Strange Highways

borderline cases, people deserving of Hell but with a chance of salvation, and by hurrying them along, I would be denying them the opportunity to mend their ways and remake their lives. Their damnation would be partly my responsibility. Then I too would be lost ... and the darkness would rise up the stairs and come into the house and take me when it wished.
     Below, that sludge-thick distillation of a billion moonless nights whispered to me, whispered.
     I stepped back and closed the door.
     It did not vanish.
     Dalcoe, I thought desperately, why have you been such a bastard? Why have you made me hate you?
     Darkness dwells within even the best of us. In the worst of us, darkness not only dwells but reigns.
     I am a good man. A hard worker. A loving and faithful husband. A stern but doting father. A good man.
     Yet I have human failings - not the least of which is a taste for vengeance. Part of the price that I have paid is the death of my innocence in Vietnam. There, I learned that great evil exists in the world, not in the abstract but in the flesh, and when evil men tortured me, I was contaminated by the contact. I developed a thirst for vengeance.
     I tell myself that I dare not succumb to the easy solutions offered by the cellar. Where would it stop? Someday, after sending a score of men and women into the lightless chamber below, I would be so thoroughly corrupted that it would be easy to use the cellar for what had previously seemed unthinkable. For instance, what if Carmen and I had an argument? Would I devolve to the point where I could ask her to explore those lower regions with me? What if my children displeased me as, God knows, children frequently do? Where would I draw the line? And would the line be constantly redrawn?
     I am a good man.
     Although occasionally providing darkness with a habitat, I have never provided it with a kingdom.
     I am a good man.
     But the temptation is great.
     I have begun to prepare a list of people who have, at one time or another, made my life difficult. I don't intend to do anything about them, of course. The list is merely a game. I will make it and then tear it to pieces and flush the pieces down the toilet.
     I am a good man.
     This list means nothing.
     The cellar door will stay closed forever.
     I will not open it again.
     I swear by all that's holy.
     I am a good man.
     The list is longer than I had expected.

OLLIE'S HANDS

THE JULY NIGHT WAS HOT. THE AIR AGAINST OLLIE'S PALMS MADE HIM aware of the discomfort of the city's sweltering residents: millions of people wishing for winter.
     Even in the cruelest weather, however, even on a bitterly cold night filled with dry January wind, Ollie's hands would have been soft, moist, warm - and sensitive. His thin fingers were tapered in an extraordinary manner. When he gripped anything, his fingers seemed to fuse with the surface of the object. When he let it go, the release was like a sigh.
     Every night, regardless of the season, Ollie visited the unlighted alleyway behind Staznik's Restaurant, where he searched for the accidentally discarded silverware in the three large overflowing garbage bins. Because Staznik himself believed in quality, and because his prices were high, the tableware was expensive enough to make Ollie's undignified rooting worthwhile. Every two weeks, he managed to sense out enough pieces to constitute a matched set, which he sold to one of several used-furniture stores in exchange for wine money.
     Recovered tableware was only one source of his funds. In his own way, Ollie was a clever man.
     On that Tuesday night early in July, his cleverness was tested to its limits. When he made his nightly trip into the alley to sense out the knives, forks, and spoons, he found instead the unconscious girl.
     She was lying against the last Dumpster, face toward the brick wall, eyes closed, hands drawn across her small breasts as if she were a sleeping child. Her cheap, tight, short dress revealed that she was no child; her pale flesh glimmered like a soft flame viewed through smoked glass. Otherwise, Ollie could not see much of her.
     "Miss?" he asked, leaning toward her.
     She didn't respond. She didn't move.
     He knelt beside her, shook her, but was unable to wake her. When he rolled her