His dark desire became an urgent need.
He prowled the park, seeking satisfaction.
He was a little surprised that Fantasy World continued to turn as if
nothing had happened in the Millipede. He had expected the whole
operation to close down, not just that one ride. Now he realized money
was more important than mourning one dead customer. And if those who'd
seen Tod's battered body had spread the story to others, it was probably
discounted as a rehash of the legend. The level of frivolity in the
park had not noticeably declined.
Once he dared to pass the Millipede, although he stayed at a distance
because he still did not trust himself to be able to conceal his
excitement over his achievement and his delight in the new status that
he had attained.
Master of the Game. Chains were looped from stanchion to stanchion in
front of the pavilion, to block anyone attempting to gain access. A
closed for repairs sign was on the entrance door. Not for repairs to
old Tod. The rocket jockey was beyond repair. No ambulance was in
sight, which they might have thought they needed, and no hearse was
anywhere to be seen.
No police, either. Weird.
Then he remembered a TV story about the world under Fantasy World:
catacombs of service tunnels, storage rooms, security and ride computer
control centers, just like at Disneyland. To avoid disturbing the
paying customers and drawing the attention of the morbidly curious, they
were probably using the tunnels now to bring in the cops and
corpse-pokers from the coroner's office.
The shivers within Jeremy increased. The desire. The need.
He was a Master of the Game. No one could touch him.
Might as well give the cops and corpse-pokers more to do, keep them
entertained.
He kept moving, seeking, alert for opportunity. He found it where he
least expected it, when he stopped at a men's restroom to take a leak.
A guy, about thirty, was at one of the sinks, checking himself out in
the mirror, combing his thick blond hair, which glistened with Vitalis.
He had arranged an array of personal objects on the ledge under the
mirror: wallet, car keys, a tiny aerosol bottle of Binaca breath
freshener, a half-empty pack of Dentyne (this guy had a bad-breath
fixation), and a cigarette lighter.
The lighter was what immediately caught Jeremy's attention. It was not
just a plastic Bic butane disposable, but one of those steel models,
shaped like a miniature slice of bread, with a hinged top that flipped
back to reveal a striker wheel and a wick. The way the overhead
fluorescent gleamed on the smooth curves of that lighter, it seemed to
be a supernatural object, full of its own eerie radiance, a beacon for
Jeremy's eyes alone.
He hesitated a moment, then went to one of the urinals. When he
finished and zipped up, the blond guy was still at the sink, primping
himself.
Jeremy always washed his hands after using a bathroom because that was
what polite people did. It was one of the rules that a good player
followed.
He went to the sink beside the primper. As he lathered his hands with
liquid soap from the pump dispenser, he could not take his eyes off the
lighter on the shelf inches away. He told himself he should avert his
gaze.
The guy would realize he was thinking about snatching the damn thing.
But its sleek silvery contours held him rapt. Staring at it as he the
lather from his hands, he imagined that he could hear the crisp crackle
of all-consuming flames.
Return nag his wallet to his hip pocket but leaving the other objects on
the ledge, the guy turned away from the sink and went to one of the
urinals. As Jeremy was about to reach for the lighter, a father and his
teenage son entered. They could have screwed everything up, but they
went into two of the stalls and closed the doors. Jeremy knew that was
a sign. Do it, the sign said. Take it, go, do it, do it.
Jeremy glanced at the man at the urinal, plucked the lighter off the
shelf, turned and walked out without drying his hands. No one ran after
him.
Clutching the lighter tightly in his right hand, he prowled the park,
searching for the perfect kindling. The desire in him was so intense
that his shivers spread outward from his crotch and belly and spine,
appearing once more in his hands, and in his legs, too, which sometimes
were rubbery with excitement.
Need...
Finishing the last of the Reese's Pieces, Vassago neatly rolled the
empty bag into a tight tube, tied the tube in a knot to make the
smallest possible object of it, and dropped it into a plastic garbage
bag that was just to the left of the iceless Styrofoam cooler.
Neatness was one of the rules in the world of the living.
He enjoyed losing himself in the memory of that special night, eight
years ago, when he had been twelve and had changed forever, but he was
tired now and wanted to sleep. Maybe he would dream of the woman named
Lindsey. Maybe he would have another vision that would lead him to
someone connected with her, for somehow she seemed to be part of his
destiny; he was being drawn toward her by forces he could not entirely
understand but which he respected. Next time, he would not make the
mistake he had made with Cooper. He would not let the need overwhelm
him. He would ask questions first. When he had received all the
answers, and only then, he would free the beautiful blood and, with it,
another soul to join the inanimate throngs beyond this hateful world.
4
Tuesday morning, Lindsey stayed home to get some work done in her studio
while Hatch took Regina to school on his way to a meeting with an
executor of an estate in North Tustin who was seeking bids on a
collection of antique Wedgwood urns and vases. After lunch he had an
appointment with Dr. Nyebern to learn the results of the tests he had
undergone on Saturday. By the time he picked up Regina and returned
home late in the afternoon, Lindsey figured to have finished the canvas
she had been working on for the past month.
That was the plan, anyway, but all the fates and evil elves-and her own
psychology conspired to prevent the fulfillment of it. First of all the
coffee maker went on the fritz. Lindsey had to tinker with the machine
for an hour to find and fix the problem. She was a good tinkerer, and
fortunately the brewer was fixable. She could not face the day without
a blast of caffeine to jump-start her heart. She knew coffee was bad
for her, but so was battery acid and cyanide, and she didn't drink
either one of those, which showed she had more than her share of
self-control when it came to destructive dietary habits; hell, she was
an absolute rock!
By the time she got up to her second-floor studio with a mug and a full
thermos besides, the light coming through the north facing windows was
perfect for her purposes. She had everything she needed. She had her
paints, brushes, and palette knives. She had her supply cabinet She had
&nbs
p; her adjustable stool and her easel and her stereo system with stacks of
Garth Brooks, Glenn Miller, and Van Halen CDs, which somehow seemed the
right mix of background music for a painter whose style was a
combination of neoclassicism and surrealism The only things she didn't
have were an interest in the work at hand and the ability to
concentrate.
She was repeatedly diverted by a glossy black spider that was exploring
the upper right-hand corner of the window nearest to her. She didn't
like spiders, but she was loath to kill them anyway. Later, she would
have to capture it in a jar to release it outside. It crept upside down
across the window header to the left-hand corner, immediately lost
interest in that territory, and returned to the right-hand corner, where
it quivered and flexed its long legs and seemed to be taking pleasure
from some quality of that particular niche that was apprehensible only
to spiders.
Lindsey turned to her painting again. Nearly complete, it was one of
her best, lacking only a few finishing touches.
But she hesitated to open paints and pick up a brush because she was
every bit as devoted a worrier as she was an artist. She was anxious
about Hatch's health, of course-both his physical and mental health.
She was apprehensive, too, about the strange man who had killed the
blonde, and about the eerie connection between that savage predator and
her Hatch.
The spider crept down the side of the window frame to the right-hand
corner of the sill. After using whatever arachnid senses it possessed,
it rejected that nook, as well, and returned once more to the upper
right hand corner.
Like most people Lindsey considered psychics to be good subjects for
spooky movies but charlatans in real life. Yet she had been quick to
suggest clairvoyance as an explanation for what had been happening to
Hatch. She had pressed the theory more insistently when he had declared
that he was not psychic.
Now, turning away from the spider and staring frustratedly at the
unfinished canvas before her, she realized why she had become such an
earnest advocate of the reality of psychic power in the car on Friday,
when they had followed the killer's trail to the head of Laguna Canyon
Road.
If Hatch had become psychic, eventually he would begin to receive
impressions from all sorts of people, and his link to this murderer
would not be unique. But if he was not psychic, if the bond between him
and this monster was more profound and infinitely stranger than random
clairvoyant reception, as he insisted that it was, then they were
hip-deep into the unknown. And the unknown was a hell of a lot scarier
than something you could describe and define.
Besides, if the link between them was more mysterious and intimate than
psychic reception, the consequences for Hatch might be psychologically
disastrous. What mental trauma might result from being even briefly
inside the mind of a ruthless killer? Was the link between them a
source of contamination, as any such intimate biological link would have
been?
If so, perhaps the virus of madness could creep across the ether and
infect Hatch.
No. Ridiculous. Not her husband. He was reliable, levelheaded,
mellow, as sane a human being as any who walked the earth.
The spider had taken possession of the upper right-hand corner of the
window. It began to spin a web.
Lindsey remembered Hatch's anger last night when he had seen the story
about Cooper in the newspaper. The hardness of rage in his face. The
unsettling fevered look in his eyes. She had never seen Hatch like
that. His father, yes, but never him. Though she knew he worried that
he might have some of his father in him she had never seen evidence of
it before. And maybe she had not seen evidence of it last night,
either. What she had seen might be some of the rage of the killer
leaking back into Hatch along the link that existed between them No.
She had nothing to fear from Hatch. He was a good man, the best she had
ever met. He was such a deep well of goodness that all the madness of
the blond girls killer could be dropped into him, and he would dilute it
until it was without effect.
A glistening, silky filament spewed from the spider's abdomen as the
arachnid industriously claimed the corner of the window for its lair.
Lindsey opened a drawer in her equipment cabinet and took out a small
magnifying glass, which she used to observe the spinner more closely.
Its spindly legs were prickled with hundreds of fine hairs that could
not be seen without the assistance of the lens. Its horrid,
continuously as if in anticipation of the first living fly to become
stuck in the trap that it was weaving.
Although she understood that it was a part of nature as surely as she
was, and therefore not evil, the thing nevertheless revolted Lindsey.
It was a part of nature that she preferred not to dwell upon: the part
that had to do with hunting and killing, with things that fed eagerly on
the living. She put the magnifying glass on the windowsill and went
downstairs to get a jar from the kitchen pantry. She wanted to capture
the spider and get it out of her house before it was any more securely
settled.
Reaching the foot of the stairs, she glanced at the window beside the
front door and saw the postman's car. She collected the mail from the
box at the curb: a few bills, the usual minimum of two mailer
catalogues, and the latest issue of Arts America She was in the mood to
seize any excuse nottowork, which was unusual for her, because she loved
her work. Quite forgetting that she had come downstairs in the first
place for a jar in which to transport the spider, she took the mail back
up to her studio and settled down in the old armchair in the corner with
a fresh mug of coffee and Arts American.
She spotted the article about herself as soon as she glanced at the
table of contents. She was surprised. The magazine had covered her
work before, but she had always known in advance that articles were
forthcoming. Usually the writer had at least a few questions for her,
even if he was not doing a straight interview.
Then she saw the byline and winced. S. Steven Honell. She knee before
reading the first word that she was the target of a hatchet job.
Honell was a well-reviewed writer of fiction who, from time to time,
also wrote about art. He was in his sixties and had never married. A
phlegmatic fellow, he had decided as a young man to forego the comforts
of a wife and family in the interest of his writing. To write well, he
said, one ought to possess a monk's preference for solitude. In
isolation, one was forced to confront oneself more directly and honestly
than possible in the hustle bustle of the peopled world, and through
oneself also confront the nature of every human heart. He had lived in
splendid isolation first in northern California, then in New Mexico.
; Most recently he had settled at the eastern edge of the developed part
of Orange County at the end of Silverado Canyon, which was part of a
series of brush-covered hills and ravines spotted with numerous
California live oaks and less numerous rustic cabins.
In September of the previous year, Lindsey and Hatch had gone to a
restaurant at the civilized end of Silverado Canyon, which served strong
drinks and good steaks. They had eaten at one of the tables in the
taproom, which was paneled in knotty pine with limestone columns
supporting the roof. An inebriated white-haired man, sitting at the
bar, was holding forth on literature, art, and politics. His opinions
were strongly held and expressed in caustic language. From the
affectionate tolerance the curmudgeon received from the bartender and
patrons on the other bar stools, Lindsey guessed he was a regular
customer and a local character who told only half as many tales as were
told about him.
Then Lindsey recognized him. 5. Steven Honell. She had read and liked
some of his writing. She'd admired his selfless devotion to his art;
for she could not have sacrificed love, marriage, and children for her
painting, even though the exploration of her creative talent was as
important to her as having enough look to eat and water to drink.
Listening to HoneIl, she wished that she and Hatch had gone somewhere
else for dinner because she would never again be able to read the
author's work without remembering some of the vicious statements he made
about the writings and personalities of his contemporaries in letters.
With each drink, he grew more bitter, more scathing, more indulgent of