Praying for Sleep

vanished toward the turbulent lake.
    It was from this direction—the lake—that the figure suddenly appeared. He grabbed Lis around the shoulders and they fell together into the saturated mud of one of her rose gardens. The fall emptied her lungs and she bent double, gasping for breath, unable to call for help. His full weight was on her, pinning her to the ground. She yanked at the pistol but the rear lip of the receiver caught in the cloth of her pocket.
    Portia turned and saw the assailant. She screamed and made a dash for the police car, as Lis kicked him away. She succeeded only in sliding through a muddy trench and catching herself, in an ungainly sitting position, on the thorny stalk of a blossomless Prospero rose shrub. She was held immobile as the man, his head lowered like an animal’s, crawled through the muck after her, muttering eerie sounds. Lis ripped the pocket flap open and pulled the Colt from it. She placed the black muzzle against his head just as Trenton Heck looked up and said, “Help me.”
    “Oh, my God.”
    “I’m . . . Can you help me?”
    “Portia!” she shouted, pocketing the automatic once again. “It’s Trenton. He’s hurt. Get the deputy. Tell him.”
    The young woman stood at the door of the patrol car.
    “It’s Trenton, ” Lis shouted over the wind and rain. “Tell the deputy!”
    But Portia didn’t move. She stepped back from the car and began to scream. Lis ripped her jacket from the rosebush and crawled away from Heck. Lis approached her sister cautiously, frowning. Smoke poured from the front seat of the cruiser. Portia pressed her hands over her face then fell to her knees, gagging. A moment later she vomited violently.
    When the deputy had been shot—point-blank in the face—the cigarette he held fell into his lap and started his uniform smoldering.
    “Oh, no,” Portia was crying, “no, no . . .”
    Lis pushed her sister aside then scooped up mud and patted out the embers. She too gagged at the smell of burnt cloth, hair and skin.
    “The radio!” Portia screamed. She stood, wiping her mouth, and shouted the word twice more before Lis understood. But only a curly black wire protruded from the dash; the handset had been torn off. Lis bent to the deputy once more though there was nothing to be done. He was pasty and cold. Lis stepped away and glanced at the Acura. The water was up to the windows now and had filled the car, covering the cellular phone inside.
    Together, the women stumbled through the mud to where Trenton Heck lay on his side. They managed to get him to his feet and struggled toward the back door. The rain pelted their faces and stung; it lay on them heavily like a dozen wet blankets. Halfway to the house a huge gust of wind slapped them from behind and Portia slipped into a trench of mud, pulling unconscious Heck after her. It took long, agonizing minutes to get him out of the soggy yard and to the kitchen. Portia collapsed in the open doorway.
    “No, don’t stop here. Get him inside.”
    “I have to rest,” Portia gasped.
    “Come on, you’re the runner. You got the stamina genes in the family.”
    “Jesus.”
    The women dragged him into the living room and laid him on the couch.
    Emil joined them but apparently the hound had no sixth sense of disaster. He sniffed once at his master’s boot and went back to the corner he’d commandeered, where he flopped down and closed his eyes. Portia locked the door and turned on a small lamp in the living room. Lis pulled Heck’s work shirt open.
    “Oh, my God—a bullet hole.” Portia’s voice was high with shock. “Get something! I don’t know. A towel.”
    Lis walked into the kitchen. As she pulled a handful of paper towels off the roll she heard a noise outside—faint at first then growing until it rivaled the howl of the wind. Her heart froze, for the sound reminded her of Claire’s final keening, emanating up through the ground from the caves of Indian Leap. Dazed by this terrible memory and her present fear Lis stumbled to the door and stared out. She saw nothing but rain and wind-bent foliage, and it was a moment before she realized that the sound was Michael Hrubek’s unearthly cry, calling from nowhere and from everywhere, “Lis-bone, Lis-bone, Lis-bone . . .”

30
    Trenton Heck lapsed into and out of consciousness. Lis tried to find his pulse and couldn’t, though when she rested her head on his chest his heart seemed to beat stridently.
    “Can you hear me?” she