
In the dead of night three ordinary men—an accountant, a duck‑hunter, a philosophy professor—suddenly abandon their sleep‑filled homes, each moving with a strange, Brando‑like coolness. Their wives watch in bewildered silence as the husbands dress, speak in low, cryptic tones, and slip out into the empty streets. A sense of restless urgency thrums beneath their seemingly casual banter, as if something unseen is pulling them from the safety of domestic life.
Outside, the city is a sleeping beast, its lights flickering like distant fireflies, the air humming with an uneasy quiet. As the trio walks, their eyes glint with a hidden animus, and the shadows around them begin to stir with the promise of other nocturnal wanderers—college boys, lawyers, doctors—each drawn into the same silent procession. Listeners are invited to follow these early‑morning prowlers into a world where ordinary routines give way to a collective, enigmatic purpose that hints at a larger, unsettling mystery.
Language
en
Duration
~28 minutes (27K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2020-01-22
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
b. 1942
A longtime science fiction and fantasy short-story writer, he published dozens of stories from the 1960s into the 1990s, many of them in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He also taught English for many years in Denver, bringing a thoughtful, literary touch to his fiction.
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