He said, "We keep this up, I'll never have a chance to from the cholesterol in this Big Mac."

"Lee says cholesterol doesn't kill us."

"Is that what he says?"

"He says we live forever, and all cholesterol can do is move us out of this life a little sooner. Same thing must be true I slip up and roll this sucker a few times."

"I don't think that'll happen," he said.

"You're the best driver I've ever seen."

"Thank You, Bobby. You're the best pa.s.senger."

"The only thing I wonder.

"Yeah?"

"If we don't really die, just move on, and I don't have to worry about anything-why the h.e.l.l did I bother to get diet colas?" THOMAS ROLLED off the bed, onto his feet.

"Derek, go, get out, he's coming!" Derek was watching a horse talking on TV, and he didn't hear Thomas.

The TV was in the room's middle, between the beds, and by the time Thomas got there and grabbed Derek to make him listen, a funny sound was all around them, not funny ha-ha but funny weird, like somebody whistling but not whistling. There was wind, too, a couple of puffs, not warm or cold either, but it made Thomas shiver when it blew on him.

Pulling Derek off his chair, Thomas said, "Bad Thing's coming, you get out, you go, like I said before, now!"

Derek just made a dumb face at him, then smiled, like- he figured Thomas was pretending to be funny the way the Three Stooges pretended. He'd forgot all about the promise he made Thomas. He'd thought the Bad Thing was going to be poached eggs for breakfast, and when poached eggs never showed up on his plate, he figured he was safe, but now he wasn't safe and didn't know it.

More funny-weird whistling. More wind.

Giving Derek a shove, making him get started for the door, Thomas shouted, "Run!" The whistling stopped, the wind stopped, and all of a sudden from nowhere the Bad Thing was there. Between them and the open door.

It was a man, like Thomas already knew it was, but it was more than just a man. It was darkness poured in the shape of a man, like a piece of the night itself that came in through the window, and not just because it wore a black T-shirt and black pants but because it was all deep dark inside, you could tell.

Right away Derek was afraid. n.o.body needed to tell him this was a Bad Thing, not now when he could see it with his own eyes. But he didn't see it was too late to run, and he went straight at the Bad Thing, like maybe he could push past it, which must have been what he was figuring because Derek wasn't dumb enough to figure he could knock it do it was so big.

The Bad Thing grabbed him and lifted him before he any chance to get around it, lifted him right up off the floor like he didn't weigh any more than a pillow. Derek scream and the Bad Thing slammed him against the wall so hard scream stopped, and pictures of Derek's mom and dad a brother fell off the wall, not the one where Derek got slam but another wall all the way around the room from him a over his bed.

The Bad Thing was so fast. That was the worst thing about it, how awful fast it was. It slammed Derek against the wall. Derek's mouth fell open but no more sound came from him the Bad Thing slammed him again, right away, harder, thou the first time was hard enough for anybody, and Derek's e went funny. The Bad Thing took him away from the wall a slammed him down on the worktable. The table kind of shuttered like it would fall apart, but it didn't. Derek's head over the table edge, hanging down, so Thomas was looking his face, upside-down eyes blinking fast, upside-down more open real wide but no sound coming out. He looked up from Derek's face, looked right across Derek's body at the Bad Thing, which was looking at him and grinning, like all this was a joke, funny ha-ha, which it wasn't, no way. Then it picked up the scissors on the edge of the worktable, the ones Thomas used to make his picture poems, the ones that almost fell on the floor when it slammed Derek on the table. It made the scissors go into Derek and bring the blood out of him, into Derek who wouldn't hurt no one himself, except himself,wouldn't know how to hurt anyone. And the Bad Thing get the scissors go in again and bring more blood out of another place in Derek, and in again, and again. Then blood was coming Out of just four places on Derek's chest and belly who the scissors had been made to go in, but out of his mouth a nose too. The Bad Thing lifted Derek off the table, the scissors still sticking out of his front, and threw him like he was just a Pillow. No, like he was a garbage bag, threw him like the Sanitation Men threw the garbage bags onto their Sanitation Truck. Derek landed on his bed, on his back on bed, with the scissors still in him, and didn't move and gone to the Bad Place, you could tell. And the worst thing was it all happened so fast, faster than Thomas could think what to do to stop it.

Footsteps in the hall, people running.

Thomas yelled for help. the doorway. Pete saw Pete, one of the aides, showed up in Derek on the bed, scissors in him, blood coming out everywhere, and he got afraid, you could see him get it. He turned to the Bad Thing and said, "Who-" The Bad Thing grabbed him by the neck, and Pete made a sound like something was stuck in his throat. He put both his hands on the Bad Thing's arm, which seemed bigger than Pete's two arms together, but he couldn't make the Bad Thing let go. The Bad Thing lifted him by his neck, making his chin turn up and his head bend back, and then took hold of him by the belt, too, and pitched him back out the door, into the hall. Pete hit a nurse who came running up just then, and they both went down on the floor out there in the hall, all tangled up, her screaming.

All of this in a few clock ticks. So fast.

The Bad Thing made the door shut with a bang, saw you couldn't lock it, then did the funniest thing of all, funny-weird, funny-scary. He held both his hands out at the door, and this blue light came from his hands the way not-blue came from a flashlight. Sparks flew from hinges and around the k.n.o.b and all around the door edges. Everything metal smoked and turned all soft, like b.u.t.ter when you put it on mashed potatoes. It was a Fire Door. They said you had to keep your door closed if you ever saw fire in the hall, not try to run in the hall, but keep your door closed and stay put. They called it a Fire Door because fire couldn't get through it, they said, and Thomas always wondered why they didn't call it a Fire Can't Get Through It Door, but he never asked. The thing was, a Fire Door was all metal, so it couldn't burn, but no* it melted around the edges, and so did the metal frame, they melted together, it didn't look like you could ever get through that door again.

People started pounding on the door from out there in the hall, tried to make it open, couldn't, and shouted for Thomas and Derek. Thomas knew some voices and who they belonged to, and he wanted to yell for them to help quick because he was in trouble, but he couldn't make a sound any better. Poor Derek.

The Bad Thing made the blue light stop. Then it turned looked at Thomas. It smiled at him. It didn't have a nice smile it said, "Thomas?"

Thomas was surprised he could stand up, he was so scared He was against the wall by the window, and he thought maybe making the lock open on the window and push it and get out, which he knew how to do because of Emerge Drills. But he knew he wasn't fast enough, no way, because the Bad Thing was the fastest he ever saw.

it took a step toward him, and another step.

"Are Thomas?" For a while he still couldn't find the way to make sound He could just move his mouth and sort of pretend to make sounds. Then while he was doing that, he figured maybe if told a lie and said he wasn't Thomas, the Bad Thing won't believe him and just go away. So when all of a sudden he could make sounds, and then words, he said, "No. I... no...

Thomas. He's gone out in the world now, he's got a big cue, he's a high-end moron, so they moved him out in world." The Bad Thing laughed.

It was a laugh that had no future in it, the worst Thomas ever heard.

The Bad Thing said, " the h.e.l.l are you, Thomas? Where do you come from? H come a dummy like you can do something I can't?" Thomas didn't answer. He didn't know what to say.

wished the people in the hall would stop pounding on the door and find some other way to get in, because pounding was working. Maybe they could call the cops and tell them to bring the Jaws of Life, yeah, the Jaws of Life, like you saw them on the TV news when a person was in a wrecked car couldn't get out. They could use the Jaws of Life to pull the door the way they pulled at smashed-up cars to get people out of them. He hoped the cops wouldn't say, we're sorry we can only open car doors with the Jaws of Life, we can open Care Home doors, because then he was finished for"You going to answer me, Thomas?" the Bad Thing ask Derek's TV chair got turned around in the fight, and it was between Thomas and the Bad Thing. The Bad Thing held one hand out at the chair, just one, and the blue light whoosh! and the chair blew up in splinters, like all the toothpicks in the world. Thomas threw his hands over his face just fast enough so no splinters went in his eyes. Some went in the backs of his hands and even in his cheeks and chin, and he could feet some of them in his shirt, poking his belly, but he didn't feel any hurt because he was so busy feeling scared.

He took his hands from his eyes right away, because he had to see where the Bad Thing was. Where it was was right on top of him, with soft bits of the chair insides floating in the air in front of its face.

"Thomas?" it said, and it put one of its big hands on the front of Thomas's neck the way it did Pete a while ago.

Thomas heard words coming from himself, and he couldn't believe he was making them, but he was. Then when he forgot what he said to the Bad Thing, he couldn't believe he said it, but he did: "You're not Being Sociable." The Bad Thing grabbed him by the belt and kept hold of him by the neck and lifted him off the floor and pulled him away from the wall, then slammed him into the wall, the same way it did Derek, and, oh, it hurt worse than Thomas ever before hurt in his life.

THE INTERIOR garage door had a dead bolt but no security chain.

Pocketing his keys, Clint entered the kitchen at ten minutes past eight and saw Felina sitting at the table, reading a magazine while she waited for him.

She looked up and smiled, and his heart thumped faster about her, just like in every sappy love story ever written.

the sigh He wondered how this could have happened to him. He had been so self-contained before Felina. He had been proud of the fact that he needed no one for intellectual stimulation or emotional support, and that he was therefore not vulnerable to the pains and disappointments of human relationships. Then he had met her. When he caught his breath, he had been as vulnerable as anyone-and glad of it.

She looked terrific in a simple blue dress with a red belt and matching red shoes. She was so strong yet so gentle, so tough yet so fragile.

He went to her, and for a while they stood by the refrigerator 7tor, next to the sink, holding each other and kissing, neither of them speaking in either of the ways they could. Clint thought they would have been happy, just then, even if!" of them had been deaf and mute, capable of neither lip reading nor sign language, because at that moment what made them happy was the very fact of being together, which no would could adequately express anyway.

Finally he said, "What a day! Can't wait to tell you all about it. Let me clean up real quick, change clothes. We'll be of here by eight-thirty, go over to Caprabello's, get a corner booth, some wine, some pasta, some garlic bread-" Some heartburn.

He laughed because it was true. They both loved Caprablo's, but the food was spicy. They always suffered for the indulgence.

He kissed her again, and she sat down with her magazine and he went through the dining room and down the hall the bathroom. While he let the water run in the sink to it hot, he plugged in his electric razor and began to shave, grinning at himself in the mirror because he was such a d.a.m.n lucky guy.

THE BAD THING, was right in his face, snarling at him, I of questions, too many for Thomas to think about and answer even if he was sitting in a chair quiet and happy, instead lifted ofF the floor and held against the wall with his whole body hurting so bad he had to cry. He kept saying, "I'm full up, I, full up." Always when he said that, people stopped asking him things or telling him things, they let him take time to make his head clear. But the Bad Thing was not like other people. It didn't care if his head was clear, it just wanted answers. W was Thomas? Who was his mother? Who was his father Where did he come from? Who was Julie? Who was Bobby Where was Julie? Where was Bobby?

Then the Bad Thing said, "h.e.l.l, you're just a dummy. Y don't know the answers, do You? You're just as stupid as are stupid-looking." It Pulled Thomas away from the wall, held him off the floor with one hand on his neck, so Thomas couldn't breathe good Thomas in the face, hard, and Thomas didn't want It slapped to keep crying, but he couldn't stop, he hurt and was scared.

"Why do they let people like you live?" the Bad Thing asked.

It let go of Thomas, and Thomas dropped on the floor. The Bad Thing looked down at him in a mean way that made Thomas angry almost as much as it made him scared. Which was funny-weird, because he almost never was angry. And this was the first time he was ever angry and scared both at the same time. But the Bad Thing was looking at him like he was just a bug or some dirt on the floor that had to be made clean.

"Why don't they kill you people at birth? What're you good for? Why don't they kill you at birth and chop you up and make dog food out of you?" Thomas had memories of how people, out there in the world, looked at him that way or said mean things, and how Julie always Told Them OfF.

She said Thomas didn't have to be nice to people like that, said he could tell them they were Being Rude. Now Thomas was angry like he had Every Right To Be, and even if Julie never told him he could be angry about these things, he probably would be angry anyway, because some things you just knew were right or wrong.

The Bad Thing kicked him in the leg, and was going to kick him again, you could tell, but a noise was made at the window. Some of the aides were at the window. They broke a little square of gla.s.s and reached through, wanting to find the lock.

When the gla.s.s made a breaking sound, the Bad Thing turned from Thomas and held its hands up at the window, like it was asking the aides to stop wanting in. But Thomas knew what it was going to do was make the blue light.

Thomas wanted to warn the aides, but be figured n.o.body would hear him or listen to him until it was too late. So while the Bad Thing's back was turned, he crawled across the floor, away from the Bad Thing, even if crawling hurt, even if he had to go through spots of Derek's blood, all wet, and it made him sick on top of being angry and scared.

Blue light. Very bright.

Something exploded.

He beard gla.s.s falling and worse, like maybe not just the whole window blew out on the aides but part of the wall too.

People screamed. Most of the screams cut off quick-like, but one of them went on, it was real bad, like somebody out in dark past the blown-up window was made to hurt even worst than Thomas.

Thomas didn't look back because he was all the way around the side of Derek's bed now, where he couldn't see the wind anyway from where he was on the floor. And, besides, he knew what he wanted now, where he wanted to go, and he had get there before the Bad Thing got interested in him again Quick-like, he crawled to the top end of the bed and look up and saw Derek's arm hanging over the side, blood running down under his shirtsleeve and across his hand and drip-d dripping off his fingers. He didn't want to touch a dead person not even a dead person he liked. But this was what he had do, and he was used to having to do all sorts of things wished he didn't-that was what life was like. So he grabbed the edge of the bed and pulled himself up as fast as he could trying not to feel the bad hurt in his back and in his kicking leg, because feeling it would make him stiff and slow. Deryk was right there, eyes open, mouth open, blood-wet, so sad, scary, on top of the pictures of his folks that fell off the table still dead, off for always and ever to the Bad Place.

Thomas grabbed the scissors sticking out of Derek, pulled them loo telling himself it was okay because Derek couldn't feel an thing now, or ever.

"You!" the Bad Thing said, Thomas turned to see where the Bad Thing was, and when it was was right behind him, all the way around the bed, coming at him. So he shoved the scissors at it, hard as he could and the Bad Thing's face made a surprised look. The scissors went in the front of the Bad Thing's shoulder. The Bad Thing looked even more surprised. The blood came.

Letting go of the scissors, Thomas said, "For Derek," Thomas said, "for me.', He wasn't sure what would happen, but he figured that making the blood come would hurt the Bad Thing and maybe it dead, like it made Derek dead. Across the room where the window wasn't any more and where part of there wasn't any more, some smoke coming from the broken end of things. He figured he was going to run over there and through the hole, even if the night was out there on the other side.

But he never figured on what did happen, because the Bad Thing acted like the scissors weren't even in it, like blood wasn't being let loose from it, and it grabbed him and lifted him up again. It slammed him into Derek's dresser, which was a lot more hurt than the wall because the dresser was made with k.n.o.bs and edges the wall didn't have.

He heard something crack in him, heard something tear. But the funny thing was, he wasn't crying any more and didn't want to cry any more, like he'd used up all the tears in himself The Bad Thing put its face close to Thomas's face, so their eyes were only a couple inches apart.

He didn't like looking in the Bad Thing's eyes. They were scary. They were blue, but it was like they were really dark, like under the blue was a lot of stuff as black as the night out past the gone window.

But the other funny thing was, he wasn't as scared as he was a while ago, like he'd used up all his being scared just like he'd used up his tears. He looked in the Bad Thing's eyes, and he saw all that big dark, darkness. The dark that came over the world each day when the sun went away, and he knew it was wanting to make him dead, going to make him dead, and that was okay. He was not so afraid of being made dead as he always thought he would be. It was still a Bad Place, death, and he wished he didn't have to go there, but he had a funny-nice feeling about the Bad Place all of a sudden, a feeling that maybe it wouldn't be so lonely over there as he always figured it was, not even as lonely as it was on this side. He felt maybe someone was over there who loved him, someone who loved him more than even Julie loved him, even more than their dad used to love him, someone who was all bright, no dark at all, so bright you could only look at Him sideways.

The Bad Thing held Thomas against the dresser with one hand, and with its other hand it pulled the scissors out of itself.

Then it put the scissors in Thomas.

This light started to fill up Thomas, this light that loved him, and he knew he was going away. He hoped when he was all gone, Julie would know how brave he was right at the end, how he stopped crying and stopped being scared and fought back. And then all of a sudden he remembered he hadn't sent a warning to Bobby that the Bad Thing might be coming for them, too, and he started to do that.

-the scissors went in again Then he all of a sudden knew something even more important he had to do. He had to let Julie know that the Bad Place was not so bad, after all, there was a light over there that love you, you could tell. She needed to know about it because deep down she really didn't believe it. She figured it was all dark and lonely the way Thomas once figured it was, so she counted each clock tick and worried about all she had to do before he time ran out, all she had to learn and see and feel and get, a she had to do for Thomas and for Bobby so they'd be ok if Something Happened To Her.

-and the scissors went in again And she was happy with Bobby, but she was never going to be real happy until she knew she didn't have to be so angry about everything ending in a big dark. She was so nice it was hard to figure she was angry inside, but she was. Thomas only figured it out now, as the light was filling him up, figured out how terrible angry Julie was. She was angry that all the hard work and all the hope and all the dreams and all the trying and doing and loving didn't matter in the end because you were sooner or later made dead forever.

-the scissors If she knew about the light, she could stop being angry deep down. So Thomas sent that, too, along with a warning, an with three last words to her and to Bobby, words of his own all three things at once, hoping they wouldn't get mixed up: The Bad Thing's coming, look out, the Bad Thing, there u light that loves you, the Bad Thing, I love you too, and there u light, there's a light, THE BAD THING'S COMING AT 8:15 they were on the Foothill Freeway, rocketing toward the junction with the Ventura Freeway, which they would follow across the San Fernando Valley almost to the ocean before turning north toward Oxnard, Ventura, and eventually Santa Barbara. Julie knew she should slow down, but she couldn't. Speed relieved her tension a little; if she stayed even close to the fiftY-five-mile-an-hour limit, she was pretty sure that she would start to scream before they were past Burbank.

A Benny Goodman tape was on the stereo. The exuberant melodies and syncopated rhythms seemed in time and sympathy with the headlong rush of the car; and if they had been in a movie, Goodman's sounds would have been perfect background music to the tenebrous panorama of light-speckled night hills through which they pa.s.sed from city to city, suburb to suburb.

She knew why she was so tense. In a way she could never have antic.i.p.ated, The Dream was within their grasp they could lose everything as they reached for it. Everything. Hope.

Each other. Their lives.

Sitting in the seat beside her, Bobby trusted her so implicitly that he could doze at more than eighty miles an hour, even though he knew that she, too, had slept only three hours last night. From time to time she glanced at him, just because it felt good to have him there.

He did not yet understand why they were going north to check out the Pollard family, stretching their obligation to the client beyond reason, but his bafflement sprang from the fact that he was nearly as good a man as he appeared to be. He sometimes bent the rules and broke the laws on behalf of their clients, but he was more scrupulous in his personal life than anyone Julie had ever known. She had been with him once when a newspaper-vending machine gave him a copy of the Sunday Los Angeles Times, then malfunctioned and returned three of his four quarters to him, whereupon he had repaid all three into the coin slot, even though that same machine had malfunctioned to his disadvantage on other occasions over the years and was into him for a couple of bucks.

"Yeah, well," he'd said, blushing when she had laughed at his goody-goody deed, "maybe the machine can be crooked and still live with itself, but I can't." Julie could have told him that they were hanging with the Pollard case because they saw a once-in-a-lifetime shot at really big bucks, the Main Chance for which every hustler in the world was looking and which most of them would never find.

Frank had shown them all that cash the From the moment of flight bag and told them about the second cache back at the motel, they were locked in like rats in a maze, drawn forward by the smell of cheese, even though each of them had taken a turn at protesting any interest in the game.

When Frank came back to that hospital room from G.o.d-knew_where, with another three hundred thousand, neither she nor Bobby even 7 I raised the issue of illegality, though it was by that time longer possible to pretend that Frank was entirely an innocent By then the smell of cheese was too strong to be resisted a all. They were plunging ahead because they saw the chance to use Frank to cash out of the rat race and buy into The Dream sooner than they had expected. They were willing to use dirty money and questionable means to get to their desire end, more willing than they could admit to each other, though Julie supposed it could be said in their favor that they were not yet so greedy that they could simply steal the money an the diamonds from Frank and abandon him to the mercy of his psychotic brother; or maybe even their sense of duty t their client was a lie now, a virtue they could point to late when they tried to justify, to themselves, their other less-than n.o.ble acts and impulses.

She could have told him all that, but she didn't, because she did not want to argue with him. She had to let him figure i out at his own pace, accept it in his own way. If she tried to tell him before he was able to understand it, he'd deny what she said. Even if he admitted to a fraction of the truth, he' trot out an argument about the rightness of The Dream, the basic morality of it, and use that to justify the means to the end. But she didn't think a n.o.ble end could remain purely n.o.ble if arrived at by immoral means. And though she could not turn away from this Main Chance, she worried that when they achieved The Dream it would be sullied, not what it might have been.

Yet she drove on. Fast. Because speed relieved some of he fear and tension. It numbed caution too. And without caution she was less likely to retreat from the dangerous confrontation with the Pollard family that seemed inevitable if they were to seize the opportunity to obtain immense and liberating wealth They were in a clearing in traffic, with nothing close behind them and trailing the nearest forward car by about a quarter of a mile, when Bobby cried out and sat up in his seat as i warning her of an imminent collision. He jerked forward, pulling the shoulder harness taut, and put his hands on his head as though stricken by a sudden migraine.

Frightened, she let up on the accelerator, lightly tapped the brake pedal, and said, "Bobby, what is it?" In a voice coa.r.s.ened by fear and sharpened by urgency speaking above the music of Benny Goodman, he said, "Bathing, the Bad Thing, look out, there's a light, there's a light that loves you-" CANDY LOOKED down at the b.l.o.o.d.y body at his feet and knew that he should not have killed Thomas. Instead, he should have taken him away to a private place and tortured the answers out of him even if it took hours for the dummy to remember everything Candy needed to know.

It could even have been fun.

But he was in a rage greater than any he had ever known, and he was less in control of himself than at any time in his life since the day he had found his mother's dead body. He wanted vengeance not only for his mother but for himself and for everyone in the world who ever deserved revenge and never got it. G.o.d had made him an instrument of revenge, and now Candy longed desperately to fulfill his purpose as he had never fulfilled it before. He yearned not merely to tear open the throat and drink the blood of one sinner, but of a great mult.i.tude of sinners. If ever his rage was to be dissipated, he needed not only to drink blood but to become drunk on it, bathe in it, wade through rivers of it, stand on land saturated with it. He wanted his mother to free him from all the rules that had restricted his rage before, wanted G.o.d to turn him loose.

He heard sirens in the distance, and knew that he must go soon.

Hot pain throbbed in his shoulder, where the scissors had parted muscle and sc.r.a.ped bone, but he would deal with that when he traveled. In reconst.i.tuting himself, he could easily remake his flesh whole and healthy.

Stalking through the debris that littered the floor, he looked for something that might give him a clue to the whereabouts of either the Julie or the Bobby of whom Thomas had spoken. They might know who Thomas had been and why he had possessed a gift that not even Candy's blessed mother had been able to impart.

He touched various objects and pieces of furniture, but all he could extract from them were images of Thomas and Derek and some of the aides and nurses who took care of them. Then he saw a sc.r.a.pbook lying open on the floor, beside the table on which he had butchered Derek. The open pages were of all kinds of pictures that had been pasted in lines and peculiar patterns. He picked the book up and leafed through wondering what it was, and when he tried to see the face the last person who had handled it, he was rewarded with someone other than a dummy or a nurse.

A hard-looking man. Not as tall as Candy but almost solid.

The sirens were less than a mile away now, louder by second.

Candy let his right hand glide over the cover of the sc.r.a.pebook, seeking ... seeking...

Sometimes he could sense only a little, sometimes a lot. T time he had to be successful, or this room was going to be dead end in his search for the meaning of the dummy's pow Seeking...

He received a name. Clint.

Clint had sat in Derek's chair sometime during the afternoon, paging through this odd collection Of pictures.

When he tried to see where Clint had gone, after leaving the room, he saw a Chevy that Clint was driving on the freeway then a place called Dakota & Dakota. Then the Chevy again on a freeway at night, and then a small house in a place call Placentia.

The approaching sirens were very close now, probably coming up the driveway into the Cielo Vista parking lot.

Candy threw the book down. He was ready to go.

He had only one more thing to do before he teleported When he had discovered that Thomas was a dummy, and who he had realized that Cielo Vista was a place full of them, had been angered and offended by the home's existence.

He held his hands two feet apart, palm facing palm. Sky-blue light glowed between them.