"I love you, Danny," he whispered. "God knows I do."
He left the room. He had lost his temper again, only a little, but enough to make him feel sick and afraid. A drink would blunt that feeling, oh yes. It would blunt that
(Something about the timer)
and everything else. There was no mistake about those words at all. None. Each had come out clear as a bell. He paused in the hallway, looking back, and automatically wiped his lips with his handkerchief.
* * *
Their shapes were only dark silhouettes in the glow of the night light. Wendy, wearing only panties, went to his bed and tucked him in again; he had kicked the covers back. Jack stood in the doorway, watching as she put her inner wrist against his forehead.
"Is he feverish?"
"No." She kissed his cheek.
"Thank God you made that appointment," he said as she came back to the doorway. "You think that guy knows his stuff?"
"The checker said he was very good. That's all I know."
"If there's something wrong, I'm going to send you and him to your mother's, Wendy."
"No."
"I know," he said, putting an arm around her, "how you feel."
"You don't know how I feel at all about her."
"Wendy, there's no place else I can send you. You know that."
"If you came-"
"Without this job we're done," he said simply. "You know that."
Her silhouette nodded slowly. She knew it.
"When I had that interview with Ullman, I thought he was just blowing off his bazoo. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe I really shouldn't have tried this with you two along. Forty miles from nowhere."
"I love you," she said. "And Danny loves you even more, if that's possible. He would have been heartbroken, Jack. He will be, if you send us away."
"Don't make it sound that way."
"If the doctor says there's something wrong, I'll look for a job in Sidewinder," she said. "If I can't get one in Sidewinder, Danny and I will go to Boulder. I can't go to my mother, Jack. Not on those terms. Don't ask me. I... I just can't."
"I guess I know that. Cheer up. Maybe it's nothing."
"Maybe."
"The appointment's at two?"
"Yes."
"Let's leave the bedroom door open, Wendy."
"I want to. But I think he'll sleep through now."
But he didn't.
* * *
Boom... boom... boomboomBOOMBOOM-
He fled the heavy, crashing, echoing sounds through twisting, mazelike corridors, his bare feet whispering over a deep-pile jungle of blue and black. Each time he heard the roque mallet smash into the wall somewhere behind him he wanted to scream aloud. But he mustn't. He mustn't. A scream would give him away and then
(then REDRUM)
(Come out here and take your medicine, you f**king crybaby!)
Oh and he could hear the owner of that voice coming, coming for him, charging up the hall like a tiger in an alien blue-black jungle. A man-eater.
(Come out here, you little son of a bitch!)
If he could get to the stairs going down, if he could get off this third floor, he might be all right. Even the elevator. If he could remember what had been forgotten. But it was dark and in his terror he had lost his orientation. He had turned down one corridor and then another, his heart leaping into his mouth like a hot' lump of ice, fearing that each turn would bring him face to face with the human tiger in these halls.
The booming was right behind him now, the awful hoarse shouting.
The whistle the head of the mallet made cutting through the air
(roque... stroke... roque... stroke... REDRUM)
before it crashed into the wall. The soft whisper of feet on the jungle carpet. Panic squirting in his mouth like bitter juice.
(You will remember what was forgotten... but would he? What was it?)
He fled around another corner and saw with creeping, utter horror that he was in a cul-de-sac. Locked doors frowned down at him from three sides. The west wing. He was in the west wing and outside he could hear the storm whooping and screaming, seeming to choke on its own dark throat filled with snow.
He backed up against the wall, weeping with terror now, his heart racing like the heart of a rabbit caught in a snare. When his back was against the light blue silk wallpaper with the embossed pattern of wavy lines, his legs gave way and he collapsed to the carpet, hands splayed on the jungle of woven vines and creepers, the breath whistling in and out of his throat.
Louder. Louder.
There was a tiger in the hall, and now the tiger was just around the corner, still crying out in that shrill and petulant and lunatic rage, the roque mallet slamming, because this tiger walked on two legs and it was-
He woke with a sudden indrawn gasp, sitting bolt upright in bed, eyes wide and staring into the darkness, hands crossed in front of his face.
Something on one hand. Crawling.
Wasps. Three of them.