When he entered the store—which smelled almost exactly like Took’s—a bell jingled. To the left was a stack of Portland Press-Herald s, and the date gave him a nasty little shock. When he’d taken the book from the New York Public Library, not half an hour ago by his body’s clock, it had been June 26th. The date on these papers was the 27th.

He took one, reading the headlines (a flood in New Orleans, the usual unrest among the homicidal idiots of the mideast) and noting the price: a dime. Good. He’d get change back from his ’69 quarter. Maybe buy a piece of good old Made in the U.S.A. salami. The clerk looked him over with a cheerful eye as he approached the counter.

“That do it?” he asked.

“Well, I tell you what,” Callahan said. “I could use a point toward the post office, if that does ya.”

The clerk raised an eyebrow and smiled. “You sound like you’re from these parts.”

“Do you say so, then?” Callahan asked, also smiling.

“Ayuh. Anyway, post office is easy. Ain’t but a mile down this road, on your left.” He pronounced road rud, exactly as Jamie Jaffords might have done.

“Good enough. And do you sell salami by the slice?”

“I’ll sell it just about any old way you want to buy it,” the clerk said amiably. “Summer visitor, are you?” It came out summah visitah, and Callahan almost expected him to add Tell me, I beg.

“You could call me that, I guess,” Callahan said.

Four

In the cave, Eddie fought against the faint but maddening jangle of the chimes and peered through the half-open door. Callahan was walking down a country road. Goody gumdrops for him. Meantime, maybe Mrs. Dean’s little boy would try having himself a bit of a read. With a cold (and slightly trembling) hand, he reached into the bookcase and pulled out a volume two down from one that had been turned upside down, one that would certainly have changed his day had he happened to grab it. What he came up with instead was Four Short Novels of Sherlock Holmes . Ah, Holmes, another great sage and eminent junkie. Eddie opened to A Study in Scarlet and began to read. Every now and then he found himself looking down at the box, where Black Thirteen pulsed out its weird force. He could just see a curve of glass. After a little bit he gave up trying to read, only looking at the curve of glass, growing more and more fascinated. But the chimes were fading, and that was good, wasn’t it? After a little while he could hardly hear them at all. A little while after that, a voice crept past the bullets in his ears and began to speak to him.

Eddie listened.

Five

“Pardon me, ma’am.”