Strangers

have some idea. Haven't you thought about it a lot?"
        "Surprisingly, I haven't," Dom said. He stared out to sea for a long moment, watching a dozen sailboats and a large yacht as they moved majestically along the coast. "I just now realized how amazingly little I've thought about it. Strange I'm usually too self-analytical for my own good, but in this case I've never probed very deeply."
        "Ah ha!" Parker exclaimed. "I knew I was on the right trail! The changes you went through then are somehow related to the problems you're having now. So go on. So you told the people at Mountainview that you didn't want their job any more?"
        "They weren't happy."
        "And you took a tiny apartment in town."
        "One room, plus kitchen and bath. Not much of a place. Nice view of the mountains, though."
        "Decided to live on your savings while you wrote a novel?"
        "There wasn't a lot in the bank, but I'd always been frugal."
        "Impulsive behavior. Risky. And not a damn bit like you," Parker said. "So why did you do it? What changed you?"
        "I guess it was building for a long time. By the time I got to Mountainview, my dissatisfaction was so great that I had to change."
        Parker leaned back in his chair. "No good, my friend. There must be more to it than that. Listen, by your own admission, you were as happy as a pig in shit when you left Portland with your U-Haul. You had a job with a livable salary, guaranteed tenure, in a place where no one was ever going to demand too much of you. All you had to do was settle down in Mountainview and disappear. But by the time you got there, you couldn't wait to throw it all over, move into a garret, and risk eventual starvation, all for your art. What the hell happened to you during that long drive to Utah? Something must've given you a real jolt, something big enough to knock you out of your complacency."
        "Nope. It was an uneventful trip."
        "Not inside your head, it wasn't."
        Dominick shrugged. "As far as I remember, I just relaxed, enjoyed the drive, took my time, looked at the scenery…"
        "Amigo!" Parker roared, startling their waiter, who was passing by. "Uno margarita! And another cerveza for my friend."
        "No, no," Dom said. "- I"
        "You haven't finished that beer," Parker said. "I know, I know. But you are going to finish it and drink another, and gradually you're going to loosen up, and we're going to get to the bottom of this sleepwalking. I'm sure it's related to the changes you underwent the summer before last. You know why I'm so sure? I'll tell you why I'm so sure. Nobody under goes two personality crises in two years for utterly unrelated reasons. The two have to be tied together somehow."
        Dom grimaced. "I wouldn't exactly call this a personality crisis."
        "Oh, wouldn't you?" Leaning forward, lowering his shaggy head, putting all the force of his powerful personality behind the question, Parker said, "Wouldn't you really call it a crisis, my friend?"
        Dom sighed. "Well… yeah. I guess maybe I would. A crisis."
        

    ***
        
        They left Las Brisas late that afternoon, without arriving at any answers. That night, when he went to bed, he was filled with dread, wondering where he would find himself in the morning.
        And in the morning, he virtually exploded out of sleep with a shrill scream and found himself in total, claustrophobic darkness. Something had hold of him, something cold and clammy and strange and alive. He struck out blindly, flailed and clawed, twisted and kicked, freed himself, scrambled away in panic, through the cloying blackness, on his hands and knees, until he collided with a wall. The lightless room reverberated with thunderous pounding and shouting, an unnerving cacophony, the source of which he could not identify. He scrambled along the baseboard until he came to a junction of walls, where he put his back into the corner and faced out upon the lightless chamber, certain that the clammy creature would leap on him from the gloom.
        What was in the room with him?
        The noise grew louder: shouting, hammering, a crash followed by a clatter-rattle of wood, more shouting, and another crash.
        Still groggy from sleep, his senses distorted by hysteria and excess adrenaline, Dom was convinced that the thing from which he had been hiding had at last come for him. He had tried to fool it by