End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3) - Stephen King Page 0,106

I don’t score at least six-fifty, I won’t get into a good school.’

‘And you’ll be lucky to score four hundred,’ he says. ‘Isn’t that the truth, Ellen?’

‘Yes.’ Tears well in her eyes and begin to roll down her cheeks.

‘And then you’ll do badly on the English, too,’ Brady says. He’s opening her up, and this is the best part. It’s like reaching into an animal that’s stunned but still alive, and digging its guts out. ‘You’ll freeze up.’

‘I’ll probably freeze up,’ Ellen says. She’s sobbing audibly now. Brady checks her short-term memory and finds that her parents have gone to work and her little brother is at school. So crying is all right. Let the bitch make all the noise she wants.

‘Not probably. You will freeze up, Ellen. Because you can’t handle the pressure.’

She sobs.

‘Say it, Ellen.’

‘I can’t handle the pressure. I’ll freeze, and if I don’t get into a good school, my dad will be disappointed and my mother will be mad.’

‘What if you can’t get into any school? What if the only job you can get is cleaning houses or folding clothes in a laundromat?’

‘My mother will hate me!’

‘She hates you already, doesn’t she, Ellen?’

‘I don’t … I don’t think …’

‘Yes she does, she hates you. Say it, Ellen. Say “My mother hates me.”’

‘My mother hates me. Oh God, I’m so scared and my life is so awful!’

This is the great gift bestowed by a combination of Zappit-induced hypnosis and Brady’s own ability to invade minds once they are in that open and suggestible state. Ordinary fears, the ones kids like this live with as a kind of unpleasant background noise, can be turned into ravening monsters. Small balloons of paranoia can be inflated until they are as big as floats in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

‘You could stop being scared,’ Brady says. ‘And you could make your mother very, very sorry.’

Ellen smiles through her tears.

‘You could leave all this behind.’

‘I could. I could leave it behind.’

‘You could be at peace.’

‘Peace,’ she says, and sighs.

How wonderful this is. It took weeks with Martine Stover’s mother, who was always leaving the demo screen to play her goddam solitaire, and days with Barbara Robinson. With Ruth Scapelli and this pimple-faced crybaby in her poofy-pink girl’s bedroom? Mere minutes. But then, Brady thinks, I always had a steep learning curve.

‘Do you have your phone, Ellen?’

‘Here.’ She reaches under a decorative throw pillow. Her phone is also poofy-pink.

‘You should post on Facebook and Twitter. So all your friends can read it.’

‘What should I post?’

‘Say “I am at peace now. You can be, too. Go to zeetheend.”’

She does it, but at an oozingly slow speed. When they’re in this state, it’s like they’re underwater. Brady reminds himself of how well this is going and tries not to become impatient. When she’s done and the messages are sent – more matches flicked into dry tinder – he suggests that she go to the window. ‘I think you could use some fresh air. It might clear your head.’

‘I could use some fresh air,’ she says, throwing back the duvet and swinging her bare feet out of bed.

‘Don’t forget your Zappit,’ he says.

She takes it and walks to the window.

‘Before you open the window, go to the main screen, where the icons are. Can you do that, Ellen?’

‘Yes …’ A long pause. The bitch is slower than cold molasses. ‘Okay, I see the icons.’

‘Great. Now go to Wipe Words. It’s the blackboard-and-eraser icon.’

‘I see it.’

‘Tap it twice, Ellen.’

She does so, and the Zappit gives an acknowledging blue flash. If anyone tries to use this particular game console again, it will give a final blue flash and drop dead.

‘Now you can open the window.’

Cold air rushes in, blowing her hair back. She wavers, seems on the edge of waking, and for a moment Brady feels her slipping away. Control is still hard to maintain at a distance, even when they’re in a hypnotic state, but he’s sure he’ll hone his technique to a nice sharp point. Practice makes perfect.

‘Jump,’ Brady whispers. ‘Jump, and you won’t have to take the SAT. Your mother won’t hate you. She’ll be sorry. Jump and all the numbers will come right. You’ll get the best prize. The prize is sleep.’

‘The prize is sleep,’ Ellen agrees.

‘Do it now,’ Brady murmurs as he sits behind the wheel of Al Brooks’s old car with his eyes closed.

Forty miles south, Ellen jumps from her bedroom window. It’s not a long drop, and there’s banked snow against