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From his feet he heard dry snapping noises-Pouck! Pouck! Pouck!-as several of the snowshoes’ rotted cross-facings let go.
The wolf howled in the silence. It was a hungry, heartless sound.
“No one,” Flagg muttered in the sitting room of his dark apartments. He was rarely sick-could remember being sick only three or four times in all of his long life-but he had caught a bad cold in the north, sleeping on the frozen ground, and although he was improving, he was still not well.
“No one. A dream. That’s all.”
He took the book from his lap, closed it, and set it on a side table-the surface of this table had been handsomely dressed in human skin-and settled back in his chair. Soon he slept again.
In the snowy fields west of the castle, De
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At eight of the clock, De
He stood behind a tree, looking out at the castle wall. It was half a mile away over open, snow-covered ground. The moon was still shining, and De
Go back, a cowardly voice inside him begged, but De
Faint and yet clear, like a voice heard in a dream, came the call of the Crier, drifting out to him from the castle’s central tower: “Twelve o’clock and all’s well…”
Nothing’s well, De
Eventually it left the sky, and De
De
De
At last he heard it, and looked up. There, at eye height, was a round black hole in the solid castle wall. Fluid ran from it in listless streams. It was a sewer outflow pipe.
“Now for it,” De
An hour later, in a deserted corridor of the castle’s east wing, a sewer grating moved-was still-then moved again. It was shoved partway aside, and a few moments later a very dirty (and very smelly) butler named De
He did not recognize the hallway at once, but this in no way upset him. He started down it toward the T-intersection at the far end. At least, he reflected, there had been no rats in the warren of sewer pipes below the castle. That had been a great relief. He had been prepared for them, not just because of the gruesome tales his Da’ had told him, but because there had been rats on a few occasions when he and his mates had ventured with fearful screeches of laughter down into the pipes as children-the rats had been part of the scary, dare-you adventure of it.
Probably there were just a few mice, and your memory’s exaggerated them into rats, De