understood that in order to be really free, totally free, he had to act
upon his understanding, begin to live differently from the herd of
humanity, with his own pleasure as the only consideration. He had to be
willing to exercise the power over others which he possessed by virtue
of his insight into the true nature of the world. That night he learned
that the ability to kill without compunction was the purest form of
power, and that the exercise of power was the greatest pleasure of them
all. …
In those days, before he died and came back from the dead and chose the
name of the demon prince Vassago, the name to which he had answered and
under which he had lived was Jeremy. His best friend had been Tod
Ledderbeek, the son of Dr. Sam Ledderbeek, a gynecologist whom Jeremy
called the “crack quack” when he wanted to rag Tod.
In the morning of that early June day, Mrs. Ledderbeek had taken Jeremy
and Tod to Fantasy World, the lavish amusement park that, against all
expectations, had begun to give Disneyland a run for its money.
It was in the hills, a few miles east of San Juan Capistrano, somewhat
out of the way-just as Magic Mountain had been a bit isolated before the
suburbs north of Los Angeles had spread around it, and just as
Disneyland had seemed to be in the middle of nowhere when first
constructed on farmland near the obscure town of Anaheim. It was built
with Japanese money, which worried some people who believed the Japanese
were going to own the whole country some day, and there were rumors of
Mafia money being involved, which only made it more mysterious and
appealing. But finally what mattered was that the atmosphere of the
place was cool, the rides radical, and the junk food almost deliriously
junky. Fantasy World was where Tod wanted to spend his twelfth
birthday, in the company of his best friend, free of parental control
from morning until ten o’clock at night, and Tod usually got what he
wanted because he was a good kid; everyone liked him: he knew exactly
how to play the game.
Mrs. Ledderbeck left them off at the front gate and shouted after them
as they raced away from the car: “I’ll pick you up right here at ten
o’clock!
Right here at ten o’clock sharp!”
After paying for their tickets and getting onto the grounds of the park,
Tod said, “What do you wanna do first?”
“I don’t know. What do you wanna do first?”
“Ride the Scorpion?”
“Yeah!”
“Yeah!”
Bang, they were off, hurrying toward the north end of the park where the
track for the Scorpion-“The Roller Coaster with a Sting!” the TV ads all
proclaimed-rose in sweet undulant terror against the clear blue sky.
The park was not crowded yet, and they didn’t need to snake between
cow-slow herds of people. Their tennis shoes pounded noisily on the
blacktop, and each slap of rubber against pavement was a shout of
freedom. They rode the Scorpion, yelling and screaming as it plummeted
and whipped and turned upside down and plummeted again, and when the
ride ended, they ran directly to the boarding ramp and did it once more.
Then, as now, Jeremy had loved speed. The stomach-Bopping sharp turns
and plunges of amusement-park rides had been a childish substitute for
the violence he had unknowingly craved. After two rides on the
Scorpion, with so many sag-swooping-looping-twisting delights ahead,
Jeremy was in a terrific mood.
But Tod tainted the day as they were coming down the exit ramp from
their second trip on the roller coaster. He threw one arm around
Jeremy’s shoulders and said, “Man, this is gonna be for sure the
greatest birthday anybody’s ever had, just you and me.”
The camaraderie, like all camaraderie, was totally fake. Deception.
Fraud. Jeremy hated all that phoney-baloney crap, but Tod was full of
it.
Best friends. Blood brothers. You and me against the world.
Jeremy wasn’t sure what rubbed him the rawest: that Tod jived him all
the time about being good buddies and seemed to think that Jeremy was
taken in by the con-or that sometimes Tod seemed dumb enough to be