49.

Jim Bishop opened his eyes. He had to get to Weiss. He had to get to the house in the middle of nowhere or Weiss would die.

He didn't know where he was at first. He had come from darkness into darkness. He had come from somewhere black inside himself into a room that was deep gray with shadow. He was aware of vague rhythms. The click and whisper and peep of machines. His own body, heartbeat, pulse, and breath. He felt he had been away from all this for a long time.

Now things came clear. The rhythms, the noises, the blurred shapes in the shadows. There was a bed, tubes, chairs. He was in a hospital room. There was a woman in one of the chairs. She had a newspaper on her lap. Her head was down on her chest. She was sleeping. He recognized her. Sissy.

Bishop felt a rush of energy. The sight of Sissy reminded him who he was. He remembered how he had come to Phoenix, how he had been shot in the hotel. He remembered the fall from the hotel window, the certainty that he was dying, dying.

But he had not died. That was the point. He was alive in the shadowy room.

And he had to get to Weiss. He didn't know how he knew this, but he did. He didn't know how he knew about the house in the middle of nowhere, but he knew that too. And he knew it was urgent. Everything depended on him. He had to get to the house or Weiss would die.

He lost consciousness again, faded from the surface of the world. Even then, the sense of urgency stayed with him. He fought his way back. He forced his eyes open. He tried to remember how things were. Some of it tumbled into place and some of it wouldn't. The sickening sense that he had failed-that came back to him, all right. He had been trying to help Weiss, but the Shadowman had set a trap for him, and he had walked into it like a prize idiot. That much came back to him, but the rest… There was something he had to say, something he had to tell Weiss that would save him. But what was it? And the house. How did he know about the house? How was he supposed to find it? He tried to remember, but there was nothing. All that was gone.

It didn't matter. He had to start moving. Start moving and he would remember. He would find a way.

So he tried to move. What a comedy that turned out to be. He felt as if he were a tiny little stick figure Bishop trapped inside a full-sized Bishop, trying to lift the full-sized man with his tiny little stick figure strength. There was no chance.

But somehow he had to do it. He had to get to the house, to Weiss. He tried again. He focused on his hand. He closed it into a fist. It took a long time, the fingers slowly curling, clenching. Afterward he fell back inside himself, exhausted. It didn't matter. He had to keep trying. He didn't know what time it was, but he knew there was no time to fuck around.

He went back to work at it. It took… he didn't know how long. He felt the sweat bead on his forehead. He felt the weakness open at his core like a hole. Slowly, slowly, he filled his hollow muscles with his will. He lifted his arm. He reached across himself. He clawed at the tubes that seemed to snake into his flesh from somewhere in the shadows above him. With a hoarse gasp of pain, he dragged the tubes out of himself. He flung them aside. They sprayed drops of clear fluid and drops of red blood over the white sheets.

Then Bishop sat up. He found his clothes. He got dressed. It was a desperately long process, desperately long and slow. Lucky for him he wasn't there for a lot of it. It came to him in strobic flashes of consciousness. Between the flashes, there was only weakness, nausea, blackouts. He didn't feel pain-not pain in one place or another. It was all pain. Pain was the air he breathed.

But now, somehow, it was done. He discovered himself sitting on the edge of the bed. He was panting, sweating, sick-but he had his jeans pulled on and a T-shirt pulled down over his bandages.

He swallowed. He turned his head. Sissy was still there, still sleeping. She hadn't moved.

Bishop began to think about standing. It was not a happy thought. He was bigger inside than he had been, bigger than the little stick figure man he was before. But still. It was an awfully long way to his feet. An even longer way to the door. And a long way to fall if he didn't make it.

Minutes went by. He sat there, sick just thinking about it. He tried to gather his strength for the effort.

Finally, he wrapped his hand around the rail at the foot of the bed. He pushed himself up. All the pain in the world suddenly spun down in a vortex to center in his belly. Bishop grimaced at the agony, his mouth open, his teeth bare. Bent over, he clung to the bed rail with both hands, trying not to tumble to the floor. He breathed hard. He breathed back the pain. Then, with a low growl, he launched himself in the direction of the door.

Now he was traveling down the hospital hallway. It seemed a weird and ghostly place. Nurses and aides floated by him like white phantoms. The walls fogged and melted from the edges of his consciousness. The floor sloped down into misty nothing. He stumbled along it as if drawn by gravity. At one point he must've passed a mirror. He saw his own face. Horrible, horrible. Corpse-white with faint under-traces of corpse-green. The eyes had sunk down into two dark holes. He was afraid someone would notice him looking like that, afraid someone would try to stop him and take him back to bed. But no one did. He stumbled on.

The next thing he knew he was somewhere else, somewhere in the night, moving through the night. Everything was shaking, rumbling. He became aware of nausea, an awful dryness in his mouth, awful pain. Then there was the noise. A rushing, whispered roar all around him. His eyes came open suddenly. He saw a strip of light pass over the leg of his jeans. He tried to lift his head off his chest. He managed to hoist it up, then it rolled back against some sort of seat.

He was in the cab of a truck. Out through the windshield, he saw two-lane blacktop in the headlights. How had he gotten here? He tried to remember. An image came into his mind. He saw himself stumbling along the side of a road. He remembered how grateful he had been for the cool night air on his cheeks because it kept him from fainting. Now he was in a truck. He must have managed to hitch a ride.

He rolled his head to one side so he could see the driver. The lights of an oncoming car passed over the cab. He saw the driver in the light. By an odd coincidence, the driver happened to be an alien monster from a comic book he had read as a child. He had yellow eyes and a long red snout with sharp teeth bared in a drooling grin. This worried Bishop in a distant sort of way. Maybe he had died trying to leave the hospital and this demon had been sent to drive him down to hell.

His head rolled back on the seat. His gorge rose. He thought he would vomit for sure. The light passed and the cab sank back into darkness. Bishop closed his eyes. That couldn't be right about the demon, he thought. That didn't make any sense. He looked again and, in fact, the driver was not a demon after all. He was a fat white guy with a round bald head and a long, wispy red-blond beard. That was better. He lay back again. He closed his eyes again.

Now all he had to do was remember the other thing. What was he supposed to tell Weiss? It started to come back to him. The hotel. The egg-shaped man in the Hawaiian shirt. The specialist had had nowhere to hide a gun, but he had had a gun. The Saracen.

That was it. The Shadowman's plan. He was planning for Weiss to outsmart him. He was planning for Weiss to take his gun away, to take two of his guns. But he had a third gun, the Saracen, that he could hide where no one would find it.

"This the place?"

The driver's rough voice startled him out of sleep. He felt as if he had slept for a long time. He felt better, stronger. He opened his eyes.

The truck had stopped somewhere in the dark. Bishop looked out the window. There was a house out there, a silhouette in the night. How had he gotten here? How had he known to tell the driver where to go?

Confused, he looked at the driver. The driver inclined his bald pate toward the house.

"That the one?"

Bishop wiped his lips with his hand. He looked out the window again. Was that the house? How could he know? But he must've told the driver how to get here. He must've known the way in his unconscious somehow.

"Thanks," he croaked.

"You take care of yourself," the driver told him.

Bishop shoved the door open, shouldered it open with a grunt. It took all his strength. He began the long, difficult climb down from the high cab to the pavement.

He stood in front of the house. He was swaying like a sapling in a swirling breeze. Behind him, the truck drove away into the night. Bishop started up the house's front walk.

He did not feel like a tiny stick figure anymore. He filled his own body. But there was no strength in him. He was weak, so weak. He drove himself forward step by staggering step. He saw the house lurching and swaying in front of him, looming closer. It was a sickening sight. It filled him with fear. Was he too late? Was it over already? Was Weiss already dead?

He kept walking. He reached the door. He pushed inside.

He could see the shapes of things. Furniture in a room. Table, chair, sofa. No one was there. He felt sick, so sick and weak and full of fear. He wanted to lie down on the floor and go to sleep again. Where was everyone?

Then he saw the door. Somehow, he knew that's where he had to go. How did he know? Who had told him? He remembered a voice whispering in his ear. But whose voice? Who was it?

He didn't know. But he knew what he had to do. He staggered to the door. There was a handle on it. He grabbed hold of it. The door was heavy, hard to move. He didn't know where he found the muscle power to haul it open, but he did, shouting out with the pain and the effort.

He stood, panting, on the threshold. He couldn't tell what was real anymore and what wasn't. He was so sick, so weak, so miserable. Everything seemed so weird, so far away. Maybe none of it was real. The cellar stairs, for instance: they seemed to wind down and down forever. He didn't think the stairway was real. He didn't see how it could be. But he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure about his tears either. He felt them, hot, streaking his cheeks, but he didn't know if they were really there.

He went spiraling down and down the stairs impossibly. Finally, he stumbled out onto a cellar floor of packed dirt. Dazed and ill, he looked around, trying to get his bearings. A door slammed, startling him. He looked up. The stairs were just wooden stairs now. And the door at the top of the flight was shut. As Bishop stood there looking at it, he smelled gasoline. Gasoline was spilling down through the door, running down the stairs, dripping onto the cellar floor. The specialist had outsmarted him again, had caught him again. Bishop understood what was going to happen next a second before it did.

The gas caught fire. Of course. Flames spread over the cellar ceiling and down the stairs, blocking the way out.

Bishop stood squinting up at the flames. He knew this was real. He was trapped down here. And Weiss-where the hell was Weiss?

He turned to scan the cellar. There he was. He saw Weiss's body in the hectic light from the flames. Weiss was lying on the dirt cellar floor. He was lying on his side, one hand stretched up over his head, one resting in front of him. Bishop might have thought he was sleeping there, but for the blood that had run out of the center of him. It was pooled in the packed dirt, black in the firelight.

"Weiss." Bishop tried to shout the word but it was barely a rasp. He staggered across the cellar to him. He caught hold of a support beam, wrapped his arm around it. He slid down the beam to the floor, kneeling by his old boss.

He glanced over his shoulder. The fire was spreading up the walls and down the stairs toward him. He could feel the heat of it now. It dried the tears on his cheeks. The first tendrils of hot, black smoke drifted into his nostrils.

He wanted to die. He had failed at everything, even this. He wanted to kneel here and let the fire come and die with Weiss and have their bodies burn together. Crying dry, he looked down at the fallen man.

In the dancing flame glow, he saw Weiss's big body rise and fall with a breath.

"Jesus," Bishop murmured.

Weiss was still alive.

With a new feeling flooding into him, Bishop crawled across the floor to Weiss. He grabbed Weiss's heavy shoulder. He shook it, shouting, "Weiss! Weiss!" Behind him, the wood of the stairs began to crackle as it burned. The sound of the fire was growing louder. It was like a rushing wind. His voice was almost hidden beneath the noise of it. He shouted again. "Weiss!"

It was no good. Weiss just lay there. Bishop looked down at the sad, hangdog face, all slack and fleshy and flickering with fire. The sight of the old man made his heart ache. He wanted to tell him how sorry he was, sorry for everything. Sorry he had failed even at this.

But there was no point. Weiss couldn't hear him. Somehow Bishop would have to get him out of here and tell him then.

Bishop took a searing breath. He lifted his face. A black haze of smoke was hanging over him. Coughing, he looked down at Weiss. He had to lift him. That was the only way.

He worked as the smoke sank down toward him, as the fire leapt, crackling, around the stairs. He shoved and dragged Weiss's limp body onto its front. Grunting and hacking, he pushed himself off Weiss's back and stood and straddled him. He wrapped his arms around Weiss's enormous chest.

Holding on to Weiss, Bishop began moving backward. The effort ripped him open inside. He felt his innards tear ing like a paper bag. He screamed with the pain. He kept moving backward. Weiss was six foot four at least. Two hundred and fifty pounds at least. It didn't seem possible his body would keep rising, but it did. As Bishop moved backward, he drew Weiss to his knees. He went on screaming. He went on lifting Weiss. It was impossible, but it was real, like the fire and the tears were real.

Screaming again, he hauled Weiss to his feet. Holding him upright, he got around in front of him and raised one of his slack arms. Bishop bent his knees and pulled the arm over his shoulder. He brought the whole enormous body across his back, holding the arm with one hand and the dangling legs with the other.

Then, screaming wildly, he straightened, holding Weiss across his shoulders. His insides tore again. He felt hot fluid spilling inside him, spreading through him. He faced the fire on the stairs. The top steps were snapping and crumbling. Sparks were flying upward. The banister had become a line of bubbling flame.

Bishop charged up the stairs, up into the heart of the fire, carrying Weiss on his back. The flames surrounded him. The heat engulfed him. The smoke was everywhere, crawling over his hands, over his face. He lifted one leg and then another, climbing. His legs grew rubbery, weak. They wouldn't hold him. He fell to his knees. He rose again, screaming, lifting Weiss. The fire felt as if it would strip the flesh from his cheeks. He climbed. His guts bled inside him. He thought he must be dead already. He thought he must be a corpse animated by pure will.

He stepped on the top stair. It cracked. It caved in under his foot. Only the very bottom of the riser held. His foot came down onto it. He felt it bending with his weight. He had only another second before he broke clean through.

He drove himself forward into the door.

The door flew open. Bishop pushed through it, carrying Weiss. He was out-out in the upstairs room again. The room was ablaze. The whole house was burning. The night was blindingly bright with fire.

He turned, this way and that. The smoke was thick as mud. It smothered him like mud. He was lost in it. He couldn't see the door. He couldn't tell one direction from another. Black smoke was folding over him. Black unconsciousness was rising inside him.

It occurred to him that none of this was possible. It couldn't be real. It had to be a dream. But even then, in the impossible moment, with the black coming down over him and rising up inside him, he was struck with wonder by the fantastic appearance of a child.

He caught a glimpse of the child through the flames. He saw him standing in the chaos of smoke and fire, wonderfully calm, wonderfully still. It was a boy with red-gold hair and a beautiful face, all serene. Bishop remembered him from somewhere. He had seen him before as he had seen the demon truck driver before. It came to him then. The child was a character in a movie, some crap movie or other he had seen on TV. He had stayed up late one night, getting drunk on beer and staring at it. It was full of cliched images like this one, like this golden boy. He had watched the entire film. It was a complete piece of shit. He wished he had never wasted his time with it. Now he was stuck with this cliched kid, standing in the midst of the fire.

Well, maybe he wasn't real, Bishop thought, but there he was, all the same. He must've come in through the door. The door must be right behind him: the way out. Bishop went toward him, slogging across the blackness.

The fire clawed at his flesh. The smoke bore down on top of him. He staggered under the weight of the smoke and under the weight of Weiss. He went on, step by step, his knees starting to buckle. He carried Weiss to the child.

The child lifted his hackneyed and beautiful face. He lifted his white, white hand. Bishop held Weiss steady on his back with his right hand and held out his left toward the child. The child took hold of it. He drew Bishop forward, through the black smoke and the blackness inside him, through the flame and the flaming pain. Bishop gazed at the child, amazed and glad that he had come to him out of the crap movie. Then he looked up over the child's head. He saw the door. The door was a standing rectangle of white light. The child tugged him by the hand and drew him toward it.

The fire fell away behind him. The smoke and noise fell away. The door grew closer. The white light grew brighter, bigger. The white light surrounded him. The white light became everything.

Bishop opened his eyes. He didn't know where he was at first. He had come as if from light into light. He had been surrounded by that fantastic brightness, and now he was in the hospital room and the lights were on and Sissy was sitting over him. She smiled at him. She had a sweet smile. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

Bishop tried to speak to her. It was hard. He hurt. He hurt a lot.

"Ssh, take it easy, Jim," Sissy whispered. Bishop remembered her voice and how tender it always was. "You're gonna be okay. You made it. You made it back to us."

Bishop tried to speak again. His mouth moved but he hadn't the strength to push the words out.

"It was close there, let me tell you," Sissy went on, her voice breaking. "We weren't sure you were going to pull through. You're a pretty tough guy."

Bishop tried to lift his hand to her. He couldn't. He must've moved it, though. Sissy looked down at it and put her own hand into it. Bishop was glad to feel her. The soft woman skin. The cool woman skin.

His eyes traveled from her face, up and around the room. Chairs, the bed rail, a silver tray, tubes, machines. It was the same hospital room as before. He had never left it. The house in the middle of nowhere wasn't real. The demon wasn't real and the child wasn't and neither were the fire and the whole business about carrying Weiss. Only the darkness had been real. The darkness and the light. And the tears-he could feel the tears rolling down his face onto the pillow. They were real too.

He was alive. That was the point. He was still alive. Maybe he had failed at everything, but whatever needed to be done, there was still time to do it.

He licked his dry lips. He squeezed Sissy's hand. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was, how terribly sorry. He had not gotten to Weiss. He had not told him about the Shadowman's plan.

"It's all right," she whispered down at him. "It's all right."

Bishop closed his eyes, exhausted. He would live. There was time. But it was not all right. It was not all right at all. He had not reached Weiss. He had not told him the plan.

Weiss was still out there-still out there, in the middle of nowhere-alone.

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