Let us move from one form of insanity to another. After the owner of the Holiday Trailer Park has extended a trembling index finger to point out the Freneau residence, Jack drives toward it on the dusty path with gathering doubts. Tansy's Airstream is the last and least maintained of a row of four. Two of the others have flowers in a bright border around them, and the third has been dressed up with striped green awnings that make it look more like a house. The fourth trailer displays no signs of decoration or improvement. Dying flowers and skimpy weeds straggle in the beaten earth surrounding it. The shades are pulled down. An air of misery and waste hangs about it, along with a quality Jack might define, if he stopped to consider it, as slippage. In no obvious way, the trailer looks wrong. Unhappiness has distorted it, as it can distort a person, and when Jack gets out of his truck and walks toward the cinder blocks placed before the entrance, his doubts increase. He can no longer be sure why he has come to this place. It occurs to Jack that he can give Tansy Freneau nothing but his pity, and this thought makes him uneasy.
Then it occurs to him that these doubts mask his real feelings, which have to do with the discomfort the trailer arouses in him. He does not want to enter that thing. Everything else is a rationalization; he has no choice but to keep moving forward. His eyes find the welcome mat, a reassuring touch of the ordinary world he can feel already disappearing around him, and he steps up onto the topmost board and knocks on the door. Nothing happens. Maybe she really is still asleep and would prefer to stay that way. If he were Tansy, he would stay in bed as long as possible. If he were Tansy, he'd stay in bed for weeks. Once more pushing away his reluctance, Jack raps on the door again and says, "Tansy? Are you up?"
A little voice from within says, "Up where?"
Uh-oh, Jack thinks, and says, "Out of bed. I'm Jack Sawyer, Tansy. We met last night. I'm helping the police, and I told you I'd come over today."
He hears footsteps moving toward the door. "Are you the man who gave me the flowers? He was a nice man."
"That was me."
A lock clicks, and the knob revolves. The door cracks open. A sliver of a faintly olive-skinned face and a single eye shine out of the inner darkness. "It is you. Come in, fast. Fast." She steps back, opening the door just wide enough for him to pass through. As soon as he is inside, she slams it shut and locks it again.
The molten light burning at the edges of the curtains and the window shades deepens the darkness of the long trailer's interior. One soft lamp burns above the sink, and another, just as low, illuminates a little table otherwise occupied by a bottle of coffee brandy, a smeary glass decorated with a picture of a cartoon character, and a scrapbook. The circle of light cast by the lamp extends to take in half of a low, fabric-covered chair next to the table. Tansy Freneau pushes herself off the door and takes two light, delicate steps toward him. She tilts her head and folds her hands together beneath her chin. The eager, slightly glazed expression in her eyes dismays Jack. By even the widest, most comprehensive definition of sanity, this woman is not sane. He has no idea what to say to her.
"Would you care to . . . sit down?" With a hostessy wave of her hand, she indicates a high-backed wooden chair.
"If it's all right with you."
"Why wouldn't it be all right? I'm going to sit down in my chair, why shouldn't you sit down in that one?"
"Thank you," Jack says, and sits down, watching her glide back to the door to check the lock. Satisfied, Tansy gives him a brilliant smile and pads back to her chair, moving almost with the duck-waddle grace of a ballerina. When she lowers herself to the chair, he says, "Are you afraid of someone who might come here, Tansy? Is there someone you want to keep locked out?"
"Oh, yes," she says, and leans forward, pulling her eyebrows together in an exaggerated display of little-girl seriousness. "But it isn't a someone, it's a thing. And I'm never, never going to let him in my house again, not ever. But I'll let you in, because you're a very nice man and you gave me those beautiful flowers. And you're very handsome, too."
"Is Gorg the thing you want to keep out, Tansy? Are you afraid of Gorg?"
"Yes," she says, primly. "Would you care for a cup of tea?"
"No, thank you."
"Well, I'm going to have some. It's very, very good tea. It tastes sort of like coffee." She raises her eyebrows and gives him a bright, questioning look. He shakes his head. Without moving from her chair, Tansy pours two fingers of the brandy into her glass and sets the bottle back down on the table. The figure on her glass, Jack sees, is Scooby-Doo. Tansy sips from the glass. "Yummy. Do you have a girlfriend? I could be your girlfriend, you know, especially if you gave me more of those lovely flowers. I put them in a vase." She pronounces the word like a parody of a Boston matron: vahhhz. "See?"
On the kitchen counter, the lilies of the vale droop in a mason jar half-filled with water. Removed from the Territories, they do not have long to live. This world, Jack supposes, is poisoning them faster than they are able to deal with. Every ounce of goodness they yield to their surroundings subtracts from their essence. Tansy, he realizes, has been kept afloat on the residue of the Territories remaining in the lilies — when they die, her protective little-girl persona will crumble into dust, and her madness may engulf her. That madness came from Gorg; he'd bet his life on it.
"I do have a boyfriend, but he doesn't count. His name is Lester Moon. Beezer and his friends call him Stinky Cheese, but I don't know why. Lester isn't all that stinky, at least not when he's sober."
"Tell me about Gorg," Jack says.
Extending her little finger away from the Scooby-Doo glass, Tansy takes another sip of coffee brandy. She frowns. "Oh, that's a real icky thing to talk about."
"I want to know about him, Tansy. If you help me, I can make sure he never bothers you again."
"Really?"