been genuinely prophetic. After all the mess that Frank had brought
into their lives, she was willing to give credence to such things as
omens, visions, prescient dreams.
The bad thing is coming, the bad thing…
Maybe the bad thing was Mr. Blue.
Jackie regressed Frank to the alleyway, to the very morning when he had
first awakened in a strange place, disoriented confused.
“Now go back further, Frank, just a little further back just a few more
seconds, and a few more, back, back, beyond the total darkness in your
mind, beyond that black in your mind….” Since the questioning had
begun, Frank had appeared to dwindle in Julie’s desk chair, as if made
of wax and subjected to a flame. He had grown paler, too, if that was
possible, as white as candle paraffin. But now, as he was forced
backward through the darkness in his mind, toward the light of memory on
the other side, he sat up straighter, put his hands on the arms of the
chair and clutched the vinyl almost tightly enough to cause the
upholstery to split. He seemed to be growing, returning to his former
size, as if he had drunk one of the magic elixirs that Alice had
consumed in her adventures at the far end of the rabbit hole.
“Where are you now?” Jackie asked.
Frank’s eyes twitched beneath his closed lids. An inarticulate,
strangled sound issued from him.
“Uh… uh…
“Where are you now?” Jackie insisted gently but firmly.
“Fireflies,” Frank said shakily.
“Fireflies in a windstorm!” He began to breathe rapidly, raggedly, as
if he were having trouble drawing air into his lungs.
“What do you mean by that, Frank?”
“Fireflies.
“Where are you, Frank?”
“Everywhere. Nowhere.”
“We don’t have fireflies in southern California, Frank, so you must be
somewhere else. Think, Frank. Look around yourself now and tell me
where you are.”
“Nowhere.” Jackie made a few more attempts to get Frank to describe his
surroundings and be more specific as to the nature of the fireflies, all
to no avail.
“Move him on from there,” Bobby said.
“Farther back.” Julie glanced at the recorder in Clint’s hand and saw
the spools turning behind the plastic window in the tapedeck.
With his melodic and vibrant voice, in seductively rhythmic cadences,
Jackie ordered Frank to regress past the firefly speckled darkness.
Suddenly Frank said,
“What am I doing here?” He was not referring to the offices of Dakota &
Dakota, but to the place that Jackie Jaxx had drawn him to in his
memory.
“Why here?”
“Where are you, Frank?”
“The house. What in the hell am I doing here, why did I come here? This
is crazy, I shouldn’t be here.”
“Whose house is it, Frank?” Bobby asked.
Because he had been instructed to hear only the hypnotists voice, Frank
did not respond until Jackie repeated the question. Then:
“Her house. It’s her house. She’s dead, of course, been dead seven
years, but it’s still her house, always will, the bitch will haunt the
place, you can’t destroy that kind of evil, not entirely, part of it
lingers in the rooms where she lived, in everything she touched.”
“Who was she, Frank?”,Mother.” -Your mother? What was her name?”
“Roselle. Roselle Pollard.”
“This is the house on Pacific Hill Road?”
“Yeah. Look at it, my God, what a place, what a dark place what a bad
place. Can’t people see what a bad place it is? can’t they see that
something terrible lives in there?”
He was crying. Tears glimmered in his eyes, then streamed down his
cheeks. Anguish twisted his voice.
“Can’t they see what’s in their what lives there, what hides there and
breeds in that bad place? Are people blind? Or do they just not want
to see?”
Julie was riveted by Frank’s tortured voice and by the agony that had
wrenched his face into an approximation of the pain countenance of a
lost and frightened child. But she turned away from him and peered past
the hypnotist to see if Bobby had reacted to the words
“bad place.” He was looking at her. The expression of distress that
darkened his blue eyes was proof enough that the reference had not