He listened for the halted footstep, for the creak of sagging floor boards under unaccustomed weight. He listened for the whisper of shirt fabric against jacket lining as the intruder breathed silently in the dark. He hoped for an unwary sniff, for the catch of breath in a nervous throat. But he heard only the breathing of himself and Black Thomas, only the flick of the old tom’s ear as a nocturnal mite nibbled.
So slowly it could scarcely be called a movement, Wizard eased his lashes open. He bared the tiniest slit of eyeball, too narrow a gap to glitter in the darkness. In his swath and huddle of blankets, his chin tucked to his chest, his eyes were pits of darkness. His pupils adjusted to the room.
Horror clutched at his throat.
When he had pinched out his final candle, his cardboard and blanket screen had been perfectly adjusted across the window. The blanket was a recent addition, replacing three old sheets that had previously bolstered the cardboard’s tattered morale. Wizard had stretched the blanket tight across the window frame and fastened it in place by silently pressing tacks gleaned from bulletin boards through the blanket and into the wooden sill. From outside the building, the cardboard appeared to be still wedged in place inside the cracked window where it had been taped many years before. Within, the blanket supported it firmly against the pigeon-streaked glass.
His heart foundered as he remembered the blanket had been a gift, freely given. Cassie had taught him how to be open to such gifts. He had been standing by the Goodwill drop box when the woman in the blue Chevy drove up. As she opened her car door and picked up the brown paper sack from the seat beside her, he had smilingly approached her, asking, ‘Would you like to give that to me?’ She had nodded, pushed it into his hands, and driven away.
Within the bag he had found some infant clothing, a Johnny-Jump-Up infant swing, a worn pair of hunting boots too small for him, and the neatly folded blanket. It was dark blue, of thickly woven woolly stuff, with only two worn spots. But it had been a gift. Not all gifts were given to bring joy to the receiver. At the time, he had felt the blanket had been sent to him, but not for his bed. The stretched sheets, even layered three deep, still permitted a streaking of his candlelight to escape. The blanket would seal him in, protect both his light and his darkness, and shield him from the grey city-night outside. When he had put it up, it had baffled the light, sealing in every speck and ray. Not one fingering beam of the city-night seeped in. He had slept in safety.
And awakened to terror. His cardboard had been wrenched clear of his window to lie atop the clotting puddle of blanket on the gritty floor.
The cracked window was not transparent. Rising street dust and grime had given it a milky wash. Stalactites of pigeon droppings graced it à la Jack Frost. The recent pattering of rain against it had smeared it more, making it impossible to see out. But the ghostly black-grey that passes for night in the city seeped in, making shadows that oozed from the edges of his possessions and slunk from beneath the brick and board shelves.
A smear of harsher light in the lower left corner of the window was flung from the vulturing streetlamps of South Jackson. The light striated across the cracked window, destroying even his memories of the blessed empty darkness of true night. Sweet night of star-specked skies and tree-breathed air had been replaced by a crouching greyness that emanated from the city. It came as much from the gutters and dumpsters as from headlights and streetlamps. It was more than the fogging breath of huddled winos and the grey puffing of exhaust. It was not inanimate.
Wizard kept his breathing steady, but from the skin in he trembled. His heart longed to gallop, his lungs screamed for more oxygen, faster. He smothered them, choking on fear, and tried to think.
It was grey. And now that he so desperately needed to recall everything he had ever known about it, he could remember nothing. Nothing. Except…Mir. A name, he wondered, and chased the wonder away. No time for it. All he could do right now was to defend. But at least it thought he was sleeping. He reined his power back, risking no contact. It wanted him. He didn’t move. If he trembled, if he flinched, if his power just brushed it, it would suck at him. It would drag him from his bed to the window. It believed he still slept; he felt its tenuous probings. It sought to find his dreams and slip in the unguarded back door of his mind. Not again. Like the shock of a bright flashlight in the eyes, an unbidden memory came to him. Once it had forced him to come to it. It had never forgotten its triumph over him. But Wizard had. He could not keep the memory, let the force of the recollection assault him. He couldn’t let it weaken him. If he harked to that memory, it would sense his awareness. Without a reason to hover and sneak and wait, it would leap in and fasten itself to him. Right now, it hunted his dreams.
It pressed against the cracked window pane. He saw the glass bend with its weight, heard a slight scratch as the rough edges of the crack grated against each other. His first night in this room, he had pressed the edges of the glass back into smooth alignment. Now he saw lengthening cracks race across the glass to meet the dried putty in the frame with a final click. The tip of the broken wedge of glass began to veer slowly in. It separated from the window, swinging on the putty edge like a hinge, pointing at him like an accusing finger.
Wizard held himself in check. He had a chance, if he kept his defences tight. Let it think he slept. Let it pray and peer for the easy way into him. He could wait it out. He poised his power, waiting for it to extend itself into the room. Let it think he was defenceless; he was ready for it.
Black Thomas betrayed him. Some questing tendrils of the Grey’s power must have brushed his feline senses. From a curled ball of damp fur and warmth, the cat catapulted into panic. His hind legs and razor claws flashed down Wizard’s bony back. The black tom bounded from the mattress to crouch in awful fury between Wizard and the thing at the window. Deep growls scraped from Black Thomas’s throat as his tail lashed defensively. He did not know what threatened him, but he defied it.
‘Thomas!’ Wizard warned, too late. The thing outside the window bellied and gusted in its power, delighted at the cat’s foolish bravery and Wizard’s wakefulness. Wizard flung up his power as he heard the gathering forces race down the long alley beneath his window and bellow through the broken pane. Wizard held his position, but poor Thomas could not. It was too much for any cat. He broached Wizard’s defences, springing out from that protection into the heart of the oncoming malice. In terror he flung himself toward the connecting door and the other room. That way had always been escape, but now escape was the bait in the trap. Mir roared menacingly into the room. A wedge of glass leaped from the broken window. It sliced the foot off the fleeing tom’s right hind leg as easily as a knife slices butter.
The moment was frozen and offered to Wizard. He stared at the slicing glass falling intact to the floor. The small black foot bounded and tumbled to a stop. It twitched on the floor like a witchery charm. Yowling terror and spraying blood, Black Thomas fled to the other room and down the fire escape. Impulsively Wizard reached after him. He sealed off the pumping veins in the stump of the leg as the cat ran. But grey Mir had known he would reach after the cat. With a roaring of triumphant mirth, it fell on him.
It closed on him like a fist. Wizard balled himself into a tiny hard nut in its grasp. It might hold him, but it would not have him.
The winds of eternity screamed past his soul. Wizard shivered, then shuddered in their chill. They forced his eyes open, though he had not closed them. Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes, streaking into his hairline. He was peering down through a hole in the sky. In a barnyard, three boys were killing chickens. He fell into them.
The dark-haired boy holding the chicken’s feet did not look at what they were doing. He looked away from the bird, wincing each time the axe bit into the chopping block beneath the bird’s outstretched neck. He flung the beheaded body from him, his lips pinched in a tight white line. Then he stooped down to the gunnysack he held shut with one foot. He reached into the struggling bag to extract another squawking victim. He drew out a black and gleaming rooster. He knew this one. He had been a multicoloured chick, with dark stripes on his head and wings. The dark-haired boy remembered a morning when he went out to feed the stock, and discovered that this chick and one other