. . Please, please, not this. Not death. Not all the blood and having
to lie in all the blood while the ax rose and fell and methodically
dismembered him. Not death, dammit. Anything else. All he could see
on the other side of death was nothingness, perpetual blackness; and the
vision was so complete and vivid and horrifying that he never even
recognized the incongruity and futility of praying to a God in whose
existence he did not believe.
just: God, God, please . . . Not this. Anything but this. Please .
. .
All of this flashed through his mind in a fraction of a second, before
he realized that he had not been caught by the ax blade.
instead, he had been hit on the backswing of the first blow. He had
taken the head of the ax, the three-inch-wide top of it, just below the
ribs on his right side. There had been enough force in the blow to
knock the wind out of him and to leave him with a welt and eventually a
bruise. But that was all. There was no torn flesh. No blood.
But where was the madman-and the ax?
Doyle looked up, blinked tears out of his eyes.
The stranger had dropped the weapon. He was pressing the palms of his
hands against his temples, grimacing furiously. Perspiration had popped
out on his forehead and was trickling down his reddened face.
Gasping for breath, Alex clamhered to his feet and leaned back against
the wall, too weak and pain-racked to move any farther.
The stranger saw him. He bent down to pick up the ax, but stopped short
of it. He gave a strangled cry, turned, and stumbled out of the room,
out into the night and the rain.
For a long while, as he struggled to regain his breath and to overcome
the pain which stitched his side, Alex was certain that he had been
granted only a temporary reprieve.
it made no sense for this stranger to walk away from a job so nearly
finished. The man had desperately needed to kill Doyle. There had been
nothing playful or joking about him. Each time that he had swung that
ax, he had intended to sever flesh and spill blood.
Certainly, he was insane. And the insane were unpredictable. But it
was likewise true that a madman’s violent compulsions were not easily or
rapidly dissipated.
Yet the man did not return.
The pain in Doyle’s side gradually eased until he could stand erect,
could walk. His breath came much less raggedly than it had, although he
could not inhale too deeply without amplifying the pain.
His heartbeat softened and slowed.
And he was left alone.
He walked slowly to the door, his right hand pressed to his side, and he
leaned against the frame for a moment, then stepped outside.
The rain and wind struck him with more force than ever, chilling him.
The parking lot was deserted. The green brown cars sparkled with water,
all still and unremarkable.
He listened to the night.
The only sounds were the steady drumming of the rain and the fluting of
the wind along the building.
it seemed almost as if the events in the maintenance room had been
nothing but a bad dream. If he had not had the pain in his side to
convince him of its reality, he might have gone back to look for the ax
and the other signs of what had happened.
He walked back toward the courtyard in the center of the motel complex,
splashing through puddles rather than walk around them, wary of every
velvety shadow, stopping half a dozen times to listen for imagined
footsteps following close behind him.
But there were no footsteps other than his own.
At the top of the stairs which led to the second level, in the northeast
corner of the courtyard overlook, he leaned against the iron safety rail
to catch his breath and to clamp down on the renewed thump of dull pain
in his side and chest.
He was cold. Deep-down cold and shivering. The raindrops struck him
like chips of ice and melted down his face.