Nightrunners Read Free

scenery to correct that, but right here, near the end of their trip, at the true beginning of their vacation —if that was the proper word—he took it as a bad omen.
    Becky slept fitfully in the back seat, tossing and turning, making noises in her throat that reminded him of an old dog his dad had owned. "Chasing rabbits in his sleep, Monty," his dad used to say as the sleeping dog kicked and whined.
    Montgomery knew Becky wasn't chasing rabbits, however. Something was chasing her; the dark side of a memory.
    He hoped this trip would help dilute those memories. He knew that it would not eliminate them. Like smallpox scars they would remain, but perhaps they could be doctored into a benign state of existence.
    He hoped.
    Montgomery turned on the windshield wipers as rivulets of rain gathered on the glass.
    Less than five minutes ago the sky had been black and crisp and full of shimmering, ice-blue stars. But that was East Texas weather for you. As the old tired joke went, "If you don't like the weather here, wait a minute."
    To the best of his memory, he had the directions right, and this was the road coming up.
    He turned the VW Rabbit off the blacktop and onto a narrow path of red clay that ambled its way into the forest of crowding pines.
    "You've got plenty of privacy there," Dean had said. "No one to bother you. Not a house within three miles. Swell place. Relaxing. Quiet. Becky'll love it, and you will too.
    Do you good. Pines all around, a lake out back, plenty of fresh air. Swell place."
    That phrase of Dean's hung in Montgomery's memory like barbed wire. Swell place.
    The trip had gone badly from the first. One fuckup after another. He hadn't taken it too seriously at first, but now, coupled with Becky's dreams, it all seemed earthshaking.
    Then again, one A.M. had a way of making things seem terribly traumatic.
    "Take her away for a while," the psychiatrist had said. "Let her have a change of scenery.
    Being in the apartment where it happened isn't a good idea. Make arrangements to move.
    And in the meantime, get away. She's trying to be strong about it, but the passing months haven't helped that much. It's eating her up inside. Take her on a vacation for a week or so and find plenty to do. You might be surprised at how much of a change it will make."
    So he had heeded the psychiatrist's advice. They left Galveston and stopped off in Houston to eat at a rather famous and highly recommended restaurant, and what happens but Becky gets sick. Something she ate. And the damn food hadn't been that good either.
    Thirty-five dollars for something that tasted like what the dog threw up, and an upset stomach for Becky to boot.
    Next stop had been the Alabama-Coushatta Indian reservation. But this year it had rained like hell and the water had risen out of the Big Thicket and swamped both train ride and reservation. Snakes were everywhere, and all the tours were closed down. Only the Trading Post was open, and everything sold there was twentieth-century bright and made in the Orient. About the only thing the Indians had to do with the "crafts" was unloading them from a truck.
    (Get your gen- U-ine im-I-tation Alabama-Coushatta In-dee-an trinkets rightchere, folks. Hurry and getem, won't be another boat from Japan for a month.) The government and the reservation's administrators had turned the place into a clown act.
    Take the reservation trip, pile the shitty restaurant on top of that, add Becky getting sick, and now the goddamn dreams, and what you had was October 29 whipped into one, thick, depressing shit pie.
    Red clay widened a bit, rolled into a circle drive. A long, low, ranch-style cabin projected out of the pines. The lake lay not far behind it.
    Cabin, hell. It looked like the Ritz to Montgomery, logs or not. It was easily three to four times the size of their apartment.
    Montgomery wheeled the Rabbit around the drive and stopped with the lights resting on the cabin. He looked back at Becky, reached out and touched