When at last he had control of himself, he went into Joey's room, just to reassure himself. The boy was sleeping peacefully.
Chewbacca raised his furry head and yawned.
Charlie looked at his watch, saw that he had slept about four hours.
Dawn was nearing.
He returned to the gallery.
He couldn't stop shaking.
He went downstairs and made some coffee.
He tried not to think about the dream, but he couldn't help it. He had never before had such a vivid nightmare, and the shattering power of it led him to believe that it had been less a dream than a clairvoyant experience, a foreshadowing of events to come. Not that rats were going to burst out of Joey. Of course not. The dream had been symbolic. But what it meant was that Joey was going to die. Not wanting to believe it, devastated by the very idea that he would fail to protect the boy, he was nevertheless unable to dismiss it as only a dream; he knew; he felt it in his bones: Joey was going to die. Maybe they were all going to die.
And now he understood why he and Christine had made love with such intensity, with such abandon and fiercely animalistic need. Deep down, they both had known that time was running out, subconsciously, they had felt death approaching, and they had tried to deny it in that most ancient and fundamental of life-affirming rituals, the ceremony of flesh, the dance done lying down.
He got up from the table, left his half-finished coffee, and went to the front door. He wiped at the frosted glass until he could look out at the snow-covered porch. He couldn't see much of anything, just a few whirling flakes and darkness. The worst of the storm had passed. And Spivey was out there. Somewhere.
That's what the dream had meant.
By dawn the storm had passed.
Christine and Joey were up early. The boy was not as ebullient as he had been last night. In fact he was sinking back into gloom and perhaps despair, but he helped his mother and Charlie make breakfast, and he ate well.
After breakfast, Charlie suited up and went outside, alone, to sight-in the rifle that he had purchased yesterday in Sacramento.
More than a foot of new snow had fallen during the night.
The drifts that sloped against the cabin were considerably higher than they had been yesterday, and a couple of first-floor windows were drifted over. The boughs of the evergreens dropped lower under the weight of the new snow, and the world was so silent it seemed like a vast graveyard.
The day was cold, gray, bleak. At the moment no wind blew.
He had fashioned a target out of a square of cardboard and two lengths of twine. He tied the target around the trunk of a Douglas Fir that stood a few yards downhill from the windmill, then backed off twenty-five yards and stretched out on his belly in the snow. Using one of the rolled-up sleeping bags as a makeshift bench rest, he aimed for the center of the target and fired three rounds, pausing between each to make sure the cross hairs were still lined up on the bull's-eye.
The Winchester Model 100 was fitted with a 3-power telescope sight which brought the target right up to him. He was firing 180 grain soft-point bullets, and he saw each of them hit home.
The shots cracked the morning stillness all across the mountain and echoed back from distant valleys.
He got up, went to the target, and measured the point of average impact, which was the center point of the three hits. Then he measured the distance from the point of impact to the point of aim (which was the bull's-eye where he had lined up the cross hairs), and that figure told him how much adjustment the scope required.
The rifle was pulling low and to the right. He corrected the elevation dial first, then the windage dial, then sprawled in the snow again and fired another group of three. This time he was gratified to see that every shot found the center of the target.
Because a bullet does not travel in a straight line but in a curving trajectory, it twice crosses the line of sight-once as it is rising and once as it is falling. With the rifle and ammunition he was using, Charlie could figure that any round he fired would first cross the line of sight at about twenty-five yards, then rise until it was about two and a half inches high of the mark at one hundred yards, then fall and cross the line of sight a second time at about two hundred yards.
Therefore, the Winchester was now sighted-in for two hundred yards.
He didn't want to have to kill anyone.
He hoped killing wouldn't be necessary.
But now he was ready.
Christine and Charlie put on their snowshoes and backpacks and went down the mountain to the lower meadow to finish unloading the Jeep.
Charlie was carrying the rifle, slung over one shoulder.
She said, "You're not expecting trouble?"
"No. But what's the use of having the gun if I don't always keep it close by?"
She felt better about leaving Joey alone this morning than she had last night, but she still wasn't happy about it. His high spirits had been short-lived. He was withdrawing again, retreating into his own inner world, and this change was even more frightening than it had been the last time it happened because, after his recovery yesterday evening, she had thought he was permanently back with them. If he withdrew into silence and despair again, perhaps he would slip even deeper than before, and perhaps this time he would not come out again. It was possible for a once perfectly normal, outgoing child to become autistic, cutting off most or all interaction with the real world. She'd read about such cases, but she'd never worried about it as much as she worried about diseases and accidents because Joey had always been such an open, joyous, communicative child. Autism had been something that could happen to other people's children, never to her extroverted little boy. But now. This morning he spoke little.
He didn't smile at all. She wanted to stay with him every minute, hug him a lot, but she remembered that being left alone for a while last evening had convinced him that the witch must not be near, after all.
Being left to his own resources this morning might have that same salutary effect again.
Christine didn't glance back as she and Charlie headed downhill, away from the cabin. If Joey was watching from a window, he might interpret a look back as an indication that she was afraid for him, and her own fear would then feed his.
Her breath took frosty form and wreathed her head. The air was bitterly cold, but because there was no wind, they didn't need to wear ski masks.
As first she and Charlie didn't speak, just walked, finding their way through the new soft snow, sinking in now and then in spite of the showshoes, searching for a firmer crust, squinting because the glare of the snow was fatiguing to the eyes even under a sunless sky like this one. However, as they reached the woods at the base of the meadow, Charlie said, "Uh. about last night-"
"Me first," she said quickly, speaking softly because the air was so still that a whisper carried as well as a shout." I've been sort of.
well, a little embarrassed all morning."
"About what happened last night?"
"Yes."
"You're sorry it happened?"
"No, no."
"Good. Because I'm sure not sorry."
She said, "I just want you to know… that the way I was last night…
so eager… so aggressive… so.