Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place

by The Bad Place(Lit)

  later, leaving Thomas with just Julie.

  He didn't mean Hell. He knew about Heaven and Hell. Heaven was God's.

  The devil owned Hell. If there was a Heaven, he was sure his mom and

  dad went there. You wanted to go up to Heaven if you could. Things

  were better there. In Hell, the aides weren't nice.

  But, to Thomas, the Bad Place wasn't just Hell. it was Death. Hell was

  a bad place, but Death was the Bad Place. Death was a word you couldn't

  picture. Death meant everything stopped, went away, all your time ran

  out, over, done, kaput. How could you picture that? A thing wasn't

  real if you couldn't picture it. He couldn't see Death, couldn't get a

  picture of it in his head, not if he thought about it the way other

  people seemed to think about it. He was just too dumb, so he had to

  picture it in his head as a place. They said Death came to take you,

  and it had come to take his father one night, his heart had attacked

  him, but if it came to take you, then it had to take you to some place.

  And that was the Bad Place. It's where you were taken and never allowed

  to come back. Thomas didn't know what happened to a person there. Maybe

  nothing nasty. Except you weren't allowed to come back and see people

  you loved, which made it nasty enough, no matter if the food was good

  over there. Maybe some people went on to Heaven, some to Hell, but you

  couldn't come back from either one, so both were part of the Bad Place,

  just different rooms. And he wasn't sure Heaven and Hell were real,

  maybe all there was in the Bad Place was darkness and!" and so much

  empty space that when you went over there you couldn't even find the

  people who'd gone ahead of you.

  That scared him most of all. Not just losing Julie to the Place, but

  not being able to find her when he went over there himself.

  He was already afraid of the night. All that big empty place off the

  world. So if just the night itself was so scary, Bad Place would be

  lots worse. It was sure to be bigger to the night, and daylight never

  came in the Bad Place.

  Outside, the sky got darker.

  Wind blew the palms.

  Rain ran down the glass.

  The Bad Thing was far away.

  But it would come closer. Soon.

  CANDY WAs having one of those days when he could not accept that his

  mother was dead. Every time he crossed a threshold or turned a corner,

  he expected to see her. He thought he heard her rocking in the parlor,

  humming softly to herself as she knitted a new afghan, but when he went

  in there to look, the rocking chair was filmed with dust and draped with

  a shawl of cobwebs. Once, he hurried into the kitchen, expecting to

  find her in a brightly flowered house dress overlaid with a

  ruffle-trimmed white apron, dropping neat spoonsful of cookie batter on

  baking sheets or perhaps mixing a cake, but, of course, she was not

  there. In a moment of acute emotional turmoil, Candy raced upstairs,

  certain that he would find his mother in bed, but when he burst into her

  room, he remembered that it was his room now, and that she was gone.

  Eventually, to jar himself out of that strange and troubling mood, he

  went into the backyard and stood by her lonely grave in the northeast

  corner of the large property. He had buried her there, seven years ago,

  under a solemn winter sky similar to the one that currently hid the sun,

  with a hawk circling above just as one circled now. He had dug her

  grave, wrapped her in sheets scented with Channel No. 5, and lowered her

  into the ground secretly, because interment on private property, was not

  designated as a grave site, was against the law. If he had allowed her

  to be buried elsewhere, he would have had to go live there with her, for

  he could not have endured being separated from her mortal remains for

  any great length of time.

  Candy dropped to his knees.

  Over the years the original mound of earth had settled, until her grave

  was marked by a shallow concavity. The grass was sparser there, the

  blades coarse, wiry, different from the rest of the lawn, though he did

  not know why; even in the months following her burial, the grass above

  her had not flourished No headstone memorialized her passing; although

  the back yard was sheltered by the high hedge, he could not risk

  calling] attention to her illegal resting place.

  Staring at the ground before him, Candy wondered if a stone would help

  him accept her death. If every day he could see her name and the date

  of her death deeply cut into a sliver of marble, that sight should

  slowly but permanently engrave his loss upon his heart, sparing him days

  like this, when he was disturbed by a queer forgetfulness and by a hope

  that could never be fulfilled.

  He stretched out on the grave, his head turned to one side with an ear

  against the earth, as if he half expected to hear her speaking to him

  from her subterranean bed. Pressing his back hard into the unyielding

  ground, he longed to feel the vitality that she had once radiated, the

  singular energy that had flowed from her like heat from the open door of

  a furnace, but he was nothing. Though his mother had been a special

  woman, Candy knew it was absurd to expect her corpse, after seven years

  radiate even a ghost of the love that she had lavished upon when she was

  alive; nevertheless, he was grievously disappointed when not even the

  faintest aura shimmered up through the dirt from her sacred bones.

  Hot tears burned in his eyes, and he tried to hold them back But a faint

  rumble of thunder passed through the sky, an few fat droplets of rain

  began to fall, and neither the storm his tears could be restrained.

  She lay only five or six feet beneath him, and he was overcome by an

  urge to claw his way down to her. He knew flesh would have

  deteriorated, that he would find only bow cradled in a vile muck of

  unthinkable origin, but he was to hold her and be held, even if he had

  to arrange her skeleton arms around himself in a staged embrace. He

  actually rip at the grass and tore up a few handsful of topsoil. Soon,

  however, he was wracked by powerful sobs that swiftly exhausted him and

  left him too weak to struggle with reality any way She was dead.

  Gone.

  Forever.

  As the cold rain fell in greater volume, pounding on Candy's back, it

  seemed to leech his hot grief from him and fill him instead, with icy

  hatred. Frank had killed their mother; he must pay for that crime with

  his own life. Lying on a muddy grave and weeping like a child would not

  bring Candy one step closer to vengeance. Finally he got up and stood

  with his hands fisted at his sides, letting the storm sluice some of the

  mud and grief from him.

  He promised his mother that he would be more relentless and diligent in

  his pursuit of her killer. The next time he got a lead on Frank, he

  would not lose him.

  Looking up at the cloud-choked and streaming sky, addressing his mother

  in Heaven, he said,

  "I'll find Frankie, kill him, crush him, I will. I'll smash his skull

  open and cut his hateful brain into pieces and flush it do
wn a toilet."

  The rain seemed to penetrate him, driving a chill deep into his marrow,

  and he shuddered.

  "If I find anyone who lifted a hand to help him, I'll cut their hands

  off. I'll tear out the eyes of anyone who looked at Frankie with

  sympathy. I swear I will. And I'll cut out the tongues of any bastards

  who spoke kind words to him." Suddenly the rain fell with greater force

  than before, hammering the grass flat, crackling through the leaves of a

  nearby oak, stirring a chorus of whispers from the Eugenias. It snapped

  against his face, making him squint, but he did not lower his eyes from

  Heaven.

  "If he's found anyone to care about, anyone at all, I'll take them away

  from him like he took you from me. I'll break them open, get the blood

  out of them, and throw them away like garbage." He had made these same

  promises many times during the past seven years, but he made them now

  with no less passion than he had before.

  "Like garbage," he repeated through clenched teeth.

  His need for vengeance was no less fierce now than it had been on the

  day of her murder seven years ago. His hatred of Frank was, if

  anything, harder and sharper than ever.

  "Like garbage.

  " An ax of lightning cleaved the conclusive sky. Briefly a long, jagged

  laceration gaped open in the dark clouds, which for a moment seemed to

  him not like clouds at all but like the infinitely strange and throbbing

  body of some godlike being, and through the lightning-rent flesh he

  thought he glimpsed the shining mystery beyond.

  Clint DREADED the rainy season in southern California. Most of the year

  was dry, and in the on-again-off-again drought of the past decade, some

  winters were marked by a few storms. When rain finally fell, the

  natives seemed to have forgotten how to drive in it. As gutters

  overflowed, the street clogged with traffic. The freeways were worse;

  they looked like infinitely long car washes in which the conveyors had

  broken down.

  While the gray light slowly faded out of that Monday afternoon, he drove

  first to Palomar Laboratories in Costa Mesa. It was a large,

  single-story concrete-block building one block west of Bristol Avenue.

  Their medical-lab division an any blood samples, Pap smears, and

  biopsies, among other things but they also performed industrial- and

  geological-samples analyses of all kinds.

  He parked his Chevy in the adjoining lot. Carrying a plastic bag from

  Von's supermarket, he sloshed through the deep ditches, head bent

  against the driving rain, and went into the small reception lounge,

  dripping copiously.

  An attractive young blonde sat on a stool behind the counter at the

  reception window. She was wearing a white uniform and a purple

  cardigan. She said, "You should have an umbrella."

  Clint nodded, put the supermarket bag on the counter, and began to untie

  the knot in the straps, to open it.

  "At least a raincoat," she said.

  From an inside jacket pocket, he withdrew a Dakota & & Dakota & card,

  passed it to her.

  "Is this who you want billed?" she asked.

  "Yeah."

  "Have you used our service before?"

  "Yeah."

  "You have an account?"

  "Yeah."

  "I haven't seen you in here before."

  "No."

  "My name's Lisa. I've only been here about a week. Never had a private

  eye come in before, least since I've started."

  From the large white sack he withdrew three smaller, clear, Ziploc bags

  and lined them up side by side.

  "You got a name?" she asked, cocking her head, smiling at him.

  "Clint."

  "You go around without an umbrella or raincoat in this weather, Clint,

  you'll catch your death, even as sturdy as you look."

  "First, the shirt," Clint said, pushing that bag forward.

  "We want the bloodstains analyzed. Not just typed. We want the whole

  nine yards. A complete genetic workup too. Take samples from four

  different parts of the shirt, because there might be more than one

  person's blood on it. If so, do a workup on both."

  Lisa frowned at Clint, then at the shirt in the bag. She began filling

  out an analysis order.

  "Same program on this one," he said, pushing forward the second bag. It

  contained a folded sheet of Dakota & Dakota stationery that was mottled

  with several spots of blood. Back at the office, Julie had sterilized a

  pin in a match flame, stuck Frank Pollard's thumb, and squeezed the

  crimson samples onto the paper.

  "We want to know if any of the blood on the shirt matches what's on this

  stationery."

  The third bag contained the black sand.

  "Is this a biological substance?" Lisa asked.

  "I don't know. Looks like sand."

  "Because if it's a biological substance, it should go to our medical

  division, but if it's not biological it should go to the industrial

  lab."

  "Send a little to both. And put a rush on it."

  "Costs more."

  "Whatever."

  As she filled out the third form, she said, "There's a few beaches "in

  Hawaii with black sand, you ever been there?"

  .'No.

  "Kaimu. That's the name of one of the black beaches. Comes from a

  volcano, somehow. The sand, I mean."

  "You like beaches?"

  "Yeah." She looked up, her pen poised over the form, and gave a big

  smile. Her lips were full. Her teeth were very white. "love the

  beach. Nothing I like better than putting on a bathing suit and soaking

  up some sun, really just baking in the sun, I don't care what they say

  about a tan being bad for you. I'm short anyway, you know? Might as

  well look good while we're here. Besides, being in the sun makes me

  feel... oh, not exactly, because I don't mean it saps my energy, just

  that it makes me feel full of energy, but a lazy energy, so the way a

  lioness walks-you know?-strong-looking but The sun makes me feel like a

  lioness."

  He said nothing.

  She said, "It's erotic, the sun. I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

  You lay out in the sun enough, on a nice beach, all your inhibitions

  sort of melt away." He just stared at her.

  After she finished filling out the analysis orders, gave him copies, and

  attached each order to the correct sample, said, "Listen, Clint, we're

  living in a modern world, figuring He didn't know what she meant.

  She said, "We're all liberated these days, am I right? a girl finds a

  guy attractive, she doesn't have to wait for to make the move."

  Oh, Clint thought.

  Leaning back on her stool, maybe to let him see how her full breasts

  filled out her white uniform blouse, she smiled said, "Would you be

  interested in a dinner, movie?"

  "No."

  Her smile froze.

  "Sorry," he said.

  He folded the copies of the work orders and put them in his jacket

  pocket from which earlier he had withdrawn a business card.

  She was glaring at him, and he realized he'd hurt her feelings.

  Searching for something to say, all he could come up with was, "I'm

  gay."


  She blinked and shook her head as if recovering from a stunning blow.

  Like sun piercing clouds, her smile broke through the gloom on her face.

  "Had to be to resist this package, I guess."

  "Sorry."

  "Hey, it's not your fault. We are what we are, huh?"

  He went into the rain again. It was getting colder. The sky looked

  like the ruins of a burned-out building to which the fire department had

  arrived too late:

  wet ashes, dripping cinders.

  AS NIGHT fell on that rainy Monday, Bobby Dakota stood at the hospital

  window and said, "Not much of a view, Frank. Unless you're keen on

  parking lots."

  He turned and surveyed the small, white room. Hospitals always gave him

  the creeps, but he did not express his true feeling to Frank.

  "The decor sure won't be featured in Architectural Digest anytime soon,

  but it's comfy enough. You've got TV, nurses, and three meals a day in

  bed. I noticed that some of the nurses are real lookers, too, but

  please try to keep your hands off the nuns, okay?"

  Frank was paler than ever. The dark circles around his eyes had grown

  like spreading inkblots. He not only looked like he belonged in a

  hospital but as if he had been there already. He used the power