Most
of the cars drove off. The two soldiers wandered over to the benches in
front of the depot, so they could sit down while they waited for their
bus or train. He was alone except for Alec. He located the scrap of paper in one of the slots between the worn
planks. It had almost slipped through. He took it over to the cab and studied it. He heard Alec say, "Well, where do we go now?" Alec sounded dubious. He glanced at his watch. Ten thirty-five. Not quite an hour and a half
until midnight. There were a lot of things he could do, but he could
not do more than a couple of them in that time. His thoughts moved
sluggishly, almost painfully. He looked around at the dim buildings. The seaward halves of some of
the street lamps were painted black. Up a side street there were signs
of life. He looked again at the scrap of paper. Then he made a decision. "I think there's a hotel on the main street," he told Alec. "You can
drive me there." *       *       *       *       *

"Eagle Hotel" read the black-edged gold letters on the plate-glass
window, behind which the narrow lobby with its half-dozen empty chairs
was nakedly revealed. He told Alec to wait, and took a room for the night. The clerk was an
old man in a shiny black coat. Norman saw from the register that no one
else had checked in recently. He carried his bag up to the room and
immediately returned to the lobby. "I haven't been here for ten years," he told the clerk. "I believe
there is a cemetery about five blocks down the street, away from the
Bay?" The old man's sleepy eyes blinked wide open. "Bayport Cemetery? Just three blocks, and then a block and a half to
the left. But--" He made a vague questioning noise in his throat. "Thank you," said Norman. After a moment's thought, he paid off Alec, who took the money and with
obvious relief kicked his cab into life. Norman walked down the main
street, away from the Bay. After the first block there were no more stores. In this direction,
Bayport petered out quickly. Most of the houses were dark. And after he
turned left there were no more street lights. The gates of the cemetery were locked. He felt his way along the
wall, behind the masking shrubbery, trying to make as little noise as
possible, until he found a scrubby tree whose lowest branch could bear
his weight. He got his hands on the top of the wall, scrambled up, and
cautiously let himself down on the other side. Behind the wall it was very dark. There was a rustling sound, as if he
had disturbed some small animal. More by feeling than sight, he located
a headstone. It was a thin one, worn, mossy toward the base, and tilted
at an angle. Probably from the middle of the last century. He dug into
the earth with his hand, and filled an envelope he took from his pocket. He got back over the wall, making what seemed a great deal of noise in
the shrubbery. But the street was empty as ever. On his way back to the hotel he looked up at the sky, located the Pole
Star, and calculated the orientation of his room. As he crossed the lobby, he felt the curious eyes of the old clerk
boring into him. His room was in darkness. Chill salt air was pouring through the open
window. He locked the door, shut the window, pulled down the blind, and
switched on the light--a glaring overhead which revealed the room in
all its dingy severity. A cradle phone struck the sole modern note. He took the envelope out of his pocket and weighed it in his hand. His
lips curled in a peculiarly bitter smile. Then he reread the scrap of
paper that had fluttered from Tansy's hand. Add a small quantity of graveyard dirt, and wrap all in a piece of
    flannel, wrapping widdershins. Tell it to stop me. Tell it to bring
    me to you. Graveyard dirt. That was what he had found in Tansy's dressing table. It had been the beginning of all this. Now he was fetching it himself. He looked at his watch. Eleven twenty. He cleared the small table and set it in the center of the room,
jabbing in his penknife to mark the edge facing east. "Widdershins"
meant "against the sun"--from west to east. He placed the necessary ingredients on the table, cutting a short strip
of flannel from the hem of his bathrobe, and fitted together the four
sections of Tansy's note. The distasteful, bitter smile did not leave
his lips. Taken together, the significant portions of the notes read:

    Take four lengths of four-inch white cord and a length of gut, a
    bit of platinum or iridium, a piece of lodestone, a phonograph
    needle that has only played Scriabin's "Ninth Sonata." Tie the
    four white cords into a granny, a reef, a cat's-paw, and a carrick
    bend. Tie the gut in a bowline. Add a small quantity of graveyard
    dirt, and wrap all in a piece of flannel, wrapping widdershins. Tell it to stop me. Tell it to bring me to you. In general outline, it was similar to a hundred recipes for Negro
tricken-bags he had seen or heard about. The phonograph needle, the
knots, and one or two other items, were obvious "white" additions. And it was all on the same level as the mental operations of a child or
neurotic adult who religiously steps on, or avoids sidewalk cracks. A clock outside bonged the half-hour. *       *       *       *       *

Norman sat there looking at the stuff. It was hard for him to begin. It would have been different, he told himself, if he were doing it
for a joke or a thrill, or if he were one of those people who dope up
their minds with morbid supernaturalism--who like to play around with
magic because it's medieval and aesthetic. But to tackle it in dead
seriousness, to open your mind deliberately to superstition--that was
to join hands with the forces pushing the world back into the dark
ages, to cancel the term "science" out of the equation. But, behind Tansy, he had seen that thing. Of course, it had been an
hallucination. But when hallucinations start behaving like realities,
even a scientist has to face the possibility that he may have to treat
them like realities. And when hallucinations begin to threaten you and
yours in a direct physical way--

He reached out for the first length of cord and tied the ends together
in a granny. When he came to the cat's-paw, he had to consult the page he had torn
from the dictionary. After a couple of false starts he managed it. But on the carrick bend he was all thumbs. It was a simple knot, but
no matter how he went about it, he could not get it to look like the
illustration. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Very close in the room,
he told himself. "I'm still overheated from rushing about." The skin on
his fingertips felt an inch thick. The ends of the cord kept eluding
them. He remembered how Tansy's fingers had rippled through the knots. Eleven forty-one. The phonograph needle started to roll off the table. He dropped the cord and laid the phonograph needle against his fountain
pen, so it would not roll. Then he started again on the knot.