“A nightlight,” she repeated, coming down another step. “You know, for comfort. I had one when I was a girl.”
The outsider was looking up at her over Ralph’s shoulder. With his back to the standing lamp and his face in the shadows, Ralph could see a strange shine in those mismatched eyes. Except that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t in them but coming from them, and now Ralph understood what Grace Maitland had meant when she said the thing she’d seen had straws for eyes.
“Comfort?” The outsider seemed to consider the word. “Yes, I suppose so, although I’ve never thought of it that way. But also information. Even dead, they’re full of Bolton-ness.”
“Do you mean memories?” Another step closer. Ralph took his left hand off his wrist and motioned her back, knowing she wouldn’t go.
“No, not those.” He looked impatient with her again, but there was something else there, too. A certain eagerness Ralph knew from many interrogation rooms. Not every suspect wanted to talk, but most of them did, because they had been alone in the closed room of their thoughts. And this thing must have been alone with its thoughts for a very long time. Alone, period. You only had to look at him to know it.
“Then what is it?” She was still in the same place, and thank God for small blessings, Ralph thought.
“Bloodline. There’s something in bloodline that goes beyond memory or the physical similarities that are carried down through the generations. It’s a way of being. A way of seeing. It’s not food, but it is strength. Their souls are gone, their ka, but something is left, even in their dead brains and bodies.”
“A kind of DNA,” she said. “Maybe tribal, maybe racial.”
“I suppose. If you like.” He took a step toward Ralph, holding out the hand with MUST written on the fingers. “It’s like these tattoos. They aren’t alive, but they hold certain infor—”
“Stop!” she shouted, and Ralph thought, Christ, she’s even closer. How could she do that without me hearing?
The echoes rose, seeming to expand, and something else fell. Not a stalactite this time, but a chunk of rock from one of the rough walls.
“Don’t do that,” the outsider said. “Unless you want to risk bringing the whole thing down on our heads, don’t raise your voice like that.”
When Holly spoke again, her voice was lower but still urgent. “Remember what he did to Detective Hoskins, Ralph. His touch is poisonous.”
“Only when I’m in this transformative state,” the outsider said mildly. “It’s a form of natural protection, and rarely fatal. More like poison ivy than some sort of radiation. Of course, Detective Hoskins was . . . susceptible, shall we say. And once I’ve touched someone, I can often—not always, but often—get into their minds. Or the minds of their loved ones. I did that with Frank Peterson’s family. Only a little, enough to push them in directions they were already going.”
“You should stay where you are,” Ralph said.
The outsider raised his tattooed hands. “Certainly. As I’ve said, you’re the man with the gun. But I can’t let you leave. I’m too tired to relocate, you see. I had to make the drive down here far too soon, and I had to buy a few supplies, which drained me even more. It seems we’re at a standoff.”
“You put yourself in this position,” Ralph said. “I mean, you know that, right?”
The outsider looked at him out of a face that still held the fading remains of Terry Maitland and said nothing.
“Heath Holmes, okay. The others before Holmes, also okay. But Maitland was a mistake.”
“I suppose that’s so.” The outsider looked puzzled, but still complacent. “Yet I’ve taken others who had strong alibis and immaculate reputations. With evidence and eyewitness testimony, the alibis and reputations make no difference. People are blind to explanations that lie outside their perception of reality. You should never have come looking for me. You never should have even sensed me, no matter how strong his alibi was. Yet you did. Was it because I came to the courthouse?”
Ralph said nothing. Holly had come down the last step and was now standing beside him.
The outsider sighed. “That was a mistake, I should have thought more seriously about the presence of TV cameras, but I was still hungry. Yet I could have stayed away. I was gluttonous.”
“Add overconfident, while you’re at it,” Ralph said. “And overconfidence breeds carelessness. Cops see a lot of that.”