Showdown (33 page)

He focused on a minute droplet of red ink glistening on the pen's very tip. He lowered the tip to the page, watching the gap between it and the paper close. His breathing came to a ragged halt.

He swallowed and pressed down. The pen made contact with the paper, and Billy's world seemed to erupt with light, like a strobe in a pitch-dark cell. A tone hummed through his mind.

Hmmmmmm.

As if the pen had struck a tuning fork in his skull.

A window in his mind blew open. He grinned at the thought of the preacher sitting in the root cellar.
Now how do you like your Paradise? What
do you think of your little church now?

The red words on the page before him glistened, and he blew across the paper to speed their drying. He dipped the quill in the ink jar again.

Easy, bringing the preacher to his knees on the cellar floor, cold and damp, shivering in the darkness.

It had been the monk's idea to write a story about Paradise. And why not? He had heard a little of the nearby town, and what he didn't know, the monk told him. Details of the setting, names of characters. A basic plot that suggested a kind of story Billy had never explored before.

A story of evil, loosed.

The story was like nothing he'd ever written, and Billy figured it was because of the worm salve. When he wrote, he actually felt like he was in the story with real characters who had minds of their own, like all really good stories, only much better.

How many times had he written something, paused, realized that the character didn't want to do it that way, written again and again until finally he got it right and the character did things his way?

Or was it the character's way?

This was the most realistic story he could ever imagine.

Billy laid the tip to the paper.

What do you want, Stanley?

I want what I had.

And what did you have, Stan, that you don't have now?

Warmth. A bed. Light.

More, Stan. What do you really want?

Power.

Grace and hope, Stan. How about grace and hope?

Yes, grace and hope
.

But Black brought you grace and hope and you rejected him, deep down there in your heart where no one knew.

Maybe I shouldn't have
.

Well, if you stand up right now and cry like a baby and beat your head on the wall until it's bloody, I'll give you some power.

Billy chuckled. He brought his free hand to his neck and scratched.

He could fully imagine Stan's situation at this very moment. He could smell the musty dirt and see the darkness. He was inside Stan the man's mind. Of course he was, Stan was his character.

But right now, Stan didn't want to stand up and hit his head against the wall. He was considering it, but this wasn't where the character wanted to go.

Billy wrote again.

Then instead lay there and sulk, you stuffed-up fool.

I am in a very bad way. I'll lay here for a while.

Good enough. Time to move on to another character.

“Darcy?”

The girl beside him didn't turn from her writing. Billy rubbed his fingers into his shirt. The annoying infections were chronic, a rash of systemic boils. He'd tried bandages, but they wouldn't stick to his oily skin. Washing the area only seemed to keep the flesh clean for an hour. Only the worms' ointment held the sores at bay. And then only as long as he managed to avoid scratching, which proved almost impossible.

The other students suffered the same already, in less than a day. The disease overtook them much faster. This as much as the writing would keep them in the dungeons where they could access a ready supply of the ointment.

They ventured upstairs to the dining hall for short raiding trips only, before returning to the great library the monk had shown Billy. There they hunkered down under Paul's supervision. At least his version of supervision, which was really a kind of chaos.

“You've already ruined the tables,” Billy observed after Paul and the others occupied the great library for only a few hours.

“We don't like the tables,” Paul answered. “They're too wet and slimy.”

“They're wet and slimy because you've spread that worm stuff all over them.”

“Yes, well, we don't like them anymore.”

Billy gave up. “Just don't let any of the others come to my hall. Keep them here.”

“Sure. How many worms do you think you have in that tunnel?”

“I don't know. What difference does it make?”

“We have 338 in our hall alone,” Paul said. “But I think they all want to be here. With us. What do you think?”

“I think you're wasting your time thinking about these stupid worms instead of writing our story!”

He left Paul standing in the hall just outside the library. That was last night. It was the last time he'd seen him.

Billy looked around the study. Apart from sludge stains all over the carpet and sofa, his study had survived the brats. Now only he and Darcy used the study.

Darcy grunted and brought her fingernails to her neck. Billy watched, revolted, as she scratched a wide swath of skin away, oblivious to any pain or blood. She resumed her writing, smiling. She smeared a large streak of blood along the margin of her page without noticing. She was writing some of the women. Women could be quite engrossing.

Billy closed his eyes and thought about Stanley again.
Stan the man.
You should have run, Stan the man. Now you're in the can without a plan
. He bent over the desk and began to write again, this time in more developed prose.

He wrote for an hour, lost in the valley below, his senses dulled to everything but the story that he brought to life in his mind. And then he took a short walk through the hall to stretch.

His mind drifted back to the debate that he'd won so easily. Seemed like a week ago. Technically, if he remembered right, he could now do whatever he wanted upstairs. Funny thing, though, he didn't care about what happened upstairs anymore. As long as they left him alone to write down here, the monkeys upstairs could do whatever they wanted.

Billy padded lightly on the cold stone, warm and dazed. An image of Paul smiling at the entrance of the larger library popped into his mind.
Do
you know how many worms you have?

Billy shoved his hand into his pocket. It was slightly mushy but for the most part empty. Restocking worm gel would be a good idea. He held his torch to the wall and dipped his hand into a thick
layer of the ointment.

Billy was stuffing his pockets when it occurred to him that there were no worms within the circle of light cast by his flame. He turned and walked along the wall, expecting a slug to appear in the light. But none did.

Gone?

Billy began to run. Where were they? They couldn't have just
left
! Slug slime still crisscrossed the walls, but it would eventually run out. Maybe even dry up, leaving nothing but crusty trails. He and Darcy needed the worms. He ran a full hundred meters beyond the study, but the walls were vacant.

Near panic now, Billy sprinted for the study. He had to get Darcy! Maybe they should find buckets and fill them with what ointment still clung to the walls. Store it in a cool damp corner, hidden from the others. Yes, they should do at least that. Maybe barricade their tunnel to keep the others out altogether.

Then he and Darcy could write in peace surrounded by buckets of worm gel. Finish their story. But then how would they get out to eat? The moment they left, the others would break in. Better to barricade them in
their
stinking tunnel!

When Billy raced through the entrance to the study, his torch slammed into the arch and flew from his hand in a shower of sparks.

“Darcy!” He retreated quickly to snatch up his torch then jumped back into the study and faced a glassy-eyed Darcy, pen still cocked in her right hand.

“The worms are gone!”

She was overdosed on writing. He leaned forward and yelled again. “You hear me? The worms are gone!”

She blinked and set her pen down. “Worms?”

“Come on, snap out of it. Yes, worms.” He snaked his hand through the air in a slithering motion. “The worms on the walls are gone.”

She stood, snatched the other torch from the wall, and ran past Billy into the tunnel. He turned and followed, leaving the study dark behind him. Darcy waved her torch about the cavern and followed the orange splash of light with her head.

“Gone?” she asked in a thin voice. “You sure?”

“You see them? They look gone to me.”

“You check up that way?” She motioned toward the black hole Billy had just searched.

“Yes.”

“Come on!” Darcy ran the opposite way, toward the main entrance, and Billy ran right on her heels. The slapping of their feet echoed down the tunnel. Their flames whooshed over their heads.

Darcy pulled up just before the tunnel ended, and Billy had to swerve to avoid her. His foot hooked under the tail of a massive worm and he found himself diving headlong.

Three distinct thoughts crashed through his mind as his body flew through the air. The first was one of self-preservation,
Heavens, I hope I don't
break my neck. Maybe I should curl up and roll when I land
.

In that instant the second thought materialized. The worm had recoiled when his foot struck its soft flesh. It had compressed like an accordion and raised its head into the air. Maybe it would strike at him like a cobra while he lay on the floor with a broken neck.

But the third thought superseded even this danger. His flame washed across the tunnel and Billy thought,
Jiminy Cricket, there's a
boy
dragging
that worm!

Billy landed with a terrible grunt and rolled to his feet. A boy did indeed stand at the worm's opposite end, gripping a rope tied around it. Paul! Paul was dragging one of
their
worms from
their
tunnel! “What are you doing?” Billy demanded. But he knew what worm-boy was doing. Worm-boy was stealing one of their worms.

“Uh, nothing.” Paul stepped backward, tugging at the rope. The worm slid easily on its smooth belly.

“What do you mean
nothing
?” Darcy snapped. “That doesn't look like nothing to me. Looks to me like you're dragging a worm. One of
our
worms.”

Paul stopped his tugging and stared at them as though he were having difficulty placing their faces. After a moment he resumed his haul of the giant worm. Billy glanced at the ground and saw dozens of long mucus streaks running along the floor. This wasn't the first worm dragged down the corridor recently.

“Wake up, boy! You hear Darcy? What in heaven's name are you doing, dragging our worms out of our tunnel?”

Paul leaned into the rope, ignoring Billy's charge. He trudged down the hall like an ox pulling a heavy sled.

Billy dove for the worm's tail end. His fingers slipped through a thin layer of mucus and dug into the soft body flesh.

The worm slithered on, probably completely unaware of the failed assault. Billy fell to his rear with a grunt. Paul tugged the worm, their last one maybe, through the tunnel's gaping mouth and around the bend toward his own hall.

“Come on,” Darcy said, pulling Billy to his feet. “That fool has no right to steal our worms.”

Billy felt the throbbing pain of his disturbed boils aching to the bone and grimaced. “You'd think he has enough of his own.”

He shoved a hand into his hip pocket, withdrew a palm full of worm salve, and slapped it along the forearm hit hardest by the first fall. “Man, this hurts!”

“Don't worry, Billy. We'll get our worms back. Sooner than he might think too, assuming he still has the ability to think. You see his eyes? That boy's lost it. He's out there in worm land.”

“Come on,” Billy said. “Let's find some ropes. No way we can haul those slugs without ropes.”

“Yeah.”

Twenty minutes later Billy and Darcy slipped into the far tunnel, laden with ropes they'd found in the study. They'd formed a plan of sorts, though it amounted to no more than sneak-in-and-steal-our-worms-back. And if any kid gets in the way, smack them on the neck where their sores hurt most.

They each held a torch and tiptoed along the corridor, hugging the right wall. Darcy watched their rear for any scoundrels who might be returning from the upper levels, and Billy took point, scanning the tunnel's face for their first worm.

But when the first worm didn't appear, Billy began to wonder if this tunnel had been cleared as well. Where had that sicko put the worms if not here, in his own tunnel? Of course, there were four other tunnels between them.

The entrance to the big library flickered in the torchlight and Billy drew up. So soon? And not one worm. Not one student, either. They were probably swinging from the chandeliers, ripping the paneling from the walls, and feasting on worm flesh.

He motioned Darcy forward and crept to the doors. With a deep breath he shoved through the doors and stepped into the library's outer hall. Nothing yet—that was good. He felt Darcy's hand on his hip, and he moved down the hall toward the balcony entrance. He reached it, pried the narrow door open, and peered down into the main library.

The flames of twenty torches burned along the walls, filling the room with dancing yellow light. From his position he couldn't see the tables below, but the library's eerie silence struck him as odd.

“Are they in there?” Darcy whispered.

“I can't tell. I don't hear anything.” Billy eased out onto the balcony and crawled to the railing on all fours. He waited for Darcy to slide in beside him and then edged his head over the three-foot wall that bordered the upper level.

The first thought that rushed through his mind was that Paul's band of brats were dead. All of them, dead! Slumped on the floor, surrounded by a thick carpet of worms, twisting slowly on the carpet at their feet.