Her heart began to pound. “Jim!”
At the note of alarm in her voice, he sat up straighter and opened his
eyes. “What?”
“For God’s sake, don’t close your eyes that long. You might’ve been
asleep, and I wouldn’t have realized it until”
“You think I can sleep with this on my mind?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to take the chance. Keep your eyes open,
okay? You obviously suppress The Enemy when you’re awake, it only comes
through all the way when you’re asleep.”
In the windshield glass, like a computer readout in a fighter-plane
cockpit, words began to appear from left to right, in letters about one
inch high: DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD.
Scared but unwilling to show it, she said, “To hell with that,” and
switched on the windshield wipers, as if the threat was dirt that could
be scrubbed away. But the words remained, and Jim stared at them with
evident dread.
As they passed a small ranch, the scent of new-mown hay entered with the
wind through the windows.
“Where are we going?” he asked again.
“Exploring.”
“Exploring what?”
“The past.”
Distressed, he said, “I haven’t bought this scenario yet. I can’t.
How the hell can I? And how can we ever prove it’s true or isn’t?”
“We go to town,” she said. “We take that tour again, the one you took
me on yesterday. Svenborg-port of mystery and romance. What a dump.
But it’s got something. You wanted me to see those places, your
subconscious was telling me answers can be found in Svenborg. So let’s
go find them together.”
New words appeared under the first six: DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD.
Holly knew that time was running out. The Enemy wanted through, wanted
to gut her, dismember her, leave her in a steaming heap of her own
entrails before she had a chance to convince Jim of her theory-and it
did not want to wait until Jim was asleep. She was not certain that he
could repress that dark aspect of himself as she pushed him closer to a
confrontation with the truth. His self control might crack, and his
benign personalities might sink under the rising dark force.
“Holly, if I had this bizarre multiple personality, wouldn’t I be cured
as soon as you explained it to me, wouldn’t the scales immediately fall
off my eyes?”
“No. You have to believe it before you can hope to deal with it.
Believing that you suffer an abnormal mental condition is the first step
toward an understanding of it, and understanding is only the first
painful step toward a cure.”
“Don’t talk at me like a psychiatrist, you’re no psychiatrist.”
He was taking refuge in anger, in that arctic glare, trying to
intimidate her as he had tried on previous occasions when he’d not
wanted her to get any closer. Hadn’t worked then, wouldn’t work now.
Sometimes men could be so dense.
She said, “I interviewed a psychiatrist once.”
“Oh, terrific, that makes you a qualified therapist.”
“Maybe it does. The psychiatrist I interviewed was crazy as a loon
himself, so what does a university degree matter?”
He took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. “Okay, suppose
you’re right and somehow we do turn up undeniable proof that I’m crazy
as a loon”
“You aren’t crazy, you’re-”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m disturbed, troubled, in a psychological box. Call it
whatever you want.
If we find proof somehow-and I can’t imagine how then what happens to
me? Maybe I just smile and say, Oh, yes, of course, I made it all up, I
was living in a delusion, I’m ever so much better now,
let’s have lunch.” But I don’t think so. I think what happens is. . .
I blow apart, into a million pieces.”
“I can’t promise you that the truth, if we find it, will be any sort of
salvation, because so far I think you’ve found your salvation in fantasy
not in truth. But we can’t go on like this because The Enemy resents
me, and sooner or later it’ll kill me. You warned me yourself.”
He looked at the words on the windshield, and said nothing. He was