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--the kitchen snapped co a foggy highway, pushing the muzzle of the revolver into the blonde’s side With horror, as she looked up at hier once, twice She was punched sideways by the dual ih the car

Vassago could not have anticipated what happened next

The gun es, for the two shots ripped through the blonde more violently than he expected and slaer door Either her door was not properly shut or one of the rounds punched all the way through her, da the latch, because the door flew open Wind rushed into the Pontiac, shrieking like a living beast, and Lisa was snatched out into the night

He jammed on the brakes and looked at the rearview an to fishtail, he saw the blonde’s body tu the pavement behind hio back for her, but even at that dead hour of the , other traffic shared the freeway He sao sets of headlights es in theby the second Those drivers would encounter the body before he could reach it and scoop it into the Pontiac

Taking his foot off the brake and accelerating, he swung the car hard to the left, across two lanes, then whipped it back to the right, forcing the door to slaain The latch h visibility had declined to about a hundred feet, he put the Pontiac up to eighty, bulleting blindly into the churning fog Two exits later, he left the freeway and rapidly slowed down On surface streets hespeed limits because any cop who stopped him would surely notice the blood splashed across the upholstery and glass of the passenger door

In the rearviewthe pave Then for a brief e of his nose to his eyebrows He earing sunglasses even though driving at night No He wasn’t wearing the them, and the reflection at which he stared was not his own Although he seemed to be the driver, he realized that he was not, because even the diot of the eyes behind the tinted lenses was sufficient to convince him that they were peculiar, troubled, and utterly different fro at the kitchen sink again, breathing hard andsounds of revulsion Beyond thelay only the backyard, blanketed by night and fog

"Hatch?"

Startled, he turned

Lindsey was standing in the doorway, in her bathrobe "Is so his soapy hands on his sweatshirt, he tried to speak, but terror had rendered hihtly and was glad for her embrace, which at last squeezed the words frohty, bounced along the highway like a rag doll!"

7

At Hatch’s request, Lindsey brewed a pot of coffee The faeness of the night More than anything else, that smell restored a sense of normalcy that helped settle Hatch’s nerves They drank the coffee at the breakfast table at one end of the kitchen

Hatch insisted on closing the Levolor blind over the nearbyHe said, "I have the feeling … so in at us" He could not explain what hethat had happened to hihtmare of the icy blonde, the switchblade, and the mutilated eye, Lindsey had only one explanation to offer "No matter how it seeot out of bed You were sleepwalking You didn’t really wake up until I stepped into the kitchen and called your name"

"I’ve never been a sleepwalker," he said

She tried to ht of his objection "Never too late to take up a new affliction"

"I don’t buy it"

"Then what’s your explanation?"

"I don’t have one"

"So sleepwalking," she said

He stared down into the white porcelain cup that he clasped in both hands, as if he were a Gypsy trying to foresee the future in the patterns of light on the surface of the black brew "Have you ever dreamed you were someone else?"

"I suppose so," she said

He looked hard at her "No supposing Have you ever seen a dreaer? A specific dream you can tell me about?"

"Well … no But I’m sure I must’ve, at one time I just don’t remember Dreams are smoke, after all They fade so fast Who re?"

"I’ll reh they returned to bed, neither of theain Maybe it was partly the coffee She thought he had wanted the coffee precisely because he hoped that it would prevent sleep, sparing hiht on their backs, staring at the ceiling

At first he had been unwilling to turn off the bedside lah he had revealed his reluctance only in the hesitancy hich he clicked the switch He was alh to know real fears froh to escape all of the latter, certain that some monster lurked under the bed but ashamed to say as low of distant streetla the s between the halves of the drapes, his anxiety had infected her She found it easy to i ular stealth and malevolent purpose

They talked softly, on and off, about nothing special They both knehat they wanted to talk about, but they were afraid of it Unlike the creepy-crawlies on the ceiling and things that lived under children’s beds, it was a real fear Brain da up in the hospital, reani power He didn’t have the as three or four nights in a row But he was having them more frequently, week by week, and the intensity was increasing

They were not always the same dreams, as he described them, but they contained si bodies contorted into peculiar positions Always, the dreaer, the saure, as if Hatch were a spirit in possession of thefor the ride Routinely the night: an asses and other queer structures that resisted identification, all of it unlighted and seen ht sky He also saw cavernous rooms and mazes of concrete corridors that were sohting The location was, he said, fanition reh to be able to identify it

Until tonight, they had tried to convince themselves that his affliction would be short-lived Hatch was full of positive thoughts, as usual Bad dreams were not remarkable Everyone had them They were often caused by stress Alleviate the stress, and the night And now they had taken a new and deeply disturbing turn: sleepwalking

Or perhaps he was beginning, while awake, to hallucinate the saes that troubled his sleep

Shortly before dawn, Hatch reached out for her beneath the sheets and took her hand, held it tight "I’ll be all right It’s nothing, really Just a drea, you should call Nyebern," she said, her heart sinking like a stone in a pond "We haven’t been straight with him He told you to let him know immediately if there were any sy to put the best face on it

"Physical or mental sympto rong with hiave e"

"Then you’ve nothing to worry about, do you? No reason to delay seeing Nyebern"