Drawn Into Darkness(95)
“Uncle Steve!” Justin screamed. “No, please don’t!”
And Forrest yelled, “Mom!”
• • •
All I could see were remarkable special effects—lightning flashes, flaring supernovas, comets, and meteor showers—until the dazzling pain was done with my eyes.
Even then, what I saw was hard to interpret from where I lay bleeding on the floor. My main impression was of feet. Stoat’s scuffed cowboy boots with their pointy toes turned toward the front of the house. Toward wing tips, work boots, and a pair of Chucks.
With horror as heavy as my love I recognized the three young men instantly. I knew them at once by a single look at their shocked bodies, arms outflung, silhouette targets against a surreal blue-white light blasting through the front door. Stoat would kill them, my sons, all three of them. Why were they here in my wretched pink shack for Stoat to murder? Close to my face I saw his shotgun butt freshly bloodied from clubbing me and his big-knuckled, frenzied hands repositioning the weapon so he could shoot them down, Quinn and Forrest and—and the one I loved like my own child—he would slaughter them like three calves on meat hooks.
And I lay stunned, injured, broken, helpless to prevent it.
I could not move.
“Mom!” cried one of my children.
I moved.
I had to, just like I’d had to get up at night when the babies cried; the summons shocked me with high voltage to the heart and could not be refused. Somehow I moved. I rolled to one side, flung my usable arm around Stoat’s ankles, and rolled back with all the kinetic force in my badly compromised body in an attempt to yank his goddamn pointy cowboy-booted feet out from under him.
But the pain of moving made me faint at the same time as I heard the shotgun fire.
• • •
Justin felt as if time had pleated and he had somehow slipped across the folds, because once again he was just a little boy begging for his life, “Uncle Steve, no, please don’t!” The man with the gun had once again loomed to fill the darkness of night, a deity of evil with death at his command, and the only hope of continued existence was to plead and promise, promise, promise to stay and never disobey and never tell the dark secret, never ever. Shaking with terror, Justin knew he had disobeyed and now he must die. He saw his doom incarnate raising the shotgun toward his shoulder, and he cringed, on the point of closing his eyes—
He saw something trying to rise up from the shadows like a wounded bird trying to lift its wings.
Lee!
Time focused like a laser; everything Justin had ever been or could be was now, that moment as Lee rolled sideward with an arm swinging out like a scythe to snatch Stoat around his cowboy-booted ankles, attacking with all her wounded strength.
Stoat leveled his shotgun just as he staggered.
He started to topple.
The shotgun blasted fit to earthquake the house down. Justin did not just hear it fire; he felt it shake him to the bone, and bits of white ceiling snowed down on him from where the blast had struck. Yet he remained standing while Uncle Steve—while Stoat the Goat fell.
Justin did not wait until Stoat hit the floor, or the floor hit Stoat. He lunged to hit him at the same time and grab the shotgun when Stoat lost his grip.
Only the damn creepy strong pervert didn’t lose his grip, didn’t let go, not for an instant. Justin smelled his so-called uncle’s hot and furious breath in his face as he tried to wrench the weapon away from him, but goddamn—no, there was no God and Stoat the pervert was still master, still stronger, still doom, getting the better of Justin—
Wait. Someone was helping. Justin saw someone hammering Stoat across the knuckles with a jack handle and somebody else wrestling Stoat’s hard old arms away from the shotgun before he completed the thought, Quinn, Forrest. With the death weapon, the shotgun, in his possession, Justin stood up and stepped back while Stoat still lay sprawled on the floor.
Forrest and Quinn left him there, both of them hurrying to tend to their mother. Lee lay far too still, and standing there with the shotgun heavy in his grasp, Justin heard Quinn and Forrest saying to her, “Mom? Mom?” but he did not hear her answer. Unconscious? Dead? God, please not dead, and he wanted terribly to see whether she was breathing, to go to her like her sons, yet some dark instinct made him glance at Stoat still lying dazed on the floor—
No! Stoat was sitting up, and all in one quick motion he pulled his knife out of his pocket, opened the blade, lifted the weapon—
Justin did not wait to see whether Stoat intended to throw the knife at Quinn, at Forrest, at Lee, or at him. Without wasting time putting the shotgun to his shoulder, he aimed it and pulled hard on both triggers, God help them all, please let there be a round left in one of the barrels—