Behind the house the slope continued to rise. Blade walked around it along the circular drive, noting the fallen trees that were rotting amid the grass of what had once been a neatly kept lawn. Now it grew rank and dense, reaching Blade's knees.

Blade's mood grew sober as he surveyed the estate. He did not like this house, intact but as lifeless as the Great Pyramid, sitting there brooding on this dark hill. The mental association of abandoned houses filled with things dark and sinister was too deep for even Blade's trained mind to shake off. He had never seen a better haunted house.

He would not have liked it particularly even if he had never heard of haunted houses. Country mansions could easily be abandoned for legitimate reasons. But they could also be abandoned for more sinister ones-plagues, wars, the long, slow dying of a civilization that could no longer sustain them. The mansion was intact except for the damage inflicted by the years. That seemed to rule out war. Or did it? Chemicals, bacteria, hard radiation, or radioactive dust could leave a house intact and its inhabitants dying in agony. The house seemed to have been abandoned long enough for any CBR warfare agents to have lost their deadliness. But Blade would have been happier with a Geiger counter.

There was no point in standing in the darkness, staring at the house. It only suggested the state of the world he had fallen into, and it might be leading him completely astray. At the top of the hill he might see anything from a farm to an entire city. He stepped away from the house, took a final look at the empty windows, shivered at more than the rising wind, and strode off up the hill.