Cold Fire

saying it, but you did. You have problems with the 'L' word. Maybe because you lost your folks when you were so young, you're afraid to get close to anyone for fear of losing them, too. Instant analysis. Holly Freud. Anyway, you did tell me you loved me, and I'll prove it in a little while, but right now, before I get into this mess, I want you to know I never imagined I could feel about anyone the way I feel about you. So if whatever I say to you in the next few minutes is hard to take, even impossible to take, just know where it comes from, only from love, from nothing else.”
    He stared at her. “Yeah, all right. But Holly, this—”
    “You'll get your turn.” She leaned across the seat, kissed him, then pulled back. “Right now, you've got to listen.”
    She told him everything she had theorized, why she had crept out of the mill while he'd been asleep—and why she had returned. He listened with growing disbelief, and she repeatedly cut off his protests by lightly squeezing his hand, putting a hand to his lips, or giving him a quick kiss. The answer-tablet, which she produced from the back seat, stunned him and rendered his objections less vehement.
    BECAUSE HE LOOKS LIKE MY FATHER WHOM I FAILED TO SAVE. His hands shook as he held the tablet and stared at that incredible line. He turned back to the other surprising messages, repeated page after page—HE LOVES YOU HOLLY/HE WILL KILL YOU HOLLY—and the tremors in his hands became even more severe.
    “I would never harm you,” he said shakily, staring down at the tablet. “Never.”'
    “I know you'd never want to.”
    Dr. Jekyll had never wanted to be the murderous Mr. Hyde.
    “But you think I sent you this, not The Friend.”
    “I know you did, Jim. It feels right.”
    “So if The Friend sent it but the The Friend is me, a part of me, then you believe it really says 'I love you Holly.' ”
    “Yes,” she said softly.
    He looked up from the tablet, met her eyes. “If you believe the I-love-you part, why don't you believe the I-will-kill-you part?”
    “Well, that's the thing. I do believe a small, dark part of you wants to kill me, yes.”
    He flinched as if she had struck him.
    She said, “The Enemy wants me dead, it wants me dead real bad, because I've made you face up to what's behind these recent events, brought you back here, forced you to confront the source of your fantasy.”
    He started to shake his head in denial.
    But she went on: “Which is what you wanted me to do. It's why you drew me to you in the first place.”
    “No. I didn't—”
    “Yes, you did.” Pushing him toward enlightenment was extremely dangerous. But that was her only hope of saving him. “Jim, if you can just understand what's happened, accept the existence of two other personalities, even the possibility of their existence, maybe that'll be the beginning of the end of The Friend and The Enemy.”
    Still shaking his head, he said, “The Enemy won't go peacefully,” and immediately blinked in surprise at the words he had spoken and the implication that they conveyed.
    “Damn,” Holly said, and a thrill coursed through her, not merely because he had just confirmed her entire theory, whether he could admit it or not, but because the five words he had spoken were proof that he wanted out of the Byzantine fantasy in which he had taken refuge.
    He was as pale as a man who had just been told that a cancer was growing in him. In fact a malignancy did reside within him, but it was mental rather than physical.
    A breeze wafted through the open car windows, and it seemed to wash new hope into Holly.
    That buoyant feeling was short-lived, however, because new words suddenly appeared on the tablet in Jim's hands: YOU DIE.
    “This isn't me,” he told her earnestly, in spite of the subtle admission he had made a moment ago. “Holly, this can't be me.”
    On the tablet, more words appeared: I AM COMING. YOU DIE.
    Holly felt as if the world had become a carnival fun-house, full of ghouls and ghosts. Every turn, any moment, without warning, something might spring at her from out of a shadow—or from broad daylight, for that matter. But unlike a carnival monster, this one would inflict real pain, draw blood, kill her if it could.
    In hopes that The Enemy, like The Friend, would respond well to firmness, Holly grabbed the tablet from Jim's hand and threw it out the window. “To hell with that. I won't read that crap. Listen to me, Jim. If I'm right, The Enemy is the