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By Root 1105 0

or two, and she'd started to make a joke, and then the phone had rung and it had been Burt Iverson, and Sam tried to replay the conversation in his mind and was chagrined at how little he remembered. Naomi had said Ardelia was peculiar, all right; he was sure of that, but not much else. It hadn't seemed important then. The important thing then was that his career seemed to have taken a quantum leap forward. And that was still important, but this other thing seemed to dwarf it. In truth, it seemed to dwarf everything. His mind kept going back to that modern no-nonsense suspended ceiling and the short bookcases. He didn't believe he was crazy, not at all, but he was beginning to feel that if he didn't get this thing sorted out, he might go crazy. It was as if he had uncovered a hole in the middle of his head, one so deep you could throw things into it and not hear a splash no matter how big the things you threw were or how long you waited with your ear cocked for the sound. He supposed the feeling would pass - maybe - but in the meantime it was horrible.

He turned the burner under the soup to LO, went into the study, and found Naomi's telephone number. It rang three times and then a cracked, elderly voice said, 'Who is it, please?' Sam recognized the voice at once, although he hadn't seen its owner in person for almost two years. It was Naomi's ramshackle mother.

'Hello, Mrs Higgins,' he said. 'It's Sam Peebles.'

He stopped, waited for her to say Oh, hello, Sam or maybe How are you? but there was only Mrs Higgins's heavy, emphysemic breathing. Sam had never been one of her favorite people, and it seemed that absence had not made her heart grow fonder.

Since she wasn't going to ask it, Sam decided he might as well. 'How are you, Mrs Higgins?'

'I have my good days and my bad ones.'

For a moment Sam was nonplussed. It seemed to be one of those remarks to which there was no adequate reply. Pm sorry to hear that didn't fit, but That's great, Mrs Higgins! would sound even worse.

He settled for asking if he could speak to Naomi.

'She's out this evening. I don't know when she'll be back.'

'Could you ask her to call me?'

'I'm going to bed. And don't ask me to leave her a note, either. My arthritis is very bad.'

Sam sighed. 'I'll call tomorrow.'

'We'll be in church tomorrow morning,' Mrs Higgins stated in the same flat, unhelpful voice, 'and the first Baptist Youth Picnic of the season is tomorrow afternoon. Naomi has promised to help.'

Sam decided to call it off. It was clear that Mrs Higgins was sticking as close to name, rank, and serial number as she possibly could. He started to say goodbye, then changed his mind. 'Mrs Higgins, does the name Lortz mean anything to you? Ardelia Lortz?'

The heavy wheeze of her respiration stopped in raid-snuffle. For a moment there was total silence on the line and then Mrs Higgins spoke in a low, vicious voice. 'How long are you Godless heathens going to go on throwing that woman in our faces? Do you think it's funny? Do you think it's clever?'

'Mrs Higgins, you don't understand. I just want to know - '

There was a sharp little click in his ear. It sounded as if Mrs Higgins had broken a small dry stick over her knee. And then the line went dead.

3

Sam ate his soup, then spent half an hour trying to watch TV. It was no good. His mind kept wandering away. It might start with the woman in Dirty Dave's poster, or with the muddy footprint on the cover of Best Loved Poems of the American People, or with the missing poster of Little Red Riding Hood. But no matter where it started, it always ended up in the same place: that completely different ceiling above the main reading room of the Junction City Public Library.

Finally he gave it up and crawled into bed. It had been one of the worst Saturdays he could remember, and might well have been the worst Saturday of his life. The only thing he wanted now was a quick trip into the land of dreamless unconsciousness.

But sleep didn't come.

The horrors came instead.

Chief among them was the idea that