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The Cold One

Tom Doherty Associates, 1995 394 pages, 38 chapters + epilogue & 12-page prologue ISBN 0-812-51245-6 LOC: PS3566.I486 C65 1995 OCLC: 31289835 Released December 28, 1994 (per B&N) Mass printing December 15, 1995 (per B&N)

The Cold One is no longer under guidance from its external voice. Without this incessant instruction, it does not know what comes next anymore. All it knows is that its destiny is to destroy humanity — an outcome that it has no feelings or concerns about whatsoever. What exactly is this creature? Where did it come from? How will it carry out its inevitable mission? We're going to have to read about a whole bunch of other people, and how the Cold One connects to them, to find out.

Oof. This book is a monster, which is part of why it's taken me over a week to write a new post. (The other part is, you know, stuff.) There's a lot going on, and even though a lot of it ties back to stuff Pike's written before, this is a new story with new uses for the same elements. In that vein, I was surprised to find that I didn't remember a single word or a single plot point out of this story — which allowed me to no doubt be freshly disappointed by the rushed ending.

I mentioned that there are a bunch of characters. For the first time in a while, Pike's writing from multiple viewpoints again, which makes me unsure how to best approach this summary. It probably makes the most sense to just begin at the beginning and describe the people and their doings as they appear in the narrative. It won’t be the fastest way to cover this book, but let’s be real: that’s not what I’m here for.

That prologue? It's two prologues, actually. We start with Penny Hampton, a rehab nurse at a hospice facility who works on unresponsive patients so that they don't totally atrophy while comatose. She's creeped out by one particular patient who has been there since before anybody can remember, and this is justified when the power goes out and she gets her breath taken away — literally — while manually respirating her. Worse is when the patient uses her first living breath in years to speak: just two words, one of which Pike doesn't tell us right now because it would give too much away I guess. Oh, and this is the last time we hear directly from Penny, which is a little bit of a rip, especially toward the end. We'll get there.

The second prologue is from the perspective of the Cold One Itself. You read that right — whenever It narrates, Its preferred personal pronoun is It, capital I. (Which might make my writing awkward in this entry as I attempt to avoid using "it" for other things.) We discover that It has been guided by a voice (or as It says, a "Voice") that has just stopped, and now It has awakened into Itself somewhere in Baja California. It no longer knows what comes next, but It knows that ultimately It will be responsible for the death of humanity. And It decides to start with the dude that picks It up hitchhiking. I'm not totally sure this was necessary as a prologue; I think it would have been just fine as Chapter One, seeing as it ties into the continuation of the story. We get plenty more chapters from the Cold One's POV, so it wouldn't have felt particularly out of place to have this start the story proper.

But how we launch is in a dream, inside the brain of journalist and educator Peter Jacobs. He's fishing with an old and dear friend, a beautiful girl who catches a creepy sea monster and then tries to undo his pants, but he's woken by the ringing phone. On the other end is a creepazoid who implies that he knows something about the mysterious and gruesome death of a young woman two weeks before. He hangs up before Peter can get any specifics out of him, but it feels weirdly like an extension of the dream. He does manage to record most of the conversation, to go over at work.

We learn a little more about Peter here as he prepares for his day: how his roommate is a mentally handicapped friend with whom he's grown up in foster care, how his job is writing a nationally-syndicated column that promotes good news in a somewhat cynical voice, how he had a girlfriend who got pregnant and had a miscarriage and left him with no explanation just that fast. None of this is covered in much depth here, which is OK because it allows us to fill in the blanks and then be surprised when Pike fills them in later on. 

Peter plays the tape for his editor, who wants him to go to the police. As it happens, the police are investigating another unusual death, and ask him to come to the scene. The MO is totally different — a dude smothered and then stabbed in the heart — but it's linked to the other girl by a similar fingerprint. In fact, there have been half a dozen killings split between these two methods that are tied by the same print. I'm not sure why these cops are so eager to tell Peter about it, if he's a journalist, even though he's said he's not going to write about the deaths. Convenient storytelling, I guess.

Our next character is Jerry Washington, a high-school dropout and South Central gang member who is trying to get out of the game. The big man won’t let him leave, though — in fact, we meet Jerry as he's carrying out a hit on a rival gang leader. This whole part is kind of hyper-violent and unnecessary, but you know, adult fiction. And again, I could do without Pike writing minorities in LA who belong to inner-city gangs as the only native non-whites in his story. Ultimately, Jerry blackmails his boss into letting him walk and takes off for Malibu, where he meets a hot young thing who is up for a little danger and intrigue. This is Susan Darly, and she and Jerry quickly fall in love/like/lust and become each other’s world, like you do in a teenage relationship. But one day, as they're bodysurfing, Susan doesn't come back up, and Jerry can't find her. Eventually he does — on the beach down the opposite end of the current, a way she'd never have been pulled naturally, being respirated by a long-haired woman. And Susan, who wasn't breathing at all, starts again, thank goodness. OR SHOULD WE

Now we meet Julie Moore, a psychology doctorate student who is studying the meaning of near-death experiences. She speaks with an older woman who's had one, and is totally spooked by the clarity and authority the woman evokes in talking about crossing over and reviewing her life as opposed to the more familiar way she speaks on mundane matters. (Everything-old-is-new-again point: the timeline of life as a single viewable document, used in Eternal Enemy and Remember Me 2.) Julie is also spooked when the woman says she has a message specifically for her, about not fearing the end of life. It's so creepy that she leaves the hospital room without asking all of her questions.

As it turns out, there's a doctor in the hospital at the same time who has done a vast amount of research on near-death experiences, and Julie wants to pick his brain. Dr. Lawrence Morray is less than amenable to this at the present moment, but he does invite her to look him up later, at which time he may share his research. So Julie goes home, has a shower, and then has to fend off a home intruder who turns out to be her ex-boyfriend being grossly intrusive. He's supposed to be a creep, so we won't feel bad later when he gets mutilated and killed. Spoilers! But for now he just walks out and leaves a mess.

Meanwhile, Dr. Morray has a late-night appointment assessing the need for heart surgery on one of his patients. They schedule the procedure, and then he goes home to his wife Sara, to whom he feels unusually connected and compelled, if not actually in love. She mentions a young girl almost drowning on the beach and then offers to make dinner for them, and while she does Dr. Morray goes into his office (which is actually a lab) and stares at a wall safe that exhibits signs of life even though he hasn't put anything in there for two months.

We whip back to the Cold One, who considers killing a child to observe its mother's reaction, and then succumbs to a street preacher's saving throw or whatever in an attempt to feel something. (I guess I should mention, too, that outwardly the Cold One looks like an attractive woman, and It seems to know how to interact with unturned humans so as to avoid arousing suspicion that It is not.) Neither of these things has an effect on It (and It actually decides against killing the kid to avoid making a scene), and so It goes to find the man who gave It a ride north and give him a job. It has successfully turned him into ... well, not another Cold One, but certainly an unfeeling monster with inhuman strength and a craving for flesh and blood. It calls the monsters who survive Its turning "bastards" and acknowledges that they will have to be destroyed before It can successfully take the necessary step toward creating the true downfall of humankind.

Back to Peter: he's gotten another call from the creepy guy, who asks to meet him at the museum of natural history. The cops wire him up and set him loose, hoping to catch the monster. At the same time, Julie calls Dr. Morrow’s house and gets Sara, who invites her to drop by that evening. She waits outside for him, and when his car pulls into the garage and immediately back out, she follows it. To the museum, happy accident. But it's not he who gets out — it's Sara, there to work on a drawing. Julie decides to go after her anyway, thinking she might be more accommodating than her husband. But when Peter sees her and starts talking her up, Julie hangs back, intimidated but also somehow instantly attracted to him. She does corner him as he's leaving, and they go for coffee together, and they're more honest with each other about themselves than they've been to anybody else in LA. So we're pretty sure they're going to see each other again.

Jerry, meanwhile, hasn't seen Susan since that day on the beach, when her parents panicked that he was black and kicked him out of the hospital. He tracks her down at her school, but she's so dark and empty and ... well, cold, that he freaks out and bails, straight to the hospital, where he tries to get more information about how she was treated. The doctor who saw her volunteers that she checked out earlier than he would have liked, and that if Jerry wants a more thorough psychological assessment he might consider contacting Julie. After all, Susan did nearly die, and Julie is the expert on such matters.

Right now, though, she's on a date with Peter, which ends up back at his place. She’s totally sprung on him, and Peter likes her just fine, but he can’t stop thinking about Sara even as they’re making out and getting hot and heavy. His roommate walks in and interrupts them half-undressed, which kills the mood, and so Peter goes to check his messages. There’s one from the police detective, letting him know that there’s been another killing — and what ho, it’s Susan Darly’s ex-boyfriend. They’re holding Jerry on suspicion after his storming of the school, though he insists that it was Susan.

Peter realizes that Julie’s mentioned Jerry this evening — he left a message on her machine, worried about Susan. They go back to her apartment and listen to the message, and it doesn’t jibe with what the detective told him. Here they become more honest: Peter tells Julie the truth about his sting operation trying to unearth the mystery killer, and Juile tells the truth about having followed Sara Morray and who she is. Peter wants to talk to Sara himself, and Julie doesn’t really like this but she gives him the number. It’s weird how hard she’s fallen after two dates, right? But Julie insists that there’s something special about Peter, even though Peter thinks of himself as pretty cold and emotionless. Still, he does stay at her place overnight, because desire ≠ love.

The Cold One doesn’t really understand either of these things, but It is checking them out with the street preacher. It has picked up enough cues that he desires It, and so It decides It will try for some kind of feelings or emotions by making sex with him. But then he comes too fast and so It rips his ribs out. No, seriously, It is still trying to figure out whether It can have attachments or feel loss, and figures that if It truly loves the preacher then It will mourn his death. Even if It is responsible. But no — It feels no shame or pain at ruining this man, and walks out to leave him dying painfully on the floor.

*  *  *

And now we jump to a whole new section, to a whole new continent, to a whole new narrator, who I can’t really figure out why he actually belongs in this story. Surely there could have been a more elegant way to describe the ancient demon that awakens from induced slumber to teach the people of Los Angeles where they have come from and how to reach their desired end. Instead, we get him followed by Govinda Sharma, a dam engineer who has forsaken his religion and returned to India after the senseless death of his pregnant-to-term wife and their unborn child. But like ... at least it’s a brown person who isn’t a gangbanger.

Govinda has rediscovered religion, in a way: his company’s runner has introduced him to a Master, a young Jesus-looking mystic who helps him find peace through meditation and specific breathing techniques. It’s making Govinda feel better than he has since burying his wife. So he doesn’t really think twice when the Master summons him with a job: follow Rak, the immortal monster who has awakened and is leaving his cave for the first time in five thousand years.

Rak was accomplished in a technique called Seedling, which uses the sexual chakra of the body to bring about unquestioning obedience in potential followers. Have I mentioned Seedling before? Pike brought it up in some of his other stories, where it was important that someone be hypnotized and acting against their pattern but not necessarily their will. Most specifically, Helen used it in The Immortal. Certain people are born with an ability to tap into it (typically the leaders we see as charismatic and dangerous), but Rak could inflict it without any concern. This ultimately made Rak so dangerous that Krishna (remember him? Sita’s buddy?) had to overpower him with a mystical weapon analogous to an atomic bomb, which blinded him, killed most of his followers, and knocked him out for millennia. But he’s awake now, so obviously is a totally safe person for Govinda to go after.

He doesn’t go alone: he brings the runner and his younger brother with him, so that they can watch Rak in shifts and make sure he doesn’t lose them. But one night they all accidentally fall asleep, and wake up with a cobra sitting on the youngest one’s chest. Govinda tries to get the kid to sit still while he finds a stick to knock the snake away, but the kid panics and grabs at it and it bites him in the hand and the kid dies within moments. I’m not totally sure that’s how cobra venom works? But obviously Govinda isn’t going to sacrifice another child to this jungle — or to Rak’s black magic, sending a snake after them, which is what it feels like here. So he sends the other brother to get help and follows Rak all the way to the Delhi airport, where they both get tickets on the next flight to Los Angeles.

*  *  * 

Back to Juile: she meets Jerry in a coffee shop to talk about Susan. His description is not really precise enough for Julie to figure out what’s wrong, but he doesn’t want the two of them to meet, knowing that something bad will happen to Juile if they do. So he takes off, and then Julie calls her dissertation chair to talk about the issue — and about Peter, who hasn’t called since they did it three days ago. The chair thinks she should call him, and also try to get in touch with Dr. Morray about his research. As doctoral students do, she puts work first — but Dr. Morray is curt and brusque, upset as he is about some journalist in his house.

Yep: Peter called Sara and they’re flirting with each other. She says that she and her husband don’t actually talk; that she didn’t even know about his all-consuming research of years prior until Julie called to see if she could come over. She’s an artist, and she shows Peter her paintings, and this is where Dr. Morray comes in and gets all upset. So she walks Peter out and kisses him goodbye, and like ... gross? Am I a prude to want someone to be faithful and true, close out a relationship before starting another one? This whole thing really annoyed me — and I get it, with Peter and Sara being who they are (we’ll get there), but I don’t have to like it.

We’re back with Jerry as he walks up to Susan’s house. She’s creepy and gross, worse than she was at school, and she won’t give straight answers. No, that’s not it — she gives NOTHING but straight answers, and they’re not answers that make Jerry feel better about how she’s acting. It turns out that when she didn’t get out of the water, it wasn’t an accident: she was PULLED under by the woman who respirated her, and ever since she’s wanted to eat dudes. And yep, she killed her ex-boyfriend, and then she killed her parents, and now she’s going to kill Jerry. His gun does no good; she kicks his hand INTO THE WALL before he can fire it, and then starts to take his pants off with lust in her eyes and blood in her mouth. And this is the last we hear from poor Jerry.

Peter now gets home, and guess who’s there? Julie is showing the roommate some things that Peter knows are IQ tests and mind exercises, and he doesn’t really like this. Which ... I don’t really get Peter’s objection to his slow roommate, whose IQ has been pegged at 60, getting some help from a caring and thoughtful friend. I understand that he doesn’t want his friend to feel ostracized or bad about himself, but this is a sweet and thoughtful woman who has been nothing but good to Peter and his friend. Maybe let her talk to him, work with him, help him step up?

So they talk, Peter apologizes, Julie goes home, and then the creep calls, but Peter isn’t scared this time and doesn’t alert the police. Weird? Instead, he calls the newspaper with a pitch on a possible story: that Dr. Lawrence Morray is somehow connected to the creepy murders. He asks his editor to dig around for information on Dr. and Mrs. Morray — and learns that she is not the doctor’s first wife, as Sara has intimated. Definitely more to investigate.

Meanwhile, Rak and Govinda have landed at LAX. Rak is still in a loincloth, but somehow hypnotizes a college basketball player into giving him a spare set of clothes. Then they take off, walking God knows where. Govinda is careful to keep his distance as they walk from the airport to the beach and then north to Malibu. Yeah, walk — Google Maps says 20 miles. This is a long-ass walk for a thirty-year-old desk jockey, and by the end of it he’s almost hoping for his own snake.

Peter’s story chase has taken him to San Francisco, to the apartment of Dr. Morray’s sister, who has nothing but lovely and wonderful things to say about Larry’s wife. His first wife, that is — they don’t really talk anymore, and so she doesn’t know much about Sara. But Sandy’s death was so tragic, the way she fell off the boat they were using in Mexico and drowned. Peter didn’t know that Dr. Morray was there when she died, and this is suspicious to both him and the editor. He decides to fly to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to try to meet with a mutual friend of Larry’s and Sandy’s, at the behest of the editor who won’t really tell him why yet.

Julie’s got her own investigation to follow. She hasn’t been able to get in touch with Jerry (wonder why) and so goes to Susan’s house, where she gets the same cold and icky vibe, along with the stench of blood and decay after, what, a week or two of parent and boyfriend carcasses rotting in the house. Julie is smart enough not to go all the way in, and runs away home at her first opportunity, where there’s a message from Sara Morray on her machine. It seems that Sara is intrigued by Julie’s research, and by her husband’s, and since she can’t get him to talk about it she might as well ask the grad student (because that’s all we can talk about, is our research).

Peter makes it all the way to Iowa (nonstop and first-class from SFO to CID, which does not now exist) before he learns just why his editor was so eager for him to be out there. It seems that there is no death certificate for Sandra Morrow, and the journalist’s investigative digging instinct led the editor to learn that she is being kept alive by machines at a clinic an hour out of town. (I’m hoping to learn a little more about Iowa in the comments ... specifically why Peter wouldn’t have been better served just flying to Des Moines. This is your moment, @mildhorror​.) So he goes and poses as Sandra Morrow’s son, and ends up talking with: you got it, Penny Hampton. Remember her? She tells Peter the two words that came out of Sandy’s mouth just weeks ago: child, cold. She also tells him that she’s had asthma since trying to respirate his “mother,” and as repulsed as she is by Sandy she now feels compelled to keep her alive. As though her death will mean Penny’s to come.

There’s a whole chapter about Dr. Morray carrying out his cardiac procedure with the patient from earlier. The guy says he hears music as he’s going under, which ties into Larry’s research about near-death experiences. Ominous? Probably, considering he miscalculates with the balloon angioplasty and ruptures the inferior thyroid vein and kills the dude. He gets home all pissed off to find Julie administering a Rorschach test to Sara, which Dr. Morray thinks is a waste of time. And Julie kind of hopes so, because Sara is freaking her out with non-standard and sociopathic responses. Sara asks Julie not to tell Peter, and before Julie can think too much about this she has to excuse herself and get the hell out. But before she can get too far, Rak steps in front of her car and asks what she was doing in the doctor’s house. Without even thinking about who this giant blind Indian might be or what he is to them, Julie sort of word-vomits all over him and then asks how he knows the Morrays and what he thinks of them, specifically Sara.

“She cold.”

Back in ... I don’t know, Muscatine? Peter is trying to throw his weight around to get Sandra Morrow’s records. He has to call in a favor with his police officer friend, and then it’s partly in Spanish (remember, Mexico) and all in doctor handwriting, but he determines that yes, she drowned thirty years ago and has been on the machines here ever since. But there is a little oddity: she was pregnant when she was admitted to the facility, and she carried to term and delivered nine months to the day after her accident. So now Peter wants to track down the baby and see if that gives him any more info.

Dr. Morray, it turns out, actually was kind of freaked out by the inkblot test, especially since Sara was not blind to Julie’s reaction and now thinks she’s empty. So he goes back to work, of course, and who should show up but Rak. He tells the doctor a story of a young man who would dive to the bottom of a lake using reeds to breathe, and when the other kids got jealous and stole his reeds — his breath — he didn’t die but couldn’t rejoin humanity. Obviously Larry doesn’t know what this means yet, but Rak doesn’t have time to spell it out for him.

In the meantime, the Cold One has figured out what It needs to do to take the next step in monster making. It tells Its bastards to sacrifice themselves making a gory mess in a mall, and then decides to eliminate Julie Moore as she is too close to Peter Jacobs. This bit here feels like it gives away too much too soon, but again, I’m still enjoying the story as it doesn’t totally spell out what’s happening and I can piece it together. So the Cold One goes to Julie’s apartment and finds her ex and his lawyer there waiting for her. And It figures, why the hell does It have to hang around to kill Julie when It could just turn these two into bastards and make them do it? Efficiency!

Obviously Peter hasn’t been able to get the adoption agency to give up its files — he has to call in another favor with his cop buddy. But he learns that there was a girl, adopted by a family, where both parents died and the brother (also adopted) was in a mental institution, but the dad’s sister still lives in Iowa City. He kisses Sandra Morray goodbye before he leaves ... why? Peter doesn’t know, but maybe there’s something to Penny’s previously stated connection with her. And then he goes to the sister’s house, where he learns that the daughter was always kind of off and freaky, even when she was adopted at five days old, even though she was a wonderful artist. The brother had asthma and anxiety and willingly chose to go to the institution when he was 18, and then when the girl was a few months shy of high school graduation both her parents died and she took off for California. Peter doesn’t want to, but he asks if the woman has a picture — and sure enough, this weird artist girl is Sara Morray. Ew, she married her dad!

And now we’re suddenly in the perspective of the police detective, because Pike just can’t fuckin’ help himself. This is another too-gory chapter that serves no purpose except to kill off the bastards and I guess make the book more adult. It seems that there is a group of weirdos literally tearing people apart in the mall, and the detective is needed on the scene. When he gets there, the monsters are barricaded in the sporting goods store, and there’s a trail of gore and viscera leading up to it. Fortunately, there are only two left, but unfortunately they have unlimited hunting ammunition, or however much the store has in stock, which is enough. The detective decides to go in through the air duct, and he manages to take down one of the creatures with a lucky head shot, but the other one blasts him in the shoulder with her shotgun. Yeah, her. Of course it’s Susan Darly, the last monster alive, cold and eager to keep killing. But the detective empties his revolver into her, and finally she stops moving. And that is the end of the mysterious monster killings storyline. Seriously, we never see the detective again.

But now Julie shows up at her place, and her ex is there, and he is determined to get in one last lay before he kills her. I told you this asshole was a gross monster who we wouldn’t be sad to see die. And boy does Julie kill him. She stabs him in the neck with a letter opener, she drops a ten-gallon fishtank on his dick, she hits him in the face with a body powder he’d been allergic to when they were dating, and then she drops a TV on his head, which (back in the day when TVs were heavy as shit) crushes his skull. And then the phone rings, and it’s Sara Morray, and she wants Julie to come over and talk. Obviously, Julie doesn’t want to, but she feels like she HAS to. Seedling!

And also now Peter has gotten an audience with the doctor who was Larry and Sandy’s mutual friend, the reason that Sandra Morray is vegetating in Iowa rather than somewhere closer to her husband. It seems that this guy dated her first, but Larry stole her away and they got married really fast. He’s tried to be happy for them, because she obviously loved him back, but he also knew that Larry had a temper, and in fact he’s pretty sure that’s how the accident happened. That Larry hit Sandy because she was pregnant and refused to get rid of it, and that she got knocked overboard and nearly died. Larry managed to keep her alive until they got to shore and medicine, but there was no way she would ever wake up. Old love and anger bade this doctor to take over Sandy’s care, but because he’s not the legal guardian he couldn’t just end her life, which is why she’s still on machines after thirty years. He did deliver the babies, though, and wants to know what Peter knows about them.

Babies. Plural. Twins. A boy and a girl.

We remember that Peter’s a foster kid. He certainly remembers that. And I don’t begrudge him leaping to conclusions here, considering everything he’s been through with Sara and Sandra and the monster killers and all. But ... are you trying to tell me that there were twin babies placed with an adoption agency at the same time, and the agency has detailed information about what happened to the girl but fuck-all on the boy? Like, nobody even bothered to go, hey detective journalist guys, don’t you want to know about BOTH of Sandra Morray’s coma-born babies? Or maybe, yeah, we have that record on file — which child are you asking about?

*  *  * 

Good building and scaffolding of a premise so far, right? It’s too bad that from here, the narrative kind of dribbles to a halt. And before we can get to the closure of Peter and Sara and Julie and Dr. Morray and everyone else (except the cops, like I mentioned), we have to listen to Govinda dream about the story he was told of Rak’s birth. Basically, his mother was a celibate seer who was raped, and the act implanted in her a monstrous presence that was never wrong. In fact, one of her predictions went so right that the man she was giving it to killed her, pretty much at term. So the dude who raped her cut the baby out  — and it ended up being Rak.

Govinda is still watching him, in a cemetery, digging up a coffin. Govinda’s wife’s coffin. Who then comes to zombie-life and delivers their baby, also dead. Govinda realizes he’s being given a second chance with his god; at least according to this narrative, Hindus must be cremated rather than buried. (Wikipedia says this isn’t always true of every sect, but remember Pike didn’t have Wikipedia in 1994. Besides, even with a burial there are still preparation rites that we can probably assume Govinda didn’t follow, being too distraught to be a good Hindu.) So when his dead wife and son lie back down, he lights them on fire. Is this why he was supposed to be following Rak? He’s not risking it — he leaves the pyre and goes after him.

Now Julie shows up at Sara’s house, and she wants to go for a walk on the beach. Obviously Julie is still under Seedling, because she knows she doesn’t trust this lady but goes with her anyway. And she’s right to distrust, because Sara drags her into the ocean and starts the same transformation she did on Susan Darly.

And even though we know the Cold One is Sara, It still narrates in this way as It makes Its way back to the house. I’ll give this to Pike: he thoroughly commits to the voice. Who should It encounter on the road in front, though, but Rak, who asks to hear Its story. The Cold One tells how It has always had a consciousness beyond Its apparent age and that It followed the instructions of the Voice until it suddenly disappeared. Rak reveals that the Voice is none other than the ghost of the life of Sandra Morrow, causing the Cold One to relive her life up to the point of her death. Which is why It has ended up where It is. It wants to kill Rak and his weird Indian follower, but Rak won’t allow It to touch Govinda and can’t be manipulated by It anyway. This pisses It off — but hey, finally emotions!

It goes inside to find Lawrence Morrow staring at two bottles. One is whiskey, half empty. The other contains a moving fetus — the Cold One’s miscarriage from three years earlier, echoing the miscarriage that Sandra Morrow had three years before her death. And now that It remembers everything from both lives, It wants to make Dr. Morrow hurt the way he hurt Sandra. But because It has emotions and feelings for the first time, It wants to savor them, to drag things out and taunt and scare Larry. So he gets away, with the knowledge that his wife is somehow the comatose vegetable seven states away and the goal of stopping her, with maybe a plan? We don’t know yet.

But Rak and Govinda are still outside, because Govinda doesn’t know if his job is done yet. They walk down to the beach and find the lifeless body of Julie Moore in the surf. Govinda is ready to stop Rak from murdering an innocent, but all Rak does is watch Julie struggle to breathe. Govinda wants to help, but as he’s reaching in her mouth to clear the airway Julie bites off his finger. And now Rak steps in, calmly pushing Julie back to the sand and quieting her. He explains to Govinda that Julie carries a child who is the incarnation of the Hindu death goddess Kali, and that there’s nothing either of them can do  and no rationale to what’s already happened. He takes off, and this time Govinda doesn’t follow, so he’s there when Julie wakes up and can take care of her instead.

Now Peter is stuck in the Denver airport on a layover and is thinking about everything he’s learned. He calls up the ex-girlfriend who bailed on him after her miscarriage, and learns that she was scared of the sensation, not just of miscarrying but also how cold and abnormal the life inside felt. So Peter’s vindicated in his jumping to conclusions, even though he hasn’t read the whole book like I did and couldn’t possibly know everything.

When he gets home, the first thing he does is goes to see Sara, and tells her everything he’s found out. She’s not to be deterred from her plan, though: fuck her brother and make a Cold Baby. If she can’t carry warm life to term and he can’t provide life for a ... I don’t know, “warmie”? Then maybe they should get it on together and allow their cold child to destroy humankind. Before she can torture him into banging her, though, Peter’s roommate shows up, having found the address and directions in the apartment and thinking it was a new place he had to deliver a newspaper. So Sara holds him under in the hot tub until Peter agrees to do what she wants, but it’s too late and the roommate is dead.

Meanwhile, Dr. Morray is flying the other direction, to see his wife for the first time in thirty years. And not just to see her: to cut her life support so she can die with whatever shred of dignity she has left, and so her undead reborn self will also die without ruining the world. Does he sign a medical order of withdrawal of life support? Hell no, he’s too rich and important for that. He sneaks in a scalpel and slices off the air tube, holding Penny Hampton hostage while he does it so nobody will stop him.

And now, with no breath in the warm lungs, the Cold One realizes that It is near Its end. That sentence is a cheat to make it sound more interesting: we’re still in Peter’s POV, as Sara smothers and fades. She tells him what Rak told her: that the first breath is a gift, and it can be given just as a life reaches its end to make more life. So Peter, who has never had anybody except this roommate, realizes that he has a responsibility to let him live. He blows his last breath into the roommate’s lungs and then dies beside his naked sister lover monster.

Epilogue, finally! Three years later, Govinda is back in LA for a meeting and he connects with Julie and her daughter at a playground. The kid sure is creepy and precocious, and doesn’t seem to be hot even though it’s a sweltering day. Maybe he shouldn’t have let Rak save Julie? Too late! To be continued! Only not, and it never was, and now Pike says it never will be!

Like ... what happened to the roommate? What happened to Dr. Morray and Penny Hampton? How is everybody reacting to the deaths of Peter Jacobs and Sara Morray? Has the city recovered from the monstrous killing spree? Does Govinda actually have a reason for being here beyond just telling us what Rak is doing? Where is the actual closure?

I really enjoyed reading The Cold One right up until that fourth section. It spent all of this time building people and monsters and showing how they were related to each other, and then it rushed to the end in less than a quarter of the length, with Peter’s death literally the last thing before the epilogue and no time to react or respond to it. It feels like Pike just had to get through the book to fulfill his contract requirement and didn’t have time to actually finish it, thus the tossed-in promise of The Cold One 2: Seedling at the end. I wish he would have just finished it at the time instead of kicking the can down the road to infinity.

Mob Psycho 100 Episodes 4-8 as narrated by an 11-year old

So I wish I'd had this idea when I first introduced my lil sis to MP100 because her reactions to anime she loves are fuckin hilarious and she's jumped on the MP100 bandwagon as hard as I have lmao she customized a Littlest Pet Shop toy for me to look like Mob and she's gonna try making Reigen because she knows he's like one of my favourites (she's too pure omg). So we watched episodes 4-7 last night and episode 8 just a little while ago but here're her reactions to what happened in episodes 4-8. My dialogue is marked with an H and hers is indicated with a B.

Episode 4: *Mezato interviewing Ritsu* B: "Are they in Starbucks?" H: "No, they're in MobDonalds" B: "Does Mob know McDonalds is named after him?" H: "I..." *Onigawara appears* B: "He looks like Elvis Presley!" H: "Why?" B: "He has Elvis hair." *Onigawara punching his bald friend* B: "KICK HIS BUTT ELVIS!" H: *laughing* "His name's Onigawara" B: "That sounds like onion. I can't say his name and I can't say onion because it makes me think of Shrek." H: "Yeah, please don't say onion." *the body improvement club comes to save Mob* B: "Mob has good friends." H: "Which friends?" B: "The muscle club guys." H: "Yeah, they're good friends, aren't they?" B: "I wish I had strong muscle-y friends like that to beat up kids who are mean to me at school." H: "Well you have me, text me if you need me." B: "But you're a twig. And you're like a zombie. And the grade threes are taller than you." H: "..." B: "And you're a weeb." H: "I will leave you in the woods for the wolves, I swear to fuck." *teru appears* B: "The blonde guy's cool." H: "What makes you say that?" B: 'He has a cool name. And he's gay." H: "How do you know if he's gay? He was dating a girl before Edano called him." B: "What's that one thing your friend is?" H: "Bisexual?" B: "Yeah. He's that." (omfg she's too great) Episode 5: B: *aggressive headbanging to the intro* *Teru talking shit and knocking Mob around* B: "Why's he being so mean?!" H: "That's just how he is." B: "Maybe he had a sad life so he's taking it out on Mob." H: "Dude you're giving me sad headcanons. Stop." *Teru makes Dimple vanish* B: "HE BETTER NOT HAVE KILLED DIMPLE." H: "..." B: "HE COMES BACK RIGHT?!" H: "I dunno..." *laughing* B: *SCREAMING* H: *hissing whisper* "SHUT UP MOM ISN'T SUPPOSED TO KNOW YOU'RE STILL UP." *Mob getting beat up* B: "STOP HURTING MOB HE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!!" *Teru screeching* B: "That's me every day." *Teru's hair buzzed off* B: "He looks like an old man!" *Teru turns his tie into a sword* B: "Now he's a very angry old man." H: *laughing* "Yeah, he is." B: "Kinda like you." H: "You sure like insulting me, don't you?" B: "It's 'cuz you won't tell me if Dimple comes back." H: "Fair enough." *??? appears* B: "Oh no." H: "What?" B: "Is Teru gonna die?" H: "What do you think?" B: "He better not. He's gonna be friends with Mob. Or date him." H: *laughing* "Chill." B: "But you draw them gay." H: "How the fuck-" (she doesn't see me draw so she must've found my DA or something, she won’t tell me) B: *evil laugh* *Teru's clothes get ripped off* B: "He's very very naked." H: "Yup." B: "He deserves it for being so mean to Mob." *100% Sadness* B: "Don't cry, you're a good person." H: "Aw..." B: "He's nicer than you." H: "I mean probably but can you fucking not." *The body improvement club picks Mob up* B: "Yeah, go do squats with your friends. They won't beat you up like Teru did." H: "Well at least Teru feels sorry about it." B: "Yeah. I want to see Teru and Mob be friends." Episode 6: *Reigen reassures Mob* B: "Reigen's so nice to Mob." H: "Yup." B: "He's like Mob's dad." *Shinji appears* B: "He needs to sleep more. He has rings under his eyes." H: "Yeah." B: "He looks like a zombie." H: "Mm-hm." B: "Sorta like you." H: "Do you wanna fuckin die" *Ritsu goes to the Awakening lab* B: "The afro man's gonna kill him." H: "No??" B: "Stranger Danger. Ritsu needs to learn Stranger Danger." H: "Well...you're not wrong I guess?" *Ritsu meets the Awakening Lab kids and has his interior monologue* B: "I like Ritsu. He's salty like me." H: "Well I guess so." *The Shiratori brothers appear* B: "Is that Steve from Minecraft?" H: "Yes." *Shinji's arrival at home* B: "Shinji has a mean family. I feel bad for him." H: "Yeah. Kinda like me." *glance at sister* B: "I'll stop if you tell me if Dimple comes back." H: *heavy sigh* *Shinji and Ritsu frame Onigawara* B: "I don't feel bad for Shinji anymore." H: "Why's that?" B: "He made Ritsu be bad." H: "Yeah..." B: "And (Onigawara) was trying to be a good person." H: "Mm-hm." B: "(Onigawara) needs a hug." *Dimple appears* B: *gasp* *glances rapidly between me and the screen* *bounces up and down on the couch, kicking feet* B: "DIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMPPPLLLLLEEEEE!!!!!!" H: "You happy now?" B: "He's my favourite character!" H: "Figured as much." B: "Can you please draw him for me?" H: "Sure." B: *excited squeak* Episode 7: *shows the different shadow leaders* *gozu appears* B: "I want hair like that." H: "I can make it happen." B: "If you do I'll put orange juice in your fishtank." H: "...your hair's safe." *Ritsu sitting alone in his room with his aura visible* B: "Whoa, his powers look so cool!" H: "Yeah, they're really pretty." B: "So if I get really stressed will I get powers like Ritsu?" H: "I've been stressed for months and nothing's happened so I don't think so." *laugh* B: "Maybe you just suck." H: "Maybe I should beat your ass." *Teru's hair: 150%* B: "HE'S A TREE!!!" At this point, I went upstairs to get a glass of water and to let the dog out, so I left her to watch on her own. I came back around the time that Shinji kept getting beat up. H: *enter room with dog and water* "What happened so far?" B: "Shinji's getting his ass beat." H: "Don't cuss." B: "But it's true." H: "Yeah..." B: "He deserves it." *Ritsu being a shit* B: "Is Dimple possessing him all the time?" H: "No, he's stressed so he's doing bad things." B: "Mob's gonna be sad." *Mob sees Ritsu in the alley* B: *glance excitedly between me and the screen* B: "NEXT EPISODE!!!!" H: *receives text from mother upstairs saying to go to sleep and that 'the kid' had better be in bed as well* H: "You gotta go to bed now." B: *takes my phone* *calls mom* B: *enter lengthy, heated debate over phone between mom and sis about whether or not she can watch the next episode* B: *loses argument, hangs up* H: "So?" B: "We're watching the next one after school tomorrow.”

Episode 8 (next day):

*Teru meets Mob and Tome on the bench* B: "Does Tome like Teru?" H: "No, why do you ask?" B: "I dunno." *Teru takes Mob to the alley* B: "Teru still looks like a tree." H: *laugh* "Yup." *Ritsu yelling at Mob to fight him* B: "Ritsu's being a jerk and needs to stop." H: "I agree." B: "He needs a Snickers.* H: *laugh* *Mob bowing to apologize to the delinquents for Ritsu* B: "Mob has a booty." H: "S T O P." B: "I'm kidding." H: "Thank the Lord." *Koyama on the rooftop talking to Sakurai* B: "I want his pants." H: "...why?" B: "They're really shiny." H: "Aight." *Ritsu gets attacked by Koyama* B: "IS RITSU DEAD?!" H: "No." *laugh* B: "I'd be dead." H: "Yeah, you definitely would." *sees half of Koyama's face (when he threatens the delinquents)* B: "Ew." *Koyama makes the delinquents grovel* B: "I wouldn't bow to him." H: "Really?" B: "Yeah, I'd rather die." H: "Holy shit calm down you’re only eleven." *Mob first attacks Koyama and slams him into the ground* B: "GET REKT SCRUB!!" *First half of the fight (before Mob goes 100%)* B: "The animation's really good, wow!" H: "Holy shit, I know right?" B: "Yeah, Mob's powers are really cool!" *Mob getting beat up* B: "STOP BEATING HIM UP!!" H: "..." B: "RITSU SAVE HIM!!" B: *cringing and hugging stomach whenever Mob gets hit* B: *various "ouch!" and "ooh!" exclamations whenever Mob's hit* *Mob hits 100% animosity* B: "Well his hair looks better now." H: *laugh* "Yeah." B: "He doesn't have a bowl cut anymore." H: "Oh, the bowl cut's still there, kiddo." B: "Oh, ok." *Mob 100% vs Koyama* B: "This is the coolest and most intense fight I've ever seen!" H: "Yeah, it won for best fight of 2016 on Crunchyroll." B: "It deserved to win!" *Dimple appears before going to find Teru* B: "DIMPLE!!!" H: *laugh* B: *SCREECH* *the delinquents cheering Mob on* B: "Those kids looks like adults." H: "Wow, you're right." B: "Are you sure they're middle schoolers?" H: "Yup." *Koyama knocks out Mob* B: "IS MOB DEAD?!" H: "HE'S NOT FUCKIN DEAD WHY IS THAT YOUR FIRST CONCLUSION EVERY TIME A CHARACTER GETS HURT?!" B: "WELL ANIME CHARACTERS DIE ALL THE TIME!" H: "You really shouldn't use Danganronpa and Attack on Titan as reference." *Reigen's aroma runaway express* B: "Reigen is me." H: "Nah, you're more like Ritsu." B: "But he's mean. H: "Not all the time. And you're mean sometimes as well." B: "I'll put juice in your fishtank." H: "Case in point." *Mob wakes up and Teru leans over him* B: "What if Teru's wig fell on Mob?" H: *hard laughter* B: "It would be like a haystack fell on his face." H: *LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY* B: "Shoof." H: *wHEEZE*

So all of this is unaltered from our original conversations and now she changed her phone, ipad and laptop backgrounds to Mob Psycho 100 wallpapers XD DISCLAIMER: We aren't violent towards each other, we just banter and shit lmao it's all in good fun. Also, these are her two favourite songs from the OST (Song 1 | Song 2)