“Covenants, Conventions a Restrictions” that came with the grant deed
and mortgage. Lawns were green and recently mown, flower beds were well
tended, and trees were neatly trimmed. It was difficult to believe that
unspeakable violence could ever intrude from the outer world into such
an orderly, upwardly mobile community, and inconceivable that anything
supernatural could stalk those streets.
The neighborhood’s normalcy was so solid that it seemed like encircling
stone ramparts crowned with battlements.
Not for the first time, he thought that Lindsey and Regina might be
perfectly safe there-but for him. If madness had invaded this fortress
of normalcy, he had opened the door to it. Maybe he was mad himself;
maybe his weird experiences were nothing as grand as psychic visions,
merely the hallucinations of an insane mind. He would bet everything he
owned on his sanity-though he also could not dismiss the slim
possibility that he would lose the bet. In any event, whether or not he
was insane, he was the conduit for whatever violence might rain down on
them, and perhaps they would be better off if they went away for the
duration, put some distance between themselves and him until this crazy
business was over. Sending them away seemed wise and responsible-except
that a small voice deep inside him spoke against that option. He had a
terrible hunch-or was it more than a hunch?-that the killer would not be
coming after him but after Lindsey and Regina.
If they went away somewhere, just Lindsey and the girl, that homicidal
monster would follow them, leaving Hatch to wait alone for a showdown
that would never happen.
All right, then they had to stick together. Like a family. Rise or
fall as one.
Before leaving to pick Regina up at school, he slowly circled the house,
looking for lapses in their defenses. The only one he found was an
unlocked window at the back of the garage. The latch had been loose for
a long time, and he had been meaning to fix it. He got some tools from
one of the garage cabinets and worked on the mechanism until the bolt
seated securely in the catch.
As he’d told Lindsey earlier, he didn’t think the man in his visions
would come as soon as tonight, probably not even this week, maybe not
for a month or longer, but he would come eventually. Even if that
unwelcome visit was days or weeks away, it felt good to be prepare 2
Vassago woke.
Without opening his eyes, he knew that night was coming. He could feel
the oppressive sun rolling off the world and slipping over the edge of
the horizon. When he did open his eyes, the last fading light coming
through the attic vents confirmed that the waters of the night were on
the rise.
Hatch found that it was not exactly easy to conduct a normal domestic
life while waiting to be stricken by a terrifying, maybe even bloody,
vision so powerful it would blank out reality for its duration. It was
hard to sit in your pleasant dining room, smile, enjoy the pasta and
Parmesan bread, make with the light banter, and tease a giggle from the
young lady with the solemn gray eyes-when you kept thinking of the
loaded shotgun secreted in the corner behind the Coromandel screen or
the handgun in the adjacent kitchen atop the refrigerator, above the
line of sight of a small girls eyes.
He wondered how the man in black would enter when he came. At night,
for one thing. He only came out at night. They didn’t have to worry
about him going after Regina at school. But would he boldly ring the
bell or knock smartly on the door, while they were still up and around
with all the lights on, hoping to catch them off-guard at a civilized
hour when they might assume it was a neighbor come to call? Or would he
wait until they were asleep, lights off, and try to slip through their
defenses to take them unaware?
Hatch wished they had an alarm system, as they did at the store. When
they sold the old house and moved into the new place following Jimmy’s