an explanation would suddenly be writ large across the heavens.
No explanation came to him. He remained confused and anxious.
At least Lindsey and Regina were fine, untouched by whatever presence he
had connected with last night.
He was reminded of an old vampire movie he had once seen, in which a
wizened priest had warned a young woman that the undead could enter her
house only if she invited them-but that they were cunning and
persuasive, capable of inducing even the wary to issue that mortal
invitation.
Somehow a bond existed between Hatch and the psychotic who had killed
the young blond punker named Lisa. By falling to repress his anger at
William Cooper, he had strengthened that bond. His anger was the key
that opened the door. When he indulged in anger, he was issuing an
invitation just like the one against which the priest in that movie had
warned the young woman. He could not explain how he knew this to be
true, but he did know it, all right, knew it in his bones. He just
wished to God he understood it.
He felt lost.
Small and powerless and afraid.
And although Lindsey and Regina had come through the night unharmed, he
sensed more strongly than ever that they were in great danger.
Growing greater by the day. By the hour.
3
Before dawn, the thirtieth of April, Vassago bathed outdoors with
bottled water and liquid soap. By the first light of day, he bad safely
ensconced in the deepest part of his hideaway. Lying on his mattress,
staring up the elevator shaft, he treated himself to Oreos and warm root
beer, then to a couple of snack-size bags of Reese’s Murder was always
enormously satisfying. Tremendous internal pressures were released with
the striking of a killing blow. More important, each murder was an act
of rebellion against all things holy, against commandments and laws and
rules and the irritatingly prissy systems oft employed by human beings
to support the fiction that life was precious and endowed with meamng.
Life was cheap and the point was Nothing mattered but sensation and the
swift gratification of all d which only the strong and free really
understood. After every kilhhg, Vassago felt as liberated as the wind
and mightier than any steel machine.
Until one glorious night in his twelfth year, he had been one of the
enslaved , dumbly plodding through life according to the rules of
civilization, though they made no sense to him. He pretended to love
his mother, father, sister, and a host of relatives, though he felt
nothing more for them than he did for strangers encountered on the
street.
As a child, when he was old enough to begin thinking about such things,
he wondered if something was wrong with him, a crucial element missing
from his makeup. As he listened to himself playing the game of love,
employing strategies of false affection and shameless flattery, he was
somehow convincing others found him, for he could hear the insincerity
in his voice, could feel the fraudulence in every gesture, and was
acutely aware of the deceit behind his every loving smile. Then one day
he suddenly heard the deception in their voices and saw it in their
faces, and he knew that none of them had ever experienced love, either,
or any of the nobler sentiments toward which a civilized person was
supposed to aspire, selflessness, courage, piety, humility, and all the
rest of that dreary catechism. They were all playing the game, too.
Later he came to the conclusion that most of them, even the adults, had
never enjoyed his degree of insight, and remained unaware that other
people were exactly like them. Each person thought he was unique, that
something was missing in him, and that he must play the game well or be
uncovered and ostracized as something less than human. God had tried to
create a world of love, had failed, and had commanded His creations to
pretend to the perfection with which He had been unable to imbue them.
Perceiving that stunning truth, Vassago had taken his first step toward
freedom. Then one summer night when he was twelve, he finally