before her.
She edged away from the refrigerator, toward the open door between the
kitchen and the living room.
It raised one murderous hand, palm out, as if to tell her she must stop
retreating. The segmented arm appeared capable of bending backward or
forward at four places, and each of those bizarre joints was protected
by hard brown-black plates of tissue that seemed similar in substance to
a beetle’s carapace. The long, claw-tipped fingers were frightening,
but something worse lay in the center of its palm, a round,
sucker-shaped orifice as large as a half-dollar. As she stared in
horror at this Dantean apparition, the orifice in its palm opened and
closed slowly, opened and closed like a raw wound, opened and closed.
The function of the mouth-in-hand was in part mysterious and in part too
dreadfully clear, as she stared, it grew red and moist with an obscene
hunger.
Panicked, she made a break for the nearby doorway and heard the beast’s
feet clicking like cloven hooves on the linoleum as it rushed after her.
Five or six steps into the living room, heading toward the door that
opened into the motel office, with eight or ten steps to go, she saw the
beast looming at her right side.
It moved so fast!
Screaming, she threw herself to the floor and rolled to escape its
grasp. She collided with an armchair, shot to her feet, and put the
chair between her and the enemy.
When she changed directions, the creature had not immediately followed.
It was standing in the center of the room, watching her, apparently
aware that it had cut her off from her only route of escape and that it
could take time to relish her terror before it closed in for the kill.
She began to back toward the bedroom.
It said, “Raysheeeel, Raysheeeel,” no longer capable of speaking her
name clearly.
The tumorous lumps across the beast’s forehead rippled and reformed.
Right before her eyes, one of its small horns melted away entirely as
another minor wave of change passed through the creature, and a new vein
traced a path across its face much like a slow-moving fissure forming in
the earth.
She continued to edge backward.
It moved toward her with slow, easy steps.
“Raysheeeel…”
Convinced that a dying wife lay in an intensi”‘e-care ward waiting for
her husband, Amos Tate wanted to drive Ben all the way to Sunrise
Hospital, which would have taken him too far away from the Golden Sand
Inn. Ben had to insist strenuously on being dropped at the corner of
Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana. And as there was no good reason to
refuse Amos’s generous offer, Ben was reduced to admitting that he had
lied about the wife, though he offered no explanation. He flung off the
blanket, threw open the cab door, jumped down to the street, and ran
east on Tropicana, past the Tropicana Hotel, leaving the startled
trucker staring after him in puzzlement.
The Golden Sand Inn was approximately a mile ahead, a distance he could
ordinarily cover in six minutes or less.
But in the heavy rain, he did not want to risk sprinting at top speed,
for if he fell and broke an arm or leg, he would not be in any condition
to help Rachael if, in fact, she needed help. (God, please, let her be
warm and safe and sound and in need of no help at all!) He ran along the
shoulder of the broad boulevard, the revolver digging into his flesh
where it was tucked under his waistband.
He splashed through puddles that filled every depression in the macadam.
Only a few cars passed him, several of the drivers slowed to stare, but
none offered him a lift.
He did not bother trying to hitch a ride, for he sensed that he had no
time to waste.
A mile was not a great distance, but tonight it seemed like a journey to
the far end of the world.
Julio and Reese had been able to board the plane in Orange County with
their service revolvers holstered under their coats because they had
presented their police credentials to the attendant at the