back and forth between the lab's sparkling, white-tiled walls. Dex
could see the gold glimmer of the fillings at the back of the man's
mouth. He could see the yellow ghost of nicotine on his tongue.
The janitor's head slammed down against the edge of the board he
had been about to remove when the thing had grabbed him. And
this time Dex did see something, although it happened with such
mortal, savage speed that later he was unable to describe it
adequately to Henry. Something as dry and brown and scaly as a
desert reptile came out of the crate--something with huge claws. It
tore at the janitor's straining, knotted throat and severed his jugular
vein. Blood began to pump across the table, pooling on the formica
and jetting onto the white-tiled floor. For a moment, a mist of
blood seemed to hang in the air.
Dex dropped the janitor's arm and blundered backward, hands
clapped flat to his cheeks, eyes bulging.
The janitor's eyes rolled wildly at the ceiling. His mouth dropped
open and then snapped closed. The click of his teeth was audible
even below that hungry growling. His feet, clad in heavy black
work shoes, did a short and jittery tap dance on the floor.
Then he seemed to lose interest. His eyes grew almost benign as
they looked raptly at the overhead light globe, which was also
blood-spattered. His feet splayed out in a loose V. His shirt pulled
out of his pants, displaying his white and bulging belly.
"He's dead," Dex whispered. "Oh, Jesus."
The pump of the janitor's heart faltered and lost its rhythm. Now
the blood that flowed from the deep, irregular gash in his neck lost
its urgency and merely flowed down at the command of indifferent
gravity. The crate was stained and splashed with blood. The
snarling seemed to go on endlessly. The crate rocked back and
forth a bit, but it was too well-braced against the instrument mount
to go very far. The body of the janitor lolled grotesquely, still
grasped firmly by whatever was in there. The small of his back
was pressed against the lip of the lab table. His free hand dangled,
sparse hair curling on the fingers between the first and second
knuckles. His big key ring glimmered chrome in the light.
And now his body began to rock slowly this way and that. His
shoes dragged back and forth, not tap dancing now but waltzing
obscenely. And then they did not drag. They dangled an inch off
the floor... then two inches.., then half a foot above the floor. Dex
realized that the janitor was being dragged into the crate.
Tile nape of his neck came to rest against the board fronting the far
side of the hole in the top of the crate. He looked like a man resting
in some weird Zen position of contemplation. His dead eyes
sparkled. And Dex heard, below the savage growling noises, a
smacking, rending sound. And the crunch of a bone.
Dex ran.
He blundered his way across the lab and out the door and up the
stairs. Halfway up, he fell down, clawed at the risers, got to his
feet, and ran again. He gained the first floor hallway and sprinted
down it, past the closed doors with their frosted-glass panels, past
the bulletin boards. He was chased by his own footfalls. In his ears
he could hear that damned whistling.
He ran right into Charlie Gereson's arms and almost knocked him
over, and he spilled the milk shake Charlie had been drinking all
over both of them.
"Holy hell, what's wrong?" Charlie asked, comic in his extreme
surprise. He was short and compact, wearing cotton chinos and a
white tee shirt. Thick spectacles sat grimly on his nose, meaning
business, proclaiming that they were there for a long haul.
"Charlie," Dex said, panting harshly. "My boy... the janitor... the
crate... it whistles... it whistles when it's hungry and it whistles
again when it's full... my boy ... we have to ... campus security ...
we .... We..."
"Slow down, Professor Stanley," Charlie said. He looked
concerned and a little frightened. You don't expect to be seized by
the senior professor in your department when you had nothing
more aggressive in mind yourself than charting the continued
outmigration of sandflies. "Slow down, I don't know what you're
talking about."
Stanley, hardly aware of what he was saying, poured out a garbled
version of what had happened to the janitor. Charlie Gereson
looked more and more confused and doubtful. As upset as he was,
Dex began to realize that Charlie didn't believe a word of it. He
thought, with a new kind of horror, that soon Charlie would ask
him if he had been working too hard, and that when he did, Stanley
would burst into mad cackles of laughter.
But what Charlie said was, "That's pretty far out, Professor
Stanley."
"It's true. We've got to get campus security over here. We--"
"No, that's no good. One of them would stick his hand in there,
first thing." He saw Dex's stricken look and went on. "If I'm having
trouble swallowing this, what are they going to think?"
"I don't know," Dex said. "I... I never thought..."
"They'd think you just came off a helluva toot and were seeing
Tasmanian devils instead of pink elephants," Charlie Gereson said
cheerfully, and pushed his glasses up on his pug nose. "Besides,
from what you say, the responsibility has belonged with zo all
along... like for a hundred and forty years."
"But..." He swallowed, and there was a click in his throat as he
prepared to voice his worst fear. "But it may be out."
"I doubt that," Charlie said, but didn't elaborate. And in that, Dex
saw two things: that Charlie didn't believe a word he had said, and
that nothing he could say would dissuade Charlie from going back
down there.
Henry Northrup glanced at his watch. They had been sitting in the
study for a little over an hour; Wilma wouldn't be back for another
two. Plenty of time. Unlike Charlie Gereson, he had passed no
judgment at all on the factual basis of Dex's story. But he had
known Dex for a longer time than young Gereson had, and he
didn't believe his friend exhibited the signs of a man who has
suddenly developed a psychosis. What he exhibited was a kind of
bug-eyed fear, no more or
less than you'd expect to see a man who has had an extremely close
call with... well, just an extremely close call.
"He went down, Dex?"
"Yes. He did."
"You went with him?"
"Yes."
Henry shifted position a little. "I can understand why he didn't
want to get campus security until he had checked the situation
himself. But Dex, you knew you were telling the flat-out truth,
even if he didn't. Why didn't you call?"
"You believe me?" Dex asked. His voice trembled. "You believe
me, don't you, Henry?"
Henry considered briefly. The story was mad, no question about
that. The implication that there could be something in that box big
enough and lively enough to kill a man after some one hundred and
forty years was mad. He didn't believe it. But this was Dex... and
he didn't disbelieve it either.
"Yes," he said.
"Thank God for that," Dex said. He groped for his drink. "Thank
God for that, Henry."
"It doesn't answer the question, though. Why didn't you call the
campus cops?"
"I thought... as much as I did think... that it might not want to come
out of the crate, into the bright light. It must have lived in the dark
for so long... so very long... and ... grotesque as this sounds... I
though it might be pot-bound, or something. I thought ... well, he'll
see it... he'll see the crate... the janitor's body... he'll see the blood...