were blue, but it was like they were really dark, like under the blue
was a lot of stuff as black as the night out past the gone window.
But the other funny thing was, he wasn’t as scared as he was a while
ago, like he’d used up all his being scared just like he’d used up his
tears. He looked in the Bad Thing’s eyes, and he saw all that big dark,
darkness. The dark that came over the world each day when the sun went
away, and he knew it was wanting to make him dead, going to make him
dead, and that was okay. He was not so afraid of being made dead as he
always thought he would be. It was still a Bad Place, death, and he
wished he didn’t have to go there, but he had a funny-nice feeling about
the Bad Place all of a sudden, a feeling that maybe it wouldn’t be so
lonely over there as he always figured it was, not even as lonely as it
was on this side. He felt maybe someone was over there who loved him,
someone who loved him more than even Julie loved him, even more than
their dad used to love him, someone who was all bright, no dark at all,
so bright you could only look at Him sideways.
The Bad Thing held Thomas against the dresser with one hand, and with
its other hand it pulled the scissors out of itself.
Then it put the scissors in Thomas.
This light started to fill up Thomas, this light that loved him, and he
knew he was going away. He hoped when he was all gone, Julie would know
how brave he was right at the end, how he stopped crying and stopped
being scared and fought back. And then all of a sudden he remembered he
hadn’t sent a warning to Bobby that the Bad Thing might be coming for
them, too, and he started to do that.
-the scissors went in again Then he all of a sudden knew something even
more important he had to do. He had to let Julie know that the Bad
Place was not so bad, after all, there was a light over there that love
you, you could tell. She needed to know about it because deep down she
really didn’t believe it. She figured it was all dark and lonely the
way Thomas once figured it was, so she counted each clock tick and
worried about all she had to do before he time ran out, all she had to
learn and see and feel and get, a she had to do for Thomas and for Bobby
so they’d be ok if Something Happened To Her.
-and the scissors went in again And she was happy with Bobby, but she
was never going to be real happy until she knew she didn’t have to be so
angry about everything ending in a big dark. She was so nice it was
hard to figure she was angry inside, but she was. Thomas only figured
it out now, as the light was filling him up, figured out how terrible
angry Julie was. She was angry that all the hard work and all the hope
and all the dreams and all the trying and doing and loving didn’t matter
in the end because you were sooner or later made dead forever.
-the scissors If she knew about the light, she could stop being angry
deep down. So Thomas sent that, too, along with a warning, an with
three last words to her and to Bobby, words of his own all three things
at once, hoping they wouldn’t get mixed up: The Bad Thing’s coming, look
out, the Bad Thing, there ù light that loves you, the Bad Thing, I love
you too, and there ù light, there’s a light, THE BAD THING’S COMING AT
8:15 they were on the Foothill Freeway, rocketing toward the junction
with the Ventura Freeway, which they would follow across the San
Fernando Valley almost to the ocean before turning north toward Oxnard,
Ventura, and eventually Santa Barbara. Julie knew she should slow down,