Sock

"Try it on, Pete!" Jake urged. "I dare ya!" He elbowed Jimmy Watson to let him in on the private joke.

As for Pete, he seemed oblivious to the teasing. He held the cold, wet sock at eye level and examined it closely. They had found it in the gutter, saved from falling through the grate of the storm drain by a jumbled, twisted collection of weeds, mud, and cigarette butts. It could have been black or possibly dark brown. It was hard to tell through the thick, caked-on coating of dirt. There was a pattern on the sock. It looked like small squares, no, maybe there were circles.

The three boys had been walking single file along the curb enjoying the return of the sunshine. The winter had been the wettest in Pete's memory. It seemed as though the harsh back-to-back March storms would last forever, and when you're twelve, two weeks cooped up in the house is a very long time. That's two weeks of not riding your bike, two weeks of not playing ball in the park, two weeks of not even being able to shoot the breeze with your friends away from the prying ears of adults. But the sun had finally broken through--at least for a little while--giving the boys a chance to stretch their legs and go out of doors, the natural place for boys to be.

Pete tore his eyes from the sock and looked over at his friends. He still remembered the time Jake dared him to put a marble up his nose. It took the doctor an hour to get it out and he'd been on restriction for two weeks. Pete wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to stick this wet, you-don't-know-where-the-heck-it's-been sock on his foot.

But for some reason he couldn't put it down, either. There was just something about it, something special.... He could feel it in the tips of his fingers that gingerly held the smooth, silky material. In spite of the winter torrent that had left it wet and dirty, the sock felt warm, inviting. Pete grasped the sock and squeezed the remaining water out of it. A pincer bug frantically escaped from between his fingers and dropped to the ground.

Jake's eyes lit up in anticipation. He glanced conspiratorially at Jimmy. "You going to put it on?" he asked again. Pete was his friend, but let's face it, he wasn't too bright. He watched with expectancy as Pete shook the last of the water from the sock.

"Yeah, I'm going to put it on," he announced, "but not until my Mom washes it!" With a flourish he stuffed the sock into his sweatshirt pocket.

Jake looked disappointed, his moment of glee had eluded him, but he was pragmatic. With a shrug, he wondered if the kid was finally smarting up. "Come on," he said, suddenly bored with the whole thing, "let's go to my house and shoot a few hoops before dark."

The three boys headed up Stony Glen Drive, the storm drain and the sock forgotten. Pete had meant to throw it back into the gutter, but the invitation to play basketball had erased that thought from his adolescent mind. The sock lay forgotten in the depths of his pocket.

For Pete, basketball was a dirty game. When you're the shortest and the lamest, as Jake would point out, you try to make up for it by being the most aggressive, but being aggressive had its drawbacks--you spent a lot of time being knocked on your butt. And that's where he found himself several times during the next hour. Twice he had fallen into the flowerbed behind the hoop, and by the time he got home he was a mess.

"Don't you dare walk on my entry-way tile, Peter Thompson!" his mother yelled from the kitchen. She had heard him open the front door and caught him before he could place one grimy foot on the new tile his father had laid the previous summer. "You go around back and come in through the garage. And take off those clothes and put them in the hamper next to the washer."

Pete did as he was told and by the time he entered the house, he had stripped to his underwear. "I'm going to take a shower, Mom," he said, heading up the stairway that led to his room.

"Okay, sweetie," she replied. "Dinner will ready in about an hour. Daddy called. He has to work late again tonight. We'll eat and watch a little T.V., okay?"

"Okay, Mom," he yelled as he ran up the stairs.

It was another ordinary Sunday night at the Thompson house. His mother folded clothes from the dryer while Pete, attired in his flannel pajamas, struggled to complete his homework. Pete hated math more than anything, which was saying a lot since he didn't like school much at all. It took him an entire weekend to finish an assignment Jake Gellender finished on the bus coming home.

A little before 9:00 PM, Pete, frustrated by the mysteries of mathematics, retreated to his bedroom to seek solace in the latest Spiderman comic book before his mother made him turn off the light. Though his parents didn't approve of his reading material, Pete loved Spiderman more than anything. How he wished he had his powers, his bravery! Every night before he went to sleep, Pete prayed to God to let him someday be like Spidy.

Half way through the comic book, Pete heard his father come home, tired and complaining about the heat. The heating bill was a major bone of contention in the Thompson household. "Damn it, Flora!" his father complained as he turned down the thermostat. "You trying to turn this place into a sauna?"

A few minutes later his mother entered his room and plopped a large bundle of freshly washed clothes on top of his dresser. "I swear, Pete, I've never had a son who could dirty clothes like you," she said.

"I'm the only son you've ever had, Mom," he reminded her.

She turned and gave him that "don't sass me look" that quickly melted to a smile. She went to the bed and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Your father will be up to tuck you in. You can read until then, but then its lights off, mister. Understand?"

"Sure, Mom," he replied.

Moments later his father poked his head into the room, still dressed in his work clothes. "How's it going, sport?" he asked.

"Fine, Dad," he replied with a smile. His father had called him sport for as long as he could remember. Sometimes he wondered if he'd forgotten his name.

"Did you finish your homework?"

"Yeah, I finished it."

His father sat beside him and gently took the comic book from Pete's hands. He placed it on the bed stand and kissed his son on the forehead. Pete could smell cigarette smoke on his breath. His father supposedly quit smoking months ago; his mother had insisted on it. Well, he didn't smoke around the house anymore, but like his mother turning up the heat once his father left for work, Pete was sure there was a pack of Marlboro Lights somewhere in his life.

"Time to go to sleep, sport. Okay?"

"Okay, Dad."

His father reached over and turned off the reading lamp, tousled his son's hair for good measure and left the room, leaving the hall light on until his son fell asleep. Pete hadn't been afraid of the dark since the fourth grade, but he never told his parents. The light in the hallway was a little bit of childhood Pete wasn't quite ready to let go of....

****

When Peter Thompson woke in the middle of the night he was cold. Actually, it was his feet that were cold. He looked over at his dresser sitting dimly across the room. The bottom right drawer was what his mother called "the extra sock drawer". It was where she kept all the orphaned socks that had either lost their partners to holes or had mysteriously disappeared from the dryer. Pete liked to imagine that the dryer was some sort of time machine that occasionally jettisoned one of his socks into the future. Pete's mother would never throw away a sock just because it had lost its mate. They all went into the extra sock drawer to be used on occasions just like this--cold feet in the middle of the night.

The problem was one of logistics. In order to get the socks, he would have to run across the cold hardwood floor to the dresser and back without freezing his toes off. He had performed this maneuver often in the past, each time scolding himself that he should have put on a pair before he went to sleep. But since his feet were never cold at bedtime, the socks always remained forgotten in their drawer.

It was no use fighting it. Cold feet always kept him awake; he needed the socks. He didn't dare turn on his light. His mother, who he swore never slept, would be on him like a hawk scolding him back to bed. Pete threw back his covers and dashed through the darkness to the dresser. He slid open the drawer, randomly grabbed two orphans, closed the drawer and dashed back to the inviting warmth of his bed. Mission accomplished, Spiderman!

Pete slipped on the socks and enjoyed the warmth that was slowly returning to his feet. He couldn't see them in the darkness, of course, but the sock on his right foot that grabbed his attention. He spent a few seconds analyzing the feeling. He felt as if it his foot was swathed in luxury, the most comfortable, heavenly feeling he had ever experienced in his young life.

Moments later, as he drifted off to sleep, he thought how wonderful it would be to have an entire suit of clothes made out of the sock's exquisite material...

...Sharon Buckley was looking at him, not just looking his direction while waiting for him to embarrass himself once again in math class, she was looking at him. Her cool blue eyes bored into his. The inviting mounds on her chest, which had started to appear during the fifth grade, rose and fell with every breath. In his dream, he felt light-headed, giddy. Sharon smiled radiantly, and from across the aisle and two seats back she did the most extraordinary thing; right there in math class, oblivious to everyone but him, she began slowly to unbutton her pink satin blouse...

Pete awoke, bathed in sweat, his head spinning. He looked over his still silent alarm clock. 6:40 AM, it said. He pulled back the covers and sat at the side of the bed trying to clear his thoughts. He didn't think he was sick, but when he stood his underpants seemed to stick to his body, pulling painfully against his skin. Had he wet himself in the middle of the night? No, that wasn't it. It was something else. A wisp of his dream tugged at him, and he remembered....

Feeling flush, Pete hurried to his bathroom and removed his clothes, hoping a hot shower would wash away the dream. He stood in front of the tub, naked except for his feet, and looked down. On his left foot was a brown dress sock, on his right....

Pete stared in amazement, his nakedness, his erotic dream, and the chill of the morning forgotten. On his right foot was the sock, the one from the storm drain. How? His mother must have found it, he supposed, tucked away in the bowels of his sweatshirt pocket. She had washed it and tucked it away with the other lonely souls. The sock was definitely black. He wiggled his toes and the small circles embedded on its silky surface rolled up and down like small white sea birds riding on crest of the ocean.

Pete turned on the shower and while he waited for the water to warm, sat on the toilet seat and removed his socks, first the brown one and then reluctantly, oh so very reluctantly, the other. When his right foot emerged into the cool morning air it started to cramp. Pete dropped the sock to the tile floor and gingerly rubbed his throbbing arch.

"Pete, are you all right?" his mother asked through the bathroom door. It wasn't like her son to get out of bed without being prodded.

Pete stared at the door, momentarily at a loss for words. He could hear the concern in her voice, but he felt strangely detached. "I'm fine, mom," he said at last. "I just woke up a little early, that's all."

His mother hesitated. Did she dare believe such a simple explanation? Perhaps he's starting to grow up, she told herself with a shrug. "Well, come down to breakfast when you're finished, honey," she said.

Pete continued to stare. "All right, mom," he said. He gave the sock one last glance and jumped into the shower. The warm water refreshed him, and washed away the night. Later, after he had finished dressing, he returned to the bathroom to toss his soiled clothes into the hamper where his mother would surely have them cleaned and neatly folded by the time he returned from school.

As he picked up the bundle, he felt his hand brush against the unmistakable fabric of the sock. He dropped the clothes and held the sock eye level. In the clear morning light he discovered that the sock's design were not circles at all. They were triangles. Perfect angles of remarkable beauty. Perfect, he thought. How so very perfect.

Throw the sock away, a thought warned him. After all, clean or not, you found the nasty thing in the gutter! Who knew who had worn it or where it had been? But instead of hiding it in the wastebasket along with his discarded math homework, Pete slid it hungrily on his right foot. He closed his eyes and sighed. "It is as it should be," he heard himself whisper.

Pete went to his dresser and quickly selected a matched pair of white socks and slipped them on his feet, protectively covering his beloved sock. Once in place he put on his Nikes and headed downstairs for breakfast with the growing feeling that this would be a special day.

Yes, a very special day.
****
"Peter Thompson?" Pete's math teacher, Mr. Biggs, called out. He was a funny looking man with a flat top haircut and a bow tie, a man stuck in some sort of time warp.

"Peter Thompson?" he asked again.

Pete was staring out the window, chin cupped in his hand, lost in his own world. When the rest of the class started to giggle, he looked around to see what the joke was. To his dismay, the joke was him.

"Are you with us today, Mr. Thompson, or have you gone off to some desert island?" Mr. Biggs asked.

"Yeah, more like Gilligan's Island!" Greg Miller cracked from the back of the room. "How's the professor, Pete?"

The entire class broke up laughing. Pete turned beet red. "I'm here, Mr. Biggs," he said quietly.

Mr. Biggs stared at him a moment longer and shook his head. "Andy Vincente?" he called out, continuing down the roster.

In spite of his morning revelation, it had all the makings of another depressing day at Westfield Middle School. But Pete was to soon discover that this day would be far from normal. It began with a surprise math quiz.

When Mr. Biggs announced the test, Pete's his heart sank. It wasn't as if he was dumb. If given enough paper and enough time, he could figure out his math problems, but fractions--they were just beyond him. He looked around the room nervously, sure that everyone could see his panic. His eyes eventually fell on the lovely but aloof Sharon Buckley, the object of his adolescent desire and the reinforcement that, so far, his life had been a dismal failure.

But to his surprise, instead of her normal reaction to him, a general ignoring of his existence altogether, Sharon was looking back at him. Her bright blue eyes were wide, her mouth pursed as if she were about to speak to him from across the rows that separated their desks. The look on her face unsettled him, but before Pete could analyze it, Mr. Biggs announced that the test was about to begin.

Pete reluctantly tore his eyes away from Sharon and stared blankly at the quiz sheet, his worst fears confirmed. Fractions. "Great!" he muttered under his breath. "Another "F" for my father to yell at me about!"

"Ten minutes, people," Biggs announced. "Complete as many was you can, and remember neatness counts!"

Pete gawked at the series of utterly mysterious problems. For a while he could do nothing except twirl his pencil between his nervous fingers, feeling flustered and confused. But as he stared helplessly at the page something odd occurred: patterns began to emerge within the numbers. Pete's eyes widened, his mouth fell open in disbelief. Why hadn't he seen them before? If you took this number and this number and added them together....

Pete's pencil slipped through his fingers, clanging noisily on the desk. For the first time the fractions seemed understandable. No, that wasn't right. They were more than understandable; they were ridiculously simple! He picked up the pencil and even though he only had a little more than a minute left, he dashed through the test with ease.

The rest of the hour was equally unbelievable. Why was he wasting his time and intellect on this crap? And Mr. Biggs? He was nothing but an ignorant pig! Pete could tell at a glance that the man knew nothing about real mathematics, or about the things that held the fabric of the universe together. By the time the bell rang, Pete Thompson was seething. No wonder he hadn't been doing well in school!

He stood from his desk and stopped. Sharon Buckley was standing in front of him. She was hugging her schoolbooks and looking at him apprehensively.

"Hello, Peter," she said timidly. It was the first time Pete ever remembered her speaking to him.

"Hello, Sharon," he replied, feeling eerily confident. The stammer he assumed would come from his mouth hadn't materialized.

"Peter, I'm having a party at my house on Friday. I was wondering if you would come?"

Party? You're inviting me to a party? That was what he wanted to ask her, but instead, he found himself saying something very different. "I'm busy Friday, Sharon. Too bad you didn't invite me earlier."

Pete's mind screamed at him. "What are you saying, you idiot!"

“Oh I'm sorry, Peter, please forgive me!" Sharon said with panic in her voice. "I meant to invite you earlier, I truly did!"

Pete was shocked to see tears forming in her eyes. She was extremely distressed, almost on the verge of hysteria.

"You must come!" she implored. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Must!" she repeated.

He looked at her through liberated eyes. How pathetic she was! Had he really been in love with this? Had she no pride? "I'll think about it, Sharon," he said with disdain. "I'll let you know."

"Oh thank you, Peter!" she said with relief "Thank you!"

That's right! Grovel, bitch, he said to himself. He gave her a contemptuous sneer and strolled confidently to his next class. As he passed his classmates congregated in the hallway, conversations stopped mid-sentence, lockers stood half opened, books dropped to the floor. They all stopped to watch him pass. The boys looked at him with sudden awe, and the girls--they had thoughts most had never even imagined before, visions of acts they only barely understood. There was something about Peter Thompson, something they could only whisper.

Pete's second period class was History. There, he led the class in a lively discussion, displaying an amazing knowledge of cultures that astounded his teacher, Mrs. Grasse. It was so wonderful to have a prodigy in her class! At the end of the hour she thanked Peter profusely and hoped he might be free later to discuss tomorrow's lesson.

Next, came gym. It was the first day of intramural basketball. Pete had regretted this day because he knew, as usual, he would be chosen last. The humiliation was almost too much to bear. But shortly after they lined up to play, Mr. Mangin suggested that Pete be named team captain, replacing a shocked Greg Miller. To Greg's dismay the other boys all agreed it was a good idea. The selection of Pete Thompson seemed a perfectly, logical choice, a choice no one would regret. Pete's performance, of course, was brilliant, playing the game with a perfect combination of ability, ferocity and finesse. Mr. Mangin went home that night positive that Pete Thompson would some day make it to the NBA.

After the game, Pete sat in front of his locker, enjoying the afterglow of his play. He spent a few minutes fielding the congratulations of the other boys, who were thrilled to be in the presence of a player of his ability. Eventually, they wandered off to the showers leaving Pete to his thoughts.

He removed his gym shoes and socks, revealing his beloved sock underneath. It was time to take it off, shower and get ready for the rest of this wonderful day. He examined the fabric closely. What he thought were triangles were not triangles at all. It was some sort of design, circles with lines through them. As he watched the design started to slowly move counterclockwise around the sock. Pete was mesmerized. The design gained speed, whirling against the sock's solid black background.

"How beautiful," he whispered.

It stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Pete stared for a moment longer, feeling let down, then reached to remove the sock.

"Don't!" a voice whispered in his mind. It was a harsh voice, evil. A voice that hinted of clogged sewers and a filthy death.

It would be ridiculous to shower with one sock on, Pete told himself, but when his trembling fingers touched the sock, pain streaked up his leg like a lightening bolt ending at his groin. Pete doubled over in agony, his watering eyes darting to the sock. He had only pulled it down an inch, but he didn't like what he saw. His ankle was raw as if he had been skinned. Veins stood out like the highways on a color road map.

"Pull me up, God damn it!" the voice demanded.

He opened his mouth but the scream he hoped would break the spell of pain refused to come. He could hear the other boys in the shower, talking loudly, laughing, ignorant of his anguish. Their voices sounded as if they were miles and miles away.

"Pull me up, fool! Now!"

With the last of his strength, Pete pulled up the sock. His leg felt as if it were on fire, but once the sock was in place, the pain vanished. Pete fell back to the bench, panting with relief when another sensation came, traveling up his ankle like the sun escaping from a storm cloud. Joy, euphoria, overtook him. It came in waves, erasing the memory of the pain, leaving him on the brink of ecstasy.

"I am meant to be!" he muttered to himself. "It was meant to be!"

"Hey, dickweed," a voice said.

Pete opened his eyes and saw Greg Miller staring at him. Greg was everything Pete Thompson was not. He had golden blond hair and striking blue eyes. His body was lean and muscled. He stood a full head taller than Pete, and played with the eighth graders on the Westfield Middle School basketball team.

"What's wrong, dickweed? Still stuck on Gilligan's Island?"

"Leave me alone, Greg," Pete said slowly. "I'm warning you!"

Greg waved his arms and looked around. "Oh! Oh! Someone protect me! The wimp is warning me!" He stopped and turned a complete circle. "Gee whiz, there's no one here to protect you, dickweed. It's just you and me."

Pete knew he should be scared out of his mind, but he felt strangely detached. As the bully ranted, he was amazed to see his right foot begin to rise--amazed because he was certain his brain was not giving the command.

It was the sock.

One moment, Greg Miller was standing in front of him, his face red with anger, the next moment Pete saw his leg lash out at Greg's crotch and kicked him ferociously. Greg gasped as if the air had been sucked out of him. He hit the ground and began to roll on the floor, his face a twisted mask of pain.

Pete watched him silently while calmly putting on his clothes. "The next time you will die," he said without a hint of emotion.

Greg looked up at Pete and saw something that he would remember the rest of his life. The whites of Pete's eyes had disappeared, replaced by black so total it was like staring into the depths of hell. For a second moment Greg was certain he would die. His bladder let go. He began to babble for mercy. But instead of killing him, Pete slowly stood and walked away, leaving Greg alone on the cold locker room floor.

The realization that he would live made the pain in Greg Miller's groin seem unimportant. He began to weep, and when the rest of the boys came out of the shower that was where they found him, lying in a pool of his own urine, refusing to talk to anyone.

There were now two Pete Thompsons. One walked to his science class reveling in his newly found greatness, while the other suffered from the growing realization that he was skidding down a path of evil. For a while he hoped that he could have the best of both worlds; be a whiz at math, play basketball with skill and courage, win the heart of Sharon Buckley, but he suspected it wouldn't be that simple. The sock wanted more, needed more than the simple yearnings of a twelve-year-old boy, and would do anything to get it. Pete knew that he was slowly losing control. Something in the sock he had so innocently found in the storm drain was taking over. And if he didn't do something about it soon, the old Pete would be gone forever.

What to do? What to do? Ah, that was the awful question. A question that had a ridiculously simple but dangerous answer--remove the sock. Did he dare? He remembered the agony in the locker room. What would happen if he summoned the courage to go all the way? If he ripped off the sock, would he also rip the flesh from his bones? Would freedom from the sock mean a life spent without his right foot?

"Oh, but you don't want to remove the sock, Pete!" the sock whispered in his ear. "I will show you things. I will help you achieve things you could never imagine! You will have it all, Pete. You will be the best! The brightest! The leader! The God!"

"NO!" Pete screamed out. He looked around, embarrassed. He was in his classroom, certain he was about to be laughed at again. But his classmates were not laughing. They were staring at him, adoring smiles frozen on their faces.

"Yes, Pete? Did I do something wrong?" his teacher, Mr. Doan, asked nervously. Anxiety was etched on his face. Anxiety and something else. Fear. "I did it just as you instructed, I swear. Do you know what you have done? It's gold son! Real gold! Do you know how many men have dreamt of this throughout the ages? Now, just tell me the last part of the formula and we'll be rich! Rich!"

But Pete wasn't listening. For a moment the spell that entwined him lifted. His head was fuzzy with a million thoughts, evil voices chattering in his brain. He looked into the anxious eyes of his classmates. Their gaze was full of love and admiration, but when Pete looked closer he saw something else: blank, cold loyalty. The eyes of the Nazis as they did the bidding of their fuehrer. The crazed mind of a serial killer. He saw the spirit of death and destruction. He saw the real face behind the sock.

With the last of courage and humanity left in him, Pete leaped from his seat and bolted from the room, running in blind panic down the echoing hallway, bursting out the side door of Westfield Middle School and into the cloudy day. Behind him he could hear Mr. Doan shouting for the rest of the formula. "Rich!" he babbled. "We'll be rich!"

Pete, the real Pete, didn't care about riches or power. For even with his faults, he knew deep inside his life was good; that he was loved, that he had place in that frightening adventure that is the future. But on this day felt as if his soul was being torn from his being. Death and madness was stalking him.

It was starting to rain lightly, but he didn't care. He ran and ran through the wet streets of the town hoping to find redemption.

"Go Back! Your destiny awaits you!" the sock echoed in his ears. Renewed agony flared up his leg.

Pete struggled to ignore the voice and the pain, but it was becoming harder and harder. If greatness was his destiny, why couldn't he just accept it? It would be so easy to give in for he had been chosen. Chosen by the sock. Given a chance never before offered to miserable mankind. He would become like God himself.

"Stop it Pete!" he screamed to himself. "Don't you listen! Don't you listen!"

He found himself near the city park and a desperate idea came to him. He knew what he had to do, if God granted him the courage to do it. The old Pete was dying and in a very short time would be gone forever. If he were to save himself, it had to be now. Lightening flashed as if to punctuate the point, and the rain turned into a howling downpour.

In the rear of the park, surrounded by a ten-foot high chain-link fence, was the entrance to Westfield's central storm sewer. It was here that the town's storm water was gathered before it was sent south of town to empty into the Green River. The huge drain was ten feet in diameter, and a raging current was being sucked into its dark depths.

Pete reached the fence and started to climb. Hail the size of marbles pelted his face. Half way up his feet betrayed him, and he slipped on the slick metal links. He fell to the ground with a grunt, but he was determined not to be defeated. He shot to his feet and with a single purpose climbed again, trying to blot all other thoughts from his mind. He had to be strong. He had to be brave and bold--like his beloved Spiderman.

But the sock refused to let him. As he climbed the fence he had a vision of a mathematical formula that could turn water into gasoline. As his leg went over the top he realized that he knew how to make nuclear waste inert. On the downward climb his mind designed an engine that could carry man to the stars and beyond.

"Stay strong, Pete! Don't listen! It lies! It lies!"

He fell to the ground panting--not out of physical exhaustion, but of mental overload--landing on the cement walkway that bordered the drain. Doubts ripped at him. Should he give in? He could use his knowledge to help mankind, he was certain!

"Power! You will have power!" the sock crowed.

"No, Pete! You will have power, but it will be the power to enslave not help!"

Pete grabbed his head and screamed. "God damn it! Leave me alone!"

To his surprise the voices stilled, and for the first time since his midnight raid to the sock drawer, his mind was clear. He looked down at his Nikes. As his shaking hand reached for the shoestring, his right foot began to throb in anticipation. Visions of Sharon Buckley once again came into his head. She was doing things, such delicious things.... Oh, God!

"No!" he screamed, shaking his head clear once again.

He fumbled with the shoelace but managed to untie it. The shoe seemed to be shrinking on his foot, getting tighter and tighter as it protected its silken master from harm. Pete thought he would pass out from the pain. With great effort he moved his left foot behind his right and began to pry off the shoe at the heal. The shoe grew tighter still. Pete pushed at the shoe, his face turning crimson with the strain. Waves of agony rolled up his leg, but he refused to let go. One way or another it had to end here. At last the shoe relented, flying off his foot, skittering across the walkway and falling over the embankment and into the torrent below.

Pete looked down at the sock, his vision blurred by pain and the raindrops splattering on his face. The designs embroidered on its surface were spinning, spinning. He began to feel woozy as the sock wove its hypnotic spell. He grabbed drunkenly at the sock. When he touched it a bolt of electricity jumped up his arm leaving it numb.

Pete pulled back, tears of pain mixing with his rain-soaked cheeks. His mind began to drift again and he knew he would soon be gone forever. He fell back to the ground and gathered the last of his remaining strength. The sock teased him; alternating pulses of blinding agony and pure ecstasy, flying over his body in waves, back and forth until he thought he would go mad.

"Sharon!" he muttered.

The part of Peter Thompson, the one that knew his fate in life was to be bad at math and basketball, took charge one last time. Like a person jolted back from death, Pete shot up and with both hands grabbed at the sock, and with his last remaining ounce of strength, Pete tore off the sock and hurled it into the boiling water.

Pete collapsed on the walkway, and as he lost consciousness, his last thought was that his foot was on fire, blazing like a road flare, or the eternal furnace of hell....

The sock tumbled into the water like a power line blasted by lightening. Sparks flew and smoke rose. The air filled with the pungent smell of ozone. But after a few seconds it was over. The sock now heavy with moisture, sank below the surface and drifted toward the drain where it entered the watery cave and disappeared.


Pete's eyes fluttered open. It had stopped raining. The sky was dark with the coming evening. For a few seconds he didn't know where he was. He turned his head one way, then the other. He was soaking wet and there was something else-- "Your foot is gone," his mind told him. It must be true. He had no feeling done there, only cold and numbness, but he was afraid to look. When he finally summoned his courage, he saw his bare foot, pale and cold, but in one piece.

Pete moaned with relief and peered over the side of the churning drainage ditch. The sock was gone. Where? Was it gone forever? Or would it do its evil to someone else, somewhere else?

Pete managed to stand and looked down at his bare foot. How would he ever explain to his mother how he had lost one shoe? With a shrug he hobbled to the fence and began to climb. The wire mesh hurt, but next to the torture inflected by the sock, it was nothing. He slowly limped home, realizing with a smile that he could no longer remember how to add and subtract fractions much less the grand inventions that could save or enslave mankind. He wondered, would Sharon Buckley still want him at her party?

And with a sigh, he reminded himself that it really didn't matter.

She Stares

Joe Flick's right index finger searched down the page of the tattered history book until it finally found the paragraph he was searching for. "Here it is," he announced excitedly.

"'The legend of the Lady in White is an often told story in the history of Washington Township,'" he quoted. "'It is said that she died in a tragic automobile accident on Niles Canyon Road and every year on February 17, the anniversary of her death, she desperately tries to find a ride back to the safety of town.'"

Joe looked up and smiled. "You were right about the date, Matt!"

"All right!" Ernie Sanchez exclaimed, impressed by their timing.

"I'll tell you what we've got to do," Matthew Trant said, intently studying the book over Joe's shoulder. "We've got to keep our eyes on her."

"What you mean 'keep our eyes on her',?" Ernie asked.

"Sssh!" the librarian called to them. She had been watching the three young men ever since they entered the nearly deserted library. Looking for a history book, were they? On a Saturday afternoon? Like hell, they were! They were taggers more than likely, just waiting for her to turn her head so they could scribble all over her freshly-painted walls!

Matthew ignored the librarian's glare but did lower his voice. "It says here that the Lady in White always gets into the back seat of the car, but somewhere between the place the driver picks her up and the end of the canyon, she always disappears."

"So?" Ernie asked blankly.

"No one ever sees her disappear. It's the same story, over and over. It happens when you take your eyes off of her. So we don't, you see? Once we get her in the car, we watch her like a hawk, and we capture her!"

Joe smirked.

"What's so funny?" Matthew asked. "It's what we want, isn't it? Haven't we talked about this since we were kids?"

"You've been talking about it since we were kids," Joe pointed out. "Anyway, it sure sounds weird," Joe replied. "I mean, like sure, seeing a real ghost is one thing, and if we have the balls to do it, actually getting her into the car is another. But capturing her? You really think we're going to capture her? And if we do, what do you plan on doing with her?"

"Well, trying to get laid by a ghost is definitely out of the question," Ernie observed with a shiver.

"Come on, dummies!" Matthew insisted. "Think about it! Everyone who's picked her up has lost her. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life thinking about the ghost that got away."

"This sounds more like a fishing trip than a ghost hunt," Joe said dryly.

"Call it what you want, but if we do get lucky and find the Lady in White, I want to keep her as long as possible."

Matthew checked his watch. "It's about an hour before sunset. Let's get something to eat and make plans."

The Lady in White, also known as the White Lady or The White Witch is an irresistible legend but also an odd one. The three young men didn't realize it, but the tale of a young woman picked up on a rural road on the anniversary of her death, only to disappear in the shocked driver's back seat, was a story told in just about every state in the Union. It was the McDonalds of ghost stories, franchised to dozens of towns, told around countless campfires throughout the land. Yet, the Fremont, California, version of the story was apparently the real thing, because when Matthew Trant first heard the story, it was from someone who had actually seen her.

Matthew was just eight at the time, but he remembered it like it was yesterday. He was watching T.V. when his Uncle Bill came to his house on Mento Drive one rainy February night. He was white as a sheet, babbling to Matthew's father about a woman he and his friend Jimmy Seishas had picked up out on Niles Canyon Road.

"She was just standing out there dressed up in this frilly white dress like she was going to a party. It was colder than witch's tit out there, but she had no coat, no nothing. We pulled over to help. She said she needed to get home right away. She got in the back of Jimmy's Ford without so much as a shiver. We talked a bit, though she didn't seem too anxious to tell us how she got out there alone.

"I felt kinda embarrassed staring at her. I figured she'd refused some guy and he had dumped her. So I turned my attention to the road for a minute. When I looked
back... ."

"What?" Matthew's father asked, staring at his younger brother with disbelief.

"She was gone," Bill replied hoarsely.

"She got out of the car?"

"Hell, no! Jimmy's got a lead foot, you know that. No way she got out! She was just--gone... ."

Uncle Bill never talked about that night again, even years later when Matthew was in his teens. When Matthew would ask, he would just shake his head and refuse to acknowledge that the night had even happened.

But then last August Uncle Bill got transferred to Texas, and Matthew spent his uncle's last weekend in the Bay Area helping him load the U-Haul for the long trip back. Late Sunday afternoon, when everyone was tired out from the packing, Bill offered his underage nephew a beer and volunteered one last piece of information about the Lady in White.

He was standing at the rear doorway of the truck, leaning against its frame, looking thoughtfully at the sunset when he said it. "She stares," he said.

"Who stares, Uncle Bill?" Matthew asked from his resting place at the bottom of the ramp.

"The Lady in White. You remember, don't you? It's the one thing I can't forget from that night, Matty. The real reason I took my eyes off of her and turned forward was because she was staring at me, and I swear... ." He stopped for a second his lips quivering as if they were resisting releasing the words.

"Swear what, Uncle Bill?" Matthew asked.

"Her eyes. They were like glass marbles glowing in the night, getting bigger, looking into mine like she knew everything I'd ever done."

"Then she disappeared?"

"Yeah, she disappeared. So I guess I'll never know what she saw."

Matthew swore that the next time February rolled around, he'd go out and try to discover what the Lady in White was staring at, but as fate would have it, he almost missed the date.

It was his senior year at Mission High, and there were lots of things to do, lots of plans to be made. The prom was only two months away, and there was college to think about. Then there was his girlfriend, Haley, who took up a lot of his time and interest. It wasn't until one dull, winter Saturday when she was shopping for a prom dress, and he decided to spend the day with his friends that he remembered Uncle Bill's story about the Lady in White.

"Can we borrow your mother's Taurus?" Matthew asked Joe. They were sitting in the Burger King on Mowry Avenue tossing around ideas for the night ahead.

"I guess so, but why do you want to drive around in that? It's an old lady's car."

"It's a Ford. My Uncle Bill was in a Ford that night, an old white Galaxy 500. I saw it from the living room window."

"You're saying that the Lady in White prefers Fords?" Ernie asked incredulously.

"I don't know what she prefers," Matthew replied, ignoring the taunt. "I just want everything to be as close to the way it was when Uncle Bill found her."

"Sure, no problem," Joe said with a shrug. "Mom thinks my Mustang's a death-trap anyway."

"Good," Matthew nodded, munching on a french fry.

"One thing, though," Joe added. "I've got to drive."

"That's okay with me," Matthew replied. "I'm sitting in the back with her!"


Sunset comes early in February, especially when the Bay Area sky is overcast and the smell of rain is thick in the air. After topping off the Taurus, the three boys pulled out of the Chevron station and headed purposely up Mission Boulevard toward the mouth of the canyon.

Niles Canyon Road is a narrow gorge roughly six miles long that follows the path of Alameda Creek as it meanders its way into the San Francisco Bay. Train tracks also follow the path, crossing the road in several places over thick, graffiti-scared cement bridges.

The road is known primarily as alternate route commuters can take to enter the city of Fremont from the east. Few realize that the canyon has enjoyed a colorful past. In the mid-1800's it was infested with bandits who fed on travelers brave enough to navigate the chasm. Early in the twentieth century, the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company built a movie studio in the little town of Niles at the base of the road and used the canyon's rolling hills and rocky precipices to film hundreds of early westerns.

Today the creek is still a place for fishing, swimming and drinking beer, but sadly its place in history is mostly forgotten. It is, for the most part, just another overused country road, except for one thing: dark, windy Niles Canyon Road can be as dangerous as a snake, ready to strike anyone who takes it for granted. Over the years it has claimed more than its share of lives, including one of an unknown young woman who had the misfortune to become known as the Lady in White... .

"So where are we supposed to find her?" Joe Flick asked as they headed up Niles Canyon Road. The evening fog had already begun to settle over the hills, giving the verdant canyon a dark, jungle-like look.

"Uncle Bill never said, but if she's out here, we'll find her," Matthew replied with certainty. "I'm sure of it."

It was soon apparent that their night of searching would not be a smooth one. In spite of the light Saturday evening traffic, an accident midway in the canyon blocked the road for nearly an hour. Eventually, an ambulance passed, moving slowly west toward town.

"Its siren isn't on," Ernie said gravely. "I wonder what that means?"

"Maybe no one was hurt," Joe suggested.

"Maybe someone died," Matthew said ominously.

"Jesus, Matt, do you have to say that crap?" Ernie asked irritably.

"Traffic's moving," Joe said, pointing at the cars ahead of them.

Soon the Taurus slowly slipped around the turn. There, in a turnout near the bridge, were the crushed remains of a car hanging from the rear of a tow truck. A CHP officer waved them past with a flashlight. The orange light from a dozen road flares reflected off his yellow rain slicker, giving him an almost angelic glow.

"It's a Mustang, Joe," Ernie noted as they passed. "Same model as yours."

"I wonder what happened?" Matthew asked from the back seat.

"He must have run right into the cliff," Joe said, pointing out a smear of blue paint on the rocky wall.

The wreckage gave them pause, and silence filled the car as each young man considered the ramifications of their adventure. Was the Mustang a warning or just a coincidence? Was the Lady in White sending them a message?

"Just keep driving," Matthew instructed from the back seat, cutting off their morbid thoughts.

The next two hours passed slowly. The boys continued their course from the mouth of the canyon to the little town of Sunol just beyond its eastern edge, then back. As the night grew deeper so did the fog, making the pavement slick and dangerous, but Joe drove the Taurus carefully. Fewer and fewer cars passed them now, and the road was soon enveloped in a quiet more in keeping with its country past.

During each pass up the narrow road, they were certain they saw things watching them from just beyond the range of their headlights. But when their worried eyes looked closer, the images disappeared, becoming a malformed rock, tree trunk or sometimes the eyes of one of the nocturnal animals waiting for that magical time during the dead of night when the road once again becomes their own.

At 9:50 P.M. they stopped at Big Daddy's coffee shop at the west end of the canyon for a break. Ernie Sanchez was nervous. He had gone along with their goofy plans because he was certain it was all just a bunch of bullshit. There wasn't any ghost out on that road waiting for them. It was just something to do. He looked at his two friends anxiously, hoping that one of the other two would call off this stupid escapade and suggest a movie or a game of pool, but his reprieve never came. Matthew was resolute, and Joe held onto his look of quiet determination.

They drank their coffee in silence. The joking around that had prevailed throughout the day was gone. A part of them knew that the time was near, and within minutes they were back in their car heading eastward once again. Searching. Searching for her. And less than five minutes after they made their turn-around in Sunol, they found her.

What does a ghost look like? If one were to believe the stories, they are nothing more than a wisp of smoke, there for a moment, then gone. But that was not what the three young men found standing alone in a narrow turnout. She looked very real.

She was young, barely out of her teens, and wore a look of worry on her face. Her long auburn hair hung in ringlets over her shoulder. Her dress was white and lacy with short sleeves, broken at the waist by a red sash. She wore black patent leather shoes that glistened in the Ford's headlights. In spite of the cold, she wore neither coat nor sweater.

"You think that's her?" Joe asked uncertainly, the crisp realness of her presence throwing him off guard.

"I suppose we're about to find out," Matthew replied, rolling down the back right window. "Pull up beside her, Joe."

Joe edged the Taurus to the shoulder of the road parallel to the young woman.

"Do you need some help, miss?" Matthew asked, leaning his head out the window.

The young woman looked at him as if noticing the car for the first time. Her brow furrowed with concern. "He, he left me here," she stuttered.

"Who left you?" Matthew asked.

"My beau," she replied. "We had an quarrel, and he left me here to fend for myself."

"Would you like a ride back to town?" Matthew asked.

She looked at him uncertainly, as if debating whether it was safer to get in the car or take her chances outside in the cold.

Matthew studied her closely. She certainly wasn't beautiful, but she definitely wasn't ugly either. She filled out the old-fashion dress nicely. Much to his disappointment, she didn't look like a ghost at all. Could finding this young woman out here be just an amazing coincidence?

"I suppose it will be all right," she finally said.

Matthew stepped out of the car and held the door open for her to get in.

"This is a most unusual motor car," she said, as she entered the car. "What is it?"

"It's a Ford," Matthew replied, sliding in beside her.

"A Ford?" she asked dubiously.

"Hi!" Joe said nervously from the front seat. Ernie sat bolt upright facing forward, too scared to even turn and look.

"These are my friends Joe Flick and Ernie Sanchez," Matthew said. "I'm Matt Trant. What's your name?"

"My name?" she asked as if trying to remember. "Why it's Clara, Clara Nichols."

"So where can we take you, Clara?" Matthew asked, waving for Joe to get under way.

"I've been staying in a rooming house in Niles, but I'm from a town across the San Francisco Bay, Redwood City. Have you heard of it?"

"Yes, of course," Matthew replied, watching her intently. "It's just across the bridge."

"Bridge?" she asked, her voice trailing off. Her face was filled with confusion, as if she had just remembered something most unpleasant. She looked out the window, then back at Matthew. Her brown eyes were glistening with tears. "Why do you look at me that way, sir?" she asked.

"What was that?" Matthew asked defensively.

"He used to look at me that way; like he owned me, like he could see right through me."

"Who was that, miss?" Matthew asked, trying to concentrate on her face.

"Chester," she replied. "Please turn away your gaze, sir."

"Why?"

There was a long pause before she spoke again. "So that I may return."

"Return where?"

"To where I wait. Wait so long in the cold and dark."

"What are you waiting for?" Matthew asked, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. It was suddenly colder in the car, in spite of the fact that he could hear the whirring of the car's heater. In the front seat his two friends were silent, as if they were holding their breath with anticipation.

She turned and looked at him fully. Tears were now cascading down her ashen cheeks. "Peace. I wait for peace to come and take me home. Please, sir. Let me go."

Matthew felt very bad. Guilty. He hadn't expected this, this overwhelming sense of despair. To catch a ghost seemed like the ultimate adventure, but now that he had her in his grip, caught in the web of his own blue eyes, he knew that it was a tragic adventure. Ghosts were things of sorrow, and this young woman deserved more than to be the object of a teenage prank.

But there was something else. Now that he had her, couldn't he help her in some way? Could he somehow give this young woman the peace she craved so desperately her soul was forced to wander this dark, desperate road throughout eternity?

"Maybe we can help you," he said, watching her.

"Help me?"

"Help you find the peace you are looking for."

"Oh," she said, her gaze returning to the window.

The car got colder still, and when the ghost of Clara Nichols turned its attention back to the teenage boy that had captured her tortured soul, she had changed.

She stared back.

Matthew shivered, and his uncle's words swept through his mind. "She stares!" he had warned. Signaling that the time had come for mortals to turn away, to let the apparition return to wherever it came from, and allow the paper-thin barrier between life and death to once again separate the now and the forever.

But Matthew did not turn away, and in spite of the bitter cold that now held the interior of the car in its icy grip, he was sweating, and he felt himself being pulled in by--her eyes! They had gotten bigger! Almost glowing now, like spinning saucers! Widening until they began to distort the sad face that had hailed them from the side of the road.

"Turn away, sir," she warned. Her voice had changed. It had gotten deeper, gravely, like an old woman who had drunk too much booze and smoked one too many cigarettes. "Or come with me... ."

There was a blinding flash of light and then blackness. Matthew blinked his eyes. The world had changed. The sound of the car's engine had deepened and the smell of cigarettes, liquor and mohair upholstery invaded his nostrils. The Taurus was gone. Joe and Ernie were gone. Matthew was still in the back seat of a Ford, but now it was the narrow seat of a very old car.

Light spilled through his back window. It was late afternoon, and in the front seat Clara Nichols was sitting alongside a man wearing a dark fedora who was maneuvering the automobile carefully down the narrow canyon road. Matthew could see the man's reflection in the small rearview mirror. He was a handsome man dressed in formal attire, sporting a thin, neatly trimmed mustache. He looked worried.

"What's wrong, Chester? You act like you've never seen a woman's breast before," Clara teased.

"For Christ's sakes, cover up, Clara," he said. "It's broad daylight!" But in spite of his words, Matthew could see his eyes fluttering toward the tempting form of Clara Nichols.

"That isn't what you said when you were having your way with me," she replied. "As I recall, you were bound and determined to get me buck naked."

As Matthew watched with utter fascination, Clara brought up her hand and teasingly pulled apart the top of her pretty white party dress, revealing a little more of her smooth white skin. "Let's go back to Sunol, Chester. Let's take a room in that seedy hotel and make love for the rest of the evening. Maybe we can do the things in those French postcards."

"Stop talking like a harlot, Clara!" Chester bristled. "This has gone too far, I'm afraid. I have a wife, you know, and a career to protect."

"Oh, so now you think of your little wife? Well, it wasn't so important an hour ago, was it, darling? Maybe your wife and I should have a little talk, Chester. What would you think about that?"

With a quick yank of the steering wheel, Chester pulled the Ford into a turnout, stopping it against the rocky side of a hill.

"If you want to be treated like the harlot you are, then that's the way it shall be, my dear."

Clara grinned wickedly, still not appreciating her lover's irritation. "That's my Chester," she said. "Will you take me here? In the car like before? Or shall we find a place out in Mother Nature?"

"I will teach you not to threaten me, Clara!" Chester seethed, ignoring her erotic invitation. "I want you to get out!"

"Out? Here?" Clara asked looking around, her face suddenly alive with anger. "But we're miles from town!"

"You heard me, woman!" Chester bellowed. "Out! Now! Maybe the walk will remind you of your place!" And with that he leaned over, threw open Clara's door and pushed her out, tossing her small handbag after her.

Clara landed indignantly on the dirt and gravel beside the car, her pretty white dress torn and soiled beyond repair. For a moment she was too stunned to speak. She looked at the stinging impressions of pebbles temporarily embedded in the flesh of her soft, delicate hands and slowly lifted herself from the ground with as much dignity as she could muster. She stood on wobbly legs and glared into the car.

"You son-of-a-bitch!" she screeched, shaking so hard she had to brace herself on the car's doorframe. "You think just because you get paid to dress up like a cowboy and parade around these hills, you can treat me like this? I will ruin you!" she said, shaking her fist. "I swear by God I will! I will not only tell your wife about our trysts, I will tell the studio! Then for good measure I will tell the newspapers, God help me! See what that does for your precious career!" And with that she slammed the door.

Chester was too stunned by her outburst to reply. He thought he knew this young woman who had given herself to him without the slightest pretense of resistance or morality. He thought he could control her and a walk back into town would remind her who was the boss. She dared to threaten him? The very thought of it was outrageous!

In a rage Chester threw the car into gear and left Clara standing beside the road in a cloud of dust. Matthew managed to turn and watch as the twitching form of Clara Nichols disappeared behind the curve. His heart was beating madly. Not only was he witnessing this awful scene, he was living it, too. It was as if he were inside these two mad beasts, feeling their passion, feeling their uncontrolled rage.

"How dare that slut speak to me that way!" Chester swore as he drove the car like a mad man, drifting from one lane to the other, muttering under his breath as he wildly aimed the car westward.

Matthew wished he could speak, but he knew Chester would not hear him. In this world Matthew was the outsider, the spirit, the one who was forced to relive a scene that should have been forever hidden in the past.

About a mile from where he left Clara, Chester abruptly stopped the Ford dead in the middle of the road. From the back seat Matthew could see the man's reflection in the mirror. His face was ashen and beads of perspiration were running freely from his face and onto his starched, white collar. He looked like a man about to have a coronary.

For a long moment neither Chester nor the Ford moved. Luckily, no other cars rounded the sharp curve just ahead. An eternity seemed to pass, but eventually Chester shoved the car into gear and made a slow, deliberate "U" turn.

"He's changed his mind!" Matthew hoped, as the Ford started back up the road. "He's going back to get her!"

But then Chester began to speak, and his words chilled Matthew's heart. They were said softly, in a low, guttural monotone that made the man sound as if he were in a devilish trance. "I'm going to kill her," Chester growled. "I'm going to kill her. I'm going to kill her... ."

Chester repeated the threat as if it were a mantra, leaving Matthew with no doubt as to what was about to take place. He now knew how Clara Nichols, aka The Lady in White, earned her union card as a ghost. Chester had murdered her.

The Ford headed eastward, rapidly picking up speed. In the back seat Matthew hung on as best he could, dearly wishing he were secured by a seat belt. All the while Chester kept talking, his manic chant now reduced to one deadly word: "Kill, kill, kill, kill... ."

The Ford finally found the turnout where Chester had left a highly pissed-off Clara Nichols. She was still standing there, looking as if she couldn't believe she had been left stranded a good three miles from town. For a split second the two former lovers made eye contact, and the spark of telepathic communication between them sent shivers through Matthew's body.

The turnout behind Clara had been blasted out of a solid mass of rock, but Chester aimed the car at her anyway, oblivious to the consequences. To Matthew's surprise Clara made no attempt to dodge the automobile. Instead, her hand emerged from her handbag revealing the white steel of a small handgun. With surprising calm she raised her arm and aimed the pistol at the Ford's windshield.

Clara didn't hesitate. She squeezed off two quick shots. The first hit the car on the passenger side, smashing through the glass. Matthew felt the bullet whiz past his head and out the rear of the car, wondering if in this ghost world a bullet could actually hit him. The possibility only added to his terror.

The second bullet hit Chester in the head.

From his angle, Matthew didn't see the bullet smash the actor's face, but he felt its effect. Blood exploded from the man's head, bathing Matthew's face and chest with warm liquid. Matthew tried to scream but couldn't. This ghost world denied him even that. Instead, he heard the deadening thump as the Ford hit Clara Nichols' body, gobbling up her and her party dress under its front tires like a hungry beast.

And directly ahead was the rocky face of Niles Canyon... .

In the old Ford the story of Clara Nichols was being told in real time, but back in the new Ford Taurus, where a terrified Joe Flick and Ernie Sanchez watched Matthew Trant's duel with a ghost, the whole thing lasted but seconds.

The ghost seemed to be swallowing their friend whole, sucking his soul out of him like some giant leech. Ernie almost pissed his pants in terror, but he couldn't just sit there while Matthew was taken away forever. The ghost of Clara Nichols was gone now, replaced by a howling beast with eyes the size of basketballs. The fine mist of Matthew's life source was drifting toward it like wind-driven fog, and the beast waited hungrily for its feast.

When Joe skidded the Taurus to a stop, Ernie grabbed at his seat belt. Without further thought, he lunged over the seat, his only plan to somehow break the connection between the ghost world and their own.

"Close your eyes, Matt!" Ernie pleaded as he leapt. "Close your God damn eyes!"

"She stares!" Matthew screamed, his face twisted in madness. "She stares!"

When Ernie finally landed between them, the ghost figure screamed with rage. No one had gone this far before. No one had had the courage, the audacity, and the stupidity to challenge its gaze. But the damage had been done. The delicate spiritual connection between this world and the next had been broken, gone until some other fool decided to cruise Niles Canyon Road on the February 17.

Matthew's hands shook openly as he clutched the cup of coffee at Big Daddy's and told them in halting sentences about his glimpse into a dead world filled with hate and murder. He owed his two friends an explanation, but the words were hard to come by. It was as if the ghost world defied translation.

When they were finished they stood in the parking lot, looking eastward toward the mouth of the canyon. It was there, with the cold night wind blowing around them and the evening stars poking though a clearing sky, that Matthew mustered a brief final statement.

"That was not The Lady in White, you know," he said, nodding toward the canyon. "Don't get me wrong. What I saw really happened. But that ghost was not Clara Nichols. It was something else that was using her tragedy for its purposes. Looking for an idiot like me, I suppose."

"I'll tell you this much. Whatever it is in that canyon, it's been there for a long time, hiding under its rocks, lying at the bottom of the creek. It's been many things. Scary things. It feeds on people. Feeds on their hate. It's caused quite a few car wrecks, I suppose. I think it's been there since the very beginning of... ."

"The beginning of what, Matt?" Joe asked.

Matthew looked at them and sighed. He didn't know the proper word. He suspected it was there, but it wasn't in English or any other language spoken by mortals. It was a word that was more feeling than sound.

"Fear," he said, looking at them strangely. And with that he moved to the Taurus' front door and got in.