Then she remembered that she was nude, and she went back for panties and
a T-shirt.
She wasn't afraid of Candy's disapproval or of Candy himself. In fact,
she would welcome his violent attentions, for it would be the ultimate
game of hunter and prey, hawk mouse, brother and sister. Candy was the
only wild creature into whose mind she couldn't intrude; though wild, he
was human and beyond the reach of her powers. If he tore out Verbina's
throat, then her blood would get into him, and into her throat, and she
would become a part of him in the only manner she ever could. Likewise,
that was the only way he could get into her: by biting his way in, by
chewing into her, the only way.
On any other night, she would have called to him and let him see her
nude, with the hope that her shamelessness would at last provoke him to
violence. But she could not pursue her fondest desire right now, not
when Frank was nearby and unpunished for what he had done to their poor
puss, mantha When she had dressed, she returned to the hall, moved all
through it in the gloom-still in complete touch with Darkle and Zi and
the wild world-and stopped before the door to mother's room, into which
Candy had moved upon her death. A thing line of light showed along the
sill.
"Candy," she said.
"Candy, are you there?"
LIKE A MEMORY from wars past or a presentiment of a war to come, a
searing flash of lightning and a shattering crash of thunder shook the
night. The window in the study vibrated. It was the first thunder
Bobby had heard since the faint and distant peal when they had come out
of the motel, nearly an hour and a half ago. In spite of the thunder in
the sky, rain was not yet falling. But though the storm was
slow-moving, it was almost upon them. The pyrotech of a storm was an
ideal backdrop to Fogarty's tale.
"I was disappointed in Frank," Fogarty said, taking an old bottle of
bourbon from his capacious desk drawer and filling his glass.
"No fun at all. So normal. But two years later she was pregnant again!
This time the delivery was every as entertaining as I'd expected Frank's
to be. A baby boy again and she called him James. Her second virgin
birth, she said, and she didn't mind at all that he was as much of a
mess as she was. She said that was just proof that he, too, was favored
by God and brought into the world without a need to wallow in the
depravity of sex. I knew then that she was as mad as a hatter." Bobby
knew he had to remain sober, and he was aware of the danger of too much
bourbon after a night of too little sleep. But he had a hunch that he
was burning it off as fast as he drank it, at least for now. He took
another sip before he said,
"You're not telling us that beefy hulk is hermaphroditic too?"
"Oh, no," Fogarty said.
"Worse than that." CANDY OPENED the door.
"What do you want?"
"He's here, in town, right now," she said.
His eyes widened.
"You mean Frank?"
"Yes."
"WORSE," Bobby said numbly.
He got up from the sofa long enough to put his glass on the desk. It
was still three-quarters full, but he suddenly decided that even bourbon
would not be an effective tranquilizer in this case.
Julie seemed to reach the same conclusion, and put her glass aside too.
"James-or Candy, if you wish-was born with four testes instead of two,
but with no male organ. Now, at birth, male infants all carry their
testes safely in their abdominal cavity, and the testes descend later,
during infant maturation. But Candy's never descended and never could,
because there was no scrotum for them to descend into. And for another
thing, there's a strange excrescence of bone that would prevent their
descent. So they've remained within his abdominal cavity. But I would
guess they've functioned well, busily producing quite large amounts of
testosterone, which is related to development of musculature and partly
explains his formidable size."
"So he's incapable of having sex," Bobby said.
"With his testicles undescended and no organ for copulation, I'd say
he's got a shot at being the most chaste man ever lived." Bobby had
come to loathe the old man's laugh.
"But four gonads, he's producing a flood of testosterone, and does more
than help build muscles-doesn't it?" Fogarty nodded.
"To put it in the language of a med journal: excess testosterone, over
an extended period of time alters normal brain function, sometimes
radically, and it's causative factor of socially unacceptable levels of
aggressi To put it in layman's language: this guy is seriously stoked
sexual tension he can't possibly release, he's rechanneledenergy into
other outlets, mainly acts of incredible viole and he's as dangerous as
any monster any moviemaker dreamed up." ALTHOUGH SHE HAD released the
owl as the storm drewViolet still inhabited Darkle and Zitha, taking
their fear a from them when the lightning flared and the thunder boo
Even as she stood before Candy, at the door to his room, was listening
to Fogarty tell the Dakotas about her brother's deformity. She knew
about it already, of course, for within family their mother had referred
to it was God's sign that Candy was the most special of all of them.
Likewise, and in some way Violet had been aware that this deformity was
related to great wildness in Candy, the thing that made him so po fully
attractive.
Now she stood before him, wanting to touch his huge a feel the sculpted
muscles, but she restrained herself.
"He' Fogarty's house." That surprised him.
"Mother said Fogarty was an instrument of God. He brought us into the
world, four virgin bi Why would he harbor Frank? Frank's on the dark
side no
"That's where he is," Violet said.
"And a couple. His na BobbY. Hers is Julie."
"Dakota," he whispered.
"
At Fogarty's. Make him pay for Samantha, Candy. Bring him back here
after you've killed him, and let us feed him the cats. He hated the
cats, and he'll hate being part offorever." JULIE'S TEMPER, not always
easily controlled, was dangerously near the flashpoint. As lightning
shocked the night outside and thunder again protested, she counseled
herself about the necessity for diplomacy.
Nevertheless, she said,
"You've known all these years that Candy is a vicious killer, and you've
done nothing to alert anyone to the danger?"
"Why should I?" Fogarty asked.
"Haven't you ever heard of social responsibility?"
"It's a nice phrase, but meaningless."
"People have been brutally murdered because you let that man-"
"People will always and forever be brutally murdered. His shit buried
millions. Stalin, tory is full of brutal murder. Hitler murdered many
millions more. Mao Tse-tung, more millions than anyone. They're all
considered monsters now, but they had their admirers in their time,
didn't they? And there're people even now who'll tell you Hitler and
Stalin only did what they had i to do, that Mao was
just keeping the
public order, disposing of ruffians. So many people admire those
murderers who are bold about it and who cloak their bloodlust in noble
causes like brotherhood and political reform and justice-and social
responsibility. We're all meat, just meat, and in our hearts we know
it, so we secretly applaud the men bold enough to treat us as what we
are. Meat." By now she knew that he was a sociopath, with no
conscience, no capacity for love, and no ability to empathize with other
people. Not all of them were street hoodiumr even high-class, high-tech
thieves like Tom Rasmussen, who had tried to kill Bobby last week. Some
got to be doctorsr lawyers, TV ministers, politicians. None of them
could be reasoned with, for they had no normal human feelings.
He said,
"Why should I tell anyone about Candy Pollard?
I'm safe from him because his mother always called me God's instrument,
told her wretched spawn I was to be respected. It's none of my
business. He's covered his mother's murder to avoid having the police
tramping through the house, told people she moved to a nice oceanside
condo near San Diego. I don't think anybody believes that crazy bitch
would suddenly lighten up and become a beach bunny, but nobody questio
it because nobody wants to get involved. Everybody feels it' none of
their business. Same with me. Whatever outrage Candy adds to the
world's pain are negligible. At least, give his peculiar psychology and
physiology, his outrages will be more imaginative than most.
"Besides, when Candy was about eight, Roselle came to thank me for
bringing her four into the world, and for keepin my own counsel, so that
Satan was unaware of their blessed presence on earth. That's exactly
how she put it! And as token of her appreciation, she gave me a
suitcase full of mone enough to make early retirement possible. I
couldn't figur where she'd gotten it. The money that Deeter and
Elizabeth piled up in the thirties had long ago dwindled away. So she
to explain that she'd never want for cash. That was the firs told me a
little bit about Candy's ability, not much, but enough time I realized
there was a genetic boon tied to the genetic did saster." Fogarty
raised his glass of bourbon in a toast that they did not return. "To
God's mysterious ways." LIKE THE ARCHANGEL come to declare the end of
the worl in the Book of the Apocalypse, Candy arrived just as the
heavens sundered and the rain began to fall in earnest, althoug this was
not black rain as would be the deluge of Armageddon nor was it a storm
of fire. Not yet. Not yet.
He materialized in the darkness between two widely space street lamps,
almost a block from the doctor's house, to be sur that the soft trumpets
that unfailingly announced his arrive would not be audible to anyone in
Fogarty's library. As he walked toward the house through the hammering
rain, he believed that his power, provided by God, had now grown s
enormous that nothing could prevent him from takingachieving anything he
desired.
"IN SIXTY-SIX, the twins were born, and physically they were as normal
as Frank," Fogarty said as rain suddenly splattered noisily against the
window.
"No fun in that. I couldn't believe it, really. Three out of four of
the kids, perfectly healthy. I'd been expecting all sorts of cute
twists-harelips at the- very least, misshapen skulls, cleft faces,
withered limbs, or extra heads!" Bobby took Julie's hand. He needed
the contact.
He wanted to get out of there. He felt burnt out. Hadn't they heard
enough?
But that was the problem: he didn't know what was left to hear, or how
much of it might be crucial to finding a way of dealing with the
Pollards.
"Of course, when Roselle brought me that suitcase full of money, I began
to learn that the children were all freaks, mentally if not physically.
And seven years ago, when Frank killed her, he came to me, as if I owed
him something-understanding, shelter. He told me more about them than I
wanted to know, too much. For the next two years, he'd periodically
return here, just appear like a ghost that wanted to haunt me instead of
a place. But he finally understood there was nothing for him here, and
for five years he stayed out of my life. Until today, tonight." In his
wingback chair, Frank moved. He shifted his body and tipped his head
from the right to the left. Otherwise, he was no more alert than he had
been since they had entered the room. The old man had said that Frank
had come around a few times and had been talkative, but it couldn't be
proved by his behavior during the past hour or so.
Julie, who was the closest to Frank, frowned and leaned toward him,
peering at the right side of his head.
"Oh, my God." She spoke those three words in a bleak tone of voice that
was as effective a refrigerant as anything used in an air conditioner.
With a chill skittering up his spine, Bobby slid along the sofa,
crowding her against the other end, and looked past her at the side of
Frank's head. Wished he had not. Tried to look away. Couldn't.
When Frank's head had been tilted to his right, almost lying against his
shoulder, they had not been able to see that temple.
After leaving Bobby at the office, still out of control, travelin
against his will, Frank evidently had returned to one of those craters
where the engineered insects shit out their diamond His flesh was lumpy
all the way along his temple to his ja and in some places the rough
gemstones that were the caus of the lumpiness poked through, gleaming,
intimately melded with his tissue. For whatever reason, he had scooped
up handful to bring with him, but when reconstituting himself he had
made a mistake.
Bobby wondered what treasures might be buried in the so gray matter
within Frank's skull.
"I saw that too," Fogarty said.
"And look at the palm his right hand." Although Julie protested, Bobby
pinched the sleeve Frank's jacket and pulled until he twisted the man's
arm of the chair and revealed his palm. He had found the partial roac
that had once been welded into his own shoe. At least it a peared to be
the same one. It was sprouting from the meat part of Frank's hand,
carapace gleaming, dead eyes staring u toward Frank's index finger.
CANDY CIRCLED the house in the rain, passing a black cat sitting on a
windowsill. It turned its head to glance at him, then put it face to
the windowpane again.
At the rear of the house, he stepped quietly onto the porch and tried
the back door. It was locked.
Vague blue light pulsed from his hand as he gripped the knob. The lock
slipped, the door opened, and he stepped insid JULIE HAD heard and seen
enough, too much.
Eager to get away from Frank, she rose from the sofa an walked to the
desk, where she considered her unfinished bourbon. But that was no
answer. She was dreadfully tired, stru gling to repress her grief for
Thomas, striving even hardermake some sense out of the grotesque family
histor
y that F garty had revealed to them. She did not need the
complicatio of any more bourbon, appealing as it might look there in the
glass.
She said to the old man,
"So what hope do we have of dealing with Candy?"
"None."
"There must be a way."
"No."
"There must be."
"Why?" "Because he can't be allowed to win." Fogarty smiled.
"Why not?"
"Because he's the bad guy, dammit! And we're the good guys. Not
perfect, maybe, not without flaws, but we're the good guys, all right.
And that's why we have to win, because if we don't, then the whole game
is meaningless." Fogarty leaned back in his chair.
"My point exactly. It is all meaningless. We're not good, and we're
not bad, we're just meat. We don't have souls, there's no hope of
transcendence for a slab of meat, you wouldn't expect a hamburger to go
to Heaven after someone ate it." She had never hated anyone as much as
she hated Fogarty at that moment, partly because he was so smug and
hateful, but partly because she recognized, in his arguments, something
perilously close to the things she had said to Bobby in the motel, after
she had learned about Thomas's death. She had said there was no point
in having dreams, that they never came true, that death was always there
watching even if you were lucky enough to grasp your personal brass
ring. And loathing life, just because it led sooner or later to death
... well, that was the same as saying people were nothing but meat.
Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place Page 51
