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“To hell with that.” Crumley moved behind me. “I’m coming with.”
I shook my head. “No. You want to wait around for weeks or months, trying to find the Beast? He’d hide from you. He’s open to me now, maybe to tell all about the people who have disappeared. You going to get permits to open a hundred graves across the wall? You think the city will hand you a spade to dig for J. C., Clarence, Groc, Doc Phillips?! We’ll never see them again unless the Beast shows us. So go wait by the front gate of the graveyard. Circle the block eight or ten times. One exit or another, I’ll probably come screaming out, or just walking.”
Crumley’s voice was bleak. “Okay. Get yourself killed!” he sighed. “Naw. Damn. Here.”
“A gun?” I cried. “I’m afraid of guns!”
“Take it. Put the pistol in one pocket, bullets in the other.”
“No!”
“Take it!” Crumley shoved.
I took.
“Come back in one piece!”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
I stepped inside. The studio took my weight. I felt it sink in the night. At any moment, all the last buildings, gunshot like elephants, would fall to their knees, carrion for dogs, and bones for night birds.
I went down the street, hoping Crumley would call me back. Silence.
At the third alley, I stopped. I wanted to glance aside toward Green Town, Illinois. I did not. If the steam shovels had demolished and the termites eaten its cupolas, bay windows, toy attics, and wine cellars, I refused to see.
At the administration building a single small outside light glowed.
The door was unlocked.
I took a deep breath and entered.
Fool. Idiot. Stupid. Jerk.
I muttered the litany as I climbed up.
I tried the doorknob. The door was locked.
“Thank God!” I was about to run when—
The tumblers clicked.
The office door drifted open.
The pistol, I thought. And felt for the weapon in one pocket, the bullets in the other.
I half stepped in.
The office was illuminated only by a light over a painting on the far west wall. I moved across the floor, quietly.
There were all the empty sofas, empty chairs, and the big empty desk with only a telephone on it.
And the big chair, which was not empty.
I could hear his breathing, long and slow and heavy, like that of some great animal in the dark.
Dimly I made out the massive shape of the man lodged in that chair.
I stumbled over a chair. The shock almost stopped my heart.
