spiral staircase

“Man, like I said, you have to lighten up. Christ’s sake man, most of the trouble that comes in this world, it’s from crazy people poking what doesn’t need to be poked to see if it bites. I tell you as a friend, leave it alone. You can stare at a mark on the wall, you see a monster from a horror movie. I’ll tell you, Grandson of mine, wouldn’t go down the stairs by himself because of a shadow on the wall. I showed him how it was his own shadow.'Yeah,' he said, `but why has it got a snout?'” Django laughed softly. “'Why has it got a snout?'” And I could see it had, like the wolf in the story, trees and stuff outside, the wind, it was moving just a bit, and I put my hand there to show him it was only a shadow but part of me understood full well that he wasn’t having any of it, it may have been a shadow but it still had a snout, so I stopped telling him to grow up and be a brave boy and I went down the stairs with him.” He kind of tailed off, eyes distant. Patrul knew Django lacked the intellectual discipline to follow an argument to its conclusion.
“So what’s your point?”
He shrugged.
“Doesn’t mean there aren’t real wolves.”
Django held the curtain that was flapping in the cool breeze and looked outside the window, into the night, then looked at his friend with pity. “No there aren’t,” he said. “There aren’t wolves. More coffee?”