Mr. Murder

Stillwaters, so like him on the outside, so dark and cold on the inside. Now ahead of him as well, reaching out from the mirrors past which he runs and into which he blunders, grasping at him, all of them speaking in a single voice, I need my life.
        The mirrors shattered as one, and he woke.
        Lamplight.
        Shadowy ceiling.
        Lying in bed.
        Cold and hot, shivering and sweating.
        He tried to sit up. Couldn't.
        "Honey?"
        Barely enough strength to turn his head.
        Paige. In a chair. Beside the bed.
        Another bed beyond her. Shapes under blankets. The girls.
        Sleeping.
        Drapes over the windows. Night at the edges of the drapes. She smiled.
        "You with me, baby?"
        He tried to lick his lips. They were cracked. His tongue was dry, furry.
        She took a can of apple juice from a plastic ice bucket in which it was chilling, lifted his head off the pillow, and guided the straw between his lips.
        After drinking, he managed to say, "Where?"
        "A motel in Bishop."
        "Far enough?"
        "For now, it has to be," she said.
        "Him?"
        "Clocker? He'll be back."
        He was dying of thirst. She gave him more juice.
        "Worried," he whispered.
        "Don't. Don't worry. It's okay now."
        "Him."
        "Clocker?" she asked.
        He nodded.
        "We can trust him," she said.
        He hoped she was right.
        Even drinking exhausted him. He lowered his head onto the pillow again.
        Her face was like that of an angel. It faded away.
        Escaping from the hall of mirrors into a long black tunnel. Light at the far end, hurrying toward it, footsteps behind, a legion in pursuit of him, gaining on him, the men from out of the mirrors. The light is his salvation, an exit from the funhouse. He bursts out of the tunnel, into the brightness, which turns out to be the field of snow in front of the abandoned church, where he runs toward the front doors with Paige and the girls, The Other behind them, and a shot explodes, a lance of ice pierces his shoulder, the ice turns to fire, fire The pain was unbearable.
        His vision was blurred with tears. He blinked, desperate to know where he was.
        The same bed, the same room.
        The blankets had been pulled aside.
        He was naked to the waist. The bandage was gone.
        Another explosion of pain in his shoulder wrung a scream from him. But he was not strong enough to scream, and the cry issued as a soft,
        "Ahhhhhh."
        He blinked away more tears.
        The drapes were still closed over the windows. Daylight had replaced darkness at the edges.
        Clocker loomed over him. Doing something to his shoulder.
        At first, because the pain was excruciating, he thought Clocker was trying to kill him. Then he saw Paige with Clocker and knew that she would not let anything bad happen.
        She tried to explain something to him, but he only caught a word here and there, "sulfur powder… antibiotic… penicillin…"
        They bandaged his shoulder again.
        Clocker gave him an injection in his good arm. He watched. With all of his other pains, he couldn't feel the prick of the needle.
        For a while he was in a hall of mirrors again.
        When he found himself in the motel bed once more, he turned his head and saw Charlotte and Emily sitting on the edge of the adjacent bed, watching over him. Emily was holding Peepers, the rock on which she had painted a pair of eyes, her pet.
        Both girls looked terribly solemn.
        He managed to smile at them.
        Charlotte got off the bed, came to him, kissed his sweaty face.
        Emily kissed him, too, and then she put Peepers in his good right hand.
        He managed to close his fingers around it.
        Later, drifting up from dreamless sleep, he heard Clocker and Paige talking, "… don't think it's safe to move him," Paige said.
        "You have to," Clocker said. "We're not far enough away from Mammoth Lakes, and there are only so many roads we could've taken."
        "You don't know anyone's looking for us."
        "You're right, I don't. But it's a safe bet. Sooner or later someone will be looking-and probably for the rest of our lives."
        He drifted out and in, out and in, and when he saw Clocker at the bedside again, he said, "Why?"
        "The eternal