Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place Read online

  that it was there.

  Julie looked up from the two-page spread in the scrapbook and said,

  "This is wonderful, Thomas. It makes me want to... run outside in the

  grass... and stand under the sky and maybe even dance, just throw my

  head back and laugh. It makes me glad to be alive."

  "Yes!" Thomas said, slurring the word, clapping his hands.

  She passed the book to Bobby, and he sat on the edge of the bed to read

  it.

  The most intriguing thing about Thomas's poems was the emotional

  response they invariably evoked. None left a reader untouched, as an

  array of randomly assembled images might have done. Sometimes, when

  looking at Thomas's work, Bobby laughed out loud, and sometimes he was

  so moved that he had to blink back tears, and sometimes he felt fear or

  sadness or regret or wonder. He did not know why he responded to any

  particular piece as he did; the effect always defied analysis. Thomas's

  compositions functioned on some primal level, eliciting reaction from a

  region of the mind far deeper than the subconscious.

  The latest poem was no exception. Bobby felt what Julie had felt: that

  life was good; that the world was beautiful; elation in the very fact of

  existence.

  He looked up from the scrapbook and saw that Thomas was awaiting his

  reaction as eagerly as he had awaited Julie's, perhaps a sign that

  Bobby's opinion was cherished as much as hers, even if he still didn't

  rate as long or as ardent a hug as Julie did.

  "Wow," he said softly. "Thomas, this one gives such a warm, tingly

  feeling that... I think my toes are curling." Thomas grinned.

  Sometimes Bobby looked at his brother-in-law and felt two Thomases

  shared that sadly deformed skull. Thomas and one was the moron, sweet

  but feebleminded. Thomas and two was just as smart as anyone, but he

  occupied one small part of the damaged brain that he shared with number

  one, a chamber in the center, from which he had direct communication

  with the outside world. Although number two's thoughts had to be

  filtered through number one's part of the brain, so they ended up

  sounding different from Thomas number one's thoughts; therefore the

  world could not know that number two was in there, thin and feeling and

  fully alive-except through the evidence of picture poems, the essence of

  which survived even after being filtered through Thomas number one.

  "You've got such a talent," Bobby said, and he meant it almost envied

  it.

  Thomas blushed and lowered his eyes. He rose and quickly shuffled to

  the softly humming refrigerator that stood by the door to the bathroom.

  Meals were served in the communal dining room, where snacks and drinks

  were provided on request, but patients with sufficient mental capacity

  to keep their rooms neat were allowed to have their own refrigerators

  stocked with their favorite snacks and drinks, to encourage as much

  independence as possible. He withdrew three cans of Coke. He gave one

  to Bobby, one to Julie. With the third he returned to the chair at the

  worktable, sat down, and asked, "You been catchin' bad guys?"

  "Yeah, we're keeping the jails full," Bobby said.

  "Tell me."

  Julie leaned forward in the armchair, and Thomas scooted his

  straight-backed chair closer to her, until their knees touched, and she

  recounted the highlights of the events at Decodyne last night. She made

  Bobby more heroic than he'd really been, and she played down her own

  involvement a little not only out of modesty but in order not to

  frighten Thomas with too clear a picture of the danger in which she had

  gotten herself. Thomas was tough in his own way; if he hadn't been he

  would have curled up on his bed long ago, facing into the corner, and

  never gotten up again. But he was not tough enough to endure the loss

  of Julie. He would be devastated even to imagine that she was

  vulnerable. So she made her daredevil driving and the shoot-out sound

  funny, exciting but not really dangerous. Her revised version of events

  entertained Bobby nearly as much as it did Thomas.

  After a while, as usual, Thomas became overwhelmed by what Julie was

  telling him, and the tale grew more confusing than entertaining.

  "I'm full up," he said, which meant he was still trying to process

  everything he had been told, and didn't have room for any more just now.

  He was fascinated by the world outside Cielo Vista, and he often longed

  to be a part of it, but at the same time he found it too loud and bright

  and colorful to be handled in more than small doses.

  Bobby got one of the older scrapbooks from the shelves and sat on the

  bed, reading picture poems.

  Thomas and Julie sat in their chairs, Cokes put aside, knees to knees,

  leaning forward and holding hands, sometimes looking at each other,

  sometimes not, just being together, close. Julie needed that as much as

  Thomas did.

  Julie's mother had been killed when Julie was twelve. Her father had

  died eight years later, two years before Bobby and Julie had been

  married. She'd been only twenty at the time, working as a waitress to

  put herself through college and to pay her half of the rent on a studio

  apartment she shared with another student. Her parents had never been

  rich, and though they had kept Thomas at home, the expense of looking

  after him had depleted what little savings they'd ever had. When her

  dad died, Julie had been unable to afford an apartment for her and

  Thomas, to say nothing of the time required to help him cope in a

  civilian environment, so she'd been forced to commit him to a state

  institution for mentally disabled children. Though Thomas never held it

  against her, she viewed the commitment as a betrayal of him.

  She had intended to get a degree in criminology, but she dropped out of

  school during her third year and applied to the sheriffs' academy. She

  had worked as a deputy for fourteen months by the time Bobby met and

  married her; she had been living on peanuts, her life-style hardly

  better than that of a bag lady, saving most of her salary in hope of

  putting together a nest egg that would allow her to buy a small house

  someday take Thomas in with her. Shortly after they were married when

  Dakota Investigations became Dakota & and Dakota, they brought Thomas to

  live with them. But they worked irregular hours, and although some

  victims of Down's syndrome were capable of living to a degree on their

  own, Thomas needed someone nearby at all times. The cost of three daily

  shift qualified companions was even more than the cost of his care at a

  private institution like Cielo Vista; but they would have borne it if

  they could have found enough reliable help.

  When it became impossible to conduct their business, have a life of

  their own, and take care of Thomas, too, they brought him to Cielo

  Vista. It was as comfortable a care institution that ever existed, but

  Julie viewed it was her second betrayal of her brother. That he was

  happy at Cielo Vista, even thrived it did not lighten her burden of

  guilt.

  One part of The Dream, an important part, was to have
time and financial

  resources to bring Thomas home again.

  Bobby looked up from the scrapbook just as Julie asked, "Thomas, think

  you'd like to go out with us for a while?

  Thomas and Julie were still holding hands, and Bobby his

  brother-in-law's grip tighten at the suggestion of an excursion.

  "We could just go for a drive," Julie said.

  "Down to the Walk on the shore. Get an ice cream cone. What do you

  say?"

  Thomas looked nervously at the nearest window, who framed a portion of

  clear blue sky, where white sea gulls oddly swooped and capered.

  "It's bad out."

  "Just a little windy, honey."

  "Don't mean the wind."

  "We'll have fun."

  "It's bad out," he repeated. He chewed on his lower lip. At times he

  was eager to venture out into the world, but other times he withdrew

  from the prospect as if the air outside Cielo Vista was purest poison.

  Thomas could never be argued or cajoled out of that agoraphobic mood,

  and Julie knew better than to push the issue.

  "Maybe next time," she said.

  "Maybe," Thomas said, looking at the floor.

  "But feel really bad. I... sort of feel it... the badness... cold

  over my skin."

  For a while Bobby and Julie tried various subjects, but Thomas was

  talked out. He said nothing, did not make eye contact, and gave no

  indication that he even heard them.

  They sat together in silence, then, until after a few minutes Thomas

  said, "Don't go yet."

  "We're not going," Bobby assured him.

  "Just 'cause I can't talk... don't mean I want you gone."

  "We know that, kiddo," Julie said.

  "I... need you."

  "I need you too," Julie said. She lifted one of her brother's

  thick-fingered hands and kissed his knuckles.

  AFter BUYING an electric razor at a drug store Frank Pollard shaved and

  washed as best he could in a service station restroom. He stopped at a

  shopping mall and bought a suitcase, underwear, socks, a couple of

  shirts, another pair of jeans, and incidentals. In the mall parking

  lot, with the stolen Chevy rocking slightly in the gusting wind, he

  packed the other purchases in the suitcase. Then he drove to a motel in

  Irvine, where he checked in under the name of George Ferris, using one

  of the sets of ID he possessed, making a cash deposit because he lacked

  a credit card. He had cash in advance.

  He could have stayed in the Laguna area; but he sensed that he should

  not remain in one place too long. Maybe his wariness was based on hard

  experience. Or maybe he had been on the run for so long that he had

  become a creature of motion could never again be truly comfortable at

  rest.

  The motel room was large, clean, and tastefully decorated The designer

  had been swept up in the southwest craze: white washed wood, rattan side

  chairs with cushions upholstered peach and pale-blue patterns,

  seafoam-green drapes. Only mottled-brown carpet, evidently chosen for

  its ability to conceal stains and wear, spoiled the effect; by contrast,

  the light hued furnishings seemed not merely to stand on the dark carpet

  but to float above it, creating spatial illusions that were

  disconcerting, even slightly eerie.

  For most of the afternoon Frank sat on the bed, using a pile of pillows

  as a back rest. The television was on, but he didn't watch it. Instead,

  he probed at the black hole of his past. Hard as he tried, he could

  still not recall anything of his life prior to waking in the alleyway

  the previous night. Some strange a exceedingly malevolent shape loomed

  at the edge of recollection, however, and he wondered uneasily if

  forgetfulness actually might be a blessing.

  He needed help. Given the cash in the flight bag and his two sets of

  ID, he suspected that he would be unwise to seek assistance from the

  authorities. He withdrew the Yellow Pages from one of the night stands

  and studied the listings for private investigators. But a PI called to

  mind old Humphrey Bogart movies and seemed like an anachronism in this

  modern age. How could a guy in a trench coat and a snap-brimmed fedora

  help him recover his memory?

  Eventually, with the wind singing melodies at the window, Frank

  stretched out to get some of the sleep he had missed last night.

  A few hours later, just an hour before dusk, he woke suddenly,

  whimpering, gasping for breath. His heart pounded furiously.

  When he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, he saw that

  his hands were wet and scarlet. His shirt and jeans were smeared with

  blood. Some, though surely not all of it, was his own blood, for both

  of his hands bore deep, oozing scratches. His face stung, and in the

  bathroom, the mirror revealed two long scratches on his right cheek, one

  on his left cheek, and a fourth on his chin.

  He could not understand how this could have happened in his sleep. If

  he had torn at himself in some bizarre dream frenzy-and he could recall

  no dream-or if someone else had clawed him while he slept, he would have

  awakened at once. Which meant that he had been awake when it had

  happened, then had stretched out on the bed again and gone back to

  sleep-and had forgotten the incident, just as he had forgotten his life

  prior to that alleyway last night.

  He returned in panic to the bedroom and looked on the other side of the

  bed, then in the closet. He was not sure what he was looking for. Maybe

  a dead body. He found nothing.

  The very thought of killing anyone made him sick. He knew he did not

  have the capacity to kill, except perhaps in self defense. So who had

  scratched his face and hands? Whose blood was on him?

  In the bathroom again, he stripped out of his stained clothes and rolled

  them into a tight bundle. He washed his face and hands. He had a

  styptic pencil along with other shaving gear; he used that to stop the

  scratches from bleeding.

  When he met his own eyes in the mirror, they were haunted that he had to

  look away.

  Frank dressed in fresh clothes and snatched the car keys from the

  dresser. He was afraid of what he might find in the Chevy parked At the

  door, as he disengaged the dead bolt, he realized that neither the frame

  nor the door itself was smeared with blood. If he had left during the

  afternoon and returned, bleeding from his hands, he would not have had

  the presence of mind to wipe the door clean before climbing into bed.

  Anyway, he had seen no bloody washcloth or tissues with which a cleanup

  might have been accomplished.

  Outside, the sky was clear; the westerly sun was bright. the motel's

  palm trees shivered in a cool wind.

  The concrete walkway outside his room was not spotted with blood. The

  interior of the car was free of blood. No blood marked the dirty rubber

  mat in the trunk, either.

  He stood by the open trunk, blinking at the sun-wash motel and parking

  lot around him. Three doors down, a man and woman in their twenties

  were unloading luggage from their black Pontiac. Another couple and

  their grade-school-a daughter were hurrying along the
covered walkway,

  apparently heading toward the motel restaurant. Frank realized that he

  could not have gone out and committed murder and turned, blood-soaked

  and in broad daylight, without being seen.

  In his room again, he went to the bed and studied the rumpled sheets.

  They were crimson-spotted, but not a fraction saturated as they would

  have been if the attack-whatever nature-had happened there. Of course,

  with all the blood, it might have spilled mostly on the front of his

  shirt and jeans. But he still couldn't believe that he had clawed

  himself in his sleep-one hand ripping at the other, both hands tearing

  at his face-without waking.

  Besides, he had been scratched by someone with sharp fingernails. His

  own nails were blunt, bitten down to the quick.

  SOUTH OF Cielo Vista Care Home, between Corona Del Mar and Laguna, Bobby

  tucked the Samurai into a corner of a parking lot at a public beach. He

  and Julie walked down to the shore.

  The sea was marbled blue and green, with thin veins of gray. The water

  was dark in the troughs, lighter and more colorful where the waves rose

  and were half pierced by the rays of the fat, low sun. In serried ranks

  the breakers moved toward the strand, big but not huge, wearing caps of

  foam that the wind snatched from them.

  Surfers in black wet suits paddled their boards out toward where the

  swell rose, seeking a last ride before twilight. Others, also in wet

  suits, sat around a couple of big coolers, drinking hot beverages from

  thermos bottles or Coors from the can. The day was too cool for