• Questions Near Sunset •

The house was by now casting long shadows out across the frost as the sun was nearing its departure from the Dead Hills and Eastern Oregon and all the rest of Western America while Greer was asking the Hawkline women some last minute questions.

“And you’ve never seen the monster?” Greer said to Miss Hawkline.

“No, we’ve just heard it screaming down in the caves and we’ve heard it banging on the iron door that locks the caves off from the laboratory. It’s very strong and can shake the door. The door’s thick, too. Iron.”

“But you’ve never seen it?”

“No, we haven’t.”

“And the door’s been locked ever since your father disappeared?”

“Yes,” Miss Hawkline said.

The pearls about the Hawkline sisters’ throats had grown a little more intense in light, almost approaching a diamond-like quality. Greer saw a motion in the darkness of their hair. It was as if their hair had moved but it hadn’t moved. Something had shifted in their hair. Greer thought for a second. Then he realized that it was the color of their hair that had moved.

“And sometimes you hear screams?”

“Yes, we can hear them all over the house and we can hear the banging on the iron door, too,” Miss Hawkline said.

“How often?”

“Every day or so,” Miss Hawkline said.

“We haven’t heard anything,” Greer said.

“Sometimes it’s like that,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “Why all these questions? We’ve already told you everything that we know and now we’re telling it to you again.”

“Yeah,” Cameron said. “I want to get that monster out of the God-damn way.”

“OK,” Greer said. “Let’s kill the monster,” while letting his vision casually brush past the necklaces about the Hawkline sisters’ throats.

The necklaces were staring back.