Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

Doll passed the door and turned, stepping into the vision. In that moment it seemed to Annie as if she had a spotlight turned on her. Doll's eyes bugged wide. Her mouth tore open. She raised the gun in slow motion.

And Annie pulled the trigger.

The nine-millimeter Kurz Back-Up bucked in her hands and Doll Renard's face shattered like glass. The force knocked her backward across the room. She was dead before she hit the floor.

Annie went limp against the wall, her head swimming, her vision fuzzing out. She blinked hard and watched as the apparition of Pam shot straight up through the ceiling and was gone.

Justice. She'd come into this looking for justice-for Pam, for Josie.

Let justice be done.

Too weak to return the Kurz to her ankle holster, she stuck the gun in the waistband of her pants, then tried to find within herself the strength to keep from dying.

"He killed my baby girl," Hunter Davidson mumbled. "He killed my baby."

He sat on his knees on the floor of Marcus Renard's studio, drenched in sweat, pale and trembling. He looked up at Nick, the pain in his eyes as wretched as anything Nick had ever seen.

"You understand, don't you?" Davidson said. "I had to. He killed my girl."

Nick kept his gun at his side, approaching the man cautious step by cautious step. A.45 hung limp in the big man's left hand, resting on his thigh. Marcus Renard lay on the floor, arms flung wide, his eyes half-open and sightless.

"Why you don't set that gun on the floor and slide it toward me, Mr. Davidson?" Nick said.

Hunter Davidson just sat there, his gaze on the man he had killed. Slowly, Nick bent down, took the.45 away from him, and stuck it in the back waistband of his jeans. He holstered his own weapon, then gently coaxed Davidson up from the floor and moved him away from the body.

"You have the right to remain silent, Mr. Davidson," he began.

"I had to do it," Davidson murmured more to himself than to Nick. "He had to pay. We deserved justice."

The system hadn't given it to him quickly enough. And now the justice meted out would be against him. The tragedy of Pam's death had just extended out another ring in the pond.

Nick looked from Renard's lifeless body to Pam's father and felt nothing but deep and profound sadness.

Victor held himself perfectly still outside the door to Marcus's Own Space. Marcus had given him a job to do. He tried always to please Marcus, even though Victor didn't fully understand what it meant to be pleased. Pleased was a white feeling-he knew that. But the sounds had driven him from his room before he could complete his counting task. The voices had come up through the floor- very red.

The house was quiet now, but the silence didn't give him a white feeling as it usually did. The Controllers in his head were frowning. Red seeped around the edges of his brain like bacteria. Then and now. Like before. Victor knew this feeling. He raised his hands to touch his special mask. The feel of the feathers against his fingertips was soft, white, like running water. And yet, he could feel the heavy redness all around. He could taste it in the air, feel it against his skin, pressing in on him, touching each individual hair on his body, reaching into his ears-a sound that was not a sound. Tension. Sound and silence.

Mother was not asleep, as Marcus thought. Then and now. Like before. She was gone. Enter out. Very red. She was their mother, but not their mother sometimes. Mask, no mask. Mask equaled change, and sometimes deception. Victor had tried to tell, but Marcus didn't hear him. Marcus saw only one of Mother's faces, and he never heard The Voice. Sound and silence.

Victor stood just outside the door, staring in. He felt time pass, felt the earth move in minute increments beneath his feet. Marcus lay on the floor near the Secret Door. Asleep, but not asleep. Marcus had ceased to exist. His eyes were open, but he didn't see Victor. His shirt was red with blood. Very red.

Hesitant, Victor moved into the room, not looking at the other people. He kneeled down beside Marcus and touched the blood, though he didn't touch the holes. Holes were always bad. Bacteria and germs. Red holes were very bad.

"Not now, Marcus," he said softly. "Not now enter out."

Marcus didn't move. Victor had tried to tell him about Mother and the Face Women-Elaine and Pam and Annie -but Marcus didn't hear him. He had tried to tell him about the Waiting Man tonight, but Marcus didn't hear him. Very, very red.

Victor touched his brother's forehead with his bloody fingers and began to rock himself. He knew he wouldn't like for Marcus to not exist forever. He knew he didn't like the way his brother's face had changed. The Controllers frowned in his mind.

"Not now, Marcus," he whispered. "Not now enter out."

Slowly he reached up and slipped the feather mask from his own face and placed it over his brother's.

Nick watched the strange, sad little ritual with a heavy heart. He wondered for the first time where Renard's mother was, why she hadn't come running at the sound of trouble. Then the roar of a big car engine cut into his thoughts, and he started for the front of the house, breaking into a run at the sound of metal hitting metal.

At the side of the house a Cadillac had broadsided Renard's Volvo. As Nick stepped out onto the veranda, the car's door opened and the driver fell out onto the lawn. Nick jumped down to the ground and jogged closer, that old hand of dread grabbing hold of him hard as he saw the uniform and the mop of dark hair.

"'Toinette!" he shouted, sprinting the last few yards.

He dropped to the ground beside her, his trembling hands framing her face. He slid two fingers down the side of her throat to search for a pulse, praying, pleading.

Annie opened her eyes and looked up at him. Nick. It was nice to see him one last time, whether his image was real or not.

"Doll," she murmured dreamily, a shudder quaking through her body. "Doll killed Pam. And she killed me too."

The edge of death was a place of darkness and light, sound and silence. She hovered there, slipping from one world into the next and back again.

The ambulance, the urgency of the EMTs, the lights, the sirens.

Utter stillness, a sense of calm and resignation.

The noise and motion of the ER.

The eerie peace of nonexistence.

Annie saw the landscape as bleak and still, a battlefield in the aftermath, bodies scattered across the ground, the sky hanging heavy and leaden, everything cast in the twilight colors of nightmares. Pam was there. And Doll Renard. And Marcus. Their souls rose from them like smoke from a dying fire and drifted just above the bloody ground. She stood on the sidelines and watched.

"It's cold here, no?" Fourcade whispered.

"Where?"

He raised his left hand, fingers spread, and reached out, not quite touching her. Slowly he passed his hand before her eyes, skimmed it around the side of her head, just brushing his fingertips against her hair.

"In Shadowland."

He spoke as if he lived in this place. And yet, Annie felt herself being pulled away from him, deeper into the blackness.

"Don't leave me here, 'Toinette," he murmured, his dark eyes filled with sadness. "Me, I've been alone too long."

She stretched out her hand toward his, but couldn't quite reach. Then panic seized her as she felt herself being drawn backward, across the line between life and death. She didn't think she had the strength to break free. She was so tired, so weak. But she didn't want to die. She wasn't ready to die.