Charles L. Grant - Oxrun Station 03 - The Hour Of The Oxrun Dead

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WHEN EVIL INVADES
The front door shattered inward. Her mouth opened for a scream, but there was no sound. Shards of
glass tumbled end over end across the carpeting, tinkled on the tables like wind chimes. She tried to duck
away from the knifelike mis-siles, but they struck her mercilessly, and still the glass rained in from the
door.
And there was no wind.
Finally, the scream found its way out, and she pressed her bleeding hands to her face to pro-tect her
eyes. She tripped and nearly lost con-sciousness when her hands struck the floor and drove the glass
deeper into her skin.
She was going to bleed to death. She was going to die slowly under a shroud of drifting pink....
Chapter 1
The WANING moon spread a worn blanket of pale silver across the center of the room's darkness. It
was an impersonal glow that bleached the lines from Natalie's face and replaced them with grey
shadows, creating pits and hollows to give her the look of a freshly unearthed skull.
Her quilt, its rills deepened to indigo, had bunched at her neck, and its faded satin edging pushed up
over her chin. She shiv-ered once, and her legs grew taut, relaxed, and her knees inched slowly toward
her chest. Suddenly she jerked them straight and twisted sharply on her side. A hand shoved the quilt
impatiently to her waist, then pressed itself against her ear as if the thin fingers could filter the voices out
of the silent room.
One Alpha, this is Control, over. One Al-pha, this is Control.
Control, One Alpha here. What have you got for me now, Sammy? A robbery of the Park Street
Bank, I hope.
Don't you wish, Dick Tracy. No, I got a call here from a Mrs. Leonard Jamieson at 1176 High Street.
She says there's a prowler in her back yard.
What? At four in the morning? What's she been drinking, for crying out loud? And for how long?
Ben—
And what in heaven's name is she doing up so late? Doesn't she know what time it is?
Ben—
For crying out loud, Sammy!
Ben, all I do is get them and call them. I don't run a contest for their originality or time telling.
All right, Sammy, all right. I'm on my way. And thanks for tagging me. We cer-tainly wouldn't want to
wake the others, would we?
Roger, One Alpha, and call on your arrival.
Roger, Control.
And keep your comments to yourself.
Natalie thrust the hand away from her head and groped blindly for the quilt. Failing to find it, she drew
up one leg, kicked and pushed the tufted wool onto the bare floor.
The sudden chill on her legs disturbed but did not interrupt an already precarious sleep; the hand
returned to her ear.
A tangled strand of dark hair slipped into her mouth, then, as she rolled her face away from the
window, her tongue worked, pushed out the hair, licked at full lips that hinted at black in the grey light.
She sighed. Pressed her fingers tighter against her skull. Shud-dering.
Control, this is One Alpha.
One Alpha, roger. A bit of static but I hear you good, Ben.
Your English is lousy, Sam, do you know that? And so's your sense of direction. Did you say 1176
High?
That's right, Ben. You there now?
Well, sure I'm here. Where else would I be at this time of night? And I've got news for you, brother.
This here house is locked up tight. There's a garage door open, but there's no car inside. I already took a
quick look around, and even the stupid crickets are sleeping. For crying out loud.
You ring the bell?
At four o'clock in the morning? Are you nuts? I knocked front and back, but no one answered. The
shades are up, no curtains that I can see. Grass needs cutting badly, too. There just ain't nobody home,
Sam. There ain't nobody home at all.
Can't be. I got the call. You want me to go in or something? Wait one. Let me think a minute.
Oh, brother!
Perspiration trembled into droplets in the shallows of her temples, the sides of her nose, under her
lower lip. She threw an arm over her eyes, and her breasts heaved once against her flannel nightgown.
The fingers of her left hand clenched, opened, fumbled and gripped the edge of the mattress. Her teeth
began to chatter. Another sigh that lingered before whirling into a choking gasp.
Ben, check the mail box. Look for a name or something.
Wait one, slave driver ... Sam? There is none, believe it or not. Just a hole where the post used to be. I
went onto the porch again, and there are a couple of broken windows on the first floor. They have tar
paper tacked over them. Didn't see that the first time. Sam, I hate to tell you this, but this place is
deserted. Nobody's lived here for a good long time.
What? A joke. It must be a stupid practical joke.
At four in the morning?
Ben, do you have to keep saying that?
Absolutely! Nat's probably listening in and want her to go back to bed. Now! Ben, you've been told
before we don't allow personal messages over the radio. You're going to get nabbed for that one of
these days.
So I'll never make Chief. Big deal, who needs it? And if it'll make you happy, I'll never do it again. Fine.
Just as long as Nat goes to bed. Ben!
The gasp caught in her throat, bubbled as though she were gargling. She coughed twice, and her
fingers trailed to the floor, touched wood and recoiled, moving quickly to her stomach where they fisted
and she rubbed tight circles over her glistening skin.
Ben, you might as well hit the road. I'll leave a note for the day shift to check on the—
Hold it, Sam! I've got the spotlight down the side of the house. I think I saw some-thing in the back
yard. I just got a glimpse. It ... cat . .. big thing, it looks ... do you say?
Hold it, Ben. There's a ton of static on the wire. I can hardly understand what you're saying. I don't
want you to be a hero. Stick by the car until I call Moss and—
My God! Did you see that?
Ben, for crying out loud, if the captain should hear that kind of talk you'll be back on the park beat.
Sam, if that's what I think it ... can't be ... promised ... wait a minute, the cord's caught on the steering
... getting out for a closer .. . Sam, did you—
Ben, not on the radio!
Don't believe it. It isn't ... have to shoot, Sam . .. oh, my God! .. . promised, he promised ... oh, my
God, Sam!
Ben? Benny? One Alpha, this is Control, over. One Alpha, this is Control. Ben? Con-found it, Ben,
talk to me! ... Two Alpha, this is Control. Haul over to 1176 High ASAP. Ben's in some kind of trouble.
Move! ... One Alpha, this is Control, over.
Control, this is Two Alpha. What's all the shouting?
Moss, if you'd been monitoring like you're supposed to instead of—never mind, just get over to 1176
High and see if you can make some sense out of what's going on there. Ben's in trouble, I think. Move!
The noise finally escaped her throat and dipped into a whimper, a choked-off scream, and Natalie sat
up abruptly, her mouth wide to gulp at the chilled air and fill the gaps in her lungs. She blinked against the
moon-light, and as the stiffness in her back faded, one hand rubbed the side of her neck, care-fully
avoiding a brush with her ear. A mo-ment later the other hand passed across her eyes; then, lightly, she
touched it to her cheek. But there were no tears, only the slick coating of perspiration. No tears. Not
any-more. They had brimmed and fled in hysteri-cal spasms several months before, and what remained
had been sponged by the traces of her nightmares.
Calm, she told herself. Stay calm. It's only a dream, now.
One final massage, and she eased herself carefully off the bed and draped a tattered silken robe over
her shoulders. Her feet slid unerringly into thickly lined slippers, and with one hand skimming along the
wall, she moved to the bedroom's threshold without the necessity of a lamp. She leaned heavily against
the jamb; though she hadn't yet glanced at her watch, she knew it was close to dawn and there would be
neither sense nor progress gained from making another attempt to sleep.
Resigned, then, she slid her arms into the robe and waited until her eyes adjusted to the dim light. The
house was cored by a central stairwell, and when she could make out the cream-and-white bannister that
rimmed it, she stretched out a hand and guided herself along the polished wood until she reached the top
step. Behind her, the curtained french doors leading onto the back porch deck glowed faintly, and
below, through the frosted panes of the front door, she could see the front light shimmering a winter
white.
Now that's a bloody waste, she thought. Sam, of course, had insisted and she had fallen into the habit
without really thinking; but perhaps, finally, it was time for a change.
She nodded, and while she descended, con-sidered her present alternatives: if she turned left into the
crowded living room, she might be tempted to lie down on the divan to watch the sun come up. No. She
had had enough of the voices for one night, for one year. She thought it best not to press her sanity's
luck.
The dining room directly opposite across the tiny slate-floored entrance hall would be just as useless
for peace of mind, and proba-bly just as dusty—the room had scarcely been used since Ben had died,
and it was only procrastination that kept the double doors opened.
So, then. The kitchen it would be. As usual. As always.
And once decided, she grabbed the newel post, spun herself to the right and rushed down the green
carpeted corridor toward the rear of the house. At the kitchen entrance she paused and snaked a hand
around the jamb to flick on the ceiling light. A quick glance to the back porch, to the locked door of the
den at the opposite end of the rear hall, and she escaped into fluorescent brightness. Immediately she
busied herself with copper teapot and chrome toaster, plum jam and skimmed milk. A wall clock of
Aztec design buzzed softly, the refrigerator switched on and com-forted, and the blast of the kettle's
steam shriek was less strident than welcome.
But when her fussing ended and she could find no other excuse to keep from sitting, she took her
place at the circular table under the window and waited for daylight. And here we are again, she thought,
shak-ing her head at the tea that burned her tongue and the unavoidable sensation that this year's dream
had been markedly less intense than any of the others. Had she taken Sam's advice and visited a
psychiatrist, she probably would have been told by now that the grief-and-terror combination was finally
being dulled by the cliched sands of time that heals all wounds and colors psychic scars in autumnal
shades. Well, maybe it was true. Maybe she was finally shedding her mourning skin. But the feeling left
an indefinable emptiness all the same.
Yet it had been so exciting in the begin-ning. Her marriage to Ben Windsor had happened so swiftly,
she still had to wonder how it had lasted as long as it had. She supposed it was a miracle. But what, then,
would you call his murder?
With nothing and no one to tie her to the outside world, Natalie had arrived at Oxrun Station to
assume a position at the local library. She had been twenty-five, fresh from her Master's and looking
forward to the decent burial of several hapless affairs. There were plans to move on to larger
communities after a year or so of paid apprenticeship, but Oxrun's gentle isolation, insulation and nearly
tangible aura of unas-suming wealth soothed her and her plans were buried along with her lovers. She
had known it was more fitting to a schoolgirl, but she'd even entertained fantasies of a Nordic scion
hoisting her bodily from behind the front desk and riding off to the hounds while she bore him the
demigods who would continue his line. It was somewhat of a shock, then, when Ben had lumbered his
six-and-a-half foot bulk up to a magazine display she was readying, introduced himself as the Assistant
Chief of Police and, ten minutes later, invited her out to dinner. Flustered and oddly flattered, she'd
stepped back, tipped over the rack and, in the confu-sion, accepted. And again, a week later. Then to a
party. To a picnic. A long summer's drive through the woodlands of western Connecti-cut where they
discovered a beaver's dam, a cave filled with bats, a rotted log swarming with honey bees; and where
they had made not-so-gentle love on the banks of a pond rippling under the weight of several dozen
geese.
Two months afterward they were engaged. Another seven months and the wedding in the stone
church on Williamston Pike.
She hadn't minded his being a policeman in Oxrun Station, even after she'd learned it was his brother,
Sam, who was the Assistant Chief soon to be promoted. In the affluent, unostentatious community crimes
generally ran to wavelets of petty vandalism and mi-nor drug busts. Drifters were not tolerated, and either
soon found employment or a lift to Mainland Road and a pointed finger toward distant Hartford. It was
safe. Almost boring, despite Ben's assurances that he would be moving up to something bigger in just a
few short years. And in the meantime, for her own amusement more than anything, she had purchased a
radio with a police band and listened to the patrols' transmis-sions, giggling and applauding Ben's
some-times cryptic, often clumsily hidden messages that threatened to grey what hair his brother had left.
And when Ben moved on their marriage's first night shift, she lobbied for and received approval and
custody of the library's night hours. Her major justification to the Council had been the welfare and
continued patronage of the students attend-ing the local community college. The Sta-tion's Council had
thought her a daring and charming innovator; her Director, Adriana Hall, thought her impulsively faddish.
Nata-lie thought she was just being damned clever for, when the library closed, she'd hurry home to turn
on the radio and listen until the dead hours just before dawn; if anything happened after she'd gone to
bed, Ben's voice, no matter how soft or complacent, would waken her instantly.
But he had died less than a year after it had all begun. Had been murdered. Brutally. Found flung over
the hood of his patrol car with his throat slashed and his face muti-lated almost beyond recognition. His
right ear had been severed and placed between his teeth. Died? Had been murdered. Mrs. Jamie-son
was fictitious. And the killer had never been found.
She refilled her cup and nibbled uncon-sciously at a cold piece of toast.
When the mourning period had ended, both Sam and his wife, Elaine, launched a campaign to ease her
out of town and, failing that, urged her to at least find another home as far from Fox Road as she could
get. Natalie was initially too shocked to respond, then too stubbornly annoyed to succumb to their
clumsy blandishments.
"I'm a grown woman, Elaine," she'd told her sister-in-law during one prodding session on the front
porch. "What good would it do me to run away? Listen, I'm not morbid, you know. I'm not about to turn
the place into a memorial, if that's what you're afraid of."
"But Nattie," the pudgy woman had whined, "there are such awful memories here. Now, Sam
thinks—"
"Well, good for dear old Sam. Now, what I think is that I am not leaving. No way. And I really wish
you'd leave me alone!"
But she hadn't, and Natalie wasn't surprised, had only prayed that she would. And it pleased her to
watch the barely suppressed expressions of impending apoplexy on her double-chinned face when she
donated Ben's clothes to several charities, his few books to a hospital library. His meager collection of
baseball and bowling trophies she gave to Sam. The only thing she kept when the purge had been
completed was a shoebox of memories she hadn't looked at for several months.
And on this particular morning, after a nightmare now more horrible in its persis-tence than its content,
she wasn't sure what it was she was waiting for. The killer's apprehension? The next man in her life? The
end of those dreams that clawed into her sleep for several nights running on the anni-versary of Ben's
death?
What, she wondered, and instantly and relievedly decided it was—had to be—all of them.
"But you're not going to get any of them by moping around drinking lousy hot tea," she told herself,
laughing, and fearing as always that her habits were beginning to decline into the stereotype mold of the
long-suffering, pining woman, the old maid, the pitiful (but not pitiable) husk of what had once been a
woman who had enjoyed control— of herself, her life and, as much as she was able, her destiny. Fate,
she'd concluded, was the poorer word because it denoted a manip-ulation beyond her grasp. Destiny,
however; she liked its sound and thought of it as a horizon on an unfinished canvas, undefined and
waiting for her to get there so she would know what it looked like.
Hurrying her plate and cup into the dish-washer, she darted upstairs to shower away the sticky residue
of her dream. Then she chose a snug pair of slacks and summer-thin blouse and slipped into the light
overcoat she'd bought downtown the year before. It was an extravagance, a calculated defiance to those
who continued to look upon her with hypocritical sorrow. She knew she was known to many in the
Station as the Police-man's Widow. It annoyed her, then amused her. And no Policeman's Widow,
certainly not in Oxrun Station, wore a bright gold coat with a thickly rich fox collar; nor in Oxrun did she
allow her soft sable hair to fight with the wind for the privilege of nestling on her shoulders. Not a
Policeman's Widow.
She laughed as she locked the front door behind her.
She stood on the porch of the small, square dark blue house and squinted at the sun poking between
the homes opposite. It was a cool brittle morning, and the few birds remaining in the slowly shedding
trees rose to greet her raucously. She grinned, took a deep breath and moved to the sidewalk,
deliberately avoiding a glance to the left. Once past the three Victorian boxes that hunkered between her
home and the corner, she paused with one hand resting on the green metal pole of a Dead End sign. The
newborn brightness was decidedly too invig-orating to waste arriving early to work. It would be much
better for her to walk a mile or so to drive the stiffness from her legs, the patina of the evening from her
eyes. In which direction, then? Straight on across William-ston Pike to stay on Fox Road would bring
her directly to the police station, and the chance of encountering Sam. Into the sun two blocks would
confront her with the library.
No choice, she thought as though she'd had one from the start, and she put the sunrise to her back.
She would take the three long blocks to Mainland Road and turn around. A fair plan, an easy plan, and
one she followed several times a week over the past four months.
So who, she asked herself, are you kidding, lady?
The collar brushed at her neck, tickled and made her laugh aloud. She adjusted the broad strap of her
pocketbook over her shoul-der, thrust her hands into her pockets and walked with broad relaxing
strides. The homes she passed sat well back from the Pike, protected by high-trimmed hedges and trees
nearly as old as the country around them. She paused only once, to allow a battered sedan to back onto
the street and join the light traffic headed almost exclusively toward the highway. There was a bus stop
on the next corner complete with a freshly painted white bench, but she ignored the temptation to sit,
reveling too much in the tightness at her cheeks and the pleasantly sharp sting of cold air in her lungs. She
crossed, heard the cough of a starting motor and turned. There was a patrol car parked opposite her,
ostensibly keeping an eye on the outbound traffic. She shook her head slowly and re-sumed her walk.
Sam, she thought, is carrying his big-brother routine too far.
She had, in fact, mentioned this uncon-tracted surveillance several times, but each meeting only
resulted in his smothering her objections under his own grand illusions of police proficiency and familial
obligation. She had never before had the nerve to tell him she was no longer his kin; and with Ben gone,
no longer wanted to be. Finally, her persistence penetrated and he admitted his men had more important
matters to attend to, and she was relieved. And the absence of the blue uniform shadows helped in
cutting away one more strand of the now fragile rope that tied her to the past.
But it had begun again. Unasked, and unexpected, and she hated Sam Windsor for spoiling her
beautiful new day.
"No!" she said aloud to the empty side-walk. "No, he will not do it to me again." And she lifted her
head, hunched her shoul-ders against a gust of October wind, and watched through the traffic as the
church where she and Ben had been married drifted slowly by. It was a long and aging structure that had
suffered with little dignity the ravages of recent parishioner neglect. Its once clean stone had become
blemished with dark, unsavory blotches of some unknown fungus. Its steeple was silent even on
Sun-days because there was no money left to repair its pre-Revolutionary bell. The double front doors
needed new paint, and the stained glass was dull even when lighted from within. Reverend Karl Hampton
did much of the handyman work himself, and as a result the rectory beside it suffered as well. Not that he
seemed to care overly much. The last time Natalie saw him, he'd been picking out a new Mercedes at a
local dealer. His patrician priorities, she thought, obviously weren't monastic.
She frowned, ducked away as a truck blasted dust into her face, then hesitated as though she would
cross to take a closer look. The frown deepened to a scowl, however, when the patrol car slid into
view.
Confound it, I won't have this!
She quickened her step and" nearly tripped over the broken curb at Devon Street. She grabbed onto
a Stop sign to keep herself from tumbling into the gutter. Another gust, and fur from her collar slid into
her mouth. She spat, brushed stiff fingers through her hair, and made a show of examining the houses
until she reached Mainland Road.
Trucks, then, and crowded buses interlaced with automobiles in a swift tide passing in both directions
without turning into the Sta-tion. Commuters heading for the far larger towns north and south, never once
seeing Oxrun to the east nor the checkered expanse of unused farmland to the west. Blind they seemed,
and Natalie had long ago stopped thinking it sad that her town was continually ignored. Now she
believed the community quite large enough. So let it stay a whistle-stop, she thought; it makes things a lot
more simple that way.
She waited five minutes for a break in the traffic, then ran across the Pike and headed back into the
sun. Almost immediately she reached one of the few businesses this side of Fox Road: the low profile,
red-brick home of the Station Herald. Its plate-glass window was undecorated except for the gold
Gothic lettering of the paper's name, and a taped front page of the previous week's edition. Peering
inside, she could see the ceiling's embedded fluorescent lights already glowing, and a dim shadow figure
obscured by the sun's glare raised a hand in greeting. She waved back, slowed, and when the office door
opened, stopped in feigned surprise, smiling broadly and tugging self-consciously at the collar of her coat.
"Hey, there, lady," a man said gaily, "you always walk the streets in the middle of the night? You could
get mugged or something, you know."
Natalie laughed at the warning she never took seriously, nor ever tired of hearing. "In case you're
interested, my fine-feathered re-porter, it's going on nine o'clock."
"And that," the young man said, "is defi-nitely the middle of the night. You thirsty?"
And before she could object, he reached out and put a hand to her elbow. "Come on in. It's cold
outside, and I need a little bookish sympathy."
Natalie glanced at the patrol car now stationed less than fifty yards away, and nodded. Sam, she
thought, I sure hope your boys are taking notes.
"Coffee? Oops, sorry, I forgot. You're one of those uppity folk who think coffee drinkers are on the
road to perdition. Tea, lemon and sugar, right?"
She nodded and sat in a stiff-backed chrome chair by the first of a half-dozen desks arranged in a
ragged file away from the window. Along the side wall, teletypes were already clattering to a
shirt-sleeved man hunched in front of them, a pad and pencil in his liver-spotted hands. A young woman
stood by a water cooler combing her hair. The rear wall had been divided in half: on the left the same
walnut paneling that car-ried all the way to the front, and a door that led to the printing plant in back; on
the right there was glass festooned with snippets of articles and headlines, and beyond it the boxlike
office of Wagner Dederson, editor and publisher. By straining, Natalie could see past the maze of paper
and recognized Dederson's overweight and overdressed figure apparently in argument with someone
who, she thought with a start, was Karl Hampton.
"Hey."
She blinked and grinned sheepishly, and wondered how much of that brash newsman image Marc
Clayton polished from his watch-ing old movies, and how much was natural. It was, at times, a little too
much to take, but she flattered herself in believing it was a role he practiced solely for her.
"So how've you been, Marc?"
He took his chair and placed it in front of her, sat and put two paper cups on the desk. He was no
more than an inch taller than she, slight, pale, and constantly neglectful of the white blond hair that
straggled over his ears and forehead. He wore gold wire-rimmed glasses with rectangular lenses and
spent more time fighting their slide down the bridge of his uptipped nose than looking through them. At
the moment, she thought critically, he looked as though he hadn't even been home to shave, and tried to
picture him with a beard and moustache. It wouldn't suit him, she decided; he would look like a kid trying
to be old.
"How have I been?" he repeated slowly, as if the question was philosophically impossi-ble to answer
in less than an hour. Then he shrugged and glanced away from her impa-tient stare. "Lousy, if you must
know. I've nearly been canned again, and the landlady refuses to fix a roof that leaks right over my bed,
and if I get one more story of mine slashed again, I'm going to pack up and head for fame and fortune in
the big city." Then he laughed at the dismay in her face. "Well, you asked for it, you know."
"I think I'm sorry I did. The roof is nothing new, but what about the firing?" She nodded toward
Dederson's office. "He getting testy in his old age?"
A wave of his hand almost tipped over the cups, neither of which they'd touched. "Deder-son thinks I
lean too much toward the purple-prose school of journalism."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I imagine things that aren't there and then write about them as if they were the apocalypse.
Like the creeps last week that smeared black paint all over the synagogue on Devon, down past
Chancellor. I said they seemed to be taking part in a conspiracy to defame all the religious com-munity's
edifices in town. Dederson says it was a bunch of drunken college kids feeling their oats."
"Well, weren't they?"
"Who knows? They weren't caught. And neither were the poor, underprivileged kids who sliced up
the altar cloth and dented the crucifix at St. Mary's last month. Or the rambunctious students who nailed
those dead cats to the Baptist Church doors last June." He frowned, drained his cup without breath-ing
and dropped it into a wastebasket. "A conspiracy? Nuts. Just kids feeling their en-riched oats."
"It could be, you know," she said, at once taken by the seriousness of his tone, and the nervous way
he pulled at the tie sloppily knotted and yanked toward the middle of his chest. "I mean, you read about
it all the time, don't you? Rich kids with nothing better to do, so they—"
"I know, I know. That maybe I could believe. But ..." He stopped, suddenly, and swiveled to his
desk. "Nat," he said without looking at her, "how've you been lately? Seriously."
Puzzled, she could only lift a hand to indicate she was doing fine.
"You, uh, over the hump, so to speak?"
"Oh." And she surprised herself by saying. "Yes, I think so. Life, as they say, goes on whether you
want it to or not." Her smile was a weak one. "So they say. Why?"
Marc rubbed at his chin before extracting a crumpled sheet of paper from an untidy pile on his blotter.
"There was a murder last night, Nat. In the park. Howard Vorhees, the assistant dean of students out at
the college."
"I don't think I want to hear anymore, Marc," she said. Then, sighing, nodded for him to continue while
a tightness around her chest amplified the increased beating of her heart.
Vorhees, Marc explained, was found just after dawn stretched out on a bench near the ball field. His
clothes had been stripped off and tossed into a nearby briar copse. A copy of the Herald had been
placed carefully over his face. When the officer who'd discovered the body pulled back the paper, he
found the throat slashed, the face mutilated apparently by a razor, and his right ear had been cut off and
stuffed into his mouth. Chief Windsor had admitted to no leads and had doubled the park patrol
immediately.
"As of," and Marc glanced at his watch, "as of twenty minutes ago, there were no clues of any kind.
No tracks, no nothing." He flicked the paper with a forefinger and set it carefully back on the pile. "I also
got into trouble because Dederson wanted me to in-terview you, and I told him where he could find it if
he wanted it that bad."
Natalie swallowed the trace of bile that had crept into her mouth. A feeling of time displacement
unsteadied her, and she felt the coffee cup pressed into her hands. She sipped gratefully, not tasting the
cool liquid, and handed it back.
"It's the same, isn't it?"
He agreed, sadly. "And when I mentioned that instead of an interview we ought to pursue the
possibility of a connection, he told me, and I quote for your edification, 'Clayton, if you want to be a
mystery writer, then move to the city. You, sir, are a re-porter. That means you report, get it? Re-port,
Clayton, or cover your typewriter and truck.' "
"Truck?" She laughed once, loudly.
"Truck," Marc said. "He likes to think he's up on the latest street language."
She pulled her purse into her lap and toyed nervously with the strap. "What are you going to do?"
"If I knew, I'd tell you. Come on," he said, grabbing his brown and rumpled sports jacket from the
back of his chair. "I'll walk you to work. That was where you were headed, wasn't it?"
"Where else? I still have bills, you know."
And once on the street, they separated just enough to keep their arms from brushing as they walked.
It was a confusing few minutes. Natalie wished Marc wouldn't be quite so sensitive about her feelings,
her image, but she was also pleased at the consideration. Several of her friends had not so subtly
wondered why she and Marc hadn't been seeing more of one another, and lately Natalie had discovered
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WHENEVILINVADESThefrontdoorshatteredinward.Hermouthopenedforascream,buttherewasnosound.Shardsofglasstumbledendoverendacrossthecarpeting,tinkledonthetableslikewindchimes.Shetriedtoduckawayfromtheknifelikemis­siles,buttheystruckhermercilessly,andstilltheglassrainedinfromthedoor.Andtherewasnowind.Final...

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Charles L. Grant - Oxrun Station 03 - The Hour Of The Oxrun Dead.pdf

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