Tick Tock

mother's folk tales were set. In that Asian world of jungles, limpid waters, and blue mountains like mirages, it was easier to believe in the fantastic, such as the story of the mandarin named Tu Thuc, who had climbed Mount Phi Lai and, at the top, had found the Land of Bliss where the immortals lived in perfect happiness and harmony. On humid nights along the banks of the Mekong River or on the shores of the South China Sea, the air seemed thickened by magic, which Tommy could remember even after twenty-two years, and in that far place, one could give some credit to the tale of the good genie of medicine, Tien Thai, and his flying mountain, or to the story of beautiful Nhan Diep, the faithless wife who, after her death, returned to earth in the form of the first buzzing cloud of mosquitoes ever seen, initially to afflict her husband and then all of humankind. If Tommy were in Vietnam again—and returned to childhood—he might be able to believe in devil dolls too, although Vietnamese folk tales were generally gentle in nature and featured no monsters like the shrieking, sharp-toothed mini-kin.
    But this was the United States of America, the land of the free and the brave, the land of Big Business and Big Science, from which men had gone to the moon and back, where movies and television had been invented, where the atom had first been split, where scientists were rapidly mapping the human genome and developing nanotechnology and shining light into the deepest mysteries of existence—where eighty-five percent of the citizenry declared themselves deeply religious, yes, but where fewer than three in ten attended church. This was America, damn it, where you could solve any problem with a screwdriver and a wrench, or with a computer, or with fists and a handgun, or at worst with the help of a therapist and a twelve-step program to effect personal enlightenment and change.
    Screwdrivers, wrenches, computers, fists, guns, and therapists weren't going to help him cope with the mini-kin if he returned to his house and found the creature still in residence. And it would be there; he had no doubt about that.
    It would be waiting.
    It had a job to finish.
    It had been sent to kill him.
    Tommy didn't know how he could be so sure of the mini-kin's ultimate purpose, but he knew that what he intuited was true. Little assassin.
    He could still feel a vaguely sore spot on his tongue where he had been pricked by the wind-blown melaleuca leaf when he had opened the front door of his house and discovered the doll lying on the porch.
    Holding the steering wheel with only his left hand, he pressed his right hand to his thigh. He had no difficulty locating the spot where the pin with the black enamel head had pierced his flesh.
    Two wounds. Both small but clearly symbolic.
     
    Now, Tommy cruised Spyglass Drive, piloting the Corvette along ridges stippled with million-dollar houses that overlooked Newport Beach, past graceful California pepper trees thrashing in the wind, and his thoughts were as chaotic as his driving was aimless. Cold drowning tides of rain came off the black Pacific and, although the torrents couldn't touch him now, they seemed to wash confidence and reason out of him, leaving him limp with doubt and feverish with superstitious speculations.
    He wanted to go to his parents' cosy house in Huntington Beach, take refuge in the bosom of his family. His mother was the person most likely to believe his story. Mothers were required by law—not the law of men, but natural law—to be able to discern the truth when their children told it to them, to be quick to defend them against the disbelief of others. If he stared directly into his mother's eyes and explained about the devil doll, she would know that he was not lying. Then he would no longer be alone in his terror.
    His mother would convince his father that the threat, although outlandish, was real, whereupon his father would convince Tommy's two brothers and his sister. Then there would be six of them—an entire family—standing against the unnatural power that had sent the hateful mini-kin to him. Together they could triumph as they had triumphed so long ago against the communists in Vietnam and against the Thai pirates on the South China Sea.
    But instead of turning the Corvette toward Huntington Beach, Tommy swung left on El Capitan and drove higher into the night and the storm. He wove from street to street across Spyglass Hill, past the houses of strangers who would