Marty recognized it as such. Having packed, having gotten as far as the
car, that close to escaping unscathed, they would return to the house to
complete an inessential task, confident of their safety, and somehow the
psychopath would be in there, either because he had returned while they
were in the garage or because he had successfully hidden in some
cleverly concealed niche throughout the police search of the premises.
They would move from room to room, switching off the lights, letting
darkness spill through the house where upon the look-alike would
materialize, a shadow out of shadows, wielding a large butcher’s knife
taken from the rack of implements in their own kitchen, slashing,
stabbing, killing one or both of them.
Marty knew real life was neither as extravagantly colorful as the most
eventful fiction nor half as drab as the average academic novel–and
less predictable than either. His fear of returning to the house to
switch off the lights was irrational, the product of a too-fertile
imagination and a novelist’s predilection to anticipate drama,
malevolence , and tragedy in every turn of human affairs, in every
change of weather, plan, dream, hope, or roll of dice.
Nevertheless, they weren’t going back into the damn house. No way in
hell.
“Leave the lights on,” he said. “Lock up, raise the garage door, let’s
get the kids and get out of here.”
Maybe Paige had lived with a novelist long enough for her own
imagination to be corrupted, or maybe she remembered all of the blood in
the upstairs hall. For whatever reason, she didn’t protest that leaving
so many lights on would be a waste of electricity. She thumbed the
button to activate the Genie lift, and shut the door to the kitchen with
her other hand.
As Marty closed and locked the trunk of the BMW, the garage door
finished rising. With a final clatter it settled into the full-open
position.
He looked out at the rainy night, his right hand straying to the butt of
the Beretta at his waistband. His imagination was still churning, and
he was prepared to see the indomitable look-alike coming up the
driveway.
What he saw, instead, was worse than any image conjured by his
imagination. A car was parked across the street in front of the De
lorios’ house. It wasn’t the Delorios’ car. Marty had never seen it
before. The headlights were on, though the driver was having difficulty
getting the engine to turn over, it cranked and cranked. Although the
driver was only a dark shape, the small pale oval of a child’s face was
visible at the rear window, staring out from the back seat. Even at a
distance, Marty was sure that the little girl in the Buick was Emily.
At the connecting door to the kitchen, Paige was fumbling for house keys
in the pockets of her corduroy jacket.
Marty was in the grip of paralytic shock. He couldn’t call out to
Paige, couldn’t move.
Across the street, the engine of the Buick caught, chugged
consumptively, then roared fully to life. Clouds of crystallized fumes
billowed from the exhaust pipe.
Marty didn’t realize he’d shattered the paralysis and begun to move
until he was out of the garage, in the middle of the driveway, sprinting
through the cold rain toward the street. He felt as though he had
teleported thirty feet in a tiny fraction of a second, but it was just
that, operating on instinct and sheer animal terror, his body was ahead
of his mind.
The Beretta was in his hand. He didn’t recall drawing it out of his
waistband.
The Buick pulled away from the curb and Marty turned left to follow it.
The car was moving slowly because the driver had not yet realized that
he was being pursued.
Emily was still visible. Her frightened face was now pressed tightly to
the glass. She was staring directly at her father.
Marty was closing on the car, ten feet from the rear bumper.
Then it accelerated smoothly away from him, much faster than he could
run. Its tires parted the puddles with a percolative burble and plash.
Like a passenger on Charon’s gondola, Emily was being ferried not just