Cold Fire

When Holly pressed The Friend to explain itself logically, Jim resisted her because her probing threatened a fantasy which he desperately needed to sustain himself For similar reasons of her own, she had not questioned him as toughly as she should have on Monday evening. He was her sustaining dream. He had come into her life like a heroic figure in a dream, saving Billy Jenkins with dreamlike grace and panache. Until she had seen him, she had not realized how much she needed someone like him. And instead of probing deeply at him as any good reporter would have done, she had let him be what he wanted to pretend to be, for she had been reluctant to lose him.

Now their only hope was to press hard for the whole truth. He could not be healed until they understood why this particular and bizarre fantasy of his had evolved and how in the name of God he had developed the superhuman powers to support it.

She sat with her hands on the steering wheel, prepared to act but with no idea what to do. There seemed to be no one to whom she could turn for help. She needed answers that were to be found only in the past or in Jim's subconscious mind, two terrains that at the moment were equally inaccessible.

Then, hit by a thunderbolt of insight, she realized Jim already had given her a set of keys to unlock his remaining mysteries. When they had driven into New Svenborg, he had taken her on a tour of the town which, at the time, seemed like a tactic to delay their arrival at the farm. But she realized now that the tour had contained the most important revelations he had made to her. Each nostalgic landmark was a key to the past and to the remaining mysteries that, once unlocked, would make it possible for her to help him.

He wanted help. A part of him understood that he was sick, trapped in a schizophrenic fantasy, and he wanted out. She just hoped that he would suppress The Enemy until they had time to learn what they needed to know. That darkest splinter of his mind did not want her to succeed; her success would be its death, and to save itself, it would destroy her if it got the chance.

If she and Jim were to have a life together, or any life at all, their future lay in the past, and the past lay in New Svenborg.

She swung the wheel hard right, began to turn around to head out of the driveway to the county road-then stopped. She looked at the windmill again.

Jim had to be part of his own cure. She could not track down the truth and make him believe it. He had to see it himself.

She loved him.

She was afraid of him.

She couldn't do anything about the love; that was just part of her now, like blood or bone or sinew. But almost any fear could be overcome by confronting the cause of it.

Wondering at her own courage, she drove back along the graveled path to the foot of the windmill. She pumped three long blasts from the horn, then three more, waited,a few seconds and hit it again, again.

Jim appeared in the doorway. He came out into the gray morning light, squinting at her.

Holly opened her door and stepped out of the car. "You awake?" "Do I look like I'm sleepwalking?" he asked as he approached her.

"What's going on?" "I want to be damn sure you're awake, fully awake.”

He stopped a few feet away. "Why don't we open the hood, I'll put my head under it, then you can let out maybe a two-minute blast, just to be sure. Holly, what's going on?" "We have to talk. Get in.”

Frowning, he went around to the passenger's side and got into the Ford with her.

When he settled into the passenger's seat, he said, "This isn't going to be pleasant, is it?" "No. Not especially.”

In front of them, the sails of the windmill stuttered. They began to turn slowly, with much clattering and creaking, shedding chunks and splinters of rotten vanes.

"Stop it," she said to Jim, afraid that the turning sails were only a prelude to a manifestation of The Enemy. "I know you don't want to hear what I have to say, but don't try to distract me, don't try to stop me.”

He did not respond. He stared with fascination at the mill, as if he had not heard her.

The speed of the sails increased.

"Jim, damn it!" At last he looked at her, genuinely baffled by the anger underlying her fear. "What?" Around, around, around-around-around, aroundaroundaround. It turned like a haunted Ferris wheel in a carnival of the damned.

"Shit!" she said, her fear accelerating with the pace of the windmill sails.

She put the car in reverse, looked over her shoulder, and backed at high speed around the pond.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Not far.”

Since the windmill lay at the center of Jim's delusion, Holly thought it was a good idea to put it out of sight while they talked.

She swung the car around, drove to the end of the driveway, and parked facing out toward the county road.

She cranked down her window, and he followed suit.