even the best of men had limits. He evidently felt that he had failed
his parents somehow. Their deaths weighed heavily on his conscience,
and he was trying to redeem himself by saving the lives of others: HE
LOOKED LIKE MY FATHER, WHOM I FAILED TO SAVE.
It was now obvious, as well, why The Enemy broke through only when Jim
was asleep: he was terrified of that dark aspect of himself, that
embodiment of his rage, and he strenuously repressed it when he was
awake. At his place in Laguna, The Enemy had materialized in the
bedroom while Jim was sleeping and actually had been sustained for a
while after Jim had awakened, but when it had crashed through the
bathroom ceiling, it had simply evaporated like the lingering dream it
was. Dreams are doorways, The Friend had warned, which had been a
warning from Jim himself Dreams were doorways, yes, but not for evil,
mind-invading alien monsters ; dreams were doorways to the subconscious,
and what came out of them was all too human.
She had other pieces of the puzzle, too. She just didn’t know how they
fit together.
Holly was angry with herself for not having asked the correct questions
on Monday, when Jim had finally opened his patio door and let her into
his life. He’d insisted that he was only an instrument, that he had no
powers of his own. She’d bought it too quickly. She should have probed
harder, asked tougher questions. She was as guilty of amateurish
interviewing technique as Jim had been when The Friend had first
appeared to them.
She had been annoyed by his willingness to accept what The Friend said
at face value. Now she understood that he had created The Friend for
the same reason that other victims of multiple-personality syndrome
generated splinter personalities: to cope in a world that confused and
frightened them. Alone and afraid at the age of ten, he had taken
refuge in fantasy.
He created The Friend, a magical being, as a source of solace and hope.
When Holly pressed The Friend to explain itself logically, Jim resisted
her because her probing threatened a fantasy which he desperately needed
to sustain himself For similar reasons of her own, she had not
questioned him as toughly as she should have on Monday evening. He was
her sustaining dream. He had come into her life like a heroic figure in
a dream, saving Billy Jenkins with dreamlike grace and panache. Until
she had seen him, she had not realized how much she needed someone like
him. And instead of probing deeply at him as any good reporter would
have done, she had let him be what he wanted to pretend to be, for she
had been reluctant to lose him.
Now their only hope was to press hard for the whole truth. He could not
be healed until they understood why this particular and bizarre fantasy
of his had evolved and how in the name of God he had developed the
superhuman powers to support it.
She sat with her hands on the steering wheel, prepared to act but with
no idea what to do. There seemed to be no one to whom she could turn
for help. She needed answers that were to be found only in the past or
in Jim’s subconscious mind, two terrains that at the moment were equally
inaccessible.
Then, hit by a thunderbolt of insight, she realized Jim already had
given her a set of keys to unlock his remaining mysteries. When they
had driven into New Svenborg, he had taken her on a tour of the town
which, at the time, seemed like a tactic to delay their arrival at the
farm. But she realized now that the tour had contained the most
important revelations he had made to her. Each nostalgic landmark was a
key to the past and to the remaining mysteries that, once unlocked,
would make it possible for her to help him.
He wanted help. A part of him understood that he was sick, trapped in a
schizophrenic fantasy, and he wanted out. She just hoped that he would
suppress The Enemy until they had time to learn what they needed to