The Third Magic (20 page)

And it was only going to get worse. What the hell was going on, he wondered. The thing with the bread and fish was a coincidence, for God's sake. People were ready to believe anything.

But what had really been strange was Arthur's behavior. It was as if he had expected it all to happen.

Maybe Arthur had even enjoyed it, Hal thought. He was a kid who had been virtually locked up for years with a bunch of doofuses who treated him literally as if he were the king of the world. Maybe it all just went to his head.

But Hal knew that wasn't true. Arthur never did anything to court attention. It just came to him because he was special, and always had been.

Hal hated living like this. He hated what was happening, hated it so much that every day he thought about just walking away from it. A part of him believed what Taliesin was always telling him, that all this madness was just part of Arthur's destiny, and that whatever happened was meant to happen, regardless of what Hal said or did. There were times when Hal looked at each winding, empty road with longing, picturing himself peeling off the pack and finding his way to some hick town where he would get a job in a garage and forget he ever knew a kid named Arthur Blessing.

But he never did leave. Every day, when he made the decision to stay, he felt himself growing sick with anxiety.

But he stayed.

THE PROCESSION TO THE SANCTUARY

S
ome people were actually
waving palms. More than a thousand of them had come to the Sanctuary at Dawning Falls. Some had made pilgrimages of hundreds of miles just to see the boy whom the press was calling the new Jesus.

"I don't like this," Hal said to Launcelot as they rode into town.

Launcelot looked about him, astonished. "Is it not enough that the boy is their King?" he asked.

"I don't know whose idea this is, but it isn't going to do Arthur any good," Hal said, riding forward to search the crowd.

There were going to be crazies among this bunch, Hal knew. Any issue smacking of religion brought out the fanatics on both sides of the issue; but a story about a teenager who acted like Jesus Christ was going to attract every lunatic within a hundred-mile radius. Before long the churches were going to start objecting—and not to the press, who started it all, but to Arthur himself. That was how the media worked. They stirred up what they called controversy and others called hatred and then, when the people in the center of the story were thoroughly ruined, they lost interest and went after another story.

The problem was, just about everyone here was some kind of nut. How was he going to tell the benign nuts from the violent ones?

H
ad he stood face
to face with Titus Wolfe, Hal would not have judged the man to be either a benign or a violent nut. He looked, in fact, like ninety percent of the males there. He was dressed in jeans, a Buffalo Bills T-shirt and a baseball cap worn backward. He wore sunglasses. His feet were shod in white sneakers. He held a can of Coca Cola.

He had already been inside the old farmhouse that served as the administrative office for the Miller's Creek enterprise. It had not been difficult to get in. The lone security guard—a very old man—had not even seen Titus slip away from the crowd gathered at the well and walk up the back stairway to the upper floor of the building.

The place had not offered any clues about either the boy or the so-called healing water. Not that Titus had expected to find any. Any information worth knowing would not be kept in some ramshackle building without so much as a burglar alarm. Inside, there were no expensive paintings on the walls, no gift shop. The office itself held no more than a couple of cheap desks and typist's chairs, some metal file cabinets, an old electric typewriter such as could be bought in any pawn shop for twenty dollars, and a few molded plastic chairs for visitors. Hardly the thing to attract thieves.

It probably would not even have mattered if he had been discovered, although he made sure to exit the place unnoticed. The place was so loose. The woman who was acting director was outside waiting for the boy—the one Titus had come to think of as the Christ Child—with a bouquet of flowers and a welcoming committee.

He spotted Pinto near the back of the assembled crowd, his arms crossed in front of him. As Titus watched, Pinto slowly made his way toward the roadway where the boy and his motorcycle escort would be approaching.

Titus had done a fairly decent job of cleaning him up. Pinto now sported a small goatee. His hair had been cut neatly, and he was wearing a plaid shirt in place of his usual filthy leathers. Titus had told him to keep his mouth closed, literally. As long as no one saw his teeth, Pinto would be difficult to identify.

The gun and silencer he carried were concealed inside his boot.

P
into watched Hal from
a safe distance, although he thought he could discern the cop-smell of him even from where he stood. He knew how to avoid the notice of those in authority: The point was not to move much. Cops looked for moving things—hands, eyes, scared feet on the run. It was important to stay cool, still as a statue if you could do it, casual if you couldn't. He kept his hands in his pockets. Titus had told him not to smoke or chew gum, and he was uncomfortable with that, but he could keep it up long enough to do this job.

It wouldn't take long, and there was a wad of money in it. Titus had bucks, that was for sure. Pinto supposed he could just kill him and take it, but why bother, if the English prick was willing to share it so willingly? Besides, the guy was a good car thief. They'd gone through six or seven already. It didn't take Titus but a minute to boost one. He had a gizmo, some electronic thing, and didn't even need to hotwire, although he could.

The guy definitely had his amazing aspects. Like how he changed how he looked so totally, and inside of a half hour, except for the eating. Hell, who thought about
eating
to change your looks? But it worked. He wondered how fat Titus would be by the end of summer.

They wouldn't be together that long, though. There was something about Titus that was... well, dangerous. That was a funny word, Pinto thought, coming from him. Oh, he was dangerous, too, no question about that, Pinto was plenty dangerous. Just ask any cop who'd ever met him.

But Titus, he was something else. So smart, yet he'd still kill his own mother between dinner and dessert. That was why it wasn't worth it to try to rip off Titus. Better let him pay you. He was good for it.

Out of the comer of his eye he saw Hal. The pig was looking around in that cop way, mean-eyed, obvious.

W
ell, that wasn't going
to last much longer, Pinto thought, holding still. Before long, those pig eyes were going to be staring straight up at the blue sky.

T
he press had begun
to refer to the house, for reasons known only to them, as the Sanctuary. It was hardly that for Emily, who waited miserably in the spot appointed to her by the mayor's office. The Chamber of Commerce had assembled a wooden platform with steps for her to stand on. A local radio station had given her a bouquet of three dozen roses to present to Arthur upon his triumphant entry into Dawning Falls.

The roses were overwhelming. After ten minutes of sweltering in the August sun with her arms tired from the sheer weight of the flowers and their heady scent in her nostrils, she was about to toss them onto the ground when she spotted Gwen walking through the crowd toward her.

It took Emily a moment to recognize her. The girl had washed off her freakish makeup, and pulled her hair back with a headband of green grosgrain.

"Gwen!" she began "What—"

"Don't, Ms. B." Gwen's cheeks were blazing with embarrassment. "I've already been through this with my mother. I just didn't have time to do my face, okay?"

Emily smiled and shook her head. "Fine. Do you think you could take these roses? My nose feels as if it's full of bees."

Awkwardly Gwen climbed on the platform and scooped the flowers out of Emily's arms. Even her clothes were different, Emily noticed. Instead of her usual black T-shirt, Gwen was wearing a pretty blouse with ruffles and pintucks. Over it she wore a long green silk duster that covered her jeans.

"This was my mom's," she said, plucking at the duster. "I found it in an old box in the attic."

"It's lovely." Emily touched the girl's hair. "You look like a beauty queen."

"Especially with these," Gwen said, holding up the flowers.

Emily smiled wanly. "Aren't they awful?"

"This whole thing is awful," Gwen agreed. "That's why I came. I thought you might need moral support."

"I need a brain transplant," Emily moaned. "How could I have allowed this to get so out of control? Look at these people!"

"Smile, girls!" A photographer took their picture.

"Please go away!" Emily had tried to sound cold and commanding, but her voice had quavered.

Ever since the
Christian Science Monitor
had run the story about Arthur's destination, the media had been relentless. Apparently the combination of Arthur's mysterious past, his abduction by foreigners, the healing waters of Miller's Creek, and the legend of King Arthur were irresistible news fodder.

And, of course, there was Emily's face to add yet another dimension to the story. Arthur's long-lost aunt was never more than a footnote to the news stories about the miracle-making boy, but her appearance seemed to be a subject of concern to the media nonetheless. The major papers and television networks tried not to show her likeness, since the image of such an ugly woman ran counter to all the romantic things they were inventing about Arthur. The tabloids, though, enjoyed smearing pictures of Emily's melted-mask features over the pages of their publications. "Messiah's Monster Mom," read one particularly coarse— and inaccurate—headline.

The townspeople of Dawning Falls had gone to great lengths to express their support for Ms. B, who had long ago ceased to be a freak in their eyes. Nevertheless, the attention they gave her was painful. As she stood on the platform waiting for Arthur, she had to force herself to keep her head held high as an endless stream of strangers with cameras took her picture.

She deeply regretted having made the deal with the
Monitor
, and not just because of the exposure she had brought to herself. She was sorry she had made such a demand of Hal, who had been doing an excellent job of safeguarding Arthur from the certain harm of publicity. Realizing the position in which she was placing her nephew, she wished she had never begun her search for Arthur in the first place.

He had never been meant to stay with her, she thought, too late, feeling sick in her heart at the danger in which she knew she was placing him.

"The boy whom the faithful are calling the new Messiah is headed for Dawning Falls, the small town in upstate New York which is the location of what some believe to be a healing spring," a reporter was saying into a microphone nearby.

Messiah?

The whole idea of it was ridiculous, more than ridiculous. How could anyone even think such a thing? She remembered Arthur as a little boy, with scraped knees and fevers. A normal boy.

Normal, but not ordinary. She bit her lip. Because she had always known that Arthur was not like other children. From the beginning there had been something of the ascetic about him, something pared down and finely textured, as if the world could not stick to him.

And then the cup had come into their lives. The cup had started everything.

Arthur had found the cup when he was still a child. Together they had discovered its miraculous properties. He had never wanted it, though, despite the power it might have conferred on him. That was why the cup was now at the bottom of a well encased in cement.

Because no one else should have the cup. Its power was too strong. A lesser being would be tempted—no, more than tempted, because its pull was irresistible—to use the cup for selfish ends. Oh, its owner would vow at first to use it only for good, for the welfare of all humanity. But in the end, whoever owned the cup would want it for himself. That was its nature, and the nature of human beings.

Two signs came into view above the heads of the milling crowd. One read
satan
. The other,
antichrist
.

Emily turned to Gwen. "How did you get here?" she asked.

"Bike."

"Could you..." She hesitated. "Do you think you could do a favor for me?" Emily was blushing. She did not like to ask favors of anyone.

"Anything, Ms. B," Gwen said.

"I'd like you to meet Arthur before he gets here. They'll be traveling eastbound."

Gwen looked down Germantown Pike. It was all but impassible, jammed with people as if it were a fair. "No problem," she said. "What do you want me to tell him?"

"Just to be careful. I didn't expect..." She opened her hands. "...this."

Gwen felt a wave of pity for the woman. Standing in front of all these cameras had to be hard for her. Her personal reunion with her nephew had snowballed into some tacky festival. All the place lacked was a marching band, and the only reason it wasn't blaring right now was because Emily had nearly screamed in horror when the mayor had mentioned it. "Don't worry about anything," Gwen said, tossing the roses into the crowd, where one of the tourists took it upon herself to distribute the flowers among the assemblage. "It'll all be over soon."

A
s Gwen pedaled her
bicycle past a mile or more of endless, crawling traffic and parked cars, she realized that Ms. B's fear that Arthur would be shocked by the crowd at Dawning Falls was naive. He was used to crowds.

This is how he lives
, she thought, shuddering. Surrounded by hordes of people whose behavior he had no way of pre-dieting. For every well-wisher, there was somebody who thought he should be dead. But they all had one thing in common: They wanted something from Arthur. Something: happiness, amusement, maybe only the cheap thrill of being where the media was. Some insisted on full-fledged miracles; others called for no less than Arthur's death.

It must have been like this to be the King, she thought, and then felt silly. She had heard the stories in school about how Arthur Blessing was the reincarnation of King Arthur—it was the sort of thing girls talked about in hushed tones, with big eyes and tossing hair.

Stupid girls. Gwen had never shown her drawings to any of them. They would have said that she'd copied Arthur's face from his image on television. They would have made photocopies of them and hung them in their lockers, as if he were some rocker in an MTV video.

But the fact was that she hadn't copied his face from the news, or from anywhere else. It had just come to her, as she had told Ms. B, in a dream. Ms. B herself didn't quite believe her, either, she knew. Gwen's story just didn't stand up to scrutiny.

Yet it was the truth. She had never seen him before she had drawn his face. And when she had finally seen Arthur on television, she had recognized him, and not just as the face in her drawing. She had known him as surely, as deeply, as she knew herself.

That was why she had kept her face bare of makeup today. Like this, she resembled the other drawings, the portraits of the women, to a startling degree. If she had recognized Arthur so easily, Gwen wondered, perhaps he would recognize her, too.