be either a fakir from the Mysterious East, capable of twisting your body up like a pretzel, or an escape artist like Harry Houdini or David Copperfield. I'm just telling it the way I see it, okay? And the way I see it, you're toast.
She suddenly remembered what had happened after her father had left her bedroom on the day of the eclipse-how she had thrown herself on her bed and cried until it had seemed her heart would either break or melt or maybe just seize up for good. And now, as her mouth began to tremble, she looked remarkably as she had then: tired, confused, frightened, and lost. That last most of all.
Jessie began to cry, but after the first few tears, her eyes would produce no more; stricter rationing measures had apparently gone into effect. She cried anyway, fearlessly, her sobs as dry as sandpaper in her throat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
In New York City, the regulars of the Today program had signed off for another day. On the NBC affiliate which served southern and western Maine, they were replaced first by a local chat-show (a large, motherly woman in a gingham apron showed how easy it was to slow-cook beans in your Crock-pot), then by a game-show where celebrities cracked jokes and contestants uttered loud, orgasmic screams when they won cars and boats and bright red Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners. In the Burlingame home on scenic Kashwakamak Lake, the new widow dozed uneasily in her restraints, and then began to dream once more. It was a nightmare, one made more vivid and somehow more persuasive by the very shallowness of the dreamer's sleep.
In it Jessie was lying in the dark again, and a man-or a manlike thing-was once more standing across from her in the corner of the room. The man wasn't her father; the man wasn't her husband; the man was a stranger, the stranger, the one who haunts all our sickest, most paranoid imaginings and deepest fears. It was the face of a creature Nora Callighan, with her good advice and sweet, practical nature, had never taken into account. This black being could not be conjured away by anything with an ology suffix. It was a cosmic wildcard.
But you do know me, the stranger with the long white face said. It bent down and grasped the handle of its bag. Jessie noted, with no surprise at all, that the handle was a jawbone and the bag itself was made of human skin. The stranger picked it up, flicked the clasps, and opened the lid. Again she saw the bones and the jewels; again it reached its hand into the tangle and began to move it in slow circles, producing those ghastly clickings and clackings and tappings and tappings.
No I don't, she said. I don't know who you are, I don't, I don't, I don't!
I'm Death, of course, and I'll be back tonight. Only tonight I think I'll do a little more than just stand in the corner,, tonight I think I'll jump out at you, just... like... this !
It leaped forward, dropping the case (bones and pendants and rings and necklaces spilled out toward where Gerald lay sprawled with his mutilated arm pointing toward the hallway door) and shooting out its hands. She saw its fingers ended in dark filthy nails so long they were really claws, and then she shook herself awake with a gasp and a jerk, the handcuff chains swinging and jingling as she made warding-off gestures with her hands. She was whispering the word "No" over and over again in a slurry monotone.
It was a dream! Stop it, Jessie, it was just a dream!
She slowly lowered her hands, letting them dangle limply inside the cuffs once more. Of course it had been-just a variation of the bad dream she'd had last night. It had been realistic, though-Jesus, yes. Far worse, when you got right down to it, than the one of the croquet party, or even the one in which she had recalled the furtive and unhappy interlude with her father during the eclipse. It was passing strange that she had spent so much time this morning thinking about those dreams and so little thinking about the far scarier one. In fact, she really hadn't thought of the creature with the weirdly long arms and the gruesome souvenir case at all until she'd dozed off and dreamed of him just now.
A snatch of song occurred to her, something from the Latter Psychedelic Age: