

More a creak than a squeak, but not the creak of a floorboard underfoot, either.

It faded. came again a few seconds later. faded.

came again. rhythmically.

When Holly realized that she was listening to the protest of an unoiled mechanism of some kind, she should have been relieved. Instead, standing in that tenebrous room, straining to imagine what machine it might be, felt her heartbeat accelerate. The creaking grew only slightly louder, but speeded up a lot; instead of one creak every five or six seconds, the sound came every three or four seconds, then every two or three, then once a second.

Suddenly a strange rhythmic whoosh, whoosh, whoosh struck up, as if in syncopation with the creaking. It was the sound of a wide flat object cutting the air.

Whoosh.

It was close. Yet she felt no draft.

Whoosh.

She had the crazy idea that it was a blade.

Whoosh.