Dean Koontz - From the Corner of His Eye

He ran gasping, praying, feet slapping the concrete sidewalk, frightening birds out of the purple brightness of blossom-laden jacarandas and out of Indian laurels, terrorizing a tree rat into a lightning sprint up the bole of a phoenix palm. The few people he encountered reeled out of his way. Brakes shrieked as he crossed intersections without looking both ways, risking cars and trucks and rhinoceroses.

Sometimes, in his mind, Tom wasn't running along the residential streets of Bright Beach, but along the corridor of the dormitory wing over which he had served as prefect. He was cast back in time, to that dreadful night. A sound wakes him. A fragile cry. Thinking it a voice from his dream, he nevertheless gets out of bed, takes up a flashlight, and checks on his charges, his boys. Low-wattage emergency lamps barely relieve the gloom in the corridor. The rooms are dark, doors ajar according to the rules, to guard against the danger of stubborn locks in the event of fire. He listens. Nothing. Then into the first room-and into a Hell on earth. Two small boys per room, easily and silently overcome by a grown man with the strength of madness. In the sweep of the flashlight beam: the dead eyes, the wrenched faces, the blood. Another room, the flashlight jittering, jumping, and the carnage worse. Then in the hall again, movement in the shadows. Josef Krepp captured by the flashlight. Josef Krepp, the quiet custodian, meek by all appearances, employed at St. Anselmo's for the past six months with nary a problem, with only good employee reviews attached to his record. Josef Krepp, here in the corridor of the past, grinning and capering in the flashlight, wearing a dripping necklace of souvenirs.

In the present, long after the execution of Josef Krepp, half a block ahead, lay the Lipscomb house. Beyond it, the Lampion place.

A calico cat appeared at Tom's side, running, pacing him. Cats were witches' familiars. Good luck or bad, this cat?

Here, now, the Pie Lady's house, the battleground.

“Naomi, are you in there?” Junior whispered again, peering into the windows of the girl's soul.

She wouldn't answer him, but he was as convinced by her silence as he would have been by a blurted confession—or by a denial, for that matter. Her wild eyes convinced him, too, and her trembling mouth. Naomi had come back to be with him, and it could be argued that Seraphim had returned in a sense, too, for this girl was the flesh of Seraphim's flesh, born out of her death.

Junior was flattered, he really was. Women couldn't get enough of him. The story of his life. They never let go gracefully. He was wanted, needed, adored, worshiped. Women kept calling after they should have taken the hint and gone away, insisted on sending him notes and gifts even after he told them it was over. Junior wasn't surprised that women would return from the dead for him, nor was he surprised that women he'd killed would try to find a route back to him from Beyond, without malice, without vengeance in their hearts, merely yearning to be with him again, to hold him and to fulfill his needs. As gratified as he was by this tribute to his desirability, he simply didn't have any romantic feelings left for Naomi and Seraphim. They were the past, and he loathed the past, and if they wouldn't let him alone, he would never be able to live in the future.

He pressed the muzzle of the weapon against the girl's forehead and said, “Naomi, Seraphim, you were exquisite lovers, but you've got to be realistic. There's no way we can have a life together."

“Hey, who's there?” said the blind boy, whom Junior had nearly forgotten.

He turned from the cowering girl and studied the boy, who stood a few steps inside the room, holding a can of soda in each hand. The artificial eyes were convincing, but they didn't possess the knowing look that so troubled him in the strange girl.

Junior pointed the pistol at the boy. “Simon says your name's Bartholomew."

“Simon who?"

“You don't look very threatening to me, blind boy."

The child didn't reply.

“Is your name Bartholomew?"

“Yes."

Junior took two steps toward him, sighting the gun on his face. “Why should I be afraid of a stumbling blind boy no bigger than a midget?"

“I don't stumble. Not much, anyway.” To the girl, Bartholomew said, “Angel, are you okay?"

“I'm gonna have the trots,” she said.

“Why should I be afraid of a stumbling blind boy?” asked Junior again. But this time the words issued from him in a different tone of voice, because suddenly he sensed something knowing in this boy's attitude, if not in his manufactured eyes, a quality similar to what the girl exhibited.

“Because I'm a prodigy,” Bartholomew said, and he threw the can of root beer.

The can struck Junior hard in the face, breaking his nose, before he could duck.

Furious, he squeezed off two shots. Passing the living-room archway, Tom saw Jacob in the armchair, under the reading lamp, slumped as if asleep over the book. His crimson bib confirmed that he wasn't just sleeping.

Drawn by voices on the second floor, Tom took the stairs two at a time. A man and a boy. Barty and Cain. To the left in the hallway, and then to a room on the right.

Heedless of the rules of standard police procedure, Tom raced to the doorway, crossed the threshold, and saw Barty throw a can of soda at the shaved head and pocked face of a transformed Enoch Cain.

The boy fell and rolled even as he pitched the can, anticipating the shots that Cain fired, which cracked into the doorframe inches from Tom's knees.

Raising his revolver, Tom squeezed off two shots, but the gun didn't discharge.

“Frozen firing pin,” Cain said. His smile was venomous. “I worked on it. I hoped you'd get here in time to see the consequences of your stupid games."

Cain turned the pistol on Barty, but when Tom charged, Cain swung toward him once more. The round that he fired would have been a crippler, maybe a killer, except that Angel launched herself off the window seat behind Cain and gave him a hard shove, spoiling his aim. The killer stumbled and then shimmered.

Gone.

He vanished through some hole, some slit, some tear bigger than anything through which Tom flipped his quarters.

Barty couldn't see, but somehow he knew. “Whooooaa, Angel."

“I sent him someplace where we aren't,” the girl explained. “He was rude."

Tom was stunned. “So ... when did you learn you could do that?"

“Just now.” Although Angel tried to sound nonchalant, she was trembling. “I'm not sure I can do it again."

“Until you are sure ... be careful."

“Okay."

“Will he come back?"

She shook her head. “No way back.” She pointed to the sketch pad on the floor. “I pushed him there."

Tom stared at the girl's drawing-quite a good one for a child her age, rough in style, but with convincing detail-and if skin could be said to crawl, his must have moved all the way around his body two or three times before settling down again where it belonged. “Are these ... ?"

“Big bugs,” the girl said.

“Lots of them."

“Yeah. It's a bad place."

Getting to his feet, Barty said, “Hey, Angel?"

“Yeah?"

“You threw the pig yourself."

“I guess I did."

Shaking with a fear that had nothing to do with Junior Cain and flying bullets, or even with memories of Josef Krepp and his vile necklace, Tom Vanadium closed the sketch pad and put it on the window seat. He opened the window, and in rushed the susurration of breeze-stirred oak leaves.

He picked up Angel, picked up Barty. “Hold on.” He carried them out of the room, down the stairs, out of the house, to the yard under the great tree, where they would wait for the police, and where they would not see Jacob's body when the coroner removed it by way of the front door.