The conversation took an even stranger turn: "You mean, these weren't their original bodies? These were puppets?"
Frowning, Jack dropped to his knees beside the boy.
"Puppets? That's a peculiar thing to say."
As if in a trance, the boy focused on Tommy's headstone. His gray-blue eyes stared unblinking.
"Toby, are you okay?"
Toby still didn't look at him but said, "Surrogates?"
Jack blinked in surprise.
"Surrogates?"
"Were they?"
"That's a pretty big word. Where'd you hear that?"
Instead of answering him, Toby said, "Why don't they need these bodies any more?".Jack hesitated, then shrugged.
"Well, son, you know why-they were finished with their work in this world."
"This world?"
"They've gone on."
"Wwhere?"
"You've been to Sunday school. You know where."
"No."
"Sure you do."
"No."
"They've gone on to heaven."
"They went on?"
"Yes."
"In what bodies?"
Jack removed his right hand from his jacket pocket and cupped his son's chin.
He turned the boy's head away from the gravestone, so they were eye-to-eye.
"What's wrong, Toby?"
They were face-to-face, inches apart, yet Toby seemed to be looking into the distance, through Jack at some far horizon.
"Toby?"
"In what bodies?"
Jack released the boy's chin, moved one hand back — and forth in front of his face. Not a blink.
His eyes didn't follow the movement of the hand.
"In what bodies?" Toby repeated impatiently.
Something was wrong with the boy. Sudden psychological ailment.
With a catatonic aspect.
Toby said, "In what bodies?"
Jack's heart began to pump hard and fast as he stared into his son's flat, unresponsive eyes, which were no longer windows on a soul but.mirrors to keep out the world.
If it was a psychological problem, there was no doubt about the cause.
They'd been through a traumatic year, enough to drive a grown man-let alone a child-to a breakdown.
But what was the trigger, why now, why here, why after all these many months, during which the poor kid had seemed to cope so well?
"In what bodies?" Toby demanded sharply.
"Come on," Jack said, taking the boy's gloved hand. "Let's go back to the house."
"In what bodies did they go on?"
"Toby, stop this."
"Need to know. Tell me now. Tell me."
"Oh, dear God, don't let this happen."
Still on his knees, Jack said, "Listen, come back to the house with me so we can-" Toby wrenched his hand out of his father's grasp, leaving Jack with the empty glove.
"In what bodies?"
The small face was without expression, as placid as still water, yet the words burst from the boy in a tone of ice-cold rage.
Jack had the eerie feeling that he was conversing with a ventriloquist's dummy that could not match its wooden features to the tenor of its words.
"In what bodies?"
This wasn't a breakdown. A mental collapse didn't happen this suddenly, completely, without warning signs.
"In what bodies?"
This wasn't Toby. Not Toby at all. Ridiculous. Of course it was Toby. Who else?
Someone talking through Toby. Crazy thought, weird. Through Toby?
Nevertheless, kneeling there in the graveyard, gazing into his son's eyes, Jack no longer saw the blankness of a mirror, although he was aware of his own frightened eyes in twin reflections. He didn't see the innocence of a child, either, or any familiar quality. He perceived-or was imagining-another presence, something both less and more than human, a strangeness beyond comprehension, peering out at him from within Toby… "In what bodies?"
Jack couldn't work up any saliva. Tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Couldn't swallow, either. He was colder than the wintry day could explain. Suddenly much colder. Beyond freezing.
He'd never felt anything like it before. A cynical part of him thought he was being ridiculous, hysterical, leting himself be swept away by primitive superstition- because he could not face the thought of Toby having a psychotic episode and slipping into mental chaos. On the other hand, it was precisely the primitive nature of the perception that convinced him another presence shared the body of his son: he felt it on a primal level, deeper than he had ever felt anything before, it was a knowledge more certain than any that could be arrived at by intellect, a profound and irrefutable animal instinct, as if he'd captured the scent of an enemy's pheromones, his skin was tingling with the vibrations of an inhuman aura. His gut clenched with fear. Sweat broke out on his forehead the flesh crimped along the nape of his neck.
He wanted to spring to his feet, scoop Toby into his arms, run down the hill to the house, and remove him from the influence of the entity that held him in its thrall. Ghost, demon, ancient Indian spirit?
No, ridiculous. But something, damn it. Something.
He hesitated, partly because he was transfixed by what he thought he saw in the boy's eyes, partly because he feared that forcing a break of the connection between Toby and whatever was linked with him would somehow harm the boy, perhaps damage him mentally. Which didn't make any sense, no sense at all. But then none of it made sense.
A dreamlike quality characterized the moment and the place. It was Toby's voice, yes, but not his usual speech patterns or inflections:
"In what bodies did they go on from here?"
Jack decided to answer.
Holding Toby's empty glove in his hand, he had the terrible feeling that he must play along or be left with a son as limp and hollow as the glove, a drained shell of a boy, form without content, those beloved eyes vacant forever.
And how insane was that? His mind spun. He seemed poised on the brink of an abyss, teetering out of balance. Maybe he was the one having the breakdown.
He said, "They didn't need bodies, Skipper. You know that. Nobody needs bodies in heaven."
"They are bodies," the Toby-thing said cryptically. "Their bodies are."
"Not any more. They're spirits now."
"Don't understand."."Sure you do. Souls. Their souls went to heaven."
"Bodies are."
"Went to heaven to be with God."
"Bodies are."
Toby stared through him. Deep in Toby's eyes, however, like a coiling thread of smoke, something moved. Jack sensed that something was regarding him intensely.
"Bodies are. Puppets are. What else?" Jack didn't know how to respond.
The breeze coming across the flank of the sloped yard was as cold as if it had skimmed over a glacier on its way to them. The Toby-thing returned to the first question that it had asked: "What are they doing down there?"
Jack glanced at the graves, then into the boy's eyes, deciding to be straightforward. He wasn't actually talking to a little boy, so he didn't need to use euphemisms. He was crazy, imagining the whole conversation as well as the inhuman presence. Either way, what he said didn't matter.
"They're dead."
"What is dead?"
"They are. These three people buried here."
"What is dead?"
"Lifeless."
"What is lifeless?"
"Without life."
"What is life?"
"The opposite of death."
"What is death?"
Desperately, Jack said, "Empty, hollow, rotting."
"Bodies are."
"Not forever."
"Bodies are."
"Nothing lasts forever."
"Everything lasts."."Nothing."
"Everything becomes."
"Becomes what?" Jack asked.
He was now beyond giving answers himself, was full of his own questions.
"Everything becomes," the Toby-thing repeated.
"Becomes what?"
"Me. Everything becomes me."