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"I don’t know"
She took a turn too wide The car went off the paveravel spraying out froe The guardrail flashed close, too close, and the car was shaken by the hard bang-bang-bang of sheetit back under control by a sheer effort of will, biting her lower lip so hard it appeared as if she would draw blood
Although Hatch are of Lindsey and the car and the reckless pace they were keeping along that sohway, he could not turn his er he thought about Regina being added to that grisly collection, the er It was the hot, uncontainable anger he had seen so often in his father, but directed now against soet worthy of such seething rage
As he approached the entrance road to the abandoned park, Vassago glanced away froed in the other seat Even in that poor light he could see that she had been straining at her bonds Her wrists were chafed and beginning to bleed Little Regina had hopes of breaking free, striking out or escaping, though her situation was so clearly hopeless Such vitality She thrilled hiht not need the mother at all, if he could think of a way to place her in his collection that would result in a piece of art with all the power of the various hter tableaux that he had already conceived
He had been unconcerned with speed Now, after he turned off the highway onto the park’s long approach road, he accelerated, eager to return to the museum of the dead with the hope that the ato, the four-lane entrance had been bordered by lush flowers, shrubbery, and groupings of pal up, potted, and hauled away ages ago by agents of the creditors The flowers had died and turned to dust when the landscape watering system had been shut off
Southern California was a desert, transformed by the hand of man, and when the hand of htful territory So enius of humanity, God’s imperfect creatures The pavement had cracked and hoved froun to vanish under drifts of sandy soil His headlights revealed tumbleweed and scraps of other desert brush, already brown hardly six weeks after the end of the rainy season, chased ard by a night wind that came out of the parched hills
When he reached the tollbooths he slowed down They stretched across all four lanes They had been left standing as a barrier to easy exploration of the shuttered park, linked and closed off by chains so heavy that simple bolt cutters could not sever them Now the bays, once overseen by attendants, were filled with tangled brush that the wind had put there and trash deposited by vandals He pulled around the booths, bouncing over a low curb and traveling on the sun-hardened soil of the planting beds where lush tropical landscaping would once have blocked the way, then back to the pavement when he had bypassed the barrier
At the end of the entrance road, he switched off his headlights He didn’t need thehway patrolhts His eyes immediately felt more comfortable, and now if his pursuers drew too close, they would not be able to follow hiled across the i toward a service road at the southwest corner of the inner fence that circurounds of the park proper
As the Honda jolted over the pot-holed blacktop, Vassago ransacked his iination, which was a busy abattoir of psychotic industry, seeking solutions for the artistic problems presented by the child He conceived and rejected concept after concept The ie must stir him Excite him If it was really art, he would know it; he would be ina, he becaht and its singular rage Suddenly he was plunged into another psychic vision, a flurry of falimpse of Lindsey behind the wheel of a car … a car phone in ahand … and then the object that instantly resolved his artistic dilemma … a crucifix The nailed and tortured body of Christ in its famous posture of noble self-sacrifice
He blinked away that iirl in the car with hiination saw the two coina to mock the Crucifixion Yes, lovely, perfect But not raised upon a cross of dogwood Instead, she mented belly of the Serpent, under the bosoions of the funhouse, crucified and her sacred heart revealed, as backdrop to the rest of his collection Such a cruel and stunning use of her negated the need to include herachievee County Sheriffs Depart transmission problees of Regina disfigured in a e Then he was struck by a vision of a crucifixion; it was so powerful, vivid, and monstrous that it almost rendered hi blow froed Lindsey to drive faster, without explaining what he had seen He couldn’t speak of it
The terror was a of the statee Was God in error to have otten Child a man? Should Christ have been a woman? Were not women those who had suffered the reatest syranted wo and tenderness, for caring and nurturing--then had duular qualities ets for the cruel and depraved
Horror enough existed in that truth, but a greater horror, for Hatch, lay in the discovery that anyone as insane as Jereht If a horasp its theological implications, then creation itself must be an asylum For surely, if the universe were a rational place, no madman would be able to understand any portion of it
Lindsey reached the approach road to Fantasy World and took the turn so fast and sharp that the Mitsubishi slid sideways and felt, for a ht She pulled hard on the wheel, brought it around, tra to be permitted to realize his decadent vision with that lamb of innocence Hatch was prepared to die to prevent it
Fear and fury flooded hi of the cellular-phone handset creaked in his right fist as though the pressure of his grip would crack it as easily as if it had been an eggshell
Tollbooths appeared ahead Lindsey braked indecisively, then see, sandy earth at the saht, and it bounced over the concrete border of what had once been a flower bed
He had to rein in his rage, not succumb to it as his father had always done, for if he didn’t reood as dead He tried to place the eain Tried to hold fast to his reason He h whose eyes he had seen the bound wrists and frightened eyes of his child
The surge of rage pouring back across the telepathic wire excited Vassago, pumped up his own hatred, and convinced him that he must not wait until both the worasp Even the prospect of the single crucifixion brought hi and revulsion that he knew his artistic concept was of sufficient power Once realized through the flesh of the gray-eyed girl, his art would reopen the doors of Hell to him He had to stop the Honda at the entrance to the service road, which appeared to be blocked by a padlocked gate He had broken the h the hasp with the appearance of effectiveness He got out of the car, opened the gate, drove through, got out again and closed it