Through darkness he flees, all but blind, not without fear but purged of doubt, across sandstone but also sand, across loose shale, between masses of sage and weather-sculpted thrusts of rock, zigging and zagging, legs reaching for the land ahead, sneakered feet landing with assurance on terrain that had previously been treacherous, arms pump-pump-pumping like the connecting rods on the driving wheels of a locomotive, the dog often visible in front of him, but sometimes seen less than sensed, sometimes seen not at all, but always reappearing, the two of them bonding more intimately the farther they travel, spirit sewn to spirit with the strong thread of Curtis’s reckless trust.
Running with this strange blind exuberance, he loses all sense of distance and time, so he doesn’t know how far they have gone when the quality of the night abruptly changes, one moment marked by a worrisome air of danger and the next moment thick with a terrifying sense of peril. Curtis’s heart, furiously drumming from the physical demands of flight, now booms also with fear. Into the night has entered a threat more ominous than that represented by the officers in the SUVs and the troops in the helicopter. Dog and therefore boy together recognize that they are no longer merely the objects of a feverish search, but again the game in n hunt, the prey of predators, for in the August gloom arise new scents-sounds-pressures-energies that raise the hackles on Old Yeller and pebble-texture the nape of Curtis’s neck. Death is in the desert, striding the sand and sage, stealthy under the stars.
Drawing on reserves that he didn’t know he possessed, the boy runs faster. And the dog. In harmony.
Chapter 27
Snake killed, mother patched, prayers said, Leilani retired to bed in the blessed dark.
Since the age of three or four, she hadn’t wanted a night-light. As a little little girl, she’d thought that a luminous Donald Duck or a radiant plastic Tweetie Bird would ward off hungry demons and spare her from all sorts of supernatural unpleasantness, but she had soon learned that night-lights were more likely to draw the demon than repel it.
Old Sinsemilla sometimes rambled in the most wee of the wee hours, restless because she craved drugs or because she had stuffed herself with too many drugs, or maybe just because she was a haunted woman. Though she had no respect for her children’s need to sleep, she was inexplicably less inclined to wake them when the room was dark than when a plug-in cartoon character watched over them.
Scooby Doo, Buzz Lightyear, the Lion King, Mickey Mouse— they all drew Sinsemilla into their light. She’d often awakened Luki and Leilani from sound sleep to tell them bedtime stories, and she had seemed to deliver these narratives as much to Scooby or to Buzz as to her children, as though these were not molded-plastic lamps made in Taiwan, but graven images of benign gods that listened and that were moved by her tears.
Tears always punctuated the conclusions of her bedtime stories. When she told fairy tales, the classic yarns on which they were based could be recognized, although she fractured the narratives so badly that they made no sense. Snow White was likely to wind up dwarfless in a carriage that turned into a pumpkin pulled by dragons; and poor Cinderella might dance herself to death in a pair of red shoes while baking blackbirds in a pie for Rumpelstiltskin. Loss and calamity were the lessons of her stories. Sinsemilla’s versions of Mother Goose and the Brothers Grimm were deeply disturbing, but some-limes she recounted instead her true-life adventures before Lukipela and Leilani were born, which had more hair-raising effect than any tales ever written about ogres, trolls, and goblins.
So goodbye to Scooby, goodbye to Buzz, to Donald in his sailor suit — and hello, Darkness, my old friend. The only light visible was the ambient suburban glow at the open window, but it didn’t penetrate the bedroom.
No slightest draft sifted through the screen, either, and the hot night was nearly as quiet as it was windless. For a while, no sound disturbed the trailer park except for the steady hum of freeway traffic, but this white noise was so constant and so familiar that you heard it only if you listened for it.
Even by the time the midnight hour had passed, the distant drone of cars and trucks had not lulled Leilani to sleep. Lying with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling, she heard the Dodge Durango pull up in front of the house.
The engine had a distinctive timbre that she would never fail to recognize. In this Durango, Luki had been taken away into the Montana mountains on that slate-gray November afternoon when she’d last seen him.
Dr. Doom didn’t slam the driver’s door, but closed it with such care that Leilani could barely detect the discreet sound even though her bedroom window faced the street. Wherever their travels led them, he treated their neighbors with utmost consideration.
Animals elicited his kindness, as well. Whenever he saw a stray dog, Preston always coaxed it to him, checked for a license, and then tracked down its owner if the address was on the collar, regardless of the time and effort involved. Two weeks ago, on a highway in New Mexico, he’d spotted a car-struck cat lying on the shoulder of the road, both rear legs broken, still alive. He carried a veterinary kit for such emergencies, and he tenderly administered an overdose of tranquilizer to that suffering animal. As he’d knelt on the graveled verge, watching the cat slip into sleep and then into death, he’d wept quietly.
He tipped generously in restaurants, too, and always stopped to assist a stranded motorist, and never raised his voice to anyone. Without fail, he would help an arthritic old lady across a busy street — unless he decided to kill her instead.
Now Leilani rolled onto her right side, putting her back to the door. A single sheet covered her, and she pulled it under her chin.
She had removed her leg brace for comfort, but as usual, she had kept the apparatus in bed with her. She reached out to touch it under the sheet. The metal felt cool beneath her exploring fingers.
A few times over the years, when she’d left the brace on the floor beside her bed, she had awakened to discover that it had been moved during the night. More accurately, hidden.
No game was less amusing than find-the-brace, though Sinsemilla thought it entertaining and also professed to believe that it taught Leilani self-reliance, sharpened her wits, and reminded her that life “throws more stones at you than buttered cornbread,” whatever that might mean.
Leilani never rebuked her mother for this cruelty, or for any other, because Sinsemilla would not tolerate a thankless child. When forced into this hateful game,she proceeded with grim determination and without comment, aware that either a harsh word or refusal to play would bring down upon her the shrillest, most accusative, and most unrelenting of her mother’s upbraidings. And in the end, she would have to find the brace anyway.
Now her open window admitted the sound of Preston at the front door. The jingle of keys. The clack as the dead-bolt lock disengaged. The quiet scrape of metal weatherstripping against the threshold as he gently closed the door behind him.
Perhaps he would visit the kitchen for a glass of water or a late-night snack.
Drawn by the red light spilling into the hall, perhaps he would go directly to the master bedroom.
What would he make of the dead snake, the discarded closet pole, and Sinsemilla’s bandaged hand?
Most likely he wouldn’t stop in Leilani’s room. He would respect her privacy and her need for rest.
On a daily basis, Preston treated her with the same kindness that always he exhibited toward neighbors and waitresses and animals. On the eve of her tenth birthday, next February, if she had not yet escaped him or devised an effective defense, he would kill her with the selfsame regret and sadness that he had shown when euthanizing the crippled cat. He might even weep for her.
He traveled silently on the matted orange shag, and she didn’t hear him coming through the house until he opened her door. No stop for water or a snack. No curiosity about the red glow in the master bedroom. Directly to Leilani.
Because her back was to him, she hadn’t closed her eyes. A pale rectangle of hall light projected on the wall opposite the entrance, and in that image of the door stood the effigy of Preston Maddoc.
“Leilani?” he whispered. “Are you awake?”
She remained dead-cat still and didn’t reply.
As considerate as ever, lest the hallway lamp wake her, Preston entered. He soundlessly closed the door behind him.
In addition to the bed, the room contained little furniture. One nightstand. A dresser. A cane chair.
