Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place Read online

  that Julie was not actually there with him, that what he had coupled

  with was a dream, or the congealing darkness itself, and that she had

  been stolen from him in the night, whisked away by some power he could

  not fathom, and that she was forever beyond his reach.

  His childish fear made him feel foolish, but he rose onto one elbow and

  turned on one of the wall-mounted bedside lamps.

  When he saw Julie lying beside him, smiling, her head raised on a

  pillow, the level of his inexplicable anxiety abruptly dropped. He let

  out a rush of breath, surprised to discover that he'd pent it up in the

  first place. But a peculiar tension remained in him, and the sight of

  Julie, safe and undamaged but for the scabbing spot on her forehead, was

  insufficient to completely relax him.

  "What's wrong?" she asked, as perceptive as ever.

  "Nothing," he lied.

  "Bit of a headache from all that rum in the eggnog?"

  What troubled him was not a hangover, but the queer, unshakable feeling

  that he was going to lose Julie, that something out there in a hostile

  world was coming to take her away. As the optimist in the family, he

  wasn't usually given to grim forebodings of doom; accordingly, this

  strange August chill frightened him more than it would have if he had

  been regularly subject to such disturbances

  "Bobby?" she said, frowning.

  "Headache," he assured her.

  He leaned down and gently kissed her eyes, then again, forcing her to

  close them so she could not see his face and read the anxiety that he

  was unable to conceal.

  LATER, AFTER showering and dressing, they ate a hasty breakfast while

  standing at the kitchen counter: English muffins and raspberry jam, half

  a banana each, and black coffee. By mutual agreement, they were not

  going to the office. A brief call to Clint Karaghiosis confirmed that

  the wrap-up on the Decodyne case was nearly completed, and that no other

  business needed their urgent personal attention.

  Their Suzuki Samurai waited in the garage, and Bobby's spirits rose at

  the sight of it. The Samurai was a small sports truck with four-wheel

  drive. He had justified its purchase by pitching its dual

  nature-utilitarian and recreational-to Julie, especially noting its

  comparatively reasonable price tag, but in fact he had wanted it because

  it was fun to drive. She had not been deceived, and she had gone for it

  because she, too, thought it was fun to drive. This time, she was

  willing to let him have the wheel when he suggested she drive.

  "I did enough driving last night," she said as she buckled herself into

  her shoulder harness.

  Dead leaves, twigs, a few scraps of paper, and less identifiable debris

  whirled and tumbled along the windswept streets. Dust devils spun out

  of the east, as the Santa Anas-named for the mountains out of which they

  arose-poured down through the canyons and across the arid,

  scrub-stubbled hills that Orange County's industrious developers had not

  yet graded and covered with thousands of nearly identical wood

  and-stucco pieces of the California dream. Trees bent to the surging

  oceans of air that moved in powerful and erratic tides toward the real

  sea in the west. The previous night's fog was gone, and the day was so

  clear that, from the hills, Catalina Island could be seen twenty-six

  miles off the Pacific's distant coast.

  Julie popped an Artie Shaw CD into the player, and the smooth melody and

  softly bouncing rhythms of "Begin the Be guine" filled the car. The

  mellow saxophones of Les Robinson Hank Freeman, Tony Pastor, and Ronnie

  Perry provided strange counterpoint to the chaos and dissonance of the

  Santa Ana winds.

  From Orange, Bobby drove south and west toward the beach cities-Newport,

  Corona Del Mar, Laguna, and Dana Point. He traveled as much as possible

  on those few of the urbanize county's blacktop byways that could still

  be called back roads They even passed a couple of orange groves, with

  which the county had once been carpeted, but which had mostly fallen to

  the relentless advance of the tracts and malls.

  Julie became more talkative and bubbly as the miles rolled up on the

  odometer, but Bobby knew that her spirited mood was not genuine. Each

  time they set out to visit her brother Thomas, she worked hard to

  inflate her spirits. Although she loved Thomas, every time that she was

  with him, her fear broke anew, so she had to fortify herself in advance

  with manufactured good humor.

  "Not a cloud in the sky," she said, as they passed the Irvine Ranch

  fruit-packing plant.

  "Isn't it a beautiful day Bobby?"

  "A wonderful day," he agreed.

  "The wind must've pushed the clouds all the way to Japan piled them up

  miles high over Tokyo."

  "Yeah. Right now California litter is falling on the Ginza."

  Hundreds of red bougainvillea blossoms, stripped from their vines by the

  wind, blew across the road, and for a moment the Samurai seemed to be

  caught in a crimson snowstorm. Maybe it was because they had just

  spoken of Japan, but there was something oriental about the whirl of

  petals. He would not have been surprised to glimpse a kimono-clad woman

  at the side of the road, dappled in sunshine and shadow.

  "Even a windstorm is beautiful here," Julie said.

  "Aren't we lucky, Bobby? Aren't we lucky to be living in this special

  place?"

  Shaw's "Frenzies" struck up, string-rich swing. Every time he heard the

  song, Bobby was almost able to imagine that he was in a movie from the

  1930s or '40s, that he would turn a corner and encounter his old friend

  Jimmy Stewart or maybe Bing Crosby, and they'd go off to have lunch with

  Cary Grant and Jean Arthur and Katharine Hepburn, while all kinds of

  screwy things would happen.

  "What movie are you in?" Julie asked. She knew him too well.

  "Haven't figured it yet. Maybe The Philadelphia Story.

  By the time they pulled into the parking lot of Cielo Vista Care Home,

  Julie had whipped herself into a state of high good humor. She got out

  of the Samurai, faced west, and grinned at the horizon, which was

  delineated by the marriage of sea and sky, as if she had never before

  encountered a sight to match it. In truth it was a stunning panorama,

  because Cielo Vista stood on a bluff half a mile from the Pacific,

  overlooking a long stretch of southern California's Gold Coast. Bobby

  admired it, too, shoulders hunched slightly and head tucked down in

  deference to the cool and blustery wind.

  When Julie was ready, she took Bobby's hand and squeezed it hard, and

  they went inside.

  Cielo Vista Care Home was a private facility, operated without

  government funds, and its architecture eschewed all of the standard

  institutional looks. Its two-story Spanish facade of pale peach stucco

  was accented by white marble corner pieces, door frames, and window

  lintels; white-painted French windows and doors were recessed in

  graceful arches, with deep sills. The sidewalks were shaded by lattice

  arbors draped with a mix of purple- and yellow-blooming bougainvillea,r />
  from which the wind drew a chorus of urgent whispers. Inside, the

  floors were gray vinyl tile, speckled with peach and turquoise, and the

  walls were peach with white base and crown molding, which lent the place

  a warm and airy ambience.

  They paused in the foyer, just inside the front door, while Julie

  withdrew a comb from her purse and pulled the wind tangles from her

  hair. After stopping at the front desk in the cozy visitors' lobby,

  they followed the north hall to Thomas's first floor room.

  His was the second of the two beds, nearest the windows, but he was

  neither there nor in his armchair. When they stopped in his open

  doorway, he was sitting at the worktable that belonged to both him and

  his roommate, Derek. Bent over the table, using a pair of scissors to

  clip a photograph from a magazine, Thomas appeared curiously both

  hulking and fragile, thickset yet delicate; physically, he was solid but

  mentally and emotionally he was frail, and that inner weakness shone

  through to belie the outer image of strength. With thick neck, heavy

  rounded shoulders, broad back, proportionally short arms, and stocky

  legs, Thomas had a gnomish look but when he became aware of them and

  turned his head to see who was there, his face was not graced by the

  cute and beguiling features of a fairy-tale creature; it was instead a

  face of cruel genetic destiny and biological tragedy.

  "Jules!" he said, dropping the scissors and magazine, nearly knocking

  over his chair in his haste to get up. He was wearing baggy jeans and a

  green-plaid flannel shirt. He seemed years younger than his true age.

  "Jules, Jules!"

  Julie let go of Bobby's hand and stepped into the room opening her arms

  to her brother.

  "Hi, honey." Thomas hurried to her in that shuffling walk of his, as if

  his shoes were heeled and soled with enough iron to preclude lifting

  them. Although he was twenty years old, ten years younger than Julie,

  he was four inches shorter than she, just barely five feet. He had been

  born with Down's syndrome, a diagnosis that even a layman could read in

  his face: his brow was sloppy and heavy; inner epicanthic folds gave his

  eyes an oriental cant the bridge of his nose was flat; his ears were

  low-set on a head that was slightly too small to be in proportion to his

  body; the rest of his features had those soft, heavy contours often

  associated with mental retardation. Though it was a common shaped more

  for expressions of sadness and loneliness, it no less defied its

  naturally downcast lines and formed itself into a wondrous smile, a warm

  grin of pure delight.

  Julie always had that effect on Thomas.

  Hell, she has that effect on me, Bobby thought.

  Stooping only slightly, Julie threw her arms around her brother when he

  came to her, and for a while they hugged each other.

  "How're you doing?" she asked.

  "Good," Thomas said.

  "I'm good." His speech was thick but not at all difficult to

  understand, for his tongue was as deformed as those of some victims of

  DS; it was a little larger than it should have been but not fissured or

  protruding.

  "I' real good."

  "Where's Derek?"

  "Visiting. Down the hall. He'll be back. I'm real good. Are you

  good?"

  "I'm fine, honey. Just great."

  "I'm just great too. I love you, Jules," Thomas said happily, for with

  Julie he was always free of the shyness that colored his relations with

  everyone else.

  "I love you so much."

  "I love you, too, Thomas."

  "I was afraid... maybe you wouldn't come."

  "Don't I always come?"

  "Always," he said. At last he relaxed his grip on his sister and peeked

  around her. "Hi, Bobby."

  "Hi, Thomas. You're looking' good."

  "Am I?"

  "If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'."

  Thomas laughed. To Julie, he said, "He's funny."

  "Do I get a hug too?" Bobby asked.

  "Or do I have to stand here with my arms out until someone mistakes me

  for a hatrack?"

  Hesitantly, Thomas let go of his sister. He and Bobby embraced. After

  all these years, Thomas was still not entirely comfortable with Bobby,

  not because they had bad chemistry between them or any bad feelings, but

  because Thomas didn't like change very much and adapted to it slowly.

  Even after more than seven years, his sister being married was a change,

  something that still felt new to him.

  But he likes me, Bobby thought, maybe even as much as I like him.

  Liking DS victims was not difficult, once you got past the pity that

  initially distanced you from them, because most of them had an innocence

  and guilelessness that was charming and refreshing. Except when

  inhibited by shyness or embarrassment about their differences, they were

  usually forthright, more truthful than other people, and incapable of

  the petty social games and scheming that marred so many relationships

  among "ordinary" people.

  The previous summer, at Cielo Vista's Fourth of July picnic, a mother of

  one of the other patients had said to Bobby,

  "Sometimes, watching them, I think there's something in them-a

  gentleness, a special kindness that's closer to God than anything in

  us."

  Bobby felt the truth of that observation now, as he hugged Thomas and

  looked down into his sweet, lumpish face.

  "Did we interrupt a poem?" Julie asked.

  Thomas let go of Bobby and hurried to the work table, where Julie was

  looking at the magazine from which he had been clipping a picture when

  they'd arrived. He opened his current scrapbook-fourteen others were

  filled with his creations and shelved in a corner bookcase near his

  bed-and pointed at a two-page spread of pasted-in clippings that were

  arranged lines and quatrains, like poetry.

  "This was yesterday. Finished yesterday," Thomas said.

  "Took me a looooong time, and it was hard, but now it... is... right."

  Four or five years ago, Thomas had decided that he wanted to be a poet

  like someone he had seen and admired on television. The degree of

  mental retardation among victims of Down's syndrome varied widely, from

  mild to severe; Thomas was somewhere just above the middle of the

  spectrum, but did not possess the intellectual capacity to learn to

  write more than his name. That didn't stop him. He had asked for paper

  glue, a scrapbook, and piles of old magazines. Since he rarely asked

  for anything, and since Julie would have moved a mountain on her back to

  get him whatever he wanted, the items, his list, were soon in his

  possession.

  "All kinds of magazine he'd said, "with different pretty pictures... but

  ugly too. all kinds." From Time, Newsweek, Life, Hot Rod, Omni,

  Seventeen, and dozens of other publications, he snipped whole pictures

  and parts of pictures, arranging them as if they were words, in a series

  of images that made a statement that was important to him. Some of his

  "poems" were only five lines long, and some involved hundreds of

  clippings arranged in dearly stanzas or, more often, in loosely

  st
ructured lines that resembled free verse.

  Julie took the scrapbook from him and went to the armchair by the

  window, where she could concentrate on his newest composition. Thomas

  remained at the worktable, watching her anxiously.

  His picture poems did not tell stories or have recognizable thematic

  narratives, but neither were they merely random jumbles of images. A

  church spire, a mouse, a beautiful worn in an emerald-green ball gown, a

  field of daisies, a can of Do pineapple rings, a crescent moon, pancakes

  in a stack with syrup drizzling down, rubies gleaming on a black-velvet

  drape play cloth, a fish with mouth agape, a child laughing, a nun

  praying, a woman crying over the blasted body of a loved one in some

  Godforsaken war zone, a pack of Lifesavers, a puppy with floppy ears,

  black-clad nuns with starched white wimples-from those and thousands of

  other pictures in his treasured boxes of clippings, Thomas selected the

  elements of his compositions.

  From the beginning Bobby recognized an uncanny rightness to many of the

  poems, a symmetry too fundamental to be defined, juxtapositions that

  were both naive and profound, rhythms as real as they were elusive, a

  personal vision plain to see but too mysterious to comprehend to any

  significant degree. Over the years, Bobby had seen the poems become

  better, more satisfying, though he understood them so little that he

  could not explain how he could discern the improvement; he just knew