clock, rubbed his eyes in order to clear them, and looked again. And the clock said the same time it had an instant before: 2:27 A . M ., the numbers and letters of the digital readout glowing in the dimness.
Had time flown by that quickly? Was it possible?
Well, it didn’t really matter if it was possible or not; it had, so there was no point in debating the possibilities of it. He stretched his arms, yawned, shook out the cramped muscles of his legs, and moved to the window.
One of the things Bruce had gotten used to about himself—indeed, one of his strengths as a scientist—was his ability to see patterns in everything around him. Sometimes they were utterly pointless: mundane digits in a checking account number that recombined, or sequences of letters drawn from various sources that spelled out something. At other times the result would be sudden bursts of insight that invariably led to a flurry of activity that might or might not lead to a new and even more interesting breakthrough. Betty likened the ability to that of the protagonist from that movie about the mathematician who developed psychotic behavior, a comparison that didn’t exactly thrill Bruce.
So it didn’t surprise Bruce at all when, while staring out at a willow tree illuminated by a street lamp, the shadows and branches of the tree seemed to form an intricate latticework of shapes and patterns. It was like nature was giving him a Rorschach inkblot test. The shapes kept changing as the wind blew: one moment they were octopus tentacles writhing through a sea of air, now they were long fingers interlacing like the hands of a silent film villain, who was rubbing his hands together in gleeful anticipation of his malevolent plan reaching fruition.
And now they looked like a stairway, and now they looked like two interlocking faces of . . . of . . .
He stared and stared, and continued to stare, and even though the branches moved a dozen times more, the image they had formed just a bit earlier remained in Bruce’s brain, frozen there like a gray-cell snapshot. Two faces, ensnared in each other, but they weren’t human faces. They were like—like a pair of animals. Animals that were . . .
An association floated through his mind, and almost escaped unmolested, but then he snagged it and pulled it down to him, and the thought came to him:
stuffed toys
.
Yes. That was it. The shadow imagery had born a resemblance to a couple of stuffed toys. But what kind of toys they were precisely, and whose they were, he couldn’t say. He suspected, for no particular reason, that they were his. But he didn’t know when he had received them and, more important, from whom.
Then he blinked, and partially turned away, only to snap his head back and look again, for Bruce was sure that he had seen something else that was most definitely not a shadow. It was a figure, standing tall, shoulders squared, and—
could I be anymore melodramatic?
—radiating an aura of menace.
But when Bruce focused his full attention on the spot, he saw nothing save the waving branches.
Perhaps there had never been a man there. It might have been nothing more than his sleep-deprived mind adding yet more shapes to the wavering shadows of the deceptive willow. It was certainly a supposition preferable to the idea that someone was lurking about in the shadows at 2:30 in the morning, watching him . . .
Half past two in the morning. God Almighty.
“I’ve got to get some sleep,” he said to no one in particular, perhaps as much to convince himself of the necessity of it as anything else. As if to underscore for him just how tired he was, it seemed that an instant later that he had tossed on his nightclothes and climbed into bed. He didn’t remember the action at all. He felt as if his entire being was fading out and in, as if some of his actions were attributable to another person entirely. Which was, of course, ridiculous.
He decided to be pragmatic about it: If this were indeed the
Had time flown by that quickly? Was it possible?
Well, it didn’t really matter if it was possible or not; it had, so there was no point in debating the possibilities of it. He stretched his arms, yawned, shook out the cramped muscles of his legs, and moved to the window.
One of the things Bruce had gotten used to about himself—indeed, one of his strengths as a scientist—was his ability to see patterns in everything around him. Sometimes they were utterly pointless: mundane digits in a checking account number that recombined, or sequences of letters drawn from various sources that spelled out something. At other times the result would be sudden bursts of insight that invariably led to a flurry of activity that might or might not lead to a new and even more interesting breakthrough. Betty likened the ability to that of the protagonist from that movie about the mathematician who developed psychotic behavior, a comparison that didn’t exactly thrill Bruce.
So it didn’t surprise Bruce at all when, while staring out at a willow tree illuminated by a street lamp, the shadows and branches of the tree seemed to form an intricate latticework of shapes and patterns. It was like nature was giving him a Rorschach inkblot test. The shapes kept changing as the wind blew: one moment they were octopus tentacles writhing through a sea of air, now they were long fingers interlacing like the hands of a silent film villain, who was rubbing his hands together in gleeful anticipation of his malevolent plan reaching fruition.
And now they looked like a stairway, and now they looked like two interlocking faces of . . . of . . .
He stared and stared, and continued to stare, and even though the branches moved a dozen times more, the image they had formed just a bit earlier remained in Bruce’s brain, frozen there like a gray-cell snapshot. Two faces, ensnared in each other, but they weren’t human faces. They were like—like a pair of animals. Animals that were . . .
An association floated through his mind, and almost escaped unmolested, but then he snagged it and pulled it down to him, and the thought came to him:
stuffed toys
.
Yes. That was it. The shadow imagery had born a resemblance to a couple of stuffed toys. But what kind of toys they were precisely, and whose they were, he couldn’t say. He suspected, for no particular reason, that they were his. But he didn’t know when he had received them and, more important, from whom.
Then he blinked, and partially turned away, only to snap his head back and look again, for Bruce was sure that he had seen something else that was most definitely not a shadow. It was a figure, standing tall, shoulders squared, and—
could I be anymore melodramatic?
—radiating an aura of menace.
But when Bruce focused his full attention on the spot, he saw nothing save the waving branches.
Perhaps there had never been a man there. It might have been nothing more than his sleep-deprived mind adding yet more shapes to the wavering shadows of the deceptive willow. It was certainly a supposition preferable to the idea that someone was lurking about in the shadows at 2:30 in the morning, watching him . . .
Half past two in the morning. God Almighty.
“I’ve got to get some sleep,” he said to no one in particular, perhaps as much to convince himself of the necessity of it as anything else. As if to underscore for him just how tired he was, it seemed that an instant later that he had tossed on his nightclothes and climbed into bed. He didn’t remember the action at all. He felt as if his entire being was fading out and in, as if some of his actions were attributable to another person entirely. Which was, of course, ridiculous.
He decided to be pragmatic about it: If this were indeed the
Similar Books
