Dark Rivers of the Heart

into the restaurant, overturn the tables, knock the food and the mugs of beer out of those people's hands, shout at them and shake them until their illusions of safety and normalcy were shattered into as many pieces as his own had been. He was so bitter that he might have done it-would have done it-if he hadn't had a wife and two daughters to think about, if he had been facing his frightening new life alone. It wasn't even their happiness that he envied; it was their blessed ignorance that he longed to regain for himself, though he knew that no knowledge could ever be unlearned.
        He lifted the handset from the pay phone and deposited coins. For a blood-freezing moment, he listened to the dial tone, unable to remember the number that had been on the paper in the redhead's hand.
        Then it came to him, and he punched the buttons on the keypad, his hand shaking so badly that he half expected to discover that he had not entered the number correctly.
        On the third ring, a man answered with a simple, "Hello?"
        "I need help," Harris said, and realized the-iat he hadn't even identified himself. "I'm sorry. "I'm… my name is… Descoteaux.
        Harris Descoteaux. One of your people, whoever you are, she said to call this number, that you could help me, that you were ready to help."
        After a hesitation, the man at the other end of the line said, "If you had this number, and if you got it legitimately, then you must be aware there's a certain protocol."
        "Protocol?"
        There was no response.
        For a moment, Harris panicked that the man was going to hang up and walk away from that phone and be forever thereafter unreachable.
        He couldn't understand what was expected of him-until he remembered the three passwords that had been printed on the piece of paper below the telephone number. The redhead had told him that he must memorize those too. He said, "Pheasants and dragons."
        At the security keypad, in the short hallway at the back of the barn, hat disarmed the alarm. The Dresmunds had been instructed not to alter the codes, in order to make access easy for the owner if he ever returned when they were gone. 'VNhcn luminous readout changed from Spencer punched in the last digit, the ARMED AND SECURE to the less bright RFADY TO Aim.
        He had brought a flashlight from the pickup. He directed the beam along the left-hand wall. "Half bath, just a toilet and sink," he told Ellie.
        Beyond the first door, a second: "That's a small storage room."
        At the end of the hall, the light found a third door. "He had a gallery that way, open only to the wealthiest collectors. And from the gallery, there's a staircase up to what used to be his studio on the second floor." He swung the beam to the right side of the corridor, where only one door waited. It was ajar.
        "That used to be the file room."
        He could have switched on the overhead fluorescent panels.
        Sixteen years ago, however, he had entered in gloom, guided only by the radiance of the green letters on the security-system readout.
        Intuitively, he knew that his best hope of remembering what he had repressed for so long was to re-create the circumstances of that night insofar as he was able. The barn had been air-conditioned then, and now the heat was turned low, so the February chill in the air was nearly right. The harsh glare of overhead fluorescent bulbs would too drastically alter the mood. If he were striving for a roughly authentic re-creation, even a flashlight was too reassuring, but he didn't have the nerve to proceed in the same depth of darkness into which he had gone when he was fourteen.
        Rocky whined and scratched at the back door, which Ellie had closed behind them. He was shivering and miserable.
        For the most part and for reasons that Spencer would never be able to determine, Rocky's argument with darkness was limited to that in the outside world. He usually functioned well enough indoors, in the dark, although sometimes he required a night-light to banish an especially dad case of the willies.
        "Poor thing," Ellie said.
        The flashlight was brighter than any night-light. Rocky should have been sufficiently comforted by it. Instead, he quaked so hard that it seemed as if his ribs ought to make xylophone music against one another.
        "It's okay, pal," Spencer told the dog. "What you sense is something in the