Strangers

He removed the pistol from his nightstand, locked it in a drawer of his office desk, and buried the desk key under a package of ice cream in the freezer. Better to be unprepared for a burglar than to risk firing the gun while sound asleep. Next, from a coil of rope in the garage, he cut a ten-foot length. After brushing his teeth and undressing, he knotted one end of the line securely around his right wrist in such a way that he could escape only by untying four difficult knots, He secured the other end of the rope to one post of the headboard, taking care to fasten it tightly. With one foot of the line's length used for the knots, he was left with nine feet of play, enough to assure his comfort while keeping him tethered within a safe distance of the bed.
        In previous somnambulistic episodes, he had performed complex tasks that had required some concentration, though nothing quite so tedious as the unraveling of well-made knots, which were often a challenge to him when he was awake. In his sleep, he would surely lack the coordination and mental focus to free himself and the effort to do so would be frustrating enough to wake him.
        Being thus hampered involved some danger. If a fire broke out in the night or if the house were damaged in an earthquake, he might be so delayed by the need to untie himself that he would perish in the smoke or beneath a collapsing wall. He had to risk it.
        When he turned out the bedside light and slipped under the blanket, trailing the rope from one arm, the glowing red numerals of the digital clock read twelve-fifty-eight. Staring at the dark ceiling, wondering what in the name of God he had become involved in out there on the road the summer before last, he waited for sleep to creep upon him.
        On the nightstand, the telephone was silent. If his number had not been unlisted, he might have received, at that moment, a long-distance call from a lonely and frightened young woman in Boston, a call that would have radically changed the course of the next few weeks and might have saved lives.
        
        Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
        In the guest room of her only daughter's house, where a nightlight burned in consideration of Ernie's phobia, Faye Block listened to her husband as, asleep and dreaming, he mumbled into his pillow. A few minutes ago, she had been awakened when he had let out a soft cry and had thrashed for a moment in the sheets. Now she raised herself on one elbow, cocked her head, and listened intently, trying to decipher his muffled speech. He was saying the same thing again and again into the pillow. The almost panicky urgency in his voice made Faye nervous. She leaned closer to him, straining to understand.
        Suddenly he shifted his head just enough to turn his mouth from the pillow, and his words became clear though no less mysterious than when they had been muffled: "The moon, the moon, the moon, the moon.
        
        Las Vegas, Nevada.
        Jorja took Marcie into her own bed that night, because it did not seem like a good idea to leave the girl alone after the disturbing events of the day. She did not get much rest because all night Marcie seemed to phase in and out of nightmares, frequently kicking at the sheets, squirming vigorously as if to free herself from restraining hands, and talking in her sleep about doctors and needles. Jorja wondered how long this had been going on. Their bedrooms were separated by back-to-back closets insulated by hanging clothes, and the child's sleep-talk was very soft, so it was possible that she had passed a lot of nights in unconscious terror without Jorja being aware of it. Her voice raised gooseflesh on Jorja's arms.
        In the morning, she would take Marcie to the doctor. Given her unexplained dread of all physicians, the girl might cause a hell of a scene. But as much as Marcie feared going to a doctor, Jorja feared not going. If it had not been so hard to locate the right physician on Christmas Day, Jorja would have gone for help already. She was scared.
        Following Marcie's outburst, when her grandfather's teasing about taking her to a hospital had driven her away from the table in a mad panic, the day had gone downhill. The girl was so overcome by fear that she peed her pants, and for ten or fifteen hideously embarrassing and terrifying minutes, she resisted all Jorja's efforts to get her cleaned up. She screamed, scratched, and kicked. The tantrum passed at last,