The thing that killed was in the mind.
In her dream Gillian opened windows wide as the world and looked out at Peter, who was suspended in a void on a child's swing. Feet together, pumping rhythmically—successive arcs carried Peter higher and higher. He laughed and waved at her as he swung past the windows. Such good spirits.
/The doll, he called.
Gillian looked reluctantly at the Skipper doll in her hands. She'd always had Skipper, and she didn't want to share him. But Peter insisted. He had a right to Skipper too.
/Give him to me, Gillian, Peter said on his next slow pass at the windows. /Hand him over. His mood had changed. He wasn't laughing any more. She knew she'd better do what he said.
All she needed to do was lean out and Peter would swoopingly gather Skipper in his arms. But she couldn't be brave about the void she faced. Nothingness terrified her. She wanted to close her eyes and hold Skipper at arm's length for Peter to snatch away. But she had no eyelids. No matter which way she turned her head she was forced to see. Endlessly she went on seeing.
Skipper's head was in her hands. Skipper hung down dancing within reach of Peter, but Peter missed him. When Peter stretched out backwards, making a second effort to get his hands on Skipper, he lost his seat. He took Skipper down with him, they dwindled in the lonesome void. Gillian at the windows, hands outstretched, seeing, seeing. She was cursed with eternal vision. The eye dictated to the mind. It was a strange form of insanity, and the horrors had just begun.
She was still holding Skipper's head.
It rolled woodenly on her flattened palms, winking and giggling, sticking its tongue out at her. The head rolled up one arm and perched on her shoulder. There it turned into a toucan, a bird with a tyrannical eye and a fierce horn beak that gleamed like polished boots. The toucan picked up an ear and ate it. Gillian tolerated this. Peckishly it dismantled the bones of her head. Then it paused, gloating over the throb of blue uncovered brains. Now this is too much, Gillian thought tearfully. What's mine is mine. You miserable bird!
She awoke with a quiet shudder, blinking, instantly reassured that she was not doomed to a lidless existence. The mind despised the all-seeing eye, and did its best to shroud reality for the sake of the vulnerable organism. Her dream dissolved slowly. There was a glaze of firelight on the ceiling of the cold room in which she was bedded. She heard someone else breathing, through a stuffy nose, heard the pages of a magazine turning. Gillian moved her head carefully on the pillow, not wanting to rustle the crisp sheets.
The girl with the yellow headband was sitting in a chair near the fire with a magazine in her lap, rubbing her nose on the back of one hand. A high-intensity lamp beamed down on her. Gillian heard a clock ticking and wondered what time it was, and why she wasn't sleeping. Granny Sig had insisted that she take the capsules that would bomb her out for a day or more. Granny Sig had been kind of tough about it.
But her mind, despite the awful dreams, was sharp and clear. She was wide awake and, she hoped, able to think rationally. She even remembered the name of the girl with the yellow headband. Lana had been a constant companion since Shadowdown.
So if she wasn't sleeping, then the pills she had swallowed were nothing but sugar.
There was a point to that.
Granny Sig was the only one who seemed to care about her. As far as she knew, Gillian had never met a real transvestite before, although some of her mother's acquaintances. . . . She'd always considered transvestites to be woebegone, ridiculous creatures, but Granny Sig was forthright and intelligent and very easy to talk to. They'd spent nearly two hours discussing the tragedy, talking over Robin's many accomplishments and his ultimate failure to cope with his powers: the powers which she and Robin had in common. It was not difficult then for Gillian to unburden herself. Granny Sig understood.
A phone beside Lana rang. She glanced at Gillian, who was studying her through slitted eyes, and picked up the receiver. She listened for a few moments without speaking, then turned her head again.
"Totally knocked out," Lana said. She listened a while longer, then put down the receiver and approached the bed. Gillian feigned sound sleep. Lana put a hand on one shoulder and shook her gently. Gillian sensed that wouldn't be all, and willed herself to be a rock. Lana pinched her earlobe with sharp fingernails. Gillian didn't bat an eye.
Satisfied, Lana left her, murmured into the phone again, hung up and left the room.
Gillian waited, counted off two minutes. Then she sat up. She was alone. She got out of bed and, shivering, put on her clothes. She was thinking about Peter and the talk they'd had less than twenty-four hours ago. She wept for Peter, but her tears didn't last long. It wasn't what he would have wanted.
Her room was on the third floor. Granny Sig had made sure, during their whispered colloquy, that she had full knowledge of how the house was laid out.
The staircase down to the little-used servants' quarters was cold and poorly lighted; Gillian stumbled once and made some noise, then froze to the railing until she could get her heart out of her mouth.
When she reached the second floor the door, as Granny Sig had promised, was unlocked. A cabinet clock ticked loudly as she walked down the hall to the south wing. It was ten minutes past four in the morning.
But what about dogs? she had said, and Granny Sig said, Childermass hates vicious dogs. He won't have them in the house.
All the bedroom doors in the south wing of the house were closed. Gillian was momentarily confused. She counted and recounted, then put her ear to one door and heard nothing. Listening at the next door she heard Lana, faintly, talking inside. She waited, poised to run. Nobody came near the door. Gillian continued to listen, but she didn't hear Lana speak again.
/What you do accidentally, Granny Sig said, you can do on purpose. By willing it.
No, it's horrible, I can't!
/Then you will surely end up like Robin. As mad and monstrous as Robin.
(The thing that killed was in the mind)
Gillian turned the knob and eased the door open. She entered the sitting room of Childermass's suite.
A single lamp was lit. Beyond the lamp, in the bedroom, Childermass sat naked on the side of his bed. Lana, still wearing her yellow headband but nothing else, was down on one knee between his legs, face close to his groin. She nuzzled and nursed. For all the reaction she was getting she might as well not have been there.
Gillian singled out a closet door near the bedroom door. Then, without much interest, she watched the sexual dumbshow as long as it lasted. Very tiring for Lana, but she brought him off.
As soon as Lana was finished, Gillian popped into the closet.
She heard them talking again. Apparently Childermass was an insomniac. He thought a hot bath might help. Gillian heard Lana in the bathroom filling the tub. When she came out Childermass complained that he was hungry. He wanted steak and eggs and a shot of brandy. Lana put her clothes on. From deep inside the closet Gillian watched her leave the bedroom. A few moments later the outside door clicked shut behind Lana.
Cut off the head, Peter had told her, and MORG's enemies will devour the body.
Gillian opened the closet door and started into the bedroom. Then she doubled back to lock the outside door.
Up to now she had stayed reasonably calm, but the act of locking herself in with Childermass almost snapped her nerve. Her mind seemed to slip out of gear, because the next thing she knew she was standing agape in the bedroom just a few feet from his bath, hearing him sigh and splash lethargically in the deep tub. Childermass's back was to the door.
/What affects you might be described as rare form of epilepsy.
Oh, God, how can I do this?
I'm like a generator. Turn me on, turn me off.
/Robin could do it, said Granny Sig.
(What I can do you can do, Gillian. You're my sister)
But what turns the generator on, Granny Sig?
/Hate. Anger. Any powerful emotion.
I can't. I'm too afraid.
/Yes, fear. Fear will do. Use it.
/Use it, Gillian!
Keeping an eye on the bathroom door, Gillian quietly stripped the coverlet and blankets from the bed. She moved deliberately, but her pulse was hammering incredibly fast, at well over two hundred beats a minute. Her skin was flushed. She pulled the top sheet off and folded it twice.
When the bathroom door opened on a squeaking hinge Childermass trembled all over, startled out of a nodding doze.
"Lana?" he said. "Run some more hot water. And I could use a smoke."
"Go to hell," Gillian said.
With a mighty splash he sat up straight, craning his head. He had only a glimpse of Gillian's furious face before she threw the doubled sheet over him and followed with an arm lock on his stubby body, bearing him down, holding him in the tub with all her strength. His scream was muffled by the sheet and cut off by a gush of water down his throat, although he managed immediately to get his face above the water line. He fought with his one arm, but the wet sheet clung suffocatingly. When he kicked his feet his head slipped far under water and Gillian pressed down again, snorting, her arms wet to the shoulders, her face dripping.
Then his blood began to flow beneath the sheet. Childermass, gasping and sobbing, thrust his head up yet another time before he sank again. Gillian looked away. It was terrible, yet better than her dreams. Here she could close her eyes and not watch the sheet turn red, the water turn vilely dark.
With her eyes tightly closed she remembered the expression on Childermass's face as he murdered Peter; she wondered what he looked like now. Gillian didn't really care. Her fury had ebbed almost immediately after she laid hands on him. She had fed it all to Childermass and now there was nothing to do but hang on while his strength flowed out of him.
It might have taken a minute, or an hour.
Cleaning up afterward was difficult; Gillian gagged and almost fainted. She had to strip herself to the waist. Fortunately the ski pants were a dark blue color, and she didn't mind the few spots on them.