limply in his fierce embrace. A shiver of delicious anticipation
whizzed through He had considered killing his father to learn if that
act would win him back his citizenship in Hades. But he was wart’ of
his old man. Jonas Nyebern was a rule-giver and seemed to shine with an
inner light that Vassago found forbidding. His earliest memories of his
father were wrapped up in images of Christ and angels and the Holy
Mother and miracles, scenes from the paintings that Jonas collected and
with which their home had always been decorated. And only two years
ago, his father had rest him in themnnner of Jesus raiimgcold
Consequently, he thought of Jonas not merely as the enemy but as a
figure of power, an embodiment of those bright forces that were opposed
to the will of Hell. His father was no doubt protected, untouchable,
living in the loathsome grace of that other deity.
-His hopes, then, were pinned on the woman and the girl. One
acquisition made, the other pending.
He drove east past endless tracts of houses that had sprung up in the
six years since Fantasy World had been abandoned, and he was grateful
that the spawning multitudes of lite-loving hypocrites had not pressed
to the very perimeter of his special hideaway, which still lay miles
beyond the last of the new communities. As the peopled hills passed by,
as the land grew steadily less hospitable though still inhabited,
Vassago drove more slowly than he would have done any other night.
He was waiting for a vision that would tell him if he should kill the
child upon arrival at the park or wait until the mother was his, as
well.
Turning his head to look at her once more, he discovered she was
watching him. Her eyes shone with the reflected light from the
instrument Jonas returned to the living room with the box of items he
had saved panel. He could see that her fear was great.
“Poor baby,” he said. “Don’t be afraid. Okay? Don’t be afraid.
We’re just going to an amusement park, that’s all. You know, like
Disneyland, like Magic Mountain?”
If he was unable to acquire the mother, perhaps he should look for
another child about the same size as Regina, a particularly pretty one
with four strong, healthy limbs. He could then remake this girl with
the arm, hand, and leg of the other, as if to say that he, a mere
twenty-year-old expatriate of Hell, could do a better job than the
Creator. That would make a fine addition to his collection, a singular
work of art.
He listened to the contained thunder of the engine. The hum of the
tires on the pavement. The soft whistle of wind at the windows.
Waiting for an epiphany. Waiting for guidance. Waiting to be told what
thin he should do. Waiting, waiting, a vision to behold.
Even before they reached the Ortega Highway off-ramp, Hatchreviewed a
flurry of images stranger than anything he had seen before. None lasted
longer than a few seconds, as if he were watching a film with no
narrative structure. Dark seas crashing on black shores under starless
and moonless skies. Enormous ships, windowless and mysterious, driven
through the tenebrous waves by powerful engines that produced a noise
like the anguished screaming of multitudes. Colossal demonic figures, a
hundred feet tall, striding through alien landscapes, black capes
flowing behind them, heads encased in black helmets as shiny as glass.
Titanic, half-glimpsed machines at work on monumental structures of such
odd design that purpose and function could not even be guessed.
Sometimes Hatch saw that hideous landscape in eerily vivid detail, but
sometimes he saw only descriptions of it in words on the printed pages
of a book. If it existed, it must be on some far world, for it was not
of this earth.
But he was never sure if he was receiving pictures of a real place or
one that was merely imagined. At times it seemed as vividly depicted as
any street in Laguna but at other times seemed tissue-paper Jeremy’s
room, and put it down beside his armchair. He withdrew from the box a
small, shoddily printed volume titled The Htdaen and gave it to Kari,