Time Thieves

permit a grown man escape.
        
        When he turned around, Della and the maid were standing at the open doorway to the main room. Della's face was unnaturally white, her lips drawn together until they almost disappeared, bloodless lips against bloodless skin. The maid just looked angry.
        
        “Whose room is this?” he asked the heavy woman before she could reprimand him for forcing his way into a room that wasn't his.
        
        “How should I know?” She covered the pocket where the five dollars lay, effectively sealing it from him with one pudgy hand.
        
        He pushed past her and went back to the motel office. “Who is occupying Room 27?” he asked, reaching for the registration book.
        
        It was on the top sheet of card duplicates. The name of the occupant was listed as D. J. Mullion.
        
        “Who?” Della asked.
        
        He could hardly speak. “You,” he croaked.
        
        She took it from him and looked at her initials. “It's not my handwriting though. And it says the room was rented-an hour and ten minutes ago. I was with you then.”
        
        “What did he look like?” Pete asked Simmons.
        
        “The man in 27? Well, he was tall. And thin. Sharp nose, like a beak. That's about all. He wasn't one of those people who leave any sort of lasting impression.”
        
        “What kind of car did he come in? 1 ”
        
        “A VW,” Simmons said, reading from the register. “There's the license number.”
        
        Pete looked at it. He wanted to rip the ledger apart, to scream and kick at things. As calmly as he could, he said, “He gave you the license number of my Thunderbird. He probably lied about the VW part of it as well.”
        
        Simmons stood up, his stool rattling on the tiled floor. “I better go check the room,” he said. His bland face was creased with a frown. “See if he stole anything.”
        
        “Do that,” Pete said.
        
        Then he and Della were alone in the tiny lobby, listening to the banshee roar of the trucks on the distant highway. The air seemed flat, the darkness beginning to press the light from the room.
        
        “Do we have to stay here and wait for him?” she asked.
        
        “No.”
        
        “Then let's get away from here, Pete. Please.”
        
        “You think I'm crazy, breaking into a strange room like that? Telling wild stories about strange men watching me from dark doorways, all of that? I know it sounds-”
        
        His voice trailed away, for he realized that he was talking much too fast, that he was not communicating anything but his own panic.
        
        Color had returned to Della's face. Now some of it drained away again. He took time to notice how beautiful she was, even when her face was pasty with fear.
        
        “I don't think you're crazy,” she said. “I saw him too, Pete. I saw him, just before he closed the door on you.”
        

----

    VI
        
        
        Pete discovered the new complications when he woke from a bad dream Monday night. All that day, he had been tense, expectant. When nothing out of the ordinary transpired, the tension broke loose in a nightmare and sent him scurrying down imaginary alleyways, running from his own shadow and from things far worse than that.
        
        The dream ended as he sat straight up in bed, unable to breathe, his stomach cramped with pain. There was perspiration dripping from his jawline. The sheets around him were soaked.
        
        But something was wrong.
        
        For a long while, as his chest heaved with his labored breathing and he gripped the edge of the mattress with his right hand in order to still the dizziness that bothered him, he could not place the source of his annoyance. Della still slept. The clock hummed; the soft green glow from the clock-radio face was the only source of light. But something was definitely wrong; there was something in the room which did not belong here, which had never been here before.
        
        As his pulse slowed and the dizziness abated along with the memory of the nightmare, he realized that he could hear voices, soft, murmuring voices speaking close at hand. He could not see anyone in the bedroom, and nothing about the furniture seemed out of place to him.
        
        He rose and crept, quietly,