The damn thing made a sound like a bass drum. Echoes rolled into the windy night; he heard them mutter and die inside, beyond the door. Then the panels moved.

The inside of the house was darker than the night. He saw only the pale oval of her face, suspended in blackness. He never doubted her identity, even though she seemed smaller than he remembered, as small as a child, as small as a bent old woman.

“I knew it was you,” she said, in a breathy whisper.

Michael nodded, then realized that she could see no more of him than he could see of her.

“I figured you’d be here.”

“Why didn’t you come before?”

“It wasn’t until last night that I got your-” Michael stopped; it was hard enough to mention his fantastic experience, but the phrase he had been about to use reduced it to inanity, as if the thing he had received had been a telegram or phone call.

Then he realized she was not listening. She was looking past him, out into the dark garden.

He was slower to perceive. He realized first that the wind had died; leaf and bough hung motionless, as if in apprehension of what was coming. He thought, This is going to be one hell of a storm. And he knew the thought for what it was-the desperate defense of the commonplace against a phenomenon it was afraid to admit. For the stillness was abnormal. Linda’s hand gripped his arm, her fingers digging in like claws. At the same instant the silence burst. He recognized the sounds, but they sounded different, here, than they had coming from the back alleys of the city. Cats. The howls and snarls seemed to come from more than a dozen feline throats. The shrubbery was animate with glowing eyes and flying bodies.

The fury of the cats might have warned him, if he had had time to think. The next flash of lightning came too quickly; it caught him unprepared. The storm was moving in. All the horizon was dark with boiling masses of cloud, and the thunderclap came close on the heels of the light, booming like a cannon’s roar. In the ghastly gray-blue light he saw it. Standing stiff-legged and huge, it might have been only a monstrous image, cut out of basalt or obsidian. But the pricked, listening ears were alive, and so were the eyes, glowing with an inner fire. When the darkness returned, he felt as if every light in the world had failed, and the darkness was worse than the vision itself, because he knew it was still out there, waiting-the black dog.

Chapter 8

I

LINDA KNEW IT WOULD BE THERE. SINCE THE THING first appeared to her, she had developed a special sensitivity; she didn’t have to see it now, to know it was coming. It was a tension in her very bones, like fear, a stench like the foulness of decay. But familiarity did not breed contempt, or acceptance. Every time she saw it, the feeling was worse. She would have stood there, frozen, if Michael had not pushed her into the house and slammed the door.

Two inches of wood were a frail barrier against the thing in the garden. But it seemed to cut off some of the aura of terror that enveloped it. Only then did she realize the enormous importance of what had happened.

“You saw it,” she gasped. “Oh, God, oh, God-you saw it!”

“I saw it.” His voice was queer; she thought that the emotion that made it shake was fear, until he went on, “God forgive me. I thought you were imagining it.”

He caught her to him, holding her so tightly that breathing was an effort. For a long moment she stood quiescent in his arms, recognizing the impulse for what it was, a desire untouched by ordinary physical passion. She felt it too-the reassurance of contact with another living human body.

“You’re not afraid,” she murmured.

“Like hell I’m not,” Michael said promptly. “Linda-what is it?”

“You saw it.”

“Yes, and I know too well that eyesight is a damned unreliable witness. We can’t stand here all night. Are you sure it can’t get into the house?”

“I’m not sure what it can do.”

“That’s comforting. Aren’t there any lights in this hole? I’d be happier if I could see what was coming at me. I think.”

“Of course there are lights. I was afraid to use them, before.”

“We’ll risk it now.”

As she switched the lights on, Michael turned from the door. He had been peering out through the small window, and he answered her question before she could voice it aloud.

“Nothing there now. I could see clearly during that last big flash.”

“It’s gone,” she said. “Not-vanished. Withdrawn.”

“You can feel it? Sense it? Damn the language, it’s inadequate.”

“I can tell when it’s coming, sometimes. But not long in advance.”

Michael laughed, a short, explosive sound that held no amusement. The antique wall sconce, which was the sole source of light in the hall, held pink bulbs shaped like candle flames-one of Andrea’s cuter affectations. The rosy light gave Michael’s cheeks a healthy flush, but she knew, by the shape of the lines around his mouth, that he was badly shaken.

“We’re talking about it as if it were susceptible to natural laws,” he muttered. “Damn it, I’m still not ready to admit that it isn’t. It was the shock of seeing it like that, when I hadn’t…And you’ve been living with that for-how long?”

“I don’t know… Months.”

“And you’ve held on to your sanity.”

“By the width of a fingernail,” she said. “By the breadth of a hair.”

Separated from her by the width of the hall, Michael did not move; but the steady dark eyes held hers with a look that was as palpable as a touch, and as expressive as a page of print. Linda knew the look; no woman with a single normal instinct could have failed to read it. Her eyes fell before his, and after a moment he spoke in a casual tone.

“As a companion in a haunted house you’re not very cheering. You look like a little ghost yourself. How long has it been since you’ve had any sleep, or a decent meal? And speaking of food, I’m starved. Is there anything in the house except toadstools and henbane?”

“Yes, of course. Come out to the kitchen.”

While she made coffee and scraped together a scanty meal, Michael wandered around the kitchen making casual remarks. This was an interlude of comparative sanity in the midst of madness; both of them recognized its artificiality, just as they recognized the need for a breathing space. But she knew that he looked out the window each time he passed it, and she did not miss the fleeting glance he gave the door. It was bolted and chained; Andrea had left it that way, and she had checked those bolts daily, knowing their inadequacy but knowing, as well, that no precaution could be neglected. Only once did he refer to the thing that loomed large in both their minds.

“The cats,” he exclaimed, as a tabby-striped tom appeared, demanding sustenance. “How do they get in and out?”

“One of those pet doors, in the cellar. No,” she said, as he made an involuntary movement of alarm. “It’s too small for anything but a cat. You know how they can compress themselves-like rubber-”

“Yes, I know,” he said.

The meal was a poor one-she had already depleted Andrea’s stock of food-but Linda ate ravenously. She hadn’t had much appetite the last few days. Michael watched her with satisfaction, eating little himself. She didn’t blame him; canned lima beans and tuna fish were unappealing unless you were half starved. When she pushed her empty plate away and looked up, she found him braced and ready.

“Talk to me,” he said. “I don’t know how much time we have.”

“About-it?” She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “How can I? How do you talk about something that is either supernatural or else a-”

“Delusion? You still believe that?”

“At first, when you saw it too, I thought…But Michael, you’ve heard of collective hallucinations.”