twists-harelips at the- very least, misshapen skulls, cleft faces,
withered limbs, or extra heads!” Bobby took Julie’s hand. He needed
the contact.
He wanted to get out of there. He felt burnt out. Hadn’t they heard
enough?
But that was the problem: he didn’t know what was left to hear, or how
much of it might be crucial to finding a way of dealing with the
Pollards.
“Of course, when Roselle brought me that suitcase full of money, I began
to learn that the children were all freaks, mentally if not physically.
And seven years ago, when Frank killed her, he came to me, as if I owed
him something-understanding, shelter. He told me more about them than I
wanted to know, too much. For the next two years, he’d periodically
return here, just appear like a ghost that wanted to haunt me instead of
a place. But he finally understood there was nothing for him here, and
for five years he stayed out of my life. Until today, tonight.” In his
wingback chair, Frank moved. He shifted his body and tipped his head
from the right to the left. Otherwise, he was no more alert than he had
been since they had entered the room. The old man had said that Frank
had come around a few times and had been talkative, but it couldn’t be
proved by his behavior during the past hour or so.
Julie, who was the closest to Frank, frowned and leaned toward him,
peering at the right side of his head.
“Oh, my God.” She spoke those three words in a bleak tone of voice that
was as effective a refrigerant as anything used in an air conditioner.
With a chill skittering up his spine, Bobby slid along the sofa,
crowding her against the other end, and looked past her at the side of
Frank’s head. Wished he had not. Tried to look away. Couldn’t.
When Frank’s head had been tilted to his right, almost lying against his
shoulder, they had not been able to see that temple.
After leaving Bobby at the office, still out of control, travelin
against his will, Frank evidently had returned to one of those craters
where the engineered insects shit out their diamond His flesh was lumpy
all the way along his temple to his ja and in some places the rough
gemstones that were the caus of the lumpiness poked through, gleaming,
intimately melded with his tissue. For whatever reason, he had scooped
up handful to bring with him, but when reconstituting himself he had
made a mistake.
Bobby wondered what treasures might be buried in the so gray matter
within Frank’s skull.
“I saw that too,” Fogarty said.
“And look at the palm his right hand.” Although Julie protested, Bobby
pinched the sleeve Frank’s jacket and pulled until he twisted the man’s
arm of the chair and revealed his palm. He had found the partial roac
that had once been welded into his own shoe. At least it a peared to be
the same one. It was sprouting from the meat part of Frank’s hand,
carapace gleaming, dead eyes staring u toward Frank’s index finger.
CANDY CIRCLED the house in the rain, passing a black cat sitting on a
windowsill. It turned its head to glance at him, then put it face to
the windowpane again.
At the rear of the house, he stepped quietly onto the porch and tried
the back door. It was locked.
Vague blue light pulsed from his hand as he gripped the knob. The lock
slipped, the door opened, and he stepped insid JULIE HAD heard and seen
enough, too much.
Eager to get away from Frank, she rose from the sofa an walked to the
desk, where she considered her unfinished bourbon. But that was no
answer. She was dreadfully tired, stru gling to repress her grief for
Thomas, striving even hardermake some sense out of the grotesque family
history that F garty had revealed to them. She did not need the
complicatio of any more bourbon, appealing as it might look there in the
glass.
She said to the old man,
“So what hope do we have of dealing with Candy?”