The Bad Place Part 30

Frank took a few steps toward Bobby, out of the mushy mire and onto that section of the beach where the sand was compacted.

"That's far enough," Bobby ordered when Frank was six or eight feet from him.

"Don't come any closer."

"Bobby, we have to go now, right away. I can't teleport correctly when I want. That'll happen when it happens, but at least we have to get away from this part of the island. He knows I lived here. He's familiar with this area. And he may be following us."

The fiery anger in Bobby was not quenched by the rain; grew hotter than ever.

"You lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"It's true, really," Frank said, obviously surprised by Bobby's vehemence.

They were close enough to converse wit out shouting now, but Frank still spoke louder than usual to be heard over the crackle-hiss-patter-rumble of the deluge "Candy came here after me, and he was worse than I'd ever seen him, more horrible, more evil. He came into my house with a baby, an infant he'd picked up somewhere, only a month old, he'd probably killed its parents.

He bit into that poor baby's throat, Bobby, then laughed and offered me its blood, taunted me with it. He drinks blood, you know, she taught him to drink blood, and he relishes it now, thrives on it. And when I wouldn't join him at the baby's throat, he threw it waside the way you'd discard an empty beer can, and he came for me but I... traveled.

"I didn't mean you were lying about him."

A wave broke closer to sh.o.r.e than the others, was.h.i.+ng around Bobby's feet and leaving short-lived, lacelike traceries of foam on the black sand.

"I mean you lied to us about your amnesia. You remember everything. You know exactly who you are."

"No, no." Frank shook his head and made negating gestures with his hands.

"I didn't know. It was a blank. And maybe it'll be a blank again when I stop traveling and stay put someplace."

"Lying s.h.i.+t!" Bobby said.

He stooped, scooped up handsful of wet black sand and threw it at Frank in a blind fury, two more sopping handsful, then two more. He began to realize that he was behaving like a child throwing a tantrum.

Frank flinched from the wet sand but waited patiently for Bobby to stop.

"This isn't like you," he said, when at last Bobby relented.

"To h.e.l.l with you."

"Your rage is all out of proportion to anything you imagine I've done to you." Bobby knew that was true. As he wiped his wet sand covered hands on his s.h.i.+rt and tried to catch his breath, he began to understand that he was not angry at Frank but at what Frank represented to him. Chaos.

Teleportation was a fun house ride in which the monsters and dangers were not illusory, in which the constant threat of death was to be taken seriously, in which there were no rules, no verities that could be relied upon, where up was down and in was out. Chaos. They had ridden the back of a bull named Chaos, and Bobby had been flat-out terrified.

"You okay?" Frank asked.

Bobby nodded.

More than fear was involved. On a level deeper than intellect or even instinct, perhaps as deep as the soul itself, Bobby had been offended by that chaos. Until now he had not realized what a powerful need he had for stability and order. He'd always thought of himself as a free spirit who thrived on change and the unexpected. But now he saw that he had limits and that, in fact, beneath the devil-may-care att.i.tude he sometimes struck, beat the steady heart of a stability-loving traditionalist. He suddenly understood that his pa.s.sion for swing music had roots of which he'd never been aware: the elegant and complex rhythms and melodies of big-band jazz appealed to his bebop surface and to the secret seeker of order who dwelt in his heart.

No wonder he liked Disney cartoons, in which Donald might run wild and Mickey might get in a tangled mess Pluto, but in which order triumphed in the end. Not for the chaotic universe of Warner Brothers' Looney Tune which reason and logic seldom won more than a tempo victory.

"Sorry, Frank," he said at last.

"Give me a second. This isn't the place for it, but I'm having an epiphany."

"Listen, Bobby, please, I'm telling the truth. Evidently I remember everything when I travel. The very fact of traveling tears down the wall blocking my memory, but as soon as I begin traveling, the wall goes up again. It's part of the degeneration I'm undergoing, I guess. Or maybe it's just a desperate attempt to forget what's happened to me in the past, what's happening now, and what will sure as h.e.l.l happen to me in the days to come."

Though no wind had risen, some of the breakers were large now, was.h.i.+ng deep onto the beach. They battered the bottoms of Bobby's legs and, on retreating, buried his feet in coal.

Struggling to explain himself, Frank said, "See, traveling isn't easy for me, like it is for Candy. He can control where he wants to go, and when. He can travel just by deciding to do it, virtually by wis.h.i.+ng himself someplace, like you suggested I might be able to do. But I can't. My talent for portation isn't really a talent, it's a curse."

His voice was shaky.

"I didn't even know I could do it until seven years ago, the day that b.i.t.c.h died. All of us who came from her are cursed, we can't escape it.

I thought I could escape by killing her, but that didn't release me."

After the events of the past hour, Bobby thought nothing could surprise him, but he was startled by the confession Frank had made. This pathetic, sad-eyed, dimpled, comic-fat pudgy man seemed an unlikely perpetrator of matricide.

killed your own mother?"

"Never mind about her. We haven't time for her."

Frank looked back toward the brush out of which they had come and both ways along the beach, but they were still alone in the downpour.

"If you'd known her, if you'd suffered under her hand," Frank said, his voice shaking with anger, "if you had known the atrocities she's capable of, you'd have picked up an ax and chopped at her too."

"You took an ax and gave your mother forty whacks?" That crazy sound burst from Bobby again, a laugh as wet as the rain but not as warm, and again he was spooked by himself "I discovered I could teleport when Candy had me backed into a corner, going to kill me for having killed her. And that's the only time I can travel-when it's a matter of survival."

"n.o.body was threatening you last night in the hospital."

"Well, see, when I start traveling in my sleep, I think maybe I'm trying to escape from Candy in a dream, which triggers teleportation. Traveling always wakes me, but then I can't stop, I keep popping from place to place, sometimes staying a few seconds, sometimes an hour or more, and it's beyond my control, like I'm being bounced around inside a G.o.dd.a.m.n cosmic pinball machine. It exhausts me. It's killing me. You can see how it's killing me."

Frank's earnest persistence and the numbing, relentless roar of the rain had washed away Bobby's rage. He was still somewhat afraid of Frank, of the potential for chaos that Frank represented, but he was no longer angry.

"Years ago," Frank said, "dreams started me traveling maybe one night a month, but gradually the frequency increased, until the last few weeks it happens almost every time I go to sleep. And when we finally wind up in your office or wherever this episode is going to come to an end, you'll remember everything that's happened to us, but I won't. And not only because I want to forget, but because what you suspected is true-I'm not always putting myself back together without mistakes."

"Your mental confusion, loss of intellectual skills, amnesia-they're symptoms of those mistakes."

"Yeah. I'm sure there's sloppy reconstruction and cell damage every time I travel, nothing dramatic in any one trip, but the effect is incremental... and accelerating. Sooner or later it's going to go critical, and I'll either die or experience some weird biological meltdown. Coming to you for help was pointless, no matter how good you are at what you do, because n.o.body can help me. n.o.body- Bobby had already reached that conclusion, but he was still curious.

"What is it with your family, Frank? Your brother has the power to make that car disintegrate around you, then A power to blow out those street lamps, and he can teleport.

what was that business with the cats?"

"My sisters, the twins, they have this thing with animals."

"How come all of you possess these... abilities? Who your mother, your father?"

"We don't have time for that now, Bobby. Later. I'll try and explain later."

He held out his cut hand, which had even stopped bleeding or was sluiced free of blood by the rain could pop out of here any moment, and you'd be stranded."

"No thanks," Bobby said, shunning his client's hand.

" me an old fuddy-duddy, but I'd prefer an airliner." He pa his hip pocket.

"Got my wallet, credit cards. I can be back in Orange County tomorrow, and I don't have to take a chance that I'll arrive there with my left ear where my nose should be."

"But Candy's probably going to follow us, Bobby. If you're here when he shows up, he'll kill you,"

Bobby turned to his right and started to walk toward the distant restaurant.

"I'm not afraid of anyone named Candy."

"You better be," Frank said, grabbing his arm and halting him.

Jerking away as if making contact with his client was tantamount to contracting the bubonic plague, Bobby said, could he follow us anyway?"

When Frank worriedly surveyed the beach again, Bobby realized that because of the pounding rain and the underly crash of the surf, they might not hear the telltale flute sounds that would warn them of Candy's imminent arrival.

Frank said, "Sometimes, when he touches something recently touched, he sees an image of you in his mind, sometimes he can see where you went after you put the object down, and he can follow you."

"But I didn't touch anything back there at the house."

"You stood on the back lawn."

"So?"

"If he can find the place where the gra.s.s is trampled, where we stood, he might be able to put his fingers to the ground and see us, see this place, and come after us."

"For G.o.d's sake, Frank, you make this guy sound super natural."

"He's the next thing to it."

Bobby almost said he would take his chances with brother Candy, regardless of his G.o.dlike powers. Then he remembered what the Phans had told him about the savage murders of the Farris family. He also remembered the Roman family, their brutalized bodies torched to cover the ragged gashes that Candy's teeth had torn in their throats. He recalled what Frank had said about Candy offering him the fresh blood of a living baby, factored in the unmitigated terror in Frank's eyes at that very moment, and thought of the inexplicable prophetic dream he'd had about the "bad thing." At last he said, "All right, okay, if he shows up, and if you're able to pop out of here before he kills us both, then I'd be better off with you. I'll take your hand, but only until we walk up to that restaurant, call a cab, and are on our way to the airport." He gripped Frank's hand reluctantly.

"As soon as we're out of this area, I let go."

"All right. Good enough," Frank said.

Squinting as the rain battered their faces, they headed toward the restaurant. The structure, which stood perhaps a hundred and fifty yards away, appeared to be made of gray, weathered wood and lots of gla.s.s. Bobby thought he saw dim lights in the place, but he could not be sure; the large windows were no doubt tinted, which filtered out what fraction of the lampglow was not already hidden by the veils of rain.

Every third or fourth incoming wave was now much larger than the others, reached farther onto the beach, and sloshed around their legs with enough force to unbalance them. They moved toward the higher end of the strand, away from the breakers, but the sand was far softer there; it sucked at their shoes and made progress more laborious.

Bobby thought of Lisa, the blond receptionist at Palomar Labs. He pictured her coming along the beach right now, taking a crazy-romantic walk in the warm rain with some guy who'd brought her to the islands, pictured her face when she saw him strolling the black-sand beach hand-in-hand with another man, cheating on Clint.

This time his laughter didn't have a scary edge.

Frank said, "What?"

Before Bobby could even start to explain, he saw that someone actually was heading in their general direction through the obscuring rain. It was a dark figure, not Lisa, a man, and he was only about thirty yards away.

He hadn't been there a moment ago.

"It's him," Frank said.

Even at a distance the guy looked big. He spotted them turned directly toward them.

Bobby said, "Get us out of here, Frank."

"I can't do it on demand. You know that."

"Then let's run," he urged, and he tried to pull Frank down the beach, toward the abandoned lifeguard tower and what lay beyond.

But after floundering a few steps through the sand, Frank stopped and said, "No, I can't, I'm worn out. I'm going to have to pray that I pop out of here in time." He looked worse than worn out. He looked half dead.

Bobby turned toward Candy again, and saw the brother slogging through the soft, wet sand much faster than they had managed but still with some difficulty.

"Why don't he just teleport from there to here in a flash, overwhelm us?"

Frank's horror at the sight of his oncoming nemesis was complete in that he didn't appear capable of speech. Yet words came with the shallow breaths that rasped out of his mouth.

"Short hops, under a few hundred feet, aren't possible. Do you know why." Maybe if the trip was too short, the mind had a fraction of a second less than the minimum time required to deconstruct and fully reconstruct the body. It didn't matter what the son was. Even if he couldn't teleport across the remain stretch of sand, Candy was going to reach them in seconds. He was only thirty feet away and closing, a ma.s.sive juggernaut of a man, with a neck thick enough to support a car balanced on his head, and arms that would give him an advantage in a wrestling match with a four-ton industrial robot. His blond hair was almost white. His face was broad and sharp-featured and hard-and as cruel as the face of one of those psychotic young boys who liked to set ants on fire with matches and test the effects of their full-strength on neighborhood Charging through the storm, kicking up gouts of wet black sand with each step, he looked less like a man than a demon with a fierce hunger for human souls.

Holding fast to his client's hand, Bobby said, "Frank, for G.o.d's sake, let's get out of here."

When Candy was close enough for Bobby to see blue eyes as wild and vicious as those of a rattlesnake on Benzedrine, he let out a wordless roar of triumph. He flung himself at them.

Darkness.

Fireflies.

Velocity.

Pale morning light filtered from a clear sky into the narrow pa.s.s-through between two rotting, ramshackle buildings so crusted in the filth of ages that it was impossible to determine what material had been used to construct their walls. Bobby and Frank were standing in knee-deep garbage that had been tossed out of the windows of the two-story structures and left to decompose into a reeking sludge that steamed like a compost pile. Their magical arrival had startled a colony of roaches that scuttled away from them, and caused swarms of fat black flies to leap up from their breakfast. Several sleek rats sat up on their haunches to see what had arrived among them, but they were too bold to be scared off.

The tenements on both sides had some windows completely open to the outside, some covered with what looked like oiled paper, none with gla.s.s. Though no people were in sight, from the rooms within the aged walls came voices: laughter here; an angry exchange there; chanting, as of a mantra, softly drifting down from the second floor of the building on the right. It was all in a foreign tongue with which Bobby was not familiar, though he suspected they might be in India, perhaps Bombay or Calcutta.

Because of the ineluctable stench, which by comparison made the stink of a slaughterhouse seem like a new perfume by Calvin Klein, and because of the insistently buzzing flies that exhibited great interest in an open mouth and nostrils, Bobby was unable to get his breath. He choked, put his free hand over his mouth, still could not breathe, and knew he was going to faint face first into the vile, steaming muck.

Darkness.

Fireflies.

Velocity.

In a place of stillness and silence, shafts of afternoon suns.h.i.+ne pierced mimosa branches and dappled the ground with golden light. They stood on a red oriental footbridge over a koi pond in a j.a.panese garden, where sculpted bonsai and other meticulously tended plants were positioned among carefully raked beds of pebbles.

"Oh, yes," Frank said with a mixture of wonder and pleasure and relief.