He needed a place to hide that was near her. Perhaps a secret corner in
her own house. a niche in which she was unlikely to look during the
long, bright, hostile hours of the day.
He parked the Honda two blocks from their house and returned on foot
along the tree-flanked sidewalk. The tall, green-patinated streetlamps
had angled arms at the top that directed their light onto the roadway,
and only a ghost of their glow reached past the sidewalk onto the front
lawns of the silent houses. Confident that neighbors were still
sleeping and unlikely to see him prowling through shadow-hung shrubbery
around the perimeter of the house, he searched quietly for an unlocked
door, an unlatched window. He had no luck until he came to the window
on the back wall of the garage.
Regina was awakened by a scraping noise, a dull thump and a sort of
protracted squeak. Still unaccustomed to her new home, she always woke
in confusion, not sure where she was, knowing only that she was not in
her room at the orphanage. She fumbled for the bedside lamp, clicked it
on, and squinted at the glare for a second before orienting herself and
recognizing the noises that had bumped her out of sleep had been the
sounds. They had stopped when she had snapped on the light. Which
seemed even sn.
She clicked the light off and listened in the darkness, which was now
with aureoles of color because the lamp had worked like a flashbulb on
her eyes, temporarily stealing her night vision. Though the sounds did
not resume, she believed they had come from the backyard.
Her bed wascomlbrtable. The room almost seemed to be scented with the
perfume of the painted flowers. Encircled by those roses, she felt
safer than she had ever felt before.
Although she didn't want to get up, she was also aware that the
Harrisons were having problems of some kind, and she wondered if these
sneaky sounds in the middle of the night somehow might be related to
that. Yesterday during the drive from school, as well as last night
during dinner and after the movie, she had sensed a tension in them that
they were trying to conceal from her. Even though she knew herself to
be a p around whom anyone would have a right to feel nervous, she was
sure that she was not the cause of their edginess.
Before going to sleep, she had prayed that their troubles, if they had
any, would prove to be minor and would be dealt with soon, and she had
reminded God of her selfless pledge to eat beans of all varieties.
If there was any possibility the sneaky noises were related to the
Harrisons' uneasy state of mind, Regina supposed she had an obligation
to check it out. She looked up and back at the above her bed, and
sighed. You couldn't rely on Jesus and Mary for everything. They were
busy people. They had a universe to run. God helped those who helped
themselves.
She slipped out from under the covers, stood, and made her way to the
window, leaning against furniture and then the wall. She was not
wearing her leg brace, and she needed the support.
The window looked onto the small backyard behind the garage, the area
from which the suspicious noises had seemed to come. Night-shadows from
the house, trees, and shrubs were unrelieved by moonlight. The longer
Regina stared, the less she could make out, as if the darkness were a
sponge soaking up her ability to see. It became easy to believe that
every impenetrable pocket of gloom was alive and watchful.
The garage window had been unlocked but difficult to open. The hinges
at the top were corroded, and the frame was paint-sealed to the jamb in
places. Vassago made more noise than he intended, but he didn't think
he had been loud enough to draw the attention of anyone in the house.
Then just as the paint cracked and the hinges moved to granthimaccess, a
light had appeared in another window on the second floor.
He had backed away from the garage at once, even though the light went
off again even as he moved. He had taken cover in a stand of six-foot
eugenia bushes near the property fence.
From there he saw her appear at the obsidian window, more visible to
was the girl he had seen in dreams a couple of times, most recently with
Lindsey Harrison. They had faced each other across a levitated black
rose with one drop of blood glistening on a velvet petal.
Regina.
He stared at her in disbelief, then with growing excitement. Earlier in
the night, he had asked Steven Honell if the Harrisons had a daughter,
but the author had told him that he knew only of a son who had died
years ago.
Separated from Vassago by nothing but the night air and one pane of
glass, the girl seemed to float above him as if she were a vision. In
reality she was, if anything, lovelier than she had been in his dreams.
She was so exceptionally vital, so full of life, that he would not have
been surprised if she could walk the night as confidently as he did,
though fora reason different from his; she seemed to have within her all
the light she needed to illuminate her path through any darkness.
He drew back farther into the eugenias, convinced that she pose the
power to see him as clearly as he saw her.
A trellis covered the wall immediately below her window. A lush trumpet
vine with purple flowers grew up the sturdy lattice to the windowsill,
and then around one side almost to the eaves. She was like some
princess locked in a tower, pining for a prince to climb up the vine and
rescue her.
The tower that served as her prison was life itself, and the prince for
whom she waited was Death, and that from which she longed to be rescued
was the curse of existence.
Vassago said softly, "I am here for you," but he did not move from his
hiding place.
After a couple of minutes, she turned away from the window.
vanished.
A void lay behind the glass where she had stood.
He ached for her return, one more brief look at her.
Regina.
He waited five minutes, then another five. But she did not come to the
window again.
At last, aware that dawn was closer than ever, he crept to the back of
the garage once more. Because he had already freed it, the window swung
out silently this time. The opening was tight, but he eeled through
with only the softest scrape of clothes against wood.
Lindsey dozed in half-hour and hour naps throughout the night, but her
sleep was not restful. Each time she woke, she was sticky with
perspiration, even though the house was cool. Beside her, Hatch issued
murmured protests in his sleep.
Toward dawn she heard noise in the hall and rose up from her pillows to
listen. After a moment she identified the sound of the toilet flushing
in the guest bathroom. Regina.
She settled back on her pillows, oddly soothed by the fading sound of
the toilet. It seemed like such a mundane-not to say ridiculous-thing
from which to take solace. But a long time had passed witho
ut a child
under her roof. It felt good and right to hear the girl engaged in
ordinary domestic business; it made the night seem less hostile. In
spite of their current problems, the promise of happiness might be more
real than it had been in years.
In bed again, Regina wondered why God had given people bowels and
bladders. Was that really the best possible design, or was He a little
bit of a comedian?
She remembered getting up at three o'clock in the morning at the
orphanage, needing to pee, encountering a nun on the way to the bathroom
down the hall, and asking the good sister that very question.
The nun, Sister Sarafina, had not been startled at all. Regina had been
too young then to know how to startle a nun; that took years of games
and practice. Sister Sarafina had responded without pause, suggesting
that perhaps God wanted to give people a reason to get up in the middle
of the night so they would have another opportunity to think of Him and
be grateful for the life He had granted them. Regina had smiled and
nodded, but she had figured Sister Sarafina was either too tired to
think straight or a little dim-witted. God had too much class to want
His children thinking about Him all the time while they were sitting on
the pot. Satisfied from her visit to the bathroom, she snuggled down in
the covers of her painted mahogany bed and tried to think of an
explanation better than the one the nun had given her years ago. No
more curious noises arose from the backyard, and even before the vague
light of dawn touched the windowpanees, she was asleep again.
Kigh, decorative windows were set in the big sectional doors, admitting
just enough light from the streetlamps out front to reveal to Vassago,
without his sunglasses, that only one car, a black Chevy, was parked in
the threes garage. A quick inspection of that space did not reveal any
hiding place where he might conceal himself from the Harrisons and be
beyond the reach of sunlight until the next nightfall.
Then he saw the cord dangling from the ceiling over one of the empty
parking stalls. He slipped his hand through the loop and pulled
downward gently, less gently, then less gently still, but always
steadily and smoothly, until the trapdoor swung open. It was well oiled
and soundless.
When the door was all the way open, Vassago slowly unfolded the three
sections of the wooden ladder that were fixed to the back of it. He
took plenty of time, more concerned with silence than with speed.
He climbed into the garage attic. No doubt there were vents in the
eaves, but at the moment the place appeared to be sealed tight.
With his sensitive eyes, he could see a finished floor, lots of
cardboard boxes, and a few small items of furniture stored under
dropcloths. No windows. Above him, the underside of rough roofing
boards were visible between open rafters. At two points in the long
rectangular chamber, light fixtures dangled from the peaked ceiling; he
did not turn on either of them.
Cautiously, quietly, as if he were an actor in a slow-motion film, he
stretched out on his belly on the attic floor, reached down through the
hole, and pulled up the folding ladder, section by section. Slowly,
silently, he secured it to the back of the trapdoor. He eased the door
into place again with no sound but the soft spang of the big spring that
held it shut, closing himself off from the threes garage below.
He pulled a few of the dropcloths off the furniture. They were
relatively dust free. He folded them to make a nest among the boxes and
then settled down to await the passage of the day.
Regina. Lindsey. I am with you.
1
Lindsey drove Regina to school Way morning. When she got back to the
house in Laguna Niguel, Hatch was at the kitchen table, cleaning and
oiling the pair of Browning 9mm pistols that he had acquired for home
security.
He had purchased the guns five years ago, shortly after Jimmy's cancer
had been diagnosed as termmal. He had professed a sudden concern about
the crime rate, though it never had been-and was not then-particularly
high in their part of Orange County. Lindsey had known, but had never
said, that he was not afraid of burglars but of the disease that was
stealing his son from him; and because he was helpless to fight off the
cancer, he secretly longed for an enemy who could be dispatched with a
pistol.
The Brownings had never been used anywhere but on a firing range. He
had insisted that Lindsey learn to shoot alongside But neither of them
had even taken target practice in a year or two.
"Do you really think that's wise?" she asked, indicating the pistols.
He was tight-lipped. "Yes."
"Maybe we should call the police."
"We've already discussed why we can't."
"Still, it might be worth a try."
"They won't help us. Can't."
She knew he was right. They had no proof that they were in danger.
"Besides," be said, keeping his eyes on the pistol as he worked a
tubular brush in and out of the barrel, "when I first started cleaning
these, I turned Ion the TV to have some company. Morning news."
The small set, on a pull-out swivel shelf in the end-most of the kitchen
cabinets, was off now.
Lindsey didn't ask him what had been on the news. She was afraid that
she would be sorry to hear it-and was convinced that she already knew
what he would tell her.
Finally looking up from the pistol, Hatch said, "They found Steven
Honell last night. Tied to the four corners of his bed and beaten to
death with a fireplace poker."
At first Lindsey was too shocked to move. Then she was too weak to
continue standing. She pulled a chair out from the table and settled
into it.
For a while yesterday, she had hated Steven Honell as much as she had
ever hated anyone in her life. More. Now she felt no animosity for him
whatsoever. Just pity. He had been an ill man, concealing his
insecurity from himself behind a pretense of contemptuous superiority.
He had been petty and vicious, perhaps worse, but now he was dead; and
death was too great a punishment for his faults.
She folded her arms on the table and put her head down on them. She
could not cry for Honeil, for she had liked nothing about him-except his
talent. If the extinguishing of his talent was not enough to bring
tears' it did at least cast a pall of despair over her.
"Sooner or later," Hatch said, "the son of a bitch is going to come
after us. Lindsey lifted her head even though it felt as if it weighed
a thousand pounds. "But why?"
"I don't know. Maybe we'll never know why, never understand it. But
somehow he and I are linked, and eventually he'll come."
"Let the cops handle him." she said, painfully aware that there was no
help for them from the authorities but stubbornly unwilling to let go of
"Cops can't find him." Hatch said grimly. "He's smoke."
"He won't come," she said, willing it to be true.
"Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next week or even nex
t month. But as
sure as the sun rises every morning, he'll come. And we'll be ready for
"Will we?" she wondered.
"Very ready."
"Remember what you said last night."
He looked up from the pistol again and met her eyes. "What?"
"That maybe he's not just an ordinary man, that he might have hitchhiked
back with you from... somewhere else."
"I thought you dismissed that theory."
"I did. I can't believe it. But do you? Really?"
Instead of answering, he resumed cleaning the Browning.
She said, "If you believe it, even half believe it, put any credence in
it at all-then what good is a gun?"
He didn't reply.
"How can bullets stop an evil spirit?" she pressed, feeling as if her
memory of waking up and taking Regina to school was just part of a
continuing dream, as if she was not caught in a real-life but in a
nightmare. "How can something from beyond the grave be stopped with
just a gun?"
"It's all I have," he said. Like many doctors, Jonas Nyebern did not
maintain office hours or perform surgery on Wednesday. However, he
never spent the afternoon golfing, sailing, or playing cards at the
country club. He used Wednesdays to catch up on paperwork, or to write
research papers and case studies related to the Resuscitation Medicine
Project at Orange County General.