"Do you remember the time," he said, "we slid down the bank to get away from the night watchman at Gorham? There would have been a magnificent scandal if he'd caught us."
"Oh, yes, and the time—"
When they went down, the moon was an hour higher. He drove slowly. No need to imitate the sillier practices of the prohibition era. A truck chugged past him. "Two more weeks." Rot! Who'd he think he was, hearing voices? Joan of Arc?
He felt hilarious. He wanted to tell Tansy all the ridiculous things he'd been imagining the last few days, so she could laugh at them, too. It would make a swell ghost story. There was a reason he shouldn't tell her, but it was an insignificant reason—part and parcel of this cramped, warped, overcautious Hempnell life they ought to break away from more often.
So when they arrived in the living room, Tansy flopping down on the sofa, he began, "You know, Tansy, about this witch stuff. I want to tell you—"
He was caught completely off guard by whatever force—subjective or objective—hit him. When it was over, he was sitting in the easy-chair, completely sober, with the outer world once more an icy pressure on his senses, and the inner world a whirling sphere of alien thought, and the future a dark corridor two weeks long.
It was as if a very large, horny hand had been clapped roughly over his mouth, and as if another such hand had grasped him by the shoulder, shook him, and slammed him down in the leather chair.
As if?
He looked around uneasily.