Beezer leaves the room in a hurry, not quite running, and Jack shades Mouse from the brief glare of kitchen sunlight as best he can. The hand clamped on Jack's loosens a little more.
Jack turns to Doc. "Do you think he's going?"
Doc shakes his head. "Passed out again. Poor old Mousie ain't getting off that easy. " He gives Jack a grim, haunted look. "This better be worth it, Mr. Policeman. 'Cause if it ain't, I'm gonna replumb your sink. "
Beezer comes back with a huge bundle of rags, and he's put on a pair of green kitchen gloves. Not speaking, he mops up the pool of vomit between Mouse's shoulder and the backrest of the couch. The black specks have ceased moving, and that's good. To have not seen them moving in the first place would have been even better. The vomit, Jack notices with dismay, has eaten into the couch's worn fabric like acid.
"I'm going to pull the blanket down for a second or two," Doc says, and Bear Girl gets up at once, still holding the bowl with the melting ice. She goes to one of the bookshelves and stands there with her back turned, trembling.
"Doc, is this something I really need to see?"
I think maybe it is. I don't think you know what you're dealing with, even now. " Doc takes hold of the blanket and eases it out from beneath Mouse's limp hand. Jack sees that more of the black stuff has begun to ooze from beneath the dying man's fingernails. "Remember that this happened only a couple of hours ago, Mr. Policeman. "
He pulls the blanket down. Standing with her back to them, Susan "Bear Girl" Osgood faces the great works of Western philosophy and begins to cry silently. Jack tries to hold back his scream and cannot.
Henry pays off the taxi, goes into his house, takes a deep and soothing breath of the air-conditioned cool. There is a faint aroma ¡ª sweet ¡ª and he tells himself it's just fresh-cut flowers, one of Mrs. Morton's specialties. He knows better, but wants no more to do with ghosts just now. He is actually feeling better, and he supposes he knows why: it was telling the ESPN guy to take his job and shove it. Nothing more apt to make a fellow's day, especially when the fellow in question is gainfully employed, possessed of two credit cards that are nowhere near the max-out point, and has a pitcher of cold iced tea in the fridge.
Henry heads kitchenward now, making his way down the hall with one hand held out before him, testing the air for obstacles and displacements. There's no sound but the whisper of the air conditioner, the hum of the fridge, the clack of his heels on the hardwood . . .
. . . and a sigh.
An amorous sigh.
Henry stands where he is for a moment, then turns cautiously. Is the sweet aroma a little stronger now, especially facing back in this direction, toward the living room and the front door? He thinks yes. And it's not flowers; no sense fooling himself about that. As always, the nose knows. That's the aroma of My Sin.
"Rhoda?" he says, and then, lower: "Lark?"
No answer. Of course not. He's just having the heebie-jeebies, that's all; those world-famous shaky-shivers, and why not?
"Because I'm the sheik, baby," Henry says. "The Sheik, the Shake, the Shook. "
No smells. No sexy sighs. And yet he's haunted by the idea of his wife back in the living room, standing there in perfumed cerements of the grave, watching him silently as he came in and passed blindly before her. His Lark, come back from Noggin Mound Cemetery for a little visit. Maybe to listen to the latest Slobberbone CD.
"Quit it," he says softly. "Quit it, you dope. "
He goes into his big, well-organized kitchen. On his way through the door he slaps a button on the panel there without even thinking about it. Mrs. Morton's voice comes from the overhead speaker, which is so high-tech she might almost be in the room.
"Jack Sawyer was by, and he dropped off another tape he wants you to listen to. He said it was . . . you know, that man. That bad man. "
"Bad man, right," Henry murmurs, opening the refrigerator and enjoying the blast of cold air. His hand goes unerringly to one of three cans of Kingsland Lager stored inside the door. Never mind the iced tea.
"Both of the tapes are in your studio, by the soundboard. Also, Jack wanted you to call him on his cell phone. " Mrs. Morton's voice takes on a faintly lecturing tone. "If you do speak to him, I hope you tell him to be careful. And be careful yourself. " A pause. "Also, don't forget to eat supper. It's all ready to go. Second shelf of the fridge, on your left. "
"Nag, nag, nag," Henry says, but he's smiling as he opens his beer. He goes to the telephone and dials Jack's number.
On the seat of the Dodge Ram parked in front of 1 Nailhouse Row, Jack's cell phone comes to life. This time there's no one in the cab to be annoyed by its tiny but penetrating tweet.
"The cellular customer you are trying to reach is currently not answering. Please try your call again later. "
Henry hangs up, goes back to the doorway, and pushes another button on the panel there. The voices that deliver the time and temperature are all versions of his own, but he's programmed
a random shuffle pattern into the gadget, so he never knows which one he's going to get. This time it's the Wisconsin Rat, screaming crazily into the sunny air-conditioned silence of his house, which has never felt so far from town as it does today:
"Time's four twenty-two P. M. ! Outside temperature's eighty-two! Inside temperature's seventy! What the hell do you care? What the hell does anyone care? Chew it up, eat it up, wash it down, it aaall ¡ª "
¡ª comes out the same place. Right. Henry thumbs the button again, silencing the Rat's trademark cry. How did it get late so fast? God, wasn't it just noon? For that matter, wasn't he just young, twenty years old and so full of spunk it was practically coming out of his ears? What ¡ª
That sigh comes again, derailing his mostly self-mocking train of thought. A sigh? Really? More likely just the air conditioner's compressor, cutting off. He can tell himself that, anyway.
He can tell himself that if he wants to.
"Is anyone here?" Henry asks. There is a tremble in his voice that he hates, an old man's palsied quaver. "Is anyone in the house with me?"
For a terrible second he is almost afraid something will answer. Nothing does ¡ª of course nothing does ¡ª and he swallows half the can of beer in three long gulps. He decides he'll go back into the living room and read for a little while. Maybe Jack will call. Maybe he'll get himself a little more under control once he has a little fresh alcohol in his system.
And maybe the world will end in the next five minutes, he thinks. That way you'll never have to deal with the voice on those damned tapes waiting in the studio. Those damned tapes lying there on the soundboard like unexploded bombs.
Henry walks slowly back down the hall to the living room with one hand held out before him, telling himself he's not afraid, not a bit afraid of touching his wife's dead face.
Jack Sawyer has seen a lot, he's traveled to places where you can't rent from Avis and the water tastes like wine, but he's never encountered anything like Mouse Baumann's leg. Or, rather, the pestilential, apocalyptic horror show that was Mouse Baumann's leg. Jack's first impulse once he's got himself back under something like control is to upbraid Doc for taking off Mouse's pants. Jack keeps thinking of sausages, and how the casing forces them to keep their shape even after the fry pan's sizzling on a red-hot burner. This is an undoubtedly stupid comparison, primo stupido, but the human mind under pressure puts on some pretty odd jinks and jumps.
There's still the shape of a leg there ¡ª sort of ¡ª but the flesh has spread away from the bone. The skin is almost completely gone, melted to a runny substance that looks like a mixture of milk and bacon fat. The interwoven mat of muscle beneath what remains of the skin is sagging and undergoing the same cataclysmic metamorphosis. The infected leg is in a kind of undisciplined motion as the solid becomes liquid and the liquid sizzles relentlessly into the couch upon which Mouse is lying. Along with the almost insupportable stench of decay, Jack can smell scorching cloth and melting fabric.
Poking out of this spreading, vaguely leglike mess is a foot that looks remarkably undamaged. If I wanted to, I could pull it right off . . . just like a squash off a vine. The thought gets to him in a way the sight of the grievously wounded leg hasn't quite been able to, and for a moment Jack can only bow his head, gagging and trying not to vomit down the front of his shirt.
What perhaps saves him is a hand on his back. It's Beezer, offering what comfort he can. The rowdy color has completely left the Beez's face. He looks like a motorcyclist come back from the grave in an urban myth.
"You see?" Doc is asking, and his voice seems to come from a great distance. "This ain't the chicken pox, my friend, although it looked a little like that while it was still getting cranked up. He's already exhibiting red spots on his left leg . . . his belly . . . his balls. That's pretty much what the skin around the bite looked like when we first got him back here, just some redness and swelling. I thought, ¡®Shit, ain't nothin' to this, I got enough Zithromax to put this on the run before sundown. ' Well, you see what good the Zithro did. You see what good anything did. It's eating through the couch, and I'm guessing that when it finishes with the couch, it'll go right to work on the floor. This shit is hungry. So was it worth it, Hollywood? I guess only you and Mouse know the answer to that. "
"He still knows where the house is," Beezer says. "Me, I don't have a clue, even though we just came from there. You, either. Do you?"
Doc shakes his head.
"But Mouse, he knows. "
"Susie, honey," Doc says to Bear Girl. "Bring another blanket, would you? This one's damn near et through. "
Bear Girl goes willingly enough. Jack gets to his feet. His legs are rubbery, but they hold him. "Shield him," he tells Doc. "I'm going out to the kitchen. If I don't get a drink, I'm going to die. "
Jack takes on water directly from the sink, swallowing until a spike plants itself in the center of his forehead and he belches like a horse. Then he just stands there, looking out into Beezer and Bear Girl's backyard. A neat little swing set has been planted there in the weedy desolation. It hurts Jack to look at it, but he looks anyway. After the lunacy of Mouse's leg, it seems important to remind himself that he's here for a reason. If the reminder hurts, so much the better.
The sun, now turning gold as it eases itself down toward the Missis-sippi, glares in his eyes. Time hasn't been standing still after all, it seems. Not outside this little house, anyway. Outside 1 Nailhouse Row, time actually seems to have sped up. He's haunted by the idea that coming here was as pointless as detouring to Henry's house; tormented by the thought that Mr. Munshun and his boss, the abbalah, are running him around like a windup toy with a key in its back while they do their work. He can follow that buzz in his head to Black House, so why the hell doesn't he just get back in his truck and do it?
The perfume he smells is not that of his dead wife.
What does that mean? Why does the idea of someone smelling perfume make him so crazy and afraid?
Beezer knocks on the kitchen door, making him jump. Jack's eye fixes on a sampler hung over the kitchen table. Instead of GOD BLESS OUR HOME, it reads HEAVY METAL THUNDER. With a carefully stitched HARLEY-DAVIDSON beneath.
"Get back in here, man," the Beez says. "He's awake again. "
Henry's on a path in the woods ¡ª or maybe it's a lane ¡ª and something is behind him. Each time he turns to see ¡ª in this dream he can see, but seeing is no blessing ¡ª there's a little more of that something back there. It appears to be a man in evening dress, but the man is frightfully elongated, with spike teeth that jut over a smiling red lower lip. And he seems ¡ª is it possible? ¡ª to have only one eye.
The first time Henry looks back, the shape is only a milky blur amid the trees. The next time he can make out the uneasy dark swim of its coat and a floating red blotch that might be a tie or an ascot. Up ahead of him is this thing's den, a stinking hole that only coincidentally looks like a house. Its presence buzzes in Henry's head. Instead of pine, the woods pressing in on either side smell of heavy, cloying perfume: My Sin.
It's driving me, he thinks with dismay. Whatever that thing back there is, it's driving me like a steer toward the slaughterhouse.
He thinks of cutting off the lane to his left or right, of using the miracle of his new sight to escape through the woods. Only there are things there, too. Dark, floating shapes like sooty scarves. He can almost see the closest. It's some sort of gigantic dog with a long tongue as red as the apparition's tie and bulging eyes.
Can't let it drive me to the house, he thinks. I have to get out of this before it can get me there . . . but how? How?
It comes to him with startling simplicity. All he has to do is wake up. Because this is a dream. This is just a ¡ª
"It's a dream!" Henry cries out, and jerks forward. He's not walking, he's sitting, sitting in his very own easy chair, and pretty soon he's going to have a very wet crotch because he fell asleep with a can of Kingsland Lager b
alanced there, and ¡ª
But there's no spill, because there's no can of beer. He feels cautiously to his right and yep, there it is, on the table with his book, a braille edition of Reflections in a Golden Eye. He must have put it there before first falling asleep and then falling into that horrible nightmare.
Except Henry's pretty sure he didn't do any such thing. He was holding the book and the beer was between his legs, freeing his hands to touch the little upraised dots that tell the story. Something very considerately took both the book and the can after he dropped off, and put them on the table. Something that smells of My Sin perfume.
The air reeks of it.
Henry takes a long, slow breath with his nostrils flared and mouth tightly sealed shut.
"No," he says, speaking very clearly. "I can smell flowers . . . and rug shampoo . . . and fried onions from last night. Very faint but still there. The nose knows. "
All true enough. But the smell had been there. It's gone now because she's gone, but she will be back. And suddenly he wants her to come. If he's frightened, surely it's the unknown he's frightened of, right? Only that and nothing more. He doesn't want to be alone here, with nothing for company but the memory of that rancid dream.
And the tapes.
He has to listen to the tapes. He promised Jack.
Henry gets shakily to his feet and makes his way to the living-room control panel. This time he's greeted by the voice of Henry Shake, a mellow fellow if ever there was one.
"Hey there, all you hoppin' cats and boppin' kitties, at the tone it's seven-fourteen P. M. , Bulova Watch Time. Outside the temp is a very cool seventy-five degrees, and here in the Make-Believe Ballroom it's a very nifty seventy degrees. So why not get off your money, grab your honey, and make a little magic?"
Seven-fourteen! When was the last time he fell asleep for almost three hours in the daytime? For that matter, when was the last time he had a dream in which he could see? The answer to that second question, so far as he can remember, is never.
Where was that lane?
What was the thing behind him?
What was the place ahead of him, for that matter?