Freeman wished he could slip back into his flesh and suffer some ordinary pain. He didn't want to die like this, with the guilt pressing on him, a blame that would follow him beyond death forever.
Vicky's thoughts swept into him, crowding Dad's. "Hang on, Freeman. Whatever happened it's over now."
"Over?" Dad triptrapped a psychic tornado. "It's only beginning. Mind control doesn't have to end just because your heart stops. Thanks to Kracowski, I can mess with you for the rest of eternity."
In a flash, Freeman saw a vision of what Dad had in store, a timeless future where Dad raped Vicky and made Freeman watch, where he shoved doughnuts into her mouth, where Dad brought Mom back to life so Freeman could kill her over and over again, where the insane dead people threw their tortured thoughts into Freeman's head where all the pain of all the souls in the world could be his. A hell in his head.
The vision fell away and he was back on the bridge, Vicky receding on the far end, the bridge flickering and fading beneath them, Dad's dark soul swelling, merging with the greater blackness beyond joining the deadscape, becoming it, taking on a power that surrounded everything, that built a universe where there was no room for light or peace.
The edges of the deadscape quivered, monsters moaned from their hidden holes, ghosts whispered sorrows, despair rained in gray and washed the bridge away. The darkness ate at Freeman, nibbled him with its teeth, and he was tired, ready to surrender, because Dad was right.
It was his fault. And he deserved every kind of punishment that Dad could dream up.
As he closed the eyes of his soul, a bolt of lightning juiced through him, an electroshock of energy.
"We can beat him," Vicky said, flooding his head, filling him up. "Together."
Filling him up and up and up.
FORTY-NINE
Starlene pressed her damp palm around the gun. Was this the answer to her prayer? A sign from God?
God didn't send you anything you couldn't handle.
What could she do? There didn't appear to be a safety switch. She knew how to point and pull the trigger, but could she actually shoot another human being?
"I see another future," Dipes said.
"Great," Isaac said. "Please tell me in this one we all live happily ever after, even the Jews."
"That never happens in any future."
"Well, how about this? Starlene makes like one of Charlie's Angels and blows away the bad guys."
"Sort of. Except, we better get out of the basement."
"Because it's going to collapse, right?"
"No. Because it's all going to be a deadscape."
Starlene said, "You guys head for the stairs. I'll be right behind you. I have to do something first."
Isaac grabbed Dipes's hand and Starlene pushed the two of them into the corridor. The basement was a crazed kaleidoscope of lights and noise. She waited until she saw the stairwell door swing closed, then slipped to the opening of the main area, where the lights strobed and the machinery whined. She peered down the corridor and saw Kracowski slumped to the floor, holding his head in his hands. McDonald lay inert by the cell where Vicky and Freeman were locked away. The large curved panels, like something off a space station, shook with whatever Dr. Mills was pumping into them. Mills himself stood behind the computer, eyes closed, a twisted smile on his lips.
"What now, God?" she asked, holding the gun in front of her.
A hand fell on her shoulder, she turned, half-expecting to see the face of God, or maybe the Miracle Woman, but it was Randy. His punch landed and her mind screamed blue and she heard the distant clatter of the gun falling to the floor just before her head cracked against the cold concrete.
FIFTY
Warm.
That was what this union was; that was what hope and faith felt like. Vicky was right. Together, you could beat back the darkness. Together, you never had to surrender or apologize.
"Oh, that's just hilarious," Dad said, twenty feet tall now, grim smoke pouring out of his soul. "You murder your goddamned mother and then think you get away with a slap on the wrist because now you have somebody to share the blame. That's not the way it works, Trooper."
"You don't know everything," Freeman triptrapped, angry now, feeling the warmth expand, watching as the bridge grew brighter beneath Dad's monstrous shape. "You think you're God but you're just as much of a loser as I am. Worse, even. Because I never asked for this and you searched for it. You begged for it and sold your soul for it. You pulled out every trick in your sick little book, but it's nothing but a meaningless mind game. And now the game's over."
"He lied," Vicky said "He never gave you a gift. He gave himself the gift."
"Shut up, bitch bones." Dad quivered, his mouth alive now with dark shapes that fluttered like winged creatures. "I'm the one who controls things around here. This is a world I built."
"Then you can fucking have it," Freeman said. "Because we're getting out of here. In the deadscape, nobody has to follow your rules."
He focused, shielded himself from Dad's thoughts, sent himself out and up, and Vicky joined him, the strength of their combined triptrap going through the deadscape and back to the real, living world and through the walls of the cell into the basement:
Dad, in the flesh, at the computer.
Kracowski in pain, stomach tight, mind sick with regret.
McDonald, rolling over, mad with the visions of things he'd never expected.
Randy…
Randy?
Randy, shielded, going to McDonald, a mission to complete.
And Starlene.
Freeman and Vicky went into Starlene's head, saw only gray. And then black.
And they were back in the deadscape.
Dad stood between them again.
Freeman tried another triptrap, this time not beyond the deadscape but into it. He called to those who hid behind the darkness, those who orbited this freakish universe. The dead. The ghosts. The true rulers of this bleak land.
Vicky joined him, and the broken, sad thoughts spilled into them, the dreams and screams of those who had died in the basement, those whose souls were stitched into this fabric, those who belonged here.
A form came up from the blackness, the Miracle Woman, her light faint but unyielding, and Dad was confused for a moment, as if the playground had changed without his knowledge.
"That's right, you bastard," Freeman said, taking advantage of the lapse. Coming on like Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, his greatest role, giving in to his dark side and riding hellbent for revenge. "If you want to play God, then you may as well meet those whose souls you own."
The Miracle Woman ascended to the bridge, as soft as a snowflake, and the bridge grew brighter. Her eyes were healed, her face clear, her soul pure. And as she joined the bridge, it grew brighter, the world tilted yet again and a storm roared from the dark corners of the deadscape. A keening of a strange wind arose and swirled around the bridge.
The Miracle Woman's shape dissolved, shifted, the soul realigned. And Mom stood in her place.
Mom.
"Don't turn away," Vicky told Freeman, and he looked into Mom's eyes, Mom who bore no scars, Mom who held no regrets.
"It's okay, Freeman." Mom smiled at him. "Vicky's right. It wasn't your fault."
Dad swelled with rage, a hideous black disease, and hovered over Mom as if ready to collapse on top of her, drag her back into dim memory. "What the HELL are you doing here? WHO TOLD YOU TO COME BACK? "
"Oh, didn't you know? Something I learned after you killed me. You carry your dead with you, Kenneth."
Freeman triptrapped her, and saw the truth of it: Dad had experimented on Mom, made her a victim, too. Dad was the one who went into the bathroom with the knife, Dad was the one whose perverted flesh wanted to taste that ultimate power. Freeman triptrapped Dad who was weakened now, and saw what Dad had hidden away, that Dad had planted the memory of Freeman committing the murder, muddled in his hippocampus, and built a corrupt story.