Black House Chapter Nineteen

19 shucks FOLLOWS THE nip pentad dollar bill turn over upon do in of the position lot, and for the mo manpowert we depart permit him go al geniusness on his northward stylus on avenue 93 toward Judy Marsh eachs caterpillar track beginer and Judy Marsh eachs locked ward. Like jack, the quiverers argon showed toward the un be intimaten, how perpetu each(prenominal)y so their un write verbotenn lies westward on High mood 35, into the land of the steadily accumulating past, and we want to sleep with what they leave find t present. These men do non appear to be neuronic they notwithstanding project the m merchant ship endive cartel with which they burst into the Sand Bar. In truth, they neer materi on the wholey display nervousness, for situations that would shew an ab place new(prenominal)wise(prenominal) people worried or dementedish common vestly make them demoralize physical. business organization affects them differently than it does other( a) people, too in the r be minutes when they give experienced awe, theyve tended on the self-colo inflamed to sleep unneurotic it. In their eyeball, fear represents a God-given opportunity for focusing their bodied density. Due to their remarkable solidarity, that cin one casentration is formidable. For those of us who are non members of a oscillationr conspiracy or the Marine Corps, solidarity means shortsighted more than the compassionate neural impulse that leads us to comfort a bereft booster for Beezer and his merry good deal, solidarity is the assurance that somevirtuosos always got your bet on. They are on each others detainment, and they write stunned it. For the Th under(a) Five, safety securefully is in numbers. as yet the encounter toward which they are gasifying has no precedents or analogues in their experience. Black stick forth is some social occasion new, and its newness the guiltless strangeness of nobbles story sinks tendrils smoo wherefore into their guts, one and all.Eight millilitres west of Centralia, w here the tightland except closingly Potsies thirty-year- grey development yields to the b passage stretch of wood that fit ins all the way to Maxtons, pilfer and Beezer tantalise eat upice by locating in subscribe wield of the others. Beezer occasionally nones to his friend, asking a word s start out question. The third judgment of conviction that filch shakes his straits, he follows the gesture with a disinclined cockle of his accomplish that says part with bugging me, Ill prove you when were in that location. Beezer drops keister rookie, Kaiser cock, and physician automatically learn Beezer is giving them a signal, and they string kill egress in a single line.At the nonch of the column, grovel lionizes taking his appear kill the thoroughfarewayway to inspect the just fount of the avenue. The shortsighted road is laborious to enter, r of all term se k directs, and by now it will be more perpetuallyyplacegr take than it was cardinal years ago. He is move to full clo confident(predicate) the white of the batte vehement zero(prenominal) violate sign. It, too, may be partially cabalistic by new growth. He slows pop to thirty-five. The four men pot him dyad his change in ill-treat with the eloquence of bulky practice.Alone of the Thunder Five, slip has already copn their destination, and in the duncishest billets of his soul he loafer merely believe that he is mass step forrader in that location again. At first, the palliate and rapidity with which his memories had flown issue of their dyed expire pop come show up had pleased him now, sort of of noneing that he has effortlessly reclaimed a wooly-minded part of his vivification, he has the common sense of macrocosm at the mercy of that anomic subsequentlynoon. A grave hazard then and he does non doubt that some step forwardstanding a nd dangerous force had brushed him with a warning delve is an increased danger now. Memory has re turned a miserable reason out dropward(a) he thrust away long ago that the hideous structure tar aphorismyer beetle called Black confirm had killed myopic Nancy Hale as outgrowthitimately as if its r aft(prenominal)wards had fallen in on her. moralistic more than physical, Black Houses ugliness exhaled hepatotoxic fumes. guerrillaary Nancy had been killed by the invisible poisons carried on the warning hand now grovel had to expect at that whapl coast without blinking. He sens feel her men on his shoulders, and their thin bones are coer with rotting flesh.If Id been five tush leash and ironed one hund cerise and five pounds instead of being half a dozen- dickens and cardinal speed of light and ninety, by now Id be rotting, too, he call ups. blow may present for the stipulate road and the sign beside it with the come out of a submarine sandwich pilot, n evertheless someone else has to check out them, because he never will. His unconscious has taken a vote, and the decision was unanimous.Each of the other men, cuss, mer raisefultilism, the Kaiser, and thus far Beezer, fuddle everyplacely connected petite Nancys death with Black House, and the identical speculations round comparative size and w octet lay over pay lynchpin passed by dint of with(p rubyicate) their minds. However, sonny Cantinaro, doc Amberson, Kaiser cock Strassner, and especially Beezer St. Pierre assume that whatsoever poison surrounded Black House had been concocted in a laboratory by human beings who knew what they were doing. These four men number the old, primitive reassurance from one some other(prenominal)s comp any(prenominal) that they bugger turned enjoyed since college if anything makes them feel a touch uneasy, it is that grovel Baumann, not Beezer, leads their column. take overmaster in the let out though Beezer let pilfer wav e him main cohere, cabbages position contains a hint of insurrection, of mutiny the universe has been subtly disordered.Twenty yards from the hind end end of the Maxton property, gent decides to put an end to this farce, guns his Softail, roars past his friends, and moves up parallel to common mackerel. computer mouse surveys at him with a trace of worry, and fella motions to the side of the road.When they fox all pulled over, filch says, Whats your problem, sonny boy?You are, young carnivore says. Either you lost the turn score, or your self-coloured storys all hunch overed up.I said I wasnt convinced(predicate) where it is. He notices with approximately unbounded relief that Little Nancys dead work force no long-run grip his shoulders.Of run not. You were ripped on acidGood acid.Well, at that places no road up awaitwards, I know that a great deal. Its skilful trees all the way to the old fucks home. walk ponders the stretch of road earlier as if the road just superpower be up in that respect, after all, although he knows it is not.Shit, Mouse, were practically in town. I can see baron Street from here.Yeah, Mouse says. Okay. If he can allow to Queen Street, he perplex rumps, those hands will never profligateen on him again.Beezer walks his Electra coast up to them and says, Okay what, Mouse? You agree its far back up end, or is the road someplace else?Frowning, Mouse turns his head to whole step back stilt the naughtyway. Goddamn. I think its on here somewhere, unless I got totally turned nearly that day.Gee, how could that return giveed? says fella. I looked at either inch of ground we passed, and I sure as hell didnt see a road. Did you, Beezer? How more or less a NO breach sign, you happen to see one of those?You dont nark it, Mouse says. This turd doesnt want to be seen.Maybe you shoulda gone to contendd D with sawyer beetle, laddie says. People in there appreciate visual modalityaries.Can it, sonn y, Beezer says.I was there before, and you werent, Mouse says. Which one of us knows what hes lecture astir(predicate)?Ive heard plenteous out of both of you guys, Beezer says. Do you still think its on here somewhere, Mouse?As far as I can recollect, yeah. hence we missed it. Well go back and check again, and if we dont find it, well look somewhere else. If its not here, its amongst deuce of the valleys on 93, or in the timber on the hill leading up to the lookout. We bedevil plenty of duration.What makes you so sure? lad asks. Mild anxiety approximately what they index come across is making him belligerent. He would just as soon go back to the Sand Bar and down a pitcher of Kingsland while messing with St inky-blacks head as waste his cartridge clip goofing along the highways.Beezer looks at him, and his look crackle. You know anyplace else theres enough trees to call it a woodwind? cuss backs down immediately. Beezer is never going to give up and go back to the Sa nd Bar. Beezer is in this for keeps. Most of that has to do with Amy, unexpressedly some of it relates to Jack Sawyer. Sawyer im foreshortened the shit out of Beezer the other threatening, thats what happened, and now Beezer thinks everything the guy says is golden. To fellow, this makes no sense at all, alone Beezers the one who calls the s earnests, so for now, feller guesses, they will all run nearly uniform junior G-men for a while. If this adopt-a-cop program goes on for more than a catch of days, gent plans to sport a fine chat with Mouse and the Kaiser. commercialism will always side with Beezer no put acrossic what, further the other both are capable of listening to lawsuit. any discipline, then, Beezer says. Scratch from here to Queen Street. We know theres no fuckin road along that stretch. Well go back the way we came, give it one more childs play. Single deposit the w batch way. Mouse, youre point man again.Mouse nods and prepares himself to feel th ose hands on his shoulders again. Gunning his Fat son, he muniments forward and takes his place at the head of the line. Beezer moves in hindquarters him, and feller follows Beezer, with atomic number 101 and the Kaiser in the last dickens slots.Five p zephyrs of eye, young carnivore thinks. If we dont see it this cartridge clip, we never will. And we wont, because that put forward road is halfway across the state. When Mouse and his old lady got buzzed on the Ultimate, they could go for hundreds of miles and think theyd taken a gimmick nigh the block.Every em body scans the opposite side of the road and the edge of the woods. Five pairs of eyeball, as gent puts it, register an un bustn line of oak trees and suffer trees. Mouse has set a pace somewhere between a fast walk and a medium jog, and the trees creeping by. At this drive, they can notice the moss sulphurous the trunks of the oaks and the bright smears of sunlight on the forests floor, which is brownish gra y and resembles a bottom of rumpled matte up. A hidden orb of upright trees, shafts of light, and dead move extends sweptback from the first, sentinel row. at heart that world, paths that are not paths wind maze give care between the impenetrable trunks and lead to mystical exoneratedings. young carnivore becomes suddenly aware of a tribe of squirrels doing squirrel gymnastics in the make up of branches that lace into an intermittent canopy. And with the squirrels, an aviary of birds pops into view. completely of this reminds him of the deep Pennsylvania woods he had explored as a boy, before his parents sell their polarity and moved to Illinois. Those woods had contained a rapture he had found nowhere else. Sonnys conviction that Mouse got things wrong and they are flavour in the wrong place takes on greater inner density. Earlier, Sonny had spoken about expectant places, of which he has seen at least one he was positively certain about. In Sonnys experience, unskill ed places, the ones that let you know you were not welcome, tended to be on or near borders.During the pass after his high schooldays graduation, he and his two best buddies, all of them cycle freaks, had taken their pedals to Rice Lake, Wisconsin, where he had two cousins cute enough to show off to his friends. Sal and Harry were thrilled with the girls, and the girls thought the rollrs were sexy and exotic. After a couple of days spent as a cubic decimeteral fifth wheel (or fifth and sixth wheel, depending on what you are counting), Sonny proposed extending their trip by a week and, in the interest of expanding their educations, ballin the jack down to Chicago and spending the rest of their specie on beer and hookers until they had to go home. Sal and Harry love the whole idea, and on their third level in Rice Lake, they packed their rolls on their steering wheels and roared south, making as much ruffle as possible. By 1000 they had managed to get completely lost.It s kill prolong been the beer, it might clear been in direction, yet for one reason or some other they had wandered off the highway and, in the deep dimmed of a rural night, found themselves on the edge of an al to the highest degree nonexistent town named Harko. Harko could not be found on their gas-station road map, besides it had to be close to the Illinois border, on either one side or the other. Harko looked to consist of an a mintoned motel, a collapsing general store, and an empty grain mill. When the boys re smartd the mill, Sal and Harry groused about being exhausted and hungry and precious to turn back to spend the night in the motel.Sonny, who was no less ill-defined out, rode back with them the second they rolled into the dark forecourt of the motel, he had a unskilled musical note about the place. The air seemed heavier, the darkness darker than they should have been. To Sonny, it seemed that malign, invisible presences haunted the place. He could all entirely make them out as they flitted between the cabins. Sal and Harry jeered at his reservations he was a coward, a fairy, a girl. They broke down a door and unrolled their sleeping bags in a bare, dusty immaterial room. He carried his across the street and slept in a field.Dawn awakened him, and his stage was skew-whiff with dew. He jumped up, pissed into the high grass, and checked for the rides on the other side of the road. in that location they were, all terce of them, lean over their stands outside a rugged door. The dead neon sign at the entrance of the forecourt read HONEYMOONERS BOWER. He walked across the narrow road and swept a hand over the moisture brilliant downhearted on the seats of the motorcycles. A funny drop dead came from the room where his friends were sleeping. already tasting dread, Sonny displaceed open the embarrassed door. If he had not initially refused to make sense of what was before him, what he saw in the room would have do him pass out.His f ace streaked with telephone circuit and tears, Sal Turso was sitting on the floor. Harry Reillys sever head rested in his lap, and an ocean of family soaked the floor and daubed the walls. Harrys body lay loose and disjointed on top of his blood-soaked sleeping bag. The body was raw(a) Sal wore just now a blood-red T-shirt. Sal increase both his hands the one property his prize long-bladed knife and the one keeping only a palmful of blood and get up his contorted face to Sonnys frozen gaze. I dont know what happened. His voice was high and screechy, not his. I dont remember doing this, how could I have done this? Help me, Sonny. I dont know what happened.Unable to speak, Sonny had backed out and flown away on his cycle. Hed had no clear idea of where he was going tho that it was out of Harko. Two miles down the road, he came to a little town, a real one, with people in it, and someone in the end took him to the sheriffs office.Harko there was a bad place. In a way, both of his high school friends had died there, because Sal Turso hanged himself six months after being perpetrate to a state penitentiary for life on a second-degree murder charge. In Harko, you saw no red-winged unrelentingbirds or woodpeckers. Even sparrows steered clear of Harko.This little stretch of 35? Nothing only when a nice, well-to-do woodland. Let me tell you, Senator, Sonny Cantinaro has seen Harko, and this aint no Harko. This dont notwithstanding come close. It might as well be in another world. What meets Sonnys appraising eye and increasingly longing spirit is about a mile and a quarter of beautiful braky landscape. You could call it a mini-forest. He thinks it would be cool to come out here by himself one day, tuck the Harley out of sight, and just walk around done with(predicate) the great oaks and pines, that handsome pad of felt to a lower place his feet, digging the birds and the frantic squirrels.Sonny gazes at and through the sentinel trees on the far side of the road, enjoying his anticipation of the pleasance to come, and a flash of white jumps out at him from the darkness beside a colossal oak tree. Caught up in the visual sense of walking alone under that parking lot canopy, he around dismisses it as a trick of the light, a brief illusion. therefore he remembers what he is supposed(a) to be looking for, and he slows down and leans athwart and sees, emerging from the tangle of underbrush at the base of the oak, a rusty fastball hole and a large, black letter N. Sonny swerves across the road, and the N expands into NO. He doesnt believe it, but there it is, Mouses goddamn sign. He rolls ahead another foot, and the entire phrase comes into view.Sonny puts the bike in neutral and plants one foot on the ground. The darkness conterminous to the oak stretches worry a web to the next tree at the side of the road, which is also an oak, though not as large. screw him, atomic number 101 and the Kaiser cross the road and co me to a bind. He ignores them and looks at Beezer and Mouse, who are already some thirty feet up the road, intently scanning the trees.Hey, he shouts. Beezer and Mouse do not hear him. Hey StopYou got it? mercantilism calls out.Go up to those assholes and dumbfound them back, Sonny says.Its here? physician asks, peering into the trees.What, you think I found a body? Of stemma its here. atomic number 101 speeds up, stops just nookie Sonny, and stares at the woods.Doc, you see it? Kaiser observation shouts, and he speeds up, too.Nope, Doc says.You cant see it from there, Sonny tells him. Will you please get your ass in gear and tell Beezer to come back here?Why dont you do it, instead? Doc says.Because if I leave this spot, I might not ever be able to fucking find it again, Sonny says.Mouse and Beezer, now about sixty feet up the road, continue jubilantly on their way.Well, I still dont see it, Doc says.Sonny sighs. Come up alongside me. Doc walks his Fat male child to a poin t parallel with Sonnys bike, then moves a couple of inches ahead. There, Sonny says, pointing at the sign.Doc squints and leans over, putting his head to a higher place Sonnys handle-bars. Where? Oh, I see it now. Its all puzzle to hell.The top half of the sign curls over and shades the bottom half. Some unsociable lad has happened along and creased the sign with his baseball game bat. His older brothers, more advanced in the ways of crime, had tried to kill it with their .22 rifles, and he was just delivering the coup de grace.Wheres the road supposed to be? Doc asks.Sonny, who is a little troubled about this point, indicates the flat planer of darkness to the right of the sign and extending to the next, teensyer oak tree. As he looks at it, the darkness loses its two-dimensionality and deepens backward deal a cave, or a black hole softly punched through the air. The cave, the black hole, melts and widens into the earthen road, about five and a half feet wide, that it must have been all along.That sure as hell is it, says Kaiser circuit card. I dont know how all of us could have missed it the first time.Sonny and Doc peek at each other, realizing that the Kaiser came along too late to watch the road seem to materialize out of a black wall with the mysteriousness of a sheet of paper.Its anatomy of tricky, Sonny says. Your look have to adjust, Doc says.Okay, says Kaiser Bill, but if you two want to argue about who tells Mouse and the Beeze, let me put you out of your misery. He jams his bike into gear and tears off interchangeable a World War I messenger with a hot dispatch from the front. By now a long way up the road, Mouse and Beezer come to a halt and look back, having apparently heard the straits of his bike.I guess thats it, Sonny says, with an uneasy glance at Doc. Our eyes had to adjust.Couldnt be anything else. slight convinced than they would same(p) to be, both men let it drop in respect of ceremonial Kaiser Bill conversing with Bee zer and Mouse. The Kaiser points at Sonny and Doc, Beezer points. Then Mouse points at them, and the Kaiser points again. It looks like a discussion in an super unevolved version of sign language. When everybody has gotten the point, Kaiser Bill spins his bike around and comes roaring back down the road with Beezer and Mouse on his tail.There is always that feeling of disorder, of misrule, when Beezer is not in the lead.The Kaiser stops on the side of the narrow road. Beezer and Mouse halt beside him, and Mouse winds up stationed directly in front of the chess opening in the woods.Shouldnt have been that hard to see, Beezer says. precisely there she is, anyhow. I was beginning to have my doubts, Mousie.Uh-huh, says Mouse. His customary manner, that of an intellectual rough contend with a playful take on the world, has lost all of its buoyancy. Beneath his bikers fair-weather sunburn, his skin looks spotter and curdlike.I want to tell you guys the truth, Beezer says. If Sawyer is right about this place, the creepy fuck who built it could have set up booby traps and all sorts of surprises. It was a long time ago, but if he really is the fisherman, he has more reason than ever to keep people away from his crib. So we gotta watch our backs. The best way to do that is to go in strong, and go in ready. Put your weapons where you can reach them in a hurry, all right?Beezer opens one of his saddlebags and draws out a Colt 9mm handgun with bead grips and a blue-steel gun barrel. He chambers a round and unlocks the safety. Under his gaze, Sonny pulls his broad .357 Magnum from his bag, Doc a Colt identical to Beezers, and Kaiser Bill an old S .38 Special he has owned since the late s reddenties. They shove the weapons, which until this hour have seen use only on ardor ranges, into the hammocks of their leather jackets. Mouse, who does not own a gun, pats the various knives he has secreted in the small of his back, in the hip and front pockets of his jeans, a nd sheathed within both of his boots.Okay, Beezer says. Anybody in there is going to hear us coming no matter what we do, and perchance already has heard us, so theres no point in being under tree branch about this. I want a fast, aggressive entrance just what you guys are good at. We can use speed to our advantage. Depending on what happens, we get as close to the house as possible.What if nothing happens? asks the Kaiser. Like, if we roll on in there and just keep going until we get to the house? I mean, I dont see any particular reason to be spooked here. Okay, something bad happened to Mouse, but . . . you know. Doesnt mean its going to happen all over again.Then we enjoy the ride, Beezer says.Dont you want to take a look inside? the Kaiser asks. He might have kids in there.He might be in there, Beezer tells him. If he is, no matter what I said to Sawyer, were bringing him out. animate would be better than dead, but I wouldnt mind putting him in a salutary state of bad heal th.He gets a rumble of approval. Mouse does not contribute to this wordless, but otherwise comprehensive agreement he lowers his head and tightens his hands on the grips of his bike.Because Mouse has been here before, he goes in on point. Doc and Ill be right behind him, with Sonny and the Kaiser blocking our asses. Beezer glances at them and says, Stay about six, eight feet back, all right?Dont put Mouse on point you have to go in first, speaks in Sonnys mind, but he says, All right, Beeze.Line up, Beezer says.They move their bikes into the positions Beezer has specified. Anyone driveway fast along way 35 would have to hit his brakes to vitiate running into at least two beefy men on motorcycles, but the road stays empty. Everyone, including Mouse, guns his engine and prepares to move. Sonny slaps his fist against the Kaisers and looks back at that dark tunnel into the woods.A big blow flaps onto a low-hanging branch, cocks its head, and seems to fix Sonnys eyes with its own. The rejoice must be looking at all of them, Sonny knows, but he cannot shake the illusion that the crow is staring directly at him, and that its black insatiable eyes are move with malice. The uncomfortable feeling that the crow is divert by the sight of him bent over his bike makes Sonny think of his Magnum. move around you into a mess of bloody feathers, baby.Without anthesis its wings, the crow hops backward and disappears into the oak leaves.GO Beezer shouts.The moment Mouse charges in, Little Nancys rotting hands clamp down on his shoulders. Her thin bones press down on the leather hard enough to leave bruises on his skin. Although he knows this is impossible you cannot get rid of what does not exist the sudden flare of trouble causes him to try to shake her off. He twitches his shoulders and wiggles the handlebars, and the bike wobbles. As the bike dips, Little Nancy launching pad in harder. When Mouse rights himself, she pulls herself forward, wraps her bony harness around his chest, and flattens her body against his back. Her skull grinds against the nape of his be intimate her teething cunte down on his skin.It is too much. Mouse had known she would reappear, but not that she would put him in a vise. And despite his speed, he has the feeling that he is traveling through a sum heavier and more viscous than air, a contour of syrup that slows him down, grants him back. Both he and the bike seem unnaturally dense, as if graveness exerts a stronger pull on the little road than anywhere else. His head pounds, and already he can hear that leaper growling in the woods off to his right. He could take all of that, he supposes, if it were not for what stopped him the last time he drove up this path a dead woman. Then she was Kiz Martin now the dead woman is Little Nancy, and she is ride him like a dervish, slapping his head, punching him in the side, strike his ears. He feels her teeth leave his neck opening and sink into the unexpended sho ulder of his jacket. unrivaled of her arms whips in front of him, and he enters a deeper level of shock and standoff when he realizes that this arm is visible. Rags of skin flit over long bones he glimpses white maggots sinuate into the some stay knots of flesh.A hand that feels both squishy and bony flaps onto his cheek and crawls up his face. Mouse cannot keep it together any longer his mind fills with white panic, and he loses go steady of the bike. When he heads into the distort that leads to Black House, the wheels are already tilting dangerously, and Mouses sideways jerk of mutual exclusiveness pushes them over beyond the possibility of correction.As the bike topples, he hears the dog snarling from only a hardly a(prenominal) yards away. The Harley smashes down on his left leg, then skids ahead, and he and his sickish passenger slide after it. When Mouse sees Black House looming from its dark mandrel amid the trees, a rotting hand flattens over his eyes. His screa m is a bright, thin sop up of run short against the cult of the dog.A few seconds after going in, Beezer feels the air modify and congeal around him. Its some trick, he tells himself, an illusion produced by the Fishermans mind-fuck toxins. Trusting that the others will not be suckered by this illusion, he raises his head and looks over Mouses broad back and cornrowed head to see the road crimp to the left about fifty feet ahead. The thick air seems to weigh down on his arms and shoulders, and he feels the onset of the beat and father of all headaches, a dull, exacting pain that begins as a precipitate twinge behind his eyes and moves sluggish deeper into his brain. Beezer gives Doc a half second of attention, and from what he sees, Doc is taking care of business. A glance at the speed indicator tells him that he is traveling at thirty-five miles per hour and gathering steam, so they should be doing sixty by the time they come into the curve.Off to his left, a dog growls. Beezer hauls his side arm out of his pocket and listens to the growling keep pace with them as they speed toward the curve. The band of pain in his head widens and intensifies it seems to push at his eyes from the inside, making them bulge in their sockets. The big dog it has to be a dog, what else could it be? is getting closer, and the fury of its hoo-hahs makes Beezer see a whale, tossing head with gross red eyes and ropes of slather brisk from a gaping lip modify with sharks teeth.Two separate things destroy his concentration the first is that he sees Mouse slamming himself back and forth on his bike as he goes into the curve, as if he is arduous to scratch his back on the leaf node air the second is that the pressure behind his eyes triples in force, and immediately after he sees Mouse going into what is sure enough a fall, the blood vessels in his eyes explode. From deep red, his vision shifts rapidly to absolute black. An ill-favoured voice starts up in his head, saying, Amy zadt in my lap an huggedt mee. I make opp my mindt to eed hurr. How she dud, dud, dud kick an scrutch. I chokked hurr do deff No Beezer shouts, and the voice that is pushing at his eyes drops into a rasping chuckle. For less than a second, he gets a vision of a tall, shadowy animal and a single eye, a flash of teeth beneath a hat or a hood and the world suddenly revolves around him, and he ends up flat on his back with the bike deliberateness on his chest. Everything he sees is stained a dark, seething red. Mouse is screaming, and when Beezer turns his head in the direction of the screams, he sees a red Mouse guile on a red road with a huge red dog barreling toward him. Beezer cannot find his side arm it went sailing into the woods. Shouts, screams, and the roar of motorcycles fill his ears. He scrambles out from under the bike yelling he knows not what. A red Doc flashes by on his red bike and almost knocks him down again. He hears a gunshot, then another.Doc sees Beezer glance at him and tries not to show how sick he feels. Dishwater boils in his tum, and his guts are writhing. It feels like he is going about five miles an hour, the air is so thick and rancid. For some reason, his head weighs thirty or forty pounds, damnedest thing it would almost be interesting if he could stop the chance happening inside him. The air seems to boil down itself, to solidify, and then boom, his head turns into a superheavyweight bowl ball that wants to drop onto his chest. A giant growling sound comes from out of the woods beside him, and Doc almost yields to the impulse to puke. He is dimly aware that Beezer is pulling out his gun, and he supposes he should do the same, but part of his problem is that the memory of a child named Daisy Temperly has moved into his mind, and the memory of Daisy Temperly paralyzes his will.As a resident in mathematical process at the university hospital in Urbana, Doc had performed, under supervision, nearly a hundred opera tions of every sort and back up at as many. Until Daisy Temperly was wheeled into the O.R., all of them had gone well. Complicated but not especially difficult or life-threatening, her baptistry involved bone grafts and other sterilize work. Daisy was being put back together again after a serious auto accident, and she had already endured two previous(prenominal) surgeries. Two hours after the start of the procedure, the head of the department, Docs supervisor, was called away for an emergency operation, and Doc was left in charge. Partly because he had been sleep-deprived for cardinal hours, partly because in his exhaustion he had pictured himself cruising along the highway with Beezer, Mouse, and his other new friends, he made a mistake not during the operation, but after it. While writing a prescription drug for medication, he miscalculated the dosage, and two hours later, Daisy Temperly was dead. There were things he could have done to rescue his career, but he did none of them. He was allowed to finish his residency, and then he left treat for good. Talking to Jack Sawyer, he had immensely simplified his motives.The uproar in the cracker of his body can no longer be contained. Doc turns his head and vomits as he races forward. It is not the first time he has puked while riding, but it is the messiest and the most painful. The weight of his bowling-ball head means that he cannot extend his neck, so vomit spatters against his right shoulder and right arm and what comes spring out of him feels alive and equipped with teeth and claws. He is not surprised to see blood mixed with the vomit erupting from his mouth. His stomach doubles in on itself with pain.Without nub to, Doc has slowed down, and when he accelerates and faces forward again, he sees Mouse topple over sideways and skid behind his bike into the curve up ahead. His ears report a race sound, like that of a distant waterfall. Dimly, Mouse screams equally dimly, Beezer shouts No Right afte r that, the Beeze runs headlong into a big rock or some other obstruction, because his Electra Glide leaves the ground, flips completely over in the compacted air, and comes down on top of him. It occurs to Doc that this mission is totally FUBAR. The whole world has hung a left, and now they are in deep shit. He does the only sensible thing he yanks his trusty 9mm out of his pocket and tries to phone number out what to shoot first.His ears pop, and the sounds around him surge into life. Mouse is still screeching. Doc cannot figure out how he missed hearing the noise of the dog before, because even with the roaring of the cycles and Mouses screams, that moving growl is the jazzyest sound in the woods. The fucking Hound of the Baskervilles is locomote toward them, and both Mouse and Beezer are out of commission. From the noise it makes, the thing must be the size of a bear. Doc aims the shooting atomic number 26 straight ahead and steers with one hand as he blasts by Beezer, who is wriggling out from beneath his bike. That enormous sound Doc imagines a bear-sized dog siding its chops around Mouses head, and instantly erases the image. Things are happening too fast, and if he doesnt pay attention, those jaws could close on him.He has just time enough to think, Thats no ordinary dog, not even a huge one when something enormous and black comes charging out of the woods to his right and cuts on a bias toward Mouse. Doc pulls the trigger, and at the sound of the pistol the tool whirls halfway around and snarls at him. All Doc can see clearly are two red eyes and an open red mouth with a long tongue and a lot of sharp canine teeth. Everything else is un white and indistinct, with no more definition than if it were cover in a swirling cape. A lightning vamoose of pure terror that tastes as clean and sharp as cheap vodka pierces Doc from gullet to testicles, and his bike slews its rear end around and comes to a halt he has stopped it out of sheer reflex. S uddenly it feels like deep night. Of course he cant see it how could you see a black dog in the place of the night?The creature whirls around again and streaks toward Mouse.It doesnt want to charge me because of the gun and because the other two guys are right behind me, Doc thinks. His head and arms seem to have gained another forty pounds apiece, but he fights against the weight of his muscles and straightens his arms and fires again. This time he knows he hits that thing, but its only reaction is to shudder off-course for a moment. The big smudge of its head swings toward Doc. The growling gets even louder, and long, silvery spuders of dog drool fly from its open mouth. Something that suggests a tail switches back and forth.When Doc looks into the open red gash, his break weakens, his arms get heavier, and he is scarcely capable of holding his head upright. He feels as though he is move down into that red maw his pistol dangles from his limp hand. In a moment suspended throu ghout eternity, the same hand scribbles a post-op prescription for Daisy Temperly. The creature trots toward Mouse. Doc can hear Sonnys voice, cursing furiously. A loud flare-up on his right side seals both of his ears, and the world falls perfectly silent. Here we are, Doc says to himself. dimness at noon.For Sonny, the darkness strikes at the same time as the searing pain in his head and his stomach. A single band of agony rips right down through his body, a phenomenon so unparalleled and extreme point that he assumes it has also erased the daylight. He and Kaiser Bill are eight feet behind Beezer and Doc, and about fifteen feet up the narrow ungraded road. The Kaiser lets go of his handlebars and grips the sides of his head. Sonny understands exactly how he feels a four-foot section of curvy iron pipe has been thrust through the top of his head and pushed down into his guts, burning everything it touches. Hey, man, he says, in his misery noticing that the air has turned sludg y, as though individual atoms of group O and carbon dioxide are gummy enough to stick to his skin. Then Sonny notices that the Kaisers eyes are swimming up toward the back of his head, and he realizes that the man is passing out right next to him. Sick as he is, he has to do something to defend the Kaiser. Sonny reaches out for the other mans bike, watching as well as he can the disappearance of the Kaisers irises beneath his speeding eyelids. Blood explodes out of his nostrils, and his body slumps backward on the seat and rolls over the side. For a couple of seconds, he is dragged along by a boot caught in the handlebars, but the boot slips off, and the cycle drifts to a halt.The red-hot iron bar seems to rupture his stomach, and Sonny has no choice he lets the other bike fall and utters a moan and bends sideways and vomits out what feels like every meal he has ever eaten. When nothing is left inside him, his stomach feels better, but John Henry has indomitable to drive giant rail spikes through his skull. His arms and legs are made of rubber. Sonny focuses on his bike. It seems to be standing still. He does not understand how he can go forward, but he watches a blood-spattered hand gun his bike and manages to stay upright when it takes off. Is that my blood? he wonders, and remembers two long red flags unfurling from the Kaisers nose.A noise that had been gathering strength in the accent turns into the sound of a 747 coming in for a landing. Sonny thinks that the last thing he wants to do today is get a look at the wildcat capable of making that sound. Mouse was right on the money this is a bad, bad place, right up there with the comely town of Harko, Illinois. Sonny wishes to encounter no more Harkos, okay? One was enough. So why is he moving forward instead of turning around and running for the sunny peace of Highway 35? Why is he pulling that monolithic gun out of his pocket? Its simple. He is not about to let that jet-airplane-dog mess up his hom eys, no matter how much his head diminisheds.John Henry keeps cock in those five-dollar spikes while Sonny picks up speed and squints at the road ahead, trying to figure out what is going on. individual screams, he cannot identify who. Through the growling, he hears the unmistakable sound of a motorcycle hitting the ground after a flip, and his heart shivers. Beezer should always be point man, he thinks, otherwise were asking for punishment. A gun goes off with a loud explosion. Sonny forces himself to press through the adhesive atoms in the air, and after another five or six seconds he vagabond Beezer, who is painfully pushing himself upward beside his toppled bike. A few feet beyond Beezer, Docs bulky figure comes into view, sitting astride his bike and aiming his 9 at something in the road ahead of him. Doc fires, and red flame bursts from the barrel of his pistol.Feeling more beat-up and uneffective than ever before in his life, Sonny jumps from his moving bike and runs to ward Doc, trying to look past him. The first thing he sees is a flash of light off Mouses bike, which comes into view flat on its side about twenty feet down the road, at the top of the curve. Then he finds Mouse, on his ass and scrambling backward from some carnal Sonny can barely make out, except for its eyes and teeth. Unconscious of the stream of obscenities that pour from his mouth, Sonny levels his pistol at the creature and fires just as he runs past Doc.Doc just stands there Doc is out for the count. The weird animal up on the road closes its jaws on Mouses leg. It is going to rip away a hamburger-sized chunk of muscle, but Sonny hits it with a fucking hollow-point missile from his Magnum, a bit show-offy for target practice but under the circumstances no more than prudent, thank you very much. Contrary to all expectations and the laws of physics, Sonnys atrocious wonderbullet does not knock a hole the size of a football in the creatures hide. The wonderbullet pushes the a nimal sideways and distracts it from Mouses leg it does not even knock it down. Mouse sends up a howl of pain.The dog whips around and glares at Sonny with red eyes the size of baseballs. Its mouth opens on scraggy white teeth, and it snaps the air. Ropes of slime shoot out of its jaws. The creature lowers its shoulders and steps forward. Amazingly, its snarling grows in the great unwashed and ferocity. Sonny is being warned if he does not turn and run, he is next on the menu.Fuck that, Sonny says, and fires straight at the animals mouth. Its whole head should fly by in bloody rags, but for a second after the Magnum goes off, nothing changes.Oh, shit, Sonny thinks.The dog-things eyes blaze, and its feral, wedge-shaped head seems to piece itself out of the darkness in the air and emerge into view. As though an inky robe had been partially twitched aside, Sonny can see a thick neck descending to meaty shoulders and strong front legs. Maybe the tide is turning here, perhaps this m onster will turn out to be vulnerable after all. Sonny braces his right wrist with his left hand, aims at the dog-things chest, and squeezes off another round. The explosion seems to stuff his ears with cotton. All the railroad spikes in his head heat up like electric coils, and bright pain sings between his temples.Dark blood gouts from the creatures brisket. At the center of Sonny Cantinaros being, a pure, primitive predominate bursts into life. More of the monster melts into visibility, the wide back and a suggestion of its rear legs. Of no recognizable breed and four and a half feet high, the dog-thing is approximately the size of a gigantic wolf. When it moves toward him, Sonny fires again. Like an echo, the sound of his gun repeats from somewhere close behind a bullet like a supercharged wasp zings past his chest.The creature staggers back, limping on an hurt leg. Its enraged eyes bore into Sonnys. He risks glancing over his shoulder and sees Beezer braced in the middle of t he narrow road.Dont look at me, shoot Beezer yells.His voice seems to awaken Doc, who raises his arm and takes aim. Then all three of them are pulling their triggers, and the little road sounds like the firing range on a busy day. The dog-thing (hell hound, Sonny thinks) limps back a step and opens wide its terrible mouth to howl in rage and frustration. ahead the howl ends, the creature gathers its rear legs beneath its body, springs across the road, and vanishes into the woods.Sonny fights off the impulse to collapse under a wave of relief and fatigue. Doc swivels his body and keeps firing into the darkness behind the trees until Beezer puts a hand on his arm and orders him to stop. The air stinks of cordite and some animal odor that is musky and distastefully sweet. Pale gray smoke shimmers almost white as it filters upward through the darker air.Beezers haggard face turns to Sonny, and the whites of his eyes are crimson. You hit that fucking animal, didnt you? Through the set up of cotton in his ears, Beezers voice sounds small and tinny.Shit, yes. At least twice, probably three times.And Doc and I hit it once apiece. What the hell is that thing? What the hell is right, Sonny says. sagging with pain, Mouse a third time repeats his cry of Help me and the others hear him at last. Moving slowly and pressing their hands over whatever parts of their bodies hurt the most, they hobble up the road and rest in front of Mouse. The right leg of his jeans is ripped and soaked with blood, and his face is contorted.Are you assholes deafen ?Pretty near, Doc says. Tell me you didnt take a bullet in your leg.No, but it must be some kind of miracle. He winces and inhales sharply. Air hisses between his teeth. focussing you guys were shooting. Too bad you couldnt draw a bead before it bit my leg.I did, Sonny says. Reason you still got a leg.Mouse peers at him, then shakes his head. What happened to the Kaiser?He lost about a liter of blood through his nose and passed o ut, Sonny tells him.Mouse sighs as if at the frailty of the human species. I believe we might try to get out of this crazy shithole.Is your leg all right? Beezer asks.Its not broken, if thats what you mean. But its not all right, either.What? Doc asks.I cant say, Mouse tells him. I dont dish out medical questions from guys all covered in puke.Can you ride?Fuck yes, Beezer you ever know me when I couldnt ride?Beezer and Sonny each take a side and, with excruciating effort, lift Mouse to his feet. When they expiration his arms, Mouse lumbers sideways a few steps. This is not right, he says.Thats brilliant, says Beezer.Beeze, old buddy, you know your eyes are, like, bright red? You look like fuckin Dracula.To the extent that hurry is possible, they are hurrying. Doc wants to get a look at Mouses leg Beezer wants to make sure that Kaiser Bill is still alive and all of them want to get out of this place and back into normal air and sunlight. Their heads pound, and their muscles ache from strain. None of them can be sure that the dog-thing is not preparing for another charge.As they speak, Sonny has been picking up Mouses Fat Boy and rolling it toward its owner. Mouse takes the handles and pushes his machine forward, wincing as he goes. Beezer and Doc rescue their bikes, and six feet along Sonny pulls his upright out of a snarl of weeds.Beezer realizes that when he was at the curve in the road, he failed to look for Black House. He remembers Mouse saying, This shit doesnt want to be seen, and he thinks Mouse got it just about right the Fisherman did not want them there, and the Fisherman did not want his house to be seen. Everything else was reel around in his head the way his Electra Glide had spun over after that ugly voice spoke up in his mind. Beezer is certain of one thing, however Jack Sawyer is not going to hold out on him any longer.Then a terrible thought strikes him, and he asks, Did anything funny anything really strange happen to you guys before t he dog from hell jumped out of the woods? Besides the physical stuff, I mean.He looks at Doc, and Doc blushes. howdy? Beezer thinks.Mouse says, Go fuck yourself. Im not gonna talk about that.Im with Mouse, Sonny says.I guess the answer is yes, Beezer says.Kaiser Bill is lying by the side of the road with his eyes closed and the front of his body wet with blood from mouth to waist. The air is still gray and sticky their bodies seem to weigh a thousand pounds, the bikes to roll on leaden wheels. Sonny walks his bike up beside the Kaisers supine body and kicks him, not all that gently, in the ribs.The Kaiser opens his eyes and groans. Fuck, Sonny, he says. You kicked me. His eyelids flutter, and he lifts his head off the ground and notices the blood soaking into his clothing. What happened? Am I shot?You conducted yourself like a hero, Sonny says. How do you feel?Lousy. Where was I hit?How am I supposed to know? Sonny says. Come on, were getting out of here.The others file past. Kaise r Bill manages to get to his feet and, after another epic struggle, hauls his bike upright beside him. He pushes it down the track after the others, marveling at the pain in his head and the total of blood on his body. When he comes out through the last of the trees and joins his friends on Highway 35, the sudden brightness stabs his eyes, his body feels light enough to float away, and he nearly passes out all over again. I dont think I did get shot, he says.No one pays any attention to the Kaiser. Doc is asking Mouse if he wants to go to the hospital.No hospital, man. Hospitals kill people.At least let me take a look at your leg.Fine, look.Doc kneels at the side of the road and tugs the cuff of Mouses jeans up to the bottom of his knee. He probes with surprisingly voiced fingers, and Mouse winces.Mouse, he says, Ive never seen a dog bite like this before.never saw a dog like that before, either.The Kaiser says, What dog?Theres something funny about this wound, Doc says. You need antibiotics, and you need them right away.Dont you have antibiotics?Sure, I do.Then lets go back to Beezers place, and you can stick me full of needles. whatsoever you say, says Doc.