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  Vicky opened the bathroom door with him, Mom never locked it because everybody knew that soaking time was her private time, and everyone needed a place to escape now and then, especially when Kenneth Mills was playing mind games, and the knife was in his hand and the steam on his face and Mom had her eyes closed as she lay in the tub, the soap wreathing her neck, her body beneath the bubbles, and just as he lifted the knife, she opened her eyes and smiled and the smile stayed frozen there as Dad ordered him to bring the knife down and the water turned red and she tried to say something, but he brought the knife down again and the blood trickled from her lips and Vicky screamed with him, screamed from the outside in, and Dad laughed in awe of his own power, because if he could make other people murder the ones they loved, then the world was his.

  Vicky stayed with Freeman as he brought the knife down again and again, and even when his arm was tired, he couldn't stop, Dad made him do it some more, and the tears ran down his face along with the spattered blood, and the soap bubbles cast their rainbows in red, and Dad was all over his brain, whispering things, putting sick thoughts in there, promising him that this was only the beginning, no one could stop them now that Dad knew the way in, and the Trust didn't matter, the Trust wouldn't understand, this type of control belonged only to those who knew how to use it.

  Vicky stood with him when the knife finally clattered to the tiles and Dad came into the bathroom, and for the first time ever Dad was proud of his son, proud because he could make bis son just like him, and Dad picked up the knife and wiped it clean on a towel and then the guys from the Trust came by and took away all of Dad's machines and made an anonymous phone call to the police and the rest was almost history except history not only repeated itself, it never went away.

  Freeman expected Vicky to draw back now that she knew. He deserved to be alone. That type of monster should be thrown to the darkness, not pitied or mourned or loved. Such a monster should be condemned to the black, cold world beneath the bridge, where it could wallow in its own hate until it drowned.

  "I… I didn't know," Vicky said. The bridge dimmed.

  "Go away."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "Get out of my head, damn you."

  The bridge faded, fell to threads, dissipated like a ghost that had died a second time.

  "No," she said.

  The light swelled. The link grew stronger as she came on again, sent herself out to him, grabbed with all the hunger for things Freeman called hope.

  She opened herself to him, offering everything, pouring into him, and he had no shield for this, because he didn't expect it, and had never known such a force could exist.

  The bridge was as hot as the sun, even more blinding than the surrounding darkness, but Freeman could see clearly, their souls had substance, they walked toward each other across the bridge, slow motion, every step a miracle, and Freeman made himself stare straight ahead, to not look over the side of the bridge where the darkness ran like rivers in every direction and dead things flitted.

  "It's not your fault," she said. "I understand."

  He'd heard that before. It wasn't his fault. He was the perfect victim. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, his soul trapped in a body born to a man who wanted the power that only God should have. The power to shape the souls of others. To crush them and burn them and ruin them. The power to inflict the worst kind of pain.

  "It wasn't… I didn't mean to," he said.

  Vicky's image approached. "It will be okay, as long as we're together."

  "I don't think we're going back. To the real world, I mean. I think Dad is killing us. Back there in the real world."

  "I'm not afraid anymore."

  "Me, either."

  "Touch me."

  They closed that final distance, the tug of their souls exerting spiritual gravity, so close, so hopeful, desperately close, a flicker and heartbeat away from joining in a union stronger than that of atoms.

  Then the troll appeared.

  Dad stood between them, with his black soul and his twisted brain and bis sharp teeth, ready to gobble them up.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Starlene huddled in the dark cell, her arms around Dipes and Isaac. The walls quivered, the metal doors clanged in the corridors, and bits of ancient plaster fell from the ceiling. Whatever Kracowski and Mills were doing, it was tearing the building apart.

  "What's happening, Dipes?" Isaac said. "I mean, what's about to happen?"

  "It keeps changing," Dipes said. "First everybody was dead and wandering around, then we were standing outside the fence, looking back at the building."

  "All of us were outside?" Starlene asked.

  "No. Not Freeman and Vicky."

  "That's what I was afraid of." Starlene wasn't sure that God would want people to know the future, because they might try to change it. But maybe God's plan included taking responsibility for the future. God didn't send you anything you couldn't handle, even telepathy and clairvoyance and precognition.

  She wondered if God would want her to reach out with her mind, to triptrap like Freeman and Vicky. Surely He wouldn't stop her if it was His will. But, if He didn't approve, would He blame her for trying? It might be a sin that had never come under consideration. She offered a quick prayer, linked with God in that strange and powerful way that was the biggest mind trip of all.

  She asked her question and the answer came. Her heart was clear. Her soul was pure enough. She called on the memory of that brief moment in Thirteen, when she could read the thoughts of those around her.

  Nothing.

  Isaac peeked out the cell door. "That new doctor's doing something to the machines."

  Starlene closed her eyes and concentrated. All she heard were her own panicked thoughts and the vibration of the building roaring in her ears. Powder poured from the crumbling masonry. She hugged the boys even more tightly.

  "We'll be okay," she said. "God told me so."

  Isaac said to Dipes, "What did God tell you?"

  "God's not talking to me," Dipes said.

  Starlene tried one more time, asking God for strength if it be His will, and the voice came to her from the rear of the cell. She turned to the dark corners and saw the Miracle Woman, ethereal, whole, smiling.

  "I, too, prayed to God," the Miracle Woman said. "Every night. Even after the doctors gave me injections and I was out of my mind."

  "You died here, didn't you? In Wendover?" she said aloud, even though the Miracle Woman's words came into her head without the benefit of sound.

  "Who are you talking to?" Isaac said. "One of your ghosts?"

  The Miracle Woman grew more solid, radiant. Clothed in what looked to be a gown of sheer silver.

  Isaac gasped. "I see her."

  "Have a little faith, Isaac," the Miracle Woman said. "Miracles happen every day."

  "Are… are you an angel?" Dipes asked.

  She smiled. "Whatever you believe. Someday you'll understand, but not too soon, I hope."

  "You're here to help us," Starlene said.

  "I'm here to help us," she said, her voice hollow yet soothing. "The ones who have been disturbed from our rest."

  "What do we do now?" Starlene said.

  The Miracle Woman smiled again, her eyes kind, suffused with a strange light that reminded Starlene of a candle behind smoked glass. "Look inside. Then you'll know. And, Edmund, the answer is at your fingertips."

  The Miracle Woman faded back into darkness.

  "A lot of help that was," Isaac said. "Like some sappy line from Touched by an Angel, where your problems get solved just in time for the commercial break. And nobody's hair even gets messed up."

  Starlene looked out the cell door at Mills feverishly working the computer keyboard, punching in commands. The chaotic wisps of spirits swirled around him, a maelstrom of scattered soul-threads. Kracowski, his lower lip swollen and his scalp bleeding, crawled to McDonald. The utility lights above the holding tanks pulsed unevenly, as if the
drain on the electrical grid was threatening a meltdown.

  Then Dipes said, "Hey, look what I found," and pressed something into her hand.

  A pistol.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  "You little shit, you never did appreciate what I gave you," Dad said.

  Freeman shivered, and the deadscape beyond the bridge became more tempting than ever. He could drown in that lightlessness and not care. He could face dying, he didn't mind going into the dark, as long as he was with Vicky. But not with Dad hanging around smart or crazy enough to split himself, keep one half back mere in the real world and the other here in the deadscape.

  "So you think you're going to take this little sack of vomit with you?" Dad triptrapped them both. He turned toward Vicky, his soul sharp around the edges, his form ten feet tall, his fingers ready to rip into anything that smacked of unity.

  "Leave her alone," Freeman triptrapped.

  "Ah, finally growing some balls, Trooper? You were so easy to control, you pathetic little puke. I tried it on other people, even your mother, but nobody rolled over like you did. You opened up your mind and invited me in, dared me to play with it."

  "That was a long time ago. I was just a little boy. How could I know what was going on?"

  Dad's laughter tore across the deadscape, making the darkness rattle, pulling the cloak of eternal night closer around them. "Still trying to blame others, huh, Freeman? All your miserable life, you've been telling yourself it's not your fault. Well, Shit for Brains, it is your fault."

  Dad turned back to Vicky, and the force of his triptrap seared through both of them. "So he finally told you, didn't he, lard-ass? It's all true, except for that part where he said I was the one who made him do it. Truth is, you always wanted to kill her, didn't you, Freeman? It was your idea, and you built this little fantasy where I was the one who made you do it. You can't out-shrink me, can you, Trooper?"

  Freeman wished he could slip back into his flesh and suffer some ordinary pain. He didn't want to die like this, with the guilt pressing on him, a blame that would follow him beyond death forever.

  Vicky's thoughts swept into him, crowding Dad's. "Hang on, Freeman. Whatever happened it's over now."

  "Over?" Dad triptrapped a psychic tornado. "It's only beginning. Mind control doesn't have to end just because your heart stops. Thanks to Kracowski, I can mess with you for the rest of eternity."

  In a flash, Freeman saw a vision of what Dad had in store, a timeless future where Dad raped Vicky and made Freeman watch, where he shoved doughnuts into her mouth, where Dad brought Mom back to life so Freeman could kill her over and over again, where the insane dead people threw their tortured thoughts into Freeman's head where all the pain of all the souls in the world could be his. A hell in his head.

  The vision fell away and he was back on the bridge, Vicky receding on the far end, the bridge flickering and fading beneath them, Dad's dark soul swelling, merging with the greater blackness beyond joining the deadscape, becoming it, taking on a power that surrounded everything, that built a universe where there was no room for light or peace.

  The edges of the deadscape quivered, monsters moaned from their hidden holes, ghosts whispered sorrows, despair rained in gray and washed the bridge away. The darkness ate at Freeman, nibbled him with its teeth, and he was tired, ready to surrender, because Dad was right.

  It was his fault. And he deserved every kind of punishment that Dad could dream up.

  As he closed the eyes of his soul, a bolt of lightning juiced through him, an electroshock of energy.

  "We can beat him," Vicky said, flooding his head, filling him up. "Together."

  Filling him up and up and up.

  FORTY-NINE

  Starlene pressed her damp palm around the gun. Was this the answer to her prayer? A sign from God?

  God didn't send you anything you couldn't handle.

  What could she do? There didn't appear to be a safety switch. She knew how to point and pull the trigger, but could she actually shoot another human being?

  "I see another future," Dipes said.

  "Great," Isaac said. "Please tell me in this one we all live happily ever after, even the Jews."

  "That never happens in any future."

  "Well, how about this? Starlene makes like one of Charlie's Angels and blows away the bad guys."

  "Sort of. Except, we better get out of the basement."

  "Because it's going to collapse, right?"

  "No. Because it's all going to be a deadscape."

  Starlene said, "You guys head for the stairs. I'll be right behind you. I have to do something first."

  Isaac grabbed Dipes's hand and Starlene pushed the two of them into the corridor. The basement was a crazed kaleidoscope of lights and noise. She waited until she saw the stairwell door swing closed, then slipped to the opening of the main area, where the lights strobed and the machinery whined. She peered down the corridor and saw Kracowski slumped to the floor, holding his head in his hands. McDonald lay inert by the cell where Vicky and Freeman were locked away. The large curved panels, like something off a space station, shook with whatever Dr. Mills was pumping into them. Mills himself stood behind the computer, eyes closed, a twisted smile on his lips.

  "What now, God?" she asked, holding the gun in front of her.

  A hand fell on her shoulder, she turned, half-expecting to see the face of God, or maybe the Miracle Woman, but it was Randy. His punch landed and her mind screamed blue and she heard the distant clatter of the gun falling to the floor just before her head cracked against the cold concrete.

  FIFTY

  Warm.

  That was what this union was; that was what hope and faith felt like. Vicky was right. Together, you could beat back the darkness. Together, you never had to surrender or apologize.

  "Oh, that's just hilarious," Dad said, twenty feet tall now, grim smoke pouring out of his soul. "You murder your goddamned mother and then think you get away with a slap on the wrist because now you have somebody to share the blame. That's not the way it works, Trooper."

  "You don't know everything," Freeman triptrapped, angry now, feeling the warmth expand, watching as the bridge grew brighter beneath Dad's monstrous shape. "You think you're God but you're just as much of a loser as I am. Worse, even. Because I never asked for this and you searched for it. You begged for it and sold your soul for it. You pulled out every trick in your sick little book, but it's nothing but a meaningless mind game. And now the game's over."

  "He lied," Vicky said "He never gave you a gift. He gave himself the gift."

  "Shut up, bitch bones." Dad quivered, his mouth alive now with dark shapes that fluttered like winged creatures. "I'm the one who controls things around here. This is a world I built."

  "Then you can fucking have it," Freeman said. "Because we're getting out of here. In the deadscape, nobody has to follow your rules."

  He focused, shielded himself from Dad's thoughts, sent himself out and up, and Vicky joined him, the strength of their combined triptrap going through the deadscape and back to the real, living world and through the walls of the cell into the basement:

  Dad, in the flesh, at the computer.

  Kracowski in pain, stomach tight, mind sick with regret.

  McDonald, rolling over, mad with the visions of things he'd never expected.

  Randy…

  Randy?

  Randy, shielded, going to McDonald, a mission to complete.

  And Starlene.

  Freeman and Vicky went into Starlene's head, saw only gray. And then black.

  And they were back in the deadscape.

  Dad stood between them again.

  Freeman tried another triptrap, this time not beyond the deadscape but into it. He called to those who hid behind the darkness, those who orbited this freakish universe. The dead. The ghosts. The true rulers of this bleak land.

  Vicky joined him, and the broken, sad thoughts spilled into them, the dreams and screams of those who had died in the b
asement, those whose souls were stitched into this fabric, those who belonged here.

  A form came up from the blackness, the Miracle Woman, her light faint but unyielding, and Dad was confused for a moment, as if the playground had changed without his knowledge.

  "That's right, you bastard," Freeman said, taking advantage of the lapse. Coming on like Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, his greatest role, giving in to his dark side and riding hellbent for revenge. "If you want to play God, then you may as well meet those whose souls you own."

  The Miracle Woman ascended to the bridge, as soft as a snowflake, and the bridge grew brighter. Her eyes were healed, her face clear, her soul pure. And as she joined the bridge, it grew brighter, the world tilted yet again and a storm roared from the dark corners of the deadscape. A keening of a strange wind arose and swirled around the bridge.

  The Miracle Woman's shape dissolved, shifted, the soul realigned. And Mom stood in her place.

  Mom.

  "Don't turn away," Vicky told Freeman, and he looked into Mom's eyes, Mom who bore no scars, Mom who held no regrets.

  "It's okay, Freeman." Mom smiled at him. "Vicky's right. It wasn't your fault."

  Dad swelled with rage, a hideous black disease, and hovered over Mom as if ready to collapse on top of her, drag her back into dim memory. "What the HELL are you doing here? WHO TOLD YOU TO COME BACK? "

  "Oh, didn't you know? Something I learned after you killed me. You carry your dead with you, Kenneth."

  Freeman triptrapped her, and saw the truth of it: Dad had experimented on Mom, made her a victim, too. Dad was the one who went into the bathroom with the knife, Dad was the one whose perverted flesh wanted to taste that ultimate power. Freeman triptrapped Dad who was weakened now, and saw what Dad had hidden away, that Dad had planted the memory of Freeman committing the murder, muddled in his hippocampus, and built a corrupt story.