stroke its ego, keep it as happy as we-”
“That’s no good. You can’t control madness by indulging it. That only
creates more and deeper madness. I suspect any nurse in a mental
institution would tell you the best way to deal with potentially violent
paranoid is to be nice, respectful, but firm.” He withdrew his hand from
hers because his palms were clammy. He blotted them on his shirt.
The mill seemed unnaturally silent, as if it were in a vacuum where
sound could not travel, sealed in an immense bell jar, on display in a
museum in a land of giants. At another time Jim might have found the
silence disturbing, but now he embraced it because it probably meant The
Friend was sleeping or at least preoccupied with concerns other than
them.
“It wants to do good,” he said. “It might be insane, and it might be
violent and even evil in its second identity, a regular Dr. Jekyll and
Mr.
Hyde. But like Dr. Jekyll it really wants to do good. At least we’ve
got that going for us.”
She thought about it a moment. “Okay, I’ll give you that one. And when
it comes back, I’ll try to pry some truth out of it.”
“What scares me most-is there really anything we can learn from it that
could help us? Even if it tells us the whole truth about everything, if
it’s insane it’s going to turn to irrational violence sooner or later.”
She nodded. “But we gotta try.”
They settled into an uneasy silence.
When he looked at his watch, Jim saw that it was ten minutes past one in
the morning. He was not sleepy. He didn’t have to worry about drifting
off and dreaming and thereby opening a doorway, but he was physically
drained. Though he had not done anything but sit in a car and drive,
then sit or stand in the high room waiting for revelations, his muscles
ached as if he had put in ten hours of heavy manual labor.
His face felt slack with weariness, and his eyes were hot and grainy.
Extreme stress could be every bit as debilitating as strenuous physical
activity.
He found himself wishing The Friend would never return, wishing not in
an idle way but with the wholehearted commitment of a young boy wishing
that an upcoming visit to the dentist would not transpire. He put every
fiber of his being into the wish, as if convinced, the way a kid
sometimes could be, that wishes really did now and then come true.
He remembered a quote from Chazal, which he had used when teaching a
literature unit on the supernatural fiction of Poe and Hawthorne:
Extreme terror gives us back the gestures of our childhood If he ever
went back into the classroom, he would be able to teach that unit a hell
of a lot better, thanks to what had happened to him in the old windmill.
At 1:25 The Friend disproved the value of wishing by putting in a sudden
appearance. This time no bells heralded its approach. Red light
blossomed in the wall, like a burst of crimson paint in clear water.
Holly scrambled to her feet.
So did Jim. He could no longer sit relaxed in the presence of this
mysterious being, because he was now more than halfconvinced that at any
moment it might strike at them with merciless brutality.
The light separated into many swarms, surged all the way around the
room, then began to change from red to amber.
The Friend spoke without waiting for a question: “August first Seattle
Washington. Laura Lenaskian, saved from drowning. She will give birth
to u child who will become a great composer and whose music will give
solace to many people in times of trouble. August eighth. Peoria,
Illinois Doogie Burkette. He will grow up to be a paramedic in Chicago,
where he will do much good and save many lives August twelfth. Portland
Oregon. Billy Jenkins He will grow up to be a brilliant medical
technologist whose inventions will revolutionize medical care” Jim met
Holly’s eyes and did not even have to wonder what she was thinking: the