Free Bad Place by Dean Koontz Page B

dreaming, for no expression tightened the muscles of her slack face.
    “All I want is your blood,” he said softly.
    Abruptly she cast off the lingering effects of the sedative, and her eyes filled with alarm.
    Before she could spoil the beauty of the moment by screaming or resisting, thereby shattering the illusion that she was his mother and was giving voluntarily of herself, he struck the side of her neck with his heavy fist. Then he struck her again. Then he hammered the side of her face twice. She slumped unconscious against the pillow.
    He squirmed under the covers to be close against her, withdrew her hand, and nipped her palm with his teeth. He put his head on the pillow, lying face to face with her, holding her hand between them, drinking the slow trickle from her palm. He closed his eyes after a while and tried to imagine that she was his mother, and eventually a gratifying peace stole over him. However, though he was happier at that moment than he had been in a long time, it was not a deep happiness, merely a veneer of joy that brightened the surface of his heart but left the inner chambers dark and cold.

14
    AFTER ONLY a few hours of sleep, Frank Pollard woke in the backseat of the stolen Chevy. The morning sun, streaming through the windows, was bright enough to make him wince.
    He was stiff, achy, and unrested. His throat was dry, and his eyes burned as if he had not slept for days.
    Groaning, Frank swung his legs off the seat, sat up, and cleared his throat. He realized that both of his hands were numb; they felt cold and dead, and he saw that he had curled them into fists. He had evidently been sleeping that way for some time, because at first he could not unclench. With considerable effort, he opened his right fist—and a handful of something black and grainy poured through his tingling fingers.
    He stared, perplexed, at the fine grains that had spilled down the leg of his jeans and onto his right shoe. He raised his hand to take a closer look at the residue that had stuck to his palm. It looked and smelled like sand.
    Black sand? Where had he gotten it?
    When he opened his left hand, more sand spilled out.
    Confused, he looked through the car windows at the residential neighborhood around him. He saw green lawns, dark topsoil showing through where the grass was sparse, mulch-filled planting beds, redwood chips mounded around some shrubs, but nothing like what he had held in his tightly clenched fists.
    He was in Laguna Niguel, so the Pacific Ocean was nearby, rimmed by broad beaches. But those beaches were white, not black.
    As full circulation returned to his cramped fingers, he leaned back in the seat, raised his hands in front of his face, and stared at the black grains that speckled his sweat-damp skin. Sand, even black sand, was a humble and innocent substance, but the residue on his hands troubled him as deeply as if it had been fresh blood.
    “Who the hell am I, what’s happening to me?” he wondered aloud.
    He knew that he needed help. But he didn’t know to whom he could turn.

15
    BOBBY WAS awakened by a Santa Ana wind soughing in the trees outside. It whistled under the eaves, and forced a chorus of ticks and creaks from the cedar-shingle roof and the attic rafters.
    He blinked sleep-matted eyes and squinted at the numbers on the bedroom ceiling: 12:07. Because they sometimes worked odd hours and slept during the day, they had installed exterior Rolladen security shutters, leaving the room coal-mine dark except for the projection clock’s pale green numerals, which floated on the ceiling like some portentous spirit message from Beyond.
    Because he had gone to bed near dawn, and instantly to sleep, he knew the numbers on the ceiling meant that it was shortly past noon, not midnight. He had slept perhaps six hours. He lay unmoving for a moment, wondering if Julie was awake.
    She said, “I am.”
    “You’re spooky,” he said. “You knew what I was thinking.”
    “That’s not spooky,”