A man moved out of the perfect darkness of the dining room, into the penumbral area beneath the archway, a big man, tall, and broad in the shoulders. He paused in the gloom for a second, then stepped into the brightly lit living room.
'No!' Hilary said.
Stunned, she stopped backing toward the door. Her heart leapt, and her mouth went dry, and she shook her head back and forth, back and forth: no, no, no.
He was holding a large and wickedly sharp knife. He grinned at her. It was Bruno Frye.
***
Tony was thankful that the streets were empty, for he couldn't have tolerated any delay. He was afraid he was already too late.
He drove hard and fast, north on Santa Monica, then west on Wilshire, putting the Jeep up to seventy miles an hour by the time he reached the first downslope just outside the Beverly Hills city limits, engine screaming, windows and loose dashboard knobs vibrating tinnily. At the bottom of the hill, the traffic light was red. He didn't brake. He pressed the horn in warning and flew through the intersection. He slammed across a shallow drainage channel in the street, a broad depression that was almost unnoticeable at thirty-five miles an hour, but at his speed it felt like a yawning ditch beneath him; for a fraction of a second he actually was airborne, thumping his head into the roof in spite of the restraining harness that he wore. The Jeep came back to the pavement with a bang, a many-voiced chorus of rattles and clanks, and a sharp bark of tortured rubber. It began to slue to the left, its rear end sliding around with a blood-chilling screech, smoke curling up from the protesting tires. For an electrifying instant, he thought he was going to lose control, but then abruptly the wheel was his again, and he was more than halfway up the next hill without realizing how he'd gotten there.
His speed was down to forty miles an hour, and he got it back up to sixty. He decided not to push it beyond that. He only had a short distance to go. If he wrapped the Jeep around a streetlamp or rolled it over and killed himself, he wouldn't be able to do Hilary any good.
He was still not obeying the rules of the road. He went much too fast and wide on what few turns there were, swinging out into the east-bound lanes, again thankful that there were no oncoming cars. The traffic signals were all against him, a perverse twist of fate, but he ignored every one of them. He wasn't worried about getting a ticket for speeding or reckless driving. If stopped, he would flash his badge and take the uniformed officers along with him to Hilary's place. But he hoped to God he wasn't given a chance to pick up those reinforcements, for it would mean stopping, identifying himself, and explaining the emergency. If they pulled him over, he would lose at least a minute.
He had a hunch that a minute might be the difference between life and death for Hilary.
***
As she watched Bruno Frye coming through the archway, Hilary thought she must be losing her mind. The man was dead. Dead! She had stabbed him twice, had seen his blood. She had seen him in the morgue, too, cold and yellow-gray and lifeless. An autopsy had been performed. A death certificate had been signed. Dead men don't walk. Nevertheless, he was back from the grave, walking out of the dark dining room, the ultimate uninvited guest, a large knife in one gloved hand, eager to finish what he had started last week; and it simply was not possible that he could be there.
Hilary closed her eyes and willed him to be gone. But a second later, when she forced herself to look again, he was still there.
She was unable to move. She wanted to run, but all of her joints--hips, knees, ankles--were rigid, locked, and she didn't have the strength to make them move. She felt weak, as frail as an old, old woman; she was sure that, if she somehow managed to unlock her joints and take a step, she would collapse.
She couldn't speak, but, inside, she was screaming.
Frye stopped less than fifteen feet from her, one foot in a cotton snowdrift of stuffing that had been torn from one of the ruined armchairs. He was pasty-faced, shaking violently, obviously on the edge of hysteria.
Could a dead man be hysterical?
She had to be out of her mind. Had to be. Stark raving mad. But she knew she wasn't.
A ghost? But she didn't believe in ghosts. And besides, wasn't a spirit supposed to be insubstantial, transparent, or at least translucent? Could an apparition be as solid as this walking dead man, as convincingly and terrifyingly real as he was?
'Bitch,' he said. 'You stinking bitch!'
His hard, low-pitched, gravelly voice was unmistakable.
But, Hilary thought crazily, his vocal cords already should have started to rot. His throat should be blocked with putrescence.
She felt high-pitched laughter building in her, and she struggled to control it. If she began to laugh, she might never stop.
'You killed me,' he said menacingly, still teetering on the brink of hysteria.
'No,' she said. 'Oh, no. No.'
'You did!' he screamed, brandishing the knife. 'You killed me! Don't lie about it. I know. Don't you think I know? Oh, Jesus! I feel so strange, so alone, all alone, so empty.' There was genuine spiritual agony mixed up with his rage. 'So empty and scared. And it's all because of you.'
He slowly crossed the few yards that separated him from her, stepping carefully through the rubble.
Hilary could see that this dead man's eyes were not blank or filmed with milky cataracts. These eyes were blue-gray and very much alive--and brimming with cold, cold anger.
'This time you'll stay dead,' Frye said as he approached. 'You won't come back this time.'
She tried to retreat from him, took one hesitant step, and her legs almost buckled. But she didn't fall. She had more strength left than she had thought.
'This time,' Frye said, 'I'm taking every precaution. I'm not giving you a chance to come back. I'm going to cut your fuckin' heart out.'
She took another step, but it didn't matter; she could not escape. She wouldn't have time to reach the door and throw off both locks. If she tried that, he would be on her in a second, ramming the knife down between her shoulders.
