He wanted to pick up the thread.

"You've seen a vision?" he asked. "That's what's frightening you?"

I shook my head. "Nothing as clear as that. But the Thing is stalking me, and now and then it lets me see something in the blink of an eye. I hear it mostly. I hear it sometimes talking in a normal conversational voice to another, or I hear its steps behind me on the street, and I spin around. It's true. I'm terrified of it. And then when it shows itself, well, I usually end up so disoriented, I'm sprawled in the gutter like a common drunk. A week will pass. Nothing. Then I'll catch that fragment of conversation again. ..." "And what are the words?"

"Can't give the fragments to you in order. I'd been hearing them before I realized what they were. On some level, I knew I was hearing a voice from some other locale, so to speak, you knew it wasn't a mere mortal in the next room. But for all I knew, it could have had a natural explanation, an electronic explanation."

"I understand."

"But the fragments are things like two people talking, and one says-the one, that is—

says, 'Oh, no, he's perfect, it has nothing to do with vengeance, how could you think I wanted mere vengeance?' " I broke off, shrugged. "It's, you know, the middle of a conversation."

"Yes," he said, "and you feel this Thing is letting you hear a little of it... just the way I thought the vision in the cafe was meant for me."

"You've got it exactly right. It's tormenting me. Another time, this was only two days ago, I was in New Orleans; I was sort of spying on the Victim's daughter, Dora. She lives there in the convent build - I mentioned. It's an old 1880s convent, unoccupied for years, and gutted, so that it's like a brick castle, and this little sparrow of a girl, lovely little woman, lives there fearlessly, completely alone. She walks about the house as if she were invincible. Well, anyway, I was down there, and I had come into the courtyard of this building—it's, you know, a shape as old as architecture, main building, two long wings, inner courtyard."

The rather typical late-nineteenth-century brick institution." Exactly, and I was watching through the windows, the progress of that little girl walking by herself through the pitch-black corridor. She was carrying a flashlight. And she was singing to herself, one of her hymns. They're all sort of medieval and modern at the same time."

"I believe the phrase is 'New Age,' " David suggested.

"Yes, it's somewhat like that, but this girl is on an ecumenical religious network. I told you. Her program is very conventional. Believe in Jesus, be saved. She's going to sing and dance people into Heaven, especially the women, apparently, or at least they'll lead the way."

"Go on with the story, you were watching her...."

"Yes, and thinking how brave she was. She finally reached her own quarters; she lives in one of the four towers of the building; and I listened as she threw all the locks. And I thought, not many mortals would like to go prowling about this dark building, and the place wasn't entirely spiritually clean."