He reached for her elbows and came away empty. She was moving away from him, retreating back into the shadows. Except she wasn't running away, he saw. She was floating, her obscenely-swollen toes inches above the floor.
The deformed mouth vomited its silent scream as she continued to rake at her eyes. Just before she disappeared into the wall, the forehead scar curved slightly, as if giving Bondurant a smile of farewell.
TWELVE
Freeman was dreaming of his dead grandparents' farm, a hundred and twelve acres of rolling woodlands, the green valleys pocked with cattle, a silver creek winding through the belly of the land. Freeman was in the garden near the barn, the smell of drying tobacco, manure, and hay dust hanging in the warm summer air. Broad leaves of zucchini plants and wires of runner beans surrounded him. He drove his shovel into the black earth, turning up nightcrawlers.
He turned the shovel and the worms spilled out, slimy and as thick as pencils. The shovel blade dipped again, and the ground fell away, becoming a huge black cavity. A monstrous worm reared up, glistening with mucus, its blind head probing the sky. The worm continued to swell, its girth like that of a rubbery tree.
Suddenly, the worm grew a hundred arms and the dark mouth opened: "Hey, Shit For Brains, what the fuck you doing jerking off in here when I need you?"
Now the worm wore Dad's head, and Freeman struggled against his blankets as the worm's millipedic arms reached for him, strangled him, slapped at him, smothered him, and, worst of all, hugged him "Psst. Hey, new guy. Freeman."
Freeman shoved away, cried out, the sunshine of his dream gave way to six walls of shadow, and still the Dad-worm clutched at him.
"Whoa, man. Take it easy."
Freeman groaned and opened his eyes. In the muted night light of the Blue Room, he could make out the face of the mossy-eyed boy, Isaac, from Group. The boy was shaking him awake.
"You must have been in a bad nightmare," Isaac said in a loud whisper. He released Freeman and knelt by the cot.
Freeman blinked in the gloom, his heart pounding. Even in here, behind these dense stone walls, he couldn't escape that damned asshole. Dad was deeper inside his brain than a maggot in a corpse, whether he was asleep or awake. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. "Thanks."
"You were kicking up a storm. About broke my arm."
"I was getting away. I've had lots of practice."
"Who hasn't? You either get away or you're not around very long. You know how they are."
The Blue Room was fairly quiet. At the far end of the rows of bunks, a couple of boys were talking. It might have been eleven o'clock or three in the morning. "Where are the house parents?"
Isaac snorted. "Probably playing kissy-face with each other, for all I know. They make themselves pretty scarce after Lights Out."
Freeman lowered his voice. "And Deke?"
He pictured Deke pestering the smaller boys in the night, maybe even molesting them. The thought sickened him as much as the dream had.
"The fearless leader? Listen for a second."
Among the nocturnal stirrings and small talk, an abrasive, rhythmic sound rose and fell.
"That's his snoring," Isaac said. "He's big on sleep. At night, you can always count on being able to tell where he is. I'm Isaac, by the way."
"I know. Like in the Bible. You ever get sacrificed?"
"Not that I know of. You know how hard it is to put up with all this Christian baloney when you're a Jew?"
"I can imagine. But, if you're like me, you learn to fake it pretty quick. I've been in enough homes to know that the faith-based ones make for easier time, and have better food, too."
"Damn. Are you Jewish, too?"
"No, but I might as well be. Got nothing better going on."
"Jews don't trust their kids to be outside a Jewish family. When I got orphaned, my aunts and uncles tried to claim me. But the shrinks wouldn't let them, because, swear to God, I don't trust Jews, either. I mean, we're pretty peculiar sometimes."
The main door creaked open. "Hey, keep it down in there," came an adult voice. A flashlight beam sliced from nowhere and swept over the rows of bunks.
Isaac put his face near Freeman's and whispered, "Nazis."
"Ah, the fathers of modern psychiatry," Freeman said. "You know that's how the Germans got their taste for genocide, by wiping out nut cases in the 1930s. Then they started on the homosexuals."
"Hey, I thought the Jews were first."
"Nah. They were doing that stuff even before Hitler came along. All the while these doctors would twirl their mustaches and talk about what a great service they were doing by putting undesirables out of their misery."
"Some of the doctors were Jews, I bet," Isaac whispered.
"Well, Isaac, you present as a classic casebook example of 'paranoia.'"
"You talk like a shrink."
"No, I'm smarter than most of the shrinks I've gone up against," Freeman said. "My dad was one. Always shrink your shrink until they're smaller than you are. That's my philosophy."
"I'll bet you've got a lot of philosophies."
"Changes with the weather."
"So what are you?" Isaac asked. "Manic D? Plain D? Schizo? Socio?"
"Manic D with a cherry on top. At least that's what my case file says. What's got you?"
"Demons. Ugly little Jewish demons with hooks for fingers. Can't shake the bastards loose." Isaac shuddered as if one of the invisible demons had just landed on his back.
"You should see a doctor about that."
"Nah. They tell me that all I have to do is accept Jesus as my own personal savior and I'll be cured. I'd just as soon put up with the demons. A lot lower maintenance."
They were quiet for a moment. Deke's snoring cut through the still air, halted as he rolled over, then picked up again, the rhythm crippled now. One of the guys in a nearby bunk broke wind in his sleep, and Freeman stifled a giggle.
"On nights we have pinto beans, it gets really rough in here," Isaac said.
"There's more than one way to gas a Jew."
They shared a hushed snicker, then Isaac said, "That was a pretty clever trick, what you did with the book today. I've been here for two years, and that's the first time anybody's stood up to Deke."
"I didn't stand up to him so much as just confuse him a little."
"That's easy to do, I admit. But you could have got your face broken. Keep an eye on him. He'll be out to show the others you're not so hot."
"It burns me up that he picks on the little kids. What's the deal with Dipes?"
"It's not a good thing when you're old enough to change your own diapers. Somebody or something must have screwed him up bad. He won't talk about it."
"Join the club," Freeman said. "We're all people of difference, exceptional children. The troubled. The little bumblefucks that society likes to keep out of sight and out of mind."
The door to the Blue Room opened again, spilling a shaft of light from the hallway. A house parent entered the room, following his flashlight beam between the rows of cots. Isaac slid under the bed beside Freeman's, then flipped onto his own cot. Isaac was under the blankets by the time the light settled on him.
"Were you sleepwalking again, Isaac?" said the house parent, Phil.
Isaac sat up and rubbed at his eyes. "They've got pointy fingers," he murmured.
Freeman had to chew the hem of his blanket to keep from laughing out loud.
"Well, try to keep quiet," Phil said. He was thin, with styled hair and cologne that was so strong Freeman could smell it over the lingering odor of flatulence. The man's voice was girlish and whiny. "The other boys need their sleep."