Shattered

lay in their beds waiting for sleep to come, Colin sighed and said, “Well, she knew that something was wrong, didn't she?”
        “Yes.”
        “You can't fool Courtney.”
        “Not for very long, anyway,” Doyle said, staring at the lightless ceiling and thinking about his wife.
        The darkness seemed to swell and shrink and swell again, to pulse as if it were alive, to press warmly down around them like a blanket.
        “You really think we've lost him?” the boy asked.
        “Sure.
        “We thought we'd lost him before.”
        “This time we can be certain.”
        “I hope you're right,” Colin said. “He's a real crazy, whoever he is.”
        The shushing snare-drum music of the spring storm soon put the boy, and then Doyle, to sleep…
        
        Rain was falling as steadily as ever when Colin woke him. He stood beside Doyle's bed, shaking the man by the shoulder and whispering urgently. “ Alex! Alex, wake up. Alex!”
        Doyle sat up in bed, groggy and somewhat confused. His mouth felt furry and stale. He kept blinking his eyes, trying to see something, until he realized it was the middle of the night and the room was still pitch-black.
        “ Alex, are you awake?”
         “ Yeah. What's the matter?”
        “There's someone at the door,” the boy said.
        Alex stared straight at the voice but could see nothing of the boy. “At the door?” he asked stupidly, still not clear-headed enough to understand what was happening.
        “He woke me up,” Colin whispered. “I've been listening to him maybe three or four minutes. I think he's trying to pick the lock.”
        

    Ten
        
        Now, above the background noise of the rain, Alex could hear the strange fumbling noises on the other side of the door. in the warm, close, anonymous darkness, the sounds of the wire probing back and forth in the lock seemed much louder than they really were. His fear acted as an amplifier.
        “You hear him?” Colin asked. His voice cracked between the last two words, leaping up the scale.
        Doyle reached out and found the boy and put one hand on his skinny shoulder. “I can hear him, Colin,” he whispered, hoping his own voice would remain steady. “It's okay. Nobody's going to come in here. Nobody's going to hurt you.”
        “But it must be him .”
        Doyle looked at his wristwatch, which was the only source of light in the small room. The irradiated numerals jumped up at him, sharp and clear: seven minutes after three in the morning. At this hour no one had a legitimate reason for picking a lock on a room that… What was he thinking” There was no legitimate reason for such a thing at any hour, day or night.
        “Alex, what if he gets in here?”
        “Ssshh,” Doyle said, kicking back the covers and sliding out of bed.
        “What if he does ?”
        “He won't.”
        Doyle went to the door, aware that Colin was right behind him, and he bent down to listen at the lock. Metal rasped on metal, clinked, snicked, rasped again.
        He stepped sideways to the room's only window, just to the left of the door. Careful not to make a sound, he lifted the heavily lined drapes and then the cold venetian blinds. He tried to look to the right along the covered promenade where the man would be bent over the lock, but he found that the outside of the glass was sheathed in a fine white mist which made the window completely opaque. He could not see anything through it except the vague, diffused glow of several scattered motel lights that made the darkness beyond somewhat less intense and more manageable than that within the room.
        With as much care as he had employed in raising them away from the window, he dropped the blinds and the drapes back into place. He could not see any good reason for continued silence, but he took the precaution anyway, in order to waste a few more precious seconds… Any moment, he knew, the time would come for him to make a decision, to chart some response to this-yet he did not know for sure if he was capable of acting against whoever was out there.
        He went back to the door.
        The carpet was nubbed and prickly against his bare feet.
        Colin had remained by the door, silent, invisible in the onyx shadows, perhaps too frightened to move or speak.
        The icy sound of the wire scraping inside the lock was insistent and as loud as ever. It made