بخش 03 - فصل 40

40

Linda Saubers came into her husband’s little home office to wait for Pete, because her husband’s laptop is on the desk and she can play computer solitaire. She is far too upset to read.

After talking to Pete, she’s more upset than ever. Afraid, too, but not of some sinister villain lurking on Sycamore Street. She’s afraid for her son, because it’s clear he believes in the sinister villain. Things are finally starting to come together. His pallor and weight loss … the crazy moustache he tried to grow … the return of his acne and his long silences … they all make sense now. If he’s not having a nervous breakdown, he’s on the verge of one.

She gets up and looks out the window at her daughter. Tina’s got her best blouse on, the billowy yellow one, and no way should she be wearing it on a dirty old glider that should have been taken down years ago. She has a book, and it’s open, but she doesn’t seem to be reading. She looks drawn and sad.

What a nightmare, Linda thinks. First Tom hurt so badly he’ll walk with a limp for the rest of his life, and now our son seeing monsters in the shadows. That money wasn’t manna from heaven, it was acid rain. Maybe he just has to come clean. Tell us the whole story about where the money came from. Once he does that, the healing process can begin.

In the meantime, she’ll do as he asked: call Tina inside and lock the house. It can’t hurt.

A board creaks behind her. She turns, expecting to see her son, but it’s not Pete. It’s a man with pale skin, thinning white hair, and red lips. It’s the man her son described, the sinister villain, and her first feeling isn’t terror but an absurdly powerful sense of relief. Her son isn’t having a nervous breakdown, after all.

Then she sees the gun in the man’s hand, and the terror comes, bright and hot.

‘You must be Mom,’ the intruder says. ‘Strong family resemblance.’

‘Who are you?’ Linda Saubers asks. ‘What are you doing here?’

The intruder – in the doorway of her husband’s study instead of in her son’s mind – glances out the window, and Linda has to suppress an urge to say Don’t look at her.

‘Is that your daughter?’ Morris asks. ‘Hey, she’s pretty. I always liked a girl in yellow.’

‘What do you want?’ Linda asks.

‘What’s mine,’ Morris says, and shoots her in the head. Blood flies up and spatters red droplets against the glass. It sounds like rain.