In the Night Season Read Online Free Page A

watching the mailbox, and he heard something on the porch. He went to the side window and looked out again, but couldn’t see enough. Entering the kitchen, he heard it again—and froze. The cats.
    The wind kicked at the house. He ran the tap, washed his hands, as if to wash away the sense of his own ability to imagine things. Upstairs, the record player paused, and the music began again. There was the sound out on the porch. Quickly, not quite believing himself, he went to the cabinet and fetched one of the rifles. But then, with a small curse, he put it back in its place. This was broad daylight, and the cats were running under the porch. He would notmake a fool of himself by walking out of the house with the rifle, a scared man in the middle of the afternoon. He strode to the front door, opened it, and stepped out. The sun had gone behind a wall of gray clouds. He walked around the house and on to the end of the side porch, where he could see into the back field. Upstairs the music was sounding, so quick and bright. He waited a moment, standing with his hands on the white-painted railing.
    No, it was his damned imagination.
    He walked around to the front door and heard the cats running before him, and how many alarms had they given him over the months? He headed toward the hallway, raised his eyes to the stairs leading up, and saw a man standing in the upper hallway, holding a pistol. The man was lean but powerful-looking.
    “Who are you?” Bishop asked him out of pure startlement. He realized almost immediately the absurdity of the question, and he put his hands up, though he hadn’t been told to.
    “Come on up,” the man said, almost friendly.
    Bishop started out the door, but another man was waiting there. He saw the jowly, pale round face, the bulk and wideness of him, and emitted a cry. He had seen that face before. The back window of the car speeding past him in the night. The heavy man pushed the door open, and Bishop backed away from him.
    “Up here,” the other said. He held the pistol, barrel down. In his other hand was a bundle of cord. His demeanor was relaxed, nearly casual. “Come on.”

INSOMNIA
    C HIEF I NVESTIGATOR S HAW HAD spoken to the computer lab teacher at the high school and had been given a list of names and addresses of youths who were known to be particularly adept at the use of the school’s computers. That afternoon, he drove to Steel Run Creek to interview the family of one such youth—a starved-looking, pale boy with a strangely protruding breastbone and long, spidery fingers. The boy identified the type of program that could produce the graphics: it was common to every computer produced in the last five years, part of the software that came with them from the factory. Oh, yes, he said, they each came with it; IBMs, and all the clones, and Macs, too. Every one had a graphics program of one kind or another. And there were dozens of color printers that could have produced these pages.
    No help.
    Shaw went out to his car and sat there, looking over his notes. He felt sleepy, sitting in the warmth of the front seat. His own radio startled him. There was a call for him out at the Lombard farm, out near Darkness Falls. He picked up the handset and spoke into it.
    “I’m in Steel Run now. Give me the address.”
     
    He had spent the morning sitting at his desk, papers open before him, bright sun washing into the window to his right, and, as had happened more often than he liked to admit to himself, he’d rested his chin in his hands and drifted off to sleep. He went through a fleeting dream about sitting in his office sleeping, and when he became aware that he was sleeping, he tried to move. The phone was ringing. But this sleep was so deeply, soul-nourishingly good, the only sleep that was ever any good at this time of the year. It was especially bad this year.
    The phone kept on. He broke free of the stillness, opened his eyes. “What?” Had it indeed been ringing?
    He picked it