“Sons of bitches,” Ralph says to his reflection. He walks to the window, pulls up the blind, and looks out. Then looks at his watch. Then shakes it. By his reckoning it should be morning already. The darkness outside is still impenetrable. But that’s not what’s frightening. Winter nights have a habit of lingering. What’s scary is the way the watch hands seem to be stuck permanently on one minute before two. And it’s the same with the wall clock.
“Calm down,” Ralph says. “There probably is a reasonable explanation.”
Except he can’t find it. He could swear that when he was leaving Sheriff’s room—the Rat Shepherd had a birthday bash, and it was a proper one—he looked at the watch and it was quarter to two. A lot of time has passed since then. It couldn’t have been less than half an hour for the hospital wing alone. Ralph stares at the long hand, hypnotizing it. The watch runs on batteries. Batteries run out. But . . . what about the clock, then? It keeps ticking, lulling him, enveloping in domestic comfort.
Ralph draws the blinds and takes a magazine off the desk. Thumbs through it standing up. Stumbles on an article about a popular singer, notes the time, and starts reading. The article about the singer, then three more—the world of algae, this winter’s fashions, sheep husbandry. He skims through the sports section and flings the magazine on the floor. The clock deigned to move to two exactly. The watch still insists on one minute to. Ralph looks at it, for what seems like another eternity, and then finally decides, with a sigh of relief, that it must be broken. And the clock as well. Yes, simultaneously. Well, it could happen, and it clearly did.
Ralph carefully takes the watch off his wrist and lowers it into the desk drawer. Vulture’s present sits untouched on the armrest of the sofa. Were he to smoke it, many things would become markedly less sinister.
“Something’s wrong with the time,” Ralph says loudly.
A faint scratching noise makes him spin around. He notices a slip of paper being pushed under the door. He reaches the door in a single bound and throws it open. Then curses himself and opens the outer one, but it’s too late. The night visitor has vanished. Ralph stands there for a moment, peering into the darkness, then goes back and picks up the sheet marked with the ridged print of his own shoe. The letters, evidently scrawled in a rush, straggle up and down and barely fit on the scrap.
Back in the Fourth, Tabaqui takes careful aim, drops the backpack on the sleeping cat, waits out a short pause, and then screams at those who jumped up on the beds.
“You can’t even imagine what just happened! Unbelievable!”
His shouting wakes up everyone who managed to sleep through the yowl of the cat.
Blind’s clothes stink of outhouse, of Butterfly’s sickness, of Red’s blood and fear. He treads slowly. His face is untroubled, like that of someone sleeping peacefully. His fingers run ahead and then return when he remembers the way. Now is the time of the crack between the worlds. Between the House and the Forest. He prefers to cross it in his sleep. When he’s inside it his memory stumbles over familiar obstacles, and the body stumbles with it. When he’s inside it he doesn’t have command over his hearing. He doesn’t hear things that are there, or hears the ones that aren’t. When in the crack he doubts whether he would be able to find those he’s seeking, and then forgets whom he was seeking. He could enter the Forest and become a part of it—then he’d be able to find anyone. But the Forest twice in one night is dangerous, even more dangerous than the crack that consumes his memory and hearing. Blind moves slowly. His hands move faster. They dart through the holes in the sweater’s sleeves—the sleeves were too long for him so he slit them with a knife all the way down from the elbows. His bare heels, black as soot, stick to the floorboards.
A beam of light hits him in the face. He walks right through it, oblivious. A hand catches his shoulder. Blind stops, surprised that he hasn’t heard any steps.
“Come with me. We need to talk.”
Blind recognizes the voice and submits to it. Ralph’s hand doesn’t let go of his shoulder until they are at the door.
The office is like the jaws of a trap for him. Blind hates it. The whole of the House is his domain, but the offices fall outside of it, those snare-rooms smelling of iron. Everything else he owns, but in them he doesn’t even own himself. In the offices there are only voices and doors. He enters and hears the click. The trap has sprung. He’s in a void now, alone with the counselor’s breathing. There’s no memory here at all. Only the hearing. He hears the window and the wind oozing through it. Also rustling, the way paper rustles. The paper in the three-fingered hand of Ralph.
“You were there. When Red was cut. I saw you.”
“Yes,” Blind says carefully. “I was there.”
“You heard those who did it. You recognized them, obviously.”
