'No, what?"

"Well, it's bad."

"What is it?" she asked.

"Burke's dead."

He'd been drank. He had stumbled. He had fallen down the steep flight of steps beside the house, fallen far to the bottom, where a passing pedestrian on M Street watched as he tumbled into night without end. A broken neck. This bloody, crumpled scene, his last.

As the telephone fell from Chris's fingers, she was silently weeping, standing unsteadily.

Sharon ran and caught her, supported her, hung up the phone and led her to the sofa.

"Burke's dead," Chris sobbed.

"Oh, my God!" gasped Sharon. "What happened?" But Chris could not speak yet. She wept.

Then, later, they talked. For hours. They talked. Chris drank. Reminisced about Dennings.

Now laughed. Now cried. "Ah, my God," she kept sighing. "Poor Burke... poor Burke..." Her dream of death kept coming back to her.

At a little past five in the morning, Chris was standing moodily behind the bar, her elbows propped, head lowered, eyes sad. She was waiting for Sharon to return from the kitchen with a tray of ice.

She heard her coming.

"I still can't believe it," Sharon was sighing as she entered the study.

Chris looked up and froze.

Gliding spiderlike, rapidly, close behind Sharon, her body arched backward in a bow with her head almost touching her feet, was Regan, her tongue flicking quickly in and out of her mouth while she hissed sibilantly like a serpent.

"Sharon?" Chris said numbly, still staring at Regan.

Sharon stopped. So did Regan. Sharon turned and saw nothing. And then screamed as she felt Regan's tongue snaking out at her ankle.

Chris whitened. "Call that doctor and get him out of bed! Get him now!"

Wherever Sharon moved, Regan would follow.

CHAPTER FOUR

Friday, April 29. While Chris waited in the hall outside the bedroom, Dr. Klein and a noted neuropsychiatrist were examining Regan.

The doctors observed for half all hour. Flinging. Whirling. Tearing at the hair. She occassionally grimaced and pressed her hands against her ears as if blotting out sudden, deafening noise. She bellowed obscenities. Screamed in pain. Then at last she flung herself face downward onto the bed and tucked her legs up under her stomach. She moaned incoherently.

The psychiatrist motioned Klein away from the bed.

"Let's get her tranquilized," he whispered. "Maybe I can talk to her."

The internist nodded and prepared an injection of fifty milligrams of Thorazine. When the doctors approached the bed, however, Regan seemed to sense them and quickly turned over, and as the neuropsychiatrist attempted to hold her, she began to shriek in malevolent fury. Bit him. Fought him. Held him off. It was only when Karl was called in to assist that they managed to keep her sufficiently rigid for Klein to administer the injection.

The dosage proved inadequate. Another fifty milligrams was injected. They waited.

Regan grew tractable. Then dreamy. Then stared at the doctors in sudden bewilderment.

"Where's Mom? I want my Mom!" she wept.

At a nod from the neuropsychiatrist, Klein left the room to go and get Chris.

"Your mother will be here in just a second, dear," the psychiatrist told Regan. He sat on the bed and stroked her head. "There, there, it's all right, dear, I'm a doctor."

"I want Mom!" wept Regan.

"She's coming. Do you hurt, dear?"

She nodded, the tears streaming down.

"Where?"

"just every place!" sobbed Regan. "I feel all achy!"

"Oh, my baby!"

"Mom!"

Chris ran to the bed and hugged her. Kissed her. Comforted and soothed. Then Chris herself began to weep. "Oh, Rags, you're back! It's really you!"

"Oh, Mom, he hurt me!" Regan sniffled. "Make him stop hurting me! Please? Okay?"

Chris looked puzzled for a moment, then glanced to the doctors with a pleading question in her eyes.

"She's heavily sedated," the psychiatrist said gently.

"You mean...?"

He cut her off. "We'll see." Then he turned to Regan. "Can you tell me what's wrong, dear?"

"I don't know," she answered. "I don't know why he does it to me." Tears rolled down from her eyes. "He was always my friend before!"

"Who's that?"

"Captain Howdy! And then it's like somebody else is inside me! Making me do things!"

"Captain Howdy?"

"I don't know!"

"A person?"