CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

When Nick woke the next morning, his heart was racing like he had had a nightmare. He was panting. When he sat up, he saw that he was lying on top of the bedspread. The thin cloth was stained with dirt. His feet were tender, almost painful.

He was naked. In a pile beside him, his T-shirt and shorts lay like the discarded skins of molting snakes, coiled in and around and through each other. He stared, frightened and fascinated, trying to remember another kind of swirling and entwining that lay just beneath the surface of memory.

For a second, it seemed that the memories would flood back.

He jumped up, wincing as his feet hit the floor, and dressed hurriedly in jeans and a pair of comfortable old sandals. By the time he had finished, he was calmer.

It had only been a dream; what else could it be, after all. This wasn’t the movies, where machines came to life and tried to get people in viciously inventive ways.

This wasn’t Maximum Overdrive or anything.

This was Tamarind Valley, Southern California, here and now.

He had only had an unusually vivid dream brought on by watching a film about a haunted car. It was only a step further, after all, to a haunted television, like in Poltergeist.

He decided that he really shouldn’t have invited a double-whammy like that—reading the novel and watching the film in one day. Especially when it was so hot and sleep would be difficult anyway. He should have shut the book and....

The book!

He had left it at Payne’s, lying cover up on the floor.

At least that’s where he thought it would be.

He pulled on a shirt and started to leave. At the door, he stopped—he needed the key. He slapped instinctively at his jeans pockets and panicked momentarily when his fingers felt only muscle rather than the hard, sharp outline of the brass key. Then he remembered that the key would be in his shorts.

He returned to the pile of clothing in his bedroom and leaned over it. For a second, it was as if the material moved, fluttered like a ribcage rising and falling. He blinked. There was nothing. Just a pair of filthy shorts wrapped around a T-shirt, both of them spotted and stained with sweat and dirt.

He dug gingerly into the pile—it might be his own sweat and dirt but that didn’t make it any more, palatable, and the clothes were disgustingly clammy and stuck together. He pulled the key from the pocket.

And nothing happened.

No savage creature lunged at him, no spontaneous fire burst out to consume him on the spot, no flickering of blue flame curled around his fingers.

Flames.

He almost remembered something again. Not knowing why, he stared at his hand. The flesh was whole, tanned and smooth as always. He recognized the white scar from a cut when he was nineteen, then the pink tissue of a healing scrape from a rose thorn not more than a week ago.

Otherwise, nothing else. Nothing new.

There had been no fire, no sparks, no blue energy wrapping around the hand like an insane, insubstantial neon boa. It had been a dream.

He left the room and walked outside. For some reason, he skirted Payne’s lawn and followed the sidewalk up to the porch. The front door stood slightly ajar, opening onto a crack of darkness. It looked as if Nick had simply forgotten to close it the night before.

Another clue. What he thought he remembered was an illusion, a dream. The door had not locked itself. It had not happened.

Nick felt a moment of panic. If someone had gotten in and stolen any of the equipment while he was in charge....

He took the steps in a bound, pushed the door open, and turned on the lights.

The living room seemed less glaring than it had the night before. The white was subdued. He walked into the hall, then on to the viewing room. He turned on the light and looked down at the floor.

The book was not there.

He checked in the kitchen, although he knew that he hadn’t left it there. Then he tried the Control Room. His palms were sweaty when he pushed the door open; they left damp spots on the polished surface. But the room was quiet, neutral. Everything was in place. He glanced at the shelf. There was not even a gap where the DVD for Christine should be. He could see the title printed boldly along the back of the box.

He crossed to the opposite wall and punched the eject button on the player. The slot was empty. He returned to the living room and stood there for a while, searching every corner of the room.

Then he saw something.

The chess set was not quite the same as it had been before. It was still black on white, but the black no longer glistened. It seemed dull. He touched one of the pieces. A gray stain smudged his fingertips. He sniffed it.

Ash. And the acrid smell of burnt paper.