Black House (64 page)

“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 Mississippi, 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—or maybe it’s a lane—and something is behind him. Each time he turns to see—in this dream he can see, but seeing is no blessing—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—is it possible?—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—

“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 balanced there, and—

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?

“Doesn’t matter,” Henry tells the empty room—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
hun
dred
bot
tles 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 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—”

“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—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—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—
”

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—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—

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—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 shit?” Doc asks. His voice, ordinarily husky, has gone up into a near-falsetto range. “What the
fuck—
”

“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—”