Some weeks later there was a frightening sequel. I was lying in bed at my grandmother's house to San Antonio, reading Time magazine. It was late at night and I was about to go to seep. In those days I used to stay with my grandmother when I went to San Antonio because my brother, then a teenager, had effectively taken over my old room at home.

Lying in that bed wide awake I had an experience so strange and frightening that I remember it to this day with total clarity. I was suddenly transported back in time and back to Austin a few weeks earlier. I leaped into my car and backed out of the apartment house parking lot. It was night and the windows of the car were closed. I couldn't see out at all. In fact, I could see nothing but the reflection of the inside of the car. I was so blind that I was forced to stop. Something approached the tar. I was frightened to see, peering in the window with its face pressed almost to the glass, what seemed almost to be a demon with a narrow face and dark, slanted eyes. It spoke to me its a high, squeaky voice, and I remember saying that we couldn't leave the car out in the middle of the street.

Then I found myself in an agonizing struggle. I was at once in the car, fighting to keep driving away but unable to overcome an urge to get out and go back into the apartment, while simultaneously fighting, in the real world, an overwhelming urge to -get out of bed and rush outside. I lay on the bed, flopping like a fish. Then it ended. Contrary to my impression, I did not move an inch. The magazine was still propped up in my lap. I could see my grandmother in her bed in the room across the hall, reading quietly. This terrible nightmare had obviously caused not a stir.

Long into the night I lay with the light on. Toward dawn I slept. I believe now that this was a nightmare memory of an attempt I made to escape whatever unearthly thing happened to use in my apartment in Austin. I was reliving an experience which at the time it happened was so unspeakably terrifying that I still don't recall the actual event, only the dream.

There then began a pattern of running that has persisted in my life until the present. A few weeks later I suddenly became obsessed with the notion of getting away from the University of Texas, out of the United States, of going wherever I could, as far away as possible. I fantasized about living in a nice little apartment in some enormous city. I wanted bustle and bright lights, not the sparse Texas landscape and the starry nights.