maybe that’ll be the beginning of the end of The Friend and The Enemy.”
Still shaking his head, he said, “The Enemy won’t go peacefully,” and
immediately blinked in surprise at the words he had spoken and the
implication that they conveyed.
“Damn,” Holly said, and a thrill coursed through her, not merely because
he had just confirmed her entire theory, whether he could admit it or
not, but because the five words he had spoken were proof that he wanted
out of the Byzantine fantasy in which he had taken refuge.
He was as pale as a man who had just been told that a cancer was growing
in him. In fact a malignancy did reside within him, but it was mental
rather than physical.
A breeze wafted through the open car windows, and it seemed to wash new
hope into Holly.
That buoyant feeling was short-lived, however, because new words
suddenly appeared on the tablet in Jim’s hands: YOU DIE.
“This isn’t me,” he told her earnestly, in spite of the subtle admission
he had made a moment ago. “Holly, this can’t be me.”
On the tablet, more words appeared: I AM COMING. YOU DIE.
Holly felt as if the world had become a carnival funhouse, full of
ghouls and ghosts. Every turn, any moment, without warning, something
might spring at her from out of a shadow-or from broad daylight, for
that matter. But unlike a carnival monster, this one would inflict real
pain, draw blood, kill her if it could.
In hopes that The Enemy, like The Friend, would respond well to
firmness, Holly grabbed the tablet from Jim’s hand and threw it out the
window.
“To hell with that. I won’t read that crap.
Listen to me, Jim. If I’m right, The Enemy is the embodiment of your
rage over the deaths of your parents. Your fury was so great, at ten,
it terrified you, so you pushed it outside yourself, into this other
identity. But you’re a unique victim of multiple-personality syndrome
because your power allows you to create physical existences for your
other identities.”
Though acceptance had a toehold in him, he was still struggling to deny
the truth. “What’re we saying here? That I’m insane, that I’m some
sort of socially functional lunatic, for Christ’s sake?”
“Not insane,” she said quickly. “Let’s say disturbed, troubled.
You’re locked in a psychological box that you built for yourself, and
you want out, but you can’t find the key to the lock.”
He shook his head. Fine beads of sweat had broken out along his
hairline, and he was into whiter shades of pale. “No, that’s putting
too good a face on it. If what you think is true, then I’m all the way
off the deep end, Holly, I should be in some damned rubber room, pumped
full of Thorazine.”
She took both of his hands again, held them tight. “No. Stop that.
You can find your way out of this, you can do it, you can make yourself
whole again, I know you can.”
“How can you know? Jesus, Holly, I”
“Because you’re not an ordinary man, you’re special,” she said sharply.
“You have this power, this incredible force inside you, and you can do
such good with it if you want. The power is something you can draw on
that ordinary people don’t have, it can be a healing power.
Don’t you see?
If you can cause ringing bells and alien heartbeats and voices to come
out of thin air, if you can turn walls into flesh, project images into
my dreams, see into the future to save lives, then you can make yourself
whole and right again.”
Determined disbelief lined his face. “How could any man have the power
you’re talking about?”
“I don’t know, but you’ve got it.”
“It has to come from a higher being. For God’s sake, I’m not Superman.”
Holly pounded a fist against the horn ring and said, “You’re telepathic,
telekinetic, tele-fucking-everything! All right, you can’t fly, you
don’t have X-ray vision, you can’t bend steel with your bare hands, and
you can’t race faster than a speeding bullet. But you’re as close to
Superman as any man’s likely to get. In fact, in some ways you’ve got