Mixed with the visions of gargantuan machines and dark seas and colossal
demonic figures, Hatch received an array of images of other types.
Choiring angels. The Holy Mother in prayer. Christ with the Apostles
at the Last Supper, Christ in Gethsemane, Christ in agony upon the
cross, Christ ascending.
He recognized them as paintings Jonas Nyebern might have collected at
one time or another. They were different periods and styles from those
he had seen in the physician’s office, but in the same spirit. A
connection was made, a braiding of wires in his subconscious, but he
didn’t understand what it meant yet.
And more visions: the Ortega Highway. Glimpses of the nightscapes
unrolling on both sides of an eastward-bound car. Instruments on a
dashboard. Oncoming headlights that sometimes made him squint. And
suddenly Regina. Regina in the backsplash of yellow light from that
same instrument panel. Eyes closed. Head tipped forward. Something
wadded in her mouth and held in place by a scarf.
She opens her eyes.
Looking into Regina’s terrified eyes, Hatch broke from the visions like
an underwater swimmer breaking for air. “She’s alive!”
He looked at Lindsey, who shifted her gaze from the highway to him.
“But you never said she wasn’t.”
Until then he did not how little faith he’d had in the girls continued
existence.
Before he could take heart from the sight of her gray eyes gleaming in
the yellow dashboard light of the killer’s car, Hatch was hit by new
clairvoyant visions that pummeled him as hard as a series of blows from
real fists: Contorted figures loomed out of murky shadows. Human forms
in bizarre positions. He saw a woman as withered and dry as tumbleweed,
another in a repugnant state of putrefaction, a mad face of
indeterminate sex, a bloated green-black hand raised in horrid
supplication. The collection. His collection. He saw Regina’s face
again, eyes open, revealed in the dashboard lights. So many ways to
disfigure, to mutilate, to mock God’s work. Regina. Poor baby. Don’t
be afraid, Okay? Don’t be afraid. We’re only going to an amusement
park You know, like Disneyland, like Magic Mountain? How nicely will
she fit in my collection. Corpses as performance art, held in place by
wires, rebar, blocks of wood. He saw frozen screams, silent forever.
Skeletal jaws held open in eternal cries for mercy. The precious
collection. Regina, sweet baby, pretty baby, such an exquisite
acquisition.
Hatch came out of his trance, clawing wildly at his safety harness, for
it felt like binding wires, ropes, and cords He tore at the straps as a
panicked victim of premature burial might rip at his enwrapping shrouds.
He realized that he was shouting, too, and sucking breath as if in fear
of suffocation, letting it out at once in great explosive exhalations.
He heard Lindsey saying his name, understood that he was terrifying her,
but could not say anything or stop crying out for long seconds, until he
had found the release on the safety harness and cast it off.
With that, he was fully back in the Mitsubishi, contact with the madman
broken for the moment, the horror of the collection diminished though
not forgotten, not in the least forgotten. He turned to Lindsey,
remembering her fortitude in the icy waters of that mountain river the
night that she had saved him. She would need all of that strength and
more tonight.
fantasy World,” he said urgently, “where they had the fire years ago,
abandoned now, that’s where he’s going. Jesus Christ, Lindsey, drive
like you’ve never driven in your life, put the pedal to the floor, the
son of a bitch, the crazy rotten son of a bitch is taking her down among
the dead!”
And they were flying. Though she could have no idea what he meant, they
were suddenly flying eastward faster than was safe on that highway,
through the last clusters of closely spaced lights, out of civilization
into ever darker realms.
While she searched the refrigerator in the kitchen for the makings of a
salad, Jonas went to the garage to liberate a couple of steaks from the
chest-style freezer. The garage vents brought in the coolish night air,