By the light of the moon

beyond, where
anything might be growing in the gloom. One room to the right and
two on his left worried him, even though he was drawn to none of
them and could most likely assume that his compulsion to keep
moving meant the danger still lay ahead rather than to either
side.
    He had no doubt that something dangerous waited to be met. The
mysterious attractant that had pulled him through the Arizona night
would not prove to be a pot of gold, nor would this house likely
ever lie at the end of any rainbow.
    Toad pin to car door to beer can, he had followed a trail of
strange energy left behind by the white-haired woman's touch.
    Marjorie. Just now he knew she was Marjorie, though her uniform
had not featured a name tag.
    Toad pin to kitchen, he had been seeking Marjorie, for in the
invisible residue that her touch left on inanimate objects, he had
read the pattern of her destiny. He had felt the broken threads in
the tapestry of her fate and had somehow known that they would be
broken here, this night.
    From the half-crushed beer can onward, he stalked a new quarry.
Unknowingly, Marjorie had been prey when she'd entered her home;
and Dylan sought her would-be killer.
    Having arrived at even this half-formed understanding of the
nature of the looming confrontation, he realized that pressing
onward was an act of reckless valor, if not evidence of insanity,
but yet he was not able to retreat a single step. He was
constrained to proceed by the same unknown and overmastering power
that had forced him to turn back from the promise of New Mexico and
to drive westward at speeds in excess of a hundred miles per
hour.
    The hallway led to a modest front foyer, where a blown-glass
lamp under a rose silk shade stood on a small table with a delicate
carved fretwork skirt. This was the sole source of light beyond the
kitchen, and it barely illuminated the rising staircase as far as
the landing.
    When Dylan put one hand on the newel post at the bottom of the
stairs, he experienced again the predator's psychic spoor, the same
that he had found upon the beer can, as clear to him as a
fugitive's unique scent is unmistakable to a bloodhound. The
character of these traces was different from the quality of those
Marjorie had left on the toad pin and the car door, for in these he
sensed a malignancy, as though they had been laid down by a spirit
that passed this way on cloven hooves.
    He took his hand off the newel cap and stared for a moment at
the polished curve of darkly stained poplar, searching for evidence
of any residue of either a physical or a supernatural nature, but
finding none. His fingerprints and palm print overlaid those of the
beer drinker, and though not one loop or arch or whorl could be
seen by the unassisted eye, police-lab technicians would later be
able to make visible – with fixative chemicals, powder, and
oblique light – irrefutable proof that he'd once been
here.
    The certainty that fingerprints exist – all but invisible
and yet sufficiently recoverable to convict a man of any crime from
theft to murder – provided an analogy that allowed Dylan more
easily to believe that with their very touch, people might leave
behind something more peculiar but every bit as real as natural
oils impressed with the patterns of skin ridges.
    The rose-decorated runner up the center of the stairs appeared
to be as worn as the similar carpet in the lower hall. The pattern
here looked bolder, featuring fewer flowers and more brambles, as
though to signify that station by station in this journey, Dylan's
task was growing thornier.
    Ascending although reason could present no argument to ascend,
he slid his right hand along the banister. Lingering traces of the
malevolent entity flared against his palm and sparked against his
fingertips, but fireflies no longer swarmed through his head. The
internal electrical sizzle had been silenced as completely as his
convulsing tongue had been stilled by the time that he'd touched
the beer can in the kitchen. He had adjusted to this uncanny
experience, and neither his mind nor his body any longer offered
resistance to these currents of supernatural sensation.
    * * *
    Even unknown intruders and a perception of impending violence
could not long stifle the white-haired woman's natural amiableness,
which had no doubt been enhanced with motivational steroids during
training provided by the fast-food franchise for which she worked.
Worry twitched into a fragile smile, and she offered one hand to