too, but somehow he was sure he could see a reflection of his own feelings in her eyes, hidden, but there.

"We'll be with you all the way," Phil said.

"But how can I sleep with a cocktail lounge full of people all over my bed? Tell me. I'm listening. Tell me how!"

Phil's smile disappeared completely for a brief second. He whispered, close to Kane's ear. "Try to do it, Larry. Please—try!"

Kane ran to the wall, clicked the light switch. He knew that the lights in his room went out, but the slightly dimmer lights projected from the cocktail lounge remained. Somehow, that was even worse. It seemed to resemble the implacable characters of a persisting nightmare. Subdued, with the coruscating bubbling play of multicolored light from the jukebox turning a rainbow over and over the ceiling and the bed, and the Gang, the Gang all there like ghosts with greenish faces smiling, sitting, whispering round the bed.

Kane threw himself on the bed and covered his eyes with his arms.

He was going mad with fatigue, and yet he knew he could never sleep, never rest, under these circumstances. It wasn't just the figures there, the lights, the laughter and whispering and the chorus breaking from the jukebox. It was what their being there really meant, the suggestion of the bigger cause behind what was happening to Kane.

A man who fears to sleep in the dark is not really afraid of the dark. But of what is hiding in it.

Shadows moved above his closed lids. Glass tinkled with ice cubes. Under his sweating forearm, his eyes throbbed and his body felt as though the skin had been scraped all over until it was raw.

Kane propped himself on an elbow, and looked to one side at Phil. Phil grinned sympathetically. Laura was in the same cushioned chair, but she seemed to be sitting beside Kane on the bed. Lucille was avoiding looking at Kane.

"Phil."

"Well, Prof, we thought we were getting our sleep!"

"No," Kane whispered. "I can't sleep. I'm asking you, you Phil, and all the rest of you, to let me sleep. I'm asking you to help me in that way, just for a while. I'm imploring you really to just tune yourselves out for a while and let me sleep."

There was something blank, 

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