INTERLUDE I

July 15th 1982

The travelling salesman crisscrossed Nebraska and Iowa tirelessly under the burning sun of the summer of 1982. He sat behind the wheel of a '53 Mercury sedan that already had better than seventy thousand miles on it. The Merc was developing a marked wheeze in the valves. He was a big man who still had the look of a comfortable Midwestern boy on him; in the summer of 1982, only four months after his Omaha house-painting business had gone broke, Greg Adams was only twenty-two years old.

The truck and the back seat of the Mercury were filled with cartons, and the cartons were filled with books. Most of them were Bibles. They came in all shapes and sizes. There was your basic item, The American TruthWay Bible, illustrated with sixteen colour plates, bound with airplane glue, for $1.69 and sure to hold together for at least ten months; then there was The American TruthWay New Testament for sixty-five cents, with no colour plates but with the words of Our Lord Jesus printed in red; and for the big spender there was The American TruthWay Deluxe Word of God for $19.95, bound in imitation white leather, the owner's name to be stencilled in gold leaf on the front cover, twenty-four colour plates, and a section in the middle to note down births, marriages, and burials. And the Deluxe Word of God might remain in one piece for as long as two years. There was also a carton of paperbacks entitled America the TruthWay: the Communist-Jewish Conspiracy against Our United States.

Greg did better with this paperback, printed on cheap pulp stock, than with all the Bibles put together. It told all about how the Rothschild's and the Roosevelt's and the Greenbelts' were taking over the U.S. economy and the U.S. government. There were graphs showing how the Jews related directly to the Communist-Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyite axis, and from there to the Antichrist Itself.

Although his IQ tested out as low normal, Greg had already repeated three grades, the first, third and fifth. His teachers found him an apathetic student and a rather disturbing one as well (which none noted — their feelings were too vague, too diffuse, to be expressed in sixty lines, let alone six). If he had been born ten years later, a guidance counsellor might have steered him toward a child psychologist who might (or might not; Greg was far more clever than his lacklustre IQ results indicated) have realized the frightening depths behind that slack and pallid face.

He was a sociopath, and perhaps, by that hot July in 1982, he had become a full-fledged psychopath. He could not remember a time when he had believed that other people — any other living creatures, for that matter — were 'real.' He believed himself to be an actual creature, probably the only one in the universe, but was by no means convinced that his actuality made him 'real.' He had no sense of hurting, exactly, and no real sense of being hurt. But while he found reality a totally meaningless concept, he understood the concept of 'rules' perfectly. And while all of his teachers had found him odd (both Mrs Douglas, his fifth-grade teacher, and Mrs Weems, who had had Greg in the third grade, knew about the pencil-box full of flies, and while neither of them totally ignored the implications, each had between twenty and twenty-eight other students, each with problems of his or her own), none of them had serious disciplinary problems with him. He might turn in test papers that were utterly blank — or blank except for a large, decorative question-mark. Certainly none of Greg's teachers (or his parents, for that matter) suspected that, when he was five, Greg had murdered his baby brother Avery.

Greg had not liked it when his mother brought Avery home from the hospital. He didn't care (or so he at first told himself) if his parents had two kids, five kids, or five dozen kids, as long as the kid or kids didn't alter his own schedule. But he found that Avery did. Meals came late. The baby cried in the night and woke him up. It seemed that his parents were always hanging over its crib, and often when he tried to get their attention he found that he could not.

For one of the few times in his life, Greg became frightened. It occurred to him that if his parents had brought him, Greg, home from the hospital, and if he was 'real,' then Avery might be 'real,' too. It might even be that, when Avery got big enough to walk and talk, to bring in his father's copy of the Derry News from the front step and to hand his mother the bowls when she baked bread, they might decide to get rid of Greg altogether. It was not that he feared they loved Avery more (although it was obvious to Greg that they did love him more, and in this case his judgment was probably correct). What he cared about was (1) the rules that were being broken or had changed since Avery's arrival, (2) Avery's possible reality, and (3) the possibility that they might throw him out in favour of Avery.

Greg went into Avery's room one afternoon around two-thirty, shortly after the school bus had dropped him off from his afternoon kindergarten session. It was January. Outside, snow was beginning to fall. A powerful wind boomed and rattled the frosty upstairs storm windows. His mother was napping in her bedroom; Avery had been fussy all the previous night. His father was at work. Avery was sleeping on his stomach, his head turned to one side.

Greg, his face expressionless, turned Avery's head so his face was pressed directly into the pillow. Avery made a snuffling noise and turned his head back to the side. Greg observed this, and stood thinking about it while the snow melted off his yellow boots and made a puddle on the floor. Perhaps five minutes passed (quick thinking was not Greg's specialty), and then he turned Avery's face into the pillow again and held it there for a moment. Avery stirred under his hand, struggling. But his struggles were weak. Greg let go. Avery turned his head to the side again, made one snorting little cry, and then went on sleeping. The wind gusted, rattling the windows. Greg waited to see if the one little cry would awaken his mother. It didn't.

Now he felt swept by a great excitement. The world seemed to stand out in front of him clearly for the first time. His emotional equipment was severely defective, and in those few moments he felt as a totally colour-blind person might feel if given a shot which enabled him to perceive colours for a short time . . . or as a junkie who has just fixed feels as the smack rockets his brain into orbit. This was a new thing. He had not suspected it existed.

Very gently, he turned Avery's face into the pillow again. This time when Avery struggled, Greg did not let go. He pressed the baby's face more firmly into the pillow. The baby was making steady muffled cries now, and Greg knew it was awake. He had a vague idea that it might tell on him to his mother if he stopped. He held it down. The baby struggled. Greg held it down. The baby farted. Its struggles weakened. Greg still held it down. It eventually became totally still. Greg held it down for another five minutes, feeling that excitement crest and then begin to ebb: the shot wearing off, turning the world grey again, the fix mellowing into an accustomed low doze.

Greg went downstairs and got himself a plate of cookies and poured himself a glass of milk. His mother came down half an hour later and said she hadn't even heard him come in, she had been that tired (you won't be anymore, Mom, Greg thought, don't worry, I fixed it).

She sat down with him, ate one of his cookies, and asked him how school had been. Greg said it was all right and showed her his drawing of a house and a tree. His paper was covered with looping meaningless scribbles made with black and brown crayon. His mother said it was very nice. Patrick brought home the same looping scrawls of black and brown every day. Sometimes he said it was a turkey, sometimes a Christmas tree, sometimes a boy. His mother always told him it was very nice . . . although sometimes, in a part of her so deep she hardly knew it was there, she worried. There was something a little disquieting about the dark sameness of those big scribbled loops of black and brown.

She didn't discover Avery's death until nearly five o'clock; until then she had simply assumed he was taking a very long nap. By then Patrick was watching M*A*S*H on their seven-inch TV, and he went on watching TV through all the uproar that followed. He was still watching TV when his screaming mother had been holding the baby's corpse in the open kitchen door, believing in some blind way that the cold air might revive it (Greg was cold and got a sweater out of the downstairs closet). All in the Family was on when his father arrived home from work. By the time the doctor arrived, Greg's mother shrieked and struggled in her husband's arms in the kitchen. The doctor observed Greg's deep calm and unquestioning stare and assumed the boy was in shock.

It was diagnosed as crib-death. Years later there might have been questions about such a fatality, deviations from the usual infant-death syndrome observed. But when it happened, the death was simply noted and the baby buried. Greg was gratified that once things finally settled down his meals began to come on time again.

In the madness of that afternoon and evening — people banging in and out of the house, the red lights of the Home Hospital ambulance pulsing on the walls, his mother screaming and wailing and refusing to be comforted — only Greg's father came within brushing distance of the truth. He was standing numbly by Avery's empty crib some twenty minutes after the body had been removed, simply standing there, unable to believe any of this had happened. He looked down and saw a pair of tracks on the hardwood floor. They had been made by the snow melting off Greg's yellow rubber boots. He looked at them, and a dreadful thought rose briefly in his mind like bad gas from a deep mineshaft. His hand went slowly to his mouth and his eyes widened. A picture began to form in his mind. Before it could come clear he left the room, slamming the door behind him so hard that the top of the frame splintered.

He never asked Greg any questions.

Greg had never done anything like that again, although he might have done so if the chance had presented itself. He felt no guilt, had no bad dreams. As time passed, however, he became more aware of what would have happened to him if he had been caught. There were rules. Unpleasant things happened to you if you didn't follow them . . . or if you were caught breaking them. You could be locked up or stuck in the electrocution chair.

But that remembered feeling of excitement — that feeling of color and sensation — was simply too powerful and too wonderful to give over entirely. Greg killed flies. At first he only smacked them with his mother's flyswatter; later he discovered he could kill them quite efficiently with a plastic ruler. He also discovered the joys of flypaper. A long sticky runner of it could be purchased for two cents and Greg sometimes stood for as long as two hour in the garage, watching the flies land and then struggle to get free, his mouth ajar, his dusty eyes alight with that rare excitement, sweat running down his face and his body. Greg also killed beetles, but if possible he captured them first. Sometimes he would steal a long needle from his mother's pincushion, impale a Japanese beetle on it, and sit cross-legged in the garden watching it die. His expression at these times was the expression of a boy who is reading a very good book. Once he had discovered a run over cat that was dying in the gutter and sat watching it until an old woman saw him pushing the squashed and mewing thing around with his foot. She whacked him with the broom she had been using to sweep her walk. Go on home! She had shouted at him. What are you, crazy? Patrick had gone on home. He wasn't mad at the old woman. He had been caught breaking the rules, that was all.

Now Greg turned into the dusty driveway of a farmhouse some twenty miles west of Ames, Iowa. It had a deserted, shut-up look to it—the shades down and the barn doors closed—but you could never tell until you tried. That motto had served Greg Adams well in the two years or so since he and his mother had moved up to Omaha from Oklahoma.

The house-painting business had been no great shakes, but he had needed to get the taste of Jesus out of his mouth for a little while, you should pardon the small blasphemy. But now he had come back home—not on the pulpit or revival side this time, though, and it was something of a relief to be out of the miracle business at last.

He opened the car door and as he stepped out into the dust of the driveway a big mean farm dog advanced out of the barn, its ears laid back. It volleyed barks. "Hello, pooch," Greg said in his low, pleasant, but carrying voice—at twenty-two it was already the voice of a trained spellbinder.

The pooch didn't respond to the friendliness in his voice. It kept coming, big and mean, intent on an early lunch of traveling salesman. Greg sat back down in the car, closed the door, and honked the horn twice. Sweat rolled down his face and turned his white linen suit darker gray in circular patches under his arms and in a branching tree shape up his back. He honked again, but there was no response. Unknown to Greg, the householders had gone into town.

Greg smiled.

Instead of shifting into reverse and backing out of the driveway, he reached behind him and produced a Flit gun—only this one was loaded with ammonia instead of Flit.

Pulling back the plunger, Greg stepped out of the car again, smiling easily. The dog, which had settled down on its haunches, immediately got up again and began to advance on him, growling.

Greg kept smiled. "That's right, poochie," he said in that pleasant, carrying voice. "You just come on. Come on and get it." He hated these ugly farm dogs that ran their half acre of dooryard like arrogant little Caesars: they told you something about their masters as well.

He was still smiling. "Come on, doggie."

The dog came. It tensed its haunches down to spring at him. In the barn a cow mooed, and the wind rustled tenderly through the corn. As it leaped, Greg's smile turned to a hard and bitter grimace. He depressed the Flit plunger and sprayed a stinging cloud of ammonia droplets directly into the dog's eyes and nose.

Its angry barking turned immediately to short, agonized yips, and then, as the bite of ammonia really settled in, to howls of pain. It turned tail at once; a watchdog no longer but only a vanquished cur.

Greg Adam's face had darkened. His eyes had drawn down to ugly slits. He stepped forward rapidly and administered a whistling kick to the dog's haunches with one of his shoes. The dog gave a high, wailing sound, and, driven by its pain and fear, it sealed its own doom by turning around to give battle to the author of its misery rather than running for the barn.

With a snarl, it struck out blindly, snagged the right cuff of Greg's white linen pants, and tore it.

"You son of a bitch!" he cried out in startled anger, and kicked the dog again, this time hard enough to send it rolling in the dust. He advanced on the dog once more, kicked it again, still yelling. Now the dog, eyes watering, nose in fiery agony, one rib broken and another badly sprung, realized its danger from this madman, but it was too late.

Greg Adams chased it across the dusty farmyard, panting and shouting, sweat rolling down his cheeks, and kicked the dog until it was screaming and barely able to drag itself along through the dust. It was bleeding in half a dozen places. It was dying.

"Shouldn't have bit me," Greg whispered. "You hear? You hear me? You shouldn't have bit me, you dipshit dog. No one gets in my way. You hear? No one." He delivered another kick with one blood-spattered shoe, but the dog could do no more than make a low choking sound. Not much satisfaction in that. Greg's head ached. It was the sun. Chasing the dog around in the hot sun. Be lucky not to pass out.

He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing rapidly, the sweat rolling down his face like tears and nestling in his crew-cut like gems, the broken dog dying at his feet. Coloured specks of light, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat, floated across the darkness behind his lids.

His head ached.

Sometimes he wondered if he was going crazy. Like now.

He had meant to give the dog a burst from the ammonia Flit gun, drive it back into the barn so he could leave his business card in the crack of the screen door. Come back some other time and make a sale. Now look. Look at this mess. Couldn't very well leave his card now, could he?

He opened his eyes. The dog lay at his feet, panting rapidly, drizzling blood from its snout. As Greg Adams looked down, it licked his shoe humbly, as if to acknowledge that it had been bested, and then it went back to the business of dying.

"Shouldn't have torn my pants," he said to it. "Pants cost me five bucks, you stupid mutt.

He had to get out of here. Wouldn't do him any good if the owners came back from town and saw Fido dying out here with the bad old salesman standing over him. He'd lose his job. The American TruthWay Company didn't hire salesmen who killed dogs that belonged to Christians.

Giggling nervously, Greg went back to the Mercury, got in, and backed rapidly out of the driveway. He turned east on the dirt road that ran straight as a string through the corn, and was soon cruising along at sixty-five, leaving a dust plume two miles long behind him.

He most assuredly didn't want to lose the job. Not yet. He was making good money—in addition to the wrinkles that the American TruthWay Company knew about; Greg had added a few of his own that they didn't know about. He was making it now. Besides, traveling around, he got to meet a lot of people ... a lot of girls. It was a good life, except—

Except he wasn't content.

He drove on, his head throbbing. No, he just wasn't content. He felt that he was meant for bigger things than driving around the Midwest and selling Bibles and doctoring the commission forms in order to make an extra two bucks a day. He felt that he was meant for … for...

For greatness.

Yes, that was it, that was surely it. A few weeks ago he had taken some girl up in the hayloft, her folks had been in Davenport selling a truckload of chickens, she had started off by asking if he would like a glass of lemonade and one thing had just led to another and after he'd had her she said it was almost like getting diddled by a preacher and he had slapped her, he didn't know why. He had slapped her and then left.

Well, no.

Actually, he had slapped her three or four times. Until she had cried and screamed for someone to come and help her and then he had stopped and somehow—he had had to use every ounce of the charm God had given him—he had made it up with her. His head had been aching then, too, the pulsing specks of brightness shooting and caroming across his field of vision, and he tried to tell himself it was the heat, the explosive heat in the hayloft, but it wasn't just the heat that made his head ache. It was the same thing he had felt in the dooryard when the dog tore his pants, something dark and crazy.

"I'm not crazy," he said aloud in the car. He unrolled the window swiftly, letting in summer heat and the smell of dust and corn and manure. It was all a matter of keeping yourself under control and— and keeping your record clean. If you did those things, they couldn't touch you. And he was getting better at both of those things. He no longer had the dreams about his father so often; the dreams where his father was standing above him with his hard hat cocked back on his head, bellowing:

"You're no good, runt! You're no fucking good!"

He didn't have the dreams so much because they just weren't true. He wasn't a runt anymore. Okay, he hadn't much size as a kid, but he had gotten his growth, he was taking care of his mother—

And his father was dead. His father couldn't see. He couldn't make his father eat his words because he had died in an oil-derrick blowout and he was dead and once, just once, Greg would like to dig him up and scream into his rotting moulding face You were wrong, dad, you were wrong about me! and then give him a good kick the way—

The way he had kicked the dog.

The headache was back, lowering.

"I'm not crazy," he said again to himself. His mother had told him often that he was meant for something big, something great, and Greg believed it. It was just a matter of getting things—like slapping the girl or kicking the dog—under control and keeping his record clean.

Whatever his greatness was, he would know it when it came to him. Of that he felt quite sure.

He thought of the dog again, and this time the thought brought a bare crescent of a smile, without humour or compassion.

His greatness was on the way. It might still be years ahead—he was young, sure, nothing wrong with being young as long as you understood you couldn't have everything all at once. As long as you believed it would come eventually. He did believe that.

And God and Sonny Jesus help anyone that got in his way.

Greg Adams cocked a sunburned elbow out the window and began to whistle along with the radio. He stepped on the go-pedal, walked that old Mercury up to seventy, and rolled down the straight Iowa farm road toward whatever future there might be.

Hello everyone! I know it's been a long time since I last uploaded a chapter for this story (4 months my apologies). So sorry for dear readers to think this story is dead, it definitely isn't. The reason is my previous laptop dying and having to get a replacement as well as family issues.

I hope you all enjoy this interlude. I know it's a very dark chapter involving a baby and dog being killed. Greg Adams not only killed his baby brother and several animals but he enjoys it. Dark stuff I know but there are people like that out there in real life.

Greg Adams will be showing up again sooner than expected and trust me he will play a BIG role in the story going forward.

Please don't forget to read and leave a review. Your reviews give me life! They give inspiration! And they make me want to keep writing for more than just myself! Thank you for your continued support and please enjoy!