Vikki tentatively rapped the other hand with her knuckles. She withdrew her hand rapidly, as if the feel of the wood bothered her.

"Time for the gun," she said.

They went to the closet and opened it warily, still also keeping an eye on the headboard. Nothing leaped out at them. Mark pulled the black bag from the closet and removed the gun. He held it awkwardly. He'd stayed away from weapons all his life. He'd always thought weapons and violence were for the weak of mind and slow of foot.

Vikki extended her hand. "Give it to me."

It looked large in her hand. Reflexively, she snapped the cylinder open to make sure it was loaded, then clicked it in place again and cocked the hammer.

"Somebody's playing a game with us," she said.

"Cowden?"

"It looks like his sculpture, doesn't it? But . . . ."

"Let's find a nice hotel where the beds don't mutate."

"Right. In another state."

While Vicki stood ready with the gun, Mark hurriedly dressed. Then, while he held the gun nervously, she changed as well. When she was almost finished, Mark heard groaning wood, somewhere in another room of the house.

He started and pointed the gun at the door. "What was that?"

Vicki finished buttoning her blouse and took the gun from him. "With a little luck, we'll never know. Luggage?"

"Just the tools and the good ol' loot. We can replace everything else. Let's move."

Each threw a last glance at the headboard when they left the room. The hands still hadn't moved.

They passed through the darkened living room, walking fast. Vicki led the way with the gun. The sound of groaning wood seemed to have shifted location. It was louder.

"You've got the keys?" Vicki asked.

Mark fumbled in a pocket, pulled forth his keychain. "Yeah. Here."

"Then let's find the egress and eeg outa here."

The entrance hallway was so dim that Mark could barely make out the outlines of the walls on either side. He thought briefly about turning on a light, then considered the possibility that it might bring someone — or something — down on them.

Vicki stepped aside, gun-barrel pointed at the ceiling as he moved past her to the door. She took up station behind him, guarding their rear. Mark twisted the knob and pulled. The door didn't budge. He grunted and pulled harder. Vikki reached up beside him and flipped the hall light switch.

Mark dropped the keys. All around the door's edge small taloned hands, not unlike those coming out of the head board, protruded, curving over the edge of the door and sinking, talons embedded, into the surrounding wall. White metal hands flowed from the doorjamb, alternating with the oaken ones.

Mark regained his breath and picked up the keys. "I like the back door, myself." Don't admit that this is serious, he thought. Don't even admit that it's real.

They walked and ran to the kitchen, where they saw that the same thing had happened to the back door.

Mark didn't remember how they got back to the living room. Everything, including he and Vicki, seemed to be moving too fast. He'd been in nervous situations when pulling a job before. He'd always stayed in control, but this was different. They should have been safe here. And how did Cowden, or whomever it was, make wood and metal flow like that?

He looked wildly around for escape. "The window!" he exclaimed.

"Good idea," Vicki said. "I'll cover." If she'd been breathing any faster, she might have been in danger of hyperventilating. She rocked back and forth on her toes, swinging the gun in wide arcs around the room.

The room was illuminated just enough to turn the window into a dark mirror. Mark picked up a large ashtray from an end table and threw it overhand. The window shattered in a glittering cascade of glass, revealing the burglar bars without.

Mark reached into the black bag hanging from his shoulder and brought out the pry bar she'd used to clobber Cowden. He stepped up to the window and carelessly knocked out the glass teeth that remained around the rim.

He angled the tool outside and began to pry at one of the places the bars were bolted to the outside of the house. Child's play. He struck the curved end three times to force the edge under the bars, then pulled hard. He was rewarded by a slight loosening of the bar. He reinserted the bar and was about to heave again when agony lanced up his leg.

Spastically, his fingers lost their grip on the bar. It fell, caromed off the edge of the windowsill, and dropped between the bars to the outside.

Mark looked down. Small hands, taloned like the hands coming out of the headboard, had grown out of the wooden floor and over his shoes. Between his feet, a forearm perhaps a foot long terminated in a hand that held a triangle of window glass. Blood from Mark's calf dripped down the glass and onto the hand. The whole arm glowed blue, and for only a second, Mark could have sworn that it moved slightly. The glass cut into him again.

He barely noticed as Vicki beside him staggered back a few steps and pointed the gun at the hand holding the glass. He leaned sideways frantically to get away from the sharp edge. His shoes were affixed to the floor. The hand wavered again, bringing the shard closer. He wrenched one foot out of a shoe, then the other.

He fell sideways to the floor and scrambled away crab-like, moaning without realizing it, still facing the hands and glass. The glow on the arm slid down to the floor and pooled briefly before vanishing.

Mark kept crabbing backwards until he smashed into a wall. He stood jerkily, eyes still fixed on his shoes and the arm between them. Vicki backed away from the window until she stood next to him.

"That blue glow," Mark said. "It's caused by whatever came from the bottle. Like a genie or something."

"Great. Tell me how that gets us out of here?"

Mark paced a few steps closer to the window. "This isn't a joke any more. I think it wants to kill us."

"Let's get the hell out of here, then."

Mark's breathing had returned almost to normal. "Calm down. You saw how slow it was. We'll get past it."

"Calm down! We're trapped in here with some kind of goddam monster that changes things!"

"It must belong to Cowden. He has to have a way to control it." Suddenly, realization dawned. "My god. It does his sculptures for him. What a racket! It does the work, he gets the credit."

"Screw this," Vicki said. She strode over to the fireplace and picked up a two-foot long axe from among the other tools. "Let's chop the door open and leave."

Mark sighed. One of the reasons he loved Vicki. She was such a direct sort of person. But, what if they could find some way to harness the monster, use it themselves . . . . Oh, well. Not tonight.

"Here. Let me apply my great masculine upper-body strength on that baby."