Phaenna's attention shifted and the carrier beam died. The Seven Sisters arefickle that way. This time, though, it was just as well. No way was I going outthere to face that monstrosity. I couldn't. And I was grateful not to have toadmit it.
For a long while I sat thinking about the Corpsegrinder. Even here, protected bythe strong walls of the Roxy, the mere thought of it was paralyzing. I tried toimagine what Charlie's Widow was going through, separated from this monster byonly a thin curtain of brick and stucco. Feeling the hard radiation of itsmalice and need ... It was beyond my powers of visualization. Eventually Igave up and thought instead about my first meeting with the Widow.
She was coming down the hill from Roxborough with her arms out, the invertedimage of a child playing a tightrope walker. Placing one foot ahead of the otherwith deliberate concentration, scanning the wire before her so cautiously thatshe was less than a block away when she saw me.
She screamed.
Then she was running straight at me. My back was to the transformerstation--there was no place to flee. I shrank away as she stumbled to a halt.
"It's you!" she cried. "Oh God, Charlie, I knew you'd come back for me, I waitedso long but I never doubted you, never, we can--" She lunged forward as if tohug me. Our eyes met. All the joy in her died.
"Oh," she said. "It's not you." I was fresh off the high-tension lines, stillvibrating with energy and fear. My mind was a blaze of contradictions. I couldremember almost nothing of my post-death existence. Fragments, bits of advicefrom the old dead, a horrifying confrontation with ... something, somecreature or phenomenon that had driven me to flee Manhattan. Whether it was this