Dead and Alive

irresistible gravity of a collapsed star, as if this night the world were rolling along its rim, at risk of spiraling down into oblivion.
    Except in the headlights, the rain that came off the lake was black, insistently rapping against the driver’s side of the car as they drove west on I-12, as if the night itself had fists of bony knuckles. And the wind seemed black, blowing down out of a moonless and starless sky.

CHAPTER 39
    HAVING BELIEVED that Erika Four was bursting in upon him, Victor fired twice, intending to stop both of her hearts, before he realized that the intruder was Christine. As the designer of her kind, he knew precisely where to aim. And because he started the job with such expert marksmanship, he had no choice but to finish it with two more shots.
    Christine dropped, although death did not at once take her. She spasmed on the floor of the master-bedroom vestibule, gasping for breath, futilely pressing her hands to her chest as if she might be able to plug the wounds from which her life bled.
    During Christine’s final throes, Erika appeared in the hall, just beyond the open door, and Victor raised the pistol from the dying housekeeper, to train it on whichever of his Erikas stood before him.
    “Something was wrong with Christine,” she said.“She didn’t seem to know who she was. She thought I was someone named Mrs. Danvers.”
    “Do
you
know who you are?” Victor asked.
    She frowned at the muzzle of the pistol and at the question. “What do you mean?”
    “Who are you!”
Victor demanded with such vehemence that she flinched, as if reminded of the intensity with which he could deliver a beating when she deserved one.
    “I’m Erika.
Your
wife.”
    “Erika Five?”
    She looked puzzled. “Yes, of course.”
    “Then tell me—what is the most dangerous thing in the world?”
    “Books,” she said at once. “Books corrupt.”
    Erika Four had been allowed to read, which led to her death. Only Erika Five was created with a proscription against reading books. A resurrected Erika Four could have no way of knowing this.
    On the floor, Christine said, “Manderley …” and her eyes glazed over.
    She appeared to have died. Victor kicked her head, testing her response, but she didn’t twitch or make a sound.
    Beside her on the floor was a book titled
Jamaica Inn
.
    Returning the pistol to his shoulder holster, Victor said, “What was the word she just spoke?”
    “Manderley,” said Erika.
    “What language is it, what does it mean?”
    Surprised, she said, “It’s the name of a great Englishhouse, a literary allusion. I’ve got it in my program. Like, I might say to someone we visited, ‘Oh, my dear, your house is even more wonderful than Manderley
and your
housekeeper isn’t insane.’”
    “Yes, all right, but to what work does it refer?”
    “Daphne du Maurier’s
Rebecca,”
Erika said, “which I have never read and never will.”
    “Books again,” he fumed, and in anger this time, he kicked the dead housekeeper, and then the book that had fallen from her hand. “I’ll send a team to bring this trash to the Hands of Mercy for an autopsy. Clean up the blood yourself.”
    “Yes, Victor.”

    SKIP, SKIP, HOP. Skip, skip, hop. Along the south hall. Skip, skip, hop. Knife in hand.
    The back stairs. Three steps up, one step back. Three steps up, one step back.
    Racing, in his fashion, toward vengeance, Jocko reminded himself of the speech he must make. As he drove the blade deep into Victor, he must say:
I am the child of he who I was before I was me! I died to birth me! I am a monster, outcast and castaway! Die, Harker, die!
    No. All wrong. So much practice in so many storm drains. And still Jocko didn’t have it right.
    Climbing twice as many stairs as he descended, Jocko tried again:
You are the monster child of he who I!
    No, no, no. Not even close.
    I
am you he who I am who die!
    Jocko was so angry with himself that he wanted tospit. He
did
spit. And he spat again. On his feet. Two steps up, one step back, spit. Two steps up, one step back, spit.
    Finally he reached the top step, feet glistening.
    In the second-floor south hall, Jocko stopped to collect his thoughts. There was one. And here was another. And here was a third thought, connected to the other two. Very nice.
    Jocko often had to collect his thoughts. They scattered so easily.
    I am the child of Jonathan Harker! He died to birth me! I am a juggler, monsters and apples! Now you die!
    Close enough.
    Tippytoe,