48

Chase removed the last of the screws from the long mirror, pulled it away from the back of the bathroom door and set it on the floor.  He measured the mirror against himself, and guessed that it was five feet tall and two feet wide.  He carried it to the living room, and set it beside the open hatch of the decompression chamber.

"It should fit," he said.  "Just."

Amanda slumped in a chair beside the far wall, still shaking, her color pasty.  "You're wasting your time," she said.  "That'll never work."

"I've gotta do something.  You have a better idea?"

"What do you use to put animals down?"

"Anesthesia."

"Well?"

"You think you can get close enough to that thing to give it a shot?  Christ, Amanda, for all I know, it just..."  He stopped, for he saw the children standing by the living room window, trying to see down the hill, and he didn't want to frighten them.  But his mind couldn't shake the image that had clouded it ever since Amanda had burst through the door, an image of Tall Man sprawled dead among the rocks.  "Give me a hand, will you?"  He turned to Max.  "See anything?"

"Not yet," Max said.

Amanda rose from the chair.  Chase bent down, stepped into the chamber and turned to take the mirror from Amanda as she slid it through the hatch.  He carried it to the far end of the chamber and stood it upright against the steel wall.  Then he backed away, checking his reflection; he crouched just inside the hatch, beside the opening.  "What do you see?" he asked Amanda.  "Remember, the light'll be dim."

"It's okay," she said.  "But, Lord, Simon, a six-year-old child could—"

"It isn’t a child; it's a thing."

"Dad!" Max shouted.  "Dad, it's Tall!"

Chase crawled out of the chamber and stood.  Max was pointing out the window.  Elizabeth stood beside him, shading her eyes from the light inside the room, straining to see through the darkness.

Chase expelled a huge breath of relief.  "About time," he said.  "He walked toward the window.

"Thank God," said Amanda.

Far down the lawn, by the crest of the hill before the sea lion pool, Chase saw a figure moving toward the house.  The movement was erratic, yawing.

"Tall looks like he's hurt," he said.  He was about to turn away, to got to the kitchen and out the door and down the lawn, when how suddenly saw color in the figure, a hue of lightness against the dark trees.

"Jesus Christ," he said.  "That's not Tall."