On the fifth day, he said, the signal started to fade, and two days later it was gone entirely.

“It was that damned skull plate,” he had told her, rapping his fist gently on the scar by his left temple. “No doubt about it. I'm sure thousands would laugh, but in my mind I'm completely sure.”

If someone else had told her the story, Anderson would have believed she was having her leg pulled, but Jim hadn't been kidding-you looked in his eyes and you knew he wasn't.

Big storms had big power.

Lightning flared in a blue sheet, giving Anderson a shutter-click of what she had come to think of-as her neighbors did-as her dooryard. She saw the truck, with the first drops of rain on its windshield; the short dirt driveway; the mailbox with its flag down and tucked securely against its aluminum side; the writhing trees. Thunder exploded a bare moment later, and Peter jumped against her, whining. The lights went out. They didn't bother dimming or flickering or messing around; they went out all at once, completely. They went out with authority.

Anderson reached for the lantern-and then her hand stopped.

There was a green spot on the far wall, just to the right of Uncle Frank's Welsh dresser. It bobbed up two inches, moved left, then right. It disappeared for a moment and then came back. Anderson's dream recurred with all the eerie power of deja vu. She thought again of the lantern in Poe's story, but mixed in this time was another memory: The War of the Worlds. The Martian heat-ray, raining green death on Hammersmith.

She turned toward Peter, hearing the tendons in her neck creak like dirty doorhinges, knowing what she was going to seeThe light was coming from Peter's eye. His left eye. It glared with the witchy green light of St Elmo's fire drifting over a swamp after a still, muggy day.

No… not the eye. It was the cataract that was glowing… at least, what remained of the cataract. It had gone back noticeably even from that morning, at the vet's office. That side of Peter's face was lit with a lurid green light, making him look like a comic-book monstrosity.

Her first impulse was to get away from Peter, dive out of the chair and simply run…

…but this was Peter, after all. And Peter was scared to death already. If she deserted him, Peter would be terrified.

Thunder cracked in the black. This time both of them jumped. Then the rain came in a great sighing sheetlike rush. Anderson looked back at the wall across the room again, at the green splotch bobbing and weaving there. She was reminded of times she had lain in bed as a child, using the watchband of her Timex to play a similar spot off the wall by moving her wrist.

And by the way, what's it doing to you, Bobbi?

Green sunken fire in Peter's eye, taking away the cataract. Eating it. She looked again, and had to restrain herself from jerking back when Peter licked her hand.

That night Bobbi Anderson slept hardly at all.

Chapter 4

The Dig, Continued

When Anderson finally woke up, it was almost ten A. M. and most of the lights in the place were on-Central Maine Power had gotten its shit together again, it seemed. She walked around the place in her socks, turning off lights, and then looked out the front window. Peter was on the porch. Anderson let him in and looked closely at his eye. She could remember her terror of the night before, but in this morning's bright summer daylight, terror had been supplanted by fascination. Anyone would have been scared, she thought, seeing something like that in the dark, with the power out, and a thunderstorm stomping the earth and the sky outside.

Why in hell didn't Etheridge see this?

But that was easy. The dials of radium watches glow in the day as well as in the dark; you just can't see the glow in bright light. She was a little surprised she had missed the green glow in Peter's eye on the previous nights, but hardly flabbergasted… after all, it had taken her a couple of days to even realize the cataract was shrinking. And yet… Etheridge had been close, hadn't he? Etheridge had been right in there with the old ophthalmoscope, looking into Peter's eye.

He had agreed with Anderson that the cataract was shrinking… but hadn't mentioned any glow, green or otherwise.

Maybe he saw it and decided to unsee it. The way he saw Peter was looking younger and decided he didn't see that. Because he didn't want to see that.

There was a part of her that didn't like the new vet a whole hell of a lot; she supposed it was because she had liked old Doc Daggett so much and had made that foolish (but apparently unavoidable) assumption that Daggett would be around as long as she and Peter were. But it was a silly reason to feel hostility toward the old man's replacement, and even if Etheridge had failed (or refused) to see Peter's apparent age regression, that didn't change the fact that he seemed a perfectly competent vet.

A cataract that glowed green… she didn't think he would have ignored something like that.

Which led her to the conclusion that the green glow hadn't been there for Etheridge to see.

At least, not right away.

There hadn't been any big hooraw right away, either, had there? Not when they came in. Not during the exam. Only when they were getting ready to go out.

Had Peter's eye started to glow then?

Anderson poured Gravy Train into Peter's dish and stood with her left hand under the tap, waiting for the water to come in warm so she could wet it down. The wait kept getting longer and longer. Her water heater was slow, balky, sadly out of date. Anderson had been meaning to have it replaced-would certainly have to do so before the cold weather-but the only plumber in either Haven or the rural towns to Haven's immediate north and south was a rather unpleasant fellow named Delbert Chiles, who always looked at her as if he knew exactly what she would look like with her clothes off (not much, his eyes said, but I guess it'd do in a pinch) and always wanted to know if Anderson was “writing any new books lately.” Chiles liked to tell her he could have been a damned good writer himself, but he had too much energy and,not enough glue on the seat of my pants, get me?” The last time she'd been forced to call him had been when the pipes burst in the minus-twenties cold snap, winter before last. After he set things to rights, he had asked her if she would like “to go steppin” sometime. Anderson declined politely, and Chiles tipped her a wink that aspired to worldly wisdom and made it almost to informed vacuity. “You don't know what you're missin”, sweetie,” he said. I'm pretty sure I do, which is why I said no had come to her lips, but she said nothing-as little as she liked him, she had known she might need Chiles again sometime. Why was it the really good zingers only came immediately to mind in real life when you didn't dare use them?

You could do something about that hot-water heater, Bobbi, a voice in her mind spoke up, one that she couldn't identify. A stranger's voice in her head? Oh golly, should she call the cops? But you could, the voice insisted. All you'd need to do would be

But then the water started to come in warm-tepid, anyway-and she forgot about the water heater. She stirred the Gravy Train, then set it down and watched Peter eat. He was showing a much better appetite these days.

Ought to check his teeth, she thought, maybe you can go back to Gaines Meal. A penny saved is a penny earned, and the American reading public is not exactly beating a path to your door, babe. And

And exactly when had the uproar in the clinic started?

Anderson thought about this carefully. She couldn't be completely sure, but the more she thought about it the more it seemed that it might have been-not for sure but might have been-right after Dr Etheridge finished examining Peter's cataract and put down the ophthalmoscope.