"Doesn't matter," Henry tells the empty room ¡ª if it is empty. "It was a dream, that's all. The tapes, on the other hand . . . "
He doesn't want to listen to them, has never wanted to listen to anything any less in his life (with the possible exception of Chicago singing "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?"), but he has to. If it might save Ty Marshall's life, or the life of even one other child, he must.
Slowly, dreading every step, Henry Leyden makes his blind way to his studio, where two cassettes wait for him on the soundboard.
"In heaven there is no beer," Mouse sings in a toneless, droning voice.
His cheeks are now covered with ugly red patches, and his nose seems to be sinking sideways into his face, like an atoll after an undersea earthquake.
"That's why we drink it here. And when . . . we're gone . . . from here . . . our friends will be drinking all the beer. "
It's been like this for hours now: philosophical nuggets, instructions for the beginning beer-making enthusiast, snatches of song. The light coming through the blankets over the windows has dimmed appreciably.
Mouse pauses, his eyes closed. Then he starts another ditty.
"Hundred bottles of beer on the wall, one hundred bottles of beer . . . if one of those bottles should happen to fall . . . "
"I have to go," Jack says. He's hung in there as well as he can, convinced that Mouse is going to give him something, but he can wait no longer. Somewhere, Ty Marshall is waiting for him.
"Hold on," Doc says. He rummages in his bag and comes out with a hypodermic needle. He raises it in the dimness and taps the glass barrel with a fingernail.
"What's that?"
Doc gives Jack and Beezer a brief, grim smile. "Speed," he says, and injects it into Mouse's arm.
For a moment there's nothing. Then, as Jack is opening his mouth again to tell them he has to go, Mouse's eyes snap wide. They are now entirely red ¡ª a bright and bleeding red. Yet when they turn in his direction, Jack knows that Mouse is seeing him. Maybe really seeing him for the first time since he got here.
Bear Girl flees the room, trailing a single diminishing phrase behind her: "No more no more no more no more ¡ª "
"Fuck," Mouse says in a rusty voice. "Fuck, I'm fucked. Ain't I?"
Beezer touches the top of his friend's head briefly but tenderly. "Yeah, man. I think you are. Can you help us out?"
"Bit me once. Just once, and now . . . now . . . " His hideous red gaze turns to Doc. "Can barely see you. Fuckin' eyes are all weird. "
"You're going down," Doc says. "Ain't gonna lie to you, man. "
"Not yet I ain't," Mouse says. "Gimme something to write on. To draw a map on. Quick. Dunno what you shot me with, Doc, but the stuff from the dog's stronger. I ain't gonna be compos long. Quick!"
Beezer feels around at the foot of the couch and comes up with a trade-sized paperback. Given the heavy shit on the bookcases, Jack could almost laugh ¡ª the book is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Beezer tears off the back cover and hands it to Mouse with the blank side up.
"Pencil," Mouse croaks. "Hurry up. I got it all, man. I got it . . . up here. " He touches his forehead. A patch of skin the size of a quarter sloughs off at his touch. Mouse wipes it on the blanket as if it were a booger.
Beezer pulls a gnawed stub of pencil from an inside pocket of his vest. Mouse takes it and makes a pathetic effort to smile. The black stuff oozing from the corners of his eyes has continued to build up, and now it lies on his cheeks like smears of decayed jelly. More of it is springing out of the pores on his forehead in minute black dots that remind Jack of Henry's braille books. When Mouse bites his lower lip in concentration, the tender flesh splits open at once. Blood begins dribbling into his beard. Jack supposes the rotted-meat smell is still there, but Beezer had been right: he's gotten used to it.
Mouse turns the book cover sideways, then draws a series of quick squiggles. "Lookit," he says to Jack. "This the Mississippi, right?"
"Right," Jack says. When he leans in, he starts getting the smell again. Up close it's not even a stench; it's a miasma trying to crawl down his throat. But Jack doesn't move away. He knows what an effort Mouse is making. The least he can do is play his part.
"Here's downtown ¡ª the Nelson, Lucky's, the Agincourt Theater, the Taproom . . . here's where Chase Street turns into Lyall Road, then Route 35 . . . here's Libertyville . . . the VFW . . . Goltz's . . . ah, Christ ¡ª "
Mouse begins to thrash on the couch. Sores on his face and upper body burst open and begin leaking. He screams with pain. The hand not holding the pencil goes to his face and paws at it ineffectually.
Something inside Jack speaks up, then ¡ª speaks in a shining, imperative voice he remembers from his time on the road all those years ago. He supposes it's the voice of the Talisman, or whatever remains of it in his mind and soul.
It doesn't want him to talk, it's trying to kill him before he can talk, it's in the black stuff, maybe it is the black stuff, you've got to get rid of it ¡ª
Some things can only be done without the mind's prudish interference; when the work is nasty, instinct is often best. So it is without thinking that Jack reaches out, grasps the black slime oozing from Mouse's eyes between his fingers, and pulls. At first the stuff only stretches, as if made of rubber. At the same time Jack can feel it squirming and writhing in his grip, perhaps trying to pinch or bite him. Then it lets go with a twang sound. Jack throws the convulsing black tissue onto the floor with a cry.
The stuff tries to slither beneath the couch ¡ª Jack sees this even as he wipes his hands on his shirt, frantic with revulsion. Doc slams his bag down on one piece. Beezer squashes the other with the heel of a motorcycle boot. It makes a squittering sound.
"What the fuck is that sh
it?" Doc asks. His voice, ordinarily husky, has gone up into a near-falsetto range. "What the fuck ¡ª "
"Nothing from here," Jack says, "and never mind. Look at him! Look at Mouse!"
The red glare in Mouse's eyes has retreated; for the moment he looks almost normal. Certainly he's seeing them, and the pain seems gone. "Thanks," he breathes. "I only wish you could get it all that way, but man, it's already coming back. Pay attention. "
"I'm listening," Jack says.
"You better," Mouse replies. "You think you know. You think you can find the place again even if these two can't, and maybe you can, but maybe you don't know quite so much as you . . . ah, fuck. " From somewhere beneath the blanket there is a ghastly bursting sound as something gives way. Sweat runs down Mouse's face, mixing with the black poison venting from his pores and turning his beard a damp and dirty gray. His eyes roll up to Jack's, and Jack can see that red glare starting to haze over them again.
"This sucks," Mouse pants. "Never thought I'd go out this way. Lookit, Hollywood . . . " The dying man draws a small rectangle on his makeshift scribble of map. "This ¡ª "
"Ed's Eats, where we found Irma," Jack says. "I know. "
"All right," Mouse whispers. "Good. Now look . . . over on the other side . . . the Schubert and Gale side . . . and to the west . . . "
Mouse draws a line going north from Highway 35. He puts little circles on either side of it. Jack takes these to be representations of trees. And, across the front of the line like a gate: NO TRESPASSING.
"Yeah," Doc breathes. "That's where it was, all right. Black House. "
Mouse takes no notice. His dimming gaze is fixed solely on Jack. "Listen to me, cop. Are you listening?"
"Yes. "
"Christ, you better be," Mouse tells him.
As it always has, the work captures Henry, absorbs him, takes him away. Boredom and sorrow have never been able to stand against this old captivation with sound from the sighted world. Apparently fear can't stand against it, either. The hardest moment isn't listening to the tapes but mustering the courage to stick the first one in the big TEAC audio deck. In that moment of hesitation he's sure he can smell his wife's perfume even in the soundproofed and air-filtered environment of the studio. In that moment of hesitation he is positive he isn't alone, that someone (or something) is standing just outside the studio door, looking in at him through the glass upper half. And that is, in fact, the absolute truth. Blessed with sight as we are, we can see what Henry cannot. We want to tell him what's out there, to lock the studio door, for the love of God lock it now, but we can only watch.
Henry reaches for the PLAY button on the tape deck. Then his finger changes course and hits the intercom toggle instead.
"Hello? Is anyone out there?"
The figure standing in Henry's living room, looking in at him the way someone might look into an aquarium at a single exotic fish, makes no sound. The last of the sun's on the other side of the house and the living room is becoming quite dark, Henry being understandably forgetful when it comes to turning on the lights. Elmer Jesperson's amusing bee slippers (not that they amuse us much under these circumstances) are just about the brightest things out there.
"Hello? Anyone?"
The figure looking in through the glass half of the studio door is grinning. In one hand it is holding the hedge clippers from Henry's garage.
"Last chance," Henry says, and when there's still no response, he becomes the Wisconsin Rat, shrieking into the intercom, trying to startle whatever's out there into revealing itself: "Come on now, honey, come on now, you muthafukkah, talk to Ratty!"
The figure peering in at Henry recoils ¡ª as a snake might recoil when its prey makes a feint ¡ª but it utters no sound. From between the grinning teeth comes a leathery old tongue, wagging and poking in derision. This creature has been into the perfume that Mrs. Morton has never had the heart to remove from the vanity in the little powder room adjacent to the master bedroom, and now Henry's visitor reeks of My Sin.
Henry decides it's all just his imagination playing him up again ¡ª oy, such a mistake, Morris Rosen would have told him, had Morris been there ¡ª and hits PLAY with the tip of his finger.
He hears a throat-clearing sound, and then Arnold Hrabowski identifies himself. The Fisherman interrupts him before he can even finish: Hello, asswipe.
Henry rewinds, listens again: Hello, asswipe. Rewinds and listens yet again: Hello, asswipe. Yes, he has heard this voice before. He's sure of it. But where? The answer will come, answers of this sort always do ¡ª eventually ¡ª and getting there is half the fun. Henry listens, enrapt. His fingers dance back and forth over the tape deck's buttons like the fingers of a concert pianist over the keys of a Steinway. The feeling of being watched slips from him, although the figure outside the studio door ¡ª the thing wearing the bee slippers and holding the hedge clippers ¡ª never moves. Its smile has faded somewhat. A sulky expression is growing on its aged face. There is confusion in that look, and perhaps the first faint trace of fear. The old monster doesn't like it that the blind fish in the aquarium should have captured its voice. Of course it doesn't matter; maybe it's even part of the fun, but if it is, it's Mr. Munshun's fun, not its fun. And their fun should be the same . . . shouldn't it?
You have an emergency. Not me. You.
"Not me, you," Henry says. The mimicry is so good it's weird. "A little bit of sauerkraut in your salad, mein friend, ja?"
Your worst nightmare . . . worst nightmare.
Abbalah.
I'm the Fisherman.
Henry listening, intent. He lets the tape run awhile, then listens to the same phrase four times over: Kiss my scrote, you monkey . . . kiss my scrote, you monkey . . . you monkey . . . monkey . . .
No, not monkey. The voice is actually saying munggey. MUNG-ghee.
"I don't know where you are now, but you grew up in Chicago," Henry murmurs. "South Side. And . . . "
Warmth on his face. Suddenly he remembers warmth on his face. Why is that, friends and neighbors? Why is that, O great wise ones?
You're no better'n a monkey on a stick.
Monkey on a stick.
Monkey ¡ª
"Monkey," Henry says. He's rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers now. "Monkey on a stick. MUNG-ghee on a stigg. Who said that?"
He plays the 911: Kiss my scrote, you monkey.
He plays his memory: You're no better'n a monkey on a stick.
Warmth on his face.
Heat? Light?
Both?
Henry pops out the 911 tape and sticks in the one Jack brought today.
Hello, Judy. Are you Judy today, or are you Sophie? The abbalah sends his best, and Gorg says "Caw-caw-caw!" [Husky, phlegmy laughter. ] Ty says hello, too. Your little boy is very lonely . . .
When Tyler Marshall's weeping, terrified voice booms through the speakers, Henry winces and fast-forwards.