"Talking," Toby confirmed. He pounded the keyboard. As before, the patterns and colors acquired a rhythm consistent with the pace at which he input his side of the conversation. "A tremendously complicated and expressive language," Heather said, "beside which English or French or Chinese is primitive."
Toby stopped typing, and the response from the other conversant was dark and churning, black and bile green, clotted with red. "No," the boy said to the screen. The colors became more dour, the rhythms more vehement. "No," Toby repeated. Churning, seething, spiraling reds.
For a third time- "No." Jack said, "What're you saying 'no' to?"
"To what it wants," Toby replied. "What does it want?"
"It wants me to let it in, just let it in."
"Oh, Jesus," Heather said, and reached for the Off switch again. Jack stopped her hand as he'd done before.
Her fingers were pale and frigid. "What's wrong?" he asked, though he was afraid he knew. The words "let it in" had jolted him with an impact almost as great as one of Anson Oliver's bullets. "Last night,"
Heather said, staring in horror at the screen. "In a dream." Maybe his own hand turned cold. Or maybe she felt him tremble. She blinked.
"You've had it too, the dream!"
"Just tonight. Woke me."
"The door," she said. "It wants you to find a door in yourself, open the door and let it in. Jack, damn it, what's going on here, what the hell's going on?".He wished he knew. Or maybe he didn't. He was more scared of this thing than of anyone he'd confronted as a cop. He had killed Anson Oliver, but he didn't know if he could touch this enemy, didn't know if it could even be found or seen.
"No," Toby said to the screen. Falstaff whined and retreated to a corner, stood there, tense and watchful. "No. No." Jack crouched beside his son.
"Toby, right now you can hear it and me, both of us?"
"Yes."
"You're not completely under its influence."
"Only a little."
"You're in between somewhere."
"Between," the boy confirmed. "Do you remember yesterday in the graveyard?"
"Yes."
"You remember this thing speaking through you."
"Yes."
"What?" Heather asked, surprised. "What about the graveyard?" On the screen: undulant black, bursting boils of yellow, seeping spots of kidney red. "Jack," Heather said, angrily, "you said nothing was wrong when you went up to the cemetery. You said Toby was daydreaming-just standing up there daydreaming."
To Toby, Jack said, "But you didn't remember anything about the graveyard right after it happened."
"No."
"Remember what?" Heather demanded. "What the hell was there to remember?"
"Toby," Jack said, "are you able to remember now because…
because you're half under its spell again but only half neither here nor there?"
"Between," the boy acknowledged. "Tell me about this 'it' you're talking to," Jack said. "Jack, don't," Heather said. She looked haunted. He knew how she felt. But he said, "We have to learn about it."
"Why?"
"Maybe to survive." He didn't have to explain. She knew what he.meant. She had endured some degree of contact in her sleep. The hostility of the thing. Its inhuman rage. To Toby, he said, "Tell me about it."
"What do you want to know?" — On the screen: blues of every shade, spreading like Japanese fans but without the sharp folds, one blue over the other, through the other.
"Where does it come from, Toby?"
"Outside."
"What do you mean?"
"Beyond."
"Beyond what?"
"This world." Is it extraterrestrial?" — Heather said, "Oh, my God."
"Yes," Toby said. "No."
"Which, Toby?"
"Not as simple as E.T. Yes. And no."
"What is it doing here?"
"Becoming."
"Becoming what?"
"Everything." Jack shook his head. "I don't understand."
"Neither do I," the boy said, riveted to the display on the computer monitor. Heather stood with her hands fisted against her breast.
Jack said, Toby, yesterday in the graveyard, you weren't just between. like now."
"Gone."
"Yes, you were gone all the way."
"Gone."
"I couldn't reach you."
"Shit," Heather said furiously, and Jack didn't look up at her because he knew she was glaring at him. "What happened yesterday, Jack? Why didn't you tell me, for Christ's sake? Something like this, why didn't you tell me?" Without meeting her eyes, he said, "I will, I'll tell you, just let me finish this."."What else haven't you told me," she demanded. "What in God's name's happening, Jack?"
To Toby, he said, "When you were gone yesterday. son, where were you?"
"Gone."
"Gone where?"
"Under."
"Under? Under what?"
"Under it."
"Under ?"
"Controlled."
"Under this thing? Under its mind?"
"Yeah. In a dark place."
Toby's voice quavered with fear at the memory. "A dark place, cold, squeezed in a dark place, hurting."
"Shut it off, shut it down!" Heather demanded. Jack looked up at her.
She was glaring, all right, red in the face, as furious as she was frightened. Praying that she would be patient, he said, "We can shut the computer off, but we can't keep this thing out that way. Think about it, Heather. It can get to us by routes through dreams, through the TV. Apparently even while we're awake, somehow. Toby was awake yesterday when it got to him."
"I let it in," the boy said. Jack hesitated to ask the question that was, perhaps, the most critical of all. "Toby, listen when it's in you does it have to be actually in you? Physically? A part of it inside you somewhere?"
Something in the brain that would show up in a dissection. Or attached to the spine. The kind of thing for which Eduardo had wanted Travis Potter to look.
"No," the boy said. "No seed no egg no slug nothing that it is."
"No." That was good, very good, thank God and all the angels, that was very good. Because if something was implanted, how did you get it out of your child, how did you free him, how could you cut open his brain and tear it out? Toby said, "Only thoughts. Nothing in you but thoughts."
"You mean, like it uses telepathic control?"."Yeah." How suddenly the impossible could seem inevitable.
Telepathic control. Something from beyond, hostile and strange, able to control other species telepathically. right out of a science fiction movie, yet it felt real and true. "And now it wants in again?"
Heather asked Toby. "Yes."
"But you won't let it in?" she asked. "No." Jack said, "You can really keep it out?"
"Yes." They had hope. They weren't finished yet. Jack said, "Why did it leave you yesterday?"
"Pushed it."
"You pushed it out?"
"Yeah. Pushed it. Hates me."
"For pushing it out?"
"Yeah." His voice sank to a whisper. "But it's it…
it hates hates everything."
"Why?" With a fury of scarlet and orange swirling across his face and flashing in his eyes, the boy still whispered: "Because that's what it is."
"It's hate?"
"That's what it does."
"But why?"
"That's what it is."
"Why?" Jack repeated patiently. "Because it knows."
"Knows what?"
"Nothing matters."
"It knows that nothing matters?"
"Yes."
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing means." Dizzied by the only half-coherent exchange, Jack said, "I don't understand." Ikl still lower whisper: "Everything can be underd, but nothing can be understood." I want to understand it." everything can be understood, but nothing can be stood." Hether's hands were still fisted, but now she pressed to her eyes, as if she.couldn't bear to look at him in this half-trance any longer. Nothing can be understood," Toby murmured again. frustrated, Jack said, "But it understands us." No." What doesn't it understand about us?" Lots of things. Mainly we resist."