Stephen King - Just After Sunset

The door at the end of the hall was closed, and as she approached it, she knew it would be locked. She would be trapped at the end of this corridor if he entered it from the kitchen/dining-room end. Trapped with nowhere to run, and these days running was the only thing she was good at, the only thing she was good for .

She hitched up her shorts — they felt like they were floating on her now, with the back seam split open — and grasped the knob. She was so full of her premonition that for a moment she couldn’t believe it when the knob turned in her hand. She pushed the door open and stepped into what had to be Pickering’s bedroom. It was almost as sterile as the guest room, but not quite. For one thing, there were two pillows instead of just one, and the counterpane of the bed (which looked like a twin of the guest-room bed) had been turned back in a neat triangle, ready to admit the owner to the comfort of fresh sheets after a hard day’s work. And there was a carpet on the floor. Just a cheap nylon-pile thing, but wall-to-wall. Henry no doubt would have called it a Carpet Barn special, but it matched the blue walls and made the room look less skeletal than the others. There was also a small desk — it looked like an old school desk — and a plain wooden chair. And although this was pretty small shakes compared to the study setup, with its big (and unfortunately shuttered) window and expensive computer, she had a feeling this desk had been used . That Pickering sat there writing longhand, hunched over like a child in a country schoolroom. Writing what she did not like to think.

The window in here was also big. And unlike the windows in the study and the guest room, it wasn’t shuttered. Before Em could look out and see what lay beyond, her attention was drawn to a photograph on the wall by the bed. Not hung and certainly not framed, only tacked there with a pushpin. There were other tiny holes on the wall around it, as if other pictures had been pinned there over the years. This one was a color shot with 4-19-07 printed digitally in the right corner. Taken by an old-fashioned camera rather than a digital one, by the look of the paper, and not by anyone with much flair for photography. On the other hand, perhaps the photographer had been excited. The way hyenas might get excited, she supposed, when sundown comes and there’s fresh prey in the offing. It was blurry, as if taken with a telephoto lens, and the subject wasn’t centered. The subject was a long-legged young woman wearing denim shorts and a cropped top that said BEER O’CLOCK BAR. She had a tray balanced on the fingers of her left hand, like a waitress in a jolly old Norman Rockwell painting. She was laughing. Her hair was blond. Em couldn’t be sure it was Nicole, not from this blurred photo and those few shocked instants when she had been looking down at the dead girl in the trunk of the Mercedes…but she was sure. Her heart was sure.

Rusty: “It doesn’t matter, sweetie. You have to get out of here. You have to get yourself some running room.”

As if to prove it, the door between the kitchen and the dining room banged open — almost hard enough to tear it from the hinges, it sounded like.

No , she thought. All the sensation went out of her middle. She didn’t think she wet herself again, but wouldn’t have been able to tell if she had. No, it can’t be .

“Want to play rough?” Pickering called. His voice sounded dazed and cheerful. “Okay, I can play rough. Sure. Not a problem. You want it? You bet. Daddy’s gonna bring it.”

Coming. Crossing the dining room. She heard a thump followed by a rough clatter as he stumbled into one of the other chairs (perhaps the one at the “father” end of the table) and shoved it aside. The world swam away from her, growing gray even though this room was relatively bright now that the storm was unraveling.

She bit down on her split lip. This sent a fresh stream of blood down her chin, but it also brought color and reality back into the world. She slammed the door and grabbed for the lock. There was no lock. She looked around and spied the humble wooden chair sitting before the humble wooden desk. As Pickering broke into a shambling run past his laundry room and study — and did he have the butcher knife clutched in one hand? Of course he did — she snatched the chair, placed it under the knob, and tilted it. Only an instant later, he hit the door with both hands.

She thought that if this floor had also been oak planking, the chair would have skidded away like a shuffleboard weight. Perhaps she would have grabbed it and stood him off with it: Em the Fearless Lion Tamer. She didn’t think so. In any case, there was that carpet. Cheap nylon pile, but deep — it had that going for it, at least. The tilted legs of the chair dug in and held, although she saw a ripple go through the carpet.

Pickering roared and began to beat on the door with his fists. She hoped he was still holding on to the knife as he did it; maybe he would inadvertently cut his own throat.

“Open this door!” he shouted. “Open it! You’re only making it worse for yourself!”

Like I could , Emily thought, backing away. And looking around. What now? The window? What else? There was only the one door, so it had to be the window.

“You’re making me mad, Lady Jane!”

No, you were already mad. As in hatter .

She could see the window was a Florida special, the kind made only for looking out of, not for opening. Because of the air-conditioning. So what was next? Hurtle through it like Clint Eastwood in one of those old spaghetti westerns? Sounded possible; it was certainly the kind of thing that had appealed to her as a kid, but she had an idea she’d cut herself to ribbons if she actually tried it. Clint Eastwood and The Rock and Steven Seagal had stuntmen going for them when it came to things like the old through-the-saloon-window sequences. And the stuntmen had special glass going for them .

She heard the rapid thump of footfalls beyond the door as he first backed up and then ran at it again. It was a heavy door, but Pickering wasn’t kidding, and it shuddered in its frame. This time the chair jerked backward an inch or two before holding. Worse, that ripple went through the rug again and she heard a tearing sound that was not unlike the sound of duct tape letting go. He was remarkably lively for someone who had been beaten about the head and shoulders with a stout piece of red maple, but of course he was both crazy and just sane enough to know that if she got away, he wouldn’t. She supposed that was a strong motivator.

I should have used the whole fucking chair on him , she thought.

“Want to play?” he panted. “ I’ll play. Sure. Bet your butt. But you’re on my playground, okay? And here…I… come !” He hit the door again. It bucked in its frame, loose on its hinges now, and the chair jumped back another two or three inches. Em could see dark teardrop shapes between the tilted legs and the door: rips in the cheap carpet.

Out the window then. If she was going to die bleeding from Christ alone knew how many wounds, she would rather inflict them herself. Maybe…if she wrapped herself in the coverlet…

Then her eye fell on the desk.

“Mr. Pickering!” she called, grasping the desk by the sides. “Wait! I want to make a deal with you!”

“No deals with bitches, okay?” he said petulantly, but he had stopped for a moment — perhaps to get his breath back — and it gave her time. Time was all she wanted. Time was all she could possibly get from him; she didn’t really need him to tell her he wasn’t the sort of man who made deals with bitches. “What’s your big plan? Tell Daddy Jim.”