In the moody amber light of the two brass lamps, with the world darkening rapidly beyond the drawn blinds, Jackie’s smooth and well-projected voice, full of low rounded tones and an occasional dramatic vibrato, commanded not just Frank’s attention but everyone else’s as well. He used a beveled teardrop crystal on a gold chain to focus Frank’s attention, after suggesting that the others look at Frank’s face rather than at the bauble, to avoid unwanted entrancement.
“Frank, please watch the light winking in the crystal, a very soft and lovely light fluttering from one facet to another, one facet to another, a very warm and appealing light, warm, fluttering....”
After a while, lulled somewhat herself by Jackie’s calculated patter, Julie noticed Frank’s eyes glaze over.
Beside her, Clint switched on the small tape recorder that he had used when Frank had told them his story yesterday afternoon.
Still twisting the chain back and forth between his thumb and forefinger to make the crystal spin on the end of it, Jackie said, “All right, Frank, you are now slipping into a very relaxed state, a deeply relaxed state, where you will hear only my voice, no other, and will respond only to my voice, no other....”
When he had conveyed Frank into a deep trance and finished giving him instructions related to the interrogation ahead, Jackie told him to close his eyes. Frank obliged.
Jackie put the crystal down. He said, “What is your name?”
“Frank Pollard.”
“Where do you live?”
“I don’t know.”
Having been briefed on the phone by Julie earlier in the day, aware of the information they were seeking from their client, Jackie said, “Have you ever lived in El Encanto?”
A hesitation. Then: “Yes.”
Frank’s voice was strangely flat. His face was so haggard and deathly pale that he seemed almost like an exhumed corpse that had been sorcerously revitalized for the purpose of serving as a bridge between the members of a seance and those to whom they wished to speak in the land of the dead.
“Do you recall your address in El Encanto?”
“No.”
“Was your address 1458 Pacific Hill Road?”
A frown Nickered across Frank’s face and was gone almost as soon as it came. “Yes. That’s what ... Bobby found ... with the computer.”
“But do you actually remember that place?”
“No.”
Jackie adjusted his Rolex watch, then used both hands to smooth back his thick, black hair. “When did you live in El Encanto, Frank?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must tell me the truth.”
“Yeah.”
“You cannot lie to me, Frank, or hide anything from me. That is impossible in your current state. When did you live there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you live there alone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you remember being in the hospital last night, Frank?”
“Yeah.”
“And you ... disappeared?”
“They say I did.”
“Where did you disappear to, Frank?”
Silence.
“Frank, where did you disappear to?”
“I ... I’m afraid.”
“Why?”
“I ... don’t know. I jcan’t think.”
“Frank, do you remember waking up in your car last Thursday morning, parked along a street in Laguna Beach?”
“Yeah.”
“Your hands were full of black sand.”
“Yeah.” Frank wiped his hands on his thighs, as if he could feel the black grains clinging to his sweaty palms.
“Where did you get that sand, Frank?”
“I don’t know.”
“Take your time. Think about it.”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you remember checking into a motel later ... napping ... then waking up with blood all over yourself?”
“I remember,” Frank said, and he shuddered.
“Where did that blood come from, Frank?”
“I don’t know,” he said miserably.
“It was cat blood, Frank. Did you know it was cat blood?”
“No.” His eyelids fluttered, but he did not open his eyes. “Just cat blood? Really?”
“Do you remember encountering a cat that day?”
“No.”
Clearly, a more aggressive technique would be required to get the answers they needed. Jackie began to talk Frank backward in time, gradually regressing him to his admission to the hospital yesterday evening, then farther back toward the moment he had awakened in that Anaheim alleyway in the earliest hours of Thursday morning, knowing nothing but his name. Beyond that point might lie his memory, if he could be induced to step through the veil of amnesia and recover his past.
Julie leaned slightly forward in her chair and looked past Jackie Jaxx, wondering how Bobby was enjoying the show. She figured the spinning crystal and other hocus-pocus would appeal to his boyish spirit of adventure, and that he would be smiling and bright-eyed.
Instead he was somber. His teeth must have been clenched, for his jaw muscles bulged. He had told her what they learned at Dyson Manfred’s house, and she had been as astonished and shaken as he and Clint. But that didn’t seem to explain his current mood. Maybe he was still unnerved by the memory of the bugs in the entomologist’s study. Or maybe he continued to be troubled by that dream he’d had last week: the bad thing is coming, the bad thing....
She had dismissed his dream as unimportant. Now she wondered if it had been genuinely prophetic. After all the weirdness that Frank had brought into their lives, she was more willing to give credence to such things as omens, visions, and prescient dreams.
The bad thing is coming, the bad thing. . .
Maybe the bad thing was Mr. Blue.
Jackie regressed Frank to the alleyway, to the very moment when he had first awakened in a strange place, disoriented and confused. “Now go back further, Frank, just a little further, back just a few more seconds, and a few more, back, back, beyond the total darkness in your mind, beyond that black wall in your mind....”
Since the questioning had begun, Frank had appeared to dwindle in Julie’s desk chair, as if made of wax and subjected to a flame. He had grown paler, too, if that was possible, as white as candle paraffin. But now, as he was forced backward through the darkness in his mind, toward the light of memory on the other side, he sat up straighter, put his hands on the arms of the chair and clutched the vinyl almost tightly enough to cause the upholstery to split. He seemed to be growing, returning to his former size, as if he had drunk one of the magic elixirs that Alice had consumed in her adventures at the far end of the rabbit hole.
“Where are you now?” Jackie asked.
Frank’s eyes twitched beneath his closed lids. An inarticulate, strangled sound issued from him. “Uh ... uh ...”
“Where are you now?” Jackie insisted gently but firmly.
“Fireflies,” Frank said shakily. “Fireflies in a windstorm!” He began to breathe rapidly, raggedly, as if he were having trouble drawing air into his lungs.
“What do you mean by that, Frank?”
“Fireflies ...”
“Where are you, Frank?”
“Everywhere. Nowhere.”
“We don’t have fireflies in southern California, Frank, so you must be somewhere else. Think, Frank. Look around yourself now and tell me where you are.”
“Nowhere.”
Jackie made a few more attempts to get Frank to describe his surroundings and be more specific as to the nature of the fireflies, all to no avail.
“Move him on from there,” Bobby said. “Farther back.”
Julie glanced at the recorder in Clint’s hand and saw the spools turning behind the plastic window in the tapedeck.
With his melodic and vibrant voice, in seductively rhythmic cadences, Jackie ordered Frank to regress past the firefly-speckled darkness.
Suddenly Frank said, “What am I doing here?” He was not referring to the offices of Dakota & Dakota, but to the place that Jackie Jaxx had drawn him to in his memory. “Why here?”
“Where are you, Frank?”
“The house. What in the hell am I doing here, why did I come here? This is crazy, I shouldn’t be here.”
“Whose house is it, Frank?” Bobby asked.
Because he had been instructed to hear only the hypnotist’s voice, Frank did not respond until Jackie repeated the question. Then: “Her house. It’s her house. She’s dead, of course, been dead seven years, but it’s still her house, always will be, the bitch will haunt the place, you can’t destroy that kind of evil, not entirely, part of it lingers in the rooms where she lived, in everything she touched.”
“Who was she, Frank?”
“Mother.”
“Your mother? What was her name?”
“Roselle. Roselle Pollard.”
“This is the house on Pacific Hill Road?”
“Yeah. Look at it, my God, what a place, what a dark place, what a bad place. Can’t people see what a bad place it is? Can’t they see that something terrible lives in there?” He was crying. Tears glimmered in his eyes, then streamed down his cheeks. Anguish twisted his voice. “Can’t they see what’s in there, what lives there, what hides there and breeds in that bad place? Are people blind? Or do they just not want to see?”
Julie was riveted by Frank’s tortured voice and by the agony that had wrenched his face into an approximation of the pained countenance of a lost and frightened child. But she turned away from him and peered past the hypnotist to see if Bobby had reacted to the words “bad place.”
He was looking at her. The expression of distress that darkened his blue eyes was proof enough that the reference had not escaped him.
At the other end of the room, carrying a sheaf of printouts, Lee Chen entered from the reception lounge. He closed the door quietly. Julie put a finger to her lips, then motioned him to the sofa.
Jackie spoke soothingly to Frank, trying to allay the fear that had electrified him.
Suddenly Frank let out a sharp cry of fear. He sounded more like a frightened animal than like a man. He sat up even straighter. He was trembling. He opened his eyes, but obviously did not see anything in the room; he was still in a trance. “Oh, my God, he’s coming, he’s coming now, the twins must’ve told him I’m here, he’s coming!”
Frank’s unalloyed terror was so pure and intense that some of it was communicated to Julie. Her heartbeat speeded up, and she began to breathe more rapidly, shallowly.
Trying to keep his subject relaxed enough to be cooperative, Jackie said, “Calm down, Frank. Relax and be calm. Nobody can hurt you. Nothing unpleasant will happen. Be calm, relaxed, calm....”
Frank shook his head. “No. No, he’s coming, he’s coming, he’s going to get me this time. Dammit, why did I come back here? Why did I come back and give him a chance at me?”
“Relax now—”
“He’s there!” Frank tried to rise to his feet, seemed unable to find the strength, and dug his fingers even deeper into the vinyl padding on the arms of the chair. “He’s right there, and he sees me, he sees me.”
Bobby said, “Who is he, Frank?” and Jackie repeated the question.
“Candy. It’s Candy!” When he was asked again for the name of this person he feared, he repeated: “Candy.”
“His name is Candy?”
“He sees me!”
In a more forceful and commanding voice than before, Jackie said, “You will relax, Frank. You will be calm and relaxed.”
But Frank only grew more agitated. He had broken into a sweat. Fixed on something in a far place and time, his eyes were wild. His terror seemed to be sweeping him into a heart-bursting panic.
“I don’t have much control of him,” Jackie said worriedly. “I’m going to have to bring him out of it.”
Bobby slid forward to the edge of his chair. “No, not yet. In a minute but not yet. Ask him about this Candy. Who is the guy?”
Jackie repeated the question.
Frank said, “He’s death.”
Frowning, Jackie said, “That’s not a clear answer, Frank.”
“He’s death walking, he’s death living, he’s my brother, her child, her favorite child, her spawn, and I hate him, he wants to kill me, here he comes!”
With a wretched bleat of terror, Frank started to push up from the chair.
Jackie ordered him to stay where he was.
Frank sat down reluctantly, but his terror only grew, because he could still see Candy coming toward him.
Jackie tried to bring him out of that place in the past, forward to the present, and out of his trance, but to no avail.
“Got to get away now, now, now, ” Frank said desperately.
Julie was frightened for him. She’d never seen anyone look more pathetic or vulnerable. He was drenched in sweat, shaking violently. His hair had fallen over his forehead, into his eyes, but it did not interfere with the vision of terror that he had called up from his past. He clutched the arms of the chair so fiercely that a fingernail on his right hand finally punctured the vinyl upholstery.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Frank repeated urgently.
Jackie told him to stay put.
“No, I’ve got to get away from him!”
To Bobby, Jackie Jaxx said, “This has never happened to me, I’ve lost control of him. Jesus, look at him, I’m afraid the guy’s going to have a heart attack.”
“Come on, Jackie, you’ve got to help him,” Bobby said sharply. He got off his chair, squatted beside Frank, putting his hand on Frank’s in a gesture of comfort and reassurance.
“Bobby, don’t,” Clint said, standing up so fast that he dropped the tape recorder he’d been balancing on his thigh.
Bobby didn’t respond to Clint, for he was too focused on Frank, who seemed to be shaking himself to pieces in front of them. The guy was like a boiler with a jammed release valve, filled to the bursting point not with steam pressure but with manic terror. Bobby was trying to calm him, where Jackie had failed.
For an instant Julie didn’t understand what had made Clint shoot to his feet. But she realized that Bobby had seen something the rest of them had missed: fresh blood on Frank’s right hand. Bobby hadn’t put his hand over Frank’s merely to offer comfort; he was trying, as gently as possible, to loosen Frank’s grip on the arm of the chair, because Frank had torn open the vinyl and cut himself, perhaps repeatedly, on an exposed staple or upholstery tack.