Strangers

that he could swiftly refute, for another thrust that he could parry with his unfailing Jesuitical aplomb.
        Brendan sighed. It was going to be a long evening.
        
        Elko County, Nevada.
        After hurrying out of the Tranquility Grille in fear and confusion, into the last fading scarlet and purple light of dusk, Dom Corvaisis went directly to the motel office. There, he walked into the middle of a scene that initially appeared to be a domestic quarrel, though he quickly saw that it was something stranger than that.
        A squarely built man in tan slacks and a brown sweater stood in the center of the room, this side of the counter. He was only two inches taller than Dom, but in other dimensions he was considerably larger. He seemed to have been hewn from massive slabs of oak. The gray of his brush-cut hair, the weathered lines of his face, indicated he was in his fifties, although his bull-strong body had a younger presence and power.
        The big man was shaking, as if enraged. A woman stood beside him, staring up at him with an odd and urgent expression. She was a blond with vivid blue eyes, younger than him, though it was difficult to judge her age. The man's pale face was shiny with sweat. As Dom stepped across the threshold, he realized that his flash impression was wrong: This guy was not enraged but terrified.
        "Relax," the woman said. "Try to control your breathing."
        The big man was gasping. He stood with his thick neck bent, head lowered, shoulders hunched, staring at the floor, inhalation following exhalation in an arhythmic pattern that betrayed a growing panic.
        "Take deep slow breaths," the woman said. "Remember what Dr. Fontelaine taught you. When you're calm, we'll go outside for a walk."
        "No!" the big man said, shaking his head violently.
        "Yes, we will," the woman said, putting a reassuring hand on his arm. "We'll go outside for a walk, Ernie, and you'll see that this darkness is no different from the darkness in Milwaukee."
        Ernie. The name chilled Dom and immediately brought to mind those four posters of the moon on which names had been scrawled in Zebediah Lomack's living room, in Reno.
        The woman glanced at Dom, and he said, " I need a room."
        "We're full," she said.
        "The vacancy sign is lit."
        "Okay," she said. "Okay, but not now. Please. Not now. Go over to the diner or something. Come back in half an hour. Please."
        Until that exchange, Ernie had seemed unaware of Dom's intrusion. Now, he looked up from the floor, and a moan of fear and despair escaped him. "The door. Close it before the darkness comes in!"
        "No, no, no," the woman told him, her voice firm yet full of compassion. "It's not coming in. Darkness can't hurt you, Ernie."
        "It's coming in," he insisted miserably.
        Dom realized that the room was unnaturally bright. Table lamps, a floor lamp, a desk lamp, and the ceiling fixtures blazed.
        The woman turned to Dom again. "For God's sake, close the door."
        He stepped in, rather than out, and shut the door behind him.
        "I meant, close it as you leave," the woman said pointedly.
        The expression on Ernie's face was part terror, part embarrassment. His eyes shifted from Dom to the window. "It's right there at the glass. All the darkness… pressing, pressing." He looked sheepishly at Dom, then lowered his head again, shut his eyes tight.
        Dom stood transfixed. Ernie's irrational fear was horribly like the terror which drove Dom to walk in his sleep and to hide in closets.
        Using anger to repress her tears, the woman turned to Dom. "Why won't you go? He's nyctophobic. He's afraid of the dark sometimes, and when he has one of these attacks, we have to work it out together."
        Dom remembered the other names scrawled on the posters in Lomack's house - Ginger, Faye - and he chose one by instinct. "It's all right, Faye. I think I understand a little of what you're going through."
        She blinked in surprise when he used her name. "Do I know you?"
        "Do you? I'm Dominick Corvaisis."
        "Means nothing to me," she said, staying with the big man as he turned and, eyes still closed, shuffled toward the back of the office.
        Ernie moved blindly toward the gate in the counter.,Got to get upstairs, where I can pull the drapes, keep the dark out."
        Faye said, "No, Ernie,