The roof groaned under the weight of the snow and the windows rattled, gently waking Denton from a coma-like sleep.

From the moment consciousness found him, pain and nausea flooded his body. There didn't seem to be a muscle, joint, or bone that didn't feel old and battered. His head was full of broken glass, and a railway spike dug into his left temple.

Ever since getting home from the hospital, his sleeps had been long and dark, and his body had rebelled at the thought of getting up. He turned over to his other side hoping the new position would ease some of the discomfort and perhaps he would slip back into the black pool of dreams. As horrific as they had been, at least they were free from the pain.

His hand slid over to Linda's side of the bed searching for her warm body. All he encountered was cool, smooth sheets.

His face pressed into the pillow. The case had a starchy, stale smell, as though it had been cleaned long ago. The pattern was pink roses on white. The rest of the room was lost in gray murk.

This wasn't his bed. He wasn't in his house.

All traces of drowsiness rushed away and a jarring reality started to form around him.

He groped at the night table in search of his glasses, hoping habit may have left them there for him. His hand brushed against something and it fell with a carpet muffled thud. The sound was too heavy and solid to be the glasses; he leaned his body over to lengthen his reach. The thin metal of one of the arms found its way to his fingers, and he pulled them onto his face in one fluid, well-practiced motion.

The neat guestroom came into focus. On the table next to the bed was a small lamp made out of milk glass and a matching vase with fake pink roses. A doily drooped off the edge threatening to slip off. The only thing preventing it from falling was a glass with less than an ounce of water in it.

Without a moment's hesitation, Denton grabbed it and greedily sucked down the last drops. The faint moisture seemed to only highlight the dryness in his throat. He need more.

There was a bathroom just down the hall, two doors down, and another one by the stairs. The whole layout of the house started coming back to him, replacing the last vestige of the strange dreams that plagued his sleep.

He sat up and put his feet on the floor. One foot felt the soft rug, a hard corner dug into the sole of the other. He reached down and picked up the book he had knocked over. The black and red cover brought it all back to him: the whole night—the whole miserable night—everything from the moment Radnor grabbed his wrist, to the strange encounter at the shelter, and how he ended up spending the night in this room.

They kicked them out of St. Fillan's at a little after 11:00. The three card players headed off to a spot they knew behind the bakery, where the ovens threw heat out all night long. They asked Denton whether he wanted to join them, but he declined as politely as he could. When he looked around again, the coughing man had disappeared into the night, taking whatever remaining secrets he might have with him.

The wind blew eddies of snow around the street, miniature tornados of frost marking the desolation of the town. It was only him and the man who had lost his home to fire, still outside the church. A horrific scene filled Denton's mind: this dour man stands in a bedroom of a suburban home pouring gasoline from a red can onto the bodies of his loved ones. They are infected and changed, strange facsimiles of their former selves. He lights a wooden match on the door frame as he walks out and sets the house ablaze.

Denton shook the image away. There was no point adding any gruesomeness to this man's tragedy. If there had been anything suspicious about the fire, he'd be in police custody, not out on the street looking for a bed in a storm.

"Do you need a lift someplace?" Denton asked.

The man looked at him as though he had just grown horns. His stare bore into Denton's forehead, as his mouth twisted in puzzlement. "No. I'm good," he said. Then he set off, plowing through the snow drifts that covered the sidewalk.

Denton should go too. It was time to turn himself in.

He hunted through his coat pockets for his car keys. The back of his hand came in contact with the sheet of paper. The one he had taken from Kaling's apartment. The one Kaling had wanted back so badly.

The temptation to pull it out and examine it then and there was tempered only by the fear that the thick flurries of snow would ruin it. It was a list of the infected, but it wasn't the first of its kind Denton had come across. There was one at the lodge on Mt. Hamon. Those boys had been assembling their own list. Denton had been unable to read the wall of photos and clippings, but it had likely been comprised of the same people.

A strong urge came over him to drive there and compare the two. He could go up and check it out and then in the morning investigate Mt. Nazareth.

Except Bill had told him everything had been cleared out of there and was in Evidence. Not to mention, he couldn't imagine spending the night in that lodge. It was a place he hoped to never see again.

Denton paused from the work of clearing snow off of the car. All the more reason to go to the police. Perhaps once he gave the list to Bill, they could review the evidence and see how much it matched up with what the boys had gathered.

That'll never happen. You'll end up strapped to a hospital bed faster than you can say: sedation.

What if one of them had made notes? Perhaps Eddie had written something down. It was a long shot, but maybe something had been left at the Radcliff home. The police must have searched it, but since it wasn't the scene of any crime, perhaps they weren't so thorough. Maybe they missed something.

But what light would their notes shine on this? He had the list already. Wasn't he just trying to put off the inevitable: the long, tiring interrogation, the trip to the hospital in handcuffs followed by drug filled days on a psych watch?

Still, it was worth a shot. Perhaps he'd be able to bring the authorities something they couldn't so easily refute.

From the window of the guest room, Denton located the Buick out on the street. It was a smooth dome. The ploughs had blocked it in with a two foot wall of compressed snow. At least, no one could read the license plate number and report it.

The light seemed too bright. The sky was a fierce blue and the sun reflected off the solid surface of white that was Bexhill. He turned back into the room and checked his watch. It was almost ten. It had been remarkably easy getting into the house. The only problem had been slogging through the deep snow. Someone had left the garden gate open, so he didn't have to shovel it out or climb over it. He was able to gain entrance by smashing a pane of glass next to the latch in the French doors. A cement garden ornament in the shape of a toad on one of the steps helped him with the window. He wasn't so lucky with his search. If Eddie had left anything, either the police had taken it, or he hid it too well. Two hours of ransacking every corner of the house produced nothing related to the case except a special edition of Philip J. Gasher's collected works. The cover was all black except for a red fish eye that stared out at the viewer.

It was a newer publication than the one Danny had at the lodge, but it contained The Spreading Evil, just as he expected it would. At the end of Denton's excruciating night, he had showered and then picked a room to bunk down in. He had read the story with drooping eyelids and wavering attention, before succumbing to his exhaustion. The story was incredibly short and was written in a terribly pretentious style. The author seemed to be intentionally trying to make it seem archaic, even though the copyright was dated 1952. Denton had been surprised that anyone would have cared enough about it to even remember the tale, never mind being inspired by it to go on a murder spree.

The story followed the sheriff of a small town on the East Coast. In the beginning, he's hiding in a room overlooking the town square afraid for his life. It then switches to a flashback where the sheriff and his deputy investigate a murder.

They actually don't do any investigating. They just show up and find that this alcoholic has killed his wife. The guy's covered in blood and screaming that the woman wasn't really his wife; she was some sort of impostor.

In one of the most preposterous passages of the story, the narrator describes the murder's assertions as a demon had taken possession of her form and wore her visage like a fine façade. What kind of sheriff spoke like that?

More strange things happen: other crimes, abnormal behavior, and a rumor of a meteor crashing in the woods. Very quickly things go all Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the sheriff is outnumbered by the aliens taking over the town.

It was aggravating how quickly the narrator deduced it was creatures from another world. Just because of a few chance things people say, suddenly the sheriff thinks, "Aha! It's aliens!" How could some old man in a diner ordering meatloaf or a young boy wandering around the town in the middle of the night make anyone think they were being invaded by aliens? It was completely ridiculous.

It's not long before everyone in town is a bunch of drones, except for the sheriff. And he's holed up in the library. On the other side of the town square is the church. The aliens have replaced the crucifix with a giant red eye. Gasher springs that like it's a huge shock, as though he thinks his readers are a bunch of monks from the Middle Ages who would tremble at the sacrilegious notion.

His big M. Night Shyamalan twist at the end is that he has been infected with the alien virus and it is only a matter of time before he turns into one of them. He has rigged the whole square with dynamite. He knows it won't stop them because they've already spread all over the world, but he intends to kill himself and take out as many of them as he can in the process. And then, it abruptly ends. "How stupid," Denton had said, tossing the book onto the nightstand. It almost seemed that the inanity of the story was a bigger disappointment than not finding any of the Guerrilla's notes. But before he could analyze his feelings, sleep had carried him away.

Downstairs, Denton checked to see if his pants were dry. After he'd searched the place, he had washed the vomit off his clothes in the kitchen sink. The cuff was still damp, but they were dry enough to put on. He had briefly considered checking if anything in Eddie's dresser would fit him, but the thought of putting on someone else's clothes disturbed him more than wearing his own dirty and soiled garments. There wasn't much in the way for breakfast. Most of the cupboards were empty. The fridge wasn't much better. There was some spoiled milk and a bottle of flat soda, mustard, ketchup, and a jar of pickles—nothing Denton would consider edible, at least not for breakfast. Eddie must have lived off of take-out. In the end, he managed to scavenge a meager meal of instant coffee and Pop Tarts. When he was ready to go, he checked to make sure he had his keys and his pills. The list wasn't with his things. He had had left it in the living room Eddie used to surf the internet and practice killing zombies. Carefully stepping over the books and CDs covering the floor, Denton made his way to the desk. He wondered if he should clean up the mess he had made in his effort to find some clues. Glancing at the junk and the empty shelves, it seemed too daunting a task. I'd be here until tomorrow morning.

The police had seized the computer, and all that was left on the desk was the monitor and a bundle of wires.

It had been about one in the morning when he had sat down there and studied the names. Without any hope of using the internet, Denton had relied on an old phone book he'd found in one of the drawers. Very carefully on the right-hand side of the sheet, he had added three addresses. He just hoped they were for the right people and still valid.

Denton folded the paper up and delicately placed it in his breast pocket. As he tucked it away, he noticed the half empty bottle of scotch at the back of the desk. The spike in his temple pressed in a little deeper, despite the best efforts of the painkillers. Perhaps it would be best to leave the liquor behind.

How much of last night's confusion had come from that bottle?

He was going to need a clear head if had any hope of finding some proof of his suspicions. Maybe one of the people on the list would have something he could show the police. But first he wanted to check out Mt. Nazareth. It was a long shot, but as Denton dug out his car and the cool tranquil day revolved around him, it was as if that mountain and all its legends of devils were calling out to him.