Totentanz (30 page)

There was a shout and then a strong intake of
breath from ahead, and he heard another crash of flesh against
glass. Soon there appeared in the sawdust a few drops of blood and
then one of his father's shoes. A pile of slivers came into view,
revealing a broken three-sided cusp of mirrors. Blood was spattered
everywhere. Close by he heard labored breath, and then, from around
a corner, his father appeared. He was limping. One trouser leg was
nearly torn off, held only by a few threads.

When he saw Pup, he turned and hobbled away,
holding his leg with both hands.

"Stop," Pup commanded, and his father came to
an abrupt halt. He fell in a heap, whimpering. "Please, son," he
wheezed. "Please."

Pup calmly approached.

"Son?" he mocked. "Did you call me 'son'? You
never called me that before. Do you really want to admit, after all
this time, that I am your son—fat and slow and seemingly stupid as
I am?"

"Yes! You're my son," his father wept.
"You've always been my son." He held his trembling hands together.
"I've always loved you."

"Call me King of the Dead."

His father stared at him. All at once the old
animal look crawled onto his features. Then something, some buried
relay switch, snapped on, and he changed his mind.

"You're my son!" he pleaded.

"Call me King of the Dead."

"Isn't it enough for you to be my son?"

You can do it,
Ash's voice said to Pup from somewhere close
by.

"My third birthday," Pup said.

It was his third birthday. It was the first
birthday he remembered, and he was surrounded by presents. There
was a rocking horse on springs, a huge expensive thing of plastic
and real mane hair, and a pile of other toys: books, a tricycle, a
stuffed monkey, windup soldiers. Thirty relatives and children from
his pre-school class were there. The cake was as big as Pup
himself. He sat at the head of the dining-room table, the place of
honor, his father's place.

"Where's Daddy?" he asked when his mother
leaned over him to cut the cake. His father was the only one in his
universe not there. All afternoon he had wondered where his daddy
was. Now he had been made to sit in his father's spot at the table,
and he wanted to know where he was.

"He had to go to work today, Puppy," his
mother said. Though her face kept its smile, something that was
obvious to him then, even at that age, changed in her eyes. "But he
sent you all these presents. He really wanted to be here, but he
just had to work today."

"I want Daddy here!" Pup said petulantly,
striking the edge of the table with his small fist.

"He'll be home soon," she said, beginning to
grow nervous.

Pup knew she was lying, and he became even
more hysterical. "I want Daddy!"

"Pup," his mother soothed, "I said he'll be
home soon!"

"Daddy! Daddy!"

Pup struck at the table with both hands. His
mother, embarrassed, tried to lift him from his chair. He resisted,
throwing out his fingers at her face. She stumbled back from him.
He pushed the birthday cake aside and sank his fists into it. His
face was red and he was crying explosively. "Daddy!"

He threw the cake from the table. It landed
with a collapsing thud on the floor. One of his aunts got out of
her chair and moved toward him. He screamed in rage and kicked at
the fallen cake, sending soft pieces flying around the room. He ran
into the living room, where his presents were stacked neatly after
the opening ceremony; he lifted them, one after another, over his
head and hurled them as far as he could. Hands reached down at him
then, and he looked up into his mother's horrified face and
screamed at her: "Get away!" She pulled her hands back, and he
threw himself at the horse his father had bought him, tearing at
the mane with his hands, trying to pull it from its springs. He
climbed onto it. The horse tilted ominously, but he didn't notice.
He held on tight and kicked furiously, trying to break it. He
pulled a great handful of hair from the mane. The hair's coming
loose threw him off balance. He dug in with his shoes to the side
of the horse, and his momentum threw the toy animal over sideways.
He saw the ground looming up, heard the squeak of springs. The
wooden floor rushed up at him, and then there was night. . . .

Silence. Pup's hands were
clenched into tight balls. At first he saw only mirrors and his own
red-faced reflection in them. Then he saw another reflection, a
mound of something on the floor in front of him. It was a shapeless
red and fabric thing. At first his eyes would not focus on it, but
gradually the haze cleared from his vision and he saw what it
was.
Even a horse couldn't do that,
he thought, and instantly knew that a crazed
horse could. Portions of what had once been human were so beaten
that a large horse's hoof mark was plainly visible, as if the
animal had stepped into soft mud.

Pup turned. For a moment he felt sharp, sour
bile climbing his throat, but he steadied himself. He took a few
long breaths, stood straight and willed himself to look back, and
when he did, a small crest of nausea passed over him, but then he
felt fine. He had the stomach for it now. He took another long
breath and didn't look away.

He wouldn't be squeamish again. For a moment
he thought Ash was standing before him, but he saw only his own
cold eyes staring back at him in a mirror. Suddenly, thinking of
how Ash had taunted him, he wanted Ash to be there. A flash of pure
anger went through him, and his eyes lingered on the mirror,
waiting for Ash to appear.

You'll get yours.

Abruptly there came a strange light, and fear
bolted through him as the House of Mirrors began to disintegrate.
Fear turned to awe. Before his eyes one world was being torn down
and another erected. The walls around him vanished, turning to
insubstantial beads of mist, leaving another place behind, a red
world. He found himself in an open area, with clouds high above in
a black and crimson sky. There was a low wall of roughly blocked
stones to his left; a circular stairway was cut into it,
corkscrewing up and around. He walked to it and mounted the steps.
Low thunderheads were crawling by above; thick, evil puffs of fog
moved beneath them, challenging their slow progress. The world
seemed all blacks and reds and deep yellow-browns.

Did I do this?

The thought coursed through him, but then he
was filled with doubt. He hadn't willed anything like this to
happen. Had Ash? No, he knew that Ash did not have that kind of
power on his own. He was just a leech; he could only use hate and
fear siphoned off from others. At least that's what Ash had told
him. That's why he'd been drawn to Pup, he said—because Pup had
enough hate to "do all kinds of things." And that was where the
idea of the King of the Dead had come from. "Why not?" Ash had
smiled. "Why can't you do anything you want?"

Pup had known that Ash was greasing him up,
stringing him along, giving him one of his father's best
loan-officer looks—level and cool. But the wheels in Pup's head had
begun at that moment to turn smooth and tight. Let Ash jerk him
around; then Pup would find out how he ticked and—

You'll get yours, Ash.

But if Pup hadn't willed this new setup into
being, who had? Who had enough power, or hate, or fear, to make
this happen?

Now real fury rose in Pup to think that there
was someone out there who would steal Ash away from him. The idea
was unbearable. This new adversary would have to be dealt with
immediately, have to be overcome and torn to bits. There could be
no negotiation, no drawn-out inquiry. Pup wanted what he wanted
now.

He trudged to the top of the tower and
surveyed the countryside surrounding him.

There was something about it—

He knew this world. A moan,
half-gasp, half-cry of wrath, came out of him. He knew this world.
Before him was laid out something so familiar and yet so alien that
his mind could not at once comprehend it. A sweeping lowland
stretched to the mist-shrouded horizon. To the north stood a
dismal, black-watered bay with a foundering ship in its
harbor.
The same one I used for
Jack.
But that had been only a temporary
hallucination, something he had pulled out of his memory as
suitable. This world was much more detailed and complete. On land
there were only scenes of death, a sprawling panorama of marching
skeletons, and stumbling humans falling before their onslaught.
Some of the bone men bore weapons: long blades or sickles or
knives, thin and sharp. Some worked in gangs, closing in on one or
two people, and then dragging them off to hang or behead or burn.
The ground was stained red in spots.

Grinning skeletons were by far in the
majority—possibly the ghoulish Montvale dead Ash had summoned to
man Jeff Scott's amusement park.

As Pup watched, fascinated, a huge phalanx of
skeletons swarmed like ants out of a cave and fell upon a group of
Montvale citizens. A dim chorus of screams arose as the two groups
met head on.

Pup was mesmerized. This was more than he had
ever imagined. The sheer amount of killing filled him with
exhilaration. This was the kind of thing he would have liked to
have come up with. For the briefest moment he wondered again if he
had, somehow, invented it all. But he knew this wasn't true.
Someone else held the key to this carnage.

Off to one side, in the far distance, a lone
figure appeared in a spot remarkably free of activity. At first Pup
could not make out who it was. Mist drifted in, and the form
vanished into a whirl of sickly red smoke. But then the mist
cleared and Pup had his answer. And he knew what place this was. He
thought of all the times he had stared at this same scene, now come
to life before him, as a poster on a wall in a bedroom in a place
called Montvale. That same figure stumbling toward him now had
stood by that picture many times, pointing out the minute details
and explaining what it all meant, how this or that symbolized
something or other—making it all seem real, and scary, and fun.
That same figure had even carried a copy of that poster in his
wallet so he could study it anywhere.

So it's Reggie Carson.

A wolf's smile crept over Pup Malamut's face.
Reggie, almost within hailing distance now, looked tired and worn
and not at all indomitable. Maybe he didn't even know what he had
done, what he was capable of doing. And then for some glorious
reason,

Jeff Scott's taunting words to Ash, the ones
that had so enraged him, slipped into Pup's mind, and his smile
became even wider.

So this is who Ash is afraid of.

It all fit so neatly that
he laughed out loud. Ash was afraid of Reggie Carson, and had been
willing to give himself to Pup to have Reggie out of the
way.
You'll be King of the Dead,
Pup.
Sure, and then after Pup had gotten
rid of Reggie for him, Ash would turn on him. But what Ash didn't
know was that Pup had his, own plans and hadn't been fooled for a
moment by that soothing voice, the limp, friendly grin.
King of the Dead, Pup.
Well, if Ash was afraid of Reggie and wanted someone to help
do away with him, fine. And then, once that someone had found out
the secret to Reggie's power over Ash and delivered him on a
silver platter to the shadow man

You'll get yours, Ash.

Reggie was just below the tower. Pup stood
up.

"Hey!" he shouted, waving his arms and
putting as much feeling as he could into his voice. "Reggie, it's
me!" He wanted to add, "It's me, King of the Dead," but that could
wait. The genuine gladness that had spread over Reggie's face upon
seeing Pup would do more than well enough for now.

You won't smile for long, Musketeer.

Pup nearly raced down the stone steps, trying
to keep his heart from leaping with joy. He wanted to crush Reggie
with happiness, lift him off the ground and kiss him. Reggie had
made it all possible. The hate went off to the side for a moment;
there was such genuine feeling on his features that Reggie would
take it for granted that this was the reunion of two lost friends.
Even as he flew down the remaining steps, Pup's mind was
constructing appropriate ways to resolve things. How to handle
Reggie? There were probably a hundred, a thousand, good ways. They
vied in Pup's mind for attention, and he tried to give them all the
loving care they required. Above all other thoughts, one only hung
like a huge, joyful, black cloud; one thought alone minimized even
the wonderful expectation he felt at the coming extermination of
his final problem. It really would come true; he knew finally that
his actions up to now had not been in vain, had not been merely the
venting of some demented adolescent spleen on those closest to
him.

I really will be King of the Dead.

At the moment Reggie Carson
faced Pup Malamut's wild, grinning, beast's face, he knew how it
would happen. Somehow the knowledge calmed him, as if an insistent
but relatively trivial question had been answered. Pup clasped him
like a brother; and on the outside, at least, he seemed the same
friend Reggie had known for years and years. And yet there was
something essentially changed in him. He was gaunt inside his
flesh, a thin canine thing in a fleshy body. Pup
belonged
in this world
of red flame and black earth, was feeding off it like a fly might
feed off a piece of fetid meat. Reggie knew it, despite the fact
that this was the same Pup Malamut he had known for so long. This
side of his friend had been there all along—perhaps had owned him
all along—and now, under this sulfurous air and crimson atmosphere,
he was illuminated. Reggie thought of little things Pup had done:
the burning of ants with scalding water; the torture of a frog or a
turtle; the anonymous letter he had once sent to the parents of a
girl in one of their classes, saying that she was sleeping with one
of her teachers—all because the girl had turned him down when he
asked her to a school dance. These little facets of the flawed and
broken gem that was Pup Malamut were brought into cracked light
now, and all of the sides of Pup Malamut showed this same black
face toward the sun.