"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.
FORTY-SEVEN
Starlene huddled in the dark cell, her arms around Dipes and Isaac. The walls quivered, the metal doors clanged in the corridors, and bits of ancient plaster fell from the ceiling. Whatever Kracowski and Mills were doing, it was tearing the building apart.
"What's happening, Dipes?" Isaac said. "I mean, what's about to happen?"
"It keeps changing," Dipes said. "First everybody was dead and wandering around, then we were standing outside the fence, looking back at the building."
"All of us were outside?" Starlene asked.
"No. Not Freeman and Vicky."
"That's what I was afraid of." Starlene wasn't sure that God would want people to know the future, because they might try to change it. But maybe God's plan included taking responsibility for the future. God didn't send you anything you couldn't handle, even telepathy and clairvoyance and precognition.
She wondered if God would want her to reach out with her mind, to triptrap like Freeman and Vicky. Surely He wouldn't stop her if it was His will. But, if He didn't approve, would He blame her for trying? It might be a sin that had never come under consideration. She offered a quick prayer, linked with God in that strange and powerful way that was the biggest mind trip of all.
She asked her question and the answer came. Her heart was clear. Her soul was pure enough. She called on the memory of that brief moment in Thirteen, when she could read the thoughts of those around her.
Nothing.
Isaac peeked out the cell door. "That new doctor's doing something to the machines."
Starlene closed her eyes and concentrated. All she heard were her own panicked thoughts and the vibration of the building roaring in her ears. Powder poured from the crumbling masonry. She hugged the boys even more tightly.
"We'll be okay," she said. "God told me so."
Isaac said to Dipes, "What did God tell you?"
"God's not talking to me," Dipes said.
Starlene tried one more time, asking God for strength if it be His will, and the voice came to her from the rear of the cell. She turned to the dark corners and saw the Miracle Woman, ethereal, whole, smiling.
"I, too, prayed to God," the Miracle Woman said. "Every night. Even after the doctors gave me injections and I was out of my mind."
"You died here, didn't you? In Wendover?" she said aloud, even though the Miracle Woman's words came into her head without the benefit of sound.
"Who are you talking to?" Isaac said. "One of your ghosts?"
The Miracle Woman grew more solid, radiant. Clothed in what looked to be a gown of sheer silver.
Isaac gasped. "I see her."
"Have a little faith, Isaac," the Miracle Woman said. "Miracles happen every day."
"Are… are you an angel?" Dipes asked.
She smiled. "Whatever you believe. Someday you'll understand, but not too soon, I hope."
"You're here to help us," Starlene said.
"I'm here to help us," she said, her voice hollow yet soothing. "The ones who have been disturbed from our rest."
"What do we do now?" Starlene said.
The Miracle Woman smiled again, her eyes kind, suffused with a strange light that reminded Starlene of a candle behind smoked glass. "Look inside. Then you'll know. And, Edmund, the answer is at your fingertips."
The Miracle Woman faded back into darkness.
"A lot of help that was," Isaac said. "Like some sappy line from Touched by an Angel, where your problems get solved just in time for the commercial break. And nobody's hair even gets messed up."
Starlene looked out the cell door at Mills feverishly working the computer keyboard, punching in commands. The chaotic wisps of spirits swirled around him, a maelstrom of scattered soul-threads. Kracowski, his lower lip swollen and his scalp bleeding, crawled to McDonald. The utility lights above the holding tanks pulsed unevenly, as if the drain on the electrical grid was threatening a meltdown.
Then Dipes said, "Hey, look what I found," and pressed something into her hand.
A pistol.
FORTY-EIGHT
"You little shit, you never did appreciate what I gave you," Dad said.
Freeman shivered, and the deadscape beyond the bridge became more tempting than ever. He could drown in that lightlessness and not care. He could face dying, he didn't mind going into the dark, as long as he was with Vicky. But not with Dad hanging around smart or crazy enough to split himself, keep one half back mere in the real world and the other here in the deadscape.
"So you think you're going to take this little sack of vomit with you?" Dad triptrapped them both. He turned toward Vicky, his soul sharp around the edges, his form ten feet tall, his fingers ready to rip into anything that smacked of unity.
"Leave her alone," Freeman triptrapped.
"Ah, finally growing some balls, Trooper? You were so easy to control, you pathetic little puke. I tried it on other people, even your mother, but nobody rolled over like you did. You opened up your mind and invited me in, dared me to play with it."
"That was a long time ago. I was just a little boy. How could I know what was going on?"
Dad's laughter tore across the deadscape, making the darkness rattle, pulling the cloak of eternal night closer around them. "Still trying to blame others, huh, Freeman? All your miserable life, you've been telling yourself it's not your fault. Well, Shit for Brains, it is your fault."
Dad turned back to Vicky, and the force of his triptrap seared through both of them. "So he finally told you, didn't he, lard-ass? It's all true, except for that part where he said I was the one who made him do it. Truth is, you always wanted to kill her, didn't you, Freeman? It was your idea, and you built this little fantasy where I was the one who made you do it. You can't out-shrink me, can you, Trooper?"