Midnight

not an insight strictly—or even primarily—intellectual in nature. It wasn't just instinctive understanding, either. On some level more profound than either intellect or instinct, he knew that he could remake himself more thoroughly than even Shaddack had remade him.
    He lowered his hand from the tilted computer screen to the data-processing unit in the console between the seats. As easily as he had penetrated the glass, he let his hand slide through the keyboard and cover plate, into the guts of the machine.
    He was like a ghost, able to pass through walls, ectoplasmic.
    A coldness crept up his arm.
    The data on the screen were replaced by cryptic patterns of light.
    He leaned back in his seat.
    The coldness had reached his shoulder. It flowed into his neck.
    He sighed.
    He felt something happening to his eyes. He wasn't sure what. He could have looked at the rearview mirror. He didn't care. He decided to close his eyes and let them become whatever, was necessary as part of this second and more complete conversion.
    This altered state was infinitely more appealing than that of the regressive. Irresistible.
    The coldness was in his face now. His mouth was numb.
    Something also was happening inside his head. He was becoming as aware of the inner geography of his brain circuits and synapses as he was of the exterior world. His body was not as much a part of him as it had once been; he sensed less through it, as if his nerves had been mostly abraded away; he could not tell if it was warm or chilly in the car unless he concentrated on accumulating that data. His body was just a machine after all, and a rack for sensors, designed to protect and serve the inner him, the calculating mind.
    The coldness was inside his skull.
    It felt like scores, then hundreds, then thousands of ice-cold spiders scurrying over the surface of his brain, burrowing into it.
    Suddenly he remembered that Dorothy had found Oz to be a living nightmare and ultimately had wanted desperately to find her way back to Kansas. Alice, too, had found madness and terror down the rabbit hole, beyond the looking-glass… .
    A million cold spiders.
    inside his skull.
    A billion.
    Cold, cold.
    Scurrying.

33
    Still circling through Moonlight Cove, seeking Shaddack, Loman saw two regressives sprint across the street.
    He was on Paddock Lane, at the southern end of town, where the Properties were big enough for people to keep horses. Ranch houses lay on both sides, with small private stables beside or behind them. The homes set back from the street, behind splitrail or white ranch fencing, beyond deep and lushly landscaped lawns.
    The pair of regressives erupted from a dense row of mature three-foot-high azaleas that were still bushy but flowerless this late in the season. They streaked on all fours across the roadway, leaped a ditch, and crashed through a hedgerow, vanishing behind it.
    Although immense pines were lined up along both sides of Paddock Lane, adding their shadows to the already darkish day, Loman was sure of what he had seen. They had been modeled after dream creatures rather than any single animal of the real world: part wolf, perhaps, part cat, part reptile. They were swift and looked powerful. One of them had turned its head toward him, and in the shadows its eyes had glowed as pink-red as those of a rat.
    He slowed but did not stop. He no longer cared about identifying and apprehending regressives. For one thing, he'd already identified them to his satisfaction: all of the converted. He knew that stopping them could be accomplished only by stopping Shaddack. He was after much bigger game.
    However, he was unnerved to see them brazenly on the prowl in daylight, at two-thirty in the afternoon. Heretofore, they had been secretive creatures of the night, hiding the shame of their regression by seeking their altered states only well after sunset. If they were prepared to venture forth before nightfall, the Moonhawk Project was disintegrating into chaos even faster than he had expected. Moonlight Cove was not merely teetering on the brink of hell but had already tipped over the edge and into the pit.

34
    They were in Harry's third-floor bedroom again, where they passed the last hour and a half, brainstorming and urgently discussing their options. No lamps were on. Watery afternoon light washed the room, contributing to the somber mood.
    "So we're agreed there are two ways we might send a message out of town," Sam said.
    "But in either case," Tessa