The postmark was blurred but I could make out that it had been cast from Grand Central. Time didn’t matter. It couldn’t have been cast more than a microsecond earlier.
The envelope contained a card upon which was typed:
“Caution! Site on cylinder of 2 ft. radius and 6 ft. height. Unwrap at armslength.”
Now what? A practical joke? If so, it must be Benson’s work. He’s played plenty, from pumping hydrogen sulphide (that’s rotten egg gas, as you know) into the air-conditioning system at high school to calling a gynecologist to the launching stage at the Sands to sever an umbilical cord which he neglected to say was on a Viking rocket.
I followed the instructions. As I bent back the first fold of the strange wrapping it came alive, unfolding itself with incredible swiftness.
Something burst forth like a freed djinn—almost instantaneously lengthening, spreading—a thing with beetling brows, low, broad forehead, prognathous jaw, and a hunched, brutally muscular body, with a great club over its swollen shoulder.
I went precipitously backward over a coffee table.
It stabilized, a dead mockery, replica of a Neanderthal.
A placard hung on its chest. I read this:
“Even some of the early huntsmen weren’t successful. Abandon the chase, Monk. I’ve things to do and this—your blood brother, no doubt—couldn’t catch me any more than you can!”