Thousand: Nine Hundred Seventeen

like a mole on its cheek. Silently they regard each other, giant stone head, odd black dwarf, yellow dog, and man. The sound of a great crash below is followed by a loud sizzling and crackling, the much softer sounds of bat wings continue their beating, and almost beyond hearing sonar squeaks chitter more rapidly. The stone face twitches suddenly, the upper lip rises, the nostrils flare even wider, the blank eyes bulge. The elevator’s metal screens flex, Sir expands and contracts, and when the ripple reaches Bernie he feels it in his gut. “Oh,” he wheezes. Another ripple runs