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Emmet Walsh, as a personal favorite of hers

The fifth cast hn

She looked up at the loo here?" she said aloud She lifted her gaze to the dismal sky, then lowered it to the photo of the dustjacket for Willott’s book "What the hell is happening here?" In a voice quaking with fear but also with an eerie note of desire, Ji, and saw a disturbance in the earth at the far end of the s up a yard-wide huht at therabbed hi," he said, wide-eyed

"Jim, it’s you, it’s only you"

"Nonot lanced back and saw the thing passing under the concrete hich cracked and heaved up in In its wake

"Ji killer with horror but also with, she thought, a sort of longing

One of the park benches was knocked over as the earth bulged then sank under it

The Enerabbed Jim by the shirt, shook him, tried to make him look at her

"I saw this movie when I was a kid What was it called, huh? Wasn’t it Invaders Fro like that, where the aliens open doors in the sand and suck you down?" She glanced back It was thirty feet fro that opens a door in the sand, sucks us down, soht He see Holly said

She shouted in his face anyway: "Are you going to killstrong and put an end to it, let one of your own nightht

"Ji of jaws in the ground under them, she raised her foot, rammed the heel of her shoe down across the front of his shin, as hard as she could, to h his sock

Jiround shifted under the earth But the burrowing stopped siround didn’t open Nothing erupted fro, Holly stepped back from the ripped sod and cracked earth on which she had been standing

Jihast "It wasn’t me It can’t have been"

Back in the car, Ji wheel, put her forehead on her ariant mole trail was still there The sideas cracked and tumbled The bench lay on its side

He just couldn’t believe that the thing beneath the park had been only a figination, empowered only by hisa Spartan existence of books and work, with no vices or indulgences (Except a frighteningly convenient forgetfulness, he thought sourly) Nothing about Holly’s theory was harder for hie part of hier that they faced

He was beyond ordinary fear now He was no longer perspiring or shivering He was in the grip of a priid and DryIce dry

"It wasn’tthat she believed he’d alentle with hireat tenderness

He said, "You’re still on this split-personality kick"

"Yes"

"So it was iant wore on his sarcash when I was sleeping, and I wasn’t sleeping, so even if I a in the park?" "New rules Subconsciously, you’re getting desperate You’re not able to control that personality as easily as before The closer you’re forced to the truth, theto become in order to defend itself" "If it was me, asn’t there an alien heartbeat like before?" "That’s always just been a dra before The Friend put in an appearance" She raised her head from her arms and looked at him "You dropped it because there wasn’t ti that plaque, and you wanted to stop me as fast as you could You needed a distraction Let me tell you, babe, it was a lulu"

He looked out theagain, toward the windmill and the lectern that held the information about The Black Windmill

Holly put a hand on his shoulder "You were in a black despair after your parents died You needed to escape Evidently a writer named Arthur Willott provided you with a fantasy that fit your needs perfectly To one extent or another, you’ve been living in it ever since"

Though he could not ad toward understanding, that he was on the brink of seeing his past from a new perspective that would les fall into a new and comprehensible shape

If selective amnesia, carefully constructed false memories, and even multiple personalities were not indications of madness but only the hooks he had used to hold on to sanity-as Holly insisted-then ould happen to hi up the truth about his past, faced the things he had refused to face when he had turned to fantasy as a child, would the truth drive hi fro is that you shut it down before it reached us, before it did any har

"Good," she said brightly

She started the engine

"Where are we going now?" he asked

"Where else? The library"

Holly parked on Copenhagen Lane in front of the s library

She was pleased that her hands were not shaking, that her voice was level and calm, and that she had been able to drive fro all over the road After the incident in the park, she was amazed that her pants were still clean She had been reduced to raw terror -a pure, intense emotion untainted by any other

Diluted now, it was still with her, and she kneould remain with her until they were out of these spooky old woods---or dead But she was determined not to reveal the depth of her fear to Jim, because he had to be worse off than she was

After all, it was his life that was turning out to be a collage of flimsy lies

He needed to lean on her

As she and Ji), Holly noticed he was studying the lawn around hi toward them