Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place
Page 42
just a Pillow. No, like he was a garbage bag, threw him like the
Sanitation Men threw the garbage bags onto their Sanitation Truck. Derek
landed on his bed, on his back on bed, with the scissors still in him,
and didn't move and
gone to the Bad Place, you could tell. And the worst thing was it all
happened so fast, faster than Thomas could think what to do to stop it.
Footsteps in the hall, people running.
Thomas yelled for help. the doorway. Pete saw Pete, one of the aides,
showed up in Derek on the bed, scissors in him, blood coming out
everywhere, and he got afraid, you could see him get it. He turned to
the Bad Thing and said,
"Who-" The Bad Thing grabbed him by the neck, and Pete made a sound like
something was stuck in his throat. He put both his hands on the Bad
Thing's arm, which seemed bigger than Pete's two arms together, but he
couldn't make the Bad Thing let go. The Bad Thing lifted him by his
neck, making his chin turn up and his head bend back, and then took hold
of him by the belt, too, and pitched him back out the door, into the
hall. Pete hit a nurse who came running up just then, and they both
went down on the floor out there in the hall, all tangled up, her
screaming.
All of this in a few clock ticks. So fast.
The Bad Thing made the door shut with a bang, saw you couldn't lock it,
then did the funniest thing of all, funny-weird, funny-scary. He held
both his hands out at the door, and this blue light came from his hands
the way not-blue came from a flashlight. Sparks flew from hinges and
around the knob and all around the door edges. Everything metal smoked
and turned all soft, like butter when you put it on mashed potatoes. It
was a Fire Door. They said you had to keep your door closed if you ever
saw fire in the hall, not try to run in the hall, but keep your door
closed and stay put. They called it a Fire Door because fire couldn't
get through it, they said, and Thomas always wondered why they didn't
call it a Fire Can't Get Through It Door, but he never asked. The thing
was, a Fire Door was all metal, so it couldn't burn, but no* it melted
around the edges, and so did the metal frame, they melted together, it
didn't look like you could ever get through that door again.
People started pounding on the door from out there in the hall, tried to
make it open, couldn't, and shouted for Thomas and Derek. Thomas knew
some voices and who they belonged to, and he wanted to yell for them to
help quick because he was in trouble, but he couldn't make a sound any
better. Poor Derek.
The Bad Thing made the blue light stop. Then it turned looked at
Thomas. It smiled at him. It didn't have a nice smile it said,
"Thomas?"
Thomas was surprised he could stand up, he was so scared He was against
the wall by the window, and he thought maybe making the lock open on the
window and push it and get out, which he knew how to do because of
Emerge Drills. But he knew he wasn't fast enough, no way, because the
Bad Thing was the fastest he ever saw.
it took a step toward him, and another step.
"Are Thomas?" For a while he still couldn't find the way to make sound
He could just move his mouth and sort of pretend to make sounds. Then
while he was doing that, he figured maybe if told a lie and said he
wasn't Thomas, the Bad Thing won't believe him and just go away. So
when all of a sudden he could make sounds, and then words, he said,
"No. I... no...
Thomas. He's gone out in the world now, he's got a big cue, he's a
high-end moron, so they moved him out in world." The Bad Thing laughed.
It was a laugh that had no future in it, the worst Thomas ever heard.
The Bad Thing said,
" the hell are you, Thomas? Where do you come from? H come a dummy
like you can do something I can't?" Thomas didn't answer. He didn't
know what to say.
wished the people in the hall would stop pounding on the door and find
some other way to get in, because pounding was working. Maybe they
could call the cops and tell them to bring the Jaws of Life, yeah, the
Jaws of Life, like you saw them on the TV news when a person was in a
wrecked car couldn't get out. They could use the Jaws of Life to pull
the door the way they pulled at smashed-up cars to get people out of
them. He hoped the cops wouldn't say, we're sorry we can only open car
doors with the Jaws of Life, we can open Care Home doors, because then
he was finished for"You going to answer me, Thomas?" the Bad Thing ask
Derek's TV chair got turned around in the fight, and it was between
Thomas and the Bad Thing. The Bad Thing held one hand out at the chair,
just one, and the blue light whoosh! and the chair blew up in
splinters, like all the toothpicks in the world. Thomas threw his hands
over his face just fast enough so no splinters went in his eyes. Some
went in the backs of his hands and even in his cheeks and chin, and he
could feet some of them in his shirt, poking his belly, but he didn't
feel any hurt because he was so busy feeling scared.
He took his hands from his eyes right away, because he had to see where
the Bad Thing was. Where it was was right on top of him, with soft bits
of the chair insides floating in the air in front of its face.
"Thomas?" it said, and it put one of its big hands on the front of
Thomas's neck the way it did Pete a while ago.
Thomas heard words coming from himself, and he couldn't believe he was
making them, but he was. Then when he forgot what he said to the Bad
Thing, he couldn't believe he said it, but he did:
"You're not Being Sociable." The Bad Thing grabbed him by the belt and
kept hold of him by the neck and lifted him off the floor and pulled him
away from the wall, then slammed him into the wall, the same way it did
Derek, and, oh, it hurt worse than Thomas ever before hurt in his life.
THE INTERIOR garage door had a dead bolt but no security chain.
Pocketing his keys, Clint entered the kitchen at ten minutes past eight
and saw Felina sitting at the table, reading a magazine while she waited
for him.
She looked up and smiled, and his heart thumped faster about her, just
like in every sappy love story ever written.
the sigh He wondered how this could have happened to him. He had been
so self-contained before Felina. He had been proud of the fact that he
needed no one for intellectual stimulation or emotional support, and
that he was therefore not vulnerable to the pains and disappointments of
human relationships. Then he had met her. When he caught his breath,
he had been as vulnerable as anyone-and glad of it.
She looked terrific in a simple blue dress with a red belt and matching
red shoes. She was so strong yet so gentle, so tough yet so fragile.
He went to her, and for a while they stood by the refrigerator 7tor,
next to the sink, holding each other and kissing, neither of them
speaking in either of the ways they could. Clint thought they would
have been happy, just then, even if!" of them had been deaf and mute,
capa
ble of neither lip reading nor sign language, because at that moment
what made them happy was the very fact of being together, which no would
could adequately express anyway.
Finally he said,
"What a day! Can't wait to tell you all about it. Let me clean up real
quick, change clothes. We'll be of here by eight-thirty, go over to
Caprabello's, get a corner booth, some wine, some pasta, some garlic
bread-" Some heartburn.
He laughed because it was true. They both loved Caprablo's, but the
food was spicy. They always suffered for the indulgence.
He kissed her again, and she sat down with her magazine and he went
through the dining room and down the hall the bathroom. While he let
the water run in the sink to it hot, he plugged in his electric razor
and began to shave, grinning at himself in the mirror because he was
such a damn lucky guy.
THE BAD THING, was right in his face, snarling at him, I of questions,
too many for Thomas to think about and answer even if he was sitting in
a chair quiet and happy, instead lifted ofF the floor and held against
the wall with his whole body hurting so bad he had to cry. He kept
saying,
"I'm full up, I, full up." Always when he said that, people stopped
asking him things or telling him things, they let him take time to make
his head clear. But the Bad Thing was not like other people. It didn't
care if his head was clear, it just wanted answers. W was Thomas? Who
was his mother? Who was his father Where did he come from? Who was
Julie? Who was Bobby Where was Julie? Where was Bobby?
Then the Bad Thing said,
"Hell, you're just a dummy. Y don't know the answers, do You? You're
just as stupid as are stupid-looking." It Pulled Thomas away from the
wall, held him off the floor with one hand on his neck, so Thomas
couldn't breathe good Thomas in the face, hard, and Thomas didn't want
It slapped to keep crying, but he couldn't stop, he hurt and was scared.
"Why do they let people like you live?" the Bad Thing asked.
It let go of Thomas, and Thomas dropped on the floor. The Bad Thing
looked down at him in a mean way that made Thomas angry almost as much
as it made him scared. Which was funny-weird, because he almost never
was angry. And this was the first time he was ever angry and scared
both at the same time. But the Bad Thing was looking at him like he was
just a bug or some dirt on the floor that had to be made clean.
"Why don't they kill you people at birth? What're you good for? Why
don't they kill you at birth and chop you up and make dog food out of
you?" Thomas had memories of how people, out there in the world, looked
at him that way or said mean things, and how Julie always Told Them OfF.
She said Thomas didn't have to be nice to people like that, said he
could tell them they were Being Rude. Now Thomas was angry like he had
Every Right To Be, and even if Julie never told him he could be angry
about these things, he probably would be angry anyway, because some
things you just knew were right or wrong.
The Bad Thing kicked him in the leg, and was going to kick him again,
you could tell, but a noise was made at the window. Some of the aides
were at the window. They broke a little square of glass and reached
through, wanting to find the lock.
When the glass made a breaking sound, the Bad Thing turned from Thomas
and held its hands up at the window, like it was asking the aides to
stop wanting in. But Thomas knew what it was going to do was make the
blue light.
Thomas wanted to warn the aides, but be figured nobody would hear him or
listen to him until it was too late. So while the Bad Thing's back was
turned, he crawled across the floor, away from the Bad Thing, even if
crawling hurt, even if he had to go through spots of Derek's blood, all
wet, and it made him sick on top of being angry and scared.
Blue light. Very bright.
Something exploded.
He beard glass falling and worse, like maybe not just the whole window
blew out on the aides but part of the wall too.
People screamed. Most of the screams cut off quick-like, but one of
them went on, it was real bad, like somebody out in dark past the
blown-up window was made to hurt even worst than Thomas.
Thomas didn't look back because he was all the way around the side of
Derek's bed now, where he couldn't see the wind anyway from where he was
on the floor. And, besides, he knew what he wanted now, where he wanted
to go, and he had get there before the Bad Thing got interested in him
again Quick-like, he crawled to the top end of the bed and look up and
saw Derek's arm hanging over the side, blood running down under his
shirtsleeve and across his hand and drip-d dripping off his fingers. He
didn't want to touch a dead person not even a dead person he liked. But
this was what he had do, and he was used to having to do all sorts of
things wished he didn't-that was what life was like. So he grabbed the
edge of the bed and pulled himself up as fast as he could trying not to
feel the bad hurt in his back and in his kicking leg, because feeling it
would make him stiff and slow. Deryk was right there, eyes open, mouth
open, blood-wet, so sad, scary, on top of the pictures of his folks that
fell off the table still dead, off for always and ever to the Bad Place.
Thomas grabbed the scissors sticking out of Derek, pulled them loo
telling himself it was okay because Derek couldn't feel an thing now, or
ever.
"You!" the Bad Thing said, Thomas turned to see where the Bad Thing
was, and when it was was right behind him, all the way around the bed,
coming at him. So he shoved the scissors at it, hard as he could and
the Bad Thing's face made a surprised look. The scissors went in the
front of the Bad Thing's shoulder. The Bad Thing looked even more
surprised. The blood came.
Letting go of the scissors, Thomas said,
"For Derek," Thomas said, "for me.', He wasn't sure what would happen,
but he figured that making the blood come would hurt the Bad Thing and
maybe it dead, like it made Derek dead. Across the room where the
window wasn't any more and where part of there wasn't any more, some
smoke coming from the broken end of things. He figured he was going to
run over there and through the hole, even if the night was out there on
the other side.
But he never figured on what did happen, because the Bad Thing acted
like the scissors weren't even in it, like blood wasn't being let loose
from it, and it grabbed him and lifted him up again. It slammed him
into Derek's dresser, which was a lot more hurt than the wall because
the dresser was made with knobs and edges the wall didn't have.
He heard something crack in him, heard something tear. But the funny
thing was, he wasn't crying any more and didn't want to cry any more,
like he'd used up all the tears in himself The Bad Thing put its face
close to Thomas's face, so their eyes were only a couple inches apart.
He didn't like looking in the Bad Thing's eyes. They were scary. They
&nb
sp; were blue, but it was like they were really dark, like under the blue
was a lot of stuff as black as the night out past the gone window.
But the other funny thing was, he wasn't as scared as he was a while
ago, like he'd used up all his being scared just like he'd used up his
tears. He looked in the Bad Thing's eyes, and he saw all that big dark,
darkness. The dark that came over the world each day when the sun went
away, and he knew it was wanting to make him dead, going to make him
dead, and that was okay. He was not so afraid of being made dead as he
always thought he would be. It was still a Bad Place, death, and he
wished he didn't have to go there, but he had a funny-nice feeling about
the Bad Place all of a sudden, a feeling that maybe it wouldn't be so
lonely over there as he always figured it was, not even as lonely as it
was on this side. He felt maybe someone was over there who loved him,
someone who loved him more than even Julie loved him, even more than
their dad used to love him, someone who was all bright, no dark at all,
so bright you could only look at Him sideways.
The Bad Thing held Thomas against the dresser with one hand, and with
its other hand it pulled the scissors out of itself.
Then it put the scissors in Thomas.
This light started to fill up Thomas, this light that loved him, and he
knew he was going away. He hoped when he was all gone, Julie would know
how brave he was right at the end, how he stopped crying and stopped
being scared and fought back. And then all of a sudden he remembered he
hadn't sent a warning to Bobby that the Bad Thing might be coming for
them, too, and he started to do that.