Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy

BUMP IN THE NIGHT

Sput Sputnik was sleeping alone at last. Visions of dollar signs danced in his head as he dreamed of a miniature sled full of barrels of beer. She nu it, he had it, Ra Hoor cooed it, right jolly old selves, but overall there was a smell of fried onions, because of janes chains gains clanking up and down again.

Sput turned in the bed, moaning slightly, as the brains danes chains came clanking back and forth again.

And there was a Russian spy named Igor Beeforshot, and there was Minor Boulevard and Major Strasse, because every Pershing comes to Cricks, but the chains mains pains were clanking in and out again.

Hoor's looking for you, cad! It was a wide house, a mason blanc, a cozy bianca, but still there were cranes cranes cranes flapping overhead again. So he sput the roavin ovamor and

He was abruptly awake, in the dark, still hearing the chains. Something was bumping and thumping at his door, something that seemed to be dragging chains behind it.

Sput was not into the S-M scene, and everybody in the mansion knew better than to come banging at his door when he was asleep. But still the thumping and the bumping and the chain-rattling continued.

He was wide awake now, and he knew it was no dream.

Something eldritch and unholy, right out of Gothic fiction, was banging at his bedroom door.

And then, for the first time in his life, he actually heard an eerie laugh, just like in the books, and It was actually coming through the door, walking right through solid wood, a greenish oldish spectral chain-rattling Thing.

"Jesus Nelly!" Sput gasped. This sort of goings-on only happened in books, not in real life.

"Sput Sputnik," came the hollow voice (right out of an echo chamber, he thought).

"Yes?" he breathed, wondering if his hairs were standing on end, too, in orthodox fashion.

"Sput Sputnik," said the Presence, "I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."