take command of him to a greater extent than The Friend had ever done,
and turn him into a killing machine? That might perversely delight the
mad-child aspect of the entity.
She shook herself as if casting off a pestering wasp.
No. It was impossible. All right, Jim could kill in the defense of
innocent people. But he was incapable of killing someone innocent. No
alien consciousness, no matter how powerful, could override his true
nature. In his heart he was good and kind and caring.
His love for her could not be subverted by this alien force, no matter
how strong it was.
But how did she know that? She was engaging in wishful thinking.
For all she knew, The Enemy’s powers of mental control were so awesome
that it could reach into her brain right now and tell her to drown
herself in the pond, and she would do as told.
She remembered Norman Rink. The Atlanta convenience store. Jim had
pumped eight rounds from a shotgun into the guy, blasting at him again
and again, long after he was dead.
Lub-dub-DUB, lub-dub-DUB. . .
Still far away.
Jim groaned softly.
She moved away from the window again, intent on waking him, and almost
called out his name, before she realized that The Enemy might be in him
already. Dreams are doorways. She didn’t have a clue as to what The
Friend meant by that, or if it was anything more than stage dressing
like the bells. But maybe what it had meant was that The Enemy could
enter the dreamer’s dream and thus the dreamer’s mind. Maybe this time
The Enemy did not intend to materialize from the wall but from Jim, in
the person of Jim, in total control of Jim, just for a murderous little
lark.
Lub-dub-DUB, !ub-dub-DUB, lub-dub-DUB. . .
A little louder, a little closer?
Holly felt that she was losing her mind. Paranoid, schizoid, flat-out
crazy. No better than The Friend and his other half She was frantically
trying to understand a totally alien consciousness, and the more she
pondered the possibilities, the stranger and more varied the
possibilities became. In an infinite universe, anything can happen, any
nightmare can be made flesh. In an infinite universe, life was
therefore essentially the same as a dream. Contemplation of that under
the stress of a life-or-death situation, was guaranteed to drive you
bugshit.
Lub-dub-DUB, lub-dub-DUB. . .
She could not move.
She could only wait.
The tripartite beat faded again.
Letting her breath out in a rush, she backed up against the wall beside
the window, less afraid of the limestone now than she was of Jim
Ironheart. She wondered if it was all right to wake him when the
threenote heartbeat was not audible. Maybe The Enemy was only in his
dream -and therefore in him-when that triple thud could be heard.
Afraid to act and afraid not to act, she glanced down at the tablet in
her hand. Some of the pages had fallen shut, and she was no longer
looking at the HE LOVES YOU HOLLY/HE WILL KILL YOU HOLLY litany.
Before her eyes, instead, was the list of people who had been saved by
Jim, along with The Friend’s grandiose explanations of their importance.
She saw “Steven Aimes” and realized at once that he was the only one on
the list whose fate The Friend had not vocalized during one or another
of their conversations last night. She remembered him because he was
the only older person on the list, fifty-seven. She read the words
under his name, and the chill that had touched her nape earlier was
nothing compared to the spike of ice that drove through it now and
pierced her spine.
Steven Aimes had not been saved because he would father a child who
would be a great diplomat or a great artist or a great healer. He had
not been saved because he would make an enduring contribution to the
welfare of mankind. The reason for his salvation was expressed in just
eleven words, the most horrifying eleven words that Holly had ever read
or hoped to read: BECAUSE HE LOOKS LIKE MY FATHER WHOM I FAILED TO SAVE.