Oh, come on, don’t be dense. You’re sleeping when -you saw the little bald guy. Dreamed the little bald guy.

That made perfect sense. Even the fact that it had been wearing Bill’s Panama made sense. The same hat had shown up in his nightmare about Carolyn. It had been between Rosalie’s paws in that one.

Except this time he hadn’t been dreaming. He was sure of it.

Well… almost sure.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what May’s brother said?” McGovern sounded slightly piqued.

“Sorry,” Ralph said. “I was woolgathering, I guess.”

“Forgiven, my son… provided you listen closely from here on out, that is. The detective in charge of the case, Funderburke-”

“I’m pretty sure it’s Utterback. Steve Utterback.”

McGovern waved his hand airily, his most common response to being corrected on some point. “Whatever. Anyway, he called Larry and said the autopsy showed nothing but natural causes. The thing they were most concerned about, in light of your call, was that May had been scared into a heart-attack-literally frightened to death ’ by housebreakers. The doors being locked from the inside and the lack of missing valuables militated against that, of course, but they took your call seriously enough to investigate the possibility.”

His half-reproachful tone-as if Ralph had wantonly poured glue into the gears of some usually smooth-running machine-made Ralph feel impatient. “Of course they took it seriously. I saw two guys leaving her house and reported it to the authorities. When they got there, they found the lady dead. How could they not take it seriously?”

“Why didn’t you give your name when you made the call?”

“I don’t know. What difference does it make? And how in Gods name can they be sure she wasn’t scared into a heart-attack-“”

“I don’t know if they can be a hundred percent sure,” McGovern said, now sounding a bit testy himself, “but I guess it must be close to that if they’re turning May’s body over to her brother for burial.

It’s probably a blood-test of some kind. All I know is that this guy Funderburke-”

“Utterback-” -told Larry that May probably died in her sleep.”

McGovern crossed his legs, fiddled with the creases in his blue slacks, then gave Ralph a clear and piercing look.

“I’m going to give you some advice, so listen up. Go to the doctor.

Now. Today. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to Litchfield. This is getting heavy.”

The ones I saw coming out of Mrs. Locher’s didn’t see me, but this one did, Ralph thought. It saw me and it pointed at me. For all I know, it might actually have been looking for me.

Now there was a nice paranoid thought.

“Ralph? Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes. I take it you don’t believe I actually saw anyone coming out of Mrs. Locher’s house.”

“You take it right. I saw the look on your face just now when I told you I’d been gone forty-five minutes, and I also saw the way you looked at your watch. You didn’t believe so much time had passed, did you? And the reason you didn’t believe it is because you dozed off without even being aware of it. Had yourself a little pocket nap.

That’s probably what happened to you the other night, Ralph.

Only the other night you dreamed up those two guys, and the dream was so real you called 911 when you woke up. Doesn’t that make sense?”

Three-six-nine, Ralph thought. The goose drank wine.

“What about the binoculars?” he asked. “They’re still sitting on the table beside my chair in the living room. Don’t they prove I was awake?

“I don’t see how. Maybe you were sleepwalking, have you thought of that? You say you saw these intruders, but you can’t really describe them.”

“Those orange hi-intensity lights-”

“All the doors locked from the inside-“, “Just the same I-”

“And these auras you talked about. The insomnia is causing them-I’m almost sure of it. Still, it could be more serious than that.” Ralph got up, walked down the porch steps, and stood at the head of the walk with his back to McGovern. There was a throbbing at his temples and his heart was beating hard. Too hard.

He didn’t just point. I was right the first time, the little sonofabitch marked me. And he was no dream. Neither Were the ones I saw comingout of Mrs. Locher’s. I’m sure of it, Of course you are, Ralph, another voice replied. Crazy people are always sure of the crazy things they see and hear. That’s what makes them crazy, not the hallucinations themselves. If you really saw what you saw, what happened to Mrs. Bennigan? What happened to the Budweiser truck? How did you lose the forty-five minutes McGovern spent on the phone with Larry Perrault?

“You’re experiencing very serious symptoms,” McGovern said from behind him, and Ralph thought he heard something terrible in the man’s voice. Satisfaction? Could it possibly be satisfaction?

“One of them had a pair of scissors,” Ralph said without turning around. “I saw them.”

“Oh, come on, Ralph! Think! Use that brain of yours and think.”

On Sunday afternoon, less than twenty-four hours before you’re due to have acupuncture treatment, a lunatic nearly sticks a knife into YOu-Is it any wonder that your mind serves up a nightmare featuring a sharp object that night? Hong’s pins and Pickering’s hunting knife become scissors, that’s all. Don’t you see that this hypothesis covers all the bases while what you claim to have seen covers none of them?”

“And I was sleepwalking when I got the binoculars? That’s what you think?”

“It’s possible. Even likely.”

“Same thing with the spray-can in my jacket pocket, right? Old Dor didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

“I don’t care about the spray-can or Old Dor!” McGovern cried.

“I care about you! You’ve been suffering from insomnia since April or May, you’ve been depressed and disturbed ever since Carolyn died-”

“I have not been depressed!” Ralph shouted. Across the street, the mailman paused and looked in their direction before going on down the block toward the park.

“Have it your own way,” McGovern said. “You haven’t been depressed. You also haven’t been sleeping, you’re seeing auras, guys creeping out of locked houses in the middle of the night…” And then, in a deceptively light voice, McGovern said the thing Ralph had been dreading all along: “You want to watch out, old son.

You’re starting to sound too much like Ed Deepneau for comfort.”

Ralph turned around. Dull hot blood pounded behind his face.

“Why are you being this way? Why are you taking after me this way?”

“I’m not taking after you, Ralph, I’m trying to help you. To be your friend.”

“That’s not how it feels.”

“Well, sometimes the truth hurts a little,” McGovern said calmly.

“You need to at least consider the idea that your mind and body are trying to tell you something. Let me ask you a question-is this the only disturbing dream you’ve had lately?”

Ralph thought fleetingly of Carol, buried up to her neck in the sand and screaming about white-man tracks. Thought of the bugs which had flooded out of her head. “I haven’t had any bad dreams lately,” he said stiffly. “I suppose you don’t believe that because it doesn’t fit into the little scenario you’ve created.”

“Ralph-”

“Let me ask you something. Do you really believe that my seeing those two men and May Locher turning up dead was just a coincidence?”

“Maybe not. Maybe your physical and emotional upset created conditions favorable to a brief but perfectly genuine psychic event.”

Ralph was silenced.

“I believe such things do happen from time to time,” McGovern said, standing up. “Probably sounds funny, coming from a rational old bird like me, but I do. I’m not out-and-out saying that is what happened here, but it could have been. What I am sure of is that the two men you think you saw did not in fact exist in the real world.”