Free The Barrens & Others by F. Paul Wilson

were armed. Still, I can do a whole lot of damage with something like this and still not kill you. Understand what I'm saying to you, old man?"
    George nodded vigorously.
    "Good. Now what we're going to have here tonight is a nice quiet little house. No noise, no talk. Just a good night's sleep for both of us. Then we'll see what tomorrow brings."
    He gave George one last hard look straight in the eye, then turned and headed back to the couch.
    *
    Before sacking out for the night, Gil went through George's check book. Not a whole lot of money in it. Most of the checks went out to cash or to the township for quarterly taxes. He noticed one good-sized regular monthly deposit that was probably his Social Security check, and lots of smaller sporadic additions.
    He looked through the three undeposited checks. They were all made out to George Haskins, each from a different greeting card company. The attached invoices indicated they were in payment for varing numbers of verses.
    Verses?
    You mean old George back thre tied up to the bed was a poet? He wrote greeting card verse?
    Gil looked around the room. Where? There was no desk in the shack. Hell, he hadn't seen a piece of paper since he got here! Where did George write this stuff?
    He went back to the bedroom. He did his best not to show the relief he felt when he saw that old George was still tied up nice and tight.
    "Hey, old man," he said, waving the checks in the air. "How come you never told me you were a poet?"
    George glared at him. "Those checks are mine! I need them to pay my taxes!"
    "Yeah? Well, right now I need them a lot more than you do. I think tomorrow morning we'll make a little trip down to the bank so you can cash these." He checked the balance in the account. "And I think you just might make a cash withdrawal, too."
    "I'll lose my land if I don't pay those taxes on time!"
    "Well then, I guess you'll just have to come up with some more romantic 'verses' for these card companies. Like, 'George is a poet / And nobody know it.' See? It's easy!"
    Gil laughed as he thought of all the broads who get those flowery, syrupy birthday and anniversary cards and sit mooning over the romantic poems inside, never knowing they were written by this dirty old man in a falling down shack on Long Island!
    "I love it!" he said, heading back to the couch. "I just love it!"
    He turned out all the lights, shoved the knife between two of the cushions, and bedded down on the dusty old couch for the night. As he drifted off to sleep, he thought he heard rustling movements from under the floorboards. George's 'tenants', no doubt. He shuddered at the thought. The sooner he was out of here, the better.
    *
    What time is it?
    Gil was rubbing the sleep from his eyes and peering around in the mineshaft blackness that surrounded him. Something had awakened him. But what? He sat perfectly still and listened.
    A few crickets, maybe a frog – the noises seemed to come from outside instead of from the crawlspace – but nothing more than that.
    Still, his senses were tingling with the feeling that something was wrong. He stood up and stepped over toward the light switch. As he moved, his foot caught on something and he fell forward. On the way down his ribs slammed against something else, something hard, like a chair. He hit the floor with his left shoulder. Groaning, he got to his knees and crawled until his fingers found the wall. He fumbled around for the light switch and flipped it.
    When his eyes had adjusted to the glare, he glanced at the clock over the kitchen sink – going on 4:00 a.m. He thought he saw something move by the sink but when he squinted for a better look, it was just some junk George had left there. Then he turned back toward the couch to see what had tripped him up.
    It was the little hassock that had been over by the rocking chair when he had turned the lights out. At least he was pretty sure it had been there. He knew it hadn't been next to the couch where it was now. And