“Harry?” she said again.
In the living room, he found Connie crouching beside the pile of mud. It was not sloppy enough to be mud, actually, just two or three hundred pounds of moist, compacted earth.
“Look at this, Harry.”
She pointed to an inexplicable feature that he had not noticed during the search of the house. For the most part, the pile was shapeless, but sprouting from the formless heap was one human hand, not real but shaped from moist earth. It was large, strong, with blunt spatulate fingers, as exquisitely detailed as if it had been carved by a great sculptor.
The hand extended from the cuff of a coat sleeve that was also molded from the dirt, complete with sleeve strap, vent, and three mud buttons. Even the texture of the fabric was well realized.
“What do you make of it?” Connie asked.
“Damned if I know.”
He put one finger to the hand and poked at it, half expecting to discover that it was a real hand coated thinly with mud. But it was dirt all the way through, and it crumbled at his touch, more fragile than it appeared, leaving only the coat cuff and two fingers.
A pertinent memory swam into Harry’s mind and out again before he could catch it, as elusive as a half-glimpsed fish quickening with a flash of color into the murky depths of a koi pond. Staring at what remained of the dirt hand, he felt that he was close to learning something of tremendous importance about Ticktock. But the harder he seined for the memory, the emptier his net.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
Following Connie into the hallway, Harry didn’t look toward the body.
He was walking a thin line between control and derangement, filled with a rage so intense that he could barely contain it, like nothing he had ever felt before. New feelings always troubled him because he could not be sure where they might lead; he preferred to keep his emotional life as ordered as his homicide files and his CD collection. If he looked at Ricky just once more, his anger might grow beyond containment, and hysteria of a sort might grip him. He felt the urge to shout at someone, anyone at all, scream until his throat ached, and he needed to punch someone, too, punch and gouge and kick. Lacking a deserving target, he wanted to turn his wrath on inanimate objects, break and smash anything within reach, stupid and pointless as that would be, even if it drew the desperately unwanted attention of neighbors. The only thing that restrained him from venting his rage was a mental image of himself in the throes of such a frenzy, wild-eyed and bestial; he could not tolerate the thought of being seen that far out of control, especially if the one who saw him was Connie Gulliver.
Outside, she closed the front door all the way. Together, they walked to the street.
Just as they reached the car, Harry stopped and surveyed the neighborhood. “Listen.”
Connie frowned. “What?”
“Peaceful.”
“So?”
“It would’ve made one hell of a lot of noise,” he said.
She was with him: “The explosion that tore up the hall floor. And he would have screamed, maybe called for help.”
“So why didn’t any curious neighbors come out to see what was happening? This isn’t the big city, this is a fairly tight little community. People don’t pretend to be deaf when they hear trouble next door. They come to help.”
“Which means they didn’t hear anything,” Connie said.
“How’s that possible?”
A night bird sang in a tree nearby.
Faint music still came from one of the houses. He could identify the tune this time. “A String of Pearls.”
Perhaps a block away, a dog let out a lonely sound between a moan and a howl.
“Didn’t hear anything…. How’s that possible?” Harry repeated.
Farther away still, a big truck started up a steep grade on a distant highway. Its engine made a sound like the low bellow of a brontosaurus displaced in time.
8
His kitchen was all white—white paint, white floor tile, white marble counters, white appliances. The only relief from white was polished chrome and stainless steel where metal frames or panels were required, which reflected other white surfaces.
Bedrooms should be black. Sleep was black except when dreams were unreeling in the theater of the mind. And although his dreams always seethed with color, they were also somehow dark; the skies in them were always black or churning with contusive storm clouds. Sleep was like a brief death. Death was black.
However, kitchens must be white because kitchens were about food, and food was about cleanliness and energy. Energy was white: electricity, lightning.
In a red silk robe, Bryan sat in a shell-white chair with white leather upholstery in front of a white-lacquered table with a thick glass top. He liked the robe. He had five more of the same. The fine silk felt good against his skin, slippery and cool. Red was the color of power and authority: the red of a cardinal’s cassock; the gold- and ermine-trimmed red of a king’s imperial mantle; the red of a Mandarin emperor’s dragon robe.
At home, when he chose not to be naked, he dressed only in red. He was a king in hiding, a secret god.
When he went out into the world, he wore drab clothing because he did not wish to call attention to himself. Until he had Become, he was at least marginally vulnerable, so anonymity was wise. When his power had fully developed and he had learned total control of it, he would at last be able to venture out in costumes that befitted his true station, and everyone would kneel before him or turn away in awe or flee in terror.
The prospect was exciting. To be acknowledged. To be known and venerated. Soon.
At his white kitchen table, he ate chocolate ice cream in fudge sauce, smothered in maraschino cherries, sprinkled with coconut and crumbled sugar cookies. He loved sweets. Salties, too. Potato chips, cheese twirls, pretzels, peanuts, corn chips, deep-fried pork rinds. He ate sweets and salties, nothing else, because no one could tell him what to eat any more.
Grandmother Drackman would have a stroke if she could see what his diet consisted of these days. She had raised him virtually from birth until he was eighteen, and she had been uncompromisingly strict about diet. Three meals a day, no snacks. Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, breads, pasta, fish, chicken, no red meat, skim milk, frozen yogurt instead of ice cream, minimal salt, minimal sugar, minimal fat, minimal fun.
Even her hateful dog, a nervous poodle named Pierre, was forced to eat according to Grandma’s rules, which in his case required a vegetarian regimen. She believed that dogs ate meat only because they were expected to eat it, that the word “carnivore” was a meaningless label applied by know-nothing scientists, and that every species—especially dogs, for some reason—had the power to rise above their natural urges and live more peaceful lives than they usually did. The stuff in Pierre’s bowl sometimes looked like granola, sometimes like tofu cubes, sometimes like charcoal, and the closest he ever came to the taste of flesh was the imitation-beef soy gravy spiked with protein powder that drenched most of what he was served. A lot of the time, Pierre had a strained and desperate look, as if maddened by a craving for something that he could not identify and therefore could not satisfy Which was probably why he’d been so hateful, sneaky, and so given to nervous peeing in inconvenient places like in Bryan’s closet, all over his shoes.
She was a demon rulemaker, Grandma Drackman. She had rules for grooming, dressing, studying, and deportment in every conceivable social situation. A ten megabyte computer would offer insufficient capacity for the cataloguing of her rules.
Pierre the dog had his own rules to learn. Which chairs he could sit on, which he could not. No barking. No whining. Meals on a strict schedule, no table scraps. Semi-weekly brushing, be still, don’t fuss. Sit, roll over, play dead, don’t claw the furniture…
Even as a child of four or five, Bryan had understood in his own terms that his grandmother was something of an obsessive-compulsive personality, an anal-retentive wreck, and he had been cautious with her, polite and ob
edient, pretending love but never letting her into his true inner world. When, at that young age, his specialness initially manifested itself in small ways, he was canny enough to conceal his budding talents from her, aware that her reaction might be… dangerous to him. Puberty brought with it a surge of growth not merely in his body but in his secret abilities, yet still he kept his own counsel, exploring his power with the help of a host of small animals that perished in a wide variety of satisfying torments.
Two years ago, only a few weeks after his eighteenth birthday, the strange and dynamic force within him surged again, as it did periodically, and though he still didn’t feel strong enough to deal with the entire world, he knew that he was ready to deal with Grandma Drackman. She was sitting in her favorite armchair with her feet on an ottoman, eating carrot sticks, sipping at a glass of sparkling water, reading an article about capital punishment in the Los Angeles Times, adding her heartfelt comments about the need for extending compassion even to the worst of criminals, when Bryan used his newly refined power of pyrokinesis to set her on fire. Jeez, did she burn! In spite of the fact that she had less fat on her bones than did the average praying mantis, she went up like a tallow candle. Although one of her rules was never to raise one’s voice in the house, she screamed nearly loud enough to shatter windows—though not for long. It was a controlled burn, focused on grandmother and her clothes, only singeing the armchair and ottoman, but she herself blazed so white-hot that Bryan had to squint when he looked at her. Like a caterpillar dipped in alcohol and lit with a match, she sizzled and popped and flared even brighter, then blackened to a crisp and curled up on herself. Still, he kept her burning until the charcoal residue of her bones became ashes and until the ashes became soot and until the soot just disappeared in a final puff of green sparks.
Then he dragged Pierre out of hiding and fried him, too.
It was a lovely day.
That was the end of Grandma Drackman and her rules. From then on Bryan lived according to his own rules. Soon the whole world would live according to them as well.
He got up and went to the refrigerator. It was filled with candies and dessert toppings. Not a mushroom or piece of chopped jicama to be found. He took a jar of butterscotch topping back to the table and added some of it to the sundae.
“Dingdong, the witch is dead, the wicked old witch, the witch is dead,” he sang happily.
By tampering with public records, he had given Grandma an official death certificate, altered his official age to twenty-one (so no court would appoint a trustee), and had made himself the sole heir in her will. This was child’s play, since no locked office or vault was proof against him; by the exercise of his Greatest and Most Secret Power, he could go where he wanted, do anything he wanted, and no one would know he had ever been there. After taking possession of the house, he had arranged for it to be gutted and remodeled to his own taste, eliminating every trace of the carrot-eating bitch.
Although he had spent more in the past two years than he had inherited, extravagance was no problem. He could get any amount of money any time he needed it. He didn’t need it often because, thanks to his Greatest and Most Secret Power, he could also take virtually anything else he wanted and never be caught.
“Here’s to you, Grandma,” he said, raising a heaping spoonful of ice cream and fudge sauce.
Although he was unable—quite yet—to heal his own injuries or even fade a bruise, he seemed able to maintain his proper weight and excellent body tone simply by concentrating on it for a few minutes every day, setting his metabolism as he might an ordinary thermostat. Because of this ability, he was confident that, after another growth surge or two, his power would extend to rapid self-healing and eventually to invulnerability.
Meanwhile, in spite of all the sweets and salties, he had a trim body. He was proud of his lean muscularity, which was one reason he sometimes liked to be naked around the house and enjoyed catching unexpected glimpses of himself in the many mirrors.
He knew that women would like his body. If he had cared for women, he could have had any of them he wanted, maybe even without using any of his powers.
But sex was of no interest to him. For one thing, sex was the old god’s biggest mistake. People had become obsessed with it, and all of their endless frantic breeding had ruined the world. Because of sex, the new god must thin the herd and clean up the planet. Besides, for him, orgasm was triggered not by sex but by the violent termination of a human life. After using one of his golems to kill someone, when he brought his entire consciousness back into his real body, he often found the black silk sheets wet with glistening streams of semen.
What would Grandma think of that!
He laughed.
He could do what he wanted and eat what he wanted, and where was his nagging grandmother? Burned, dead, gone forever—that’s where.
He was twenty years old, and he might live to be a thousand, two thousand, possibly forever. When he had lived long enough, he would most likely forget about his grandmother altogether, and that would be good.
“Stupid old cow,” he said, and giggled. It tickled him to be able to talk about her any way he wanted, in what had been her house.
Though he had made the sundae in a large serving dish, he ate every bite of it. Exercising his powers was extremely taxing, and he required both more than the usual amount of sleep and far more calories per day than other people. He napped and snacked a lot of the time, but he assumed the need for food and sleep might entirely vanish when he had finished Becoming and was, at last, the new god. When his Becoming was complete, he might never sleep, and take food not out of necessity but only for the pleasure of it.
After he had scooped up the last spoonful, he licked out the dish.
Grandma Drackman hated that.
He licked it thoroughly. When he was finished, it looked as clean as if it had been washed.
“I can do anything I want,” he said. “Anything.”
On the table, in a Mason jar, floating in preservative fluid, the eyes of Enrique Estefan watched him adoringly.
9
Driving north along the night coast with Ricky lying dead in the snake-infested house in Dana Point, Harry said, “It’s my fault, what happened to him.”
From the passenger seat, Connie said, “The hell it is.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
“I suppose it’s your fault he walked into that convenience store after he got off-duty three years ago.”
“Thanks for trying to make me feel better, but no thanks.”
“Should I try to make you feel worse? Look, this thing we’re up against, this Ticktock—there’s no way you can figure what he’s going to do next.”
“But maybe I can. I’m getting a handle on him, sort of. I’m starting to know what to expect. It’s just that I’m running one step behind the sonofabitch. As soon as I saw that belt buckle, I knew it was natural for him to go after Ricky. That’s part of what his threat meant. I just saw it too late.”
“My point exactly. Maybe there’s no way to get ahead of this guy. He’s something new, damn new, and he thinks a lot different from the way you and I think, from the way the average sleazebag thinks, doesn’t fit any psychological profile, so there’s no way you or anyone can be expected to out-think the bastard. Look, Harry, this is just not your responsibility.”
He snapped at her, not meaning to, not in the least blaming her for anything, but unable to contain his anger any longer. “That’s what’s wrong with the world these days, Jesus, that’s exactly what’s wrong! Nobody wants to be responsible for anything. Everybody wants a license to be and do any damn thing, nobody wants to pay the bill.”
“You’re right.”
She obviously meant what she said, agreed with him, wasn’t just humoring him, but he would not be defused that easily.
“These days, if your life is screwed up, if you’ve failed your family and friends, it’s never your fault. You’re a drunkard? Why, maybe it’s a genetic pr
edisposition. You’re a compulsive adulterer, have a hundred sex partners a year? Well, maybe you just never felt loved as a child, maybe your parents never gave you all the cuddling you needed. It’s crap, all of it.”
“Exactly,” she said.
“You just blew some shopkeeper’s head off or beat some old lady to death for twenty bucks? Why, you’re not a bad guy, no, you’re not to blame! Your parents are to blame, your teachers are to blame, society is to blame, all of Western culture is to blame, but not you, never you, how crass to suggest such a thing, how insensitive, how hopelessly old-fashioned.”
“You had a radio show, I’d listen to it every day,” she said. He was passing slow traffic even when he had to cross a double yellow line. He had never done that before in his life, not even when he’d been in a car with a siren and emergency beacons flashing.
He wondered what had gotten into him. He wondered how he could wonder about it—but keep doing it anyway, now swinging around a van with a Rocky Mountain mural on the side, into the oncoming-traffic lane in what was essentially a blind turn, even though the van was doing five miles an hour over the speed limit in the first place.
He raged on: “You can walk out on your wife and kids without paying child support, bilk your investors out of millions, beat some guy’s brains to jelly because he’s gay or he showed you disrespect—”
Connie joined in: “—drop your baby in a garbage dumpster because you had second thoughts about the joys of motherhood—”
“—cheat on your taxes, defraud the welfare—”
“—sell drugs to grade-school kids—”
“—abuse your own daughter, and still claim you’re the victim. Everyone’s a victim these days. No one’s a victimizer. No matter what atrocity you commit, you can stake a claim for sympathy, moan about being a victim of racism, reverse racism, sexism, ageism, classism, prejudice against fat people, ugly people, dumb people, smart people. That’s why you robbed the bank or blew away that cop, because you’re a victim, there’re a million ways to be a victim. Yeah, sure, you devalue the honest complaints of real victims, but what the hell, we only go around once, might as well get your piece of the action, and who cares about those real victims anyway, for God’s sake, they’re losers.”
He was coming up fast behind a slow-moving Cadillac.
A passing lane was provided. But an equally slow-moving Jeep station wagon with two bumper stickers on the rear window—I TRAVEL WITH JESUS and BEACHES, BIKINIS & BEER—was blocking the way.
He couldn’t cross the double yellow line again because suddenly a stream of oncoming traffic appeared behind dazzling headlights.
He thought of blowing his horn, trying to make the Caddy or the Jeep speed up, but he didn’t have the patience for that.
The shoulder of the highway was unusually wide at that point, and he took advantage of it, accelerating hard as he pulled off the pavement, passing the Cadillac on the right side. Even as he was doing it, he couldn’t believe he was doing it. Neither could the driver of the Cadillac; Harry looked over to his left and saw the man staring at him in astonishment, a funny little guy with a pencil mustache and a bad toupee. A soft bank of eroded earth, hung with ice plant and wild ivy, pressed close on the right side of the Honda. It was just inches away from the door even where the shoulder was broad… and then the shoulder began to narrow. The Cadillac dropped back, trying to get out of his way. Harry accelerated, and the shoulder shrank further. A California Highway Department no stopping sign appeared directly ahead of him and was absolutely certain to stop him if he hit it. He swerved off the diminishing shoulder, onto the blacktop again, fishtailing in front of the Caddy, got control, and continued north with the Pacific vastness to his left, as black as his mood.
“Way cool!” Connie said.
He didn’t know if she was being sarcastic or approving. With her love of speed and risk, it could be either.
“What I’m saying,” he told her, struggling to keep his anger white-hot, “is that I don’t want to be like that, always pointing the finger somewhere else. When I’m responsible, I want to choke on my responsibility.”
“I hear you.”
“I’m responsible for Ricky.”
“Whatever you say.”
“If I’d been smarter, he’d still be alive.”
“Whatever.”
“He’s on my conscience.”
“Fine with me.”
“I’m responsible.”
“And I’m sure you’ll rot in Hell for it.”
He couldn’t help it: he laughed. The laughter was dark, and for a moment he was afraid it was going to turn into tears for Ricky, but she was not about to let that happen.
She said, “Sit for eternity in a pit of dog vomit, if that’s what you think you deserve.”
Though Harry wanted to keep his rage at full blaze, it was dimming—as it should. He glanced at her and laughed harder.
She said, “You’re such a bad guy, you’ll have to eat maggots and drink demon bile for, oh, maybe a thousand years—”
“I hate demon bile—”
She was laughing, too: “—and for sure you’ll have to let Satan give you a high colonic—”
“—and watch Hudson Hawk ten thousand times—”
“Oh, no, even Hell has its limits.”
They were both howling now, letting off steam, and the laughter didn’t fade for a while.
When silence finally settled between them, Connie was the one to break it: “You okay?”
“I feel rotten.”