Shadowfires

the day, yesterday morning, and I'm
wondering how long I can stay in the house before someone comes to
put me out, and
I'm trying to figure what to do, where to go from here. But then little more than an hour after I see the story about him on the news, he shows up at the door, and at first I think the story must've
been all wrong, but then…oh, Christ… then I knew it wasn't wrong. He… he really was killed. He was.”
    “Yes.”
    The girl tenderly licked her split lip. “But somehow…”
    “Yes.”
    “… he came back.”
    “Yes,” Rachael said. “He came back. In fact,
he's still coming back. He's not made it all the way back yet
and probably won't ever make it.”
    “But how-”
    “Never mind how. You don't want to know.”
    “And who-”
    “You don't want to know who! Believe me, you don't want to
know, can't afford to know. Honey, you've got to listen closely now,
and I want you to take to heart what I'm saying to you. You can't
tell anyone what
you've seen. Not anyone. Understand? If you do… you'll be in terrible
danger. There're people who'd kill you in a minute to keep you from
talking about Eric's resurrection. There's more involved here than
you can ever know, and they'll kill as many people as necessary to keep their secrets.”
    A dark, ironic, and not entirely sane laugh escaped the girl. “Who
could I tell that would believe me, anyway?”
    “Exactly,” Rachael said.
    “They'd think I was crazy. It's nuts, the whole thing, just plain
impossible.”
    Sarah's voice had a bleak edge, a haunted note, and it was clear that what she had seen tonight had changed her forever, perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse. She would never be the same again. And for a long time, perhaps for the rest of her life, sleep would not be easily attained, for she would always fear what dreams might come.
    Rachael said, “All right. Now, when we get you to a hospital,
I'll pay all your bills. And I'm going to give you a check for ten
thousand dollars as well, which I hope to God you
won't throw away on drugs. And if you want me to, I'll call your
parents out there in Kansas and ask them to come for you.”
    “I… I think I'd like that.”
    “Good. I think that's very good, honey. I'm sure they've been worried about you.”
    “You know… Eric would've killed me. I'm sure that's what he wanted. To kill me. Maybe not me in particular. Just someone. He just felt like he had to kill someone, like it was a need in him, in his blood. And I was there. You know? Convenient.”
    “How did you get away from him?”
    “He… he sort of phased out for a couple of minutes. Like I
told you, he seemed confused at times. And then at one point his eyes
just sort of clouded up even worse, and he started making this funny
little wheezing noise. He turned away from me and looked around, as
if he was really mixed up… you know, bewildered. He seemed to get
weak, too, because he leaned against the wall there by the bathroom
door and hung his head down.”
    Rachael remembered the bloody palmprint on the bedroom wall,
beside the bathroom door.
    “And when he was like that,” Sarah said, “when he was distracted,
I was flat on the bathroom floor, hurt real bad, hardly able to move,
and so the best I could do was crawl into the shower stall, and I was
sure
he'd come in after me when he got his senses back, you know, but he didn't.
Like he forgot me. Came to his senses and either didn't remember I'd
been there or couldn't figure out where I'd gone to. And then, after
a while, I heard him farther back in the house, pounding things,
breaking things.”
    “He pretty much wrecked the kitchen,” Rachael said, and in a dark
corner of her memory was the image of the knives driven deep into the
kitchen wall.
    Tears slid first from
Sarah's good eye, then from the blackened and swollen one, and she said, “I can't
figure…”
    “What?” Rachael asked.
    “Why he'd come after me.”
    “He probably
didn't come after you specifically,” Rachael said. “If there was a wall safe in the house, he would've
wanted the money from it. But basically, I think
he's just… looking for a place to go to ground for a while, until the process… runs its course. Then, when he blanked out for a moment and you hid from him, and when he came around again and didn't
see you, he probably figured you'd gone for help, so he had to get out of there fast, go somewhere else.”
    “The cabin, I'll bet.”
    “What cabin?”
    “You don't know about his cabin up at Lake