Black House (76 page)

“What—” Burny begins, and then Ty’s groping right hand has what it wants: the loose, dangling sac of the old man’s balls. He squeezes with all the force in his body. He feels the monster’s testicles squash toward each other; feels one of them rupture and deflate. Ty shouts, a sound of dismay and horror and savage triumph all mingled together.

Burny, caught entirely by surprise, howls. He tries to pull backward, but Ty has him in a harpy’s grip. His hand—so small, so incapable (or so you would think) of any serious defense—has turned into a claw. If ever there was a time to use the Taser, this is it . . . but in his surprise, Burny’s hand has sprung open. The Taser lies on the ancient, blood-impacted earth of the shed floor.

“Let go of me! That HURTS! That hur
r
—”

Before he can finish, Ty yanks forward on the spongy and deflating bag inside the old cotton pants; he yanks with all the force of panic, and something in there
rips.
Burny’s words dissolve in a liquid howl of agony. This is more pain than he has ever imagined . . . certainly never in connection with
himself.

But it is not enough. Judy’s voice says it’s not, and Ty might know it, anyway. He has hurt the old man—has given him what Ebbie Wexler would undoubtedly call “a fuckin’ rupture”—but it’s not enough.

He lets go and turns to his left, pivoting on his shackled hand. He sees the old man swaying before him in the shadows. Beyond him, the golf cart stands in the open door, outlined against a sky filled with clouds and burning smoke. The old monster’s eyes are huge and disbelieving, bulging with tears. He gapes at the little boy who has done this.

Soon comprehension will return. When it does, Burny is apt to seize one of the knives from the wall—or perhaps one of the meat forks—and stab his chained prisoner to death, screaming curses and oaths at him as he does so, calling him a monkey, a bastard, a fucking asswipe. Any thought of Ty’s great talent will be gone. Any fear of what may happen to Burny himself if Mr. Munshun—and the abbalah—is robbed of his prize will also be gone. In truth, Burny is nothing but a psychotic animal, and in another moment his essential nature will break loose and vent itself on this tethered child.

Tyler Marshall, son of Fred and the formidable Judy, does not give Burny this chance. During the last part of the drive he has thought repeatedly of what the old man said about Mr. Munshun
—he hurt me, he pulled my guts—
and hoped he might get his own opportunity to do some pulling. Now it’s come. Hanging from the shackle with his left arm pulled cruelly up, he shoots his right hand forward. Through the hole in Burny’s shirt. Through the hole Henry has made with his switchblade knife. Suddenly Ty has hold of something ropy and wet. He seizes it and pulls a roll of Charles Burnside’s intestines out through the rip in his shirt.

Burny’s head turns up toward the shed’s ceiling. His jaw snaps convulsively, the cords on his wrinkled old neck stand out, and he voices a great, agonized bray. He tries to pull away, which may be the worst thing a man can do when someone has him by the liver and lights. A blue-gray fold of gut, as plump as a sausage and perhaps still trying to digest Burny’s last Maxton cafeteria meal, comes out with the audible pop of a champagne cork leaving the neck of its bottle.

Charles “Chummy” Burnside’s last words:
“LET GO, YOU LITTLE PIIIIG!”

Tyler does not let go. Instead he shakes the loop of intestine furiously from side to side like a terrier with a rat in its jaws. Blood and yellowish fluid spray out of the hole in Burny’s midsection.
“Die!”
Tyler hears himself screaming.
“Die, you old fuck, GO ON AND DIE!”

Burny staggers back another step. His mouth drops open, and part of an upper plate tumbles out and onto the dirt. He is staring down at two loops of his own innards, stretching like gristle from the gaping red-black front of his shirt to the awful child’s right hand. And he sees an even more terrible thing: a kind of white glow has surrounded the boy. It is feeding him more strength than he otherwise would have had. Feeding him the strength to pull Burny’s living guts right out of his body and how it
hurt,
how it
hurt,
how it dud dud dud
hurrrrr—

“Die!”
the boy screams in a shrill and breaking voice.
“Oh please, WON’T YOU EVER DIE?”

And at last—at long, long last—Burny collapses to his knees. His dimming gaze fixes on the Taser and he reaches one trembling hand toward it. Before it can get far, the light of consciousness leaves Burny’s eyes. He hasn’t endured enough pain to equal even the hundredth part of the suffering he has inflicted, but it’s all his ancient body can take. He makes a harsh cawing sound deep in his throat, then tumbles over backward, more intestines pulling out of his lower abdomen as he does so. He is unaware of this or of anything else.

Carl Bierstone, also known as Charles Burnside, also known as “Chummy” Burnside, is dead.

For over thirty seconds, nothing moves. Tyler Marshall is alive but at first only hangs from the axis of his shackled left arm, still clutching a loop of Burny’s intestine in his right hand. Clutching it in a death grip. At last some sense of awareness informs his features. He gets his feet under him and scrambles upright, easing the all but intolerable pressure on the socket of his left shoulder. He suddenly becomes aware that his right arm is splashed with gore all the way to the biceps, and that he’s got a handful of dead man’s insides. He lets go of them and bolts for the door, not remembering that he’s still chained to the wall until he is yanked back, the socket of his shoulder once more bellowing with pain.

You’ve done well,
the voice of Judy-Sophie whispers.
But you have to get out of here, and quick.

Tears start to roll down his dirty, pallid face again, and Ty begins to scream at the top of his voice.

“Help me! Somebody help me! I’m in the shed! I’M IN THE SHED!”

Out in front of the Sand Bar, Doc stays where he is, with his scoot rumbling between his legs, but Beezer turns his off, levers the stand into place with one booted heel, and walks over to Jack, Dale, and Fred. Jack has taken charge of the wrapped object Ty’s father has brought them. Fred, meanwhile, has gotten hold of Jack’s shirt. Dale tries to restrain the man, but as far as Fred Marshall’s concerned, there are now only two people in the world: him and Hollywood Jack Sawyer.

“It was him, wasn’t it? It was Ty.
That was my boy, I heard him!
”

“Yes,” Jack says. “It certainly was and you certainly did.” He’s gone rather pale, Beezer sees, but is otherwise calm. It’s absolutely not bothering him that the missing boy’s father has yanked his shirt out of his pants. No, all Jack’s attention is on the wrapped package.

“What in God’s name is going on here?” Dale asks plaintively. He looks at Beezer. “Do
you
know?”

“The kid’s in a shed somewhere,” Beezer says. “Am I right about that?”

“Yes,” Jack says. Fred abruptly lets go of Jack’s shirt and staggers backward, sobbing. Jack pays no attention to him and makes no effort to tuck in the tail of his crumpled shirt. He’s still looking at the package. He half-expects sugar-packet stamps, but no, this is just a case of plain old metered mail. Whatever it is, it’s been mailed Priority to Mr. Tyler Marshall, 16 Robin Hood Lane, French Landing. The return address has been stamped in red: Mr. George Rathbun, KDCU, 4 Peninsula Drive, French Landing. Below this, stamped in large black letters:

EVEN A BLIND MAN CAN SEE THAT COULEE COUNTRY LOVES THE BREWER BASH!

“Henry, you never quit, do you?” Jack murmurs. Tears sting his eyes. The idea of life without his old friend hits him all over again, leaves him feeling helpless and lost and stupid and hurt.

“What about Uncle Henry?” Dale asks. “Jack, Uncle Henry’s
dead.
”

Jack’s no longer so sure of that, somehow.

“Let’s go,” Beezer says. “We got to get that kid. He’s alive, but he ain’t safe. I got that clear as a bell. Let’s go for it. We can figure the rest out later.”

But Jack—who has not just heard Tyler’s shout but has, for a moment, seen through Tyler’s eyes—doesn’t have much to figure out. In fact, figuring out now comes down to only one thing. Ignoring both Beezer and Dale, he steps toward Ty’s weeping father.

“Fred.”

Fred goes on sobbing.

“Fred, if you ever want to see your boy again, you get hold of yourself right now and listen to me.”

Fred looks up, red eyes streaming. The ridiculously small baseball cap still perches on his head.

“What’s in this, Fred?”

“It must be a prize in that contest George Rathbun runs every summer—the Brewer Bash. But I don’t know how Ty could have won something in the first place. A couple of weeks ago he was pissing and moaning about how he forgot to enter. He even asked if maybe
I’d
entered the contest for him, and I kind of . . . well, I snapped at him.” Fresh tears begin running down Fred’s stubbly cheeks at the memory. “That was around the time Judy was getting . . . strange . . . I was worried about her and I just kind of . . . snapped at him. You know?” Fred’s chest heaves. He makes a watery hitching sound and his Adam’s apple bobs up and down. He wipes an arm across his eyes. “And Ty . . . all he said was, ‘That’s all right, Dad.’ He didn’t get mad at me, didn’t sulk or anything. Because that’s just the kind of boy he was. That he
is.
”

“How did you know to bring it to me?”

“Your friend called,” Fred says. “He told me the postman had brought something and I had to bring it to you here, right away. Before you left. He called you—”

“He called me Travelin’ Jack.”

Fred Marshall looks at him wonderingly. “That’s right.”

“All right.” Jack speaks gently, almost absently. “We’re going to get your boy now.”

“I’ll come. I’ve got my deer rifle in the truck—”

“And that’s where it’s going to stay. Go home. Make a place for him. Make a place for your wife. And let us do what we have to do.” Jack looks first at Dale, then at Beezer. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s roll.”

Five minutes later, the FLPD chief’s car is speeding west on Highway 35. Directly ahead, like an honor guard, Beezer and Doc are riding side by side, the sun gleaming on the chrome of their bikes. Trees in full summer leaf crowd close to the road on either side.

Jack can feel the buzzing that is Black House’s signature starting to ramp up in his head. He has discovered he can wall that noise off if he has to, keep it from spreading and blanketing his entire thought process with static, but it’s still damned unpleasant. Dale has given him one of the Ruger .357s that are the police department’s service weapons; it’s now stuck in the waistband of his blue jeans. He was surprised at how good the weight of it felt in his hand, almost like a homecoming. Guns may not be of much use in the world behind Black House, but they have to get there first, don’t they? And according to Beezer and Doc, the approach is not exactly undefended.

“Dale, do you have a pocketknife?”

“Glove compartment,” Dale says. He glances at the long package on Jack’s lap. “I presume you want to open that.”

“You presume right.”

“Can you explain a few things while you do it? Like whether or not, once we get inside Black House, we can expect Charles Burnside to jump out of a secret door with an axe and start—”

“Chummy Burnside’s days of jumping out at folks are all over,” Jack says. “He’s dead. Ty Marshall killed him. That’s what hit us outside the Sand Bar.”

The chief’s car swerves so extravagantly—all the way across to the left side of the road—that Beezer looks back for a moment, startled at what he’s just seen in his rearview. Jack gives him a hard, quick wave
—Go on, don’t worry about us—
and Beez faces forward again.

“What?”
Dale gasps.

“The old bastard was hurt, but I have an idea that Ty still did one hell of a brave thing. Brave and crafty both.” Jack is thinking that Henry softened Burnside up and Ty
finished
him up. What George Rathbun would undoubtedly have called a honey of a double play.

“How—”

“Disemboweled him. With his bare hands.
Hand.
I’m pretty sure the other one’s chained up somehow.”

Dale is silent for a moment, watching the motorcyclists ahead of him as they lean into a curve with their hair streaming out from beneath their token gestures at obeying Wisconsin’s helmet law. Jack, meanwhile, is slitting open brown wrapping paper and revealing a long white carton beneath. Something rolls back and forth inside.

“You’re telling me that a ten-year-old boy disemboweled a serial killer. A serial
cannibal.
You somehow know this.”

“Yes.”

“I find that extremely difficult to believe.”

“Based on the father, I guess I can understand that. Fred’s . . .”
A wimp
is what comes to mind, but that is both unfair and untrue. “Fred’s tenderhearted,” Jack says. “Judy, though . . .”

“Backbone,” Dale says. “She
does
have that, I’m told.”

Jack gives his friend a humorless grin. He’s got the buzzing confined to a small portion of his brain, but in that one small portion it’s shrieking like a fire alarm. They’re almost there. “She certainly does,” he tells Dale. “And so does the boy. He’s . . . brave.” What Jack has almost said is
He’s a prince.

“
And
he’s alive.”

“Yes.”

“Chained in a shed somewhere.”

“Right.”

“Behind Burnside’s house.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If I’ve got the geography right, that places him somewhere in the woods near Schubert and Gale.”

Jack smiles and says nothing.

“All right,” Dale says heavily. “What have I got wrong?”

“It doesn’t matter. Which is good, because it’s impossible to explain.” Jack just hopes Dale’s mind is screwed down tightly, because it’s apt to take one hell of a pounding in the next hour or so.

His fingernail slits the tape holding the box closed. He opens it. There’s bubble wrap beneath. Jack pulls it out, tosses it into the footwell, and looks at Ty Marshall’s Brewer Bash prize—a prize he won even though he apparently never entered the contest.