like clothes.”
“Well,” Frank said, “I can’t remember prior to last week, but this is
the first time anything like this has happened since then, even though
I’ve apparently been… traveling more nights than not. Then again,
even if my clothes have come through okay, I seem to be getting more
weary, weaker, and more confused day by day…. He did not have to
finish the thought, because the worry in their eyes and faces made clear
their understanding. If he was teleporting, and if it was a strenuous
act that bled him strength that could not be restored by rest, he was
gradually going to get less meticulous about the reconstitution of
clothes and whatever other items he tried to carry with him But more
important-he might begin to have difficulty reinstituting his body, as
well. He might return from one of his late-night rambles and find
fragments of his sweater woven into the back of his hand, and the skin
replaced by that piece of cotton might turn up as a pale patch in the
dark leather of his shoe and the displaced leather from the shoe might
appear as integral part of his tongue… or as strands of alien cells
twist through his brain tissue. Fear, never far away and circling like
a shark in the dept of Frank’s mind, abruptly shot to the surface,
called forth the worry and pity that he saw in the faces of those on who
he was depending for salvation. He closed his eyes, but it was a rotten
idea because he had a vision of his own face when he shut out theirs,
his face as it might look after a disastrous reconstitution at the end
of a future telekinetic journey: eyes or ten misplaced teeth sprouting
from his right eye socket;evicted eye staring lidlessly from the middle
of the cheek below; his nose smeared in hideous lumps of flesh and
gristle across the side of his face. In the vision he opened his
misshapen mouth, perhaps to scream, and within his sight were two
fingers and a portion of his hand, rooted where the tongue should had
been.
He opened his eyes as a low cry of terror and misery escaped him.
He was shuddering. He couldn’t stop.
HAVING FRESHENED everyone’s coffee and, at Bobby’s suggestion, having
laced Frank’s mug with bourbon in spite of the early hour, Hal went to
the nook off the reception lounge to brew another pot.
After Frank had been fortified with a few sips of the spiked coffee,
Julie showed the photograph to him and watched his reaction carefully.
“You recognize either of the people in this?”
“No. They’re strangers to me.”
“The man,” Bobby said, “is George Farris. The real George Farris. We
got the picture from his brother-in-law.”
Frank studied the photograph with renewed interest. “Maybe I knew him,
and that’s why I borrowed his name but I can’t recall ever seeing him
before.”
“He’s dead,” Julie said, and thought that Frank’s surprise was genuine.
She explained how Farris had died, years ago… and then how his family
had been slaughtered far more recently. She told him about James Roman,
too, and how Roman’s family died in a fire in November.
With what appeared to be sincere dismay and confusion, Frank said, “Why
all these deaths? Is it coincidence?”
Julie leaned forward. “We think Mr. Blue killed them /.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Blue Light. The man you said pursued you that night in Anaheim,
the man you think is hunting you for some reason. We believe he
discovered you were traveling under the names Farris and Roman, so he
went to the addresses he got for them, and when he didn’t find you
there, he killed everyone, either while trying to squeeze information
out of them or… just for the hell of it.”
Frank looked stricken. His pale face grew even paler, as if it were an
image doing a slow fade on a movie screen. The bleak look in his eyes
intensified. “If I hadn’t been using that fake ID, he never would’ve
gone to those people. It’s because of me they died.”
Feeling sorry for the guy, ashamed of the suspicion that had driven her