could have been inside the mind of another. It was a surrealistic realm
of psychotic rage, desperation, infantile self-absorption , terror,
confusion, envy, lust, and urgent hungers so vile that a flood of sewage
and rotting corpses could not have been as repulsive
For the duration of that telepathic contact, Marty felt as if he had
been pitched into one of the deeper regions of Hell. Though the
connection lasted no more than three or four seconds, it seemed
interminable. When it was broken, he found himself standing with his
hands clamped against his temples, mouth open in a silent scream.
He gasped for breath and shuddered violently.
The roar of an engine brought his eyes back into focus and drew his
attention to the day beyond the window. The Jeep station wagon was
accelerating up the driveway, toward the cabin.
Maybe he was misjudging the degree of The Other’s recklessness and
insanity, but he had been in that mind, and he thought he knew what was
coming. He spun away from the window, toward the girls.
“Run, get out the back, go!”
Having already scrambled up from the living-room floor and the two-hand
card game in which they’d been pretending to been grossed, Charlotte and
Emily were sprinting toward the kitchen before Marty had finished
shouting the warning.
He ran after them.
All in a second, spinning through his mind, an alternate strategy, stay
in the living room, hope the Jeep got hung up in the porch and never
made it to the front wall of the cabin, then rush outside, after the
impact, and shoot the bastard before he climbed out from behind the
steering wheel.
And in another second, the dark potential of that strategy, maybe the
Jeep would make it all the way–cedar siding, shattered two-by fours,
electrical wiring, chunks of plaster, broken glass exploding into the
living room with it, rafters buckling, ceiling collapsing, murderous
slate roof tiles thundering down on him–and he would be killed by
flying debris, or survive but be trapped in the rubble, legs pinned.
The kids would be on their own. Couldn’t risk it.
Outside, the roar of the engine swelled nearer.
He caught up with the girls as Charlotte grasped the thumb-turn of the
dead-bolt lock on the kitchen door. He reached over her head, slapped
open the latch-bolt as she disengaged the lower lock.
The scream of the engine filled the world, curiously less like the sound
of a machine than like the savage cry of something huge and Jurassic.
The Beretta. Rattled by the telepathic contact and the hurtling Jeep,
he had forgotten the Beretta. It was on the living-room coffee table.
No time to go back for it.
Charlotte twisted the knob. The howling wind tore the door out of her
hand and shoved it into her. She was knocked off her feet.
Then wham, from the front of the house, like a bomb going off.
The big station wagon shot past Paige’s hiding place so fast she knew
she wasn’t going to have a chance to wait for the son of a bitch to
park, then creep up on him stealthily from tree to tree and shadow to
shadow in the manner of the good adventure heroine that she envisioned
herself. He was playing by his own rules, which meant no rules at all,
and his every action would be unpredictable.
By the time she scrambled to her feet, the Jeep was within seventy or
eighty feet of the cabin. Still accelerating.
Praying her cold-stiffened legs wouldn’t cramp, she clambered over the
low rock formation. She raced toward the cabin, parallel to the
driveway, staying in the gloom of the woods, weaving between tree
trunks.
Because the BMW was not parked squarely in front of the cabin but to the
left, the Jeep had a clear shot at the porch steps. Less than an inch
of snow was insufficient to slow it down. The ground under that white
blanket wasn’t frozen rock-solid as it would be later in the winter, so
the tires cut into bare earth, finding all the traction they needed.
The driver seemed to be standing on the accelerator. He was suicidal.
Or convinced of his invulnerability. The engine screamed.