Strangers

glass.
        He had wondered if the light had been but a dream or hallucination. In a way, he almost wished it had been only that. But the frost-moon was still there, proof that what he had seen was real, not a delusion.
        Hesitantly, he touched the glass. He felt nothing unusual. Just the bitter cold of winter pressing against the other side of the pane.
        With a start, he realized that he felt the swollen rings in his palms. He turned his hands over and watched as the stigmata faded.
        He returned to bed. For a long while he sat with his back against the headboard, with his eyes open and the light on, waiting for the courage to lie down in darkness.
        
        Elko County, Nevada.
        Ernie stood by the tub in the bathroom, trying to recall precisely what he had thought and felt in the early hours of Saturday, December 14, when he had been driven by some strange impulse to open the window and had suffered that frightening hallucination. The writer, Dominick Corvaisis, stood by the sink, and Faye watched from the doorway.
        Reflections of the ceiling light and the light above the mirror imparted a warmth to the ceramic-tile floor, glimmered in the chrome faucets and shower rod, gave a bright flat sheen to the plastic shower curtain, and gradually illuminated the memories that Ernie sought.
        "Light. I came in here for the light. My fear of the dark was at a peak then, and I was trying to hide it from Faye. Couldn't sleep, so I slipped out of bed, came here, closed the door, and just… just sort of reveled in the light." He told how his gaze was drawn to the window above the tub and how he was overcome by an irrational and urgent need to escape. "It's hard to explain. But suddenly crazy thoughts… whirled into my head. For some reason, I panicked. I thought, This is my one chance to escape, so I'd better take it, go through that window, head up into the hills… get to a ranch, get help."
        "Help for what?" Corvaisis asked. "Why did you need help? Why did you feel you needed to escape from your own home?"
        Ernie frowned. "Don't have the foggiest notion. He remembered the way he had felt that night - the eeriness, urgency strangely mixed with dreaminess. He pointed to the window. "I actually slid back the bolt. Opened it. Might've crawled out, too, except I saw someone outside. On the roof of the utility room."
        "Who?" Corvaisis asked.
        "Sounds silly. It was a guy in motorcycle gear. White crash helmet. Dark visor over his face. Black gloves. In fact, he reached one hand through the window, as if making a grab for me, and I stepped backward, fell over the edge of the tub.
        "That's when I came running," Faye said.
        "I got off the floor," Ernie said, "went back to the window, looked out on the roof. No one there. It'd- been just… hallucination."
        Faye said, "In extreme cases of phobia, when the sufferer is in almost constant anxiety, hallucinations sometimes occur."
        The writer stared at the opaque window above the tub, as if hoping to find some vital secret revealed in the uneven milky texture of the glass. At last he said, "It wasn't exactly a hallucination. I have a hunch that what you saw, Ernie, was a… well, call it a memory-flash. From the summer before last. From the lost days. For a moment, back on December fourteenth, your repressed memories surged toward the surface. You had a flashback to a time when you really were a prisoner in your own home, when you really did try to escape."
        "And I was stopped by that guy on the roof of the utility room? But what was he doing there in a motorcycle helmet?
        Strange, isn't it'?"
        Dom said, "A man in a decontamination suit, sent to deal with a spill of chemicals or biological toxins, would wear an airtight helmet."
        "Decontamination," Ernie said. "But if they were actually here in suits like that, then there must've really been a spill."
        "Maybe," Dom said. "We still don't know enough to decide."
        Faye said, "But listen, if we all went through this experience, like you think we did, then how come only you and Ernie and that Mr. Lomack are suffering repercussions? How come I'm not having bad dreams and psychological problems?"
        The writer's gaze drifted back to the window. "I don't know. But those are some of the questions we've got to answer if we've any hope of relieving the subconscious anxiety that