On Interstate 40 again, he begins the three-hundred-fifty -mile trip to Barstow, California. His compulsion to keep moving westward is so irresistible that he is as helpless in its grip as an asteroid captured by the earth’s tremendous gravity and pulled inexorably toward a cataclysmic impact.
Terror propelled him out of the dream of darkness and unknown menace: Marty Stillwater sat straight up in bed. His first waking breath was so explosive, he was sure he had awakened Paige, but she slept on undisturbed. He was chilled yet sheathed in sweat.
Gradually his heart stopped pounding so fearfully. With the glowing green numerals on the digital clock, the red cable-box light on top of the television, and the ambient light at the windows, the bedroom was not nearly as black as the plain in his dream.
But he could not lie down. The nightmare had been more vivid and unnerving than any he’d ever known. Sleep was beyond his reach.
Slipping out from under the covers, he padded barefoot to the nearest window. He studied the sky above the rooftops of the houses across the street, as if something in that dark vault would calm him.
Instead, when he noticed the black sky was brightening to a deep gray-blue along the eastern horizon, the approach of dawn filled him with the same irrational dread he had felt in his office on Saturday afternoon. As color crept into the heavens, Marty began to tremble. He tried to control himself, but his shivering grew more violent. It was not daylight that he feared, but something the day was bringing with it, an unnameable threat. He could feel it reaching for him, seeking him—which was crazy, damn it—and he shuddered so violently that he had to put one hand against the windowsill to steady himself.
“What’s wrong with me?” he whispered desperately. “What’s happening, what’s wrong?”
Hour after hour, the speedometer needle quivers between 90 and 100 on the gauge. The steering wheel vibrates under his palms until his hands ache. The Honda shimmies, rattles. The engine issues a thin unwavering shriek, unaccustomed to being pushed so hard.
Rust-red, bone-white, sulfur-yellow, the purple of desiccated veins, as dry as ashes, as barren as Mars, pale sand with reptilian spines of mottled rock, speckled with withered clumps of mesquite: the cruel fastness of the Mojave Desert has a majestic barrenness.
Inevitably, the killer thinks of old movies about settlers moving west in wagon trains. He realizes for the first time how much courage was required to make their journey in those rickety vehicles, trusting their lives to the health and stamina of dray horses.
Movies. California. He is in California, home of the movies.
Move, move, move.
From time to time, an involuntary mewling escapes him. The sound is like that of an animal dying of dehydration but within sight of a watering hole, dragging itself toward the pool that offers salvation but afraid it will perish before it can slake its burning thirst.
Paige and Charlotte were already in the garage, getting in the car, when they both cried, “Emily, hurry up!”
As Emily turned away from the breakfast table and started toward the open door that connected the kitchen to the garage, Marty caught her by the shoulder and turned her to face him. “Wait, wait, wait.”
“Oh,” she said, “I forgot,” and puckered up for a smooch.
“That comes second,” he said.
“What’s first?”
“This.” He dropped to one knee, bringing himself to her level, and with a paper towel he blotted away her milk mustache.
“Oh, gross,” she said.
“It was cute.”
“More like Charlotte.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“She’s the messy one.”
“Don’t be unkind.”
“She knows it, Daddy.”
“Nevertheless.”
From the garage, Paige called again.
Emily kissed him, and he said, “Don’t give your teacher any trouble.”
“No more than she gives me,” Emily answered.
Impulsively he pulled her against him, hugged her fiercely, reluctant to let her go. The clean fragrance of Ivory soap and baby shampoo clung to her; milk and the oaty aroma of Cheerios were on her breath. He had never smelled anything sweeter, better. Her back was frightfully small under the flat of his hand. She was so delicate, he could feel the beat of her young heart both through her chest—which pressed against him—and through her scapula and spine, against which his hand lay. He was overcome with the feeling that something terrible was going to happen and that he would never see her again if he allowed her to leave the house.
He had to let her go, of course—or explain his reluctance, which he could not do.
Honey, see, the problem is, something’s wrong in Daddy’s head, and I keep getting these scary thoughts, like I’m going to lose you and Charlotte and Mommy. Now, I know nothing’s going to happen, not really, because the problem is all in my head, like a big tumor or something. Can you spell “tumor”? Do you know what it is? Well, I’m going to see a doctor and have it cut out, just cut out that bad old tumor, and then I won’t be so frightened for no reason. . . .
He dared say nothing of the sort. He would only scare her.
He kissed her soft, warm cheek and let her go.
At the door to the garage, she paused and looked back at him. “More poem tonight?”
“You bet.”
She said, “Reindeer salad . . .”
“. . . reindeer soup . . .”
"... all sorts of tasty ...”
“. . . reindeer goop,” Marty finished.
“You know what, Daddy?”
“What?”
“You’re soooo silly.”
Giggling, Emily went into the garage. The ca-chunk of the door closing behind her was the most final sound Marty had ever heard.
He stared at the door, willing himself not to rush to it and jerk it open and shout at them to get back into the house.
He heard the big garage door rolling up.
The car engine turned over, chugged, caught, raced a little as Paige pumped the accelerator before shifting into reverse.
Marty hurried out of the kitchen, through the dining room, into the living room. He went to one of the front windows from which he could see the driveway. The plantation shutters were folded away from the window, so he stayed a couple of steps from the glass.
The white BMW backed down the driveway, out of the shadow of the house and into the late-November sunshine. Emily was riding up front with her mother, and Charlotte was in the rear seat.
As the car receded along the tree-lined street, Marty stepped so close to the living-room window that his forehead pressed against the cool glass. He tried to keep his family in view as long as possible, as if they were certain to survive anything—even falling airplanes and nuclear blasts—if he just did not let them out of his sight.
His last glimpse of the BMW was through a sudden veil of hot tears that he barely managed to repress.
Disturbed by the intensity of his emotional reaction to his family’s departure, he turned away from the window and said savagely, “What the hell’s the matter with me?”
After all, the girls were merely going to school and Paige to her office, where they went more days than not. They were following a routine that had never been dangerous before, and he had no logical reason to believe it was going to be dangerous today—or ever.
He looked at his wristwatch. 7:48.
His appointment with Dr. Guthridge was only slightly more than five hours away, but that seemed an interminable length of time. Anything could happen in five hours.