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"Maybe Probably Who knows?"
"We better hope that’s how it is Because if he’s listening and watching all the time, we don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of nailing the son of a bitch The round as sure as he burned down your condo"
On the shoplinedthe dark Newport coast where land was being graded for a new co hills and where enor machines stood like prehistoric beasts asleep on their feet, Harry had a crawling sensation along the back of his neck Descending the coast highway into Laguna Beach, it got worse He felt as if he were being watched in the sauna was an arts colony and tourist h it had seen better days Speckled with golden lights and adorned with a softening reenery, serried hills sloped down froraceful as a lovely woht the lady seeerous
The house stood on a bluff above the sea The all of tinted glass enco surf
When Bryan wished to sleep during the day, electrically operated Rolladen shutters ht, however, and while Bryan slept, the huge s revealed a black sky, blacker sea, and phosphorescent incohosts
When Bryan slept, he always dreah most people’s dreams were in black and white, his were in full color In fact the spectrureater than in real life, a fabulous variety of hues and shadings that ly intricate
Rooestions of places, and landscapes were not impressionistic sly detailed If he drea, individually mottled and shaded
If snow, every flake was unique
After all, he was not a dreaod Creative
That Tuesday evening Bryan’s dreams were, as always, filled with violence and death His creativity was best expressed in iinative forms of destruction
He walked the streets of a fantasy city more labyrinthine than any that existed in the real world, aspires
When children looked upon hiue of such exquisite virulence that their s pustules; bleeding lesions split their skin When he touched strong men, they burst into flaed before his eyes, withered and died in seconds, transformed from objects of desire into piles of wor in front of a corner grocery, the ony, and swarms of cockroaches erupted from his ears, nostrils, and htmare He enjoyed his dreams and aloke from them refreshed and excited
The city streets faded into the uncountable rooms of an infinite bordello, with a different beautiful wo to please him in every richly decorated chamber Naked, they prostrated themselves before him, pleaded to be allowed to provide him with relief, but he would lie with none of thehtered each woman in a different fashion, endlessly inventive in his brutalities, until he was drenched with their blood
He was not interested in sex Poasthan sex could ever be, and by far thepoas the power to kill
He never tired of their cries for mercy Their voices were very much like the squeals of the small animals that had learned to fear hiun to Become He had been born to rule both in the dream world and the real, to help humankind relearn the hu delicious le of black sheets, as pale upon that rumpled silk as the luminescent foam was pale upon the crest of each wave that broke on the shore below his s
The euphoria of the bloody dream stayed with hiased for the day when he could brutalize the real world as he did the world in his drea multitudes In their selfabsorption, they had pridefully assumed that the world had been made for them, for their pleasure, and they had overrun it But he was the apex of creation, not them
They must be profoundly humbled, and their nu, not in full control of his power, still Beco of the earth that was his destiny
Naked, he got out of bed The slightly cool air felt good against his bare skin
In addition to the sleek, ultrae roohtstands and black marble lamps with black shades
No stereo, television, or radio There was no chair in which to relax and read; books were of no interest to hie he needed to acquire and no entertainment equal to that he could provide hi the phantom bodies in which he patrolled the outer world, he preferred to lie in bed, staring at the ceiling
He had no clock Didn’t need one He was so attuned to the mechanics of the universe that he always knew the hour, ift
The entire wall opposite the bed was hout the house; he liked what they showed hirace, beauty, and power
Except for thewas black as well
The blacklacquered shelves of a large bookcase contained scores of onepint Mason jars filled with for therein were pairs of eyes, visible to Bryan even in deep gloos: reen Others were the eyes of the animals on which he’d first experierbils, lizards, snakes, turtles, cats, dogs, birds, squirrels, rabbits; so pale red or yellow or green
Votive eyes Offered by his subjects Sy At every hour of the day and night, the eyes were there, acknowledging, ad him
Look upon me and tremble, said the Lord For I aivenns but also aeance And whatevereth to thee shall fro vent fans, the rooases, and an astringent disinfectant that made Connie squint
Harry sprayed his left hand with some Binaca breathfreshener
He cupped his rance would block out at least some of the smell of death
He offered Connie the Binaca She hesitated, then accepted it
The dead wo on the tilted, stainlesssteel table The coroner had ans had been carefully reard’s victims from the restaurant Her name was Laura Kincade Thirty years old She had been pretty when she’d gotten out of bed that risly carnival funhouse
The fluorescent lights imparted a es of the overheadHer lips were parted, as if she were about to sit up, speak into the mike, and add a few comments to the official record of her autopsy
The coroner and two assistants orking late, finishing the final of three exaard and his two victims The men looked weary, both physically and spiritually
In all her years of police work, Connie had never encountered one of those hardened forensic pathologists who appeared so frequently in theup corpses while they edies of others On the contrary, although it was necessary to approach such a job with professional detachular intimate contact with the victims of violent crime always took its toll one way or another
Teel Bonner, the chief medical examiner, was fifty but seeht, his face looked less tanned than sallow, and the bags under his eyes were large enough to pack for a weekend getaway