'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.'
