Fear Nothing

folded papers inside were dry.
        I examined these documents in the beam of the penlight. I recognized my father's careful printing on the carbon copy of the standard application, on which he had attested to the local police that he had no criminal record or history of mental illness that would be grounds to deny him the right to own this firearm. Also included was a carbon copy of the original invoice for the weapon, indicating that it was a 9mm Glock 17 and that my father had purchased it with a check.
        The date on the invoice gave me a chill: January 18, two years ago. My father had bought the Glock just three days after my mother had been killed in the car crash on Highway 1. As though he thought he needed protection.
        

    * * *
        
        In the study across the hallway from the bedroom, my compact cellular phone was recharging. I unplugged it and clipped it to my belt, at my hip.
        Orson was not in the study.
        Earlier, Sasha had stopped by the house to feed him. Maybe she had taken him with her when she'd gone. If Orson had been as somber as he'd been when I'd left for the hospital-and especially if he had settled into an even blacker mood-Sasha might not have been able to leave the poor beast here alone, because as much compassion as blood flows through her veins.
        Even if Orson had gone with Sasha, who had transferred the 9mm Glock from my father's room to my bed? Not Sasha. She wouldn't have known the gun existed, and she wouldn't have prowled through my dad's belongings.
        The desk phone was connected to an answering machine. Next to the blinking message light, the counter window showed two calls.
        According to the machine's automatic time-and-date voice, the first call had come in only half an hour ago. It lasted nearly two minutes, although the caller spoke not a word.
        Initially, he drew slow deep breaths and let them out almost as slowly, as though he possessed the magical power to inhale the myriad scents of my rooms even across a telephone line, and thereby discover if I was home or out. After a while, he began to hum as though he had forgotten that he was being recorded and was merely humming to himself in the manner of a daydreamer lost in thought, humming a tune that seemed to be improvised, with no coherent melody, spiraling and low, eerie and repetitive, like the song a madman might hear when he believes that angels of destruction, in choirs, are singing to him.
        I was sure he was a stranger. I believed that I would have been able to recognize the voice of a friend even from nothing more than the humming. I was also sure that he had not reached a wrong number; somehow he was involved with the events following MY father's death.
        By the time the first caller disconnected, I discovered that I had tightened my hands into fists. I was holding useless air in my lungs. I exhaled a hot dry gust, inhaled a cool sweet draft, but could not yet unclench my hands.
        The second call, which had come in only minutes before I had returned home, was from Angela Ferryman, the nurse who had been at my father's bedside. She didn't identify herself, but I recognized her thin yet musical voice: Through her message, it quickened like an increasingly restless bird hopping from picket point to picket point along a fence.
        “Chris, I'd like to talk to you. Have to talk. As soon as it's convenient. Tonight. If you can, tonight. I'm in the car, on my way home now. You know where I live. Come see me. Don't call. I don't trust phones. Don't even like making this call. But I've got to see you. Come to the back door. No matter how late you get this, come anyway. I won't be asleep. Can't sleep.”
        I put a new message tape on the machine. I hid the original cassette under the crumpled sheets of writing paper at the bottom of the wastebasket beside my desk.
        These two brief tape recordings wouldn't convince a cop or a judge of anything. Nevertheless, they were the only scraps of evidence I possessed to indicate that something extraordinary was happening to me-something even more extraordinary than my birth into this tiny sunless caste. More extraordinary than surviving twenty-eight years unscathed by xeroderma pigmentosum.
        

    * * *
        
        I had been home less than ten minutes. Nevertheless, I was lingering too long.
        As I searched for Orson, I more than half expected to hear a door