Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner [107]
The house was silent. It filled Nora Ray with a loneliness that threatened to cut her heart in two. Three years later, and no one had healed. Nothing was better. She could still remember the harsh grit of salt, leaching the last moisture from her body. She could remember her rage and confusion as the crabs nibbled on her toes. She could remember her simple desire to survive this hell and return to her family. If she could just see them again, slide into her parents’ loving embrace . . .
Except her family had never returned to her. She had survived. They had not.
And now, two more girls in the pastureland of her dream. She knew what that meant. The heat had arrived on Sunday, and the shadowy man from her nightmares had resumed his lethal game.
The clock glowed nearly two A.M. She decided she didn’t care. She picked up the phone and dialed the number she knew by heart. A moment later, she said, “I need to reach Special Agent McCormack. No, I don’t want to leave a message. I need to see him. Quick.”
Tina didn’t dream. Her exhausted body had given out, and now she was collapsed in the mud in a sleep that bordered on unconsciousness. One arm still touched the boulder, a link to relative safety. The rest of her belonged to the muck. It oozed between her fingers, coated her hair, slithered up her throat.
Things came and went in the sucking muck. Some had no interest in prey quite that large. Some had no interest in a meal that wasn’t already dead. Then, up above, a dark shadow lumbered along the path, stopping at the edge of the pit. A giant head peered down, dark eyes gleaming in the night. It smelled warm-blooded flesh, a fine, delectable meal that was just its size.
More sniffing. Two giant paws raked one side of the hole. The depth was too great, the terrain not manageable. The bear grunted, lumbered on. If the creature ever came up, it’d try again. Until then, there were other fine things to eat in the dark.
The man didn’t sleep. Two A.M., he packed his bags. He had to move quickly now. He could feel the darkness gathering at the edges of his mind. Time was becoming more fluid, moments slipping through his fingers and disappearing into the abyss.
Pressure was growing in the back of his skull. He could feel it, a true physical presence at the top of his spine, with another tendril starting to press against the inner canal of his left ear. A tumor, he was pretty sure. He’d had one before, years ago when he’d had his first “episode” of vanishing time. Had it been only minutes he’d lost in the beginning? He couldn’t even remember that anymore.
Time grew fluid, black holes took over his life. One tumor was removed. Another came back to eat his brain. It was probably the size of a grapefruit by now. Or maybe even a watermelon. Maybe his brain wasn’t even his brain anymore, but a giant malignant mass of constantly dividing cells. He didn’t doubt it. That would explain the bad dreams, the restless nights. It would explain why the fire came to him so often now, and made him do things he knew he shouldn’t.
He found himself thinking of his mother more. Her pale face, her thin, hunched shoulders. He thought of his father, too, and the way he always strode through their tiny cabin in the woods.
“A man’s gotta be tough, boys, a man’s gotta be strong. Don’t you listen to no government types, they just want to turn us into mealy-mouthed dependents who can’t live without a federal handout. Not us boys. We got the land. We will always be strong, as long as we got the land.”
Strong enough to beat his wife, abuse his kids and wring the neck of the family cat. Strong enough, and isolated enough, to live as he goddamned pleased, without even a neighbor to hear the screams.
The black storm clouds built, rolled, and roared. Now he was sitting tied to a chair, while his father took a strap to his brother, his mother