Totentanz (31 page)

Pup was evasive when Reggie asked about
Jack.

"He's here somewhere," he said. His eyes
glowed like nocturnal lamps.

When Reggie asked about Pup's mother, Pup was
more affirmative.

"I know where she is," he said. He was more
wolf than man now, crouching and voracious, like one of those
monsters the Three Musketeers had conjured up to scare themselves
with in the graveyard.

Pup pointed to a spot in the distance. "I saw
your Mom over this way," he said.

They moved over red earth. Reggie knew the
ground they were walking over as if it was imprinted, map-like, in
his head.

They heard eerie sounds. With each shriek in
the distance, Pup became more wolf-like, his features a grinning
caricature, his body bony and repellent. He was feeding off the
very air. There was no before or after in Pup Malamut—only the
moment of death itself. He was a beast, a creature possessed by the
act of death, caught in the amber stillness of it. Reggie
remembered all the Three Musketeer meetings they had had,
remembered the light in Pup's eyes when they told ghost stories or
tried to scare each other in the dark. While Jack had only thrilled
like a child to it, and Reggie had sought something beyond it, Pup
had been drinking the moment of pain itself and wanting more. There
had been no thrill, no wonder for Pup Malamut, only the wish for
hurt, the desire for death. Reggie now realized that Pup had
attained his most secret wish.

"Not much farther," Pup said. When he turned
to Reggie, his face was suffused with an almost angelic evil.
Perhaps this was what Lucifer had looked like before his expulsion.
Reggie had often dwelled on what evil must be like in its pure
form, and now its essence was distilled in the face looking back at
him.

"What's wrong?" Pup hissed. With all of its
new awfulness, it was still Pup Malamut's face. "Is anything
wrong?" Pup's smile returned layer upon layer until he was grinning
again.

They crested a small rise. The mist rolled
back before them like blown smoke. Pup pointed to an incongruous
sight, a frayed carnival tent blown by a rusty wind, still intact
in the midst of the hell around it. "There." As he said this, a
figure appeared in the opening, pulling a shredded canvas flap
aside to stand and look up placidly at them. Reggie knew who it
was. The figure did something with its hands, and a thin plume of
black smoke drifted up from its face. Pup waved, but the figure
made no reply, only standing still a moment and then silently
turning back into the tent.

Pup shouted, "Come on!" and then he was
loping down the hill toward the tent, Reggie following calmly
behind.

Pup pulled the tent flap aside and went in.
When Reggie reached it, he hesitated. For the first time since the
eyes had appeared to him, doubt entered his mind. It was as though
he had entered another realm, one governed by different powers, and
he was not so sure of himself now. A corner of his mind was
sprouting another seed, tiny compared to the one the eyes had
planted and grown, but one that had been there all along and had
now flowered. It was the dark man's flower, and once again he had
fear. He knew what awaited him in that tent, and he feared it.

Panic seized him. He turned wildly, a caught,
hunted animal, and saw only haze and red smoke around him. He was
doomed, and there was nowhere to turn. Outside, death awaited him
(even the lone valiant soldier in Breughel's painting, he knew,
would fall to the remorseless grim blade of the white-boned
demons), and inside that tent, the same sure fate would befall him.
He was surrounded by it. And then another, more horrible thought
flowered in that tiny corner of his brain: maybe there was no
tunnel of light; maybe there were no warming eyes; maybe there was
nothing. Maybe there was only death, a thing with teeth and claws
that ripped and sucked at your flesh forever. His hands were
shaking, and there was a knot in his stomach that grew to fist size
and began to twist within him. He wanted to get out. There was not
enough air, there would never be enough cool air, and he had to go
somewhere else.

The tent flap drew aside slowly, and he
screamed, expecting to see a horrid white face there, the face of
it, but it was only Pup. The same Pup Malamut he had always known,
his face flushed, eager and obedient.

"He wants you," Pup said, and he put a hand
that felt like a tight metal clamp on Reggie's arm.

"Let me go," Reggie gasped.

Pup's smile grew. "Sorry," he said, and then
he placed both hands on Reggie's shoulders and squeezed. A bolt of
pain went through Reggie, from his shoulders down through his
abdomen and thighs, as though hot lava had been injected into
him.

Suddenly Reggie was sure that there was no
way out for him. He had lost control of himself. The elaborate
games he had played had all been for nothing. The lighted tunnel,
the eyes—they had been only a dream, something he had built his
whole false life on. He thought of begging but knew by the look in
Pup's hungry eyes that pleading would do no good. He went limp, and
Pup laughed, hoisting him up and dragging him through the tent's
opening.

Reggie tensed and threw all his weight upward
into Pup's middle. The blow caught Pup by surprise, and momentarily
he lost his hold. Reggie fell and began to scramble to his
feet.

Pup leaped onto his back, throwing him to the
dust, and suddenly there was a great weight in Reggie's chest, and
he could not breathe. He turned over, looking up into Pup's eyes
and seeing there a light brighter than any he had ever seen.

"I'm going to kill you," Pup gloated into his
face, his hands like pincers around Reggie's neck. "I'm going to
pull your body to pieces with my bare hands." Pup's face seemed to
have grown, and his body appeared monstrous, the body of a beastly
giant. He raised one hand up over Reggie's face and brought it down
hard, and there was a numbing pain and Reggie could see nothing.
Then a blurry vision returned to one eye, and he saw Pup's fist
raised again, swinging down in a terrible arc.

"Don't."

The voice came from behind Pup, and it was
almost quiet. Pup hesitated, looking behind him, but then he
shouted something hard and turned back to Reggie. His fist rose up,
and again he brought it downward.

"Stop."

Again Pup stopped. His rage became huge, and
he threw himself off Reggie in a quick motion, turning to face the
voice. Reggie could not hear what was happening, but the ringing in
his ears quieted and he pulled himself up.

Ash and Pup were face-to-face.

"Calm down," Ash said placidly, and Pup
screamed at him, "I want to do it now!"

"When I say so," Ash responded, his voice
growing impatient. "I want to talk with him.”

"I said now!" Pup shot back. He seemed to
tower over Ash, his face filled with rage.

For a moment there seemed to be an impasse,
but then Ash reached out, touched Pup lightly with his finger and
said in the same quiet tone he had begun the conversation with, "I
said wait."

Pup grabbed at his chest where Ash had
touched him and dropped to the floor. He tried to gasp but could
not; his lungs were frozen solid; he could not even fight for
breath. His face went from red anger to a desperate grimace as he
fought for air.

Ash glanced down at him, and suddenly he
could breathe again.

He gulped air for a time before turning to
face Ash. "You can't do that," he said, and there was surprise as
well as fury in his tone. "No one can do that to me." He pointed at
Reggie. "He's the one you're afraid of, and you know it. I was
going to kill him for you." He pulled another long draft of oxygen
into his warming lungs.

Ash ignored Reggie, looking down complacently
at Pup.

"And then?"

"You told me we could work together."

"Yes," Ash said. "But I never said how long
it would last. And I don't think that's what you had in mind. Did
you really think you were going to be `King of the Dead'?" He
pronounced the last four words in mocking sarcasm.

Pup's anger began to rise again.

"I told you no one—" he started, but his
chest tightened again, and then it was ice, and he fell, clawing at
his shirt, trying to bring some warmth to his frozen lungs.

"The ego never ceases to amaze me," Ash
lectured Pup sedately. "Did you really think you were anything
more than an experiment? You had great hate, but in the end it is
Frances who has given me everything I need. Which has made you
nothing but an amusement. You really imagined that the fact that
you were still alive around me pointed to some great power within
you?" He laughed.

Ash turned slowly toward Reggie. Reggie found
that he could not look directly into the shadow man's face, and
that Ash would not look directly into his. Suddenly there was a
definite note of wariness in Ash's voice.

"I am going to kill your friend Pup," he
said, "and very slowly, because I want you to see what physical
death is. You needn't feel sorry for him because"—he looked down at
Pup's tortured face—"he's been a very bad boy."

Reggie felt Ash's aura over him lessen. It
was as if those tiny flowers of the dark man's had flourished and
died, and Reggie's mind was clear again.

"Why don't you let him go?" Reggie asked
quietly.

Ash hesitated before answering. "That would
be foolish."

"I want you to let him go."

"That can't be done." Ash sounded almost
unsure of himself.

Reggie bent down to help Pup to his feet. Pup
clutched at him, trying to find air. Reggie turned his face to
Ash.

"Take me instead."

"I'll have you both."

"Will you?"

'Yes.''

Ash had banished his uncertainty, and Reggie
was thrown away from Pup's body. With an artificial sound, air
rushed into Pup's lungs and then was pulled out again, giving him
an instantly withdrawn respite.

Ash stood over him. Pup looked imploringly at
Reggie; and Reggie suddenly saw in the startled, terrified face the
boy that Pup had been—so different from the creature he had
become.

"Watch," Ash instructed Reggie, and then a
low, humming wail started deep in Pup's throat and built to a
piercing whine. His hands darted convulsively over his body,
slapping everywhere as if a thousand bees were stinging him.

With infinite, tearing slowness, portions of
Pup's flesh began to rip themselves from his body.

"You've heard of a pound of flesh?" Ash
placidly asked Reggie. "I'll give you a hundred and fifty pounds of
it. This will take quite some time, so I suggest you find a
chair."

"Stop!" Reggie said, looking at the red
flaking thing that was Pup Malamut thrashing and screaming on the
ground. Pup's eyes were fixed on Reggie's, wild with pain and
terror.

The flesh slowly ripped away from around
Pup's eyeballs, leaving two round, staring monstrosities in his
disintegrating face.

''Ash, stop!"

"I don't want to." He spoke
happily, and his face was tinted a flushed pink. He moved a step
closer to Pup, pushing at him with the toe of one shoe, which only
made Pup scream louder. "You do see the point I'm making, don't
you? He's dying, and he knows it. The slowness of the act makes him
realize it all the more acutely." He leaned down over Pup's face.
"You do know you're dying, don't you, `King of the Dead'? What
you're experiencing now is that thing you were so in love with. But
for you there'll be no more giving of that kind of love. In fact,
you'll be
nothing
in a matter of minutes. You're literally disappearing, cell
by cell, before our very, eyes. You know that, don't
you?"

Pup's staring, horror-filled eyes gave
answer.

"He knows it," Ash
continued, addressing Reggie, "and you know it too. That's the
point. Death is a horrible thing. You seem to have gotten the
strange notion into your head that it doesn't mean anything, and
that's completely wrong. What your former friend is going through
is death itself, a dissemination, an uncoupling of Pup Malamut from
himself. In a few moments there will be no more Pup Malamut. Pup
Malamut will be
dead
. In the past there will have been two Pup Malamuts—the one
who lived up to the moment of death, and Pup Malamut at the moment
of death. The second one is the one I own. I own that moment.
That's what all the poor fools you saw risen from their Montvale
graves were, merely the good citizens of Montvale at the moment of
their deaths.
I own that moment.
The rest of them, the good citizens who lived, no
longer exist. They are gone. And I suppose that's a shame,
eh?"

He looked over at Pup now, a nearly skeletal
figure trembling as ever more flesh flaked away from his body. "A
shame, eh, Pup? No more living Pup Malamut. Not ever. He's made his
rounds, and now he's out of the picture. Just like your parents,
Pup. They're no more either. No more Mr. and Mrs. Malamut, ever.
Did you think of that while you murdered them? Did you think about
poor little Lavinia Crawford while you strangled her, how her
little pink breasts will never blossom under your fingers, or
anyone else's, ever again? There was only one girl in all of time
with her breasts, and she's gone. You killed her. No one ever again
or before with exactly her body, her eyes, her lips, her sly,
stupid smile. Did you think about any of that, Pup? Say yes and I
might save you yet."

Pup's ruined, disappearing face nodded
wildly. "Sorry, Pup. It's too late."

A keening wail escaped the carcass on the
floor of the tent. Ash laughed, the sound building from a croak to
a dry cough to a full roar. The wailing sound continued
incessantly, even over Ash's laughter, and then suddenly Ash turned
to Reggie, continuing to laugh but dropping his tone to a lower
register.