against the slope, their warm windows revealing glimpses of the lives unfolding inside, people taking the mild domestic comforts of late evening. It felt tranquil and reassuringly mundane.
The wolfman's house was as lovely in the dark as it was in daylight. Even with the windows so blank and hollow, it didn't look forbidding; it looked like it was just wanting company—a nice house, ready to provide a happy home for somebody. She went in with only a trace of reluctance.
She left the lights off, as always. Darkness was essential to the job at hand, because it tended to induce the mental state required. She and Edgar had conducted functional microelectroencephalogram tests that verified a neurological explanation: With vision frustrated, the spectrum of other senses, physical and extraphysical, came to the fore; different parts of the brain became active. Plus it was always a good idea to avoid alarming the neighbors with signs of unexplained late-night activity at an empty house.
The obvious thing to do was to head straight to the basement to seek out perimortem resonances of the wolfman, but the charm of the place beguiled her. She was feeling no whisper, no silent trill of danger or anticipation, so she took her time and wandered for a while through the main floor rooms. She savored the Victorian era's approach to space and proportion, for which she'd always had a weakness. Finally, she got curious and went upstairs.
It was hard to see in the dim glow of ambient light through the windows, but Bert was right, these rooms were gorgeous. The floors were shiny and smelled new, the walls appeared pristine with fresh paint, the woodwork had been stripped and refinished. A few pieces of furniture stood swaddled in heavy plastic sheeting, shapeless masses in the half-light, but otherwise the rooms were empty, airy. Feeling a little like a burglar, she peered into each doorway as she made her way to the front of the house. In what must have been the master bedroom, she lounged in a broad bay windowseat and just let the house come to her. Beyond the fog-blanked glass, she could sense the steep hill more than see it—a few blurry rectangles of neighbors' windows, warm and yellow, and the sulky hoots of foghorns somewhere out in the Golden Gate.
After a few minutes, she went through her sensitization ritual: lotus position, hands laid in the dhyana mudra, breathing slow and deep. An inventory of her sensory and affective state didn't reveal any hidden energies or subconscious disturbances. Her pulse was steady and moderate; behind her eyelids, the phosphene field appeared as a uniform galaxy of tiny lights, and in her ears the sound current maintained a steady, silvery hiss. Her skin sensitivity registered as normal, no wandering cold spots; her emotional landscape seemed devoid of inexplicable dissonances.
Mainly what she felt was a sense of privilege, being for the moment the sole occupant and mistress of this fine place. She savored that for a while, and then it occurred to her maybe it was time to look for a new, nicer place when she got back to Seattle.
She thought she had shed her earlier droop on the brisk walk uphill, but in fact it had tagged behind like a blue balloon, wafting along in her back draft, and now it caught up: Lovely place, she thought, / want this; maybe it's time to look for a new apartment; can't afford anything this nice, but could come closer if there were two incomes paying for it; what will happen with Paul, how long do I hold on to expectations there, why does it always have to be complicated; what am I doing with my life, why am I not connected with a man; why can't I be normal; what's the matter with me?
From balloon to avalanche, starting slow but gathering speed and weight until she unlocked her legs and fled the upstairs.
She'd always been uncomfortable with close, dark, underground places. It was a natural reflex: the instinctive fear of limited mobility, of being trapped or suffocated, of
The wolfman's house was as lovely in the dark as it was in daylight. Even with the windows so blank and hollow, it didn't look forbidding; it looked like it was just wanting company—a nice house, ready to provide a happy home for somebody. She went in with only a trace of reluctance.
She left the lights off, as always. Darkness was essential to the job at hand, because it tended to induce the mental state required. She and Edgar had conducted functional microelectroencephalogram tests that verified a neurological explanation: With vision frustrated, the spectrum of other senses, physical and extraphysical, came to the fore; different parts of the brain became active. Plus it was always a good idea to avoid alarming the neighbors with signs of unexplained late-night activity at an empty house.
The obvious thing to do was to head straight to the basement to seek out perimortem resonances of the wolfman, but the charm of the place beguiled her. She was feeling no whisper, no silent trill of danger or anticipation, so she took her time and wandered for a while through the main floor rooms. She savored the Victorian era's approach to space and proportion, for which she'd always had a weakness. Finally, she got curious and went upstairs.
It was hard to see in the dim glow of ambient light through the windows, but Bert was right, these rooms were gorgeous. The floors were shiny and smelled new, the walls appeared pristine with fresh paint, the woodwork had been stripped and refinished. A few pieces of furniture stood swaddled in heavy plastic sheeting, shapeless masses in the half-light, but otherwise the rooms were empty, airy. Feeling a little like a burglar, she peered into each doorway as she made her way to the front of the house. In what must have been the master bedroom, she lounged in a broad bay windowseat and just let the house come to her. Beyond the fog-blanked glass, she could sense the steep hill more than see it—a few blurry rectangles of neighbors' windows, warm and yellow, and the sulky hoots of foghorns somewhere out in the Golden Gate.
After a few minutes, she went through her sensitization ritual: lotus position, hands laid in the dhyana mudra, breathing slow and deep. An inventory of her sensory and affective state didn't reveal any hidden energies or subconscious disturbances. Her pulse was steady and moderate; behind her eyelids, the phosphene field appeared as a uniform galaxy of tiny lights, and in her ears the sound current maintained a steady, silvery hiss. Her skin sensitivity registered as normal, no wandering cold spots; her emotional landscape seemed devoid of inexplicable dissonances.
Mainly what she felt was a sense of privilege, being for the moment the sole occupant and mistress of this fine place. She savored that for a while, and then it occurred to her maybe it was time to look for a new, nicer place when she got back to Seattle.
She thought she had shed her earlier droop on the brisk walk uphill, but in fact it had tagged behind like a blue balloon, wafting along in her back draft, and now it caught up: Lovely place, she thought, / want this; maybe it's time to look for a new apartment; can't afford anything this nice, but could come closer if there were two incomes paying for it; what will happen with Paul, how long do I hold on to expectations there, why does it always have to be complicated; what am I doing with my life, why am I not connected with a man; why can't I be normal; what's the matter with me?
From balloon to avalanche, starting slow but gathering speed and weight until she unlocked her legs and fled the upstairs.
She'd always been uncomfortable with close, dark, underground places. It was a natural reflex: the instinctive fear of limited mobility, of being trapped or suffocated, of
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