Douglas McArthur was having a terrible dream. No . . . please, God, no. Not after all this time. It couldn’t be happening all over again. I need to wake up before this gets out of hand. But it was already too late; he was fully immersed in the nightmare and there didn’t seem to be any way out of it. He saw the shape standing on the door stoop—tall, impossibly tall—wearing the familiar fleshy. black robe, the cowl covering the head, the single burning red eye bright as a miniature sun. And he saw the kid’s startled expression a split second before his body fossilized, turning to something akin to sandstone, and then crumbling to dust at his feet. And it was so real, like he was somehow a part of it, connected to it in some elemental way. Yet he knew it was impossible. He was asleep in his bed with Annie beside him. But the dream that could not be real would not end. He knew the killer was aware of him watching, knowing that he knew, and taking some sort of perverse pleasure in knowing.
