The Home

FORTY-SIX

"Vicky?"

Freeman reached out for her, both with his hands and his mind. The darkness crawled down his throat, solid as a snake. It blinded him and clogged his ears, surrounded him like a second skin.

The fields shifted again, and from the way the world beyond the darkness shook and trembled, his outside reality was going to break into fragments any second now. If that happened, if everything he'd known and hated and feared and tasted was going to disappear forever, he wanted to be with Vicky when it happened. Inside her.

Her words came from the bleak black beyond: "Because you don't want to be alone."

"No, it's more than that." The triptrap worked, and the bridge between them threw off a faint light. She stood at the far end, glowing and pale, scared, ten million miles away.

"They're breaking it down."

"I know. Once Dad got involved, it was bound to get screwed up."

"Come to me. I'm losing you."

Freeman's heart pounded like a funeral drum near the end of a dirge. If there was a reason for this gift, if it was ever going to do anything for him besides cause him trouble, this was the time. He needed it, whether he was manic or depressed or insane or just a scared little boy. He wanted to touch and know one person before his whole universe blew apart. Who cared what Clint would do? Clint Eastwood had his own life, and no matter what happened to the character in the fantasy world of film, the actor Clint moved on after the final credits.

Freeman didn't think he'd be so lucky.

Desperation drove him, excited him, juiced his brain more than any machine ever had. He was on an up like nobody's business.

The bridge got a little bit brighter, and Vicky was now only a million miles away. He could see her clearly in his mind: blond and pale with fervid eyes, more beautiful than ever because she was reaching back to him, and this time he didn't have to build the bridge alone.

The light from the bridge pushed back the darkness, and they moved closer together.

"Come to me, Freeman," she triptrapped.

Freeman focused on the image of her face, and that brought her more fully into him; he tasted her past, and walked through her pain, and knelt with her as she forced herself to vomit. He absorbed the simultaneous emotions of love and hatred of her father, the man she wanted so desperately to please that she was willing to make herself disappear.

As he felt that soul-deep sorrow, the bridge dimmed, and she faded back into the darkness at the far end. He was losing her. She'd wanted to disappear, and this was her chance.

"No, that's wrong," he said.

"Don't tell me what to feel."

"You don't have to go away. It's not your fault. And you're not fat."

"Freeman Mills, you're starting to sound like a shrink again."

"It's in the genes. I know what I'm talking about. Hold on."

"But it would be so easy. Nothing but nice, safe dark. Just slip under like a stupid old whale and let all the problems be gone. Instant weight loss."

"Remember when you gave me hell about feeling sorry for myself? Well, that's what you're doing now. You're being selfish. Believe me. I've been there."

He triptrapped a memory toward her, the one where he found the razor in the bathroom at Durham Academy, left there by a careless counselor, and he twisted the blade free and put it to his wrist without a single thought except escape.

He felt her shudder as the metal sliced and the blood spurted as Freeman looked down at the wound and realized this wasn't the way he wanted to go, not as the edges of the world went gray and his thoughts slipped to the floor, not this way, not like Mom He froze, his thoughts hanging like icicles. He'd opened that dark space under the bridge, the place where he'd hidden the bad things.

But Vicky had seen a glimpse through that brief crack, and now she probed her curiosity making the connection stronger.

" 'Not like Mom' what?" she asked.

"Don't even think about it," he said. "Don't even try."

"Look, a second ago, or whatever passes for time in here, you were wanting me to share everything, get inside, do the one-mind thing. You get my blubber and I get your scars. And now, when things get a little too personal, you back off. What's it going to be, boy?"

The bridge grew dimmer. He was losing her, shutting her off, crawling back inside himself. Where he would be alone. With the memories.

Then he knew what hell was like. It wasn't a hot place where a pointy-tailed beast poked you with a pitchfork. Hell was inside your own head, where the doors were closed, where hope never knocked, where darkness and pain and self-pity were the only companions. Forever. And, as the crazy dead folks could tell him, forever lasted a long time.

He reached for her again, triptrapped until his brain burned, rode the up, and this time the glow radiated from his head and through his nervous system, warming him, bringing him more fully alive than he'd ever been.

He wanted this. More than he'd ever wanted anything.

"This must be faith," he said. "Believing in something. No wonder Starlene gets so high off this stuff."

"Believe in me, Freeman. Believe in us"

The bridge flickered to life, grew strong, cut a long golden ribbon through the black deadscape. Vicky was closer now, so near Freeman could reach out and touch, even though his flesh was lost and left behind. This was a touching of the soul.

Her thoughts flooded him, her love seeping into him like a warm and gentle electricity, a power of life and yearning. They probed each other's dark spaces, threw out their fears and regrets as if they were old clothes in an attic trunk, opened the doors inside and walked together into strange rooms.

The bridge was heaven-white now, shining, the gap closing, the triptrap taking on something beyond mere mystery.

He let some of that light into the dark place under the bridge, the place that no one was allowed to see, a memory from the day that Dad took over his head and made him kill Mom. Six years fell away like nothing in the land where time had no meaning.

Vicky was with him as Dad juiced him and triptrapped him, filled his brain with thoughts, an experiment of Dad's mind control theory, just another day at the office for the world's most daring pioneer, and Freeman had no choice but to leave the closet in Dad's lab and walk through the kitchen and take the knife from the drawer and go down the hall, Dad working his legs, commanding his muscles, making Freeman want to do this, reminding him that Mom demanded perfection even more than Dad did, with her "no second chances" philosophy, convincing him that Mom was the enemy, she was the one who deserved to be punished for bringing Freeman into this sorry world and for letting Dad inflict all those cruel tortures on him.

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.