Cold Fire

Madness favored darkness, but light was the kingdom of reason. If the waking world provided no sanctuary from nightmares, if daylight offered no sanctuary from unreason, then there was no sanctuary anywhere, anytime, for anyone.

The attic light, a single sixty-watt bulb dangling from a beam, did not illuminate every corner of that cramped and dusty space.

Jim probed into the many recesses with a flashlight, edged around heating ducts, peered behind each of the two fireplace chimneys, searching for. whatever had torn apart the bathroom ceiling. He had no idea what he expected to find. Besides the flashlight, he carried a loaded revolver. The thing that destroyed the ceiling had not descended into the bathroom, so it had to be in the attic above.

However, because he lived with a minimum of possessions, Jim had nothing to store up there under the roof, which left few possible hiding places.

He was soon satisfied that those high reaches of his house were untenanted except by spiders and by a small colony of wasps that had constructed a nest in a junction of rafters.

Nothing could have escaped those confines, either. Aside from the trap door by which he had entered, the only exits from the attic were the ventilation cut-outs in opposing eaves. which was about two feet long and twelve inches high, covered with tightly fitted screens that could be re moved only with a screwdriver. Both screens were secure.

Part of that space had plank flooring, but in some places nothing but insulation lay between the exposed floor studs, which were also the ceiling studs of the rooms below. Duck-walking on those parallel supports, Jim cautiously approached the rupture above the master bathroom. He peered down at the debris-strewn floor where he and Holly had been standing.

What in the hell had happened? At last conceding that he would find no answers up there, he returned to the open access and climbed down into the second-floor linen closet. He folded up the accordion ladder into the closet ceiling, which neatly closed off the attic entrance.

Holly was waiting for him in the hallway. "Well?" "Nothing," he said.

"I knew there wouldn't be.”

"What happened here?" "It's like in the dream.”

"What dream?" he demanded.

"You said you've had the windmill dreams, too.”

"I do.”

"Then you know about the heartbeat in the walls.”

"No.”

"And the way the walls change.”

"No, none of that, for Christ's sake! In my dream, I'm in the high room of the windmill, there's a candle, rain at the windows.”

She remembered how surprised he had been at the sight of the bedroom ceiling distended and strange above them.

He said, "In the dream, I have a sense that something's coming, something frightening and terrible-" "The Enemy," she said.

"Yes! Whatever that might be. But it never comes, not in my dreams. I ways wake up before it comes.”

He stalked down the hall and into the master bedroom, and she followed him. Standing beside the battered furniture that he had shoved away from the door, he stared up in consternation at the undamaged ceiling.

"I saw it," he said, as if she had called him a liar.

"I know you did," she said. "I saw it, too.”

He turned to her, looking more desperate than she had seen him even aboard the doomed DC-10. "Tell me about your dreams, I want to hear all of them, every detail.”

"Later, I'll tell you everything. First let's shower and get dressed. I want out of this place.”

"Yeah, okay, me too.”

"I guess you realize where we've got to go.”

He hesitated.

She answered for him, "The windmill.”

He nodded.

They showered together in the guest bathroom, only to save time-and because both of them were too edgy to be alone at the moment.

She supposed that, in a different mood, she would have found the experience pleasantly erotic. But it was surprisingly platonic, considering the fierce passion of the night just passed.

He touched her only when they had stepped out of the the shower and were hurriedly toweling dry. He leaned close, kissed the corner of her mouth, and said, "What have I gotten you into, Holly Thorne?" Later, while Jim hurriedly packed a suitcase, Holly wandered only as far as the upstairs study, which was next to his bedroom. The place had a disused look. A thin layer of dust covered the top of the desk.

Like the rest of the house, his study was humble. The cheap desk had probably been purchased at a cut-rate office-supplies warehouse.

The other furniture included just two lamps, an armchair on a wheel-and-swivel base, two free-standing bookcases overflowing with worn volumes, and a work table as bare as the long-unused desk.

All of the two hundred or more books were about religion: fat histories of Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduistn, Taoism, Shintoism, and others; the collected works of St.