The Voice commands, but I can't obey. I have to get away from this place.
"The window-seat. Just open it and take the box. Then you can go."
Yes. I could do that. I could do that, very quickly. Nobody will see me. Those little red eyes are only rubies. I can take it, fast, and then I can run.
The seat swings up. Funny, there was a lock here, I can see that, but it's broken now. I lift the seat. And here's the box. A black velvet box, long and shallow. I can hold it. I can hold it as I run down the hall—
"Go to the bed."
I don't want to go to the bed. I want to run. I'm going to run. Except that I can't move. All at once I'm back there in the desert, pinned underneath the car, and my arms and legs are paralyzed and I'm trying to get away from the pain in my head, trying to sink down into the darkness. That's why I need the darkness, still need it now; to get away from the memory, and the pain.
And the only way to find the darkness again is to let the Voice guide me. I must follow the Voice. That's the only way.
"Go to the bed."
I put the black case down on the table and walk over to the bed. It won’t hurt to look. Even if the batwings flap, even if the tiny skeleton moves in its dans macabre, I can look. I can gaze through the parted curtains.
The room is a museum and I am staring down at a mummy. Gaunt, stiffened limbs, wrapped in the folds of the bedding. A bald, shrivelled skull. A face that is old and wrinkled and brown and dry. No bitumen seals the lips, so it cannot be a mummy; it must be a man. A very old man, sleeping in a canopy bed, sleeping the sleep of the aged which is like death. His chest neither rises nor falls. His tongue is limp in his open mouth. I can hear nothing but the faint clattering of the little silver skeleton.
There are deep pools of shadow covering the old man's eyes. I bend forward, peering into them. Surely there will be a ripple; the stone of my gaze must inevitably plumb those depths.
No ripple. No movement.
"Now."
The Voice is not speaking to me. It is talking to my hands.
They know what to do.
It's so simple, and there's
