Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place

by The Bad Place(Lit)

  "We have just pleasure and pain," the old physician said

  "so it doesn't matter who's right or who's wrong, who wins or loses."

  "What's his weakness?" she demanded angrily.

  "None I can see." Fogarty seemed pleased by the hopelessness of their

  position. If he had been practicing medicine in the early 1940s, he had

  to be nearing eighty, though he looked younger. He was acutely aware of

  how little time remained to him, and was no doubt resentful of anyone

  younger; and given his cold perspective on life, their deaths at Candy

  Pollard's hands would entertain him.

  "No weaknesses at all." Bobby disagreed, or tried to.

  "Some might say that his weakness is his mind, his screwed-up

  psychology." Fogarty shook his head.

  "And I'd argue that he's mad strength of his screwed-up psychology. He's

  used this business about being the instrument of God's vengeance to

  armor him self very effectively from depression and self-doubt and a

  thing else that might trip him up." In the wingback chair, Frank

  abruptly sat up straight shook himself as if to cast off his mental

  confusion thea dog might shake water from its sodden coat after coming

  from the rain. He said,

  "Where... Why do I... Is it is it... is it... ?",Is it what, Frank?"

  Bobby asked.

  "Is it happening?" Frank said. His eyes seemed slowly be clearing.

  "Is it finally happening?",is what finally happening, Frank?" His voice

  was hoarse.

  "Death. Is it finally happening? Is i CANDY HAD crept quietly through

  the house, into the hallway that led to the library. As he moved toward

  the open door the left, he heard voices. When he recognized one of them

  Frank's, he could barely contain himself.

  According to Violet, Frank was crippled. His control of telekinetic

  talent had always been erratic, which is why Can had enjoyed some hope

  of one day catching him and finishing him before he could travel to a

  place of safety. Perhaps the moment of triumph had arrived.

  When he reached the door, he found himself looking at the woman's back.

  He could not see her face, but he was sure it would be the same one that

  had been suffused in a beautiful glow in Thomas's mind.

  Beyond her he glimpsed Frank, and saw Frank's eyes widen at the sight of

  him. If the mother-killer had been too confused to teleport out of

  Candy's reach, as Violet had claimed, he was now casting off that

  confusion. He looked if he might pop out of there long before Candy

  could lay a had on him.

  Candy had intended to throw the library into a turmoil sending a wave of

  energy through the doorway ahead of him setting the books on fire and

  shattering the lamps, with the purpose of panicking and distracting the

  Dakotas and Doc Fogarty, giving him a chance to go straight for Frank.

  But now he was forced to change his plans by the sight of his brother

  trembling on the edge of dematerialization.

  He entered the room in a rush and seized the woman from behind, curling

  his right arm around her neck and jerking her head back, so she-and the

  two men-would understand at once that he could snap her neck in an

  instant, whenever he chose. Even so, she slashed backward with one

  foot, scraping the heel of her shoe down his shin, stomping on his foot,

  all of which hurt like hell; it was some martial-art move, and he could

  tell by the way she tried to counterbalance his grip and stance that she

  had a lot of training in such things. So he jerked her head back again,

  even harder, and flexed his biceps, which pinched her windpipe, hurting

  her enough to make her realize that resistance was suicidal.

  Fogarty watched from his chair, alarmed but not sufficiently to rise to

  his feet, and the hush and came off the sofa with a gun in his hand, Mr.

  Quick-Draw Artist, but Candy was not concerned about either of them. His

  attention was on Frank, who had risen from his chair and appeared about

  to blink out of there, off to Punaluu and Kyoto and a score of other

  places.

  "Don't do it, Frank!" he said sharply.

  "Don't run away. It's time we settled, time you paid for what you did

  to our mother. You come to the house, accept God's punishment, and end

  it now, tonight. I'm going there with this bitch. She tried to help

  you, I guess, so maybe you won't want to see her suffer." The hush and

  was going to do something crazy; seeing Julie in Candy's grip had

  clearly unhinged him. He was searching for a shot, a way to get Candy

  without getting her, and he might even risk firing at Candy's head,

  though Candy was half crouching behind the woman. Time to get out of

  there.

  "Come to the house," he told Frank.

  "You come into the kitchen, let me end it for you, and I'll let her go.

  I swear on our mother's name, I'll let her go. But if you don't come in

  fifteen minutes, I'll put this bitch on the table, and I'll have my

  dinner, Frank. You want me to feed on her after she tried to help you,

  Frank?" Candy thought he heard a gunshot just as he got out of the In

  any event, it had been too late. He rematerialized in the kitchen of

  the house on Pacific Hill Road, with Julie still locked in the crook of

  his arm.

  NO LONGER concerned about the danger of touching Frank, Bobby grabbed

  handsful of his jacket and shoved him backward against the wide-louvered

  shutters on the library window.

  "You heard him, Frank. Don't run. Don't run this time, or I'll hang on

  to you and never let go, no matter where you take me, I swear to God,

  you'll wish you'd put your neck on Candy's platter instead of mine." He

  slammed Frank against the shutters to make his point, and behind him he

  heard Lawrence Fogarty's soft, knowing laughter.

  Registering the terror and confusion in his client's eyes, Bobby

  realized that his threats would not achieve the effect he desired. In

  fact, threats would almost certainly frighten Frank into flight, even if

  he wanted to help Julie. Worse, by stooping to violence as a first

  resort, he was treating Frank not as a person but as meat, confirming

  the depraved code by which the corrupt old physician had led his entire

  life, and that was almost as intolerable as losing Julie.

  He let go of Frank.

  "I'm sorry. Listen, I'm sorry, I just got a little crazy." He studied

  the man's eyes, searching for some indication that sufficient

  intelligence remained in the damaged brain for the two of them to reach

  an understanding. He saw fear, stark and terrible, and he saw a

  loneliness that made him want to cry. He saw a lost look, too, not

  unlike what he had sometimes seen in Thomas's eyes when they had taken

  him on an excursion from Cielo Vista,

  "out in the world," as he had said.

  Aware that perhaps two minutes of Candy's fifteen-minute deadline had

  passed, trying to remain calm nonetheless, Bobby took Frank's right

  hand, turned it palm up, and forced himself to touch the dead roach that

  was now integrated with the man's soft white flesh. The insect felt

  crisp and bristly against his fingers, but he did not permit his disgust

  to show.

  "Does th
is hurt, Frank? This bug mixed up with your cells here, does it

  hurt you?" Frank stared at him, finally shook his head. No.

  Heartened by the establishment of even this much dialo Bobby gently put

  his fingertips to Frank's right temple, fee the lumps of precious gems

  like unburst boils or cancerous soars.

  "Do you hurt here, Frank? Are you in pain?"

  "No," Frank said, and Bobby's heart pounded with excitement at the

  escalation to a spoken response.

  From a pocket of his jeans, Bobby removed a folded Klein and gently

  blotted away the spittle that still glistened Frank's chin.

  The man blinked, and his eyes seemed to focus better.

  From behind Bobby, still in the leather chair at the!" perhaps with a

  glass of bourbon in his hand, almost cert with that infuriatingly smug

  smile plastered on his face, garty said,

  "Twelve minutes left." Bobby ignored the physician. Maintaining eye

  contact his client, his fingertips still on Frank's temple, he said

  quickly

  "It's been a hard life for you, hasn't it? You were the no one, the

  most normal one, and when you were a kid you all wanted to fit in at

  school, didn't you, the way your sisters brother never could. And it

  took you a long time to remember your dream wasn't going to happen, you

  weren't goingin, because no matter how normal you were compared to rest

  of your family, you'd still come from that goddam house, out of that

  cesspool, which made you forever an outsider to other people. They

  might not see the stain on your heart might not know the dark memories

  in you, but you saw, you remembered, and you felt yourself unworthy

  because the horror that was your family. Yet you were also an outsider

  at home, much too sane to fit in there, too sensitive to the nightmare

  of it. So all your life, you've been alone."

  "All my life," Frank said.

  "And always will be." He wasn't going to travel now. Bobby would have

  be it.

  "Frank, I can't help you. No one can. That's a hardbut I won't lie to

  you. I'm not going to con you or threaten YOU."

  Frank said nothing, but maintained eye contact.

  "Ten minutes," Fogarty said.

  "The only thing I can do for you, Frank, is show you a way to give your

  life meaning at last, a way to end it with purpose and dignity, and

  maybe find peace in death. I have an idea, a way that you might be able

  to kill Candy and save Julie, and if you can do that, you'll have gone

  out a hero. Will you come with me, Frank, listen to me, and not let

  Julie die?" Frank didn't say yes, but he didn't say no, either. Bobby

  decided to take heart from the lack of a negative response.

  "We've got to get moving, Frank. But don't try teleporting to the

  house, because then you'll just lose control again, pop off to hell and

  back a hundred times. We'll go in my car. We can be there in five

  minutes." Bobby took his client's hand. He made a point of taking the

  one with the roach embedded in it, hoping Frank would remember that he

  had a fear of bugs and perceive that his willingness to overrule the

  phobia was a testament to his sincerity.

  They crossed the room to the door.

  Rising from his chair, Fogarty said,

  "You're going to your death, you know." Without glancing back at the

  physician, Bobby said,

  "Well, seems to me, you went to yours decades ago." He and Frank walked

  out into the rain and were drenched by the time they got into the car.

  Behind the wheel, Bobby glanced at his watch. Less than eight minutes

  to go.

  He wondered why he accepted Candy's word that the fifteen-minute

  deadline would be observed, why he was so sure that the madman had not

  already torn out her throat. Then he remembered something she had said

  to him once: Sweetcakes, as long as you're breathing, Tinkerbell will

  live.

  Gutters overflowed, and a sudden wind wound skeins of rain, like silver

  yarn, through his headlights.

  As he drove the storm-swept streets and turned east on Pacific Hill

  Road, he explained how Frank, through his sacrifice of himself, could

  rid the world of Candy and undo his mother's evil the way he had wanted

  to undo it-but had failed-when he had taken the ax to her. It was a

  simple concept. He was able to go over it several times even in the few

  minutes had before pulling to a stop at the rusted iron gate.

  Frank did not respond to anything that Bobby said. T was no way to be

  sure he understood what he must do if he had even heard a word of it. He

  stared straight ah his mouth open an inch or so, and sometimes his head

  tic back and forth, back and forth, in time with the windshield wipers,

  as if he were watching Jackie Jaxx's crystal pen swinging on its gold

  chain.

  By the time they got out of the car, went through the garage and

  approached the decrepit house, with less than two minutes of the

  deadline left, Bobby was reduced to proceeding on faith.

  WHEN CANDY brought her into the filthy kitchen, pushed into one of the

  chairs at the table, and let go of her, J reached at once for the

  revolver in the shoulder holster her corduroy jacket. He was too fast

  for her, however, and it from her hand, breaking two of her fingers in

  The pain was excruciating, and that was on top of theness in her neck

  and throat from the ruthless treatment he dealt out at Fogarty's, but

  she refused to cry or complain.

  stead, when he turned away from her to toss the gun o drawer beyond her

  reach, she leapt up from the chair sprinted for the door.

  He caught her, lifted her off her feet, swung her around, body-slammed

  her onto the kitchen table so hard she passed out. He brought his face

  close to hers and said,

  "You're going to taste good, like Clint's woman, all that vitality in

  veins, all that energy, I want to feel you spurting in mouth." Her

  attempts at resistance and escape had not arisen from courage as much as

  from terror, some of which sprang the experience of deconstruction and

  reconstitution, which hoped never to have to endure again. Now her fear

  doubled as his lips lowered to within an inch of hers and as his cha

  house breath washed over her face. Unable to look away from his blue

  eyes, she thought these were what Satan's eyes would be like, not dark

  as sin, not red as the fires of Hell, not craw with maggots, but

  gloriously and beautifully blue-and utterly devoid of all mercy and

  compassion.

  If all the worst of human savagery from time immemorial could be

  condensed into one individual, if all of the species' hunger for blood

  and violence and raw power could be embodied in one monstrous figure, it

  would have looked like Candy Pollard at that moment. When he finally

  pulled back from her, like a coiled serpent grudgingly reconsidering its

  decision to strike, and when he dragged her off the table and shoved her

  back into the chair, she was cowed, perhaps for the first time in her

  life. She knew that if she exhibited any further resistance, he would

  kill her on the spot and feed on her.

  Then he said an astonishing thing:

  "Later, when I'm done with
Frank, you'll tell me where Thomas got his

  power."

  She was so intimidated by him that she had difficulty finding her voice.

  "Power? What do you mean?"

  "He's the only one I've ever encountered, outside our family. The Bad

  Thing, he called me. And he kept trying to keep tabs on me

  telepathically because he knew sooner or later you and I would cross

  paths. How can he have had ahy gifts when he wasn't born of my virgin

  mother? Later, you'll explain that to me." As she sat, actually too

  terrified either to cry or shake, in a storm's-eye calm, cradling her

  injured hand in the other, she had to find room in her for a sense of

  wonder too. Thomas?

  Psychically gifted? Could it be true that all the time she worried

  about taking care of him, he was to some extent taking care of her?

  She heard a strange sound approaching from the front of the house. A

  moment later, at least twenty cats poured into the kitchen through the

  hall doorway, tails sweeping over one another.

  Among the pack came the Pollard twins, long-legged and barefoot, one in

  panties and a red T-shirt, the other in panties and a white T-shirt, as

  sinuous as their cats. They were as pale as spirits, but there was

  nothing soft or ineffectual about them. They were lean and vital,

  filled with that tightly coiled energy that you always knew was in a cat

  even when it appeared to be lazing in the sun. They were ethereal in

  some ways, yet at the same time earthy and strong, powerfully sensual.