He tossed the packet of currency back on the shelf from which he’d taken it. From the side of the pantry where he kept food, he took down two boxes of Reese’s peanut butter cups and a family-size bag of Hawaiian-style potato chips, which were a lot oilier than ordinary chips. Grandma Drackman would’ve had a stroke at the very thought.
Harry’s heart knocked so hard and fast that his ears were filled with doubletime drumming that would probably drown out the sound of approaching footsteps.
In the black bedroom, on black shelves, scores of eyes floated in clear fluid, slightly luminous in the amber lamplight, and some were animal eyes, had to be because they were so strange, but others were human eyes, oh shit, no doubt at all about that, some brown and some black, blue, green, hazel. Unhooded by lids or lashes, they all looked scared, perpetually wide with fright. Crazily he wondered if, by looking closely enough, he would be able to see reflections of Ticktock in all the lenses of those dead eyes, the last sight each victim had seen in this world, but he knew that was impossible, and he had no desire to look that close anyway.
Keep moving. The insane sonofabitch was here. In the house. Somewhere. Charles Manson with psychic power, for God’s sake.
Not in the bed, sheets tossed and rumpled, but somewhere.
Jeffrey Dahmer crossed with Superman, John Wayne Gacy with a sorcerer’s spells and magics.
And if not in the bed, awake, oh Jesus, awake and therefore more formidable, harder to get close to.
Closet. Check it. Just clothes, not many, mostly jeans and red robes. Move, move.
The little creep was Ed Gein, Richard Ramirez, Randy Kraft, Richard Speck, Charles Whitman, Jack the Ripper, all the homicidal sociopaths of legend rolled into one and gifted with paranormal talents beyond measure.
The adjoining bathroom. Through the door, no light, find it, just mirrors, more mirrors on all walls and the ceiling.
Back in the black bedroom, heading toward the door, stepping as silently as possible on the black ceramic tiles, Harry didn’t want to look again at the floating eyes but couldn’t stop himself. When he glanced at them again, he realized Ricky Estefan’s eyes must be among those in the jars, though he couldn’t identify which pair they were, couldn’t, under the current circumstances, even remember what color Ricky’s eyes had been.
He reached the door, crossed the threshold, into the upstairs hall, dizzied by infinite images of himself, and from the corner of his eye he saw movement to his left. Movement that was not another Harry Lyon. Coming straight at him and not from out of a mirror, either, coming low. He swiveled toward it, bringing the revolver around, pressure on the trigger, telling himself it had to be a headshot, a headshot, only a headshot would be sure to stop the bastard.
It was the dog. Tail wagging. Head cocked.
He almost killed it, mistaking it for the enemy, almost alerted Ticktock that someone was in the house. He let up on the trigger a fraction of an ounce short of the pressure needed to squeeze off a shot, and would have made the mistake of cursing the dog aloud if his voice hadn’t caught in his throat.
Connie kept listening for gunfire from the second floor, hoping Harry had found Ticktock asleep and would scramble his brain with a couple of rounds. The continued silence was beginning to worry her.
After quickly checking out another mirrored chamber opposite the living room, Connie was in what she assumed would have been the dining room in an ordinary house. It was easier to inspect than the other areas she’d been through, because a band of fluorescent-quality light came under the door from the adjoining kitchen, dispelling some of the gloom.
One wall featured windows, and the other three were mirrored. No furniture, not one stick. She supposed he never ate in the dining room, and he was certainly not the sort of sociable guy who would entertain a lot.
She started to return through the archway to the downstairs hall, then decided to go directly to the kitchen from the dining room. Having looked into the kitchen from an outside window, she knew Ticktock wasn’t there, but she had to sweep it again, just to be sure, before joining Harry upstairs.
Carrying two boxes of Reese’s peanut butter cups and one bag of chips, Bryan left the light burning in the pantry and went into the kitchen. He glanced at the table but didn’t feel like eating there. Heavy fog pressed at the windows, so if he went outside to the patio, he would have no view of the breaking surf on the beach below, which was the best reason for eating out there.
He was happiest, anyway, when the votive eyes watched him; he decided to go upstairs and eat in the bedroom. The glossy white-tile floor was sufficiently polished to reflect the red of his robe, so it seemed as if he walked through a thin, constantly evaporating film of blood as he crossed the kitchen toward the rear stairs.
After pausing to wag his tail at Harry, the dog hurried past him to the end of the hall. It stopped and peered down into the back stairwell, very alert.
If Ticktock was in any of the upstairs rooms that Harry had not yet checked, the dog surely would have shown interest in that closed door. But he had trotted by all of them to the end of the hall, so Harry joined him there.
The narrow stairwell was an enclosed spiral, curving down and around and out of sight like stairs in a lighthouse. The concave wall on the right was paneled with tall narrow mirrors that reflected the steps immediately in front of them; because each was angled slightly toward the one before it, every subsequent panel also partly reflected the reflection in the previous one. Because of the weird funhouse effect, Harry saw his full reflection in the first couple of panels on the right, then fractionally less of himself in each succeeding panel, until he did not appear at all in the panel just this side of the first turn in the stairwell.
He was about to start down the steps when the dog stiffened and nipped a mouthful of trouser cuff to restrain him. By now he knew the dog well enough to understand that the attempt to hold him back meant there was danger below.
But he was hunting danger, after all, and had to find it before it found him; surprise was their only hope. He tried to jerk loose of the dog without making any noise or causing it to bark, but it held fast to his cuff.
Damn it.
Connie thought she heard something just before she entered the kitchen, so she paused on the dining-room side of the door and listened closely. Nothing. Nothing.
She couldn’t wait forever. It was a swinging door. Cautiously, she pulled it toward her, easing around it, rather than pushing the door in where it would block part of her view.
The kitchen appeared deserted.
Harry tugged again, with no better result than he’d gotten before; the dog held tight.
Glancing nervously down the mirrored stairs again, Harry had the terrible feeling that Ticktock was down there and was going to get away, or more likely encounter Connie and kill her, all because the dog wouldn’t let him slip down and behind the perp. So he rapped the dog smartly on the top of the head with the barrel of his revolver, risking its yelp of protest.
Startled, it let go of him, thankfully didn’t bark, and Harry stepped out of the hallway, onto the first stair. Even as he started to descend, he saw a flash of red in the mirror at the farthest curve of the first spiral, another red flash, a billow of red fabric.