The being who had accompanied him from Albuquerque encouraged the vision, the feeling, the quiet. It left him sleeping. He would stay asleep until he was needed. The Fluiquosm were very good at keeping prey quiet and in good condition until needed.
Benita—TUESDAY NIGHT
Tuesday morning, Benita woke up feeling like death warmed over. She went downstairs to work, but Simon sent her back upstairs, where she remained achy and fretful all day, feeling as though she was coming down with the flu or a rotten chest cold. She went to bed early with a glass of warm milk and one of her hoarded sleeping pills. She didn’t take them often, keeping them for emergencies, when Bert was being impossible and she was too hurt or angry to sleep. She hadn’t planned to need them in Washington, but she was thankful to have a few left.
Despite the pill, she couldn’t settle. Sasquatch turned around and around on the foot of the bed until she yelled at him. He gave her an offended look, jumped off the bed, and curled up in his huge dog basket, though even there, he kept up a restless shifting and ear-pricking, as though something was bothering him. Finally, about midnight, she fell asleep with the light on, some time later rousing just enough to switch it off without interrupting the dream she was having about trekking through a jungle. Sasquatch was with her, nervously alert, woofing low in his throat the way he did when he saw a skunk or a really big raccoon or Bert with the blind staggers.
In the dream, she was worried about some kind of beast, a bear or jaguar, and she heard Sasquatch’s woof very clearly, so clearly that she woke up with the reality of it in her ears. There was Sasquatch in the middle of the bedroom floor, the fur on his shoulders and neck bristled up like a mane, nose wrinkled, fangs showing, the dim light reflected from his eyes as he stared up at the high windows of the bedroom that looked out on the roof of the other building, which was accessible only from the higher roof above her head. Which was, supposedly, accessible only from the elevator unless someone had a very tall ladder. The people who fixed up the apartment had covered the whole row of windows with gathered curtains of translucent muslin. The light came in, but the view was blocked, either in or out. Benita’s half-opened eyes followed the dog’s gaze to the curtains, a row of slightly lighter squares against the dark . . .
Slightly lighter squares across which something moved, from left to right, a slow shadow that progressed from window to window, touching each one, pushing at each one, making them creak protestingly. The shadow was a featureless blob, sometimes straight on the sides, sometimes with a hint of squirminess about it. The frames creaked, again and again, though not loudly and without yielding, for wire-glass inside steel frames doesn’t break easily. Sasquatch backed up until his rump was against the bed and went on making what was almost a whispered growl, more a mutter in his throat than a threat. He didn’t like whatever was up there. Benita didn’t either. Whatever was up there scared her shitless. The bottom of the windows were even with the roof and the panes were about five feet tall. Whatever was throwing the shadow was taller than that, as it extended all the way from bottom to top.
The shadow moved on, and almost at once she heard something rattling from the direction of the elevator hall. She almost fell out of bed as she scrambled to get there before the elevator could move. At each floor the cage was shut off by a folding metal grille that could not open unless the elevator was on that floor, to keep someone from falling down the shaft. The elevator was where she had left it, on the third floor, and the rattling was coming from the roof above her!
She opened the elevator grille, just enough to keep the elevator from departing, and looked frantically around for something to prop it with. The hall was empty, so she simply stuck her foot between the grille and the frame, holding it there while the rattling continued over her head as though something was trying to get into the elevator housing. It had an outside door, which locked automatically if one didn’t set the unlock button. Even if whatever it was got in, so long as she held the grille open, the elevator wouldn’t ascend and the upper grille couldn’t move.