was still loose to do more killing, maybe even doing to Julie what it’d
done to Derek.
The hurt, the fear for himself, the fear for Julie-all of it was too
much. Thomas gripped the footboard of his own bed and closed his eyes
and tried to get air into himself. It wouldn’t come. His chest was
tight. Then the air came in, and so did an ugly-nasty smell, which in a
while he realized was the stink of Derek’s blood, so he gagged and
almost puked.
He knew he had to Get Control of Himself. The aides didn’t like it when
you Lost Control of Yourself, so they Gave You Something For Your Own
Good. He’d never Lost Control before and didn’t want to lose it now.
He tried not to smell the blood. Took long deep breaths. Made himself
open his eyes to look at the dead body. He figured looking at it the
second time wouldn’t be as bad as the first. He knew it was going to be
there this time, so it wouldn’t be such a big surprise.
The surprise was-the body was gone.
Thomas closed his eyes, put one hand to his face, looked again between
spread fingers. The body still wasn’t there.
He started shaking because what he thought, first, was that this was
like some other TV stories he’d seen where nasty-dead bodies were
walking around like live bodies, rotting and getting wormy, with bones
showing in places, killing people for no reason and even sometimes
eating them. He wasn’t much for one of those stories. He sure didn’t
want to be in one. He was so scared he almost sent to Bobby-Dead
people, look out, look out, dead people hungry and mean and walking
around-but stopped himself when he saw there wasn’t blood on Derek’s
blankets and sheets. The bed wasn’t rumpled, their. Neatly made. No
walking dead person was quick enough to get out of bed, change sheets
and blankets, make everything right just in the few little seconds while
Thomas’s eyes were closed. Then he heard the shower pouring down on the
floor of the stall in the bathroom, and he heard Derek singing the way
he always did when he washed himself. For just a moment, in his head,
Thomas had a picture of a dead person taking a shower, trying to be
neat, but rotten chunks were falling off with the dirt, showing more
bones, clogging the drain. Then he realized Derek was never really
dead, Thomas hadn’t really seen a body on the bed. What he’d seen was
something he’d learned from TV stories-he’d seen a vision. A Psychic
vision. He was a sidekick.
Derek hadn’t been killed. What Thomas saw, just for a moment, was Derek
being dead tomorrow or some other day a tomorrow. It might be something
that would happen no matter what Thomas did to stop it, or it might be
something would happen only if he let it happen, but at least it was
something that already happened.
He let go of the footboard and went to his worktable.
His legs were shaky. He was glad to sit down. He opened the drawer of
the cabinet that stood beside the table. He saw scissors in there,
where they should be, with his colored pen and pens and paper clips and
Scotch tape and stapler-an half-eaten Hershey’s bar in an open wrapper,
which shouldn’t be in there because it would Draw Bugs. He took the
candy out of the drawer and stuffed it in a pocket of his robe,
reminding himself to put it in the refrigerator later.
For a while he stared at the scissors, listened to Derek in the shower,
and thought how the scissors were jammed in Derek’s belly, letting all
the music and other sounds out of him forever, sending him to the Bad
Place. Finally he touched the black plastic handles. They felt all
right, so he touched the metal blades, but that was bad, real bad, as if
leftover lightning from a storm was in the blades and jumped into him
when he touched them. Sizzling, crackling white light flashed through
him. He snatched his hand back. His fingers tingled. He closed the