penetrate the terrible darkness beyond.
Lindsey took off around the car and scrambled over the lagoon wall.
Though Hatch called out, “Lindsey, wait,” she could not delay another
moment-and how could he?-with the thought of Regina in the hands of
Nyebern’s resurrected, psychotic son.
As Lindsey crossed the lagoon, fear for Regina still far outweighed any
concern she might have for her own safety. However, realizing that she
herself, must survive if the girl were to have any chance at all, she
swept’ the flashlight beam side to side, side to side, wary of an attack
from behind one of the huge gondolas.
Old leaves and paper trash danced in the wind, for the most part
waltzing across the floor of the dry lagoon, but sometimes spinning up
in columns and churning to a faster beat. Nothing else move Hatch
caught up with her by the time she reached the funhouse entrance. He
had delayed only to use the cord she had found to bind his flashlight to
the back of the crucifix. Now he carry both in one hand, pointing the
head of Christ at anything upon which he directed the light.
That left his right hand free for the Browning 9mm. He had left the
Mossberg behind. If he had tied the flashlight to the 12-gauge, he
could have brought both the handgun and the shotgun. Evidently he felt
that the crucifix was a better weapon than the Mossberg.
She didn’t know why he had taken the icon from the wall of Regina’s
room. She didn’t think he knew, either. They were wading hip deep in
the big muddy river of the unknown, and in addition to the cross, she
would have welcomed a necklace of garlic, a vial of holy water, a few
silver bullets, and anything else that might have helped.
As an artist, she had always known that the world of the five senses,
solid and secure, was not the whole of existence, and she had
incorporated that understanding into her work. Now she was merely
incorporating it into the rest of her life, surprised that she had not
done so a long time ago.
With both flashlights carving through the darkness in front of them,
they entered the funhouse.
All of Regina’s tricks for coping were not exhausted, after all. She in
vented one more.
She found a room deep inside her mind, where she could go and close the
door and be safe, a place only she knew about, in which she could never
be found. It was a pretty room with peach-colored walls, soft lighting,
and a bed covered with painted flowers. Once she had entered, the door
could only be opened again from her side. There were no windows.
Once she was in that most secret of all retreats, it didn’t matter what
was done to the other her, the physical Regina in the hateful world
outside.
The real Regina was sale in her hideaway, beyond fear and pain, beyond
tears and doubt and sadness. She could hear nothing beyond the room,
most especially not the wickedly soft voice of the man in black. She
could see nothing beyond the room, only the peach walls and her painted
bed and soft light, never darkness. Nothing beyond the room could
really touch her, certainly not his pale quick hands which had recently
shed their gloves.
Most important, the only smell in her sanctuary was the scent of roses
like those painted on the bed, a clean sweet fragrance. Never the
stentch of dead things. Never the awful choking odor of decomposition
that could bring a sour saliva gushing into the back of your throat and
nearly strangle you when your mouth was full of crushed scarf. Nothing
like that, no, never, not in her secret room, her blessed room, her deep
and safe and solitary haven.
Something had happened to the girl. The singular vitality that had made
her so appealing was gone.
When he put her on the floor of Hell, with her back against the base of
the towering Lucifer, he thought she’d passed out. But that wasn’t it.
For one thing, when he crouched in front of her and put his hand against