she'd walked through the door into his bedroom. Dawn hadn't said anything, hadn't done anything, had simply stood there, staring. He'd slowly lowered his hands, feeling the guilty red heat of embarrassment flush across his face. He'd wanted to say something, wanted to apologize, but he hadn't been able to speak.
She'd backed up, started to move away, but he found his voice and said in his stern Father tone, 'Dawn! Stop right there!' She'd stopped, turned ashamedly around to face him, and then he had rushed forward, taken her in his arms and held her, hugged her, pressed against her, kissing her full warm tips. He knew that she could feel his hardness against her and that made him even harder. He slid his hand under her shirt, feeling the tiny nipples of her firm young breasts. She was whimpering, crying, her eyes closed, but she was not fighting back, and he knew that she wanted it, and he pushed her to the floor, slid her shorts down and felt the rough hair of her vagina beneath his fingers.
He'd taken her there, on the carpet next to the bed.
She'd stiffened at one point, and he knew that she'd come.
He'd wanted to roar in triumph; he'd wanted to cry in shame. He'd wanted to hug her with gratitude; he'd wanted to beat her in disgust.
They'd done it regularly after that, at least twice a week for the past year. He had not told Donna; of course, but he had not forbid Dawn to tell her mother, and he'd assumed that she'd known.
More than once, he'd even considered a threesome. But Donna had not known, until yesterday. Despite the extra attention he'd shown Dawn, the extra things he'd bought her, the obviously un paternal kisses he'd bested upon her, the stupid bitch still hadn't figured it out If she hadn't been snooping where she wasn't supposed to, sneaking through Dawn's diary, she probably never would have found out.
But that was all water under the bridge now, and after reading Donna's letter, he'd known that his time was up.
That's when he'd taken out his gun. There was no way in hell that he was going to go to prison. Especially not as a short eyes.
He'd rather just end it before it got that far.
But a bullet in the brain was not for him. He walked back into the kitchen, looked down at the gun lying seductively on top of the table No, he was not to die this way. He was supposed to die, his time had truly come, but the manner and method of his death was not to be so meaningless, so trivial. He knew that. He knew it not as a conscious thought but instinctively, deep inside, the way he knew that tonight the sun would set and tomorrow it would rise. He closed his eyes, feeling a sudden pressure on his brain, fearing a headache. But no headache came.
Instead, he had the impulse to go outside and walk into the desert in back of the house.
He frowned, wondering if his mind was going. His eyes focused again on the gun, and he found himself thinking that there was no reason to kill himself at all. He was safe;
Donna had obviously not gone to the police The pressure kicked in again. He shut his eyes so tightly
' that tears came, and in a clear instant he understood that it was his time to die. '
He walked out of the kitchen, through the back door, through the yard, past the rusted barbecue, and crawled through the hole in the chain-link fence. He stood up on the other side of the barrier, not bothering to dust the sand and burrs from his clothes, and began walking across the open desert, heading in the general direction of Apache Peak. Behind him, the sun was setting, and the ground was bathed in an orangish red glow, the saguaros and ocotillos black shapes against the color.
Death. He stopped walking. The pressure in his mind strengthened but he pushed back against it. He knew he should continue moving forward, keep walking, but he sensed that Death was near, and he was now scared.
Death, he suddenly realized, was not merely the absence of life but the presence of... something else. It was not a natural cessation of mind and body functions but an actual, physical end type. He turned his head, looking toward the darkened north, his terror growing. It was coming, moving across the desert toward him. He couldn't see it, but he could feel it, a blackness on the horizon, and as it drew closer he knew that it was very big. And unbelievably ancient
The pressure in his mind no longer seemed to have any hold over him, and he suddenly gathered his wits, turned, and ran. He ran not toward home, not toward shelter, but away from the onrushing..' thing, away from Death, scrambling madly through the sand in an effort to escape its coming. What the hell had possessed him to come out here in the first place? Temporary insanity? What had compelled him toHe slid, fell, tumbling arms over head over legs down the soft sand to the bottom of the arroyo, still looking behind him. His shin hit a rock, the side of his face a bush, and he landed hard on the arroyo floor, hearing and feeling the bones in his right arm crack beneath him. He was stunned for a moment, but then he remembered what was after him, and he stumbled to his feet. He looked upward, wondering if he should chance a climb up the cliff or run through the gulch.
There was a noise from around the curve behind him. A whooshing hiss.
It was a sound not unlike water, and for a brief second he thought a flash flood was sweeping through the arroyo, though there'd been no rain. He started to stagger away from the sound, then a blanket of peace settled over his mind, and he felt no worry. He stopped, turned around, and began walking toward the noise, growing more docile, more tranquil with each step he took.
He did not even cry out as he rounded the curve and saw the face of Death..
Sue awoke feeling tired, her mind a conflicting jumble of images from several disparate dreams. There was something about a hole in the earthen floor of a building, a hole that led into-a tunnel. There was a man nailed to a willow tree, screaming. There was a river of blood that ran uphill.
She sat up in bed, fluffing the pillow behind her and using it to brace her back against the headboard. She'd gotten to sleep late last night.
Janine had come over after work to talk and had stayed until nearly midnight, ignoring the not-so-subtle hints of Sue's parents, who tried to kick her out at eight, nine, and ten before finally giving up and going to bed.
John had already gone to school by the time Sue walked out into the living room, but her grandmother was still in bed. She found herself wondering, not for the first time, if maybe her grandmother was ill, if she was dying.
She forced herself to think of something else.
After breakfast, she accompanied her parents to the market. :
There was only one other car in the parking lot this morning, an old green Torino, and her father pulled next to it, parking so close that she and her mother could not open their doors all the way and had a difficult time get ring out of the car. She maneuvered her way between the two vehicles and walked up the curb to the store sidewalk.
Her father grabbed a shopping cart, and she hell the door to the market as her parents went inside.
She noticed the difference immediately.
The market had changed.
She had always enjoyed coming here; had always foundi the atmosphere to be pleasant and friendly; had always l liked Mr. and Mrs. Grimes, the owners of the store. Butt today something was wrong. The atmosphere was different the air filled with an unfocused hostility that sheI sensed the second she walked through the door. She fel unpleasantly uncomfortable, and she desperately wanted to walk back outside into the cool fresh air.
She watched her parents walk down the first aisle toward the produce section at the far end. They obviously felt nothing out of the ordinary, sensed nothing wrong, but her muscles grew tense as she watched them, her uneasiness and anxiety increasing. She noticed for the first time that Mr. and Mrs. Grimes were nowhere in sight.
Ordinarily, the checkout stand was never left unattended.
There were a series of burnt-out lights above the meat counter that cast an entire section of the market into semidarkness. Her parents walked into the shadow.
'Hey thereI'
She jumped at the sound of Mr. Grimes's voice and turned quickly around to see him standing directly behind her, smiling. There was nothing false about his smile, nothing sinister, but the fact that he had been able to sneak up on her like that, without her being able to hear him, scared her.
'How are you and your folks today?'
'Fine,' Sue said, forcing herself to smile at him.
