But nothing happened.
He climbed the steps and stood before the door and looked for something to let the Mutants know that he had arrived.
But there was no bell. No buzzer. No knocker. The door was plain, with a simple latch. And that was all.
Hesitantly, he lifted his fist and knocked and knocked again, then waited. There was no answer. The door was mute and motionless.
He knocked again, louder this time. Still there was no answer.
Slowly, cautiously, he put out a hand and seized the latch, pressed down with his thumb. The latch gave and the door swung open and Jenkins stepped inside.
"You're cracked in the brain," said Lupus. "I'd make them come and find me. I'd give them a run they would remember. I'd make it tough for them."
Peter shook his head. "Maybe that's the way you'd do it, Lupus, and maybe it would be right for you. But it would be wrong for me. Websters never run away."
"How do you know?" the wolf asked pitilessly. "You're just talking through your hair. No webster had to run away before and if no webster had to run away before, how do you know they never-"
"Oh, shut up," said Peter.
They travelled in silence up the rocky path, breasting the hill.
"There's something trailing us," said Lupus.
"You're just imagining," said. Peter. "What would be trailing us?"
"I don't know, but-"
"Do you smell anything?"
"Well, no."
"Did you hear anything or see anything?"
"No, I didn't, but-"
"Then nothing's following us," Peter declared, positively. "Nothing ever trails anything any more."
The moonlight filtered through the treetops, making the forest a mottled black and silver. From the river valley came the muffled sound of ducks in midnight argument. A soft breeze came blowing up the hillside, carrying with it a touch of river fog.
Peter's bowstring caught in a piece of brush and he stopped to untangle it. He dropped some of the arrows he was carrying and stooped to pick them up.
"You better figure out some other way to carry them things," Lupus growled at him. "You're all the time getting tangled up and dropping them and-"
"I've been thinking about it," Peter told him, quietly. "Maybe a bag of some sort to hang around my shoulder."
They went on up the hill.
"What are you going to do when you get to Webster House?" asked Lupus.
"I'm going to see Jenkins," Peter said. "I'm going to tell him what I've done."
"Fatso's already told him."
"But maybe he told him wrong. Maybe he didn't tell it right. Fatso was excited."
"Lame– brained, too," said Lupus.
They crossed a patch of moonlight and plunged on up the darkling path.
"I'm getting nervous," Lupus said. "I'm going to go back. This is a crazy thing you're doing. I've come part way with you, but-"
"Go back, then," said Peter bitterly. "I'm not nervous. I'm-"
He whirled around, hair rising on his scalp.
For there was something wrong – something in the air he breathed, something in his mind – an eerie, disturbing sense of danger and, much more than danger, a loathsome feeling that clawed at his shoulder blades and crawled along his back with a million prickly feet.
"Lupus!" he cried. "Lupus!"
A bush stirred violently down the trail and Peter was running, pounding down the trail. He ducked around a brush and skidded to a halt. His bow came up and with one motion be picked an arrow from his left hand, nocked it to the cord.
Lupus was stretched upon the ground, half in shade and half in moonlight. His lip was drawn back to show his fangs. One paw still faintly clawed.
Above him crouched a shape. A shape – and nothing else. A shape that spat and snarled a stream of angry sound that screamed in Peter's brain. A tree branch moved in the wind and the moon showed through and Peter saw the outline of the face – a faint outline, like the half erased chalk lines upon a dusty board. A skull-like face with mewling mouth and slitted eyes and ears that were tufted with tentacles.
The bow cord hummed and the arrow splashed into the face – splashed into it and passed through and fell upon the ground. And the face was there, still snarling.
Another arrow nocked against the cord and back, far back, almost to the ear. An arrow driven by the snapping strength of well-seasoned straight-grained hickory-by the hate and fear and loathing of the man who pulled the cord.
The arrow spat against the chalky outlines of the face, slowed and shivered, then fell free.
Another arrow and back with the cord. Farther yet, this time. Farther for more power to kill the thing that would not die when an arrow struck it. A thing that only slowed an arrow and made it shiver and then let it pass on through.
Back and back – and back. And then it happened. The bow string broke.
For an instant, Peter stood there with the useless weapon dangling in one hand, the useless arrow hanging from the other. Stood and stared across the little space that separated him from the shadow horror that crouched across the wolf's grey body.
And he knew no fear. No fear, even though the weapon was no more. But only flaming anger that shook him and a voice that hammered in his brain with one screaming word:
KILL-KILL-KILL
He threw away the bow and stepped forward, hands hooked at his side, hooked into puny claws.
The shadow backed away – backed away in a sudden pool of fear that lapped against its brain – fear and horror at the flaming hatred that beat at it from the thing that walked towards it. Hatred that seized and twisted it. Fear and horror it had known before – fear and horror and disquieting resignation – but this was something new. This was a whiplash of torture that seared across its nerves, that burned across its brain.
This was hatred.
The shadow whimpered to itself – whimpered and mewed and backed away and sought with frantic fingers of thought within its muddled brain for the symbols of escape.
The room was empty – empty and old and hollow. A room that caught up the sound of the creaking door and flung it into muffled distances, then hurled it back again. A room heavy with the dust of forgetfulness, filled with the brooding silence of aimless centuries.
Jenkins stood with the door pull in his hand, stood and flung all the sharp alertness of the new machinery that was his body into the corners and the darkened alcoves. There was nothing. Nothing but the silence and the dust and darkness. Nor anything to indicate that for many years there had been anything but silence, dust and darkness. No faintest tremor of a residuary thought, no footprints on the floor, no fingermarks scrawled across the table.
An old song, an incredibly old song – a song that had been old when he had first been forged, crept out of some forgotten corner of his brain. And he was surprised that it still was there, surprised that he had ever known it – and knowing it, dismayed at the swirl of centuries that it conjured up, dismayed at the remembrance of the neat white houses that had stood upon a million hills, dismayed at the thought of men who had loved their acres and walked them with the calm and quiet assurance of their ownership.