“IT’S NOT REAL,” I whisper to myself. “It’s not real. It can’t hurt us because it’s not real. That’s what Charlie said.”
My eyes are shut, and my breathing is loud, heavy. But it doesn’t drown out the ticking, scratching noise of all those insect legs moving across the pavement. Each time I open my eyes, they’re still there, a pulsing sea of black thousand-leggers, blocking my way to the motel. The sagging iron staircase is only ten or twelve feet away, but there are just so many bugs. I imagine putting my foot down, trying to walk across them, and having them swarm me, engulf my legs, creep up my body, smother me—
I can’t do it. I’m frozen. Trapped on top of the police car. I could try to climb inside the car and back over the bugs, pull up to the stairs and find a way up to room 6 without ever having to set foot on the parking lot. But if the anomaly can put the bugs here, it can put them anywhere. They were on my mattress in the nightmare, weren’t they? Proof that the version of Windale I was in was his, a mimeographed iteration of this town that it created based on … what? How did it really know anything about this place without…?
It hits me like any other moment when I’ve solved a problem. It’s like my head’s been in a vise, and as soon as the solution dawns on me, the vise loosens, and there’s nothing but relief along with a giddy pleasure that I can’t quite describe. Only tonight, the pleasure melts into more anxiety.
The Dagger Hill monster needed somebody who knew this town, who saw it for all its brightest spots and darkest corners, who was an observer.
Which means there’s a good chance Kimberly’s still alive.
I take ten long, deep breaths. I open my eyes, steel myself. Then I slide off the back of the car and put my feet down on the parking lot.
No crunching. No bugs. Because they were never really there.
I start for the staircase, and right when I do, somebody knocks on the door to room 6.