Then he began to scream

Forrester risked another glance at Putridrine and Morris. He was staring at Lester, his lips tight below his mustache. Putridrine had remembered to close her mouth, but she, too, stared.

“I wish to give you an offer of aid,” Lester continued. “Each of you . . . one and all . . . needs me so very much. I would like to help you.”

Again, no one had the slightest idea what to say. But, finally, Professor Putridrine managed to speak. “What could you possibly . . . offer us?”

He favored them with another musical laugh. “Much, so very much. All of you have needs and desires, appetites unsatisfied...” He turned to face Morris. “Monographs unwritten.” Then to Putridrine. “Enemies to be confronted.” Then to her, “Fidelities to be maintained.” Then, seemingly, to everyone in the room. “So many things.”

He smiled again. “Well, I’ll be off. If you need me, just ask, and I’ll do whatever I can. Happy Halloween, everyone.”

And then, he was out the door, and gone.

For a long, strained moment, no one said a word. Then, everyone spoke at once, and wondered what the hell . . . what the bleeding, sulfuric hell . . . had happened.

*

It was a question that would occur, as well, to a young car thief a short time later.

Actually, he was a would-be thief. He’d never stolen a car before. In fact, he was only sixteen. He was one of the numberless young men and women who were, in theory, attending high schools in the grim little post-industrial city where the University remained as a relic from another, richer age when the mills still churned out shoes and optical instruments, rather than rotting empty on backstreets.

The boy saw the old car, beat up and ill maintained, on the road leading up to the University. It says much about him, and how green he was, that he paid any attention at all to it. A more experienced thief would have eyed the Morris’ little BMW, or Putridrine’s Audi, where they sat unattended in the lot known informally as Pedantic Place.

He crept up beside the driver’s side door. He tried the handle. It was unlocked! He looked through the window. The key was in the ignition! This was too good to be true. This was like someone was forcing the car on him.

He glanced up and down the street. No cops in sight. Now, he thought, for a little quick action. The guys would never believe it.

He opened the door and slid behind the wheel. Fantastic.

He realized the seat was wet. He put his hand on it. It came up red and dripping. What? He looked at the floor, in the passenger’s seat, in the back.

Then he began to scream.

Someone heard him and called the police. They arrived a little later. They saw the hysterical boy weeping in the street next to a parked car. Indifferently, they assumed he was on drugs. Indifferently, too, they shot him with a stun-gun and took him away in cuffs.

Only then did one of them look in the back of the car.