When the brutalized girl raised her head again, Rachael said, “Please,
honey, tell me about his eyes.
“Strange.” Hyper. spaced out, you know? And..
clouded…
Sort of dylooking?
“Yeah.”
“His movements. Was there anything odd about the way he moved?”
“Sometimes… he seemed jerky . . . you know, a little spastic. But
most of the time he was quick, too quick for me.
“And you said his speech was slurred.” li “…he came back.”
“Yes,” Rachael said. “He came back. In fact, he’s still coming back.
He’s not made it all the way back yet and probably won’t ever make it.”
“But how- You don’t want to know.”
“Never mind how.
“And whc” “You don’t want to know who! Believe me, you don’t want to
know, can’t afford to know. Honey, you’ve got to listen closely flow,
and I want you to take to heart what I’m saying to you. You can’t tell
anyone what you’ve seen. Not anyone. Understand? If you do…
you’ll be in terrible danger. There’re people who’d kill you in a
minute to,keep you from talking about Eric’s resurrection. There s more
involved here than you can ever know, and they’ll kill as many people as
necessary to keep their secrets.”
A dark, ironic, and not entirely sane laugh escaped the girl. “Who
could I tell that would believe me, Rachael said.
“They’d think I was crazy. It’s nuts, the whole thing, just plain
impossible.”
Sarah’s voice had a bleak edge, a haunted note, and it was clear that
what she had seen tonight had changed her forever, perhaps for the
better, perhaps for the worse.
She would never be the same again. And for a long time, perhaps for the
rest of her life, sleep would not be easily attained, for she would
always fear what dreams might come.
Rachael said, “All right. Now, when we get you to a hospital, I’ll pay
all your bills. And I’m going to give you a check for ten thousand
dollars as well, which I hope to God you won’t throw away on drugs.
And if you want me to, I’ll call your parents out there in Kansas and
ask them to come for you. I think I’d like that.”
“Good. I think that’s very good honey. I’m sure they’ve been worried
about you.
“You know. . . Eric would’ve killed me. I’m sure that’s what he
wanted. To kill me. Maybe not me in particular. Just someone. He
jus\ felt like he had to kill someone, like it was a need in him-in his
blood. And I was there. You know? Convenient.”
“How did you get away from him?”
“He. . . he sort of phased out for a couple of minutes.
Like I told you, he seemed confused at times. And then at one point his
eyes just sort of clouded up even worse, and he started making this
funny little wheezing noise.
He turned away from me and looked around, as if he was really mixed up.
.. you know, bewildered. He seemed to get weak, too, because he leaned
against the wall there by the bathroom door and hung his head down.”
Rachael remembered the bloody palmprint on the bedroom wall, beside the
bathroom door.
“And when he was like that,” Sarah said, “when he was distracted, I was
flat on the bathroom floor, hurt real bad, hardly able to move, and so
the best I could do was crawl into the shower stall, and I was sure he’d
come in after me when he got his senses back, you know, but he didn’t.
Like he forgot me. Came to his senses and either didn’t remember I’d
been there or couldn’t figure out where I’d gone to. And then, after a
while, I heard him farther back in the house, pounding things, breaking
things.”
“He pretty much wrecked the kitchen,” Rachael said, and in a dark corner
of her memory was the image of the knives driven deep into the kitchen
wall.
Tears slid first from Sarah’s good eye, then from, the blackened and
swollen one, and she said, “I can t figure “What?” Rachael asked.
“Why he’d come after nœe.”
“He probably didn’t come after you specifically’ Rachael said. “If