Somehow the day passed, and around four o'clock, Jack fell asleep. He awoke to darkness, not knowing how long he had been out. He only knew there had been no dreams, and for that he was grateful. Richard was stirring uneasily and Jack guessed he would be up soon. He stood and stretched, wincing at the stiffness in his back. He went to the window, looked out, and stood motionless, eyes wide. His first thought was I don't want Richard to see this. Not if I can help it.
O God, we've got to get out of here, and just as soon as we can, Jack thought, frightened. Even if, for whatever reasons, they're afraid to come straight at us.
But was he really going to take Richard out of here? They didn't think he would do it, he knew that - they were counting on his refusing to expose his friend to any more of this craziness.
Flip, Jack-O. You've got to flip over, and you know it. And you've got to take Richard with you because this place is going to hell.
I can't. Flipping into the Territories would blow Richard's wheels completely.
Doesn't matter. You have to do it. It's the best thing, anyway - maybe the only thing - because they won't be expecting it.
'Jack?' Richard was sitting up. His face had a strange, na**d look without his glasses. 'Jack, is it over? Was it a dream?'
Jack sat down on the bed and put an arm around Richard's shoulders. 'No,' he said, his voice low and soothing. 'It's not over yet, Richard.'
'I think my fever's worse,' Richard announced, pulling away from Jack. He drifted over to the window, one of the bows of his glasses pinched delicately between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He put his spectacles on and looked out. Shapes with glowing eyes roamed back and forth. He stood there for a long time, and then he did something so un-Richardlike that Jack could barely credit it. He took his glasses off again and deliberately dropped them. There was a frigid little crunch as one lens cracked. Then he stepped deliberately back on them, shattering both lenses to powder.
He picked them up, looked at them, and then tossed them unconcernedly toward Albert the Blob's wastebasket. He missed by a wide margin. There was now something softly stubborn in Richard's face, too - something that said I don't want to see any more, so I won't see any more, and I have taken care of the problem. I have Had Enough, Forever.
'Look at that,' he said in a flat, unsurprised voice. 'I broke my glasses. I had another pair, but I broke them in gym two weeks ago. I'm almost blind without them.'
Jack knew this wasn't true, but he was too flabbergasted to say anything. He could think of absolutely no appropriate response to the radical action Richard had just taken - it had been too much like a calculated last-ditch stand against madness.
'I think my fever's worse too,' Richard said. 'Have you got any more of those aspirin, Jack?'
Jack opened the desk drawer and wordlessly handed Richard the bottle. Richard swallowed six or eight of them, then lay down again.
7
As the night deepened, Richard, who repeatedly promised to discuss their situation, repeatedly went back on his word. He couldn't discuss leaving, he said, couldn't discuss any of this, not now, his fever had come back and it felt much, much worse, he thought it might be as high as a hundred and five, possibly a hundred and six. He said he needed to go back to sleep.
'Richard, for Christ's sake!' Jack roared. 'You're punking out on me! Of all the things I never expected from you - '
'Don't be silly,' Richard said, falling back onto Albert's bed. 'I'm just sick, Jack. You can't expect me to talk about all these crazy things when I'm sick.'
'Richard, do you want me to go away and leave you?'
Richard looked back over his shoulder at Jack for a moment, blinking slowly. 'You won't,' he said, and then went back to sleep.
8
Around nine o'clock, the campus entered another of those mysterious quiet periods, and Richard, perhaps sensing that there would be less strain put on his tottering sanity now, woke up and swung his legs over the bed. Brown spots had appeared on the walls, and he stared at them until he saw Jack coming toward him.
'I feel a lot better, Jack,' he said hastily, 'but it really won't do us any good to talk about leaving, it's dark, and - '
'We have to leave tonight,' Jack said grimly. 'All they have to do is wait us out. There's fungus growing on the walls, and don't tell me you don't see that.'
Richard smiled with a blind tolerance that nearly drove Jack mad. He loved Richard, but he could cheerfully have pounded him through the nearest fungus-rotted wall.
At that precise moment, long, fat white bugs began to squirm into Albert the Blob's room. They came pushing out of the brown fungoid spots on the wall as if the fungus were in some unknown way giving birth to them. They twisted and writhed half in and half out of the soft brown spots, then plopped to the floor and began squirming blindly toward the bed.
Jack had begun to wonder if Richard's sight weren't really a lot worse than he remembered, or if it had degenerated badly since he had last seen Richard. Now he saw that he had been right the first time. Richard could see quite well. He certainly wasn't having any trouble picking up the gelatinous things that were coming out of the walls, anyway. He screamed and pressed against Jack, his face frantic with revulsion.