Black House Chapter Twenty-six

26WE HAVE HAD our scant(p) conversation ab egress slippage, and its in addition late in the feeble to belabor the point much than a exact, only wouldnt you range that c retreatly houses argon an attempt to h elderly slippage okay? To impose at least(prenominal) the illusion of normality and saneness on the human being? Think of Libertyville, with its corny nonwithstanding endearing street names Came heap and Avalon and Maid Marian Way. And think of that sweet little h stary of a blank space in Libertyville w here Fred, Judy, and Tyler marsh altogether(prenominal) once blend ind to pick upher. What else would you call 16 robin redbreast Hood Lane yet an ode to the e preciseday, a paean to the prosaic? We could say the a give care thing ab bug out(a) Dale Gilbertsons home, or Jacks, or Henrys, couldnt we? Most of the homes in the vicinity of French Landing, really. The destructive hurri lowlifee that has blown with the town doesnt channelize the fact that the h omes stand as brave bulwarks a discoverst slippage, as noble as they be humble. They are coifs of sanity. disastrous nursing home equivalent Shirley Jacksons Hill House, equal the turn-of-the-century monstrosity in Seattle k flatn as Rose Red is non sane. It is non entirely of this world. Its hard to touch sensation at from the outside the heart play continual tricks however if wizard digestful h anile it still for a a couple of(prenominal) seconds, genius make up anes minds a three-story dwelling of perfectly intermediate size. The color is un plebeian, yes that dead low exterior, all the same the windows swabbed shady and it has a crouching, angle of dip aspect that would raise uneasy thoughts about its structural integrity, barely if ace could appraise it with the glammer of those early(a) worlds stripped a behavior, it would look almost as common as Fred and Judys ramble . . . if not so well maintained.Inside, however, it is several(predicate) .Inside, Black House is large.Black House is, in fact, almost infinite.Certainly it is no place to get lost, although from fourth dimension to fourth dimension people exhaust hoboes and the occasional miserable runa itinerary child, as well as Charles Burnside/Carl Bierstones victims and relics here and in that respect mark their paying bits of clothing, pitiful scratchings on the hem ins of gigantic directions with singular dimensions, the occasional heap of bones. Here and thither the visitor whitethorn try a skull, such as the ones that washed up on the banks of the Hanover River during Fritz Haar universes decree of terror in the early 1920s.This is not a place where you deficiency to get lost.Let us pass through rooms and nooks and corridors and crannies, safety device in the k in a flashledge that we can return to the outside world, the sane anti-slippage world, any era we compulsion (and yet we are still uneasy as we pass put crush flights of st strips that chafferm all but endless and a keen-sighted corridors that lessen to a point in the duration). We hear an eternal low humming and the faint clash of weird machinery. We hear the idiot whistle of a constant wind either outside or on the al-Qaedas in a higher place and below us. sometimes we hear a faint, houndly barking that is undoubtedly the abbalahs devil dog, the one that did for poor octogenarian Mouse. several(prenominal)times we hear the sardonic caw of a crow and gain that Gorg is here, too somewhere.We pass through rooms of disparage and rooms that are still weaponed with a pale and dirty grandeur. Many of these are confident(predicate)ly bigger than the whole house in which they hide. And nonethelesstually we come to a humble seated room furnished with an elderly horseh atm sofa and c hairsbreadths of fading red velvet. There is a peck of noisome cooking in the air. (Somewhere close by is a kitchen we must(prenominal) never visit . . . not, that is, if we ever wish to sleep without nightmares again.) The electrical fixtures in here are at least seventy years mature. How can that be, we ask, if Black House was built in the 1970s? The answer is uncomplicated much of Black House most of Black House has been here much longer. The draperies in this room are heavy and faded. Except for the yellowed news clippings that have been taped to the ugly green circumventpaper, it is a room that would not be out of place on the ground floor of the Nelson Hotel. Its a place that is simultaneously sour and oddly banal, a toilsome on mirror for the imagination of the gaga monster who has gone to earth here, who lies dormancy on the horsehair sofa with the front of his clothe turning a sinister red. Black House is not his, although in his pathological grandiosity he believes differently (and Mr. Munshun has not disabused him of this belief ). This one room, however, is.The clippings around him spot us all we need to know of Charles Chummy B urnsides permithal fascinations.YES, I ATE HER, FISH DECLARES New York Herald TribuneBILLY GAFFNEY PLAYMATE AVERS IT WAS THE colorise MAN TOOK BILLY, IT WAS THE BOGEYMAN New York solid ground TelegramGRACE BUDD revulsion CONTINUES FISH CONFESSES Long Island StarFISH ADMITS ROASTING, EATING WM GAFFNEY New York AmericanFRITZ HAARMAN, SO-CALLED BUTCHER OF HANOVER, EXECUTED FOR MURDER OF 24 New York WorldWEREWOLF DECLARES I WAS DRIVEN BY LOVE, NOT LUST. HAARMAN DIESUNREPENTANT The defenderCANNIBAL OF HANOVERS LAST LETTER YOU CANNOT KILL ME, I SHALL BEAMONG YOU FOR infinity New York WorldWendell Green would love this stuff, would he not?And in that location are much. God help us, there are so umpteen more. even out Jeffrey Dahmer is here, declaring I WANTED ZOMBIES.The figure on the couch begins to emit and stir.Way-gup, Burny This seems to come from thin air, not his sing . . . although his lips move, same those of a average ventriloquist.Burny groans. His genius turns to the left. No . . . need to sleep. Everything . . . hurts.The judgment turns to the right in a gesture of negation and Mr. Munshun speaks again. Way-gup, dey vill be gummink. You must move der buu-uoy.The head switches defend the other way. Sleeping, Burny thinks Mr. Munshun is still safe inside his head. He has forgotten things are different here in Black House. Foolish Burny, now nearing the end of his expe bombncy tho not quite there yet.Cant . . . lea me lone . . . brook hurts . . . the silver screen man . . . fucking blind man hurt my stomach . . .But the head turns back the other way and the voice speaks again from the air beside Burnys right ear. Burny fights it, not wishinging to wake and face the full angered impact of the trouble. The blind man has hurt him much worse than he thought at the time, in the heat of the moment. Burny insists to the nagging voice that the son is safe where he is, that theyll never find him even if they can gain access to Black House, that they bequeath become lost in its extraterrestrial depth of rooms and hallways and wander until they first go mad and thence die. Mr. Munshun, however, knows that one of them is different from any of the others who have happened on this place. Jack sawyer is acquainted with the infinite, and that makes him a problem. The boy must be mattern out the back way and into End-World, into the very shadow of Din-tah, the great furnace. Mr. Munshun supposes Burny that he may still be able to have some of the boy forwards turning him over to the abbalah, but not here. Too dangerous. Sorry.Burny continues to protest, but this is a battle he will not win, and we know it. Already the stale, cooked-meat air of the room has begun to shift and swirl as the owner of the voice vexs. We see first a whirlpool of black, then a splotch of red an ascot and then the beginnings of an impossibly long white face, which is dominated by a single black sharks eye. This is the real Mr. Munshun, the anim ate being who can only live in Burnys head outside of Black House and its enchanted environs. short he will be entirely here, he will tress Burny into wakefulness (torture him into wakefulness, if necessary), and he will put Burny to use trance there is still use to be gotten from him. For Mr. Munshun cannot move Ty from his cell in the Black House.Once he is in End-World Burnys Sheol things will be different.At dwell Burnys look open. His gnarled hired mans, which have spilled so much put throughslope, now construct down to feel the dampness of his own blood seeping through his shirt. He looks, sees what has bloomed there, and lets out a scream of horror and cowardice. It does not return him as estimable that, after murdering so many children, he should have been mortally wounded by a blind man it strikes him as hideous, unfair.For the first time he is visited by an extremely unpleasant estimate What if theres more to pay for the things he has done over the telephone line of his long career? He has seen End-World he has seen Conger Road, which winds through it to Din-tah. The blasted, burning lands patee painting surrounding Conger Road is homogeneous colliery, and surely An-tak, the huge Combination, is hell itself. What if such a place waits for him? What if Theres a horrible, paralyzing pain in his guts. Mr. Munshun, now almost fully materialized, has reached out and twisted one smoky, not-quite-transparent pass away(p) in the wound Henry inflicted with his switchblade knife.Burny squeals. Tears run down the quondam(a) child-murderers cheeks. Dont hurt meZen do ass I zay.I cant, Burny snivels. Im dying. waitress at all the blood Do you think I can get old something like this? Im eighty-five fucking years oldDuff brayyg, Burn-Burn . . . but dere are zose on zosser zide who could hill you off your wunds. Mr. Munshun, like Black House itself, is hard to look at. He shivers in and out of focus. Sometimes that hideously long face (it obsc ures most of his body, like the bloated head of a caricature on some newspapers op-ed page) has devil eyes, sometimes honourable now one. Sometimes there seem to be tufted snarls of orange hair leaping up from his distended skull, and sometimes Mr. Munshun appears to be as bald as Yul Brynner. Only the red lips and the fangy pointed teeth that lurk inside them remain pretty constant.Burny eyes his accomplice with a degree of hope. His imparts, meanwhile, continue to explore his stomach, which is now hard and bloated with lumps. He suspects the lumps are clots. Oh, that someone should have hurt him so earnestly That wasnt supposed to happen That was never supposed to happen He was supposed to be protected He was supposed to It iss not even trifleyond ze realm of bossibility, Mr. Munshun says, zat ze yearz could be rawled avey vrum you jusst as ze stunn vas rawled avey from ze mouse of Cheezus Chrizzes doom.To be adolescent again, Burny says, and exhales a low, harsh sigh. His breath stinks of blood and spoilage. Yes, Id like that.Of gorse And soch zings are bossible, Mr. Munshun says, nodding his grotesquely unstable face. Soch gifts are ze abbalahs to giff. But zey are not bromised, Charles, my liddle munching munchkin. But I can make you one bromise.The creature in the black evening suit and red ascot leaps forward with dreadful agility. His long-fingered hand darts again into Chummy Burnsides shirt, this time clenches into a fist, and produces a pain beyond any the old monster has ever mooned of in his own life . . . although he has inflicted this and more on the innocent.Mr. Munshuns reeking assist pushes up to Burnys. The single eye glares. Do you feel dat, Burny? Do you, you mizz-er-a-ble old bag of dirt and zorrow? Ho-ho, ha-ha, of gorse you do It iss your in-destines I haff in my hand Und if you do not mooff now, schweinhund, I vill rip dem from your bledding body, ho-ho, ha-ha, und vrap dem arund your neg You vill die knowing you are choking on your own gudz A trick I larn from Fritz himzelf, Fritz Haarman, who vas so yunk und loff-ly instanter Vat do you say? Vill you brim him, or vill you choke?Ill work on him Burny screams. Ill bring him, only s go past, stop, youre tearing me obscureBrink him to ze station. Ze station, Burn-Burn. Dis one iz nodd for ze radhulls, de fogzhulls not for ze Com-bin-ay-shun. No bledding foodzies for Dyler he works for his abbalah vid dis. A long finger tipped with a brutal black thrive goes to the huge forehead and taps it above the eyes (for the moment Burny sees dickens of them, and then the second is once more gone). Understand?Yes Yes His guts are on fire. And still the hand in his shirt twists and twists.The terrible alley of Mr. Munshuns face hangs before him. Ze station where you brought the other sbecial ones.YESMr. Munshun lets go. He stairs back. mercifully for Burny, he is beginning to grow insubstantial again, to discorporate. Yellowed clippings swim into belief not behind him but through him. Yet the single eye hangs in the air above the paling blotch of the ascot.Mayg zure he vears za cab. Ziss one ezbeshully must wear za cab.Burnside nods eagerly. He still smells faintly of My goof perfume. The cap, yes, I have the cap.Be gare-ful, Burny. You are old und hurt. Ze bouy is young und desberate. Flitt of foot. If you let him get avey In spitefulness of the pain, Burny smiles. One of the children getting away from him Even one of the special ones What an idea Dont worry, he says. Just . . . if you speak to him . . . to Abbalah-doon . . . tell him Im not past it yet. If he makes me better, he wont regret it. And if he makes me young again, Ill bring him a thousand young. A thousand Breakers.Fading and fading. Now Mr. Munshun is again meet a glow, a milky disturbance on the air of Burnys sitting room deep in the house he abandoned only when he realized he really did need someone to take care of him in his sunset years.Bring him just dis vun, B urn-Burn. Bring him just dis vun, und you vill be revarded.Mr. Munshun is gone. Burny stands and bends over the horsehair sofa. Doing it squeezes his belly, and the resulting pain makes him scream, but he doesnt stop. He reaches into the darkness and pulls out a battered black leather sack. He grasps its top and leaves the room, limping and clutching at his bleeding, distended belly.And what of Tyler Marshall, who has existed through most of these many pages as little more than a rumor? How badly has he been hurt? How frightened is he? Has he managed to retain his sanity?As to his physical condition, hes got a concussion, but thats already healing. The Fisherman has other done no more than stroke his arm and his buttocks (a creepy-crawly touch that made Tyler think of the witch in Hansel and Gretel). Mentally . . . would you be shocked to hear that, while Mr. Munshun is goading Burny onward, Fred and Judys boy is happy?He is. He is happy. And why not? Hes at milling machine Park.Th e Milwaukee create from raw materialers have addled all the pundits this year, all the doomsayers who proclaimed theyd be in the cellar by July Fourth. Well, its still relatively early, but the Fourth has come and gone and the Brew combination has returned to Miller tied for first place with Cincinnati. They are in the hunt, in large part due to the bat of Richie Sexson, who came over to Milwaukee from the Cleveland Indians and who has been really pickin taters, in the pungent terminology of George Rathbun.They are in the hunt, and Ty is at the game EXCELLENT Not only is he there, hes got a front-row seat. Next to him big, sweating, red-faced, a Kingsland beer in one hand and some other tucked away down the stairs his seat for emergencies is the Gorgeous George himself, bellowing at the top of his leather lungs. Jeromy Burnitz of the Crew has just been called out at first on a bang-bang play, and while there can be no doubt that the Cincinnati shortstop handled the oaf well and got rid of it fast, there can also be no doubt (at least not in George Rathbuns mind) that Burnitz was safe He rises in the twilight, his sweaty bald pate glowing downstairs a sweetly lilac-colored set up, a foamy rill of beer coil up one cocked forearm, his glum eyes twinkling (you can tell he sees a lot with those eyes, just about everything), and Ty waits for it, they all wait for it, and here it is, that avatar of summertime in the Coulee Country, that wonderful bray that means everything is okay, terror has been denied, and slippage has been canceled.COME ON, UMP, achieve US A BREAK GIVE US A FREEEEAKIN BRAYYYYK still A BLIND MAN COULD SEE HE WAS SAFEThe clump on the first-base side goes wild at the hale of that address, none delirious than the fourteen or so people sitting behind the touchstone reading MILLER PARK WELCOMES GEORGE RATHBUN AND THE WINNERS OF THIS YEARS KDCU BREWER BASH. Ty is jumping up and down, express touchs, moving ridge his Brew Crew hat. What makes this doubly boss is that he thought he forgot to enter the contest this year. He guesses his father (or perhaps his mother) entered it for him . . . and he won Not the grand prize, which was getting to be the Brew Crews batboy for the entire Cincinnati series, but what he got (besides this excellent seat with the other winners, that is) is, in his opinion, even better. Of course Richie Sexson isnt Mark McGwire nobody can hit the tar out of the world like Big Mac but Sexson has been awesome for the Brewers this year, just awesome, and Tyler Marshall has won Someone is shaking his foot.Ty attempts to pull away, not wanting to lose this dream (this most excellent refuge from the horror that has befallen him), but the hand is relentless. It shakes. It shakes and shakes.Way-gup, a voice snarls, and the dream begins to darken.George Rathbun turns to Ty, and the boy sees an amazing thing the eyes that were such a shrewd, sharp luscious only a few seconds ago have gone dull and milky. Cripe, hes blind, Ty thinks. George Rathbun really is a Way-gup, the grumble voice says. Its closer now. In a moment the dream will wink out entirely.Before it does, George speaks to him. The voice is quiet, totally unlike the sportscasters usual brash bellow. Helps on the way, he says. So be cool, you little cat. Be Way-GUP, you shitThe grip on his ankle is crushing, paralyzing. With a cry of protest, Ty opens his eyes. This is how he rejoins the world, and our tale.He remembers where he is immediately. Its a cell with reddish-gray iron bars middle(a) along a stone corridor lit with cobwebby electric bulbs. Theres a dish of some sort of stew in one corner. In the other is a bucket in which he is supposed to pee (or take a dump if he has to so far he hasnt, thank goodness). The only other thing in the room is a raggedy old futon from which Burny has just dragged him.All right, Burny says. Awake at last. Thats good. Now get up. On your feet, asswipe. I dont have time t o fuck with you.Tyler gets up. A turn over of dizziness rolls through him and he puts his hand to the top of his head. There is a spongy, crusted place there. Touching it sends a bolt of pain all the way down to his jaws, which clench. But it also fronts the dizziness away. He looks at his hand. There are flakes of scab and dried blood on his palm. Thats where he hit me with his dirted rock. Any harder, and I would have been playing a harp.But the old man has been hurt somehow, too. His shirt is covered with blood his wrinkled ogres face is waxy and pallid. Behind him, the cell door is open. Ty measures the distance to the hallway, hoping hes not being too obvious about it. But Burny has been in this game a long time. He has had more than one liddle one dry to esscabe on hiz bledding foodzies, oh ho.He reaches into his bag and brings out a black gadget with a pistol grip and a stainless stigma nozzle at the tip.Know what this is, Tyler? Burny asks.Taser, Ty says. Isnt it?Burny g rins, revealing the stumps of his teeth. Smart boy A TV-watching boy, Ill be bound. Its a Taser, yes. But a special type itll degrade a cow at thirty yards. Understand? You try to run, boy, Ill bring you down like a ton of bricks. Come out here.Ty steps out of the cell. He has no idea where this horrible old man means to take him, but theres a certain relief just in being free of the cell. The futon was the worst. He knows, somehow, that he hasnt been the only nestling to cry himself to sleep on it with an aching heart and an aching, lumpy head, nor the tenth.Nor, belike, the fiftieth. while to your left.Ty does. Now the old man is behind him. A moment later, he feels the bony fingers grip the right cheek of his bottom. Its not the first time the old man has done this (each time it happens hes reminded again of the witch in Hansel and Gretel, asking the lost children to stick their arms out of their cage), but this time his touch is different. Weaker.Die briefly, Ty thinks, and the thought its cold collectedness is very, very Judy. Die soon, old man, so I dont have to.This one is mine, the old man says . . . but he sounds out of breath, no longer quite sure of himself. Ill bake half, fry the rest. With bacon.I dont think youll be able to eat much, Ty says, affect at the calmness of his own voice. Looks like somebody ventilated your stomach pretty g There is a crackling, accompanied by a hideous, jittery burning sensation in his left shoulder. Ty screams and staggers against the fence across the corridor from his cell, trying to clutch the wounded place, trying not to cry, trying to hold on to just a little of his beautiful dream about being at the game with George Rathbun and the other KDCU Brewer wham winners. He knows he actually did forget to enter this year, but in dreams such things dont matter. Thats whats so beautiful about them.Oh, but it hurts so bad. And condescension all his efforts all the Judy Marshall in him the tears begin to flow .You want another un? the old man gasps. He sounds both sick and hysterical, and even a kid Tys age knows thats a dangerous combination. You want another un, just for good luck?No, Ty gasps. Dont zap me again, please dont. past stimulate walkin And no more smart goddamn remarksTy starts to walk. Somewhere he can hear water dripping. Somewhere, very faint, he can hear the laughing caw of a crow probably the same one that tricked him, and how hed like to have Ebbies .22 and blow its evil shiny black feathers off. The outside world seems light-years away. But George Rathbun told him help was on the way, and sometimes the things you heard in dreams came true. His very own mother told him that once, and long before she started to go all lopsided in the head, too.They come to a stairway that seems to circle down forever. Up from the depths comes a smell of sulfur and a roast of heat. Faintly he can hear what business leader be screams and moans. The clank of machinery is louder. There are ominous creaking sounds that might be belts and chains.Ty pauses, thinking the old computerized axial tomography wont zap him again unless he absolutely has to. Because Ty might fall down this long circular staircase. Might hit the place on his head the old guy already clipped with the rock, or break his neck, or tumble right off the side. And the old guy wants him alive, at least for now. Ty doesnt know why, but he knows this intuition is true.Where are we going, mister?Youll find out, Burny says in his tight, out-of-breath voice. And if you think I dont dare zap you while were on the stairs, my little friend, youre very mistaken. Now get walking.Tyler Marshall starts down the stairs, descending past vast galleries and balconies, around and down, around and down. Sometimes the air smells of putrid cabbage. Sometimes it smells of burned candles. Sometimes of wet rot. He counts a hundred and cubic decimetre steps, then stops counting. His thighs are burning. Behind him, the ol d man is gasping, and in two ways he stumbles, cursing and holding the ancient banister. precipitation, old man, Ty chants inside his head. Fall and die, fall and die.But at last they are at the bottom. They arrive in a circular room with a dirty crosspatch ceiling. Above them, gray sky hangs down like a marked-up bag. There are plants oozing out of gloomy pots, sending sordid feelers across a floor of broken orange bricks. Ahead of them, two doors French doors, Ty thinks they are called stand open. Beyond them is a crumbling patio encircled by ancient trees. Some are palms. Some the ones with the hanging, ropy vines might be banyans. Others he doesnt know. One thing hes sure of they are no longer in Wisconsin.Standing on the patio is an object he knows very well. Something from his own world. Tyler Marshalls eyes well up again at the sight of it, which is almost like the sight of a face from home in a hopelessly foreign place.Stop, monkey-boy. The old man sounds out of br eath. Turn around.When Tyler does, hes pleased to see that the blotch on the old mans shirt has spread even farther. Fingers of blood now stretch all the way to his shoulders, and the waistband of his baggy old blue jeans has gone a muddy black. But the hand holding the Taser is rock-steady.God damn you, Tyler thinks. God damn you to hell.The old man has put his bag on a little table. He simply stands where he is for a moment, getting his breath. Then he rummages in the bag (something in there utters a faint bimetallic clink) and brings out a soft brown cap. Its the kind guys like Sean Connery sometimes wear in the movies. The old man holds it out.Put it on. And if you try to kidnapping my hand, Ill zap you.Tyler takes the cap. His fingers, expecting the texture of suede, are surprised by something metallic, almost like tinfoil. He feels an unpleasant buzzing in his hand, like a cushy version of the Tasers jolt. He looks at the old man pleadingly. Do I have to?Burny raises the Ta ser and bares his teeth in a silent grin.Reluctantly, Ty puts the cap on.This time the buzzing fills his head. For a moment he cant think . . . and then the feeling passes, leaving him with an odd sense of weakness in his muscles and a hammering at his temples.Special boys need special toys, Burny says, and it comes out sbecial boyz, sbecial toyz. As always, Mr. Munshuns pissed accent has rubbed off a little, thickening that touch of South moolah Henry detected on the 911 tape. Now we can go out.Because with the cap on, Im safe, Ty thinks, but the idea breaks up and drifts away almost as soon as it comes. He tries to think of his middle name and realizes he cant. He tries to think of the bad crows name and cant get that, either was it something like corgi? No, thats a kind of dog. The cap is messing him up, he realizes, and thats what its supposed to do.Now they pass through the open doors and onto the patio. The air is redolent with the smell of the trees and bushes that surrou nd the back side of Black House, a smell that is heavy and cloying. Fleshy, somehow. The gray sky seems almost low enough to touch. Ty can smell sulfur and something acrid and electric and juicy. The sound of machinery is much louder out here.The thing Ty recognized sitting on the broken bricks is an E-Z-Go golf game draw. The Tiger Woods model.My dad sells these, Ty says. At Goltzs, where he works.Where do you think it came from, asswipe? relieve oneself in. Behind the rove.Ty looks at him, amazed. His blue eyes, perhaps thanks to the effects of the cap, have grown bloodshot and rather confused. Im not old enough to drive.Oh, youll be fine. A baby could drive this baby. Behind the wheel.Ty does as he is told. In truth, he has driven one of these in the lot at Goltzs, with his father sitting watchfully beside him in the passenger seat. Now the hideous old man is easing himself into that same place, groaning and holding his perforated midsection. The Taser is in the other hand, however, and the steel tip form pointed at Ty.The key is in the ignition. Ty turns it. Theres a click from the battery at a lower place them. The dashboard light reading CHARGE glows bright green. Now all he has to do is push the accelerator pedal. And steer, of course.Good so far, the old man says. He takes his right hand off his middle and points with a bloodstained finger. Ty sees a path of discolored gravel once, before the trees and underbrush encroached, it was probably a driveway leading away from the house. Now go. And go slow. speed and Ill zap you. Try to crash us and Ill break your wrist for you. Then you can drive one-handed.Ty pushes down on the accelerator. The golf pushcart jerks forward. The old man lurches, curses, and waves the Taser threateningly.It would be easier if I could take off the cap, Ty says. Please, Im pretty sure that if youd just let me No Cap stays DriveTy pushes down gently on the accelerator. The E-Z-Go rolls across the patio, its brand-new r ubber tires crunching on broken shards of brick. Theres a bump as they leave the pavement and go rolling up the driveway. Heavy fronds they feel damp, sweaty brush Tylers arms. He cringes. The golf cart swerves. Burny jabs the Taser at the boy, snarling.Next time you get the juice Its a betokenA snake goes writhing across the overgrown gravel up ahead, and Ty utters a little scream through his clenched teeth. He doesnt like snakes, didnt even want to touch the harmless little corn snake Mrs. Locher brought to school, and this thing is the size of a python, with ruby eyes and fangs that prop its mouth open in a perpetual snarl.Go Drive The Taser, undulation in his face. The cap, buzzing faintly in his ears. Behind his ears.The drive curves to the left. Some sort of tree burdened with what look like tentacles leans over them. The tips of the tentacles exhilarate across Tys shoulders and the goose-prickled, hair-on-end nape of his neck.Ourr boyy . . .He hears this in his head in spite of the cap. Its faint, its distant, but its there.Ourrrrr boyyyyy . . . yesssss . . . ourrrrs . . .Burny is grinning. Hear em, dontcha? They like you. So do I. Were all friends here, dont you see? The grin becomes a grimace. He clutches his bloody middle again. blest blind old fool he gasps.Then, suddenly, the trees are gone. The golf cart rolls out onto a sullen, crumbling plain. The bushes dwindle and Ty sees that farther along they give way entirely to a crumbled, rocky scree hills rise and fall beneath that sullen gray sky. A few birds of enormous size wheel lazily. A shaggy, slump-shouldered creature staggers down a narrow calumniate and is gone from sight before Ty can see exactly what it is . . . not that he wanted to. The thud and pound of machinery is stronger, shaking the earth. The crump of package drivers the clash of ancient gears the squall of cogs. Tyler can feel the golf carts focal point wheel thrumming in his hands. Ahead of them the driveway ends in a g igantic road of beaten earth. Along the far side of it is a wall of round white stones.That thing you hear, thats the Crimson Kings power plant, Burny says. He speaks with pride, but there is more than a tinge of fear beneath it. The Big Combination. A million children have died on its belts, and a zillion more to come, for all I know. But thats not for you, Tyler. You might have a future after all. First, though, Ill have my piece of you. Yes indeed.His blood-streaked hand reaches out and caresses the top of Tys buttock.A good agents entitled to ten percent. Even an old buzzard like me knows that.The hand draws back. Good thing. Ty has been on the verge of screaming, holding the sound back only by thinking of sitting at Miller Park with good old George Rathbun. If Id really entered the Brewer Bash, he thinks, none of this would have happened.But he thinks that may not actually be true. Some things are meant to be, thats all. Meant.He just hopes that what this horrible old creature wants is not one of them.Turn left, Burny grunts, settling back. Three miles. Give or take. And, as Tyler makes the turn, he realizes the ribbons of mist rising from the ground arent mist at all. Theyre ribbons of smoke.Sheol, Burny says, as if reading his mind. And this is the only way through it Conger Road. Get off it and there are things out there thatd pull you to pieces just to hear you scream. My friend told me where to take you, but there might be just a leedle change of plan. His pain-wracked face takes on a gruff cast. Ty thinks it makes him look extraordinarily stupid. He hurt me. Pulled my guts. I dont trust him. And, in a horrible childs singsong Carl Bierstone dont trust Mr. Munshun Not no more Not no moreTy says nothing. He concentrates on keeping the golf cart in the middle of Conger Road. He risks one look back, but the house, in its ephemeral wallow of tropical greenery, is gone, blocked from judgment by the first of the eroded hills.Hell have whats his, but Il l have whats mine. Do you hear me, boy? When Ty says nothing, Burny brandishes the Taser. Do you hear me, you asswipe monkey?Yeah, Ty says. Yeah, sure. Why dont you die? God, if Youre there, why dont You just reach down and put Your finger on his rotten heart and stop it from beating?When Burny speaks again, his voice is sly. You looked at the wall on tother side, but I dont think you looked close enough. Better take another gander.Tyler looks past the slumped old man. For a moment he doesnt understand . . . and then he does. The big white stones stretching endlessly away along the far side of Conger Road arent stones at all. Theyre skulls.What is this place? Oh God, how he wants his mother How he wants to go homeBeginning to cry again, his brain numbed and buzzing beneath the cap that looks like cloth but isnt, Ty pilots the golf cart deeper and deeper into the furnace-lands. Into Sheol.Rescue help of any kind has never seemed so far away.