He went through Desperation like a whirlwind—shot people, stabbed them, beat them, pushed them out windows, ran them down with his car—but he still couldn’t just come up to us, any of us, and take out his gun and say ‘You’re coming with me.’
He was a big blond policeman with skin problems. He planted a bag of dope in my saddlebag and then beat the shit out of me.”
“Yes. I know. The dope came from Mary’s car. He put something like nails in the road to get us. It’s funny, when you think about it—funny-weird, not ha-ha. He went through Desperation like a whirlwind—shot people, stabbed them, beat them, pushed them out windows, ran them down with his car—but he still couldn’t just come up to us, any of us, and take out his gun and say ‘You’re coming with me.’ He had to have a . . . I don’t know the word.” He looked at Johnny.
“Pretext,” Steve’s erstwhile boss said.
“Yes, right, a pretext. It’s like how, in the old horror movies, a vampire can’t just come in on his own. You have to invite him in.”
“Why?” Cynthia asked.
“Maybe because Entragian—the real Entragian—was still inside his head. Like a shadow. Or a person that’s locked out of his house but can still look in the windows and pound on the doors. Now Tak’s in my mother—what’s left of her—and it would kill us if it could . . . but it could probably still make the best Key lime pie in the world, too. If it wanted to.”
