Strangers

diner and looked southeast, out into the terrifyingly immense darkness of the barrens. And suddenly he knew the darkness itself was not what he feared, but something that had been out there on the night of July 6, that bad summer. He was looking toward that special place along the highway, where they had gone yesterday to commune with the land in search of clues. That strange place.
        Faye had arrived, and Ernie had not shaken loose of her when she had taken hold of him. But now the crooked-eyed man tried to take his arm again, and he was still angry enough to reject that assistance.
        "Okay, okay," the guy said. "You're a bull-headed old Leatherneck bastard, and it's going to take your hurt pride a while to heal. If you want to be a thick-skulled mule, go ahead, stay pissed at me. It was only your blind anger that got you this far into the dark, wasn't it? Sure as hell wasn't Marine backbone. Just dumb blind anger. So if you stay pissed at me, maybe you'll be able to get to the diner."
        Ernie knew the crooked-eyed man was cleverly taunting him into completing the trip to the Tranquility Grille, that he was not really being cruel. Hate me enough, the guy was saying, and you'll fear the darkness less. Focus on me, Ernie, and take one step at a time. This was not much different than taking the guy's arm and leaning on it, and if Ernie had not been scared half to death by the surging night on all sides of him, he would have been amused at being conned this way. But he held fast to his anger, fanned the flames of it, and used it to light his way to the diner. He stepped through the door after the newcomer, and sighed with relief when the lights came on.
        "It's freezing in here," Faye said. She went directly to the thermostat to switch on the oil furnace.
        Sitting in a chair in the center of the room, his back to the door, Ernie recuperated from his ordeal as the others entered behind him. He watched the crooked-eyed newcomer moving from window to window, checking the plyboard slabs that had been nailed up to replace the shattered glass. And that was when, to Ernie's surprise, he realized he no longer loathed the guy, merely harbored an extreme dislike for him.
        The newcomer examined the payphone near the door. Being a coin-operated unit, it did not unplug, so he lifted the receiver, tore the cord free of the wall-mounted box, and threw the useless handset aside.
        "There's a private phone back of the counter," Ned said.
        The newcomer told him to unplug it, and Ned obliged.
        Then he told Brendan and Ginger to push three tables together and pull up chairs to accommodate everyone, and they did as they were told.
        Ernie watched the crooked-eyed man with keen interest.
        The newcomer was concerned about the diner's front door, which had not shattered during the weird phenomena on Saturday night because it was made of much thicker glass than the windows had been. It was not boarded up, so it offered a weak point to anyone trying to monitor them with a directional microphone. He wanted to know if any plywood was left from the window job, and Dom told him there was, and he sent Ned and Dom to bring back a suitable piece from the stack in the maintenance room behind the motel. They soon returned with a section of wood that was slightly larger than the door, and the newcomer stood it in front of the glass portal, bracing it in place with a table. "Not perfect," he said, "but good enough to defeat a rifle mike, I think." Then he headed toward the back of the restaurant to "have a look in the storeroom," and on his way he told Sandy to plug in the jukebox, switch it to free-play, and punch in some songs. "Some background noise makes eavesdropping more difficult." Even before he explained why he wanted music, Sandy jumped up and headed for the jukebox, quick to obey him.
        Abruptly, Ernie realized why the crooked-eyed man fascinated him. The guy's quick thinking, precision movements, and ability to command indicated that he was - or had once been - a career soldier, an officer, a damn good one. He could tune an intimidatingly hard edge into his voice one moment, and the next moment tune it out in favor of cajolery.
        Hell, Ernie thought, he's fascinating because he reminds me of me!
        That was also why the newcomer had been able to needle Ernie so effectively back in the apartment. The guy knew just where to stick the sharp points