of wind and a roar that gave Bobby the peculiar feeling that he a Julie
and the Toyota were still moving, doing eighty-five with him holding on
to the open door and her with a hand on his shoulder, magically keeping
their balance and avoiding road burn as they dragged their feet along
the pavement, with body driving.
The dream had seriously unsettled and disoriented him.
“Not a dream, really,” he told her. He continued to keep his head down,
peering at loose gravel on the shoulder of the highway, half expecting a
return of the cramping nausea.
“Not like the dream I had before, about us a the jukebox and the ocean
of acid.”
“But about ‘the bad thing’ again.”
“Yeah. You couldn’t call it a dream, though, because it just this.. –
this burst of words, inside my head.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know.” He dared to lift his head, and though a whirl of
dizziness swept through him, the nausea did not return.
He said,
“‘Bad thing… look out… there’s a light that loves You. – -.” I
can’t remember it all. It was so strong, so hard like somebody shouting
at me through a bullhorn that pressed against my ear. Except that’s not
right, either, because I didn’t really hear the words, they were just
there, in my head But they felt loud, if that makes any sense. And
there were images, like in a dream. Instead there were these feelings,
as strong as they were confused. Fear and joy, anger and forgiveness…
and right at the end of it, this strange sense of peace that I… can’t
describe.” A Peterbilt thundered toward them, towing the biggest
trailer the law allowed. Sweeping out of the night behind its blazing
headlights, it looked like a leviathan swimming up from a deep marine
trench, all raw power and cold rage, with a hunger that could never be
satisfied. For some reason, as it boomed past them, Bobby thought of
the man he had seen on the beach at Punaluu, and he shuddered.
Julie said,
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure?” He nodded.
“A little dizzy. That’s all.”
“What now?” He looked at her.
“What else? We go on to Santa Barbara.
El Encanto Heights, bring this thing to an end… somehow.” CANDY
ARRIVED in the archway between a living room and dining room. No one
was in either place.
He heard a buzzing sound farther back in the house, and after a moment
he identified it was an electric razor. It stopped. Then he heard
water running in a sink, and the drone of a bath room exhaust fan.
He intended to head straight for the hall and the bath, take the man by
surprise. But he heard a rustle of paper from the opposite direction.
He crossed the dining room and stepped into the kitchen doorway. It was
smaller than the kitchen in his mother’s house, but it was as spotlessly
clean and orderly as his mother’s kitchen had not been since her death.
A woman in a blue dress was sitting at the table, her back to him. She
was leaning over a magazine, turning the pages one after the other, as
if looking for something of interest to read.
Candy possessed a far greater control of his telekinetic talents than
Frank enjoyed, and in particular could teleport more efficiently and
swiftly than Frank, creating less air displacement and less noise from
molecular resistance. Nevertheless he was surprised that she had not
gotten up to investigate, the sounds he had made during arrival had been
only one room away from her and, surely, odd enough to prick her!”
curiosity.
She turned a few more pages, then leaned forward to where He could not
see much of her from behind. Her hair thick, lustrous, and so black it
seemed to have been spun from the same loom as the night. Her shoulders
and back were muscular. Her legs, which were both to one side of the
chair crossed at the ankles, were shapely. If he had been a man with
any interest in sex, he Supposed he would have been excited by the curve
of her calves.