This film, only ten minutes old, obviously wasn't going to be as engaging as the Spielberg movie. Thus far, Melanie's eyes were open and seemed to follow the action, but Laura wondered how long the girl would remain involved.

*  *  *

Palmer Boothe paced and drank bourbon with an uncharacteristic lack of self-control.

Albert Uhlander sat with his head low on his sharp shoulders, birdlike in every aspect of his face and body, explaining the project in the gray room.

Though he had been a doctor of psychology, Dylan McCaffrey had nurtured a lifelong fascination with various aspects of the occult. He'd read Uhlander's first few books and conducted a correspondence with him, which eventually had centred on the subject of OOBE, out-of-body-experiences, or what was also known as astral projection. The phenomenon of astral projection was based on the theory that two entities existed in each human being: a physical body of flesh, and an astral or etheric body—sometimes called a psychogeist. In other words, each person has a dual nature, including a double that can function separately of the physical body, making it possible to be in two places at one time. Usually the double, the astral body (or as Uhlander called it, 'the body of feeling and sensation'), resided in the physical body and animated it. But under extremely special circumstances (and routinely upon death) the astral body left the physical body.

'Some mediums,' Uhlander said, 'claim to be able to instigate out-of-body experiences at will, though they are very likely lying. There are, however, many fascinating stories told by reputable people who report having dreamed about rising out of their bodies while sleeping; they tell stories about traveling in an invisible state, often to places where loved ones are dying or are in risk of death. Ten years ago, for example, a woman in Oregon had such an experience while sleeping: She rose out of her body, sailed over the rooftop of houses, went out into the countryside, and came to a place where her brother's car was overturned on a lonely stretch of a little-traveled back road. He was pinned in the wreckage and bleeding to death. She couldn't help him while she was in her astral state, for the astral body frequently has no strength, only sensation, no power of any kind other than the ability to observe. But she returned to her sleeping body, woke, called the police, reported the location of her brother's accident, and saved his life.'

'Usually,' Boothe said, 'the astral body isn't visible. It's entirely spiritual.'

'Although visibility and even physical solidity aren't entirely unheard of,' Uhlander said. 'In 1810, while Lord Byron, the poet, was in Patras, Turkey, unconscious with a high fever, several of his friends saw him in London. They said he passed them on the street without speaking and was seen to write down his name on a register of people inquiring about the king's health. Byron thought this was odd but he never realized he'd experienced an OOBE of rare intensity—and then had forgotten it after recovering from his fever. Anyway, every serious occultist has consciously attempted to initiate an OOBE at some time or other ... usually without success.'

Boothe had already returned to the bar to pour more bourbon into his glass.

Dan said, 'Don't get drunk. There's sure as hell no safety in being unconscious. It'll just complicate things.'

'I've never been drunk in my life,' Booth said icily. 'I don't run from problems, Lieutenant, I solve them.' He paced again, but he didn't suck at the bourbon as greedily as he had done previously.

Uhlander said, 'Dylan not only believed in astral projection, but he thought he knew why it was so hard to achieve an OOBE.'

Dylan (Uhlander explained) had been certain that people were born with the ability to step in and out of their bodies whenever they wished—all people, everyone. But he was equally sure that the confining, limiting nature of all human society and teaching—with its long list of dos and don'ts, its overly restrictive definitions of what was possible and impossible—effectively brainwashed children so early that the development of their astral-projection potential was, like many other psychic powers, never realized. Dylan believed that a child could discover and develop that potential if raised in cultural isolation, if permitted to learn only those things that sharpened the awareness of the psychic universe—and if subjected to long and frequent sessions in a sensory-deprivation chamber from a young age, in order to direct the mind inward upon its own hidden talents.

'Isolation,' Boothe interrupted, 'was a way of purifying the child's concentration, a way of sealing out all the distractions of day-to-day life in order to focus her mind more intensely upon psychic matters.'

Uhlander said, 'When Mrs. McCaffrey decided to divorce Dylan, he saw an opportunity to raise Melanie according to his own theories, so he abducted her with that intention.'

'And you supported him,' Dan said to Boothe. 'Accessory to a kidnapping, a conspirator in child abuse.'

The white-haired publisher approached Dan's chair, loomed over him, stared down with undisguised disdain. He had a haughty disregard for the pain that he'd caused. 'It was necessary. An opportunity that could not be missed. Think of it! If astral projection could be proved possible, if the child could be taught to leave her body at will, then perhaps a system could be developed for teaching adults as well... selected adults. Imagine what it would mean if a select group, an intellectual elite, possessed the ability to enter undetected into any room in the world, no matter how heavily guarded, could listen in on any conversation no matter how secret. No government, no business competitor, no one in the world, could hide their plans or intentions from us. Without anyone knowing what we were doing or how, we could at last orchestrate the evolution of one worldwide government without effective opposition or, indeed, without any opposition at all. How could opposition exist if we could sit in on their strategy sessions, know their names, intentions, and secret organizations?'

Boothe was breathing hard, partly because of the effect of the whiskey, but largely due to the dark dreams of power that filled him with a megalomaniacal excitement. The Tiffany lamp cast amber circles of light on his cheeks, smaller spots of blue on his chin, stained his lips yellow, and painted his nose and forehead green, so he again reminded Dan of someone from a carnival, a malevolent roadshow like that in Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. He was a bizarre and demented clown in whose eyes one could see the crimson flickering fires of Hell, a soul in damnation.

'The world would be ours,' Boothe said.

Both the publisher and Uhlander smiled, and they seemed to have forgotten how badly their scheme had worked out and how deep was the trouble in which they now found themselves.

'You're both insane,' Dan said thinly.

'Farsighted,' Uhlander said.

'Insane.'

'Visionaries,' Boothe said. He turned away from Dan and began to pace once more.

Uhlander's smile gradually bled away as he remembered why they were there, and he continued the explanation that Dan had demanded. Dylan McCaffrey had lived in that Studio City house twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, year after year, staying close to Melanie, making himself nearly as much a prisoner as she was, seeing only a handful of sympathizers from his small circle of friends who bridged the scientific and occult communities and shared his interest—and who were all on the Palmer Boothe dole, one way or another. Dylan became increasingly obsessed with his project, and the regimen he designed for Melanie became ever more harsh, more demanding, less forgiving of her human failings, weaknesses, and limitations. The gray room, which was painted and soundproofed and furnished in such a way as to reduce all distraction to a minimum, became Melanie's entire universe and also the center of her father's world. Those privileged few who knew of the experiment all thought that they were involved in a noble attempt to transform the human race, and they held the secret of Melanie's torture as though they were protecting something magnificent and holy.

'Then,' Uhlander said, 'two nights ago, Melanie finally broke through. During her longest session ever in the sensory-deprivation tank, in her cocoon, she achieved what Dylan had always believed she could achieve.'

From the purple-gray twilight by the windows, Boothe said, 'The girl seized her full psychic potential. She separated her astral body from her physical body and rose out of that tank.'

'But what happened after that was something none of us had anticipated,' Uhlander said. 'In a rage, she killed her father, Willy Hoffritz, and Ernie Cooper, who happened to be there at the time.'

'But how?' Dan asked, although he had already decided that it must be true. 'You said that the astral body usually has the power to observe but can perform no physical act. And even if that wasn't the case this time ... well, she's only a frail little girl. Those people were beaten to death. Savagely beaten.'

Palmer Boothe had moved to the deepening shadows along one wall of books and had vanished within them. His disembodied voice rose from the gloom: 'Her talent for astral projection wasn't the only psychic ability the little bitch learned how to use that night. She's apparently discovered how to teleport her astral body great distances—'

'To Las Vegas, to the mountains above Mammoth,' Albert Uhlander elaborated.

'—and how to move objects without touching them. Telekinesis,' Boothe said. He paused. In the darkness where he stood, his whiskey glass clicked against his teeth. The swallowing sound he made was preternaturally loud. 'Her strength is psychic, the strength of the mind, which is virtually beyond limit. She's stronger than ten men, a hundred, a thousand. She easily disposed of her father, Hoffritz, and Cooper ... and now she's been coming after the rest of us, one by one, and she seems to be able to sense where we are, regardless of how hard we try to hide.'

*  *  *

Melanie sighed.

Laura leaned over and looked at her in the dim backwash of light from the movie screen.

The girl's eyes were getting heavy.

Worried, Laura put a hand on her daughter's shoulder and shook gently, then harder.

Melanie blinked.

'Watch the movie, honey. Watch the movie.'

The child's eyes swam back into focus and reconnected with the action on the screen.

*  *  *

Boothe had moved out of the shadows.

Uhlander was leaning forward in his chair.

They both seemed to be waiting for Dan to say something, to assure them that he would kill the girl and stop the slaughter.

Instead, he said nothing because he wanted them to sweat for a while. Besides, his emotions were in such turmoil that he didn't trust himself to speak yet.

Murder, Dan knew, was a human potential as universal as love. It existed in the kind and the meek, in the gentle and the innocent, though perhaps it lay more deeply buried in them than in others. He was no more surprised to discover it in Melanie McCaffrey than he had been surprised by the murderous impulses of the scores of killers that he'd put in prison over the years—though this discovery left him distraught, sick, and profoundly depressed.

Indeed, Melanie's homicidal urges were more understandable than most. Imprisoned, physically and psychologically tortured, denied love and comfort and understanding, treated more like a laboratory monkey than like a human being, forced to endure long years of mental and emotional and physical pain, she had developed a superhuman rage and hatred, diamond-hard and gas-flame-bright, that could have been relieved only by violent, brutal, bloody revenge. Perhaps her rage and hatred—and the need to relieve those inner pressures—were as much responsible for her psychic breakthrough as any of the exercises and conditions that her father had imposed upon her.

Now she stalked her tormentors, a frail nine-year-old girl, yet as deadly and dangerous and efficient a killer as Jack the Ripper or as any member of the Manson Family. But she wasn't entirely depraved. That was a thought to cling to. Evidently a part of her was shocked and repelled by what she had done. After all, horrified by her own thirst for blood, she'd sought refuge in a catatonic state, crawling down into that dark place where she could hide the terrible truth of the murders from the world ... and even from herself. As long as she had a conscience, she hadn't descended all the way into savagery, and maybe her sanity was retrievable.

She was the power that had taken possession of the radio in the kitchen. She could not throw off the heavy weight of guilt and self-disgust that kept her pressed down in her quasi-autistic subworld, could not bear to speak of what she had done or might do, but she could send warnings and pleas for help through the radio. That's what those messages had meant: 'Help me, stop me. Help me. Stop me.'

And the whirlwind filled with flowers had been ... what? Not at all threatening, of course. It had seemed threatening to Laura and Earl, but only because they hadn't understood. No, the flower-laden whirlwind had been a pathetic, desperate expression of Melanie's love for her mother.

Her love for her mother.

In that love, the girl might find salvation.

Boothe was impatient with Dan's silence. 'When she broke through, when she finally cast off all restraints of the flesh, and found her great powers and saw how to use them, she should have been grateful to us. The rotten little bitch should have been grateful to her father and to all of us who helped her to become more than just a child, more than just human.'

'Instead,' Uhlander whined with childish self-pity, 'the vicious little brat turned on us.'

Dan said, 'So you told Ned Rink to kill her.'

Boothe was as quick as ever with the self-justifications. 'We had no choice. She was infinitely valuable, and we wanted to study and understand her. But we knew she was after us, and recapturing her and studying her was a risk we simply couldn't take.'

'We didn't want to kill her,' Uhlander said. 'We created her, after all. We made her what she became. But we had to remove her. It was self-preservation. Self-defense. She'd become a monster.'

Dan stared at Uhlander and Boothe, as though peering through the bars of a cage, into a cell in a zoo. It must have been an alien zoo as well, on some distant planet, for it didn't seem that this world could have produced creatures as bizarre, bloodless, and cruel as these. He said, 'Melanie wasn't the monster. You were. You are.' He got up, too tense and angry to remain seated, and stood with his hands fisted at his sides. 'What the hell did you expect to happen if she ever actually achieved this breakthrough you wanted? Did you think she'd say, "Oh, thank you so much, now what can I do for you, what wishes can I grant, what deeds perform?" Did you think she would be like a genie let loose of a lamp, subservient and eager to please those who'd rubbed the brass and let her out?' He realized he was shouting. He tried to lower his voice, but he couldn't. 'For God's sake, you people imprisoned her for six years! Tortured her! Do you think prisoners are usually grateful to their jailers and torturers?'