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The ust

The pond was still and gray

Morning insects issued a thin, alround buzz, like faint static on a radio with the volume turned nearly off She hurried to the Ford and stealthily opened the door

Another panic hit her as she thought of the keys Then she felt them in a pocket of her jeans, where she had slipped the the bathroom at the farmhouse One key for the faruel, two keys for the car, all on a simple brass-bead chain

She threw the purse and tablet into the back seat and got behind the wheel, but didn’t close the door for fear the sound would wake hiht burst out of the winde of hi her from the car

Her hands shook as she fuht one in the ignition But then she got it in, twisted it, put her foot on the accelerator, and aline turned over with a roar

She yanked the door shut, threw the Ford in reverse, and backed along the gravel path that circled the pond The wheels spun up a hail of gravel, which rattled against the back of the car as she reversed into it

When she reached the area between the barn and the house, where she could turn around and head out of the driveway front-first, she jammed on the brakes instead She stared at the windmill, which was now on the far side of the water

She had nowhere to run Wherever she went, he would find her He could see the future, at least to some extent, if not as vividly or in as much detail as The Friend had claianise liht, project a beast of hideous design into her dreams and into the doorway of her motel, track her, find her, trap her

He had drawn her into his mad fantasy and most likely still wanted her to play out her role in it The Friend in Jio But the third personality-the murderous part of him, The Enemy-would want her blood Maybe she would be fortunate, and n thirds of hi after her But she doubted it Besides, she could not spend the rest of her life waiting for a wall to bulge outward unexpectedly, form into a mouth, and bite her hand off And there was one other problem

She could not abandon him He needed her

Part THREE From childhood s hour I have not been As others were I have not seen As others saw

Alone, F,Edgar ALLAN POE Vzbratzons in a wzre

Ice crystals in a beatzng heart

Cold fire

A e ainst a cruel life death and strzfe: Cold fire

-that HOOK OF counted SOHROWS

THE REST OF AUGUST 29

Holly sat in the Ford, staring at the old windmill, scared and exhilarated

The exhilaration surprised her Maybe she felt upbeat because for the first ti to which she illing to coet-bored co to put her life on the line for this, for Jim and what he could becoether

Even if he had told her she could go, and even if she had felt that his release of her was sincere, she would not have abandoned him

He was her salvation And she was his

The ainst the ashen sky Jim had not appeared at the door Perhaps he had not yet awakened

There were still many mysteries within this mystery, but so much was painfully obvious now He sometimes failed to save people-like Susie Jawolski’s father-because he was not really operating on behalf of an infallible god or a prescient alien; he was acting on his own phenomenal but imperfect visions; he was just a man, special but only a man, and even the best of men had limits He evidently felt that he had failed his parents sohed heavily on his conscience, and he was trying to redee the lives of others: HE LOOKED LIKE MY FATHER, WHOM I FAILED TO SAVE

It was now obvious, as well, why The Eneh only when Jim was asleep: he was terrified of that dark aspect of hie, and he strenuously repressed it when he ake At his place in Laguna, The Ene and actually had been sustained for a while after Jih the bathroo dream it was Dreams are doorways, The Friend had warned, which had been a warning from Jim himself Drea alien monsters ; dreams were doorways to the subconscious, and what came out of them was all too human

She had other pieces of the puzzle, too She just didn’t kno they fit together

Holly was angry with herself for not having asked the correct questions on Monday, when Jim had finally opened his patio door and let her into his life He’d insisted that he was only an instruht it too quickly She should have probed harder, asked tougher questions She was as guilty of a technique as Jim had been when The Friend had first appeared to theness to accept what The Friend said at face value Now she understood that he had created The Friend for the same reason that other victienerated splinter personalities: to cope in a world that confused and frightened thee in fantasy

He created The Friend, a , as a source of solace and hope

When Holly pressed The Friend to explain itself logically, Ji threatened a fantasy which he desperately needed to sustain himself For sihly as she should have on Monday evening He was her sustaining dreaure in a drearace and panache Until she had seen him, she had not realized howdeeply at hiood reporter would have done, she had let him be what he wanted to pretend to be, for she had been reluctant to lose him

Now their only hope was to press hard for the whole truth He could not be healed until they understood why this particular and bizarre fantasy of his had evolved and how in the name of God he had developed the superhuman powers to support it

She sat with her hands on the steering wheel, prepared to act but with no idea what to do There seemed to be no one to whom she could turn for help She needed answers that were to be found only in the past or in Jim’s subconscious mind, two terrains that at the moment were equally inaccessible

Then, hit by a thunderbolt of insight, she realized Ji , he had taken her on a tour of the tohich, at the time, seemed like a tactic to delay their arrival at the farm But she realized now that the tour had contained the ic land mysteries that, once unlocked, would make it possible for her to help him

He wanted help A part of him understood that he was sick, trapped in a schizophrenic fantasy, and he wanted out She just hoped that he would suppress The Enemy until they had time to learn what they needed to know That darkest splinter of his mind did not want her to succeed; her success would be its death, and to save itself, it would destroy her if it got the chance

If she and Jiether, or any life at all, their future lay in the past, and the past lay in New Svenborg

She swung the wheel hard right, began to turn around to head out of the driveway to the county road-then stopped She looked at the windain