The Hidden

N I N E T E E N

MACKLIN DOZED. PULSES OF heat from the stoked-up fire, the smother of the blanket and comforter, the immobility, the recuperative demands of his body, the now-monotonous ravings of the storm—all combined to push him toward the edge of a deeper sleep. He struggled against it, blinking himself awake every time he reached the edge, because sleep was also an easy escape, another way of hiding, and he wasn’t going to hide anymore.

How much time had passed since Shelby left the second time? It seemed like an hour, probably wasn’t more than a handful of minutes. Out there braving the storm and her fear of the dark and Christ knew what else for him, while he lay here warm and comfortable and waited for her to come back with help.

The black despair had left him a while ago, replaced by a resignation that was no longer quite so fatalistic. Whatever happened, it was pretty much out of his hands now.

One good thing about the heart attack: He’d finally been able to tell Shelby about Dr. Prebble and the need for the bypass operation. The words, so clogged and clotted in him every time he’d tried before, had come spewing out tonight like dammed-up water released through a spillway. And he had a sense that the spillway would remain open; that the attack had rewired him somehow and if he was given the chance, he’d be able to confide some of the other private thoughts and feelings that he’d kept locked away from her. Even though it had taken a freakish set of circumstances and a faceup look at his own mortality to make it happen, it let him feel a little better about himself, gave him a measure of hope.

His eyelids grew heavy, too heavy to keep raised. He dozed again. Snapped awake. Dozed.

Slept, in spite of himself.

And rode the nightmare again.

The same, yet not the same this time. All the familiar components, only they were broken up into out-of-sequence fragments, like film clips spliced together by a child or a drunk. It wasn’t as though he were living it but as if he were an observer watching the spliced bits unroll across a screen. The terror was there, but muted and without the usual ravaging intensity. And it didn’t end with those yellow fangs devouring his body while his torn-off head looked on in horror; it ended with the monster’s roaring words jumbled but recognizable, sentence chunks that no longer fell like whispers but like cushioned blows against his ears.

For the first time he didn’t scream himself free of it; he was simply awake, tense, but not sweating or shaking or struggling for breath. An accelerated pulsebeat was the only physical effect. The dream creature’s words echoed and reechoed in his mind. He lay piecing them together, arranging them in a semblance of order, until with a mixture of awe and anger he began to comprehend what they meant, what the nightmare signified and why he’d kept having it all these years—

The sound of the door opening, the sudden inrush of frigid air, chased it all aside, compartmentalized it.

Shelby, he thought. Back already.

He lifted his head, and then blinked and stared because it wasn’t Shelby who came stalking across the room, dripping rainwater and leaving muddy splotches on the carpet, waving a lighted torch as if it were a weapon.

Brian Lomax.

There was no expression on the man’s blocky, beard-stubbled face, but his eyes had a distended look, as if from some internal pressure. Crazy eyes. Crazy drunk, Macklin thought. They held briefly on him, then shifted and darted from one point to another, following the erratic, tracerlike patterns of the flash beam around the living room, over into the kitchen. Lomax wore a heavy mackinaw buttoned to the throat but no hat; rain glistened on his spiky hair and pink scalp, dribbled down around the edges of his mouth and off the tip of his chin.

“Where’s my wife?” he said.

It wasn’t what Macklin expected to hear. He pushed himself up gingerly until he was half sitting against the pillows. “How should I know?”

“Has she been here?”

“No. I thought she was sick, couldn’t leave the house—”

“That’s right, she is, but she got out anyway. The front door … damn her, she must’ve found an extra key.”

That sounded as if Lomax had been holding her against her will. Beating on her again, probably, keeping her prisoner—and now she’d managed to escape. If he found her, then what?

Macklin said, trying to keep his voice neutral, “What makes you think she’d come here?”

“No place else for her to go.”

Except out to the highway. But if that thought hadn’t occurred to Lomax, Macklin wasn’t about to put it into his head.

He said, “Then she must be hiding somewhere in the woods.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Lomax took the flashlight into the kitchen, then down the hall. The drumbeat of rain on the roof seemed to have let up a little; the gusts buffeting the cottage weren’t quite as strong as before. Macklin could hear him in the guest bedroom, then the master bedroom, banging closet doors. Probably down on all fours, too, looking under the beds.

He sat up a little straighter, swung one leg off the couch. But he was afraid to try getting up. And what could he do if he did, against a healthy man of Lomax’s bulk? For all he knew, the bastard had brought that gun of his with him.

When Lomax came stalking back into the room, Macklin said, “What’s the idea, barging in here like this? My wife told you I had a heart attack—”

“Might be dying, she said. You look all right to me.”

“You’re not an EMT.”

“She’s the reason Claire got out.”

“… What’re you talking about?”

“Your damn wife. Trespassing on my property, pounding on the doors and windows, distracting me. It’s her fault.”

Nothing would ever be Lomax’s fault, always somebody else’s. “Yeah, well, you’re the one trespassing now.”

“No. She wanted me to come here.”

“Not like this, she didn’t.”

“Where is she?”

“Where do you think, Lomax? Gone to bring help because you refused to do anything—”

“Take Claire with her?”

“What?”

“Your wife. She took Claire with her when she left, didn’t she?”

“No. Why would she do that? She wanted Claire to stay with me—”

“Don’t lie to me. Has my wife been here or not?”

“I just told you she hasn’t.”

“And I told you I have to find her.”

“Why? So you can beat on her some more?”

Jerkily, Lomax moved a few steps closer to the couch. The pupils of his eyes gleamed like fragments of jet in the half light; fireglow struck sparklike glints from them. “So neither of you has seen her,” he said.

“Not since Shelby ran into her on the beach.”

“The beach? When? When was that?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“What time?”

“What difference does that make?”

“What time!”

“Late morning, after your sister left.”

“Late morning … yes, sure, all right. What’d Claire tell her?”

“She didn’t have to tell her anything. Shelby has eyes—one look at what you did to her face was enough.”

“Claire had it coming. If it wasn’t for her …” Lomax bared his teeth like a feral dog, smacked the flashlight hard into the palm of his other hand. The knobs of muscle along the sides of his jaw were the size of walnuts. Crazy, all right. Those bulging eyes … some sort of psychotic break? “I’ve got to find her before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“If she shows up here, you tell her she better go home and stay there if she knows what’s good for her. You understand?”

No use arguing with him. You couldn’t reason with a man like Lomax when he was half drunk and worked up like this. Be a mistake to go on trying.

“Yeah, I understand.”

Lomax spun on his heel, stalked across the room, vanished as quickly as he’d appeared.

But he didn’t pull the door tight shut behind him. The wind hurled it open, set it banging against the closet door behind it. Candle flames guttered, blew out in the swirls of moist air.

Son of a bitch!

Macklin had no choice; he had to get up, walk over there, shut that door before the cold ate up all the room’s heat.

He threw the comforter down and swung both legs off the couch, planted his slippered feet flat on the floor. Slow, deep breath. Both hands on the couch arm, turn his body, shove up … slow … that’s it, up, all the way up … and standing, half turned, leaning on his hands.

A little weak in the knees, but not too bad. Another deep breath. No pain or dizziness, his breathing under control. Okay. Weight off his hands and arms … straighten, slow. Experimental step to make sure of his balance, holding the blanket tight around him with both hands. Okay.

Walk.

Left foot, right foot, fighting the urge to hurry. Straight ahead into the wet and cold, teeth gritted, the blanket and the tails of his robe flapping against his legs. Half expecting the squeezing to start again, but it didn’t happen. Still breathing without difficulty. And surprisingly steady on his pins, despite the still-sharp prod of the wind, the icy drops blowing into his face.

Three more steps, two, one … there. He caught hold of the door, tried to throw it shut; the wind threw it back at him. Come on, Macklin. Get a grip on the knob, lean your shoulder against the door and shove it closed. Even with a bad heart you’re stronger than the goddamn wind—

He was turning his body, starting to push on the door, when the face appeared out of the roiling darkness outside.

Witch’s face: slick-sheened and pasty white, one cheekbone bruised, lips split and cracked, tangled strands of hair stuck down or streaming in all directions, eyes like black holes. Startling him—his heart thumped and skipped a beat, his breath caught in the back of his throat.

A dripping hand clawed a hold on the edge of the door, the face loomed closer. Not a witch’s face—the face of terror. And a voice to match: “Let me in … please, please, before he comes back.”

First Lomax and now his wife.