Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place
Page 38
than he remembered. Her eyes were brighter than memory allowed, and
more beautiful.
Though by nature he was not much of a toucher, Clint put a hand on
Bobby's shoulder.
"God, it's good to see you, good to have you back." There was even a
catch in his voice.
"Had us worried there for a while." Lee Chen handed him a glass of
Scotch on the rocks.
"Don't do that again, okay?"
"Don't plan to," Bobby said.
No longer the smooth and self-assured performer, Jackie Jaxx had had
enough for one night.
"Listen, Bobby, I'm sure that whatever you have to tell us is
fascinating, and you're bound to come back with a lot of wonderful
anecdotes, wherever you went, but I for one don't want to hear about
it."
"wonderful anecdotes?" Bobby said.
Jackie shook his head.
"Don't want to hear ''em. Sorry.
my fault, not yours. I like show biz 'cause it's a narrow you know? A
thing little slice of the real world, but exciting 'cause it's all
bright colors and loud music. You don't have to think in show biz, you
can just be. I just want to be, you know Perform, hang out, have fun. I
got opinions, sure, colorful loud opinions about everything, showbiz
opinions, but I don't know a damn thing, and I don't want to know a damn
thing. I sure as hell don't want to know about what happened here
tonight, 'cause it's the kind of thing that turns your upside down,
makes you curious, makes you think, and pretty soon you're no longer
happy with all the things that made you happy before." He raised both
hands, as if to stall an argument, and said,
"I'm outta here," and a moment later he was.
At first, as he told the others what had happened to them, Bobby walked
slowly around the room, marveling at ordinary items, finding wonder in
the mundane, relishing the solace of things. He put his hand on Julie's
desk, and it seemed to him that nothing in the world was more wondrous
than the Formica-all those molecules of man-made chemicals lined up in
perfect, stable order. The framed prints of Disney characters, the
inexpensive furniture, the half-empty bottle of Scotch, the flourishing
pathos plant on a stand by the windows-all of those things were suddenly
precious to him He had been traveling only thirty-nine minutes. He took
almost as long to tell them a condensed version. He had popped out of
the office at 4:47 and returned at 5:26, but he'd had enough
traveling-via teleportation or otherwise-to last him the rest of his
life.
On the sofa, with Julie and Clint and Lee gathered around Bobby said,
"I want to stay right here in California. I do need to see Paris. Don't
need London. Not any more. I want to stay where I have my favorite
chair, sleep every night in a bed that's familiar-"
"Damn right you will," Julie interjected.
-drive my little yellow Samurai, open a medicine cab where the Anacin
and toothpaste and mouthwash and sty pencil and Bactine and Band-Aids
are exactly where they ought to be.
By 6:15 Frank had not reappeared. During Bobby's account of his
adventures, no one mentioned Frank's second disappearance or wondered
aloud when he would return. But all of them kept glancing at the chair
from which he had vanished initially and at the corner of the room from
which he had dematerialized the second time.
"How long do we wait here for him?" Julie finally asked.
"I don't know," Bobby said.
"But I have a feeling... a real bad feeling... that maybe Frank's not
going to regain control of himself this time, that he's just going to
keep popping from one place to another, faster and faster, until sooner
or later he's unable to put himself back together again."
WHEN HE came straight from Japan into the kitchen of his mother's house,
Candy was seething with anger and when he saw the cats on the table,
where he ate his meals his anger grew into a full-blown rage. Violet
was sitting in a chair at the table; her ever-silent sister was in
another chair beside her, hanging on her. Cats lay under their chairs
all around their feet, and five of the biggest were on the table, eating
bits of ham that Violet fed them.
"What're you doing?" he demanded.
Without a word Violet did not acknowledge him with a glance. Her gaze
was locked with that of a dark gray mong that was sitting as erect as a
statue of an Egyptian temple priestess patiently nibbling at a few small
bits of meat offered on a pale palm.
"I'm talking to you," he said sharply, but she did not respond.
He was sick of her silences, weary to death of her infinite strangeness.
If not for the promise that he had made to mother, he would have torn
Violet open right there and fed on her. Too many years had passed since
he had tasted the ambrosia in his sainted mother's veins, and he had
often thought that the blood in Violet and Verbina was, in a way, the
same blood that had flowed in Roselle. He wondered-and some times
dreamed-of how his sisters' blood might feel upon his tongue, how it
might taste.
Looming over her, staring down as she continued to commune with the gray
cat, he said,
"This is where I eat, damn you!" Violet still said nothing, and Candy
struck her hand, knocking the remaining bits of ham helter-skelter. He
swept the plate of ham off the table, as well, and took tremendous
satisfaction in the sound of it shattering on the floor.
The five cats on the table were not the least startled by his fury, and
the greater number on the floor remained unfazed by the ping and clatter
of china fragments.
At last Violet turned her head, tilted it back, and looked up at Candy.
Simultaneously with their mistress, the cats on the table turned their
heads to look haughtily at him, too, as if they wished him to understand
what a singular honor they were bestowing upon him simply by granting
him their attention.
That same attitude was apparent in the disdain in Violet's eyes and in
the faint smirk that curled the edges of her ripe mouth. More than once
he had found her direct gaze withering, and he had turned away from her,
rattled and confused. Certain that he was her superior in every way, he
was perplexed by her unfailing ability to defeat him or force him into a
hasty retreat with just a look.
But this time would be different. He had never been as furious as he
was at that moment, not even seven years ago when he had found his
mother's bloody, sundered body and had learned the ax had been wielded
by Frank. He was angrier now because that old rage had never subsided;
it had fed on itself all these years, and on the humiliation of
repeatedly failing to get his hands on Frank when the opportunities to
do so arose. Now it was a midnight-black bile that coursed in his veins
and bathed the muscles of his heart and nourished the cells of his brain
where visions of vengeance were spawned in profusion.
Refusing to be cowed by her stare, he seized her thin arm and jerked her
violently to her feet.
Verbina made a soft, woeful sound upon her separation from her sister,
as if they were Siamese twins, for God's sake, as if tissue had been
torn, bones split.
Shoving his face close to Violet's, he sprayed her with spittle as he
spoke:
"Our mother had one cat, just one, she liked things clean and neat, she
wouldn't approve of this mess, this stinking brood of yours."
"Who cares," Violet said in a tone of voice that was at once
disinterested and mocking.
"She's dead." Grabbing her by both arms, he lifted her off her feet.
The chair behind her fell over as he swung her away from it. He slammed
her up against the pantry door so hard that the sound was like an
explosion, rattling the loose kitchen windows and some dirty silverware
on a nearby Counter. He had the satisfaction of seeing her face contort
with pain and her eyes roll back in her head as she nearly passed out
from the blow. If he had smashed her against the door any harder, her
spine might have cracked. He dug his fingers cruelly into the pale
flesh of her upper arms, pulled her away from the door, and slammed her
into it again, though not as hard as before, just making the point that
it might have been as hard, that it could be as hard the next time if
she displeased him.
Her head had fallen forward, for she was teetering on the edge of
consciousness. Effortlessly, he held her against the door, with her
feet eight inches off the floor, as if she weigh nothing at all, thereby
forcing her to consider his incredible strength. He waited for her to
come around.
She was having difficulty getting her breath, and when at last she
stopped gasping and raised her head to face him, he expected to see a
different Violet. He had never struck her before. A fateful line had
been crossed, one over which he never expected to trespass. With his
promise to his mother in which he had kept his sisters safe from the
often dangerous world out side, provided them with food, kept them warm
in cold weather and cool in the heat, dry when it rained, but year by
year he had performed his brotherly duties with growing frustration,
appalled by their increasingly shameless and mysterious behavior. Now
he realized that disciplining them was a natural part of protecting
them; up in Heaven, his mother had probably despaired over his never
realizing the need for discipline. Thanks to his rage, he had stumbled
upon enlightenment.
It felt good to hurt Violet a little, just enough to bring her to her
senses and to prevent her from spiraling fur-their into the dense and
animal sensuality to which she had surrendered herself. He knew he was
right to punish her. He waited eagerly for her to lift her head and
face him, for he knew that they had entered a new relationship and that
the awareness of the profound changes would be evident in her eyes.
At last, breathing somewhat normally, she raised her head and met
Candy's gaze. To his surprise, none of his own enlightenment had been
visited upon his sister. Her white-blond hair had fallen across her
face, and she stared through it, like a jungle animal peering through
its wind-tossed mane. In her icy blue eyes, he perceived something
stranger and more primitive than anything he had seen there before. A
gleeful wildness. Indefinable hungers. Need. Though she had been hurt
when he had thrown her against the pantry door, a smile played on her
full lips again. She opened her mouth, and he felt her hot breath
against his face as she said,
"You're strong. Even the cats like the feel of your strong hands on me
... and so does Verbina." He became aware of her long bare legs. The
flimsiness of her panties. The way her red T-shirt had pulled up to
expose her flat belly. The swell of her full breasts, which seemed even
fuller than they were because of the leanness of the rest of her. The
sharp outlines of her nipples against the material of the shirt. The
smoothness of her skin. Her smell.
Revulsion burst through him like pus from a secret inner abscess, and he
let go of her. Turning, he saw that the cats were looking at him.
Worse, they were still lying where they had been when he had pulled
Violet from her chair, as if they had not been frightened by his outrage
even briefly. He knew their equanimity meant that Violet had not been
frightened, either, and that her erotic response to his fury-and her
mocking smile-was not in the least feigned.
Verbina was slumped in her chair, her head bowed, for she was no more
able to look at him directly now than she had ever been. But she was
grinning, and her left hand was between her legs, her long fingers
tracing lazy circles on the thing material of her panties, under which
lay the dark cleft of her sex. He needed no more proof that some of
Violet's sick desire had communicated itself to Verbina, and he turned
away from her too.
He tried to leave the room quickly, but without looking as if he was
fleeing from them.
In his scented bedroom, safely among his mother's belongings, Candy
locked the door. He was not sure why he felt safer with the lock
engaged, though he was certain it was not because he feared his sisters.
There was nothing about them to fear. They were to be pitied.
For a while he sat in Roselle's rocker, remembering the times, as a
child, when he'd curled in her lap and contentedly sucked blood from a
self-inflicted wound in her thumb or in the meaty part of her palm.
Once, she had made a half-inch incision in one of her breasts and took
him to her bosom while he drank her blood from the same place where
other mothers gave, and other children received, milk of maternity.
He had been five years old that night when, in this very chair, he
tasted the blood of her breast. Frank, seven years old then, had been
asleep in the room at the end of the hall, and the twins, who'd only
recently reached their birthday, were asleep in a crib in the room
across from mother's. Being alone with her when all the others slept
how unique and treasured that made him feel, especially since she was
sharing with him the rich liquid of her arteries veins, which she never
offered to his siblings; it was a sacred communion, dispensed and
received, that remained their secret.
He recalled being in something of a swoon that night, merely because of
the heavy taste of her rich blood and unbounded love that was
represented by the gift of it, but cause of the metronomic rocking of
the chair and the lul rhythms of her voice. As he sucked, she smoothed
the hair away from his brow and spoke to him of God's intimacies for the
world. She explained, as she had done many times before, that God
condoned the use of violence when it was committed in the defense of
those who were good and righteous. She told him how God had created men
who thrived on blood so they might be used as the earthly instruments of
God's revengements on behalf of the righteous. Theirs was a righteous
love, she said, and God had sent Candy to them to be their Protector.
&nbs
p; None of this was new. But though his mother had spoken of these things
many times during their secret communions, Candy never grew tired of
hearing them again. Candy often relished in the retelling of a favorite
story. And as. certain particularly magical tales, this story somehow
did become more familiar with retelling but curiously more righteous and
appealing.
That night in his sixth year, however, the story took a turn. The time
had come, his mother said, for him to accept the truly amazing talents
he had been given, and embark on the mission for which God had created
him. He had begun to exhibit his phenomenal talents when he was three,
the age at which Frank's far more meager gifts had become evident. His
telekinetic abilities-primarily his talent for telekinetic
transportation of his own body-particularly enchanted Roselle, and she
quickly saw the potential. They would never want for money as long as
he could teleport at night into places where cash and valuables were
locked away: bank vaults; the jewelry-rich, walk-in safes in Beverly
Hills mansions. And if he could materialize within the homes of the
Pollard family's enemies, while they slept, vengeance could be taken
without fear of discovery or reprisal.
"There's a man named Salfont," his mother cooed to him as he took his
nourishment from her wounded breast.
"He's a lawyer, one of those jackals who prey on upstanding folks,
nothing good about him at all, not that one. He handled my father's
estate-that your dear grandpa, little Candy-probated the will, charged
too much, way too much, he was greedy. They're all greedy, those