Part 27 (1/2)

She dragged herself to her feet, pausing irresolutely, looking around at the huddled houses, each set on its own acre of weeds and lawn. They were all dark in the early winter evening.

June gave a little moan and sank on the step again, hugging herself desperately against the penetrating chill. It seemed an eternity that she crouched there before the radio cut off in mid-note.

Fearfully, she roused and pressed her face to one of the door panes. Dimly through the gla.s.s curtains she could see the Eater, sluggish and swollen, lying quietly by the radio. Hysteria was rising for a moment, but she resolutely knuckled the tears from her eyes.

The headlights scythed around the corner, glittering swiftly across the blank windows next door as the car crunched into the Warren's driveway and came to a gravel-skittering stop.

June pressed her hands to her mouth, sure that even through the closed door she could hear the choonk and slither of the thing inside as it slid to and fro, seeking sound.

The car door slammed and hurried footsteps echoed along the path. June made wild shus.h.i.+ng motions with her hands as Mrs. Warren scurried around the corner of the house.

”June!” Mrs. Warren's voice was ragged with worry. ”Is Dubby all right? What are you doing out here?

What's wrong with the phone?” She fumbled for the doork.n.o.b.

”No, no!” June shouldered her roughly aside. ”Don't go it! It'll get you, too.”

She heard a thud just inside the door. Dimly through the gla.s.s she saw the flicker of movement as the snout of the Eater raised and wavered toward them.

”June!” Mrs. Warren jerked her away from the door. ”Let me in! What's the matter? Have you gone crazy?”

Mrs. Warren stopped suddenly, her face whitening. ”What have you done to Dubby, June?”

The girl gulped with the shock of the accusation. ”I haven't done anything, Mrs. Warren. He made a Noise-eater and ita”ita”” June winced away from the sudden blaze of Mrs. Warren's eyes.

”Get away from that door!” Mrs. Warren's face was that of a stranger, her words icy and clipped. ”I trusted you with my child. If anything has happened to hima””

”Don't go ina”oh, don't go in!” June grabbed at her coat hysterically.

”Please, please, wait! Let's geta””

”Let go!” Mrs. Warren's voice grated between her tightly clenched teeth. ”Let me go, youa”youa”” Her hand flashed out and the crack of her palm against June's cheek was echoed by a choonk inside the house. June was staggered by the blow, but she clung to the coat until Mrs. Warren pushed her sprawling down the front steps and fumbled at the k.n.o.b, crying, ”Dubby, Dubby!”

June, scrambling up the steps on hands and knees, caught a glimpse of a hovering something that lifted and swayed like a waiting cobra. It was slapped aside by the violent opening of the door as Mrs. Warren stumbled into the house, her cries suddenly stilling on her slack lips as she saw her crumpled son by the couch.

She gasped and whispered, ”Dubby!” She lifted him into her arms. His head rolled loosely against her shoulder. Her protesting, ”No, no, no!” merged into half-articulate screams as she hugged him to her.

And from behind the front door there was a choonk and a slither.

June lunged forward and grabbed the reaching thing that was homing in on Mrs. Warren's hysterical grief. Her hands closed around it convulsively, her whole weight dragging back ward, but it had a strength she couldn't match. Desperately then, her fists clenched, her eyes tightly shut, she screamed and screamed and screamed.

The snout looped almost lazily around her straining throat, but she fought her way almost to the front door before the thing held her, feet on the floor, body at an impossible angle, and stilled her frantic screams, quieted her straining lungs and sipped the last of her heartbeats, and let her drop.

Mrs. Warren stared incredulously at June's crumpled body and the horrible creature that blinked its lights and s.h.i.+fted its antennae questioningly. With a m.u.f.fled gasp, she sagged, knees and waist and neck, and fell soundlessly to the floor.

The refrigerator in the kitchen cleared its throat and the Eater turned from June with a choonk and slid away, crossing to the kitchen.

The Eater retracted its snout and slid back from the refrigerator. It lay quietly, its ears s.h.i.+fting from quarter to quarter.

The thermostat in the dining room clicked and the hot-air furnace began to hum. The Eater slid to the wall under the register that was set just below the ceiling. Its snout extended and lifted and narrowed until the end of it slipped through one of the register openings. The furnace hum choked off abruptly and the snout end flipped back into sight.

Then there was quiet, deep and unbroken, until the Eater tilted its ears and slid up to Mrs. Warren.

In such silence, even a pulse was noise.

There was a sound like a straw in the bottom of a soda gla.s.s.

A stillness was broken by the shrilling of a siren on the main highway four blocks away.

A choonk and a slither and the metallic b.u.mp of runners down the three front steps.

And a quiet, quiet house on a quiet side street.

Hush.

THE CIRCUS.

by Sydney J. Bounds.

Because he had been drinking, Arnold Bragg considered it a stroke of good fortune that the accident happened a long way from any main road and the chance of a patrolling police car.

He had no exact idea of his location, just that it was some where in the West Country.

He was on his way back from Cornwall where he'd been covering a story, an expose of a witches'

coven, for the Sunday Herald. He drove an MG sports car and, as always with a few drinks inside him, drove too fast. With time to spare, he'd left the A30 at a whim. It was a summer evening, slowly cooling after the heat of the day. The countryside was what he called ”pretty,” with lanes twisting between hedgerows. He took a corner at speed and rammed the trunk of a tree that jutted into the road around the bend.

Shaken but unhurt, he climbed from his car and swore at a leaking radiator. Then he got back in and drove on, looking for a garage. He found one, a couple of miles farther along, next to a pub with a scattering of cottages; there were not enough of them to justify calling them a village.

A mechanic glanced at the hood and sniffed his breath.

”ArI can fix it. Couple of hours, maybe.”

Arnold Bragg nodded. ”I'll be next door when you've finished.”

It was the kind of pub that exists only in out-of-the-way places, and then rarely; a house of local stone with a front room converted as a bar. The door stood open and he walked in past a stack of beer crates.

The walls were thick and it was cool inside. On a polished counter rested two casks, one of cider and one of beer. A gray-haired woman sat knitting behind the counter, and two oldish men sat on a wooden bench by the window.

Bragg turned on a charm that rarely failed him. ”I'll try a pint of your local beer.”

The woman laid her knitting aside, picked up a gla.s.s mug and held it under the tap; sediment hung in the rich brown liquid.

Bragg tasted it, then drank deeply. ”I didn't know anyone still brewed beer like this.” He glanced around the room.

”Perhaps you gentlemen will join me?”