She reached in her purse and pulled out the crystal. Her goddamned crystal! Sam turned away this time, before he said something he'd regret. He wasn't being realistic. You couldn't change two years overnight. He had to give her a little time, that was all.

She had finished unpacking the suitcase, having hung up half the clothes in the closet on what was "her" side of the large double bed. She proceeded to put the remaining folded piles in various dresser drawers, working with deliberate speed, as if she had had this unpacking planned for months.

Sam decided he might as well make himself useful. He flipped the suitcase closed and hauled it from the bed. There was a door on his side as well. Maybe it was a second closet. In these big old hotels, anything was possible.

Sam tried the door, but it was locked. It probably led into the next room, to make this place into some kind of suite.

Then again, it could lead nowhere at all. Looking at the walls and ceiling of this room, he could see signs of an ill-advised renovation, half-completed, then abandoned.

They probably tried to modernize this floor in the fifties. Sam smiled to himself, remembering what it had been like to be a teen-ager back then. They tried to modernize every-thing in the fifties, to bring it up to their current antiseptic standards. At least, here in the SeaHarp Hotel, either good taste or lack of money had won out, and the only signs left over were a few missing pieces of molding, and an indenta-tion where they'd tried to put in a dropped ceiling. Besides that, and the addition of electricity, this room looked pretty much the same as it would have when it was built maybe a hundred years ago.

Sam ended up sticking the suitcase under the bed. When he stood up again, Sally was sitting on the bed, staring at her crystal.

"Please, Sam," she said before he could object. He turned away. He didn't want to get into an argument. Not now, when there might be some way to make their marriage what it used to be. He walked over to the window. They had a decent view, but not a great one, mostly filled with the roofs of the town, with the ocean sparkling off to the far right.

Sally hummed to herself behind him. He didn't have to turn around to know she was rocking back and forth on the bed, staring at that damn crystal. It helped her to think, she said, to look inside herself to find the answer that was really right. Sam thought she should talk to him about her prob-lems, instead. But what did he know? They didn't have god damned crystals when he was a kid.

He looked down at the lawn that surrounded the hotel. Another man's eyes gazed straight into his own for an instant, then looked away. The man walked rapidly toward the ho-tel, out of Sam's view. But Sam had recognized the other man. It was Hank Fields.

Sam turned around to look at his wife.

"What's going on here?"

Sally blinked and frowned, still staring intently at her crys-tal. "Sam. Please."

"Please, nothing!" Sam felt the anger building in him once again. This time, he knew he couldn't stop it. "I saw Hank Fields watching us. It's no coincidence that he's here. What's going on?"

"Sam?" Sally put down her crystal to gaze at her hus-band. "What do you mean?"

"There's something between you and Hank."

"What?" she said, her voice slightly slurred, as if she was waking from a dream. "What do you-" She reached clum-sily for the purse, lying beside her on the bed. Sam reached forward and roughly grabbed her shoulders. This time, she was going to tell him the truth!

The purse fell to the floor with a thump.For once, Sally looked right at him. And she looked afraid.

"I didn't mean for it to happen," she whispered. "You'd be gone all week some times. And Hank was always there."

She clutched the crystal in her fist. "Oh, I told him not to come here!"

She started to cry. She picked her purse up off the floor and clumsily tried to open it, her fingers slipping off the clasp.

"Here," Sam said. "Give it to me." He found himself both infuriated at and sorry for his wife at the same time. When she cried like that, she looked even younger than usual.

"The clasp sticks-sometimes," Sally managed as she handed him her bag. "There's-some tissues-"

Sam tilted the purse on its side so that he could get a better grip on it. He wrenched the bag open with a single pull.

Something shiny fell to the rug.

Sally made a tiny, mewling sound in the back of her throat. Sam looked down at what had fallen.

It was a small revolver. Silver-plated, maybe. A woman's gun.

"What is this?" he asked, not bothering to pick up the gun.

Sally looked at the bed, away from both him and the gun. "Hank gave it to me. For protection."

"What?" Sam exploded. The anger was coming back again, fast and hot. "What business has he-? Who does he think-?"

He looked down at his hands. They had clenched into fists again.

Someone was pounding at the door. Sam turned around to look.

"Sally?" a voice yelled through the wood. "Are you all right? Sally?"

Sam was not even aware of his feet moving. But he felt his hand encircle the doorknob, and he jerked the door toward him with all his strength. He looked into Hank Fields' star-tled face. But the surprise lasted only for an instant, replaced by a mask of anger and defiance.

"What are you doing to her?" Fields demanded. "If you've hurt her in any way-"

Sam punched the other man in the face, knuckles con-necting with teeth and cartilage. Fields crumpled, falling to the floor like a rag doll whose parts had been badly sewn together.

Sam let the door close on the fallen man. He looked back at Sally.

"What have you done to him?" she demanded.

"Nothing he didn't deserve," Sam replied, moving quickly toward the bed.

"Who are you to say that?" Sally retorted. The tears were gone, but her angry face was red and puffy. "What do you know about him? What do you know about me?''

"I know that you're my wife." Sally laughed. "Oh, that means a whole hell of a lot. Es-pecially with somebody like you!"

"Stop talking like that." He was almost on top of her. His hands reached for her.

"Keep away from me!" she screamed. "Keep away!"

She held the crystal in front of her, like you would hold a crucifix to ward off a vampire. Did she think he was some sort of monster? He'd show her just what kind of monster he was.

"You'll listen to me," he growled. "And you'll do what I want."

He swatted her hand out of the way. The crystal flew from her fingers, sailing against the locked door by the bed, shat-tering into a dozen pieces. The sound reverberated around the room, much louder than it should have been. Samlooked at the shards of glass glittering on the rug. He heard another noise, a high, whistling sigh, like the sound the wind made when it found its way inside old houses. Or old hotels, Sam thought. He looked up from the splinters of glass, and saw what had made the noise.

The locked door was opening.

He looked down at his wife, but she seemed frozen, staring at the shattered crystal. The once locked door swung wider, showing a space of half a foot. Sam turned to the door. An instant later his hand was on the knob. It had seemed before as if he had been sleepwalking. Now even that was gone, and he was farther still from the world around him, as if that sleepwalking self was dreaming, and he moved through that dream within a dream.

He stood in the doorway, staring into light. He squinted, trying to make out what stood on the other side, but could see nothing more than vague, shifting shapes. Voices spoke; voices that were somehow familiar. Someone was laughing.

He heard the sound of shattering glass.

Sam blinked. He had almost blacked out there for an in-stant. He didn't know what was happening anymore. He took a deep breath. The anger was making him crazy.

"You're not going to see him anymore," he said to his wife.

"What are you talking about? Hank understands me."

How could he understand her? 'Cause they slept together a couple times? "But you're my wife!"

"What does that mean? A piece of paper that I was stupid enough to sign?"

"Stupid?" What was she saying? "How can you-"

Her face twisted into a strange, cruel smile. "You don't understand at all, do you? Hank's real! Hank's alive! He's so much better than an old man like you!"

"Old man?" Sam screamed. "I'll show you what an old man can do. You'll be sorry you ever met met!"

But she wasn't sorry, she wasn't even frightened. She was laughing, laughing at the poor old man who sometimes couldn't get it up, the poor old man who foolishly thought he could keep his young and pretty wife happy. It was a real joke.

"Stop it!" he hissed.

She laughed even harder. She tried to talk, but her laughter kept the words from making any sense. Tears of mirth rolled down her cheeks.

"I will not have you laughing at me!" he shouted. "No-body laughs at me!"

Sally found that even more hilarious. He couldn't stand it anymore. He would make her stop laughing if it was the last thing he ever did. He clamped a hand over her mouth, push-ing her head back against the mattress. She struggled under the pressure, still making muffled noises beneath his grip. Laughing noises. She squirmed. He shifted his weight, strug-gling to keep on top of her. She was small but strong. If he wasn't careful, she'd get herself free and start laughing all over again.

He grabbed her shoulder, but she wrenched it free. Then he grabbed her neck.

He let go when she stopped moving. She wasn't breathing, either.

He had killed her.

He heard the sound of breaking glass.

The other door was open, the one that had been locked before. And Sam realized he had already passed through that door once.

What had happened? Nothing seemed quite real. But he remembered the soft feel of his wife's flesh under his fingers. He looked down at his hands, the hands he had trusted, the hands with which he had killed his wife. He hadn'tmeant to- If he could only-He stood in the other doorway, looking into the light. He didn't remember walking here, either. The light still hurt his eyes, but he could see the shapes more clearly now. He thought he could distinguish three of them. Their voices were louder too, and rose and fell as if they were arguing. He couldn't make out the words yet, though, and the figures didn't seem to notice him at all.

He blinked. Here he was, standing in a doorway staring like an idiot, when he had just killed his wife.

But what should he do? Give himself up? Try to run away?

The voices murmured something in the other room. He couldn't quite make out the words. Were they talking to him?

She was going to leave him. He had heard her say it. It had been what led to his anger-that, and the taunting. It was only now, though, that he really thought about it. How dare she? Hadn't she loved him at all?

Maybe she deserved what had happened to her! She was going to leave him, and for that pantywaist salesman! She had taunted him, laughed at him, and had even brought a gun to kill him! She wasn't worth worrying about, or crying over. A woman like that was worthless!

The murmuring increased in the other room. The voices seemed to agree with him. Sam almost laughed-agree with him? Where had that come from? He stared out into the light. Why weren't his eyes getting used to it? Crazy things had happened. He was bound to have crazy thoughts. But if he could think, really think, about what had really happened, there might be a way out of here.

His wife's dead body was in the room behind him. Her lover's unconscious body was there, too. What would happen if he disappeared, and left the two of them for the police? Especially if he left the room through a locked door?

He looked back into the light. He didn't understand why this door had opened, and still couldn't quite make out what was on the other side. But now that it was here, he'd be a fool not to use it. Maybe he could lock the door behind him, as if he had never been here. Maybe then he could slip away from Greystone Bay, and start a brand new life.

He took a step into the other room.

He heard the sound of glass as it shattered.

He opened his eyes. He was sitting up in bed. Something was wrong.

A balding man, in his fifties, slightly overweight, was glar-ing at him. But it couldn't be.

Sam realized he was looking at himself.

What was happening? The last thing he remembered was leaving. He had been running away.

He looked down at a delicate hand wearing a diamond engagement ring. Sally's hand. When he flexed his fingers, Sally's hand moved.

He no longer knew what was happening. He realized now that he didn't understand anything at all. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe everything that he thought had happened in this room was a dream. But why did everything feel so real?

He stared up at the man that he should have been, the man angrily approaching the bed. Somehow, his mind was in Sal-ly's body, and he was looking through Sally's eyes.

"You're not going to see him anymore," the Sam-thing declared.

But his present form was speaking, too. The lips of this new body were moving, forming words. "What are you talk-ing about?" It was a woman's voice, almost like his wife's. "Hank understands me."

"But you're my wife!" The man that should have been him towered overhead, his hands gathered into fists the size of sledgehammers. He had never realized how massive he looked up close.

"What does that mean?" the woman's voice said, and he felt the lips move once again.

But if he was in Sally's mind, couldn't he control her mus-cles, too? Maybe he could stop what was happening, make some sense out of it. He tried to close her mouth."A piece of paper that I-" her voice stopped for a min-ute, then continued. "-was stupid enough to sign?"

The words had made the Sam-thing livid. He leaned over Sally, his face red and puffy. "Stupid? How can you-"

More words poured from Sally's mouth.

"You don't understand at all, do you?"

He had to stop this, to make his other self realize what was going on.

"Hank's real!"

He had to speak with Sally's voice, using her lips, her vocal chords. If he didn't, he knew what the other Sam would do.

"Hank's alive!"

He had to stop this now! No! I don't mean what I'm saying! He tried to make her voice work. No! he thought, I don't mean what I'm saying!

"Na-" Sally grunted. "Na-"