How clearly he remembered the old nights in the old times, in the times when he was a boy and them all running and running, and hiding and hiding, and playing hide-and-seek. In the first spring nights and in the warm summer nights and in the late summer evenings and in those first sharp autumn nights when doors were shutting early and porches were empty except for blowing leaves. The game of hide-and-seek went on as long as there was sun to see by, or the rising snow-crusted moon. Their feet upon the green lawns were like the scattered throwing of soft peaches and crab apples, and the counting of the Seeker with his arms cradling his buried head, chanting to the night: five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five, fifty. . . .And the sound of thrown apples fading, the children all safely closeted in tree or bush shade, under the latticed porches with the clever dogs minding not to wag their tails and give their secret away. And the counting done: eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five, a hundred!

Ready or not, here I come!

And the Seeker running out through the town wilderness to find the Hiders, and the Hiders keeping their secret laughter in their mouths, like precious June strawberries, with the help of clasped hands. And the Seeker seeking after the smallest heartbeat in the high elm tree or the glint of a dog's eye in a bush, or a small water sound of laughter that could not help burst out as the Seeker ran right on by and did not see the shadow within the shadow. . . .

He moved into the bathroom of the quiet house, thinking all this, enjoying the clear rush, the tumultuous gushing of memories like a water-falling of the mind over a steep precipice, falling and falling toward the bottom of his head.

G.o.d, how secret and tall they had felt, hidden away. G.o.d, how the shadows mothered and kept them, sheathed in their own triumph. Glowing with perspiration how they crouched like idols and thought they might hide forever! While the silly Seeker went pelting by on his way to failure and inevitable frustration.

Sometimes the Seeker stopped right at your tree and peered up at you crouched there in your invisible warm wings, in your great colorless windowpane bat wings, and said, "I see you there!" But you said nothing. "You're up there all right." But you said nothing. "Come on down!" But not a word, only a victorious Cheshire smile. And doubt coming over the Seeker below. "It is you, isn't it?" The backing off and away. "Aw, I know you're up there!" No answer. Only the tree sitting in the night and shaking quietly, leaf upon leaf. And the Seeker, afraid of the dark within darkness, loping away to seek easier game, something to be named and certain of. "All right for you!"

He washed his hands in the bathroom, and thought, Why am I washing my hands? And then the grains of time sucked back up the flue of the hourgla.s.s again and it was another year . . .

He remembered that sometimes when he played hide-and-seek they did not find him at all; he would not let them find him. He said not a word, he stayed so long in the apple tree that he was a white-fleshed apple; he lingered so long in the chestnut tree that he had the hardness and the brown brightness of the autumn nut. And G.o.d, how powerful to be undiscovered, how immense it made you, until your arms were branching, growing out in all directions, pulled by the stars and the tidal moon until your secretness enclosed the town and mothered it with your compa.s.sion and tolerance. You could do anything in the shadows, anything. If you chose to do it, you could do it. How powerful to sit above the sidewalk and see people pa.s.s under, never aware you were there and watching, and might put out an arm to brush their noses with the five-legged spider of your hand and brush their thinking minds with terror.

He finished washing his hands and wiped them on a towel.

But there was always an end to the game. When the Seeker had found all the other Hiders and these Hiders in turn were Seekers and they were all spreading out, calling your name, looking for you, how much more powerful and important that made you.

"Hey, hey! Where are you! Come in, the game's over!"

But you not moving or coming in. Even when they all collected under your tree and saw, or thought they saw you there at the very top, and called up at you. "Oh, come down! Stop fooling! Hey! We see you. We know you're there!"

Not answering even then-not until the final, the fatal thing happened. Far off, a block away, a silver whistle screaming, and the voice of your mother calling your name, and the whistle again. "Nine o'clock!" her voice wailed. "Nine o'clock! Home!"

But you waited until all the children were gone. Then, very carefully unfolding yourself and your warmth and secretness, and keeping out of the lantern light at corners, you ran home alone, alone in darkness and shadow, hardly breathing, keeping the sound of your heart quiet and in yourself, so if people heard anything at all they might think it was only the wind blowing a dry leaf by in the night. And your mother standing there, with the screen door wide . . .

He finished wiping his hands on the towel. He stood a moment thinking of how it had been the last two years here in town. The old game going on, by himself, playing it alone, the children gone, grown into settled middle age, but now, as before, himself the final and last and only Hider, and the whole town seeking and seeing nothing and going on home to lock their doors.

But tonight, out of a time long past, and on many nights now, he had heard that old sound, the sound of the silver whistle, blowing and blowing. It was certainly not a night bird singing, for he knew each sound so well. But the whistle kept calling and calling and a voice said, Home and Nine o'clock, even though it was now long after midnight. He listened. There was the silver whistle. Even though his mother had died many years ago, after having put his father in an early grave with her temper and her tongue. "Do this, do that, do this, do that, do this, do that, do this, do that . . ." A phonograph record, broken, playing the same cracked turn again, again, again, her voice, her cadence, around, around, around, around, repeat, repeat, repeat.

And the clear silver whistle blowing and the game of hide-and-seek over. No more of walking in the town and standing behind trees and bushes and smiling a smile that burned through the thickest foliage. An automatic thing was happening. His feet were walking and his hands were doing and he knew everything that must be done now.

His hands did not belong to him.

He tore a b.u.t.ton off his coat and let it drop into the deep dark well of the room. It never seemed to hit bottom. It floated down. He waited.

It seemed never to stop rolling. Finally, it stopped.

His hands did not belong to him.

He took his pipe and flung that into the depths of the room. Without waiting for it to strike emptiness, he walked quietly back through the kitchen and peered outside the open, blowing, white-curtained window at the footprints he had made there. He was the Seeker, seeking now, instead of the Hider hiding. He was the quiet searcher finding and sifting and putting away clues, and those footprints were now as alien to him as something from a prehistoric age. They had been made a million years ago by some other man on some other business; they were no part of him at all. He marveled at their precision and deepness and form in the moonlight. He put his hand down almost to touch them, like a great and beautiful archaeological discovery! Then he was gone, back through the rooms, ripping a piece of material from his trousers turn-up and blowing it off his open palm like a moth.

His hands were not his hands anymore, or his body his body.

He opened the front door and went out and sat for a moment on the porch rail. He picked up the lemonade gla.s.s and drank what was left, made warm by an evening's waiting, and pressed his fingers tight to the gla.s.s, tight, tight, very tight. Then he put the gla.s.s down on the railing.

The silver whistle!

Yes, he thought. Coming, coming.

The silver whistle!

Yes, he thought. Nine o'clock. Home, home. Nine o'clock. Studies and milk and graham crackers and white cool bed, home, home; nine o'clock and the silver whistle.

He was off the porch in an instant, running softly, lightly, with hardly a breath or a heartbeat, as one barefooted runs, as one all leaf and green June gra.s.s and night can run, all shadow, forever running, away from the silent house and across the street, and down into the ravine . . .

He pushed the door wide and stepped into the Owl Diner, this long railroad car that, removed from its track, had been put to a solitary unmoving destiny in the center of town. The place was empty. At the far end of the counter, the counterman glanced up as the door shut and the customer walked along the line of empty swivel seats. The counterman took the toothpick from his mouth.

"Tom Dillon, you old so-and-so! What you doing up this time of night, Tom?"

Tom Dillon ordered without the menu. While the food was being prepared, he dropped a nickel in the wall phone, got his number, and spoke quietly for a time. He hung up, came back, and sat, listening. Sixty seconds later, both he and the counterman heard the police siren wail by at fifty miles an hour. "Well-h.e.l.l!" said the counterman. "Go get 'em, boys!"

He set out a tall gla.s.s of milk and a plate of six fresh graham crackers.

Tom Dillon sat there for a long while, looking secretly down at his ripped trousers turn-up and muddied shoes. The light in the diner was raw and bright, and he felt as if he were on a stage. He held the tall cool gla.s.s of milk in his hand, sipping it, eyes shut, chewing the good texture of the graham crackers, feeling it all through his mouth, coating his tongue.

"Would or would you not," he asked, quietly, "call this a hearty meal?"

"I'd call that very hearty indeed," said the counterman, smiling.

Tom Dillon chewed another graham cracker with great concentration, feeling all of it in his mouth. It's just a matter of time, he thought, waiting.

"More milk?"

"Yes," said Tom.

And he watched with steady interest, with the purest and most alert concentration in all of his life, as the white carton tilted and gleamed, and the snowy milk poured out, cool and quiet, like the sound of a running spring at night, and filled the gla.s.s up all the way, to the very brim, to the very brim, and over . . .

THE WITCH DOOR.

IT WAS A POUNDING ON A DOOR, a furious, frantic, insistent pounding, born of hysteria and fear and a great desire to be heard, to be freed, to be let loose, to escape. It was a wrenching at hidden paneling, it was a hollow knocking, a rapping, a testing, a clawing! It was a scratching at hollow boards, a ripping at bedded nails; it was a m.u.f.fled closet shouting and demanding, far away, and a call to be noticed, followed by a silence.

The silence was the most empty and terrible of all.

Robert and Martha Webb sat up in bed.

"Did you hear it?"

"Yes, again."

"Downstairs."

Now whoever it was who had pounded and rapped and made his fingers raw, drawn blood with his fever and quest to be free, had drawn into silence, listening himself to see if his terror and drumming had summoned any help.

The winter night lay through the house with a falling-snow silence, silence snowing into every room, drifting over tables and floors, and banking up the stairwell.

Then the pounding started again. And then: A sound of soft crying.

"Downstairs."

"Someone in the house."

"Lotte, do you think? The front door's unlocked."

"She'd have knocked. Can't be Lotte."

"She's the only one it could be. She phoned."

They both glanced at the phone. If you lifted the receiver, you heard a winter stillness. The phones were dead. They had died days ago with the riots in the nearest towns and cities. Now, in the receiver, you heard only your own heartbeat. "Can you put me up?" Lotte had cried from six hundred miles away. "Just overnight?"

But before they could answer her, the phone had filled itself with long miles of silence.

"Lotte is coming. She sounded hysterical. That might be her," said Martha Webb.

"No," said Robert. "I heard that crying other nights, too. Dear G.o.d."

They lay in the cold room in this farmhouse back in the Ma.s.sachusetts wilderness, back from the main roads, away from the towns, near a bleak river and a black forest. It was the frozen middle of December. The white smell of snow cut the air.

They arose. With an oil lamp lit, they sat on the edge of the bed as if dangling their legs over a precipice.

"There's no one downstairs, there can't be."

"Whoever it is sounds frightened."

"We're all frightened, d.a.m.n it. That's why we came out here, to be away from cities, riots, all that d.a.m.ned foolishness. No more wiretaps, arrests, taxes, neurotics. Now when we find it at last, people call and upset us. And tonight this, Christ!" He glanced at his wife. "You afraid?"

"I don't know. I don't believe in ghosts. This is 1999; I'm sane. Or like to think I am. Where's your gun?"

"We won't need it. Don't ask me why, but we won't."

They picked up their oil lamps. In another month the small power plant would be finished in the white barns behind the house and there'd be power to spare, but now they haunted the farm, coming and going with dim lamps or candles.

They stood at the stairwell, both thirty-three, both immensely practical.

The crying, the sadness, and the plea came from below in the winter rooms.

"She sounds so d.a.m.ned sad," said Robert. "G.o.d, I'm sorry for her, but don't even know who it is. Come on."

They went downstairs.

As if hearing their footsteps, the crying grew louder. There was a dull thudding against a hidden panel somewhere.

"The Witch Door!" said Martha Webb at last.

"Can't be."

"Is."

They stood in the long hall looking at that place under the stairs, where the panels trembled faintly. But now the cries faded, as if the crier was exhausted, or something had diverted her, or perhaps their voices had startled her and she was listening for them to speak again. Now the winter-night house was silent and the man and wife waited with the oil lamps quietly fuming in their hands.

Robert Webb stepped to the Witch Door and touched it, probing for the hidden b.u.t.ton, the secret spring. "There can't be anyone in there," he said. "My G.o.d, we've been here six months, and that's just a cubby. Isn't that what the Realtor said when he sold the place? No one could hide in there and us not know it. We-"

"Listen!"

They listened.

Nothing.

"She's gone, it's gone, whatever it was, h.e.l.l, that door hasn't been opened in our lifetime. Everyone's forgotten where the spring is that unlocks it. I don't think there is a door, only a loose panel, and rats' nests, that's all. The walls, scratching. Why not?" He turned to look at his wife, who was staring at the hidden place.

"Silly," she said. "Good Lord, rats don't cry. That was a voice, asking to be saved. Lotte, I thought. But now I know it wasn't she, but someone else in as much trouble."

Martha Webb reached out and trembled her fingertips along the beveled edge of ancient maple. "Can't we open it?"

"With a crowbar and hammer, tomorrow."

"Oh, Robert!"

"Don't 'Oh, Robert' me. I'm tired."

"You can't leave her in there to-"

"She's quiet now. Christ, I'm exhausted. I'll come down at the crack of dawn and knock the d.a.m.ned thing apart, okay?"

"All right," she said, and tears came to her eyes.

"Women," said Robert Webb. "Oh, my G.o.d, you and Lotte, Lotte and you. If she is coming here, if she makes it, I'll have a houseful of lunatics!"

"Lotte's fine!"

"Sure, but she should keep her mouth shut. It doesn't pay now to say you're Socialist, Democrat, Libertarian, Pro-Life Abortionist, Sinn Fein Fascist, Commie, any d.a.m.n thing. The towns are bombed out. People are looking for scapegoats and Lotte has to shoot from the hip, get herself smeared and now, h.e.l.l, on the run."

"They'll jail her if they catch her. Or kill her, yes, kill her. We're lucky to be here with our own food. Thank G.o.d we planned ahead, we saw it coming, the starvation, the ma.s.sacres. We helped ourselves. Now we help Lotte if she makes it through."

Without answering, he turned to the stairs. "I'm dead on my feet. I'm tired of saving anyone. Even Lotte. But h.e.l.l, if she comes through the front door, she's saved."

They went up the stairs taking the lamps, advancing in an ever-moving aura of trembling white glow. The house was as silent as snow falling. "G.o.d," he whispered. "d.a.m.n, I don't like women crying like that."

It sounded like the whole world crying, he thought. The whole world dying and needing help and lonely, but what can you do? Live in a farm like this? Far off the main highway where people don't pa.s.s, away from all the stupidity and death? What can you do?