persist: “A man?”
“Yes and no.”
“What does that mean?”
She shakes her head. She dares not say, for fear the words she would need to describe my quarry might alert him to the fact that we are conspiring against him. This suggests that once he has taken control of someone, even after he departs that person, the two of them remain linked at all times, at least tenuously.
“He’s only one, I assume.”
“Yes.”
She looks at the pistol in my hand.
I ask, “Will this be enough to do the job?”
Her expression is bleak. “I don’t know.”
As I consider how best to word certain other questions without setting off a psychic alarm in the mind of the Presence, I ask if I may have a drink of water.
She plucks a bottle of Niagara from the refrigerator, and as I put down the pistol on the dinette table, I assure her that I don’t need a glass.
For a man closing in on twenty-four hours without sleep, after a long day of exhausting action, too much caffeine is as problematic as too little. Drowsiness and the lack of focus that it promotes could be the death of me, although so could the edginess and the tendency to overreact that come with an overdose of stimulants. But Mountain Dew, candy bars, and a pair of NoDoz have not yet quite cleared thesandman’s dust from my eyes. I swallow one more caffeine tablet.
As I put down the water, Ardys comes to me and takes one of my hands in both of hers. Her eyes seem to express desperation, and her look is beseeching.
Something about her stare, perhaps the intensity of it, makes me uneasy. Because my life is marbled with the supernatural, I’m creeped out frequently enough to be familiar with the feeling that something is crawling on the nape of my neck. This time, however, before I can smooth down those fine hairs with my free hand, I realize that the crawling isn’t on my neck but inside my skull.
As I slam my own private door, rejecting what has sought to enter, Ardys says, “Have you figured out how to express it better, Harry?”
“Express what?”
“The analogy with the porpoise and the prairie dog.”
Alarmed, I twist my hand free of hers.
The form of Jolie’s mother still stands before me, and surely the substance of her—mind and soul—still inhabits the body even if she is no longer in control of it. The Presence and I are face-to-face, as last we were when it challenged me through Donny, and this time its true countenance is concealed by the Ardys mask. Her skin remains clear and radiant, but her expression of utter contempt is one that I doubt is familiar to that lovely visage. Those dark-green eyes are as striking as they were before, likethe eyes of a woman in some magic-saturated Celtic myth, but they are no longer haunted or sad, or beseeching; they seem to radiate a palpable, inhuman fury.
I snatch the gun from the table.
She says, “Who are you really, Harry Potter?”
“Lex Luthor,” I admit. “That’s why I had to change my name. The thousandth time someone asked me why I hated Superman, I started wishing my name was just about anything else, even Fidel Castro.”
“You are the first of your kind I’ve ever encountered.”
“What kind is that?” I wonder.
“Inaccessible. I possess everyone who sleeps in the motor court, roam their memories, and embed recurrent nightmares that will destroy their sleep for weeks after I’ve departed them.”
“I’d prefer a free continental breakfast.”
Not stiffly, like a zombie, but with her usual grace, she walks—almost seems to glide—to the counter beside the cooktop and opens a drawer. “Sometimes I seize control of motor-court guests while they’re awake—use a husband to brutalize a wife or use a wife to tell her husband lies about infidelities that I imagine for her in delicious detail.”
Ardys stares into the drawer.
“When they leave,” the Presence says through her, “they’re beyond my control, but what I’ve done will have a lasting effect.”
“Why?
“Yes and no.”
“What does that mean?”
She shakes her head. She dares not say, for fear the words she would need to describe my quarry might alert him to the fact that we are conspiring against him. This suggests that once he has taken control of someone, even after he departs that person, the two of them remain linked at all times, at least tenuously.
“He’s only one, I assume.”
“Yes.”
She looks at the pistol in my hand.
I ask, “Will this be enough to do the job?”
Her expression is bleak. “I don’t know.”
As I consider how best to word certain other questions without setting off a psychic alarm in the mind of the Presence, I ask if I may have a drink of water.
She plucks a bottle of Niagara from the refrigerator, and as I put down the pistol on the dinette table, I assure her that I don’t need a glass.
For a man closing in on twenty-four hours without sleep, after a long day of exhausting action, too much caffeine is as problematic as too little. Drowsiness and the lack of focus that it promotes could be the death of me, although so could the edginess and the tendency to overreact that come with an overdose of stimulants. But Mountain Dew, candy bars, and a pair of NoDoz have not yet quite cleared thesandman’s dust from my eyes. I swallow one more caffeine tablet.
As I put down the water, Ardys comes to me and takes one of my hands in both of hers. Her eyes seem to express desperation, and her look is beseeching.
Something about her stare, perhaps the intensity of it, makes me uneasy. Because my life is marbled with the supernatural, I’m creeped out frequently enough to be familiar with the feeling that something is crawling on the nape of my neck. This time, however, before I can smooth down those fine hairs with my free hand, I realize that the crawling isn’t on my neck but inside my skull.
As I slam my own private door, rejecting what has sought to enter, Ardys says, “Have you figured out how to express it better, Harry?”
“Express what?”
“The analogy with the porpoise and the prairie dog.”
Alarmed, I twist my hand free of hers.
The form of Jolie’s mother still stands before me, and surely the substance of her—mind and soul—still inhabits the body even if she is no longer in control of it. The Presence and I are face-to-face, as last we were when it challenged me through Donny, and this time its true countenance is concealed by the Ardys mask. Her skin remains clear and radiant, but her expression of utter contempt is one that I doubt is familiar to that lovely visage. Those dark-green eyes are as striking as they were before, likethe eyes of a woman in some magic-saturated Celtic myth, but they are no longer haunted or sad, or beseeching; they seem to radiate a palpable, inhuman fury.
I snatch the gun from the table.
She says, “Who are you really, Harry Potter?”
“Lex Luthor,” I admit. “That’s why I had to change my name. The thousandth time someone asked me why I hated Superman, I started wishing my name was just about anything else, even Fidel Castro.”
“You are the first of your kind I’ve ever encountered.”
“What kind is that?” I wonder.
“Inaccessible. I possess everyone who sleeps in the motor court, roam their memories, and embed recurrent nightmares that will destroy their sleep for weeks after I’ve departed them.”
“I’d prefer a free continental breakfast.”
Not stiffly, like a zombie, but with her usual grace, she walks—almost seems to glide—to the counter beside the cooktop and opens a drawer. “Sometimes I seize control of motor-court guests while they’re awake—use a husband to brutalize a wife or use a wife to tell her husband lies about infidelities that I imagine for her in delicious detail.”
Ardys stares into the drawer.
“When they leave,” the Presence says through her, “they’re beyond my control, but what I’ve done will have a lasting effect.”
“Why?
Similar Books
