She thought of the words on the tablet: I AM COMING. YOU DIE.
She switched on the engine.
He said, “Where are we going?”
As she put the car in gear, pulled out onto the county road, and turned right toward New Svenborg, she did not answer him. Instead, “Was there anything special about you as a boy?”
“No,” he said a little too quickly, too sharply.
“Never any indication that you were gifted or—”
“No, hell, nothing like that.”
Jim's sudden nervous agitation, betrayed by his restless movement and his trembling hands, convinced Holly that she had touched on a truth. He had been special in some way, a gifted child. Now that she had reminded him of it, he saw in that early gift the seeds of the powers that had grown in him. But he didn't want to face it. Denial was his shield.
“What have you just remembered?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, Jim.”
“Nothing, really.”
She didn't know where to go with that line of questioning, so she could only say, “It's true. You're gifted. No aliens, only you.”
Because of whatever he had just remembered and was not willing to share with her, his adamancy had begun to dissolve. “I don't know.”
“It's true.”
“Maybe.”
“It's true. Remember last night when The Friend told us it was a child by the standards of its species? Well, that's because it is a child, a perpetual child, forever the age at which you created it — ten years old. Which explains its childlike behavior, its need to brag, its poutiness. Jim, The Friend didn't behave like a ten-thousand-year-old alien child, it just behaved like a ten-year-old human being.”
He closed his eyes and leaned back, as if it was exhausting to consider what she was telling him. But his inner tension remained at a peak, revealed by his hands, which were fisted in his lap.
“Where are we going, Holly?”
“For a little ride.” As they passed through the golden fields and hills, she kept up a gentle attack: “That's why the manifestation of The Enemy is like a combination of every movie monster that ever frightened a ten-year-old boy. The thing I caught a glimpse of in my motel-room doorway wasn't a real creature, I see that now. It didn't have a biological structure that made sense, it wasn't even alien. It was too familiar, a ten-year-old boy's hodgepodge of boogeymen.” He did not respond. She glanced at him. “Jim?” His eyes were still closed. Her heart began to pound. “Jim!” At the note of alarm in her voice, he sat up straighter and opened his eyes. “What?”
“For God's sake, don't close your eyes that long. You might've been asleep, and I wouldn't have realized it until—”
“You think I can sleep with this on my mind?”
“I don't know. I don't want to take the chance. Keep your eyes open, okay? You obviously suppress The Enemy when you're awake, it only comes through all the way when you're asleep.”
In the windshield glass, like a computer readout in a fighter-plane cockpit, words began to appear from left to right, in letters about one inch high: DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD.
Scared but unwilling to show it, she said, “To hell with that,” and switched on the windshield wipers, as if the threat was dirt that could be scrubbed away. But the words remained, and Jim stared at them with evident dread.
As they passed a small ranch, the scent of new-mown hay entered with the wind through the windows. “Where are we going?” he asked again.
“Exploring.”
“Exploring what?”
“The past.”
Distressed, he said, “I haven't bought this scenario yet. I can't. How the hell can I? And how can we ever prove it's true or isn't?”
“We go to town,” she said. “We take that tour again, the one you took me on yesterday. Svenborg — port of mystery and romance. What a dump. But it's got something. You wanted me to see those places, your subconscious was telling me answers can be found in Svenborg. So let's go find them together.”
New words appeared under the first six: DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD.
Holly knew that time was running out. The Enemy wanted through, wanted to gut her, dismember her, leave her in a steaming heap of her own entrails before she had a chance to convince Jim of her theory — and it did not want to wait until Jim was asleep. She was not certain that he could repress that dark aspect of himself as she pushed him closer to a confrontation with the truth. His self-control might crack, and his benign personalities might sink under the rising dark force.
“Holly, if I had this bizarre multiple personality, wouldn't I be cured as soon as you explained it to me, wouldn't the scales immediately fall off my eyes?”
“No. You have to believe it before you can hope to deal with it. Believing that you suffer an abnormal mental condition is the first step toward an understanding of it, and understanding is only the first painful step toward a cure.”
“Don't talk at me like a psychiatrist, you're no psychiatrist.”
He was taking refuge in anger, in that arctic glare, trying to intimidate her as he had tried on previous occasions when he'd not wanted her to get any closer. Hadn't worked then, wouldn't work now. Sometimes men could be so dense.
She said, “I interviewed a psychiatrist once.”
“Oh, terrific, that makes you a qualified therapist.”
“Maybe it does. The psychiatrist I interviewed was crazy as a loon himself, so what does a university degree matter?”
He took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. “Okay, suppose you're right and somehow we do turn up undeniable proof that I'm crazy as a loon—”
“You aren't crazy, you're—”
“Yeah, yeah, I'm disturbed, troubled, in a psychological box. Call it whatever you want. If we find proof somehow — and I can't imagine how — then what happens to me? Maybe I just smile and say, 'Oh, yes, of course, I made it all up, I was living in a delusion, I'm ever so much better now, let's have lunch.' But I don't think so. I think what happens is … I blow apart, into a million pieces.”
“I can't promise you that the truth, if we find it, will be any sort of salvation, because so far I think you've found your salvation in fantasy not in truth. But we can't go on like this because The Enemy resents me, and sooner or later it'll kill me. You warned me yourself.”
He looked at the words on the windshield, and said nothing. He was running out of arguments, if not resistance.
The words quickly faded, then vanished.
Maybe that was a good sign, an indication of his subconscious accommodation to her theory. Or maybe The Enemy had decided that she could not be intimidated with threats — and was struggling to burst through and savage her.
She said, “When it's killed me, you'll realize it is part of you. And if you love me, like you told me you did through The Friend last night, then what's that going to do to you? Isn't that going to destroy the Jim I love? Isn't that going to leave you with just one personality — the dark one, The Enemy? I think it's a damned good bet. So we're talking your survival here as well as mine. If you want to have a future, then let's dig to the bottom of this.”
“Maybe we dig and dig — but there is no bottom. Then what?”
“Then we dig a little deeper.”