Soft come the dragons

tolling—in rereverse; somewhere a dirge is sung backwards.
    And he would sing the oration; he would make with panegyrics . . .
     
    "For the Moon never beams without bringing me dreams
      Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
    And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
      Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
    And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
    Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
      In her sepulcher there by the sea—
      In her tomb by . . ."
     
    He was three miles past Steepleton. And there were no guards . . .
    He pulled the car off the road and sat thinking for a time. Was his mind leaving him? There had been guards and a roadblock back there, had there not? Which was real, the police or the graveyard world? The police, certainly. He was no E.A. Poe who slept with his dead mistress. Besides, his mistress was not dead. He turned to look at her. Her face had become wrinkled as if she were in pain. He called her name. For a brief second, he thought she answered. But her lips had not moved. He turned back and faced front. It was ten miles to Kingsmir. What would happen there? Would the graveyard delusion come back? Would there be further oddities? He suddenly remembered the disappearance of the helicopter and shuddered. Pulling back onto the road . . .
     
    . . . He woke and kissed her on the neck.
    Her black-black hair spilled down her bare shoulders, over her bare breasts, curled under her pink ears . . .
    She kissed him back . . .
    And then she was lying in a limestone casket . . . Then warm and alive . . . then cold and rotting . . . A helicopter fluttered again . . . A helicopter blinked out of existence in a world where men had suddenly never learned to fly . . . Then it was back again, chasing after quarry that had gone long ago when the world had been different for a few moments . . .
    Tombstones. . .
    Blink!
    A warm bed, warm bodies . . .
    Blink!
    Blink! Blink!
     
    He woke up two miles closer to Kingsmir. And he knew! He pulled the Champion onto the berm and crawled between the bucket seats to where she lay. He ran his fingers over her face, trailed them under her chin, felt the blood pulsing in her neck. Laurie was changing reality! Somehow, comatose as she was, the psychic powers were siphoning themselves off instead of exploding violently. They were under control! And they were not merely powers of teleportation and mind reading; they were powers that could change the basic fiber of the universe. He had thought he imagined her answering him a while back; now he knew she had answered. There had been no need of lips.
    "Laurie, can you hear me?"
    There was the distant answer that he had to strain to hear.
    "Laurie, you heard the helicopter, sensed the guards and the roadblock. And you changed reality for a while until the car—moving independent of both worlds—had passed the trouble spot. Isn't that what you did, Laurie?"
    A distant yes.
    "Listen, Laurie. The graveyard is all wrong. Poetic as hell, but wrong. The other one. The one where we are in bed, Laurie." He stroked her chin. He kissed her lips and urged her to concentrate. He heard the sirens on the road and talked faster . . .
    He talked of a world where there had never been hallucino-children. He spoke of a world where all were normal . . .
     
    He woke before she did and lay listening to the rasping of her breath: seafoam whispering over jagged rocks. It would get worse before she woke.
    The view from the window was pleasant. It had been snowing since suppertime. Beyond the hoary willow tree lay the highway, a black slash in the calcimined wonderland. They were plowing the road, for the heating coils had broken down again. Somehow, he felt that he had seen it all before. Everything was like an echo being relived.
     
    "Glittering dreams fluttering flaked
    float softly downward
    while snow priests prepare
    for fairy cotillions . . ."
     
    He was not sure whether that was senseless or not. And even the poem seemed naggling familiar. He repeated it softly.
    "Frank?" she said.
    "I know."
    "Soon."
    "I'll pull the car out of the garage."
    "The snow—"
    "They seem to have it under control," he said, feeling as if he had said the same thing once before.
    "I love you," she said as he went through the doorway into the shadow-filled living room. That always sent shivers through him—that face, that voice, those words. The shiver continued, however, rippling over his spine, quaking across his forehead, spreading to nearly