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She didn’t want to die
However, although the odds of her leaving the house alive were, at best, only fifty-fifty, she couldn’t stay in the bedroom indefinitely She had no water, no food Besides, if she didn’t get out of’ here in the next few ht be too late to be of any help to Carol
If Carol is killed sie to face that daht as well be dead anyway
She switched off the two safeties on the pistol
She got up and went to the door
For nearly afor scratching noises or other indications that Aristophanes was nearby She heard nothing
Holding the pistol in her right hand, she used her bloody, claw-torn left hand to turn the knob She opened the door with the ut the cat to dart through the opening the instant it ide enough to admit him But he didn’t
Finally, reluctantly, she poked her head out into the hall Looked left Right
The cat wasn’t anywhere in sight
She stepped into the hail and paused, afraid to rily Move your ass, Gracie!
She took a step toward the head of the stairs Then another step Trying to be quiet
The stairs appeared to be a mile away
She looked behind her
Still no Aristophanes
Another step
This was going to be the longest walk she had ever taken
Paul latched his suitcase, picked it up, turned away from the bed--and jumped, startled, when the entire house shook as if a wrecker’s ball had struck the side of it
THUNK!
He looked up at the ceiling
THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!
During the past five days there had been no haotten about it, of course; he still occasionally wondered where that mysterious sound had come from For the most part, however, he had put it out of his s to worry about But now-- THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!
The nerve-fraying noise reverberated in the s and bounced off the walls It seemed to vibrate in Paul’s teeth and bones, too
THUNK!
After spending days trying to identify the source of that sound, understanding came to him unexpectedly, in a flash It was an ax It was not a ha of it No There was a sharp edge to it, a brittle, cracking quality at the end of each blow It was a chopping sound
THUNK!
Being able to identify the noise did absolutely nothing to help hi from
So it was an ax instead of a hammer So what? He still couldn’tthe entire house? It would have to be the mythical Paul Bunyan’s ax to have such a treardless of whether it was a hammer or an ax or even, for Christ’s sake, a salami, how could the sound of it issue froht of the meat cleaver that Louise Parker had buried in the throat of her ht about the freakish lightning strikes at Alfred O’Brian’s office; the strange intruder he had seen on the rear lawn during the thunderstoro (BLADE, BLOOD, DEATH, TOMB, KILL, CAROL); Grace’s two prophetic drea how he knew--that the sound of the ax was the thread that sewed together all these recent extraordinary events Intuitively, he knew that an ax would be the instruered He didn’t kno He didn’t knohy But he knew
THUNK! THUNK!
A painting popped off its wall hook and clattered to the floor
The river of blood in Paul’s veins turned winter-cold
He had to get to the cabin Fast
He started toward the bedroom door, and it slammed shut in front of him No one had touched it There had been no sudden draft thatwide Open, and the next instant it was flung shut as if it had been shoved hard by an invisible hand
Out of the corner of his eye, Paul saw so, breath trapped in his constricted throat, he twisted around toward the movement and instinctively raised his suitcase to partially shield himself
One of the two heavy,open He expected someone to step out of the closet, but when the door was all the way open, he could see nothing in there except clothes on hangers
Then it slid shut, and the other door slid open Then both of the behind the other, back and forth, back and forth on their silent plastic wheels
THUNK! THUNK!
A la fell off the wall
THUNK!
On the dresser, two porcelain figurines--a ballerina and her an to circle one another, al for Paul They moved slowly at first, then faster, faster, until they were swept into the air and tossed halfway across the room and dashed to the floor
The cabin was constructed of logs and was nestled in the cool shadows beneath the trees it had a long, covered, screened porch out front and an excellent view of the lake
It was one of ninety vacation cabins tucked into the scenic mountain valley, each on an acre or half-acre of its own They were all built along the south shore of the lake and were reachable only by way of a private, gated, gravel-surfaced road that curved around the water Sos, like the one Paul and Carol had bought, but there were also white clapboard New England models, modern A-frames, and a few that reseraveled drive, which branched off the community road, Carol parked the car near the front door of the cabin She and Jane got out and stood for ato the stillness, breathing the wonderfully fresh air
"It’s lovely," Jane said at last