Once More With Footnotes

"Impressed by your technique, old son," I said. I took a look around the h all. Most people were milling around the punch now, the rascals. Wayne grabbed my arm. "Don't go away!"
     
                  "I was just going out for some fresh air."
     
                  "Don't ..." He pulled himself together. "Don't go. Hang around. Please. "
     
                  " What's up with you?"
     
                  "Please, John! He keeps looking at me in a funny way!" He looked really frightened. I gave in. "Okay. But point him out next time."
     
                  I let him get on with things while I tried to neaten up the towering mess of plugs and adapters that was Wayne's usual contributio n to electrical safety. If you've got the kind of gear we've got — okay, had — you can spend hours working on it. I mean, do you know how many different kinds of connectors ... all right.
     
                  In the middle of the next number Wayne hauled me back to the decks.
     
                  "There! See him? Right in the middle!"
     
                  Well, there wasn't. There were a couple of girls dancing with each other, and everyone else were just couples who were trying to pretend the '70s hadn't happened. Any rhinestone cowboys in that lot would have stood out like a strawberry in an Irish stew. I could see that some tact and diplomacy were called for at this point.
     
                  "Wayne," I said, "I reckon you're several coupons short of a toaster."
     
                  "You can't see him, can you?"
     
                  Well, no. But ...
     
                  ... since he ment ioned it ...
     
                  ... I could see the space.
     
                  There was this patch of floor around the middle of the hall which everyone was keeping clear of. Except that they weren't avoiding it, you
     
                  see, they just didn't happen to be moving into it. It was
     
                  sort of a ccidentally there. And it stayed there. It moved around a bit, but it never disappeared.
     
                  All right, I know a patch of floor can't move around. Just take my word for it, this one did.
     
                  The record was ending but Wayne was still in control enough to have a nother one spinning. He faded it up, a bit of an oldie that they'd all know.
     
                  "Is it still there?" he said, stating down at the deck.
     
                  "It's a bit closer," I said. "Perhaps it's after a spot prize."
     
                  ... I wanna live forever ...
     
                  "That's right, be a gr eat help."
     
                  ... people will see me and cry ...
     
                  There were quite a few more people down there now, but the empty patch was still moving around, all right, was being avoided, among the dancers.
     
                  I went and stood in it.
     
                  It was cold. It said: GOOD EVENIN G.
     
                  The voice came from all around me, and everything seemed to slow down. The dancers were just statues in a kind of black fog, the music a low rumble.
     
                  "Where are you?"
     
                  BEHIND YOU.
     
                  Now, at a time like this the impulse is to turn around, but you'd b e amazed at how good I was at resisting it.
     
                  "You've been frightening my friend," I said. I DID NOT INTEND TO.
     
                  "Push off."
     
                  THAT DOESN'T WORK, I AM AFRAID.
     
                  I did turn around then. He was about seven feet tall in his, yes, his platform soles. And, yes , he wore flares, but somehow you'd expect that. Wayne had said they were black but that wasn't true. They weren't any colour at all, they were simply clothes-shaped holes into Somewhere Else. Black would have looked blinding white by comparison. He did l o ok a bit like John Travolta from the waist down, but only if you buried John Travolta for about three months.
     
                  It really was a skull mask. You could see the string.
     
                  "Come here often, do you?"
     
                  I AM ALWAYS