Free Stepping Stones by Steve Gannon Page B

a glance in my direction, the shadowy figure moved on.
    After he’d gone, I remained behind the concrete column, trembling uncontrollably.  Why had he spared me ? I asked myself . Was he toying with me, tormenting me?
    Then another thought occurred.  Had I nearly made a mistake?  What if he had simply been an innocent passerby—a hotel employee, a garage attendant, a gambler leaving from a late-night stint at the tables?
    No.   I couldn’t accept that.  My vision in the TV screen had been no hallucination.  The cards at the blackjack table had proved it.
     
    *       *       *
     
    “How’d you sleep last night, hon?” Sarah asked at breakfast later that morning.  “The pills help?”
    “Yeah,” I lied.  I couldn’t tell her what I had seen in our TV, or what had happened at the Hilton.  It was too much to grasp, even for me.  And I had been there.
    “Going to work today?”
    “No.  I think I’ll stay home,” I answered, my mind racing.  Why did she want to know?
    “Good.  You still look tired.”  Finishing the last of her coffee, she checked the clock over the stove.  “Jeez, I’ve gotta run.  I’ll call from the office during lunch and see how you’re doing.”  Then, bending to kiss my cheek, “I’m worried, John.  You going to be okay?”
    “I’ll be fine.”
    “I love you.”
    “Love you back,” I mumbled.
    That night I doubled Dr. O’Brien’s dosage again , taking eight of the little pills .  Nonetheless, as usual, I found myself wide-awake after Sarah had fallen asleep.  Around midnight I got up and made my way to the den, going straight to a snowy channel on the TV.  Once more I saw my multiple selves reflected in the surface of the television screen , just as I had the night before.
    Time passed.  My reflections started to move.  Again, I saw myself at the blackjack table.  As before, I knew each hand as if I had played it a hundred times.  The shadowy figure was there too, close enough to touch.  I still couldn’t see his face.  Knowing what was coming next, I was afraid to watch, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the images in the screen .
    Death at the hands of my loathsome nemesis came suddenly this time—violent, hideous, and bloody.
    I had to go back to the Hilton.
    What happened next is mostly a haze.  I rec all getting dressed, shoving the gun into my belt, slipping into my car.  Of the trip downtown I remember nothing .  My first clear recollection is of crossing the Hilton casino floor and approaching a five-hundred-dollar blackjack table.  As I sat, the pit boss from the night before spotted me.
    “Evening, Mr. Starling,” he said, stepping behind the dealer.
    I nodded, noting the nameplate on his coat.  Frank.  I wasn’t surprised that he knew me; it was his job to recognize the players.  And after las t night, I was a player.  “I have money on deposit,” I said.  “I’d like it all in large chips, please.”
    “Certainly.”  Frank made a call on the pit phone, returning with a marker for me to sign.  Then the dealer assembled several stacks of chips before me—red-and-black hundreds, blue-and-gray thousands.
    I began by betting the ten-thousand-dollar limit on hands I knew were winners, pulling back to five hundred on the losers.  When my stacks got unwieldy I switched to the five-thousand-dollar chips.  At that point the dealer closed the table to other players and security moved in to contain a crowd that had assembled behind me.  Soon I was playing all five positions.  On one single hand , when I knew the dealer was going to bust, I raked in fifty thousand dollars.
    At the end of the shoe they changed dealers and brought out six new decks.  I counted my winnings:  nineteen stacks of five-thousand-dollar chips, ten per stack.  I did the math.  Almost a million, not counting my smaller chips.
    I played on.  Then something went wrong.  I felt a prickling at the back of my neck.  I could feel him