Free Quicker Than the Eye by Ray Bradbury

me and Finnegan, lost and found."
    "Please, no details. I feel like a damned fool following you while Finnegan, if he exists, is underfoot snug and warm, saying, 'Ah, those idiots above running about, freezing. I think I'll  let  them freeze.’ ”
    "One hopes not. Get away now. If we walk together, he won't jump up. Alone, he'll peer out the merest crack, glom the scene with a huge bright eye, flip down again,  ssst,  and one of us gone to darkness."
    "Not me, please. Not me."
    We walked on about sixty feet apart and beginning to lose one another in the half moonlight.
    "Are you there?" called Sir Robert from half the world away in leafy dark.
    "I wish I weren't," I yelled back.
    "Onward!" cried Sir Robert. "Don't lose sight of me. Move closer. We're near on the site. I can intuit, I almost  feel-"
    As a final cloud shifted, moonlight glowed brilliantly to show Sir Robert waving his arms about like antennae, eyes half shut, gasping with expectation.
    "Closer, closer," I heard him exhale. "Near on. Be still. Perhaps . .
    He froze in place. There' was something in his aspect that made me want to leap, race, and yank him off the turf he had chosen.
    "Sir Robert, oh, God!" I cried. "Run!"
    He froze. One hand and arm orchestrated the air, feeling, probing, while his other hand delved, brought forth his silver-coated flask of brandy. He held it high in the moonlight, a toast to doom. Then, afflicted with need, he took one, two, three, my God,  four incredible swigs!
    Arms out, balancing the wind, tilting his head back, laughing like a boy, he swigged the last of his mysterious drink.
    "All right, Finnegan, below and beneath!" he cried. "Come  get  me!"
    He stomped his foot.
    Cried out victorious.
    And  vanished.
    It was all over in a second.
    A flicker, a blur, a dark bush had grown up from the earth with a whisper, a suction, and the thud of a body dropped and a door shut.
    The glade was empty.
    "Sir Robert. Quick!"
    But there was no one to quicken.
    Not thinking that  I  might be snatched and vanished, I lurched to the spot where Sir Robert had drunk his wild toast.
    I stood staring down at earth and leaves with not a sound save my heart beating while the leaves blew away to reveal only pebbles, dry grass, and earth.
    I must have lifted my head and bayed to the moon like a dog, then fell to my knees, fearless, to dig for lids, for tunneled tombs where a voiceless tangle of legs wove themselves, binding and mummifying a thing that had been my friend. This is his final door, I thought insanely, crying the name of my friend.
    I found only his pipe, cane, and empty brandy flask, flung down when he had escaped night, life, everything.
    Swaying up, I fired the pistol six times here into the unanswering earth, a dumb thing gone stupid as I finished and staggered over his instant graveyard, his locked-in tomb, listening for muffled screams, shrieks, cries, but heard none. I ran in circles, with no ammunition save my weeping shouts. I would have stayed all night, but a downpour of leaves, a great spidering flourish of broken branches, fell to panic and suffer my heart. I fled, still calling his name to a silence lidded by clouds that hid the moon.
    At his estate, I beat on the door, wailing, yanking, until I recalled: it opened inward, it was unlocked.
    Alone in the library, with only liquor to help me live, I read the letter that Sir Robert had left behind:
    My dear Douglas:
    I am old and have seen much but am not mad. Finnegan exists. My chemist had provided me with a sure poison that I will mix in my brandy for our walk. I will drink all. Finnegan, not knowing me as a poisoned morsel will give me a swift invite. Now you see me, now you don't. I will then be the weapon of his death, minutes after my own. I do not think there is another outsize nightmare like him on earth. Once gone, that's the end.
    Being old, I am immensely curious. I fear not death, for my physicians tell me that f no accidents kill me, cancer will.
    I