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By Root 560 0

out Mrs Flood sitting with her knees drawn up and her thin arms clasped around them. The dark glasses were gone. Her eyes were shut.

'Did he hurt you?' he asked.

'Naw. Slapped me around a little. You're kind of a mess, though, ain't you?'

'Not really'

Her head turned towards him. 'Your blood smells funny.'

The Doctor was beginning to feel more and more light-headed. 'That's because my blood is funny. Two leucocytes walk into a bar. The first one says, "Do you serve subpoenas here ?"' He trailed off. 'That joke doesn't even make sense,' he said worriedly.

'You're delirious,' she snorted.

'No, no, maybe it's just brain damage.' He shook his head, as if expecting to hear a rattle. 'I've been hit on the head so often -'

'You're goofy as a dancing squirrel,' she said. 'Put your feet up and your head down.'

With some difficulty, the Doctor complied. His knees were above his chest, his feet against the wall and his head on the floor beside her. 'I'm not sure this is going to help.'

'Give it time.'

'Do squirrels really dance?'

'Maybe you'd better shut up for a while, too. Get yourself together.'

'Can't do it,' he said. 'Too many pieces. None of them match. No, that's not it, exactly. Did you ever try to do one of those jigsaw puzzles where all the pieces seemed to be sky?'

'No:

After a moment he said, 'I'm sorry. I forgot.'

'Don't matter.'

After another minute, he asked, 'Did you draw those runes on the wall? The ones in nail polish?'

'I never painted my nails. He painted 'em.'

'Did he paint the runes too?'

'He's a fool.'

He moved his head a little, trying to get a better look at her. She turned away. 'You looking at me?'

'Yes.'

'Don't.'

'Why not? Did he tell you you're ugly? You're not ugly'

'He was my first. I didn't know anything and he promised he'd help me.

Then after that I was his.'

'It doesn't have to be that way'

'You don't know what you're talking about. Stop looking at me.'

'Why?'

'I blink sometimes, I can't help it, and then it shows.'

'What does?'

She covered her face. 'I don't have any eyes.'

The Doctor sat up. He took her hands and gently moved them aside, peering at the slack lids.

1 cried them out,' she said. 'Just wept them all away. They ran down my face like rain.'

Impulsively, he embraced her, cradling her head against his shoulder. 'No,'

he said to her misery, beating at it, trying to drive it back. 'No.'

She squirmed suddenly.

"That's three times,' she said huskily."Three times!'

She threw back her head and howled, or crowed, or laughed -he couldn't tell which. It was not a human sound.

Then, like mist, she flowed from his arms into thin air.

A wind howled or waves crashed - something boomed through the house.

'Oh God!' Flood shrieked. 'Oh my God! Oh sweet Jesus -' His cries collapsed into a nasty, liquid choking, and the Doctor flinched back as something viscous poured through the trap door. He hurled himself to the far end of the makeshift cellar, trying to avoid whatever was splashing soupily on to the floor. The smell was horrible. The Doctor pressed against the wall, irrationally unable to bear the thought of the stuff touching him.

Beneath his fingers, he felt the slight, slick ridges of the nail-polish runes, and then he understood everything.

'Ah, yep,' said the librarian. "That was a bad one.'

He sat nodding sagaciously, but didn't volunteer any more information. The Historical Society being closed except for four hours on weekends, Anji and Fitz had made their way to the little local library, a pretty white clapboard structure like all the buildings on the green, with a sign explaining it had been a tavern in 1829-Fitz still wasn't used to the way Americans thought something from the early nineteenth century was old, when in England 1829 was practically sneered at as the beginning of banal modernism.

The library interior was shelf-lined and airy, with big windows and an upper gallery. The elderly man behind the desk wore wire-rim spectacles, a bow tie and a benign,