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.He was off balance and missed my stomach by a wide margin, but he was already righting himself and I jumped to the side and slashed at him with the scissors.I hit him across the face, one scissor blade puncturing his cheek.He let out a primal cry of rage and pain that distorted his already distorted features, and I pulled the scissors out and stabbed lower, embedding the twin halves into his chest.I felt the blades hit bone, felt a rush of hot blood spill over my hand, and again I pulled the scissors out, shoved them hard into his stomach.I backed away.No longer screaming, making only a low pitiful strangled crying sound, he staggered off the side of the desk and onto the floor.His blood spattered both the city hall tile and the blades of orange grass growing up from it.He was losing a lot of blood, and his skin looked gray and pale, as though he was dying.I prayed to God that he was.The entire encounter had passed unnoticed in front of the eyes of my coworkers and the two contractors applying for permits at the counter.Around us, the normal office routine of the planning department continued on as usual.A secretary carrying blueprints to Xerox stepped into a puddle of blood, did not see it, did not leave footprints.The murderer looked at me, glassy-eyed.“You…” he began, then trailed off.He lurched to his left, past another desk——and through the wall.I blinked.I could see the wall behind the desk, but suddenly I could see a meadow behind the wall, sloping ground leading away from the hill atop which I was standing.I rushed forward, tried to follow him, tried to chase after him, but though I could see the path on which the murderer was running, it was not there for me.I did not go into the meadow.I ran into hard stucco, hitting my head.I staggered back, staring through the transparent wall as, wounded, bleeding, crying piteously, the murderer limped off, down the sloped meadow, across the orange grass, into the purple trees.THIRTEENThe nightmare was over, but no one knew it.I had single-handedly saved Thompson from what would have probably been an unending string of serial murders.And Jane was the only one who was aware of it.I tried telling Ralph, tried telling the police chief, but neither one of them could see me.I even wrote an anonymous letter, sending copies to the mayor, the chief, the paper, anyone I could think of who might be able to get the word out, but no one paid any attention, and the official search for the murderer continued blindly along.I spent the next week in the bedroom with the shades drawn, coming out only to eat and go to the bathroom.It wasn’t the lack of recognition that was bothering me.It was not even the fact that I had killed another man.It was the intrusion of this… other world.For that was what it was.Another world.I knew that now.More and more often, I saw unfamiliar horizons, alien plant life and geologic formations, color schemes not of this earth.I did not know if they were part of another dimension that shared the same space as our own or if there was some other explanation, all I knew was that this other world was intruding on my space with greater frequency and greater intensity.Even locking myself in the bedroom did no good, because more often than not these days, the rug wasn’t the rug but was a carpet of orange grass, the walls weren’t solid white but were transparent windows on strange landscapes, the ceiling a skylight through which I could watch brown clouds float across a gold sky.I could have withdrawn entirely into myself, pulled away from Jane, but I did not.I tried to fight these visions or manifestations or whatever they were, but I did not push Jane away from me as I probably would have done in the past.Instead, I kept her close, told her everything I saw, everything I felt, and it seemed that when I was with her, when we were together, that other world faded a little and I was more fully in Thompson.I saw the creature on Sunday.Until now, my glimpses into this alternate universe had been limited to landscapes, to plant life and rocks.I had seen nothing animate, nothing alive.But on Sunday morning I awoke, opened the bedroom drapes, looked outside, and saw the creature.It was staring at me from across an orange meadow.I watched it move sideways across the tall grass.It was like a spider, only it was as big as a horse, and there was in its face, visible even from this distance, a look of sly knowledge that chilled me to the bone.I saw its hairy mouth open, heard a loud sibilant whisper, and I quickly let the drapes drop, stepping back and away from them.I did not know what the creature had said and I did not want to know, but something told me that if I continued staring at it, watching it, I would be able to make out what it was saying.I crawled back into bed, pulled the covers over my head.Later that day, I went again to see Philipe.Jane wanted to come, but I told her she couldn’t.I said Philipe would be spooked, that he would not want her with us, and though she didn’t like that at all, she believed it.It wasn’t true—I’m sure Philipe would have loved to meet her—but for some reason I did not want her to meet Philipe, and I did not feel bad lying to her about it.He opened the door to his apartment before I was halfway up the walk, and I was shocked by the change in him.It had been less than two weeks since I’d seen him last, but in that time he had deteriorated badly.It was nothing specific, nothing I could put my finger on.He wasn’t thinner than he had been, he hadn’t lost all his hair, he had just… faded.Whatever had set Philipe apart from everyone else, whatever had made him unique, an individual, seemed to have gone, and the person standing before me was as bland and unremarkable as a department store mannequin.Had the same thing happened to me?Then he spoke, called my name, and some of his old self was back.I recognized the voice, heard in it the intelligence and drive that had once drawn me to him, and I followed him into his apartment.The floor was covered with dirt and beer bottles and uprooted alien plants, and I looked at him
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