Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place

by The Bad Place(Lit)

  Their I presence in the house must have cranked up the unnatural

  tensions in their brother, who was dolibly male in the matter testes but

  lacking the crucial valve that would have allow release.

  They approached the table. One of them stared down Julie, while the

  other hung on her sister and averted her ey The bold one said,

  "Are you Candy's girlfriend?" Thereunmistakable mockery of her brother

  in the question.

  --you shut up," Candy said.

  "If you're not his girlfriend," the bold one said, in a voice as soft as

  rustling silk,

  "you could come upstairs with us, have a bed, the cats wouldn't mind,

  and I think I'd like you

  "Don't you talk like that in your mother's house," Candy said fiercely.

  His anger was real, but Julie could see that he was also more than a

  little unnerved by his sister.

  Both women, even the shy one, virtually radiated wildn as if they might

  do anything that occurred to them, regard! of how outrageous, without

  compunctions or inhibitions.

  Julie was nearly as scared of them as she was of Candy From the front of

  the moldering house, echoing ahoveroar of the rain on the roof, came a

  knocking.

  As one, the cats dashed from the kitchen, down the hall the front door,

  and less than a minute later they returned escort to Bobby and Frank.

  ENTERING THE KITCHEN, Bobby was overcome with gra tude-to God, even to

  Candy-at the sight of Julie alive. She was haggard, gaunt with fear and

  pain, but she had never looked more beautiful to him.

  She had never been so subdued, either, or so unsure of herself, and in

  spite of the banshee chorus of emotions that roar and shrieked in him,

  he found capacity to contain a separ sadness and anger about that.

  Though he was still hoping that Frank would come through for him, Bobby

  had been prepared to use his revolver if worst came to worst or if an

  unexpected advantage presented itself, But as soon as he walked in the

  room, the madman said,

  " move your gun from your holster and empty the cartridges of it." As

  Bobby had entered, Candy had moved behind the chair in which Julie sat,

  and had put one hand on her throat, his fingers hooked like talons.

  Inhumanly strong as he was, he could no doubt tear her throat out in a

  second or two, even though he lacked real talons.

  Bobby withdrew the Smith & Wesson from his shoulder holster, handling it

  in such a way as to demonstrate that he had no intention of using it. He

  broke out the cylinder, shook the five cartridges onto the floor, and

  put the revolver down on a nearby counter.

  Candy Pollard's excitement grew visibly second by second, from the

  moment Bobby and Frank appeared. Now he removed his hand from Julie's

  throat, stepped away from her, and glared triumphantly at Frank.

  As far as Bobby could tell, it was a wasted glare. Frank was there in

  the kitchen with them-but not there. If he was aware of everything that

  was happening and understanding the meaning of it, he was doing a good

  job of pretending;otherwise.

  Pointing to the floor at his feet, Candy said,

  "Come here and kneel, you mother-killer." The cats fled from the

  section of the cracked linoleum which the madman had indicated.

  The twins stood hipshot but alert. Bobby had seen cats feign

  indifference in the same way but reveal their actual involvement by the

  prick of their ears. With Violet and Verbina, their true interest was

  betrayed by the throbbing of their pulses in their temples and, almost

  obscenely, by the erection of their nipples against the fabric of their

  T-shirts.

  "I said come here and kneel," Candy repeated.

  "Or will you really betray the only people who ever lifted a hand to

  help you in these last seven years? Kneel, or I'll kill the Dakotas,

  both of them, I'll kill them now.

  Candy projected the awesome presence not of a psychotic but of a

  genuinely SUPERNATURAL being, as if his name were Legion and forces

  beyond human ken worked through him.

  Frank moved forward one step, away from Bobby's side.

  Another step.

  Then he stopped and looked around at the cats, as if something about

  them puzzled him.

  Bobby could never know if Frank had intended to evoke the bloody

  consequences that ensued from his next act, whether his words were

  calculated, or whether he was speaking out befuddlement and was as

  surprised as anyone by the tune that followed. Whatever the case, he

  frowned at the!" looked up at the bolder of the twins, and said,

  "Ah, is Mother still here, then? Is she still here in the house with

  us?" The shy twin stiffened, but the bold one actually appeared to

  relax, as if Frank's question had spared her the trouble deciding on the

  right time and place to make the revelat herself. She turned to Candy

  and favored him with thesubtly textured smile Bobby had ever seen: it

  was mocking, it was a would-be lover's invitation, as well; it was

  tentat with fear, but simultaneously challenging; hot with lust, with

  dread; and above all, it was wild, as uncivilized and fe cious as any

  expression on the face of any creature that roa any field or forest in

  the world.

  Her smile was met by Candy with an expression of stark horror and

  disbelief that made him appear, briefly and for the first time, almost

  human.

  "You didn't," he said.

  The bold twin's smile broadened.

  "After you buried her, dug her up. She's part of us now, and always

  will be, part us, part of the pack." The cats swished their tails and

  stared at Candy.

  The cry that erupted from him was less than human, a the speed with

  which he reached the bold twin was uncan He drove her against the

  refrigerator with his body, crushed her against it, grabbed her by the

  face with his right hand and slammed her head against the yellowed

  enamel surface, again. Lifting her bodily, his hands around her narrow

  was he tried to throw her as a furious child might cast away a!" but

  cat-quick she wrapped her limber legs around his waist and locked her

  ankles behind him, so she was riding him with breasts before his face.

  He pounded at her with his fists, she would not let go. She held on

  until the blows stopped raing on her, then loosened her lock on him so

  she slid do far enough to bring her pale throat near his mouth. He

  seing the opportunity that she thrust upon him and tore the life of her

  with his teeth.

  The cats squealed hideously, though not as one creaturetime, and fled

  the kitchen by several routes.

  To the sound of his anguished screams and her eerily ero cries, Candy

  extinguished his sister's life in less than a minute Neither Bobby nor

  Julie attempted to intervene, for it was clear that to do so would be

  like stepping into the funnel of a tornado, ensuring their death but

  leaving the storm undiminished. Frank only stood in that curious

  detachment that was now his only attitude.

  Candy turned immediately to the shy twin and destroyed her even more

  quickly, as she offered no resistance.

  As the psy
chotic giant dropped the brutalized corpse, Frank at last

  obeyed the order he had been given, closed the distance between them,

  and surprised his brother by taking his hand. Then, as Bobby had hoped,

  Frank traveled and Candy went with him, not under his own power but as a

  sidecar rider, the way Bobby had gone.

  After the tumult, the silence was shocking.

  Sweating, clearly ill from what she had witnessed, Julie pushed back her

  chair. The wooden legs stuttered on the linoleum.

  "No," Bobby said, and quickly came to her, stooped beside her,

  encouraging her to sit down. He took her uninjured hand.

  "Wait, not yet, stay out of the way.

  The hollow piping.

  A blustery whirl of wind.

  "Bobby," she said, panicking,

  "they're coming back, let's go, i I let's get out of here while we have

  the chance." He held her in the chair.

  "Don't look. I have to look, be sure, make certain Frank understood,

  but you don't need to see." The atonal music trilled again, and the

  wind stirred up the scent of the dead women's blood.

  "What are you talking about?" she demanded.

  "Close your eyes." She did not close her eyes, of course, because she

  had never been one to look away or run away from anything.

  The Pollards reappeared, back from the brief visit they had made in

  tandem to someplace as far away as Mount Fuji or as close as Doc

  Fogarty's house, more likely to several places.

  Recklessly rapid and repeated travel was key to the success of the

  trick, just as Bobby had outlined it to Frank in the car.

  The brothers were no longer two distinct human beings, for Frank's had

  been the guiding consciousness on their Journeys, and his ability to

  shepherd them through error-free reconstitution was declining rapidly,

  worse with each jaunt. They were re biologically tangled than any

  Siamese twin fused, most of Frank's left arm disappeared into Candy's

  right side, as if had reached in there to fish among his brother's

  internal o gans- Candy's right leg melted into Frank's left, giving the

  only three to stand on.

  There were more strangenesses, but that was all Bobby could comprehend

  before they vanished again. Frank needed to keep moving, stay in

  control, give Candy no chance to exert hispower, until the scramble was

  so complete that proper reco stitution of either of them would be

  impossible.

  Realizing what was happening, Julie sat perfectly still, her broken hand

  curled in her lap, holding fast to Bobby with her good hand. He knew

  she understood, without being told, that Frank was sacrificing himself

  for them, and that the least they could do for him was bear witness to

  his courage, just as they would keep Thomas and Hal and Clint and Felina

  alive memory.

  That was one of the most fundamental and sacred duti good friends and

  family performed for one another: they tended the flame of memory, so no

  one's death meant an imm diate vanishment from the world; in some sense

  the deceas would live on after their passing, at least as long as those

  w loved them lived. Such memories were an essential weap against the

  chaos of life and death, a way to ensure some con nuity from generation

  to generation, an endorsement of ord and of meaning.

  Piping, wind: the brothers returned from another series rapid

  deconstructions and reconstitutions, and now they were essentially one

  creature of cataclysmic biology. The body large, well over seven feet

  tall, broad and hulking, for it inco porated the mass of both of them.

  The single head had a nigh mare face: Frank's brown eyes were badly

  misaligned; slanted mouth gaped between them where a nose should had

  been; and a second mouth pocked the left cheek. Two torture screaming

  voices filled the kitchen. Another face was set inchest, mouthiess but

  with two eye sockets, in one of which I an unblinking eye as blue as

  Candy's; the other socketfilled with bristling teeth.

  The slouching beast vanished, then returned once moor after less than a

  minute. This time it was an undifferentiated mass of tissue, dark in

  some places and hideously pink in others, prickled with bone fragments,

  tufted with sparse clumps of hair, marbled with veins that pulsed to

  different beats. Along the way, Frank had no doubt visited that

  alleyway in Calcutta or someplace like it, for he had conveyed with him

  dozens of roaches, not just one, and rats as well; they were

  incorporated into the tissue everywhere that Bobby looked, further

  ensuring that Candy's flesh was too diffused and polluted ever to be

  properly reconstituted. The monstrous and obviously dysfunctional

  assemblage fell to the floor, flopped and shuddered, and finally lay

  still. Some of the rodents and insects continued to quiver and writhe,

  trying to get free; inextricably bonded to the dead mass, they also

  would soon perish.

  THE HOUSE was simple, on a section of the coast that was not yet

  fashionable. The back porch faced the sea and wooden steps led down to

  a scrubby yard that ended the beach. There were twelve palm trees.

  The living room was furnished with a couple of chairs, a low seat, a

  coffee table, and a Wurlitzer 950 stocked with records from the big-band

  era. The floor was bleached oak, tight made, and sometimes they pushed

  the furniture to the wall rolled up the area rug, punched up some

  numbers on the juke and danced together, just the two of them.

  That was mostly in the evenings.

  In the mornings, if they didn't make love, they poured through recipe

  books in the kitchen and whipped up bak goods together, or just sat with

  coffee by the window, watched the sea, and talked.

  They had books, two decks of cards, an interest in the bir and animals

  that lived along the shore, memories both good and bad, and each other.

  Always, each other.

  Sometimes they talked about Thomas and wondered what gift he'd possessed

  and had kept secret all his life. She said made you humble to think of

  it, made you realize everyone and everything was more complex and

  mysterious than you could know.

  To get the police off their backs, they had admitted workin on a case

  for one Frank Pollard from El Encanto Heights, who believed his brother

  James was trying to kill him over a misunderstanding. They said they

  felt James may have been a comPlete psychotic who had killed their

  employees and Thomas merely because they had dared to try to settle the

  matter between the brothers. Subsequently, when the Pollard house was

  found torched with gasoline, with a confusing arra of skeletal remains

  in the aftermath, police pressure was slowly lifted from Dakota &

  Dakota. It was believed that Mr. James Pollard had killed his twin

  sisters and his brother, as well, and was currently on the run, armed

  and dangerous.

  The agency had been sold. They didn't miss it. She no longer felt she

  could save the world, and he no longer needed to help her save herself.

  Money, a few more red diamonds, and negotiation had convinced Dyson

  Manfred and Roger Gavenall to invent another source for the biologically

 
engineered bug when, eventually, they published their work on it.

  Without the cooperation of Dakota & Dakota, they would never know the

  actual source, anyway.

  In the finished attic of the beach house, they kept the boxes and bags

  of cash they had brought back from Pacific Hill Road. Candy and his

  mother had tried to compensate for the chaos of their lives by storing

  up millions in a second-floor bedroom, just as Bobby and Julie had

  suspected before they had ever gotten to El Encanto Heights. Only a

  small portion of the Pollards' treasure was now in the beach-house

  attic, but it was more than two people could spend; the rest had been

  burned, along with everything else, when they'd torched the house on

  Pacific Hill Road.

  In time he came to accept the fact that he could be a good man and still

  sometimes have dark thoughts or selfish motives. She said this was

  maturity, and that it wasn't such a bad thing to live outside of

  Disneyland by the time you reached middle age.

  She said she'd like a dog.

  He said fine, if they could agree on a breed.

  She said you clean up its poop.

  He said you clean up its poop, I'll take care of the petting and Frisbee

  throwing.

  She said she had been wrong that night in Santa Barbara when, in her

  despair, she had claimed no dreams ever came true. They came true all

  the time. The problem was, you sometimes had your sights set on a

  particular dream and missed all the others that turned out your way: