boyish spirit of adventure, and that he would smiling and bright-eyed.
Instead he was somber. His teeth must have been clenched for his jaw
muscles bulged. He had told her what they learned at Dyson Manfred's
house, and she had been as astonished and shaken as he and Clint. But
that didn't seem to explain his mood. Maybe he was still unnerved by
the memory of bugs in the entomologist's study. Or maybe he continued
to be troubled by that dream he'd had last week: the bad Thing is
coming, the bad thing...
She had dismissed his dream as unimportant. Now she wondered if it had
been genuinely prophetic. After all the mess that Frank had brought
into their lives, she was willing to give credence to such things as
omens, visions, prescient dreams.
The bad thing is coming, the bad thing...
Maybe the bad thing was Mr. Blue.
Jackie regressed Frank to the alleyway, to the very morning when he had
first awakened in a strange place, disoriented confused.
"Now go back further, Frank, just a little further back just a few more
seconds, and a few more, back, back, beyond the total darkness in your
mind, beyond that black in your mind...." Since the questioning had
begun, Frank had appeared to dwindle in Julie's desk chair, as if made
of wax and subjected to a flame. He had grown paler, too, if that was
possible, as white as candle paraffin. But now, as he was forced
backward through the darkness in his mind, toward the light of memory on
the other side, he sat up straighter, put his hands on the arms of the
chair and clutched the vinyl almost tightly enough to cause the
upholstery to split. He seemed to be growing, returning to his former
size, as if he had drunk one of the magic elixirs that Alice had
consumed in her adventures at the far end of the rabbit hole.
"Where are you now?" Jackie asked.
Frank's eyes twitched beneath his closed lids. An inarticulate,
strangled sound issued from him.
"Uh... uh...
"Where are you now?" Jackie insisted gently but firmly.
"Fireflies," Frank said shakily.
"Fireflies in a windstorm!" He began to breathe rapidly, raggedly, as
if he were having trouble drawing air into his lungs.
"What do you mean by that, Frank?"
"Fireflies.
"Where are you, Frank?"
"Everywhere. Nowhere."
"We don't have fireflies in southern California, Frank, so you must be
somewhere else. Think, Frank. Look around yourself now and tell me
where you are."
"Nowhere." Jackie made a few more attempts to get Frank to describe his
surroundings and be more specific as to the nature of the fireflies, all
to no avail.
"Move him on from there," Bobby said.
"Farther back." Julie glanced at the recorder in Clint's hand and saw
the spools turning behind the plastic window in the tapedeck.
With his melodic and vibrant voice, in seductively rhythmic cadences,
Jackie ordered Frank to regress past the firefly speckled darkness.
Suddenly Frank said,
"What am I doing here?" He was not referring to the offices of Dakota &
Dakota, but to the place that Jackie Jaxx had drawn him to in his
memory.
"Why here?"
"Where are you, Frank?"
"The house. What in the hell am I doing here, why did I come here? This
is crazy, I shouldn't be here."
"Whose house is it, Frank?" Bobby asked.
Because he had been instructed to hear only the hypnotists voice, Frank
did not respond until Jackie repeated the question. Then:
"Her house. It's her house. She's dead, of course, been dead seven
years, but it's still her house, always will, the bitch will haunt the
place, you can't destroy that kind of evil, not entirely, part of it
lingers in the rooms where she lived, in everything she touched."
"Who was she, Frank?",Mother." -Your mother? What was her name?"
"Roselle. Roselle Pollard."
"This is the house on Pacific Hill Road?"
"Yeah. Look at it, my God, what a place, what a dark place what a bad
place. Can't people see what a bad place it is? can't they see that
something terrible lives in there?"
He was crying. Tears glimmered in his eyes, then streamed down his
cheeks. Anguish twisted his voice.
"Can't they see what's in their what lives there, what hides there and
breeds in that bad place? Are people blind? Or do they just not want
to see?"
Julie was riveted by Frank's tortured voice and by the agony that had
wrenched his face into an approximation of the pain countenance of a
lost and frightened child. But she turned away from him and peered past
the hypnotist to see if Bobby had reacted to the words
"bad place." He was looking at her. The expression of distress that
darkened his blue eyes was proof enough that the reference had not
escaped him.
At the other end of the room, carrying a sheaf of printout Lee Chen
entered from the reception lounge. He closed the door quietly. Julie
put a finger to her lips, then motioned him to the sofa.
Jackie spoke soothingly to Frank, trying to allay the fear that had
electrified him.
Suddenly Frank let out a sharp cry of fear. He sounded more like a
frightened animal than like a man. He sat up even straighter. He was
trembling. He opened his eyes, but obviously did not see anything in
the room; he was still in a trance
"Oh, my God, he's coming, he's coming now, the twins must've told him
I'm here, he's coming!"
Frank's unalloyed terror was so pure and intense that some of it was
communicated to Julie. Her heartbeat speeded up, and she began to
breathe more rapidly, shallowly.
Trying to keep his subject relaxed enough to be cooperative, Jackie
said,
"Calm down, Frank. Relax and be calm. Nobody can hurt you. Nothing
unpleasant will happen. Be calm, relaxed, calm.
Frank shook his head.
"No. No, he's coming, he's coming, he's going to get me this time.
Dammit, why did I come back here? Why did I come back and give him a
chance at me?"
"Relax now-"
"He's there!" Frank tried to rise to his feet, seemed unable to find
the strength, and dug his fingers even deeper into the vinyl padding on
the arms of the chair.
"He's right there, and he sees me, he sees me."
Bobby said, "Who is he, Frank?"
and Jackie repeated the question.
"Candy. It's Candy!"
When he was asked again for the name of this person he feared, he
repeated:
"Candy."
"His name is Candy?"
"He sees me!"
In a more forceful and commanding voice than before, Jackie said,
"You will relax, Frank. You will be calm and relaxed." But Frank only
grew more agitated. He had broken into a sweat. Fixed on something in
a far place and time, his eyes were wild. His terror seemed to be
sweeping him into a heartbursting panic.
"I don't have much control of him," Jackie said worriedly.
"I'm going to have to bring him out of it."
Bobby slid forward t
o the edge of his chair.
"No, not yet' In a minute but not yet. Ask him about this Candy. Who
is the guy?"
Jackie repeated the question.
Frank said, "He's death."
Frowning, Jackie said, "That's not a clear answer, Frank."
"He's death walking, he's death living, he's my brother, her child, her
favorite child, her spawn, and I hate him, he wants to kill me, here he
comes!" With a wretched bleat of terror, Frank started to push up from
the chair.
Jackie ordered him to stay where he was.
Frank sat down reluctantly, but his terror only grew, cause he could
still see Candy coming toward him.
Jackie tried to bring him out of that place in the past, toward the
present, and out of his trance, but to no avail.
"Got to get away now, now, now, " Frank said desperately.
Julie was frightened for him. She'd never seen anyone more pathetic or
vulnerable. He was drenched in sweat, shivering violently. His hair
had fallen over his forehead, into his eyes, but it did not interfere
with the vision of terror that had been called up from his past. He
clutched the arms of the chair so fiercely that a fingernail on his
right hand finally punctured the vinyl upholstery.
"I've got to get out of here," Frank repeated urgently.
Jackie told him to stay put.
"No, I've got to get away from him!"
To Bobby, Jackie Jaxx said, "This has never happened to me, I've lost
control of him. Jesus, look at him, I'm afraid the guy's going to have
a heart attack."
"Come on, Jackie, you've got to help him," Bobby said sharply. He got
off his chair, squatted beside Frank, putt his hand on Frank's in a
gesture of comfort and reassurance.
"Bobby, don't," Clint said, standing up so fast that he dropped the tape
recorder he'd been balancing on his thigh.
Bobby didn't respond to Clint, for he was too focused on Frank, who
seemed to be shaking himself to pieces in front of them. The guy was
like a boiler with a jammed release valve filled to the bursting point
not with steam pressure but manic terror. Bobby was trying to calm him,
where Jackie failed.
For an instant Julie didn't understand what had made Clint shoot to his
feet, But she realized that Bobby had seen some thing the rest of them
had missed: fresh blood on Frank's right hand. Bobby hadn't put his
hand over Frank's merely to comfort; he was trying, as gently as
possible, to loosen Frank's grip on the arm of the chair, because Frank
had torn open the vinyl and cut himself, perhaps repeatedly, on an
exposed tack or upholstery tack.
"He's coming, got to get away!"
Frank let go of the chair and grabbed Bobby's hand, and got to his feet,
pulling Bobby with him.
Suddenly Julie understood what Clint feared, and she stood up so fast
that she knocked her chair over.
"Bobby, no!"
Thrown into a panic by the vision of his murderous brother, Frank
screamed. With a hiss like steam escaping from a locomotive engine, he
vanished. And took Bobby with him.
FIREFLIES IN a windstorm.
Bobby seemed to be floating in space, for he had no sense of his body's
position, couldn't tell if he was lying or sitting or standing, right
side up or upside down, as if weightless in an immense void. He had no
sense of smell or taste. He could hear nothing. He could feel neither
heat nor cold nor texture nor weight. The only thing he could see was
limitless blackness that seemed to stretch to the ends of the
universe-and millions upon millions of tiny fireflies, ephemeral as
sparks, that swarmed around him. Actually, he was not sure he saw them
at all, because he was not aware of having eyes with which to look at
them; it was more as if he was... aware of them, through any of the
usual senses but through some inner sight of the mind's eye.
At first he panicked. The extreme sensory deprivation convinced him
that he was paralyzed, without feeling an inch of skin, felled by a
massive cerebral hemorrhage, and blinded and trapped forever in a
damaged brain that had severed all its connections to the outside world.
Then he became aware that he was in motion, not drifting in the
blackness as he had first thought, but speeding through it, rocketing at
a tremendous, frightening speed. He became aware of being drawn forward
as if he were a bit of lint flying toward some vacuum cleaner of cosmic
power, and all around him the fireflies swirled and tumbled. It was
like being on amusement park ride so huge and fast that only God could
have designed it for His own pleasure, though there was Pleasure
whatsoever in it for Bobby as he roller-coaster through the pitch
blackness, trying to scream.
He hit the forest floor on his feet, swayed, and almost slammed against
Frank, in front of whom he was standing. Frank still had a painfully
tight grip on his hand.
Bobby was desperate for air. His chest ached; his lungs seemed to have
shriveled up. He sucked in a deep breath, another, exhaling
explosively.
He saw the blood, which was on both of their hands now. An image of
torn upholstery flashed through his mind. Jackie Jaxx. Bobby
remembered.
When Bobby tried to pull loose of his client, Frank held him fast and
said,
"Not here. No, I can't risk this. Too dangerous. Why am I here?"
Steeped in the scent of pines, Bobby surveyed the surrounding primeval
forest, which was thick with shadows as dusk introduced night to the
world. The air was frigid, and the bristling boughs of the giant
evergreens drooped under a weight of snow, but he saw nothing
frightening in that scene.
Then he realized that Frank was staring past him. He turned to discover
they were on the edge of the forest. A snow-covered meadow sloped up
gently behind them. At the top was a log cabin, not a rustic shack but
an elaborate structure that clearly showed the input of an architect, a
vacation retreat for someone with plenty of disposable income. A mantle
of snow was draped over the main roof, another over the porch roof, each
decorated with a fringe of icicles that glittered in the last beams of
cold sunlight. No lights glowed at the windows. No smoke curled up
from any of the three chimneys. The place appeared to be deserted.
"He knows about this," Frank said, still panicked.
"I bought it under another name, but he found out about it, and he came
here, almost killed me here, and he's probably keeping tabs on it,
checking in regularly, hoping to catch me again." Bobby was numbed less
by the subzero cold than by the realization that he had teleported out
of their office and onto this slope in the Sierras or some other
mountains. He finally found his voice and said,
"Frank, what-" Darkness.
Fireflies.
Velocity.
He hit the floor rolling, slammed into a coffee table, and felt Frank
let go of his hand. The table crashed over, spilling a vase and other
decorative-and breakable-items onto a hard floor.
He'd sustained a solid
knock to the head. When he pushed himself onto
his knees and tried to stand, he was too dizzy to get up. Frank was
already on his feet, looking around, breathing hard.
"San Diego. This was my apartment once. He found out about it. Had to
get out fast." When Frank reached down to help Bobby get up, Bobby
unthinkingly accepted his hand, the uninjured one.
"Someone else lives here now," Frank said.
"Must be working, we're lucky." Darkness.
Fireflies.
Velocity.
Bobby found himself standing at a rusted iron gate between two stone
pilasters, looking at a Victorian-style house wit sagging porch roof,
broken balusters, and swaybacked steps. The sidewalk was cracked and
canted, and weeds flourished in an unmown lawn. In the gloaming it
looked like every kids conception of a seriously haunted house, and he
suspected it would look even worse in broad daylight.
Frank gasped.
"Jesus, no, not here!" Darkness.
Fireflies.
Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place Page 33
