“Where does it come from, Toby?”
“Outside.”
“What do you mean?”
“Beyond.” ..
“Beyond what?”
“This world.” Is it … extraterrestrial?” – Heather said, “Oh, my
God.” “Yes,” Toby said. “No.”
“Which, Toby?”
“Not as simple as … E.T. Yes.
And no.”
“What is it doing here?”
“Becoming.”
“Becoming what?”
“Everything.” Jack shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” the boy said, riveted to the display on the computer
monitor. Heather stood with her hands fisted against her breast.
Jack said, Toby, yesterday in the graveyard, you weren’t just
between.
like now.”
“Gone.”
“Yes, you were gone all the way.”
“Gone.”
“I couldn’t reach you.”
“Shit,” Heather said furiously, and Jack didn’t look up at her because
he knew she was glaring at him. “What happened yesterday, Jack? Why
didn’t you tell me, for Christ’s sake? Something like this, why didn’t
you tell me?” Without meeting her eyes, he said, “I will, I’ll tell
you, just let me finish this.”
“What else haven’t you told me,” she demanded. “What in God’s name’s
happening, Jack?”
To Toby, he said, “When you were gone yesterday. son, where were
you?”
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Under.”
“Under? Under what?”
“Under it.”
“Under. . . ?”
“Controlled.”
“Under this thing? Under its mind?”
“Yeah. In a dark place.”
Toby’s voice quavered with fear at the memory. “A dark place, cold,
squeezed in a dark place, hurting.”
“Shut it off, shut it down!” Heather demanded. Jack looked up at
her.
She was glaring, all right, red in the face, as furious as she was
frightened. Praying that she would be patient, he said, “We can shut
the computer off, but we can’t keep this thing out that way. Think
about it, Heather. It can get to us by routes through dreams, through
the TV. Apparently even while we’re awake, somehow. Toby was awake
yesterday when it got to him.”
“I let it in,” the boy said. Jack hesitated to ask the question that
was, perhaps, the most critical of all. “Toby, listen … when it’s in
you … does it have to be actually in you? Physically? A part of it
inside you somewhere?”
Something in the brain that would show up in a dissection. Or attached
to the spine. The kind of thing for which Eduardo had wanted Travis
Potter to look.
“No,” the boy said. “No seed . . . no egg .. . no slug . .. nothing
that it is.”
“No.” That was good, very good, thank God and all the angels, that was
very good. Because if something was implanted, how did you get it out
of your child, how did you free him, how could you cut open his brain
and tear it out? Toby said, “Only thoughts. Nothing in you but
thoughts.”
“You mean, like it uses telepathic control?”
“Yeah.” How suddenly the impossible could seem inevitable.
Telepathic control. Something from beyond, hostile and strange, able
to control other species telepathically. right out of a science
fiction movie, yet it felt real and true. “And now it wants in
again?”
Heather asked Toby. “Yes.”
“But you won’t let it in?” she asked. “No.” Jack said, “You can
really keep it out?”
“Yes.” They had hope. They weren’t finished yet. Jack said, “Why did
it leave you yesterday?”
“Pushed it.”
“You pushed it out?”
“Yeah. Pushed it. Hates me.”
“For pushing it out?”
“Yeah.” His voice sank to a whisper. “But it’s … it . .
. it hates . . . hates everything.”
“Why?” With a fury of scarlet and orange swirling across his face and
flashing in his eyes, the boy still whispered: “Because … that’s what
it is.”
“It’s hate?”
“That’s what it does.”
“But why?”
“That’s what it is.”
“Why?” Jack repeated patiently. “Because it knows.”
“Knows what?”
“Nothing matters.”
“It knows … that nothing matters?”
“Yes.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing means.” Dizzied by the only half-coherent exchange, Jack
said, “I don’t understand.” Ikl still lower whisper: “Everything can
be underd, but nothing can be understood.” I want to understand it.”
everything can be understood, but nothing can be stood.” Hether’s
hands were still fisted, but now she pressed to her eyes, as if she