hated the indignity of it and the cold feeling of having paid caretakers rather than family sun'ounding him.
At least he could still get around---even if it was with the aid of a walker. Plenty of other residents in the home, many younger than himself, could not even get out of bed and were stuck full-time in their rooms.
He would have taken his life long ago if that had beth his situation.
Of course, most of those people didn't have any way to take their own lives.
He spent the morning staring out at the snow. Sometime before noon one of the doctors came in to speak with him-apparently Jimmy had made good on the threat to report him and since Derek was not in the mood for a lecture or lengthy discussion, he agreed with everything the doctor said and promised to eat his lunch. Jimmy returned soon after with a food tray, looking smug, and Derek ignored him. He ate his lunch and was once again silent as the attendant took the tray, leaving him alone. After a short, painful trip to the bathroom, Derek relocated himself to the room's chaff and spent the afternoon looking through magazines. Waiting.
He wondered how it was going to come.
There was no doubt in his mind that he would die today. He was not a religious man, but he knew there were things in this world that he did not understand Wolf Canyon
--that he would never understand, and he trusted the knowledge that had been supplied to him. He waited for death to arrive.
But sleep arrived before death and as the magazine slipped from his fingers, as he felt himself beginning to drop off, he wondered if he was going to wake up again or if this was it.
He did wake up. He awoke from another Wolf Canyon dream, one in which he was trapped in a house as the waters rose, his feet stuck to the floor as if they had been set in cement, resisting his efforts to pull them free and escape. He jerked awake just as he was starting to swallow water and drown.
He opened his eyes to see Joe, the night attendant, standing in front of him with a dinner tray. 'Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Baur, but it's suppertime. You want to eat here at your chair today?'
Derek nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He was surprised to be alive, and for the first time he questioned whether his premonition was correct. Maybe he wasn't going to die yet. Maybe his mind was just going.
He picked at his food, then pushed the tray aside and, after another trip to the bathroom, settled back into his bed, staring out at the snowy landscape until he fell asleep.
The room was black when he awoke--pitch-black much darker than he had ever seen it--and he wondered for a moment if he had gone blind. The darkness was uniform, with no light anywhere, and only by reaching over to the nightstand, feeling for his watch, and pressing the button on the timepiece to illuminate the numbers, did he know he still possessed his sight.
He felt for the curtain, pulled it aside. He understood that the lights in the home were all off. But where were the lights outside?
The streetlamps were out and the house across the road was dark. There was no noon. It was as if every possible source of illumination--save for his watch--had been extinguished.
Maybe there'd been a blackout.
A blackout. It made sense, but but it didn't feel right
He didn't understand why, but in the same way that he knew he was destined to die today, he knew that this darkness had been brought about for his benefit.
In fact, the two were related.
Yes, they were. How he didn't know, but he did know that the lights were off because of him, for him, and that his death would take place in the darkness.
For the first time he felt fear. He was afraid to die, he realized. He did not want to die. Not this way.
He pressed the buzzer next to his bed to call an attendant. He waited for what seemed like forever, pressing the buzzer several more times in the interim, but no attendant came. He did not even hear the sound of anyone in the hallway. The entire rest home was silent, and the lack of noise seemed ominous to him. Maybe death had come for them all tonight. Maybe everyone else in the building had been killed, and he was the last one left. Maybe the murderer was playing with him, toying with him, before coming in to slit his throat.
Derek sat up painfully. His muscles always seemed to be at their lowest ebb in the middle of the night. As usual, he'd laid his walker against the side of the bed, and he reached for it, bending awkwardly, trying to grab hold of the cold metal top bar. It took him several moments to find it, and by the time he did he was sweating--not just from exertion but from fear. Something was definitely wrong here, something was fundamentally off. There was no sound in the room, in the building, save his own labored breathing, and there was still no light either inside or outside the rest home.
He'd changed his mind. He was positive he did not want to die. And while there might be no pleasant way to go, some ways were definitely worse than others. Much, much worse.
He could still see nothing, but there was a sense of movement in the blackness, and he knew with a certainty he could
not explain that he was not alone in the room, that there was something in here with him.
Something not human.
There was another sound now besides his breathing--the hiss of piss as he peed his pants in terror. He threw himself out of bed, the walker clutched tightly, and headed toward where he knew the door had to be.
He expected at any moment to feel a clawed hand on his shoulder, but he concentrated on moving, walking, getting out of here, not allowing himself to dwell on the other possible outcomes of this situation. He wanted to cry out for help, but he was not sure there was any help to be had, and he was hoping that this darkness was just as disorienting to whatever was after him.
His walker hit a barrier, the wall, and Derek reached out to touch, feeling to the left and to the right until he found a crack, a hinge, and, finally, a knob. He grasped the knob, turned it. Or tried to.
The door was locked.
From the outside.
Was that something that was done every night? He didn't think so, but he wasn't sure. The only thing he was sure of was that he was now trapped in here with whatever was trying to kill him.
There was a... a slumping sound, the noise of something large moving forward through the room, forcing its weight across the floor toward him.
He wished to God the room had remained silent. He didn't want to think about what kind of form went with that sound. He wanted only to find a way to escape, a way to get out of here before The bathroom!
Yes! If he could make it to the bathroom without being caught, he could lock himself in until morning. Maybe the
monster could break down the door, but his chances were better in there than they were out here.
The monster?
He had no problem with that word.
The bathroom was to the right, and he started toward it. He did not have to face forward as he moved--his walker met obstructions before he did--so he kept swiveling his head around, looking from one section of the room to the other. The darkness was still almost total, but his eyes seemed to be adjusting to the lack of light because there was an area now less black than the room around it, a rounded, shapeless mass that drew ever closer to him and looked somehow as though it was made out of ice.
His heart was pounding loud enough to drown out that horrible slumping sound. He tried to hurry but Damn this walker, was not able to move any faster than he did ordinarily. His old bones and feeble muscles were unwilling to grant him any favors even in this time of crisis.
His walker hit the wall. He looked forward, and was promptly grabbed from behind.
This is it, he thought. The hand that covered his mouth was cold, freezing cold, and hard.
Ice. '
He thought of Wolf Canyon.
Ice, it occurred to him, was made of water. And then the cold hand forced itself into his mouth and down his
