The Dream, the basic morality of it, and use that to justify the means
to the end. But she didn’t think a noble end could remain purely noble
if arrived at by immoral means. And though she could not turn away from
this Main Chance, she worried that when they achieved The Dream it would
be sullied, not what it might have been.
Yet she drove on. Fast. Because speed relieved some of he fear and
tension. It numbed caution too. And without caution she was less
likely to retreat from the dangerous confrontation with the Pollard
family that seemed inevitable if they were to seize the opportunity to
obtain immense and liberating wealth They were in a clearing in traffic,
with nothing close behind them and trailing the nearest forward car by
about a quarter of a mile, when Bobby cried out and sat up in his seat
as i warning her of an imminent collision. He jerked forward, pulling
the shoulder harness taut, and put his hands on his head as though
stricken by a sudden migraine.
Frightened, she let up on the accelerator, lightly tapped the brake
pedal, and said,
“Bobby, what is it?” In a voice coarsened by fear and sharpened by
urgency speaking above the music of Benny Goodman, he said,
“Bathing, the Bad Thing, look out, there’s a light, there’s a light that
loves you-” CANDY LOOKED down at the bloody body at his feet and knew
that he should not have killed Thomas. Instead, he should have taken
him away to a private place and tortured the answers out of him even if
it took hours for the dummy to remember everything Candy needed to know.
It could even have been fun.
But he was in a rage greater than any he had ever known, and he was less
in control of himself than at any time in his life since the day he had
found his mother’s dead body. He wanted vengeance not only for his
mother but for himself and for everyone in the world who ever deserved
revenge and never got it. God had made him an instrument of revenge,
and now Candy longed desperately to fulfill his purpose as he had never
fulfilled it before. He yearned not merely to tear open the throat and
drink the blood of one sinner, but of a great multitude of sinners. If
ever his rage was to be dissipated, he needed not only to drink blood
but to become drunk on it, bathe in it, wade through rivers of it, stand
on land saturated with it. He wanted his mother to free him from all
the rules that had restricted his rage before, wanted God to turn him
loose.
He heard sirens in the distance, and knew that he must go soon.
Hot pain throbbed in his shoulder, where the scissors had parted muscle
and scraped bone, but he would deal with that when he traveled. In
reconstituting himself, he could easily remake his flesh whole and
healthy.
Stalking through the debris that littered the floor, he looked for
something that might give him a clue to the whereabouts of either the
Julie or the Bobby of whom Thomas had spoken. They might know who
Thomas had been and why he had possessed a gift that not even Candy’s
blessed mother had been able to impart.
He touched various objects and pieces of furniture, but all he could
extract from them were images of Thomas and Derek and some of the aides
and nurses who took care of them. Then he saw a scrapbook lying open on
the floor, beside the table on which he had butchered Derek. The open
pages were of all kinds of pictures that had been pasted in lines and
peculiar patterns. He picked the book up and leafed through wondering
what it was, and when he tried to see the face the last person who had
handled it, he was rewarded with someone other than a dummy or a nurse.
A hard-looking man. Not as tall as Candy but almost solid.
The sirens were less than a mile away now, louder by second.
Candy let his right hand glide over the cover of the scrapebook, seeking