Sometimes he liked to be awake when everyone else wasn’t. Sometimes that made him feel smarter than all of them put together, seeing things they couldn’t see and knowing things they couldn’t know because they were asleep and he wasn’t.
He stared at the nothingness of night.
He put his forehead against the glass.
For Julie’s sake, he reached. Into the nothingness. Toward the far-away.
He opened himself. To the feelings. To the ripple-tingle.
A big ugly-nasty hit him. Like a wave. It came out of the night and hit him, and he stumbled back from the window and fell on his butt beside the bed, and then he couldn’t feel the Bad Thing at all, it was gone, but what he had felt was so big and so ugly that his heart was pounding and he could hardly breathe, and right away he TVed to Bobby:
Run, go, get away, save Julie, the Bad Thing’s coming, the Bad Thing, run, run.
23
THE DREAM was filled with the music of Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade,” though like everything in dreams, the song was indefinably different from the real tune. Bobby was in a house that was at once familiar yet totally strange, and somehow he knew it was the seaside bungalow to which he and Julie were going to retire young. He drifted into the living room, over a dark Persian carpet, past comfortable-looking upholstered chairs, a huge old chesterfield with rounded back and thick cushions, a Ruhlmann cabinet with bronze panels, an Art Deco lamp, and overflowing bookshelves. The music was coming from outside, so he went out there. He enjoyed the easy transitions of the dream, moving through a door without opening it, crossing a wide porch and descending wooden stairs without ever quite lifting a foot. The sea rumbled to one side, and the phosphorescent foam of the breakers glowed faintly in the night. Under a palm tree, in the sand, with a scattering of shells around it, stood a Wurlitzer 950, ablaze with gold and red light, bubble tubes percolating, gazelles perpetually leaping, figures of Pan perpetually piping, record-changing mechanism gleaming like real silver, and a large black platter spinning on the turntable. Bobby felt as if “Moonlight Serenade” would go on forever, which would have been fine with him, because he had never been more mellow, more at peace, and he sensed that Julie had come out of the house behind him, that she was waiting on the damp sand near the water’s edge, and that she wanted to dance with him, so he turned, and there she was, exotically illuminated by the Wurlitzer, and he took a step toward her—
Run, go, get away, save Julie, the Bad Thing’s coming, the Bad Thing, run, run!
The indigo ocean suddenly leapt as if under the lash of a storm, and spume exploded into the night air.
Hurricane winds shook the palms.
The Bad Thing! Run! Run!
The world tilted. Bobby stumbled toward Julie. The sea surged up around her. It wanted her; it was going to seize her; it was water with a will, a thinking sea with a malevolent consciousness gleaming darkly in its depths.
The Bad Thing!
The Glenn Miller tune speeded up, whirling at double time.
The Bad Thing!
The soft, romantic light from the Wurlitzer flamed brighter, stung his eyes, yet did not drive back the night. It was radiating light as if the door to Hell had opened, but the darkness around them only intensified, yielding nothing to that supernatural blaze.
THE BAD THING! THE BAD THING!
The world tilted again. Heaved and rolled.
Bobby staggered across the carnival-ride beach, toward Julie, who seemed unable to move. She was being swallowed by the churning oil-black sea.
THE BAD THING THE BAD THING THE BAD THING!
With the hard crack of riven stone, the sky split above them, but no lightning stabbed out of that crumbling vault.
Geysers of sand erupted around Bobby. Inky water exploded out of sudden gaping holes in the beach.
He looked back. The bungalow was gone. The sea rose on all sides. The beach was dissolving under his feet.
Screaming, Julie disappeared under the water.
BADTHINGBADTHINGBADTHINGBADTHING!
A twenty-foot wave loomed over Bobby. It broke. He was swept away. He tried to swim. The flesh on his arms and hands bubbled and blistered and began to peel off, revealing glints of ice-white bone. The midnight seawater was an acid. His head went under. He gasped, broke the surface, but the corrosive sea had already kissed away his lips, and he felt his gums receding from his teeth, and his tongue turned to rancid mush in the salty rush of caustic brine that he had swallowed. Even the spray-filled air was erosive, eating away his lungs in an instant, so when he tried to breathe he could not. He went down, flailing at the waves with arms and hands that were only bone, caught in an undertow, sucked into everlasting darkness, dissolution, oblivion.
BADTHING!
Bobby sat straight up in bed.
He was screaming, but no cry issued from him. When he realized he had been dreaming, he stopped trying to scream, and finally a low and miserable sound escaped him.
He had thrown off the sheets. He sat on the edge of the bed, feet on the floor, both hands on the mattress, steadying himself as if he was still on that heaving beach or struggling to swim in those roiling tides.
The green numbers of the projection clock glowed faintly on the ceiling: 2:43.
For a while the drum-loud thud of his own heart filled him with sound from within, and he was deaf to the outer world. But after a few seconds he heard Julie breathing steadily, rhythmically, and he was surprised that he had not awakened her. Evidently he had not been thrashing in his sleep.
The panic that infused the dream had not entirely left him. His anxiety began to swell again, partly because the room was as lightless as that devouring sea. Afraid of waking Julie, he did not switch on the bedside lamp.
As soon as he was able to stand, he got up and circled the bed in the perfect blackness. The bathroom was on her side, but a clear path was provided, and he found his way as he had on countless other nights, without difficulty, guided both by experience and instinct.
He eased the door shut behind him and switched on the lights. For a moment the fluorescent brilliance prevented him from looking into the glary surface of the mirror above the double sinks. When at last he regarded his reflection, he saw that his flesh had not been eaten away. The dream had been frighteningly vivid, unlike anything he’d known before; in some strange way it had been even more real than waking life, with intense colors and sounds that pulsed through his slumbering mind with the fulgurate dazzle of light along the filament of an incandescent bulb. Though aware that it had been a dream, he had half feared that the nightmare ocean had left its corrosive mark on him even after he woke.
Shuddering, he leaned against the counter. He turned on the cold water, bent forward, and splashed his face. Dripping, he looked at his reflection again and met his eyes. He whispered to himself: “What the hell was that?”
24
CANDY PROWLED.
The eastern end of the Pollard family’s two-acre property dropped into a canyon. The walls were steep, composed mostly of dry crumbling soil veined in places by pink and gray shale. Only the expansive root systems of the hardy, desert vegetation—chapparal, thick clumps of bunchgrass, pampas grass, scattered mesquite—kept the slopes from eroding extensively in every heavy rain. A few eucalyptuses, laurels, and melaleucas grew on the walls of the canyon, and where the floor was broad enough, melaleucas and California live oaks sank roots deep into the earth along the runoff channel. That channel was only a dry streambed now, but during a heavy rain it overflowed.
Fleet and silent in spite of his size, Candy followed the canyon eastward, moving upslope, until he came to a junction with another declivity that was too narrow to be called a canyon. There, he turned north. The land continued to climb, though not as steeply as before. Sheer walls soared on both sides of him, and in places the passage was nearly pinched off, narrowing to only a couple of feet. Brittle tumbleweeds, blown into the ravine by the wind, had collected in mounds at some of those cho
ke points, and they scratched Candy as he pushed through them.
Without even a fragment moon, the night was unusually dark at the bottom of that fissure in the land, but he seldom stumbled and never hesitated. His gifts did not include superhuman vision; he was as blinded by lightlessness as anyone. However, even in the blackest night, he knew when obstacles lay before him, sensed the contours of the land so well that he could proceed with surefooted confidence. He did not know how this sixth sense served him, and he did nothing to engage it; he simply had an uncanny awareness of his relationship with his surroundings, knew his place at all times, much as the best high-wire walkers, though blindfolded, could proceed with self-assurance along a taut line above the upturned faces of a circus crowd.
This was another gift from his mother.
All of her children were gifted. But Candy’s talents exceeded those of Violet, Verbina, and Frank.
The narrow passage opened into another canyon, and Candy turned east again, along a rocky runoff channel, hurrying now as his need grew. Though ever more widely separated, houses were still perched high above, on the canyon rim; their bright windows were too far away to illuminate the ground before him, but now and then he glanced up longingly because within those homes was the blood he needed.
God had given Candy a taste for blood, made him a predator, and therefore God was responsible for whatever Candy did; his mother had explained all of that long ago. God wanted him to be selective in his killing; but when Candy was unable to restrain himself, the ultimate blame was God’s, for He had instilled the blood lust in Candy but had not provided him with the strength to control it.
Like that of all predators, Candy’s mission was to thin the sick and the weak from the herd. In his case, morally degenerate members of the human herd were the intended prey: thieves, liars, cheats, adulterers. Unfortunately he did not always recognize sinners when he met them. Fulfilling his mission had been far easier when his mother had been alive, for she had no trouble spotting the blighted souls for him.
Tonight he would try as best he could to confine his killing to wild animals. Slaughtering people—especially close to home—was chancy; it might bring him under the eye of the police. He could risk killing locals only when they had crossed the family in some way and simply could not be allowed to live.
If he was unable to satisfy his need with animals, he would go somewhere, anywhere, and kill people. His mother, up there in Heaven, would be angry with him and disappointed by his lack of control, but God would not be able to blame him. After all, he was only what God had made him.
With the lights of the last house well behind him, he stopped in a grove of melaleucas. The day’s strong winds had drained out of the high hills, down through the canyons, and out to sea; currently the air seemed utterly still. Drooping trailers hung from the branches of the melaleucas, and every long, blade-sleek leaf was motionless.
His eyes had adapted to the darkness. The trees were silver in the dim starlight, and their cascading trailers contributed to an illusion that he was surrounded by a silent waterfall or frozen in a paperweight blizzard. He could even make out the ragged scrolls of bark that curled away from the trunks and limbs in the perpetual peeling process that lent a unique beauty to the species.
He could not see any prey.
He could hear no furtive movement of wildlife in the brush.
However, he knew that many small creatures, filled with warm blood, were huddled nearby in burrows, in secret nests, in drifts of old leaves, and in the sheltered niches of rocks. The very thought of them made him half mad with hunger.
He held his arms out in front of him, palms facing away from him, fingers spread. Blue light, the shade of pale sapphire, faint as the glow of a quarter-moon, perhaps a second in duration, pulsed from his hands. The leaves trembled, and the sparse bunchgrass stirred, then all was still as darkness reclaimed the canyon floor.
Again, blue light shone forth from his hands, as if they were hooded lanterns from which the shutters had been briefly lifted. This time the light was twice as bright as before, a deeper blue, and it lasted perhaps two seconds. The leaves rustled, and a few of the drooping trailers swayed, and the grass shivered for thirty or forty feet in front of him.
Disturbed by those queer vibrations, something scurried toward Candy, started past him. With that special sense of his surroundings that did not rely on sight or sound or smell, he reached to his left and snatched at the unseen darting creature. His reflexes were as uncanny as anything else about him, and he seized his prey. A field mouse. For an instant it froze in terror. Then it squirmed in his grasp, but he held fast to it.
His power had no effect on living things. He could not stun his prey with the telekinetic energy that radiated from his open palms. He could not draw them forth or call them to him, only frighten them out of hiding. He could have shattered one of the melaleucas or sent geysers of dirt and stones into the air, but no matter how hard he strained, he could not have stirred one hair on the mouse by using just his mind. He didn’t know why he was hampered by that limitation. Violet and Verbina, whose gifts were not half as impressive as his, seemed to have power only over living things, smaller animals like the cats. Plants bent to Candy’s will, of course, and sometimes insects, but nothing with a mind, not even something with a mind as weak as that of a mouse.
Kneeling under the silvery trees, he was swaddled in gloom so deep that he could see nothing of the mouse except its dimly gleaming eyes. He brought the fist-wrapped creature to his mouth.
It made a thin, terrified sound, more of a peep than a squeal.
He bit off its head, spat it out, and fastened his lips upon the torn neck. The blood was sweet, but there was too little of it.
He cast the dead rodent aside and raised his arms again, palms out, fingers spread. This time the splash of spectral light was an intense, electric, sapphire blue. Although it was of no longer duration than before, its effect was startlingly greater. A half dozen waves of vibrations, each a fraction of a second apart, slammed up the inclined floor of the canyon. The tall trees shook, and the hundreds of drooping trailers lashed the air, and the leaves thrashed with a sound like swarms of bees. Pebbles and smaller stones were flung up from the ground, and loose rocks rattled against one another. Every blade of bunchgrass stood up stiff and straight, like hair on a frightened man’s nape, and a few clumps tore out of the soil and tumbled away into the night, along with showers of dead leaves, as if a wind had captured them. But no wind disturbed the night—only the brief burst of sapphire light and the powerful vibrations that accompanied it.
Wildlife erupted from concealment, and some of the animals streamed toward him, heading down the canyon. He had learned long ago that they never recognized his scent as that of a human being. They were as likely to flee toward him as away from him. Either he had no scent that they could detect ... or they smelled something wild in him, something more like themselves than like a human being, and in their panic they did not realize that he was a predator.
They were visible, at best, as shapeless dark forms, streaking past him, like shadows flung off by a spinning lamp. But he also sensed them with his psychic gift. Coyotes loped by, and a panicked raccoon brushed against his leg; he did not reach out for those, because he wanted to avoid being badly clawed or bitten. At least a double score of mice streamed within reach, as well, but he wanted something more full of life, heavy with blood.
He snatched at what he thought was a squirrel, missed, but a moment later seized a rabbit by its hind legs. It shrieked. It thrashed with its less formidable forepaws, but he got hold of those, too, not only immobilizing the creature but paralyzing it with fear.
He held it up to his face.
Its fur had a dusty, musky smell.
Its red eyes glistened with terror.
He could hear its thunderous heart.
He bit into its throat. The fur, hide, and muscle resisted his teeth, but blood flowed.
The rabbit twitched, not i
n an attempt to escape but as if to express its resignation to its fate; they were slow spasms, strangely sensuous, as if the creature almost welcomed death. Over the years Candy had seen this behavior in countless small animals, especially in rabbits, and he always thrilled to it, for it gave him a heady sense of power, made him feel as one with the fox and the wolf.
The spasms ceased, and the rabbit went limp in his hands. Though it was still alive, it had acknowledged the imminence of death and had entered a trancelike state in which it evidently felt no pain. This seemed to be a grace that God bestowed on small prey.
Candy bit into its throat again, harder this time, deeper, then bit again, deeper still, and the life of the rabbit spurted and bubbled into his greedy mouth.
Far away in another canyon, a coyote howled. It was answered by others in its pack. A chorus of eerie voices rose and fell and rose again, as if the coyotes were aware that they were not the only hunters in the night, as if they smelled the fresh kill.
When he had supped, Candy cast the drained corpse aside.
His need was still great. He would have to break open the blood reservoirs within more rabbits or squirrels before his thirst was slaked.
He got to his feet and headed farther up into the canyon, where the wildlife had not been disturbed by his first use of the power, where creatures of many kinds waited in their burrows and hidey-holes to be harvested. The night was deep and bountiful.
25
MAYBE IT was just Monday morning blues. Maybe it was the bruised sky and the promise of rain that formed her mood. Or maybe she was tense and sour because the violent events at Decodyne were only four days in the past and therefore still too fresh. But for some reason, Julie did not want to take on this Frank Pollard’s case. Or any other new case, for that matter. They had a few ongoing security contracts with firms they had served for years, and she wanted to stick to that comfortable, familiar business. Most of the work they did was about as risky as going to the supermarket for a quart of milk, but danger was a potential of the job, and the degree of danger in each new case was unknown. If a frail, elderly lady had come to them that Monday morning, seeking help in finding a lost cat, Julie probably would have regarded her as a menace on a par with an ax-wielding psychopath. She was edgy. After all, if luck had not been with them last week, Bobby would now be four days dead.
Sitting forward in her chair, leaning over her sturdy metal-and-Formica desk, arms crossed on the green-felt blotter, Julie studied Pollard. He could not meet her eyes, and that evasion aroused her suspicion in spite of his harmless—even appealing—appearance.
He looked as if he ought to have a Vegas comedian’s name—Shecky, Buddy, something like that. He was about thirty years old, five ten, maybe a hundred and eighty pounds, which on him was thirty pounds too much; however, it was his face that was most suited for a career in comedy. Except for a couple of curious scratches that were mostly healed, it was a pleasant mug: open, kind, round enough to be jolly, deeply dimpled. A permanent flush tinted his cheeks, as if he had been standing in an arctic wind for most of his life. His nose was reddish, too, apparently not from too great a fondness for booze, but from having been broken a few times; it was lumpish enough to be amusing, but not sufficiently squashed to make him look like a thug.
Shoulders slumped, he sat in one of the two leather-and-chrome chairs in front of Julie’s desk. His voice was soft and pleasant, almost musical. “I need help. I don’t know where else to go for it.”
In spite of his comedic looks, his manner was bleak. Though it was mellifluous, his voice was heavy with despair and weariness. With one hand he periodically wiped his face, as if pulling off cobwebs, then peered at his hand with puzzlement each time it came away empty.
The backs of his hands were marked with scabbed-over scratches, too, a couple of which were slightly swollen and en-flamed.
“But frankly,” he said, “seeking help from private detectives seems ridiculous, as if this isn’t real life but a TV show.”
“I’ve got heartburn, so it’s real life, all right,” Bobby said. He was standing at one of the big sixth-floor windows that faced out toward the mist-obscured sea and down on the nearby buildings of Fashion Island, the Newport Beach shopping center adjacent to the office tower in which Dakota & Dakota leased a seven-room suite. He turned from the view, leaned against the sill, and extracted a roll of Rolaids from the pocket of his Ultrasuede jacket. “TV detectives never suffer heartburn, dandruff, or the heartbreak of psoriasis.”
“Mr. Pollard,” Julie said, “I’m sure Mr. Karaghiosis has explained to you that strictly speaking we aren’t private detectives.”
“Yes.”
“We’re security consultants. We primarily work with corporations and private institutions. We have eleven employees with sophisticated skills and years of security experience, which is a lot different from the one-man PI fantasies on TV. We don’t shadow men’s wives to see if they’re being unfaithful, and we don’t do divorce work or any of the other things that people usually come to private detectives for.”
“Mr. Karaghiosis explained that to me,” Pollard said, looking down at his hands, which were clenched on his thighs.
From the sofa to the left of the desk, Clint Karaghiosis said, “Frank told me his story, and I really think you ought to hear why he needs us.”
Julie noted that Clint had used the would-be client’s first name, which he had never done before during six years with Dakota & Dakota. Clint was solidly built—five foot eight, a hundred and sixty pounds. He looked as though he had once been an inanimate assemblage of chunks of granite and slabs of marble, flint and fieldstone, slate and iron and lodestone, which some alchemist had transmuted into living flesh. His broad countenance, though handsome enough, also looked as if it had been chiseled from rock. In a search for a sign of weakness in his face, one could say only that, though strong, some features were not as strong as others. He had a rocklike personality too: steady, reliable, imperturbable. Few people impressed Clint, and fewer still pierced his reserve and elicited more than a polite, businesslike response from him. His use of the client’s first name seemed to be a subtle expression of sympathy for Pollard and a vote of confidence in the truthfulness of whatever tale the man had to tell.
“If Clint thinks this is something for us, that’s good enough for me,” Bobby said. “What’s your problem, Frank?”
Julie was not impressed that Bobby had used the client’s first name so immediately, casually. Bobby liked everyone he met, at least until they emphatically proved themselves unworthy of being liked. In fact, you had to stab him in the back repeatedly, virtually giggling with malice, before he would finally and regretfully consider the possibility that maybe he shouldn’t like you. Sometimes she thought she had married a big puppy that was pretending to be