Out of Their Minds

I hadn't thought beyond the casting of the plug. I hadn't figured out what I would do if I hooked the monster. Mostly, I suppose, because I had not thought for an instant that I would really hook him.

But now, having hooked him, I did the only thing I could. I dropped quickly into a crouch and held fast to the rod. The monster's head jerked back and pointed sharply toward the sky and the reel was singing as the line went out

I jerked the rod again to set the hooks still deeper and out in the water in front of me a tidal wave went into action. A mighty body heaved into the air and it kept on coming and I thought it would never stop. The head, on its lanky neck, was thrashing back and forth and the rod was whipping wildly and I hung onto it like grim death, although I can't imagine why I hung onto it. One thing for certain, I didn't want this fish that I had hooked.

The canoe was pitching and bucking in the waves set up by the creature's struggles and I crouched lower in it, huddling in it, with my elbows braced against the gunwales, trying to keep the center of gravity low to prevent an upset And now the canoe began to move, faster and faster, down the river, towed behind the fleeing creature.

And through it all, I hung onto the rod. I could have let go of it, I could have thrown it away, but I hung onto it and as the canoe started to move I whooped in jeering triumph. The thing had been chasing me and I had been the hunted, but now I had it hooked and it was ru

The thing went streaking down the river and the line was thrumming and the canoe was riding high and fast and I whooped like a zany cowboy astride a bucking horse. I forgot for a moment what was going on or what had led up to it. It was a wild ride through the night of this river world and ahead of me the creature was twisting and humping, with the serrated row of fins along its back sometimes arched into the air and sometimes low against the water and awash in the turmoil of its struggle.

Suddenly the line went slack and the creature disappeared. I was alone upon the river, crouching in a canoe that was bucking up and down in the turbulence of the water. As the water quieted, I eased myself back upon the seat and began reeling in the line. There was a lot of reeling to be done, but finally the plug came clattering aboard and snugged against the rod tip. I was somewhat astonished to see the plug, for I had thought the line had snapped and that with the snapping of it, the creature had sounded and made its escape. But now it became apparent that the creature had simply disappeared, for the hooks must have been set deeply and solidly into its flesh and the only way that the plug could have come clean was for the flesh hi which it had been embedded to have disappeared.

The canoe now was floating gently on the river and I reached down and picked up the paddle. The moon was rising and the sky glow of its rising made the river glisten like a road of flowing silver. I sat quietly with the paddle in my hand and wondered what to do. The instinctive thing was to get off the river before another monster came heaving from the depths, to get busy with the paddle and head in for shore. But I felt sure, on second thought, that there'd not be another monster—for the business of the monster could only be explained if it were considered in the same frame of reference as the den of rattlesnakes and Justin Ballard's death. My old friend's other world had tried another gambit and had failed again, and it was not in the nature of their operation, I was sure, to repeat a scheme that failed. And if that reasoning was valid, for the moment at least the river probably was the safest place in all the world for me to be.

A sharp, shrill piping broke my line of thought and I swung my head around to try to identify the origin of the piping. Squatted on the gunwale, eight feet or so away, perched a little monstrosity. It was grotesquely humanoid and covered by a heavy coat of hair and it clung to its perch with a pair of feet that resembled the talons of an owl. Its head rose to a point and the hair grew from the top of this point to fall about the head in such a ma

Now that I saw it, its piping began to make some sense. "Three times is a charm!" it was saying, gleefully, in its high, shrill piping. "Three times is a charm! Three times is a charm!"

Gorge rising in my throat, I swung the paddle hard. The flat side of the blade caught the little monstrosity sharply and popped it off the gunwale, high into the air, as a high fly might be hit by a baseball bat. The piping changed into a feeble scream and I watched it in some fascination as it_ sailed high above the river, finally reaching the top of its parabola and starting to come down. Halfway down it blinked out, like the bursting of a soap bubble—one moment there, the next moment gone.

I got down to work with the paddle. I was looking for a town and there was no use fooling myself any longer. The quicker I reached a phone and put in a call to Philip, the better it would be.

My old friend might not have been entirely right in all that he had written, but there was something damn fu

11

The town was small and I could find no phone booth. Nor was I absolutely sure what town it was, although, if my memory did not play me false, it was a place called Woodman. I tried to summon up in my head a map of the locality, but the town and the country were too far in the past and I could not be sure of it. But the name of the town, I told myself, was not important; the important thing was to place that phone call. Philip was in Washington and he'd know what was best to do—and even if he didn't know what to do, he at least should know what was going on. I owed him that much for sending me the copy of his uncle's notes. Although I knew that if he had not sent them to me, I might not be in this mess.

The only place in the block-long business district that still was open was a bar. Yellow light shone dimly through its dirt-grimed windows and a slight breeze blowing up the street set a beer sign to creaking back and forth upon its iron bracket suspended above the sidewalk.

I stood across the street, trying to screw up my courage to go in the bar. There was no guarantee, of course, that the place would have a phone, although it seemed likely that it would. I knew that in stepping across the threshold of the place I'd be ru

The canoe was down at the river landing, tied to a tottery post, and all I had to do was to go back and get into it and push out into the stream. No one would be the wiser, for no one had seen me. Except for the place across the street, the town was positively dead.

But I had to make that phone call; I simply had to make it. Philip should be warned, and I might already be too late. Once warned, he might have some suggestion of something we could do. It was apparent now that anyone who read what my old dead friend had written faced the same danger that he had faced in writing it.

I stood in an agony of indecision and finally, scarcely realizing I was doing it, I started walking across the street. When I reached the sidewalk, I stopped and looked up at the creaking sign and the creaking seemed to wake me up to what I had been about to do. I was a hunted man and there was no sense in walking in there and asking for the kind of trouble that I was apt to get. I walked on past the bar, but halfway down the street I turned about and started back again and when I did that, I knew it was no use. I could go on like that, walking back and forth all night, not knowing what to do.