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Taconic, which would take him naturally back to 1-90. There was no phone number. Graham had mentioned that Kilrue was having money troubles, and the phone company had shut him off.
    By the time Carroll was on the Taconic, it was already getting dark, gloom gathering beneath the great oaks and tall firs that crowded the side of the road. He seemed to be the only person on the parkway, which wound higher and higher into hills and wood. Sometimes, in the headlights, he saw families of deer standing at the edge of the road, their eyes pink in the darkness, watching him pass with a mixture of fear and alien curiosity.
    Piecliff wasn't much: a strip mall, a church, a graveyard, a Texaco, a single blinking yellow light. Then he was through it and following a narrow state highway through piney woods. By then it was full night and cold enough so he needed to switch on the heat. He turned off onto Tarheel Road, and his Civic labored through a series of switchbacks, up a hill so steep the engine whined with effort. He closed his eyes for a moment, and almost missed a hairpin turn, had to yank at the wheel to keep from crashing through brush and plunging down the side of the slope.
    A half mile later the asphalt turned to gravel and he trolled through the dark, tires raising a luminescent cloud of chalky dust. His headlights rose over a fat man in a bright orange knit cap, shoving a hand into a mailbox. On the side of the mailbox, letters printed on reflective decals spelled KIL U. Carroll slowed.
    The fat man held up a hand to shield his eyes, peering at Carroll's car. Then he grinned, tipped his head in the direction of the house, in a follow-me gesture, as if Carroll were an expected visitor. He started up the driveway, and Carroll rolled along behind him. Hemlocks leaned over the narrow dirt track. Branches swatted at the windshield, raked at the sides of his Civic.
    At last the drive opened into a dusty dooryard before a great yellow farmhouse, with a turret and a sagging porch that wrapped around two sides. A plywood sheet had been nailed into a broken window. A toilet bowl lay in the weeds. At the sight of the place, Carroll felt the hairs stirring on his forearms. Journeys end in lovers meeting , he thought, and grinned at his own uneasy imagination. He parked next to an ancient tractor with wild stalks of Indian corn growing up through its open hood.
    He shoved his car keys in his coat pocket and climbed out, started toward the porch, where the fat man waited. His walk took him past a brightly lit carriage house. The double doors were pulled shut, but from within he heard the shriek of a band-saw. He glanced up at the house and saw a black, backlit figure staring down at him from one of the second-floor windows.
    Eddie Carroll said he was looking for Peter Kilrue. The fat man inclined his head toward the door, the same follow-me gesture he had used to invite Carroll up the driveway. Then he turned and let him in.
    The front hall was dim, the walls lined with picture frames that hung askew. A narrow staircase climbed to the second floor. There was a smell in the air, a humid, oddly male scent ... like sweat, but also like pancake batter. Carroll immediately identified it, and just as immediately decided to pretend he hadn't noticed anything.
    "Bunch of shit in this hall," the fat man said. "Let me hang up your coat. Never be seen again." His voice was cheerful and piping. As Carroll handed him his coat, the fat man turned and hollered up the stairs, "Pete! Someone here!" The sudden shift from a conversational voice to a furious scream gave Carroll a bad jolt.
    A floorboard creaked above them, and then a thin man, in a corduroy jacket and glasses with square, black plastic frames, appeared at the top of the steps.
    "What can I do for you?" he asked.
    "My name is Edward Carroll. I edit a series of books, America's Best New Horror ," He looked for some reaction on the thin man's face, but Kilrue remained impassive. "I read one of