Officers Farmer and Whitlock left. Hilary was alone. She didn’t think she could sleep, but she knew for sure she couldn’t spend the night in her own bed. When she stood in that room, her mind’s eye filled with vivid images of terror: Frye smashing through the door, stalking her, grinning demoniacally, moving inexorably toward the bed and suddenly leaping onto it, rushing across the mattress with the knife raised high. . . . As before, in a curious dreamlike flux, the memory of Frye became a memory of her father, so that for an instant she had the crazy notion that it had been Earl Thomas, raised from the dead, who had tried to kill her tonight. But it was not merely the residual vibrations of evil in the room that put it off limits. She was also unwilling to sleep there until the ruined door had been removed and a new one hung, a job that couldn’t be taken care of until she could get hold of a carpenter tomorrow. The flimsy door that had been there had not held long against Frye’s assault, and she had decided to have it replaced with a solid-core hardwood door and a brass deadbolt.
