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.“Fine!” Blake shouts.“Then do it! Do it now!”And yet, the spirit is silent.The swirl of insects, not a single one of which touches his skin, now seems stuck in a kind of repetitive paralysis.“You can’t.Why not? Why can’t you take me the way you took Caitlin?”The spirit’s form is too impressionistic for Blake to read any emotion or nuance from its vague expression.Vernon has collapsed in the far corner, a few feet from the Eames chair he knocked over as he stumbled backward.Squinting, his chest heaving, he sweeps the curtains of winged, otherworldly creatures with a swaying, indecisive aim.“It matters,” Blake whispers.“The choice I made.That I said no.It matters, doesn’t it? It’s stopped you.”“It has done more than that, I’m afraid.”“What? What.more has it done?” Blake is answered by the grinding buzz, but not words.“Caitlin screamed bloody murder, but she couldn’t stop you.How come I can? What happened when you took my blood, my rage, without my consent?”“It placed me under your command.”Vernon aims the gun at Blake.A piss stain crawls down the right leg of his jeans.“I want you to stop,” Blake says.“If you’re under my command now, then stop!”“There is no stopping Virginie’s desire for freedom, and there is no freeing me from it until she is made flesh again.No matter what you choose, I will be returned to the soil, forced to await another opportunity to gain her freedom and mine, but with the knowledge I have acquired during this long night of consumption and enlightenment.”“Why don’t you have enough? Why haven’t you.enough to bring her back? You killed all those people at the motel, didn’t you? That was part of this.”“Caitlin’s rage killed those people.”“They were cheaters, like Troy.Is that it?”“She consumed the sin she sought to avenge.She is but one of my arms.She fed but one of my vines.You fed the other.”“No.You did.You stole my blood, and now you’re being punished for it!”“I am the prisoner of the vines, not their architect.”For the first time since this sickening dialogue has begun, Blake lowers his outstretched hand and decides to put his alleged power to the test a second time.Under his command, the countenance of Felix Delachaise collapses, and within seconds the mass of insects has formed a smooth, undulating blanket covering the living room ceiling.It looks like smoke from a well-fed fire, but the constant grinding song of its indistinguishable components belies the soft texture of the swarm’s new configuration.A configuration that resembles exactly what Blake envisioned for it only seconds before.Staring up at the blanket of insects overhead, Vernon seems to realize his gun will be useless against Blake’s newfound power, and when he lowers it to one side, the placid expression on his face reminds Blake of a patient who realizes she is close enough to death to abandon all fight.“Do it, Blake.”“No.,” Blake says.“Come on, kid,” Vernon answers.His smile makes him look delirious, and Blake wonders if this is the way Vernon used to talk to his son.He wonders if, in a part of his mind that’s already separated from the body he’s offering up now as sacrifice, Vernon really is talking to John.If that’s who he sees standing across the wrecked room from him now.“No need to pretend for my sake.I know you want to.And it makes sense, doesn’t it? It makes perfect sense to give me to the—”“Shut up!”“You were a hero once, Blake,” he says, shattering Blake’s cozy notion that Vernon no longer knows who he is.“You could have left him.You could have just started swimming, but you tried—you tried to get my son free before he drowned.You really loved him, didn’t you?”“Stop.Please, just st—”“Did you love him?”“Yes!”“I see.Well, I didn’t,” he growls, but there are tears sprouting from his eyes and a childlike quiver to his lower jaw, and Blake can see it’s just a performance.“I wanted him to die [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]