Colin felt terribly vulnerable as he raced across the field. As far as the moonlight revealed, there was no cover, no place for him to hide. He had the crazy thought that a giant shoe was going to come down on him at any second, squashing him as if he were a bug scurrying across a vast kitchen floor.
In the stormy season, rain saturated the hillsides, then gushed off the slopes into natural drainage channels that cut through the flat land west of the railroad tracks. At least once every winter, the gullies overflowed, and the plain became a lake, part of the water-retention system created by the county flood-control project. Because the earth was underwater an average of two months every winter, it boasted very little vegetation even in the summer. There were patches of grass that had a tenuous hold on the silt, beds of the wildflowers that thrived nearly everywhere in California, and prickly tumbleweed; but there were no trees, no dense undergrowth, and no bushes in which Colin could conceal himself.
He got off the bare land as quickly as he could by jumping down into a small arroyo. The gulch was fifteen to twenty feet in width and more than seven feet deep, with almost vertical walls. During a winter storm, it was a surging river, wild and muddy and dangerous, but now it held not one drop of water. He sprinted along a straightaway, pain stabbing through his calves and side, lungs burning. As he came to a broad curve in the arroyo, he glanced back for the first time since he’d crossed the railroad tracks. So far as he could see, Roy had not yet come down into the big ditch in pursuit of him. He was surprised that he had such an encouraging lead, and he wondered if it were possible that Roy had not seen where he’d gone.
Beyond the bend, seeking shelter, he turned into a secondary watercourse that branched off the main channel. This was about ten feet wide at its mouth, but the walls rapidly drew nearer to each other as he progressed to the source. The floor rose steadily until the depth of the gully decreased from seven to five feet. When he had gone no more than a hundred yards, the passageway had narrowed to six feet. If he stood erect, his head would be above ground level. At that point the channel split into a pair of short, dead-end corridors that cut no more than four feet below the surface of the field. He moved into one of these cul-de-sacs, wedged himself into it, each shoulder pressed firmly against a sandy embankment. He sat down, drew his knees up to his chin, clamped his arms around his legs, and tried to be invisible.
— Rattlesnakes.
Oh, jeez.
— Better think about it.
No.
— This is rattlesnake country.
just shut up.
— Well, it is.
They don’t come out at night.
— The worst things always come out at night.
Not rattlesnakes.
— How do you know?
I read it in a book.
— What book?
Can’t remember the title.
— There wasn’t any book.
/tMt shut up.
— Rattlesnakes all over the place.
jeez!
He hunched down in the dirt, listening for rattlesnakes, waiting for Roy; and a long time passed during which he was not bothered by either nemesis. Every few minutes he checked his digital watch, and when he had been in the ditch for half an hour, he decided it was time to leave. If Roy had been searching the network of drainage canals all this time, he would have come close enough for Colin to be aware of him, or at least he would have made a noise in the distance; but he had not. Evidently he had abandoned the pursuit, perhaps because he’d lost track of Colin in the dark, hadn’t seen in which direction he had gone, and had no clear idea where to look for him. If true, it was a tremendous piece of luck. But Colin felt that he would be pushing Fate too hard if he stayed where he was, in this den of vipers, expecting to be safe forever from rattlesnakes.
He crawled out of the trench, stood, and studied the scarred, moonlit landscape. Within his limited circle of vision, there was no sign of Roy.
With extreme caution, stopping again and again to listen to the night, Colin headed southeast. Repeatedly, at the comers of his vision, there was movement; but it always proved to be a clump of tumbleweed rolling in front of the wind. Eventually he recrossed the flat land and reached the railroad tracks once more. He was at least a quarter of a mile south of the junkyard, and he quickly began to put even more distance between himself and Hermit Hobson’s place.
An hour later, when he reached the intersection of the tracks and Santa Leona Road, he was weary to his bones. His mouth was dry. His back ached. Every muscle in his legs was knotted and throbbing.
He considered following the highway into town. It was tempting: fairly straight and direct, with no holes or ditches or obstacles hidden in its shadows. He already had shortened the trek as much as he possibly could by going overland. From this point on, continued avoidance of the roads would only prolong the journey.
He took a few steps on the blacktop but realized again that he did not dare pursue the easy route. He almost surely would be attacked before he reached the edge of town, where people and lights would make murder more difficult than it would be in the lonely countryside.
— Hitchhike.
There’s no traffic at this hour.
— Someone will come along.
Yeah. Maybe Roy.
He left Santa Leona Road. He veered southwest from the railway line, striking out through more scrubland where only he and the tumbleweeds moved.
Within half a mile, he came to the dry creekbed that paralleled Ranch Road. It had been widened and deepened for flood-control purposes, and the walls of it were not earth but concrete. He descended on one of the regularly spaced service ladders, and when he stood on the floor of the creek, the rim was twenty feet above him.
Two miles farther, in the heart of town, he climbed up another ladder and through a safety railing. He was on the sidewalk along Broadway.
Although 1 A.M. was fast approaching, there were still people on the streets: several in passing cars; a few in an all-night diner; an attendant at a filling station. An elderly man walked arm-in-arm with a pixie-faced, white-haired woman, and a young couple strolled past the closed stores, window-shopping in spite of the hour.
Colin had an urge to rush up to the nearest of them and blurt out the secret, the story of Roy’s madness. But he knew they would think he was a lunatic. They didn’t know him, and they didn’t know Roy. None of it would make sense to strangers. He wasn’t even sure it made sense to him. And even if they did comprehend and believe, they couldn’t help him.
His first ally would have to be his mother. When she heard the facts, she would call the police, and they would respond to her much more quickly and seriously than they would to a fourteen-year-old boy. He had to get home and tell Weezy all about it.
He hurried along Broadway toward Adams Avenue, but after only a few steps he stopped because he suddenly realized that he would have to undertake the last part of his journey with the same caution that had marked it thus far. Roy might intend to ambush him within a few feet of his front door. In fact, now that he thought about it, he was positive that’s what would happen. Roy would most likely lie in wait directly across the way from the Jacobs house; half that block was a pocket park with many hiding places from which he could observe the entire street. The instant he saw Colin approaching the house, he would move; he would move real fast. For just a moment, as if briefly cursed with a clairvoyant’s vision, Colin could see himself being clubbed to the ground, being stabbed, being left there in blood and pain to die within inches of safety, on the threshold of sanctuary.
He stood in the middle of the sidewalk, trembling. He stood there for quite a while.
— Got to move, kid.
Where?
— Call Weezy. Ask her to come get you.
She’ll tell me to walk. It’s only a few blocks.
— So tell her why you can’t walk.
Not on the phone.
— Tell her Roy’s out there, waiting to kill you.
I can’t make it sound right on the phone.
— Sure you can.
No. I’ve got to be there when I tell her. Otherwise, it won’t sound right, and she’ll think it’s a joke. She’ll be mad.
— You’ve got to try to do it on the phone so she’ll come get you. Then you’ll get home safely.
I can’t do it on the phone.
— What’s the alternative?
Finally he walked back to the service station near the dry creekbed. A telephone booth stood on one comer of the property. He dialed the number and listened to it ring a dozen times.
She wasn’t home yet.
Colin slammed down the receiver and left the booth without recovering his dime.
He stood on the sidewalk, hands fisted at his sides, shoulders hunched. He wanted to punch something.
— The bitch.
She’s your mother.
— Where the hell is she?
It’s business.
— What’s she doing?
It’s business.
— Who’s she with?
It’s just business.
— I’ll bet.
The service-station attendant started closing for the night. The banks of fluorescent lights above the pumps blinked out.
Colin walked west on Broadway, through the shopping district, just passing time. He looked in store windows, but he didn’t see anything.
At ten minutes past one, he went back to the telephone booth. He dialed his home number, let it ring fifteen times, then hung up.
— Business my ass.
She works hard.
— At what?
He stood there for several minutes, one hand on the receiver, as if he were expecting a call.
— She’s out screwing around.
It’s business. A business dinner.
— This late?
A long, late business dinner.
He tried the number again.
No answer.
He sat down on the floor of the booth, in the darkness, and hugged himself.
— She’s out screwing around when I need her.
You don’t know for sure.
— I know.
You can’t.
— Face it. She screws like everyone else.
Now you sound like Roy.
— Sometimes Roy makes sense.
He’s crazy.
— Maybe not about everything.
At one-thirty he stood up, popped a dime into the phone, and called home again. It rang twenty-two times before he hung up.
It might be safe to walk home now. Wasn’t it too late for Roy to keep a vigil? He was a killer, but he was also a fourteen-year-old boy; he couldn’t stay out all night. His folks would wonder where he was. They might even call the cops. Roy would be in terrible trouble if he stayed out all night, wouldn’t he?
Maybe. And maybe not.
Colin wasn’t sure that the Bordens really cared what Roy did or what happened to him. So far as Colin knew, they had never set down rules for their son, other than the one about staying away from his father’s trains. Roy did pretty much what he wanted, when he wanted.
Something was wrong with the Borden family. The relationships were curious, indefinable. Theirs was not a traditional parent-child arrangement. Colin had met Mr. and Mrs. Borden only twice; but both times he had sensed the strangeness in them, in their attitudes toward each other, and in their treatment of Roy. Mother, father, and son seemed like strangers. There was a peculiar stiffness in the way they talked among themselves, as if they were reciting lines from a script they hadn’t learned very well. They were so formal. They almost seemed… afraid of one another. Colin had been aware of a coldness in the center of the family, but he had never spent much time wondering about it. Now that he gave it some thought, however, he realized that the Bordens were like people living in a rooming house; they smiled and nodded when they passed in the hall; they said hello when they met in the kitchen; but otherwise they led separate, distant lives. He didn’t know why that was true. Something had happened to turn them away from one another. He couldn’t imagine what it might have been. But he was certain that Mr. and Mrs. Borden wouldn’t care very much if Roy stayed out until daybreak or even disappeared forever.
Therefore it wasn’t safe for him to walk home. Roy would be waiting.
Colin dialed the number again, and he was surprised when his mother answered on the second ring.
“Mom, you’ve got to come get me.”
“Skipper?”
“I’ll wait for you at-”
“I thought you were upstairs, asleep.”
“No. I’m over at-”
“I just got in. I thought you were home. What are you doing out at this hour?”
“It’s not my fault. I was-”
“Oh, my God, have you been hurt?”
“No, no. I just-”
“You’re hurt.”
“No, just a few scrapes and bruises. I need-”
“What happened? What’s happened to you?”
“If you’d shut up and listen, you’d find out,” Colin said impatiently.
She was stunned. “Don’t you snap at me. Don’t you dare.”
“I need help!”
“What?”
“You’ve got to help me.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Real bad trouble.”
“What the hell have you done?”
“It’s not what I’ve done. It‘s-”
“Where are you?”
“I’m over here at-”
“Have you been arrested?”
“What?”
“Is it that kind of trouble?”
“No, no. I‘m-”
“Are you at the police station?”
“Nothing like that. I‘m-”
“Where are you?”
“Near the Broadway Diner.”
“What trouble have you caused at the diner?”
“That’s not it. I-”
“Let me talk to someone there.”
“Who? What do you mean?”
“Let me talk to a waitress or someone.”
“I’m not in the diner.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“In a phone booth.”
“Colin, what’s the matter with you?”
“I’m waiting for you to come get me.”
“You’re only a few blocks from home.”
“I can’t walk. He’s waiting for me along the way.”
“Who?”
“He wants to kill me.”
A pause.
“Colin, you come straight home.”
“I can’t.”
“This minute. I mean it.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m getting angry, young man.”
“Roy tried to kill me tonight. He’s still out there, waiting for me.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not joking!”
Another pause.
“Colin, did you take something?”
“Huh?”
“Did you take a pill or something?”
“Drugs?”
“Did you?”
“Jeez.”
“Did you?”
“Where would I get drugs?”
“I know you kids can get them. It’s as easy as buying aspirins.”
“Jeez.”
“It’s a big problem these days. Is that it? Are you high and having trouble getting down?”
“Me? You really think that’s a problem with me?”
“If you’ve been popping pills-”
“If that’s what you really think-”
“-or if you’ve been drinking-”
“-then you don’t know me at all.”
“-mixing booze and pills-”
“If you want to hear about it,” Colin said sharply, “you’ll have to bring the car and pick me up.”
“Don’t use that tone with me.”
“If you don’t come,” he said, “then I guess I’ll just rot here.”
He banged the receiver into the cradle and left the telephone booth.
“Shit!”
He kicked an empty soda can that was lying beside the walkway. It spun and rattled across the street.
He went to the Broadway Diner and stood at the curb, looking east, where Weezy would turn the corner if she bothered to come for him.
He was shaking uncontrollably with anger and fear.
He felt something else, too, something dark and devastating, something far more disturbing than anger, far more debilitating than fear, something uglier, like a terrible loneliness, but much worse than loneliness. It was a suspicion-no, a conviction-that he had been abandoned, forgotten, and that no one in the whole world cared or would ever care enough about him to really find out what he was like and what his dreams were. He was an outcast, a creature somehow vastly different from all other people, an object of scorn and derision, an outsider, secretly loathed and ridiculed by everyone who met him, even by those few who professed to love him.
He felt as if he would vomit.
Five minutes later she drew alongside him in the blue Cadillac. She leaned across the front seat and opened the door on the passenger’s side.
When he saw her, he lost the grip that he’d had on himself ever since the nightmare at Hermit Hobson’s place. Tears streamed down his face. By the time he got into the car and closed the door, he was sobbing like a baby.