PART ONE
   
  Something Wicked This Way
  Comes...
   By the pricking of my thumbs,
  Something wicked this way comes.
  Open, locks,
  whoever knocks!
  -Shakespeare, Macbeth
   
   1
  ACROSS the somber gray clouds, lightning followed a jagged course like cracks in a 
china plate. In the unsheltered courtyard outside Alfred O'Brian's office, the parked 
cars glimmered briefly with hard-edged reflections of the storm light. The wind gusted, 
whipping the trees. Rain beat with sudden fury against the three tall office windows, 
then streamed down the glass, blurring the view beyond.
  O'Brian sat with his back to the windows. While thunder reverberated through the low 
sky and seemed to hammer on the roof of the building, he read the application that Paul 
and Carol Tracy had just submitted to him.
  He's such a neat little man, Carol thought as she watched O'Brian. When he sits very 
still like that, you'd almost think he was a mannequin.
  He was exceedingly well groomed. His carefully combed hair looked as if it had received 
the attention of a good barber less than an hour ago. His mustache was so expertly 
trimmed that the halves of it appeared to be perfectly symmetrical. He was wearing a gray 
suit with trouser creases as tight and straight as blades, and his black shoes gleamed. 
His fingernails were manicured, and his pink, well-scrubbed hands looked sterile.
  When Carol had been introduced to O'Brian less than a week ago, she had thought he was 
prim, even prissy, and she had been prepared to dislike him. She was quickly won over by 
his smile, by his gracious manner, and by his sincere desire to help her and Paul.
  She glanced at Paul, who was sitting in the chair next to hers, his own tensions 
betrayed by the angular position of his lean, usually graceful body. He was watching 
O'Brian intently, but when he sensed that Carol was looking at him, he turned and smiled. 
His smile was even nicer than O'Brian's, and as usual, Carol's spirits were lifted by the 
sight of it. He was neither handsome nor ugly, this man she loved; you might even say he 
was plain, yet his face was enormously appealing because the pleasing, open composition 
of it contained ample evidence of his gentleness and sensitivity. His hazel eyes were 
capable of conveying amazingly subtle degrees and mixtures of emotions. Six years ago, at 
a university symposium entitled "Abnormal Psychology and Modem American Fiction," where 
Carol had met Paul, the first thing that had drawn her to him had been those warm, 
expressive eyes, and in the intervening years they had never ceased to intrigue her. Now 
he winked, and with that wink he seemed to be saying: Don't worry;
  O'Brian is on our side; the application will be accepted; everything will turn out all 
right; I love you.
  She winked back at him and pretended to be confident, even though she was sure he could 
see through her brave front.
  She wished that she could be certain of winning Mr. O'Brian's approval. She knew she 
ought to be overflowing with confidence, for there really was no reason why O'Brian would 
reject them. They were healthy and young. Paul was thirty-five, and she was thirty-one, 
and those were excellent ages at which to set out upon the adventure they were 
contemplating. Both of them were successful in their work. They were financially solvent, 
even prosperous. They were respected in their community. Their marriage was happy and 
trouble-free, stronger now than at any time in the four years since their wedding. In 
short, their qualifications for adopting a child were pretty much impeccable, but she 
worried nonetheless.
  She loved children, and she was looking forward to raising one or two of her own. 
During the past fourteen years-in which she had earned three degrees at three 
universities and had established herself in her profession-she had postponed many simple 
pleasures and had skipped others altogether. Getting an education and launching her 
career had always come first. She had missed too many good parties and had foregone an 
unremembered number of vacations and getaway weekends. Adopting a child was one pleasure 
she did not want to postpone any longer.
  She had a strong psychological need-almost a physical need-to be a mother, to guide and 
shape children, to give them love and understanding. She was intelligent enough and 
sufficiently self-aware to
  realize that this deep-seated need arose, at least in part, from her inability to 
conceive a child of her own flesh and blood.
  The thing we want most, she thought, is always the thing we cannot have.
  She was to blame for her sterility, which was the result of an unforgivable act of 
stupidity committed a long time ago; and of course her culpability made her condition 
harder to bear than it would have been if nature-rather than her own foolishness-had 
cursed her with a barren womb. She had been a severely troubled child, for she had been 
raised by violent, alcoholic parents who had frequently beaten her and who had dealt out 
large doses of psychological torture. By the time she was fifteen, she was a hellion, 
engaged in an angry rebellion against her parents and against the world at large. She 
hated everyone in those days, especially herself. In the blackest hours of her confused 
and tormented adolescence, she had gotten pregnant. Frightened, panicky, with no one to 
turn to, she tried to conceal her condition by wearing girdles, by binding herself with 
elastic cloth and tape, and by eating as lightly as possible to keep her weight down. 
Eventually, however, complications arose because of her attempts to hide her pregnancy, 
and she nearly died. The baby was born prematurely, but it was healthy. She had put it up 
for adoption and hadn't given it much thought for a couple of years, though these days 
she often wondered about the child and wished she could have kept it somehow. At the 
time, the fact that her ordeal had left her sterile did not depress her, for she didn't 
think she would ever want to be pregnant again. But with a lot of help and love from a 
child psychologist named Grace Mitowski,
  who did charity work among juvenile wards of the court, Carol had turned her life 
completely around.
  She had learned to like herself and, years later, had come to regret the thoughtless 
actions that had left her barren.
  Fortunately, she regarded adoption as a more-than-adequate solution to her problem. She 
was capable of giving as much love to an adopted child as she would have given to her own 
offspring. She knew she would be a good and caring mother, and she longed to prove it-not 
to the world but to herself; she never needed to prove anything to anyone but herself, 
for she was always her own toughest critic.
  Mr. O'Brian looked up from the application and smiled. His teeth were exceedingly 
white. "This looks really fine," he said, indicating the form he had just finished 
reading. "In fact, it's splendid. Not everyone that applies to us has credentials like 
these."
  "It's kind of you to say so," Paul told him.