if I have to kill you, little angel?” Softer, softer, word by terrible
word, softer. “What if .
. . I have .
. . to kill . . . you . . . like I had to kill . . . the other one
.
. . ?”
She began to weep quietly.
Joey was suddenly chilled to the bone, and he was worried that his
shivering would disturb the sheets and draw her attention. He was
afraid she would discover that he had heard every word.
Eventually her stifled weeping subsided.
Joey was sure she could hear his pounding heart.
He felt strange. He was afraid of her, but he was also sorry for
her.
He wanted to hug her and tell her everything would be all right–but he
didn’t dare.
Finally, after what seemed like hours but was surely only a minute or
two, she left the bedroom, gently pulling the door shut after her.
Under the covers Joey curled into a tight, fetal ball.
What did it all mean? What had she been talking about? Was she just
drunk? Or was she crazy?
Although he was scared, he was also a little bit ashamed of himself for
thinking such things about his own mother.
Nevertheless, he was glad he had the wan, milky glow of the weak
night-light.
He sure didn’t want to be alone in the dark right now.
In the nightmare Amy had given birth to a bizarrely deformed baby–a
disgusting, vicious thing that looked more like a crab than like a
human being. She was in a small, poorly lighted room with it, and it
was coming after her, snapping at her with its bony pincers and
arachnoid mandibles. The walls held narrow windows, and each time she
passed one of them she saw her mother and Jerry Galloway on the far
side of the glass, they were looking in at her and laughing. Then the
baby scuttled along the floor, closed in fast, and seized her ankle in
one of its spiny pincers.
She woke up, sat up in bed, a scream caught in the back of her
throat.
She choked it down.
Just a dream, she told herself. Just a bad dream courtesy of Jerry
Galloway.
Damn him!
In the gloom to her right, something moved.
She snapped on the bedside lamp.
Curtains. Her window was open a couple of inches to provide
ventilation, and a mild breeze stirred the curtains.
Outside, a block or two away, a dog howled mournfully.
Amy looked at the clock. Three in the morning.
She sat there for a while, until she had calmed down, but when she
switched off the light she couldn’t get back to sleep. The darkness
was oppressive and threatening in a way it hadn’t been since she was a
small child.
She had the curious, disturbing feeling that, outside, in the night,
something terrible was bearing down on the Harper house. Like a
tornado.
But not a tornado. Something else. Something weird, worse than a mere
storm. She had a premonition– not quite the right word, but the only
word that came close to describing what she was feeling–an icy
premonition that some relentlessly destructive force was closing in on
her and the entire family.
She tried to imagine what it could be, but no explanation occurred to
her. The impression of danger remained formless, nameless, but
powerful.
The sensation was, in fact, so electrifying, so unshakable, that she
finally had to get up and go to the window, even though she felt
foolish for doing so.
Maple Lane was dozing peacefully, wrapped in unthreatening shadows.
And beyond their street, the suburban south side of Royal City rose on
a series of gentle, low hills, at this hour there was only a sprinkling
of lights.
Farther south, at the edge of the town and above it, lay the county
fairgrounds. The fairgrounds were dark now, deserted, but in July,
when the carnival arrived, Amy would be able to stand at her window and
see the blaze of colored lights, the far-off, magical blur of the
steadily turning Ferris wheel.
The night was filled only with the familiar. There was nothing new in