Mystery Walk

32

It was after eleven o'clock, and Wayne was way late getting home. Jimmy Jed Falconer, in his robe and slippers, stood on the front porch in the cool night air and looked out toward the highway.

He'd slipped out of bed without waking Cammy, because he didn't want her to be worried. His belly bulged the knot at the front of his robe, but still his stomach growled for food. Where could the boy be at this time of night? he wondered. He stood on the porch for a few minutes longer, then went back through the large, rambling house to the kitchen.

He switched on the lights, opened the refrigerator, and brought out a piece of blueberry pie Esther the cook had baked just that afternoon. Pouring himself a cold glass of milk, he sat down for a late-night snack.

The summer was almost over. And what a glorious summer it had been, too! The Crusade had held tent revivals throughout Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana—hitting the larger towns and the cities—and next year would be ready for expansion into Texas and Arkansas. An ailing Fayette radio station had been purchased, as well as a South Carolina publishing company, and the first issue of Forward, the Crusade's magazine, would be out in October. Wayne had touched and healed a few thousand people over the course of the summer: the boy was a masterful orator, and could hold that stage like he'd been born on it. When Wayne had finished the healing segment of the program, the offering plates came back filled to the brim. Wayne was a good boy, and he was as smart as a whip; but he had a stubborn streak in him, too, and he persisted in going out in the airfield where his Beechcraft Bonanza was hangared and flying without a co-pilot, getting up m the sky and doing all kinds of crazy loops and rolls. That sort of thing scared Falconer to death: what if the plane should crash? Wayne was a good pilot, but he took a lot of risks, and he seemed to enjoy the danger.

Falconer gulped down the milk and chewed on a bite of pie. Yessir! It had been a glorious summer!

Suddenly he realized his left arm was tingling. He shook the hand, thinking it had somehow fallen asleep. It was very hot here in the kitchen, he noticed; he'd begun sweating.

Do you know what you're doing, son?

Falconer stopped with another piece of pie right at his mouth. He'd thought about the night in May many times, and the question the Hawthorne witch-woman had posed to Wayne. That question had surfaced in his mind as he'd watched the pale and hopeful faces of the sick and infirm passing by in the Healing Line, reaching up with trembling hands toward Wayne. Suddenly, the blueberry pie tasted like ashes. He put the fork down on his plate, and touched his chest where a quick needle-jab of pain had pierced. Now it had passed. The pain was gone. Good.

But his mind was wandering in dangerous territory. What if— what if—the witch-woman was right? And he'd known it all along, that Wayne's internal battery was getting weaker and weaker, and that was why he never dared ask Wayne to heal his diseased heart. And what if Wayne knew it, too, and was continuing to play the part because . . . because it was all he'd ever been taught to do.

No! Falconer thought. Wayne healed Toby, didn't he? And thousands of letters came in from people who said they were healed by Wayne's touch and presence!

He recalled a letter from long ago, sent to the Crusade office a week or so after the tent revival in Hawthorne. It had been from a woman named Posey, and Falconer had thrown it away as soon as he'd read it:

Dear Rev. Falconer, we just want to tell you that our son Jimmie has been took by Jesus. Your boy healed him at the revival in Hawthorne, but Jesus must have a purpose for our Jimmie in Heaven. I have paid my sin for selling my baby to Mr. Tillman. May the Lord be with you, and all of your teachings. Sincerely, Laura Posey.

Falconer had made sure Wayne would never see that letter, nor the few dozen letters similar to it that the Crusade had gotten. No, it was better that the boy never, never doubt himself.

Rising unsteadily from the kitchen table, Falconer went to the den and sat down in his easy chair. The framed Falconer Crusade poster, with him looking much younger and braver and stronger, was spotlit by a ceiling light.

Pain speared his chest. He wanted to get up now, and go upstairs to bed, but he couldn't make his body respond. Maybe he needed to take some Tums, that was all. His mind was tormented with the thought of Ramona Creekmore looking at his son and knowing it was all a lie; she had the eyes of Satan, and that boy of hers was walking Death, and it wasn't until he'd met them that his heart had begun to get worse.

Do you know what you're doing, son?

YES HE KNOWS! Falconer raged. HE KNOWS, YOU SATAN-SPAWN BITCH! When Wayne got home, Falconer would tell the boy how they would run the Creekmores out of Hawthorne, drive them off like dogs, far away to where their wicked influence couldn't seep back into the Falconer Crusade. Pain ran up and down his body, lancing across his ribs. "Cammy!" he moaned. "Cammy!"

Pluck them out! he thought. PLUCK THEM OUT!

"CAMMY!"

His hands curled around the armrests, the knuckles whitening. And then the pain struck him full-force, and his heart began to twist and writhe in his chest. His head rocked back, his face turning a deep reddish blue.

From the doorway, Cammy screamed. She was shocked, couldn't move.

"Heart ..." Falconer said in a hoarse, agonized voice. "Call . . . somebody. . . ."

She forced her legs to move, and raced for the telephone; she heard her husband moan for Wayne, and then as if from an awful fever dream he cried—or Cammy thought she heard—"Creekmore . . . pluck them out . . . oh, God, pluck them out. ..."

33

Dear Mom and Dad,

Hello, I hope everything is all right and you're doing fine. I'm writing this letter from Dothan, where the carnival is set up at the fairgrounds. We'll be here until the first of September, and then we go to Montgomery for a week. So far business has been good, Dr. Mirakle says, and he thinks we'll do real good when we get to Birmingham the first week in October. I hope all is well with both of you.

Dad, how are you feeling? I hope your reading is still getting better. I had a dream about you a couple of nights ago. We were walking to town on the highway, just like we used to do, and everybody waved and said hello to us. It must have been springtime in my dream, because there were new buds in the trees and the sky was the soft blue of April, before the heat sets in. Anyways, we were walking just to get out and see the sights, and you were as fit as a new fiddle. It was good to hear you laugh so much, even if it was just in a dream. Maybe that means you'll get better soon, do you think?

Mom, if you're reading this letter aloud to Dad you should skip this next part. Just keep it to yourself. About two weeks ago a new ride called the Octopus joined the carnival. I found out the man who runs the Octopus is named Buck Edgers, and he's been traveling around with it for the better part of four years. A couple of the roustabouts told me there've been accidents on the Octopus. A little girl and her father died when one of the gondolas…that's the part you ride in—broke loose. Mr. Edgers took the Octopus down to Florida for a while, and a teen-age boy fell out of that same gondola when the ride was moving. I don't know if he died or not, but another roustabout told me a man had a heart attack on the Octopus two years ago, in Huntsville. Mr. Edgers changes his name when he applies for a permit from the safety inspectors, I hear, but it seems the inspectors always pass the Octopus because they can never find anything wrong with it. Mr. Edgers is always working on something or another, and I hear his hammer banging late at night when everyone else is asleep. It seems he can hardly stand to leave it alone, not even for a whole night. And when you ask him what he's working on, or how he got the Octopus in the first place, his eyes just cut you dead.

Mom, something's wrong with that ride. If I said that to anybody around here, they'd laugh in my face, but I get the feeling that a lot of other people stay their distance from the Octopus too. Just last night, when we were setting up, a roustabout helping Mr. Edgers got his foot crushed when a piece of machinery fell on it, like he did it on purpose. There have been a lot of fights lately, too, and there weren't before the Octopus joined us. People are irritable, and spoiling for trouble. A roustabout named Chalky disappeared just before we left Andalusia, and a couple of days ago Mr. Ryder got a call from the police because they found Chalky's body in a field behind the shopping center where we were set up. His neck had been crushed, but the police couldn't figure out how, I heard tell. Anyway, there's a bad feeling in the air. I'm afraid of the Octopus too, probably more than anybody else, because I think it likes the taste of blood. I don't know what to do.

Dr. Mirakle and I have been talking after the Ghost Show closes up for the night. Did I tell you he wanted to be a dentist? Did I tell you the story he told me about the machine Thomas Edison invented to try to communicate with spirits? Well, Edison drew up the blueprints for it, but he died before he could build it. Dr. Mirakle says nobody knows what happened to the blueprints. Dr. Mirakle drinks a lot and he loves to talk while he drinks. One thing he told me that is interesting: he says there are institutes where scientists are studying something called parapsychology. That has to do with your mind, and spirits and stuff. I've never told Dr. Mirakle about Will Booker, or the sawmill, or the black aura. I've never told him about Gram or the Mystery Walk. He seems to want to know about me, but he never comes right out and asks.

Well, I'd better get to sleep now. Dr. Mirakle is a good man, and he's been right about one thing: the carnival does get into your blood.

I know you can put this thirty-five dollars to good use. I'll write when I have time. I love you both.

Billy

34

Wayne Falconer sat with his mother in the backseat of the chauffeured Cadillac limo. They were on their way to the Cutcliffe Funeral Home in downtown Fayette. Jimmy Jed Falconer had been dead for two days, and was going to be buried in the morning. The monument was already picked out, ready to be put in place.

Cammy had been sobbing all morning. She wouldn't stop. Her eyes were red, her nose was running, her face was bloated and blotchy. It disgusted Wayne. He knew his daddy would've wanted her to carry herself with dignity, just like Wayne was trying to do. He wore a somber black suit and a black tie with small red checks on it. Last night, while his mother was drugged and sleeping, he'd taken a pair of scissors and cut his silk shirt and trousers, both of them stained with grass and lake mud, into long strips of cloth that he could easily burn in a trash barrel behind the barn. The stains had gone up in smoke.

Wayne winced as his mother cried. She reached out and grasped his hand, and he gently but firmly pulled away. He despised her for not getting the ambulance to the house soon enough, despised her for not having told him about his father's weak heart condition. He had seen his daddy's dead face in the hospital: blue as frost on a grave.

The last word J.J. Falconer had spoken in the hospital, before he went into a deep sleep that he never came out of, was a name.

Gammy was puzzled over it, had racked her brains trying to remember what message it might carry—but Wayne knew. Demons had been afoot in the darkness that terrible.night; they had been grinning and chuckling and drawing a net around Wayne and his daddy. One of them had appeared to him as a faceless girl on a lake's diving platform whose body—if indeed she had existed as flesh and blood at all—hadn't yet emerged from the depths. Wayne had checked the newspaper, but there was no account of the drowning. Terry Dozier had called yesterday to give his sympathy, but again there was no mention of a girl named Lonnie found floating in the lake. And Wayne had found himself feverishly wondering if she had existed at all . . . or if her body was caught in a submerged tree limb down on the muddy bottom . . . or if his daddy's death had simply eclipsed that of a poor white-trash girl.

The second demon had come creeping in the darkness to steal his father's life away; it had been sent by the Hawthorne witch-woman in revenge for his father's urging a few Hawthorne men, in a secret meeting, to put a scare into the Creekmores and get them out of the county. It was for the best of the community, Wayne remembered his daddy telling the men, their faces washed by candlelight. If you rid Hawthorne of this corruption, Falconer had said, then God will see fit to favor you. In the darkened, shadowy room Wayne had imagined he'd seen movement over in the far corner, beyond the ring of listening men; he'd had the impression—just for an instant—of something standing there in a place where the candlelight couldn't reach, something that looked almost like a wild boar that had learned to walk upright, seven feet tall or more. But when Wayne had stared into that corner the thing wasn't there at all. Now, he thought it might've been Satan himself, spying for the witch-woman and her son.

There were scores to settle. Wayne's hands were curled into fists in his lap.

The Crusade, the Falconer Foundation, the radio station, the magazine, the real-estate holdings in Georgia and Florida, the stocks and bonds, the Airstream trailer, and all the road equipment had become his, Henry Bragg and George Hodges had told him yesterday. He'd spent the morning signing papers—but not before he'd read them over several times and knew exactly what was happening. Cammy was to receive a monthly allowance from J.J. 's personal account, but the remainder of the estate, and the responsibilities that went with it, had fallen to Wayne.

An evil voice hissed through his mind like the noise of wind through lake reeds: You can't get it up. . . .

Reporters and photographers were waiting in front of the funeral home when the limousine pulled to the curb. Cameras clicked as Wayne helped his mother out of the car, and she still had enough presence of mind to lower the black veil of her hat across her face. He waved the questions aside as George Hodges came out of the funeral home to meet them.

The interior was cool and quiet and smelled like a florist's shop. Their heels clicked on a marble floor. Many people were waiting for Wayne and Cammy outside the memorial room where Jimmy Jed Falconer lay; Wayne knew most of them, and began shaking their hands and thanking them for coming. Women from the Baptist Ladies' League came over to comfort Cammy. A tall, gray-haired man in a dark blue suit shook Wayne's hand; he was, Wayne knew, the minister of a nearby Episcopal church.

Wayne forced a smile and a nod. This man was one of his father's enemies, he knew—one of the coalition of ministers who had questioned J.J. Falconer's passionate approach to the gospel. Falconer had kept files on the ministers who opposed the tone of his Crusade, and Wayne planned to keep the files in good shape.

Wayne went to his mother's side. "Are you ready to go in, Momma?"

She gave a barely perceptible nod, and Wayne led her through a pair of large oak doors into the room where the casket was displayed. Most of the people followed them in at a respectable distance. The room was filled with bouquets of flowers; the walls were painted with a pale mural, in soothing blues and greens, of grassy hills where flocks of sheep were watched over by lyre-playing shepherds. From concealed speakers "The Old Rugged Cross" was played on a mellow-sounding church organ—it was J.J. Falconer's favorite hymn. The gleaming oak casket was back-dropped by white curtains.

Wayne couldn't stand being at his mother's side for another second. I didn't know he was sick! he screamed mentally. You didn't tell me! I could've healed him and then he wouldn't be dead right now! Suddenly he felt terribly alone.

And the whispering, leering voice said, You can't get it up.

Wayne stepped toward the casket. Three more steps, and he'd be looking in at the face of Death. A tremor of fear shot through him, and again he was a little boy on a stage, not knowing what to do, as everyone stared at him. He closed his eyes, put his hands on the casket's edge, and looked in.

He almost laughed. That's not my daddy! he thought. Somebody's made a mistake! The corpse, dressed in a bright yellow suit, white shirt, and black tie, was so perfectly made up it looked like a department-store mannequin. The hair was combed just so, every curl in place; the flesh of the face filled with lifelike color. The lips were tightly compressed, as if the corpse were trying to hold back a secret. The fingernails, on the hands crossed over the body, were spotless and manicured. J.J. Falconer, Wayne realized, was going to Heaven like a dime-story dummy.

The full realization of what he'd done—lying in sin with a scarlet Jezebel while his father lay with Death pressed close to his chest—hit him like a shriek. His daddy was gone, and he was just a little boy playacting on a stage, mouthing his healing rites, waiting for the same bolt of lightning he'd felt when he had placed his hands on Toby. He wasn't ready to be alone, not yet, oh Lord not yet. . . .

Tears filled his eyes—not tears of sadness, but of livid rage. He was shaking and couldn't stop.

"Wayne?" someone said behind him.

He whirled upon the strangers in the memorial room, his face a bright, strangled red. He roared, "GET OUT OF HERE!"

There was a shocked stillness. His mother cowered, as if afraid of being struck.

He advanced upon them, "I SAID GET OUT OF HERE!" he shrieked, and they retreated, stumbling into each other like cattle. "GET OUT!" Wayne was sobbing, and he pushed George Hodges away when the man reached for him. Then they were all gone, and he was alone in the room with his father's corpse.

Wayne put his hands to his face and moaned, the tears leaking out between his fingers. After another moment he walked forward and locked the oak doors.

Then he turned to face the casket.

It could be done, he knew. Yes. If he wanted to hard enough, he could do it. It wasn't too late, because his daddy wasn't in the ground yet! He could lift up J.J. Falconer, the South's Greatest Evangelist, and all the doubts and torments that had ever plagued him about his healing powers would fly like chaff in a strong wind. Then he and his daddy would march upon the Creekmores, and send them to burn in Hell forever. Yes. It could be done.

Someone jiggled the doorknob. "Wayne?" a voice asked meekly. Then: "I think he's locked himself in!"

"Lord, let me do it," Wayne whispered, as tears ran down his face. "I know I sinned, and that's why you let the demons take my daddy away. But I'm not ready to be alone! Please ... if you let me do this one thing, I'll never ask you for anything else again." He trembled, waiting for electricity to charge through him, for God's Voice to speak through his mind, for a sign or an omen or anything. "PLEASE!" he shouted.

Then he reached into the coffin and was grasping his father's thin hard shoulders. Wayne said, "Get up, Daddy. Let's show them what my healing power is really like, and how strong it is. Get up, now. I need you here with me, come on and get up. . . ."

His hands clamped harder; he closed his eyes and tried to summon up the raw healing power—where was it? Had it been all used up, a long time ago? No lightning struck him, no blue burn of power surged from his hands. "Get up, Daddy," Wayne whispered, and then he threw his head back and shouted, "I COMMAND YOU TO GET UP AND WALK!"

"Waynnnne!" Cammy screamed from beyond the locked door. "Don't, for God's sake . . . !"

"I COMMAND YOU TO THROW OFF THE CHAINS OF DEATH! DO IT NOW! DO IT NOW!" He shook like a lightning rod in a high wind, his fingers gripped tightly into yellow cloth, sweat and tears dripping from his face. The flesh-toned makeup on the corpse's cheeks were running, revealing an undercolor of whitish gray. Wayne concentrated on bringing up the power from deep within himself, from a place where volcanoes raged in his soul, where wild flames leapt. He thought of nothing but pumping Life into this casket-caged body, of willing Life back into it.

Something ripped in his brain, with a sudden sharp pain and a distinct tearing sound. A startling image whirled through his mind—the eagle and serpent in deadly combat. Black pain beat at Wayne's head, and drops of blood began leaking from his left nostril to spot the casket's white satin lining. His hands were tingling, now itching, now burning. . . .

Falconer's corpse twitched.

Wayne's eyes flew open. "YES!" he said "GET UP!"

And suddenly the corpse shook as if plugged into a high-voltage socket; it contorted and stretched, the facial muscles rippling. The hands with their perfect fingernails began rhythmically clenching and unclenching.

And then the eyelids, sewn shut with flesh-colored thread by the mortician, ripped themselves open. The eyes were sunken deep into the head, the color of hard gray marbles. With a violent twitch the lips stretched, stretched . . . and the mouth tore open, white sutures dangling; the inside of the mouth was an awful oyster gray, and cotton had been stuffed in to fill out the cheeks. The head jerked as if in agony, the body writhing beneath Wayne's hand.

Someone hammered wildly at the door. "WAYNE!" George Hodges shouted. "STOP IT!"

But Wayne was filled with righteous healing power, and he would atone for his sins by bringing J.J. Falconer back from the dark place. All he had to do was concentrate a little harder, sweat and hurt a little more. "Come back, Daddy," Wayne whispered to the writhing corpse. "Please come back. ..."

"Wayne!" his mother screamed, her voice on the raw edge of hysteria. "He's dead, he's dead, leave him alone!"

And he realized, with a sickening certainty, that he had failed. All he was doing was making a dead frog jump. His daddy was dead and gone. "No," he whispered. Falconer's head twisted to one side, the mouth yawning wide.

Wayne unclenched his fingers and stepped back. Instantly the corpse lay still, the teeth clicking together as the mouth shut.

"Wayne?"

"Unlock the door!"

"Let us in, son, let us talk to you!"

He stared down at the drops of blood on the marble floor. Numbly, he wiped his nose on his sleeve. It was all over, and he had failed. The one thing he'd asked for, the most important thing, had been denied him. And why? Because he had plummeted from the Lord's grace. Somewhere, he knew, the Creekmores must be celebrating. He touched his pounding forehead with his bloody hand, and stared at the opposite wall with its mural of sheep and shepherds.

Outside the memorial room, Cammy Falconer and the assembled mourners heard the terrible crashing noises begin. It was, as a Methodist minister would later tell his wife, as if "a hundred demons had gotten in that room and gone mad." Only when the noises stopped did George Hodges and a couple of men dare to force the doors open. They found Wayne huddled in a corner. Vases of flowers had been thrown against the walls, scarring the beautiful mural and slopping water all over the floor. The corpse looked as if Wayne had tried to drag it out of the coffin. Cammy saw her son's bloody face and fainted.

Wayne was rushed to the hospital and checked in for nervous exhaustion. He was given a private room, pumped full of tranquilizers, and left alone to sleep. During the long night he was visited by two dreams: in the first, a hideous shape stood over his bed, its mouth grinning in the darkness. In the second, an eagle and a snake were locked in mortal combat—the eagle's wings sought the open sky, but the snake's darting fangs struck again and again, its poison weakening the eagle and dragging it to the earth. He awakened in a cold sweat, before the dream combat was finished, but this time he knew the snake was winning.

He chewed on tranquilizers and wore dark glasses as he watched the South's Greatest Evangelist enter the earth at ten o'clock in the morning.

His duty was crystal-clear.

EIGHT

Serpent

and Octopus

35

Dr. Mirakle was slightly drunk and exuded the aroma of Dant bourbon like a cheap cologne. A flask full of the stuff sat on the table near his elbow. On a plate before him was a soggy hot dog and baked beans. It was lunchtime, and the air was filled with dust as the trucks and cranes set up the sideshows at the Gadsden fairgrounds; in another week the carnival would be heading into Birmingham, and the season would be over.

Billy sat across from Dr. Mirakle beneath the wooden roof of the open-air café. The Ghost Show tent was already up, ready for tonight's business. Dr Mirakle looked distastefully at his food and swigged from the flask, then offered it to Billy. "Go ahead, it won't kill you. God, to eat this food you need a little antibiotic protection! You know, if you expect to stay with the carnival you'd better get used to the taste of alcohol."

"Stay?" Billy was silent for a moment, watching as the trucks rumbled along the midway with various parts of rides and sideshows. The Octopus was being put together out there, somewhere in the haze of dust. "I wasn't planning on staying after we leave Birmingham."

"Don't you like the carnival?"

"Well ... I guess I do, but . . . there's work to be done at home."

"Ah yes." Mirakle nodded. He was unshaven and bleary-eyed from a long night of driving and then raising the Ghost Show tent. "Your home. I'd forgotten: people have homes. I had thought you might be interested in seeing my workshop, where I put together all the Ghost Show figures. It's in that house I own in Mobile—a house, mind you, not a home. My home is this." He motioned toward the midway. "Dust and all, I love it. Next year the Ghost Show will be bigger than ever! It'll have twice as many ghosts and goblins, twice as many optical effects! I thought . . . perhaps you'd like to help me with it."

Billy sipped at a cup of hot black coffee. "Something I've been meaning to ask you for a long time. Maybe I thought you'd get around to telling me, but you haven't. Just exactly why did you want me to be your assistant this summer?"

"I told you. I had heard about you and your mother, and I . . ."

"No sir. That's not all of it, is it? You could've hired anybody to help you with the Ghost Show. So why did you search so long and hard for my mother and me?"

The man looked out at the billowing yellow dust and swigged from his flask. His nose was laced with bright red and blue veins, and the whites of his eyes were a sad yellowish color. "Can you really do what . . . people have said?" he asked finally. "Do you and your mother have the ability to communicate with the dead?"

Billy nodded.

"Many people before you have said they could, too. I've never seen anything remotely resembling a ghost. I've seen pictures, of course, but those are easily faked. Oh, what I'd give to be able to see . . . something that would hint of life in the beyond— wherever that might be. You know, there are institutes devoting their whole resources to exploring the question of life after death . . . did I tell you that already? One is in Chicago, another in New York—I wrote the Chicago people once, and they sent me back a questionnaire, but by then it was too late."

"What was too late?" Billy asked.

"Things," Mirakle replied. He looked at Billy for a moment and then nodded. "If you can see apparitions, doesn't that fill you with a hope that there is an afterlife?"

"I never thought there wasn't."

"Ah. Blind faith, eh? And how do you arrive at that conclusion? Your religious beliefs? Your crutch?" Something angry and bitter flared behind Dr Mirakle's rheumy eyes for an instant, then subsided. "Damn," he said softly. "What is Death? The ending of the first act, or the final curtain? Can you tell me?"

Billy said, "No sir."

"All right, I'll tell you why I sought you out. Because I wanted desperately to believe in what I heard about you and your mother; I wanted to find someone who might . . . help me make sense of this preposterous joke we refer to as Life. What's beyond all this?" He made a wide gesture—the café, the other workers and carny people sitting around talking and eating, the dusty midway.

"I don't know."

Dr. Mirakle's gaze fell to the table. "Well. How would you? But you have a chance to know, Billy, if what you say about yourself is true. My wife, Ellen, had a chance to know, as well."

"Your wife?" It was the first time the man had mentioned his wife's name. "Is she in Mobile?"

"No. No, not in Mobile. I visited her one day before I found my way to Hawthorne. Ellen is a permanent resident of the state insane asylum in Tuscaloosa." He glanced at Billy, his lined face tight and tired. "She . . . saw something, in that house in Mobile. Or did she? Well, she likes to fingerpaint and comb her hair all day long now, and what she saw that pushed her over the edge is a moot point, isn't it?"

"What did she see?"

Mirakle took out his wallet and opened it to the photograph of the young man in the service uniform. He slid it across the table to Billy. "Kenneth was his name. Korea. He was killed by mortar fire on . . . oh, what's the date? I carried the exact day in my head for so long! Well, it was in August of 1951. I seem to remember that it happened on a Wednesday. I was always told that he favored me. Do you think so?"

"In the eyes, yes."

Mirakle took the wallet back and put it away. "Wednesday in August. How hot and final that sounds! Our only child. I watched Ellen slowly fall into the bourbon bottle, a tradition I have since clung to wholeheartedly. Is there such a thing as ever really letting a dead child go? Over a year after the burial, Ellen was taking a basket of clothes up the stairs in our house, and right at the top of the stairs stood Kenneth. She said she could smell the pomade in his hair, and he looked at her and said, 'You worry too much, Ma.' It was something he used to say to her all the time, to tease her. Then she blinked and he wasn't there. When I got home, I found she'd been walking up and down those stairs all day hoping she could trigger whatever it had been that had made her see him. But, of course . . ." He looked up at Billy, who'd been listening intently, and then shifted uneasily in his chair "I stay in that house for most of the winter, in between seasons. Sometimes I think I'm being watched; sometimes I can imagine Ken calling me, his voice echoing through the hallway. I would sell that house and move away, but . . . what if Ken is still there, trying to reach me, but I can't see him?"

"Is that why you want me to go to Mobile with you? To find out if your son is still in that house?"

"Yes. I have to know, one way or the other."

Billy was pondering the request when three women, laughing and talking, came in out of the dust. One of them was a lean black girl, the second was a coarse-looking redhead—but the third young woman was a walking vision. One glance and he was riveted; it was the girl whose picture he'd admired outside the Jungle Love sideshow!

She had a smooth, sensual stride, and she wore a pair of blue jeans that looked spray-painted on. Her green T-shirt read I'm a Virgin (This Is a Very Old T-Shirt) and she wore an orange CAT cap over loose blond curls. Billy looked up into her face as she passed the table, and saw greenish gold eyes under blond brows; her aroma lingered like the smell of wheatstraw on a July morning. She carried herself with proud sexuality, and seemed to know that every man in the place was drooling. She was obviously used to being watched. Several roustabouts whistled as the three women went to the counter to order their food.

"Ah, youth!" Even Dr. Mirakle had tried to suck in his gut. "I presume those ladies are dancers in that exhibition down the midway?"

"Yes sir." Billy hadn't been inside yet. Usually after a day's work it was all he could do to fall onto his cot at the back of the Ghost Show tent.

The three women got their food and sat at a nearby table. Billy couldn't keep his eyes off the one in the CAT cap. He watched as she ate her hot dog with a rather sloppy abandon, talking and laughing with her friends. Her beautiful eyes, he noticed, kept sliding toward two guys at another table. They were staring at her with a silent hunger, just as Billy was.

"She's got ten years on you, if a day," Dr. Mirakle said quietly. "If your tongue hangs down any farther you could sweep the floor with it."

There was something about her that set a fire burning in Billy. He didn't even hear Dr Mirakle. She suddenly glanced over in his direction, her eyes almost luminous, and Billy felt a shiver of excitement. She held his gaze for only a second, but it was long enough for wild fantasies to start germinating in his brain.

"I would guess that your . . . uh . . . love life has been rather limited," Dr. Mirakle said. "You're almost eighteen and I have no right throwing in my two cents, but I did promise your mother I'd look after you. So here's my advice, and take it or leave it: Some women are Wedgwood, and some are Tupperware. That is the latter variety. Billy? Are you listening to me?"

"I'm going to get some more coffee." He took his cup to the counter for a refill, passing right by her table.

"Live and learn, son," Dr. Mirakle said grimly.

Billy got his fresh cup of coffee and came back by the table again. He was so nervous he was about to shake it out of the cup, but he was determined to say something to the girl. Something witty, something that would break the ice. He stood a few feet away from them for a moment, trying to conjure up words that would impress her; then he stepped toward her, and she looked up quizzically at him, her gaze sharpening.

"Hi there," he said. "Haven't we met somewhere before?"

"Take a hike," she said, as the other two giggled.

And suddenly a flask was thrust under her nose. "Drink?" Dr. Mirakle asked. "J.W. Dant, finest bourbon in the land."

She looked at them both suspiciously, then sniffed at the flask. "Why not?" She took a drink and passed it around the table.

"Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Dr. Reginald Mirakle, and this is my right-hand man, Mr. Billy Creekmore. What Mr. Creekmore meant to offer you lovely ladies is an open invitation to visit the Ghost Show at your convenience."

"The Ghost Show?" the redhead asked. "What kind of crap is that?"

"You mean that funky little tent on the midway? Yeah, I've seen it." The blonde stretched, her unfettered breasts swelling against her shirt. "What do you do, tell fortunes?"

"Better than that, fair lady. We probe into the world of spirits and speak to the dead."

She laughed. There were more lines in her face than Billy had thought, but he found her beautiful and sexually magnetic! "Forget it! I've got enough hassles with the living to screw around with the dead!"

"I . . . I've seen your picture," Billy said, finally finding his voice. "Out in front of the show."

Again, she seemed to pull away from him. "Are you the bastard who's been stealin' my pictures?"

"No."

"Better not be. They cost a lot of money."

"Well . . . it's not me, but I can understand why. I . . . think you're really pretty."

She gave him the faintest hint of a smile. "Why, thank you."

"I mean it. I really think you're pretty." He might have gone on like that, had Dr Mirakle not nudged him in the ribs.

"Are you an Indian, kid?" she asked.

"Part Indian. Choctaw."

"Choctaw," she repeated, and her smile was a little brighter "You look like an Indian. I'm part French"—the other women hooted—"and part Irish. My name's Santha Tully. Those two bitches across the table don't have names, 'cause they were hatched from buzzard eggs."

"Are you all dancers?"

"We're entertainers," the redhead told him.

"I've been wanting to see the show, but the sign says you have to be twenty-one to get in."

"How old are you?"

"Almost eighteen. Practically."

She gave him a quick appraisal. He was a nice-looking boy, she thought. Really nice, with those strange dark hazel eyes and curly hair. He reminded her, in a way, of Chalky Davis. Chalky's eyes had been dark brown, but this boy was taller than Chalky had been. The news of Chalky's death—murder, she'd heard—still disturbed her, though they hadn't slept together but two or three times. Santha wondered if this boy was involved in any of the creepy things that had been happening to her in the last few weeks; somebody had put a half-dozen dead roses on the steps of her trailer, and she had heard strange noises late at night as if someone were prowling around. That's why she didn't like to sleep alone. One night last week, she could've sworn that somebody had been inside her trailer and gone through her costumes.

But this boy's eyes were friendly. She saw in them the unmistakable sheen of desire. "Come see the show, both of you. Tell the old bat out front that Santha sent you. Okay?"

Dr. Mirakle took the empty flask back. "We'll look forward to it."

Santha looked up into Billy's eyes. She decided she wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers. He seemed nervous and shy and . . . virgin? she wondered. "Come by the show, Choctaw," she said, and winked. "Real soon."

Dr. Mirakle almost had to drag him out.

Santha laughed. The two cute roustabouts were still eyeing her. "Virgin," she said. "Bet you twenty bucks."

"No takers," the black girl told her.

And in the swirl of dust spun up by the heavy trucks Dr Mirakle shook his head and muttered, "Entertainers indeed."

36

"Last show of the night!" the platinum-blond female barker was bellowing through a microphone. "Hey you in the hat! How about a thrill, huh? Well come on in! It's all right here, five lovely sensually young girls who just loooove to do their thang! Hey mister, why don't you leave your wife out here and come on in? I guarantee he'll be a better man for it, honey! Last show of the night! Hear those drums beat? The natives are restless tonight, and you never can tell who they're gonna do ... I mean what they're gonna do, ha ha!"

Billy stood with the rest of the interested males grouped around the Jungle Love show. He wanted to go in there, but he was as nervous as a cat in a roomful of rockers. A man wearing a straw hat and a flashy printed shirt drawled, "Hey, lady! They dance nude in there?"

"Does a big bear shit in the woods?"

"You don't dance nude do you, big mamma?"

She let out a husky laugh that shook her rouged cheeks. "Don't you wish, little boy? Last show of the night! Fifty cents, fifty cents! Half a dollar'll get you in, you provide your own sin! Come on, step in line!"

Billy paused. Dr Mirakle had told him that if he absolutely insisted in coming to the "strip show," then he should put his wallet in a place where light fingers couldn't get to it, and he shouldn't sit next to anybody who put a hat in his lap.

When Billy had passed the Octopus he felt a rush of dread through him, and thought he heard awful distant shrieks emanating from the covered gondola. But no one else seemed to hear them. Buck had given him a baleful glare, warning him to stay away. In motion, the Octopus cluttered and groaned, the tired engine snorting steam; the green tarpaulin covering the scabrous gondola cracked in the wind. As far as Billy knew, Buck never took the tarpaulin off; the gondola itself had to be attached to the machine, otherwise the Octopus would be off-balance and would go pinwheeling across the midway like a huge, deadly top. Buck was trying to keep riders out of that gondola, Billy knew, because the man must be fearful of what might happen should anyone get inside it. Maybe Buck was trying his best to keep it muzzled, Billy thought. What if, for lack of steady victims, it was feeding on Buck's soul and body—taking an arm, slicing a finger or an ear— while the dark ripples of its power strengthened and spread?

"Fifty cents, fifty cents! Don't be shy boys, come on in!"

At least in there he could lose himself, Billy thought. He moved forward, and the barker motioned toward a cigar box. "Fifty cents, hon. If you're twenty-one I'm little Orphan Annie, but what the hell! ..."

Inside, in a smoky haze of green light, a dozen long benches faced a stage with a garishly painted backdrop of twisted jungle foliage. The drumbeats bellowed from a speaker hidden off to the left. He sat in a center row as the place filled up with hooting, shouting men. They started clapping in time with the drumbeats, and there were hoarse yells for the show to begin. Suddenly the blond barker was up on the stage, and the drumbeats ceased. She said through a microphone that buzzed and warbled with feedback, "Okay, hold it down! We're gonna start in a minute! Right now I want you to take a look at these playing cards I hold in my hand, but don't look too close unless you want your eyebrows burned off! Yessir, straight from Paris, France, showing the kind of pictures that make a man want to get up and crow! You can't buy these in the local Woolworth's! But you can buy 'em right here, for only two dollars and seventy-five cents! Yessir, they know how to play cards in Paris! . . ."

Billy shifted uneasily in his seat. Cigar smoke drifted in front of his face. Somebody shouted, "Get off the stage or strip nekkid, baby!" He had the vague and unsettling sensation of being watched, yet when he looked around toward the back he saw only a mass of leering faces daubed in green light.

The show began. To a blare of rock music, a fleshy redhead in a black bikini—one of the women who'd been with Santha that afternoon, Billy realized—came strutting out on stage with a large stuffed chimpanzee doll. Her thighs quivered as she rolled her hips, letting the chimp sniff around her barely covered breasts and moving it slowly all over her body. The men were suddenly very quiet, as if mesmerized. After a minute or two of gyrating, the woman rolled around on the floor with the chimp and pretended dismay when her breasts popped free. She lay on her back, thrusting as the chimp sat astride her crotch. She began to moan and writhe, scissoring her legs into the air; her hips bucked faster and faster, her bare breasts trembling. Billy was sure that his eyes were about to pop from their sockets. Then the green lights went out and when they came back on again the barker was there, offering for sale something called Tijuana comic books.

The next dancer was the thin black girl, who contorted herself into positions that would've snapped any ordinary backbone. Most of the time her crotch, clad in flimsy panties with a cat's-eye strategically placed, was aimed toward the audience while her head was resting on the floor. The music hammered and roared, but the girl moved very slowly, as if to her own inner rhythm. Billy caught a glimpse of her eyes once, and saw they were blank of all emotion.

After the barker had tried to sell a Pecker Stretcher, a tall, big-boned girl wearing a bright yellow gown came out to dance; she had a huge mane of yellow hair that flowed down her back, and halfway into her act, when her huge breasts were peeking out from the material and it was obvious she was totally nude underneath, she suddenly whipped off the mane to show she was bald-headed. There was a collective stunned gasp, and then she made sure everybody could see that something else was bald, too.

The lion-girl was followed by a harsh-looking, slightly overweight brunette in a tiger-skin bikini; she mostly stood in one place, making her breasts bounce, flicking the nipples with her fingers, or clenching her buttocks. Then she did a few deep-knee bends that were obviously torturous for her and left her face sheened with sweat. After she'd gone offstage, the barker hawked a set of "French ticklers," and then she said, "Okay, are you ready to fry? You ready to have your eggs scrambled, boiled, and turned sunny-side up?"

There was a roar of assent.

"Meet Santha ... the Panther Girl. ..."

The lights went out for a few seconds. When they came back on, there was a black shape curled up at center stage. The drums started beating again. Slowly, a shaft of red light strengthened across the stage, like the red dawn on an African veld. Billy found himself leaning forward, utterly entranced.

From the black curl a single bare leg lifted up, then sank down again. An arm reached up, stretching. The figure stirred and slowly began to rise. She was wearing a long robe made of sleek black fur, and she kept it tightly around her as she surveyed the audience, her blond curls a shining red halo. Billy saw the dark in her hair where the real color had grown out, and she seemed to have on an inch of make up, but there was a challenge and a defiance in her glowing eyes that made the Pecker Stretcher obsolete. She smiled—faintly, with a touch of dangerous promise—and then, though it hadn't appeared she'd even moved at all, the black robe dropped slowly lower and lower until it was resting on the full rise of her bosom. She clasped the robe with one hand, and now as she began to move slowly and sinuously to the drumbeats the robe would part to show a brief glimpse of stomach, thigh, or the dark and inviting V between them. She kept her eyes on the audience, and Billy knew she loved to be looked at, loved to be wanted.

And Billy, though he knew lust was a terrible sin, wanted her so badly he thought he would burst apart at the seams.

The black robe continued to drop, but slowly—at Santha's pace, not the audience's. There was a heavy silence but for the drumbeats, and smoke swirled in layers like a jungle mist. Then the robe was off and kicked aside, and Santha was naked but for a brief black G-string.

Her hips moved faster. Santha's face radiated hot need, the muscles of her smooth thighs tensing; she reached out, her fingers rippling through the currents of smoke. Then she was down on her knees, reaching for the audience, on her side, writhing with lust and desire. She stretched like a beautiful cat, then lay on her back and lifted her legs, slowly scissoring them. The drumbeats hammered at Billy's head, and he knew he couldn't stand much more of this. She curled her knees up toward her chin, and suddenly the G-string fell away and there was a liquid wink between her thighs. And then the lights went out.

Breath burst from several sets of lungs. A harsh white light came on, showing all the rips and seams in the painted backdrop, and the barker said, "That's all, gentlemen! Y'all come back now, hear?"

There were a few shouts of "More!" and assorted catcalls, but the show was over. Billy couldn't move for a few minutes, because he was as big as a railroad spike and he knew he'd either split his pants or burst his balls if he tried to stagger out. When he finally did stand up, the place was empty. He could just imagine what his folks would say if they knew where he was right now. He limped toward the exit.

"I thought that you was out there. Hey, Choctaw!"

Billy turned. Santha was onstage again, wrapped up in her black robe. His heart almost stuttered to a stop.

"How'd you like it?"

"It was . . . okay, I guess."

"Okay? Jeez, we worked our asses off for you boys! And all you have to say is 'okay'? I saw you out there, but sometimes it's hard to make out faces in that damned light. How'd you like Leona? You know, the lion-girl."

"Uh ... she was fine."

"She just joined the show at the first of June. She had a disease when she was a little girl that made her hair fall out." She smiled when she saw the bewildered look in his eyes. "Not all her hair, dope! She shaves that part."

"Oh."

The bulky platinum-blond barker came out, coiling up the microphone cord. She was smoking a cheroot and scowling with an expression that might've shattered a mirror. "Christ! Did you ever see such a bunch of losers? Cheap bastards, too! Fuckers wouldn't even buy one set of ticklers! You goin' to Barbie's birthday party!"

"I don't know," Santha said. "Maybe." She glanced over at Billy. "Want to go to a party, Choctaw?"

"I . . . guess I'd better be getting back to—"

"Oh, come on! Besides, I need somebody to help me carry my makeup case and my wardrobe to my trailer. And I feel bad about jumping your case this afternoon."

"Better take it while you can," the barker said, not looking at Billy but rather examining something up in the lights. "Santha's never fucked an Indian before."

"Just a party," Santha told him. She laughed softly. "Come on, I won't bite."

"Are you . . . gonna get dressed?"

"Sure. I'll put on my chastity belt and my suit of armor. How about that?"

Billy smiled. "Okay, I'll go."

"You mean you don't have to sign out for that old ghost nut you work for?"

"Nope."

"Good. You can be my date, and get me past all the local horny old men who'll be waiting outside. Come on back to the dressing room."

Billy paused just for a few seconds, then followed her back behind the stage. His head was reeling with possibilities, and he thought how wonderful love felt.

The barker muttered, "Another one bites the dust . . ." and then she switched off the lights.

37

Being drunk, Billy thought as he staggered down the midway, was a lot like being in love. Your head spun like a top, your stomach lurched, and you knew you'd done crazy things but you couldn't quite remember what they were. The last couple of hours were all blurred in his mind; he recalled leaving with Santha, carrying her makeup case to her trailer for her, and then going with her to somebody else's trailer where there were a lot of people laughing loud and drinking. Santha had introduced him as Choctaw, somebody had put a beer in his hand, and an hour after that he was seriously contemplating Leona's bald pate while she told him her life story. The trailer had overflowed with people, music blared into the night, and after his sixth beer Billy had found himself on the wrong end of a stubby cigarette that had set fire to his lungs and, strangely, reminded him of the pipe he'd smoked with his old grandmother. Only this time, instead of seeing visions, he'd giggled like an ape and told ghost stories that he invented off the top of his ripped-open head. He remembered feeling a green burn of jealousy as he saw Santha being embraced by another man; he thought that the man and Santha had left the party together, but now it didn't matter. In the morning, it might. When he'd finally left, Barbie the black contortionist had hugged him and thanked him for coming, and now he was trying to keep from walking in circles and right angles.

He was not so drunk that he didn't take a long detour around the Octopus. A pale mist lay close to the earth along the midway. He wondered vaguely if he was a fool for being in love with a woman like Santha, older than he was and more experienced by a country mile. Was she playing with him, laughing behind his back? Hell, he thought, I hardly even know her! But she sure is pretty, even with all that glop on her face. Tomorrow he might just wander by her trailer to see what she looked like palefaced. Never fucked an Indian. He had to stop thinking like this now, or even the beers wouldn't help him sleep.

"Boy?" someone said quietly.

Billy stopped and looked around; he thought he'd heard a voice, but . . .

"I'm over here."

Billy still couldn't see anyone. The Ghost Show tent was just a few yards away. If he could make his legs cross the midway without folding on him, he'd be okay. "Huh? Where?"

"Right here." And the entrance to the Killer Snakes sideshow slowly opened, as if the painted reptile had yawned its jaws wide for him.

"I can't see you. Turn on a light."

There was a pause. Then, "You're afraid, aren't you?"

"Hell, no! I'm Billy Creekmore and I'm a Choctaw Indian and know what? I can see ghosts!"

"That's very good. You must be like me. I enjoy the night."

"Uh-huh." Billy looked across the midway at the Ghost Show tent. "Gotta get to sleep. ..."

"Where have you been?"

"Party. Somebody's birthday."

"Well, isn't that nice. Why don't you step inside, and we'll talk."

He stared at the dark entrance, his vision going in and out of focus. "No. I don't like snakes. They give me the creeps."

There was a soft little laugh. "Oh, snakes are wonderful creatures. They're very good at catching rats."

"Yeah. Well"—he ran a hand through his tousled hair and started to walk away—"been nice talkin' to you."

"Wait! Please. We can talk about . . . about Santha, if you like."

"Santha? What about her?"

"Oh, about how lovely she is. And innocent really, deep in her heart. She and I are very close; she tells me all her secrets."

"She does?"

"Yes." The voice was a silken whisper. "Come in, and we'll talk."

"What kind of secrets?"

"She's told me things about you, Billy. Step in, and then I'll turn on the lights and we'll have a nice long talk."

"I . . . can only stay a minute." He was afraid of crossing that threshold, but he wanted to know who this man was and what Santha might've told him. "Are any of those snakes loose?"

"Oh, no. Not a one. Do you think I'm crazy?"

Billy grinned. "Naw." He took the first step, and found the second one easier Then he was moving into the clammy darkness and he thrust out his arms to touch whoever was standing there. "Hey, where are . . ."

Behind him, the door slammed shut. A bolt was thrown. Billy spun around, his beer-fogged brain reacting with agonized slowness. And then a thick rope was coiled around his throat, almost choking him; the weight of it drove him to his knees, where he gripped at the rope to pull it loose. To his horror, it undulated beneath his fingers—and grew tighter. His head was pounding.

"Boy," the figure whispered, bending close, "there's a boa constrictor around your neck. If you struggle it's going to strangle you."

Billy moaned, tears of terror springing to his eyes. He grabbed at the thing, desperately trying to loosen it.

"I'll let it kill you," the man warned solemnly. "You're drunk, you stumbled in here not knowing where you were—how can I be at fault for that? Don't struggle, boy. Just listen."

Billy sat very still, a scream locked behind his teeth. The snakeman knelt down beside him so he could whisper in Billy's ear "You're going to leave that girl alone. You know the one I mean. Santha. I saw you tonight at the show, and I saw you later, at the party. Oh, you couldn't see me—but I was there." The snakeman gripped his hair "You're a very smart young man, aren't you? Smarter than Chalky was. Say yes, Mr Fitts."

"Yes, Mr. Fitts," Billy croaked.

"That's good. Santha is such a beautiful girl, isn't she? Beauty." He spoke that word as if it were exotic poison. "But I can't keep all the men away from her, can I? She doesn't understand how I feel about her yet, but she will . . . she will. And when she does she won't need scum like you. You're going to leave her alone, and if you don't I'll find out about it. Understand?"

Red motes spun before Billy's eyes. When he tried to nod, the boa tightened.

"Good. That machine whispers to me at night, boy. You know the one: the Octopus. Oh, it tells me everything I need to know. And guess what? It's watching you. So whatever you do, I'm going to know about it. I can pick any kind of lock, boy—and my snakes can get in anywhere." He released Billy's hair, and sat back on his haunches for a moment. Over the ringing of blood in his ears, Billy heard small hissings and slitherings from elsewhere in the tent.

"Don't move, now," Fitts said. He slowly worked the boa free from Billy's neck. Billy pitched forward onto his face in the sawdust. Fitts stood up and prodded him in the ribs with his shoe. "If you're going to puke, do it on the midway. Go on, get out of here."

"Help me up. Please. ..."

"No," the snake-man whispered. "Crawl."

The bolt was thrown back, the door opened. Billy, shaking and sick, crawled past the man, who remained a vague outline in the darkness. The door closed quietly behind him.

38

Wayne Falconer was awakened when something began slowly dragging the sheet off his body.

He sat up abruptly, sleep still fogging his brain, and saw an indistinct form sitting at the foot of his bed. At first he cowered, because for an instant he thought it was that dark and hideous shape he'd seen in his dreams, and now it had come to consume him; but then he blinked and realized it was his father, wearing his bright yellow funeral suit, sitting there with a faint smile on his ruddy, healthy-looking face.

"Hello, son," J.J. said quietly.

Wayne's eyes widened, the breath slowly rasping from his lungs. "No," he said. "No, you're in the ground. ... I saw you go into the . . ."

"Did you? Maybe I am in the ground." He grinned, showing even white teeth. "But . . . maybe you did bring part of me back to life, Wayne. Maybe you're a lot stronger than you thought you were."

Wayne shook his head. "You're ..."

"Dead? I'll never be dead to you, son. Because you loved me more than anybody else did. And now you realize how much you needed me, don't you? Keeping the Crusade going is a hard job, isn't it? Working with the businessmen and the lawyers, keeping all the accounts straight, pushing the Crusade forward . You've hardly begun, and already you know there's more to it than you thought. Isn't that right?"

Wayne's headache had come back again, crushing his temples. Since the funeral a month ago, the headaches had gotten much worse. He ate aspirin by the handful. "I can't ... I can't do i' alone," he whispered.

"Alone. Now isn't that an awful word? It's kind of like the word dead. But you don't have to be alone, just like I don't have to be dead . . . unless you want it that way."

"No!" Wayne said, "But I don't . . ."

"Shhhhh," Falconer cautioned, with a finger to his lips. "Your mother's right down the hall, and we wouldn't want her to hear." The shaft of silver moonlight that filtered through the window winked off the buttons on his father's coat; the shadow that was thrown from his father was huge and shapeless. "I can help you, son, if you let me. I can be with you, and I can guide you."

"My . . . head hurts. I . . . can't think. ..."

"You're only confused. There's so much responsibility on you, so much work and healing to be done. And you're still a boy, just going on eighteen. No wonder your head aches, with all that thinking and worrying you have to do. But there are things we have to talk about, Wayne; things you can't tell anybody else, not in the whole world."

"What kind of . . . things?"

Falconer leaned closer to him. Wayne thought there was a red spark in his eyes, down under the pale blue-green. "The girl, Wayne. The girl at the lake."

"I don't want to . . . think about that. No, please. ..."

"But you have to! Oh, you have to take the consequences of your actions."

"She didn't drown!" Wayne said, tears glittering in his eyes. "There was never anything in the paper about it! Nobody ever found her! Nobody ever found her! She must've . . . just run away or something!"

Falconer said quietly, "She's under the platform, Wayne. She's caught up underneath there. She's already swelled up like a balloon, and pretty soon she'll pop wide open and what's left will sink down into the mud. The fish and the turtles will pick her clean. She was a wild, sinful girl, Wayne, and her folks probably think she's just run away from home. Nobody would ever connect you with her, even if they find her bones. And they won't. There was a demon in her, Wayne, and she was waiting there for you."

"Waiting for me?" he whispered. "Why?"

"To keep you from getting home, where I needed you. Don't you think you could have saved me, if you'd known?"

"Yes."

Falconer nodded. "Yes. You see, there are demons at work everywhere. This country is rotten with sin, and it all festers from a little run-down shack in Hawthorne. She calls dark powers to do her bidding. You know who I mean. You've known for a long time. She and her boy are strong, Wayne; they've got the forces of Death and Hell behind them, and they want to destroy you just like they destroyed me. They weakened my faith in you, and I reached out for you too late. Now they'll work on your faith in yourself, make you doubt that you could ever heal at all. Oh, they're strong and wicked and they should go down in flames."

"Flames," Wayne repeated.

"Yes. You'll have the chance to send them into Hellfire, Wayne, if you let me guide you. I can be with you whenever you need me. I can help you with the Crusade. So you see? I'm not really dead, unless you want me to be."

"No! I . . . need your help, Dad. Sometimes I just ... I just don't know what to do! Sometimes I . . . don't know if the things I've done are good or bad. ..."

"You don't have to worry," Falconer said, with a gentle smile. "Everything'll be fine, if you'll trust me. You need to take a drug called Percodan for your headaches. Tell George Hodges, and make him get it for you."

Puzzled, Wayne frowned. "Dad ... I thought you said medicines were sinful, and those people who took medicines were doing the Devil's bidding."

"Some medicines are sinful. But if you're in pain, and you're confused, then you need something to take the burden off you for a little while. Isn't that right?"

"I guess so," Wayne agreed, though he could never remember his father talking about drugs like this before. Percodan, had he said?

"I'll be here when you need me," Falconer said. "But if you tell anyone, even your mother, then I can't come back and help you anymore. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir." He paused for a moment, then whispered, "Dad? What's being dead like?"

"It's . . . like being in a black hole, son, on the blackest night you can imagine, and you try to crawl out but you don't know which is the top and which is the bottom."

"But . . . haven't you heard the angels sing?"

"Angels?" He grinned again, but his eyes were still gelid. "Oh, yes. They do sing." And then he put his fingers to his lips, glancing quickly toward the door.

An instant afterward, there was a soft knocking. "Wayne?" Cammy's voice carried a tremble.

"What is it?"

The door opened a few inches. "Wayne, are you all right?"

"Why shouldn't I be?" He realized he was alone now; the yellow-suited figure was gone, and the room was empty. My dad is alive! he shrieked inwardly, his heart pounding with joy.

"I . . . thought I heard you talking. You're sure you're all right?"

"I said I was, didn't I? Now leave me alone, I've got a long day tomorrow!"

She looked nervously around the room, opening the door a little wider so the hallway light could stream in. The mounted airplane models and large wall posters of military aircraft took up a lion's share of the room. Wayne's clothes were strewn on a chair. Cammy said, "I'm sorry I bothered you. Good-night."

Wayne lay back down as the door closed. He waited for a long time, but his father didn't come back. You bitch! he seethed at his mother. You killed him a second time! But no, no . . .his father would return to the world of the living when he was needed; Wayne was sure of it. Before he drifted to sleep, Wayne repeated the word Percodan ten times to burn it into his mind.

And in her room down the hallway, Cammy Falconer lay in bed with all the lights blazing. She was staring at the ceiling. Every so often a shiver passed through her It was not Wayne's voice, in the middle of the night, that had been so bad.

It had been the guttural, harsh mumbling that Cammy had heard faintly through the wall.

Answering her son.

39

The game booths, rides, and sideshows had sprung up from the mud covering Birmingham's fairgrounds. The rain fell in drizzles and sheets for three days, blasting the state fair business to hell. Still, people continued to slog through the sawdusty mud; drenched to the bone, they sought refuge in the arcades and enclosed shows, but they left the rides alone as light bulbs and wires sputtered under the rain.

That was for the best, Billy knew. Because people wouldn't be riding the Octopus in the rain, and it would be deprived of what it needed. This was the last stop of the season. If whatever presence, that controlled the Octopus was going to strike, it would have to be in the next four days. At night, even while the rain pattered on the Ghost Show tent's roof, Billy could hear Buck Edgers working on his machine, the hammer's noise echoing down the long ghostly corridor of the midway. While setting up the Octopus on the slippery field, a roustabout's shoulder was broken by a piece of metal that toppled from above. Word had gone out about the machine, and now everyone avoided it.

Billy stood outside Santha Tully's trailer, in a light drizzle that had washed away the last of the night's customers. He had been here twice since the carnival had reached Birmingham: the first time, he'd heard Santha laughing with a man inside there, and the second time he'd come out through the rows of trailers to find a short, balding figure standing in the shadows not ten feet from him. The man had instantly whirled toward him, and Billy had gotten a quick glimpse of his startled face, wearing dark-tinted glasses, before the man had run away. Billy had followed him for a short distance, but lost him in the maze of trailers. He'd told no one about the incident at the Killer Snakes tent, fearing that the man would find out and put his snakes to work, perhaps on Santha or Dr. Mirakle. But he still desired her, and still needed to see her.

He screwed up his courage, looked around to make sure no one had followed him, and then walked up a couple of cinder-block steps to the trailer's door. A curtain was closed in a single oval window, but light leaked out around it; he could hear the scratchy whine of a country singer. He knocked at the door and waited. The music stopped. He knocked again, less hesitantly, and heard Santha say, "Yeah? Who is it?"

"Me. Billy Creekmore."

"Choctaw?" A bolt slid back, and the thin door opened. She stood there in the dim golden light, wearing a black silk robe that clung to the curves of her body. Her hair was a dusky halo, and Billy saw that she wore practically no makeup. There were a lot of lines around her eyes, and her lips looked sad and thin. In her right hand there was a small chrome-plated pistol. "Anybody else out there?" she asked.

"No."

She opened the door wider to let him in, then bolted it again. The room was a cramped half living area and half kitchen. The bed, an unsteady-looking cot with a bright blue spread, was right out in the open, next to a rack of clothes on their hangers. A dressing table was cluttered with a dozen different kinds of creams, lipsticks, and various cosmetics. On a tiny kitchen table was a battered record player, next to a small stack of unwashed dishes. Posters of Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, and Steve McQueen decorated the walls, along with a rebel flag and a Day-Glo Love poster. A door led into a tiny bathroom and shower stall.

Billy stared at the pistol. Santha flicked the safety on and put it away in a dresser drawer. "Sorry," she said. "Sometimes I get jumpy late at night." Santha stepped past him and peered out the window for a moment. "I was expecting a friend of mine. He was supposed to be here about thirty minutes ago."

"Anybody special?"

Santha looked at him, then gave him a little crooked smile. "No. Just a friend. Somebody to pass the time with, I guess."

Billy nodded. "I'd better go, then. I don't want to—"

"No!" She reached out and grasped his arm. "No, don't go. Stay here and talk to me until Buddy gets here, okay? Really, I don't like to be here alone."

"What'll he think if he finds me with you?"

"I don't know." She didn't release her grip. "What would he think?"

Her eyes were luminous in the weak light from a single table lamp, her fingers cool against his rain-dampened skin. Billy said, "Maybe he'd think . . . something was going on between us."

"Do you want something to go on between us?"

"I ... I hardly know you."

"You didn't answer my question, Choctaw. Is it you who's been sneaking around my trailer at night?"

"No." Tell her about the man, he told himself; but what good would it do? It would only scare her more, and the police couldn't prove the snake-man had had anything to do with Chalky's death. No. In four days, the fair would be over and she'd be leaving, and then that man couldn't bother her anymore.

"Well, I think it has been you. I think you've been sneakin' around and spyin' on me! Naughty, naughty!" She grinned and let go of him. "Sit down. Do you want a beer?"

"No, thanks." He sat down on a faded blue sofa while Santha rummaged through her small refrigerator and popped open a Miller's.

"Excuse the mess in here. Sometimes I'm as lazy as a leaf." She sipped from the can, walked to the window, and looked out again. "Damn! Rainin' harder." The drops sounded leaden on the trailer's roof. "I've been meanin' to come by that Ghost Show of yours." She let the curtain fall and stood over him. "Do you believe in ghosts?"

He nodded.

"Yeah, I do too. I was born in New Orleans, see, and that's supposed to be the most haunted city in the whole country, did you know that? Spooks just come out of the woodwork. 'Course, I've never seen one, but . . ." She sat down beside him and stretched out her long bare legs. Her thighs showed through a slit in the robe, and Billy saw a fine light down like flecks of copper on them. "Jeez. I don't think Buddy's corning, do you? Bastard lies like a rug. Told me he'd get me a job here in Birmingham after the fair closes up."

"What will you do?"

"I don't know, maybe go home. My kids live with my mother Yeah, don't look so surprised! I've got two little girls. I don't look like I've had two kids, do I?" She patted her flat belly. "Sit-ups. How old do you think I look?"

He shrugged. "Maybe . . . twenty-two." He was being kind.

Her eyes glittered with pure pleasure. The drumming of the rain on the roof was hypnotic and soothing. "Do you think I have a good body?"

He shifted and cleared his throat. "Well . . . sure I do. It's nice."

"I'm proud of how I look. That's why I like to dance. Oh, maybe someday I'll open up my own dance studio and give lessons, but right now I love being on that stage. You feel important, and you know that people enjoy watching you." She sipped at her beer and watched him mischievously. "You enjoyed watching, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I did."

She laughed. "Ha! Choctaw, you beat all I've ever seen! You're sittin' there like a priest in a whorehouse!" Her smile faded a fraction, her eyes darkening. "That's not what you think, is it? That I'm a whore?"

"No!" he said, though he wasn't exactly certain she was or wasn't.

"I'm not. I just . . . live my own life, that's all. I do what I please when I please. Is that so bad?"

Billy shook his head.

"Your shirt's wet." She leaned toward him and began unbuttoning it. "You'll catch a cold if you keep it on."

He shrugged out of it and she tossed it aside. "That's better," she said. "You have a nice chest. I thought Indians didn't have any hair on their bodies."

"I'm just part Indian."

"You're a nice-lookin' kid. How old are you, eighteen? No, seventeen, didn't you say? Well, I don't guess that bastard Buddy is coming tonight, do you?"

"I don't guess he is."

Santha finished her beer and set it on the table before her, then returned her gaze to his. She stared at him, a smile working around her lips, until Billy felt his face flaming. She said in a soft voice, "Have you ever been with a woman before?"

"Huh? Well . . . sure."

"How many?"

"A few."

"Yeah. And the moon is made of green cheese." She leaned closer, looking deeply into his eyes. He was such a handsome boy, she thought, but there were secrets in his eyes; secrets, perhaps, that it was best not to know. Buddy wasn't coming, that was for sure. It was raining and she was lonely and she didn't like the idea of sleeping alone when somebody who'd sent her a bunch of rose stems was out there somewhere, maybe lurking around the trailer. She traced a finger down the center of his chest and watched the flesh tighten. "You've wanted me all along, haven't you? You don't have to be shy about it." Her finger stopped at his belt buckle. "I like you. Jeez, listen to me. Usually I have to fight the guys off! So why are you different?"

"I'm not different," Billy said, trying to keep his voice steady. "I just . . . respect you, I guess."

"Respect me? I've learned a long time ago that respect doesn't keep your bed warm on a cold night. And, Choctaw, I've lived through some very wintry ones. And will again." She paused, running her finger along his belt line; then she grasped his hand and drew it closer to herself. She licked his fingers, very slowly.

He squeezed her hand and said, "I . . . don't know what to do. I'm probably not any good."

"I'm going to turn off that light," Santha told him, "and get into bed. I'd like for you to get undressed and come to bed with me. Will you?"

He wanted to say yes, but he was too nervous to speak. Santha recognized the glassy gleam in his eyes. She stood up, let the robe fall, and walked naked to the lamp. The light went out. Billy heard the sheets go back. The rain drummed down, punctuated now by the boom of distant thunder Billy stood up, as if in a dream, and unbuckled his belt.

When he was ready, he approached the bed and saw Santha's golden hair on the pillow, her body a long S-shape beneath the pale blue sheet. She reached out for him, softly whispering his name, and when he touched her electricity seemed to jump between them. Trembling with excitement and shyness, he got under the sheet; Santha folded her arms around him, her warm mouth finding his, her tongue darting between his hps. He was correct in that he didn't know what to do, but when Santha scissored her legs around his hips he very quickly learned. Then there was heat, dampness, the sound of hurried breathing, and thunder getting closer. Santha summoned him deeper, deeper, and when he was about to explode she made him lie motionless, both of them locked together, until he could continue for a while longer.

Carnival lights filled Billy's head. She eased him onto his back, and sat astride him with her head thrown back, her mouth open as if to receive the rain that pounded on the roof. She impressed upon him the varying sensations of rhythms, from a hard pulse that ground them together to a long, slow, and lingering movement that had the strength of a tickling feather. He lay stunned while Santha's tongue played over his body, like a soft damp brush tracing the outlines of his muscles; then she told him what she liked and gave him encouragement as he first circled her nipples with his tongue, then her navel, then her soft belly and down into the valley between her legs, where her thighs pressed against the sides of his head and she gripped his hair as her hips churned. She moaned softly, her musky aroma perfuming the air.

Outside in a driving rain, Fitts stood with a raincoat pulled up around his neck. He'd seen the boy go in, and he'd seen the light go out. His blue-tinted eyeglasses streamed with water, but he didn't have to see anything else. He knew the rest of it. His heart throbbed with rage and agony. A boy? he thought. She would even take a stupid boy into her bed? His fists clenched in his coat pockets. Was there no hope for her? Lightning streaked, followed by a bass rumble of thunder that seemed to shake the world. He'd tried everything he could think of, and now he felt defeated. But there was one thing left.

He would go to the Octopus, stand before it in the gray downpour, and wait for the voice that came out of it to reveal to him what he should do. He stood a while longer, staring at the darkened trailer, and then trudged through the mud toward the midway. Long before he reached the Octopus, he could hear its sibilant whisper in his tormented brain:

Murder.

40

It was the twelfth of October, and tomorrow night the State Fair would be closing down, the carnival season over until spring. The rain had passed, and for the last two nights business had been booming. Billy helped Dr. Mirakle clean up after the final Ghost Show of the night, simply grinning when Mirakle pointedly asked him why he'd look so happy lately.

Billy left the tent and walked down the midway as the lights started flickering out. He shut the noises out of his head as he passed the Octopus, and he waited around back of the Jungle Love show, where Santha had said she'd meet him. When she did come out, fifteen minutes or so late, he saw she'd scrubbed off most of the garish makeup for him.

In her trailer, Santha continued Billy's education. An hour later, he was as weak as water, and she was pressed as close to him as a second skin. Through the dim haze of sleep, Billy could hear Buck Edger's hammer, striking metal again and again out on the darkened midway. He lay awake, listening, until Santha stirred and kissed him deeply and sweetly.

"I wish things could stay like this," Billy said after a moment.

Santha sat up. A match flared as she lit a cigarette; in its glow she looked beautiful and childlike. "What are you going to do after the fair's over?"

"I'm going down to Mobile with Dr. Mirakle, driving his equipment truck for him. Then ... I guess I'll go back to Hawthorne. It's been a good summer I don't think I'll ever forget it. Or you."

She ran her fingers through his hair and then said, "Hey! I know what would be real nice! A hot shower! We can just about both fit into the stall, and we can get real soapy and slippery and . . . ooh, I'm tinglin' just thinkin' about it! Okay?"

"Sure," he said, thrilled.

"One hot shower, comin' up!" Santha rose up from the bed and, still naked, went to the tiny bathroom. She reached in and flipped on the light. "I'll call you when I'm ready," she said, and giggled like a schoolgirl. Then she went inside and shut the door.

Billy was sitting up. His heartbeat had quickened, and there was a sick sensation in the pit of his stomach. He wasn't sure, wasn't sure at all, but just for an instant—as Santha had been silhouetted in the bathroom light—he though he'd seen a pale gray haze around her An alarm went off in the back of bis head, and he climbed out of the bed to approach the bathroom.

Santha, her body rosy, reached in through the green-plastic shower curtain and turned on the hot water It sprayed downward into the tub, but instead of the sound of water against porcelain there was a different sound—a wet, thickened noise. Santha drew aside the curtain and looked into the tub.

The water was hitting a large burlap bag, drawn closed at the top. She reached for it even as Billy said, "Santha?" from just outside the door.

She pulled at the bag. It came open. It was very heavy, and wouldn't slide.

"Santha?"

And then a triangular head with blazing eyes shot out of the burlap bag, the nightmarish thing stretching high through the hot-water fog. Santha threw her arms up instinctively, but the cobra struck her on the cheek and she slammed backward against the wall, striking her head on the tiles. Her scream gurgled away as she pitched forward, her legs dangling over the tub, the scalding water beating down on her exposed back.

Billy burst through the door, barely able to see because of the rising fog. The cobra came flashing out of it toward him. He jerked his head back, and the fangs missed him by bare inches. It was uncoiling out of the tub. Billy saw that Santha was being burned, and he reached forward to grasp her ankles. The cobra hissed, its hood spreading wide, and struck at him again. He backed away. The cobra reared up over four feet, watching him with its terrible baleful gaze as steam filled the bathroom.

Billy was still naked, but he didn't think about bis clothes. He ran to the door, threw aside the bolt, and tried to push it open ... but it wouldn't budge. He slammed his shoulder against it, and heard the rattle of a lock in the clasp. But Santha had taken off the lock when they'd come in! He realized, then, what must've happened: the snakeman had gotten in here and put that cobra in the bathroom hours ago, to kill them both, and then while they were sleeping he'd put one of his own locks through the clasp. He hammered against the door, and shouted for help.

Steam was rolling out into the room. He fumbled with the lamp, knocked it to the floor, bent and found the switch. The low, harsh light spread out in irregular rays, and Billy saw the cobra winding out through the bathroom door in what looked like foot after foot. It reared up again, its gaze fixed on him, and now Billy could hear Santha's low, terrified moaning. The cobra hissed and slithered forward, trying to defend its newfound territory.

Billy backed up against the dresser. He opened the drawer, threw aside lipsticks and makeup until his hand closed on the chrome-plated pistol. When he turned, the cobra was only a few feet away from him, its head weaving back and forth. Billy picked up a pillow from the bed, and suddenly the cobra darted forward; its head hit the pillow with the force of a man's fist. He aimed the pistol and squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. The safety was on! The snake was motionless, its tongue flickering out as it watched him. Billy would have to drop the pillow and push back the safety with his free hand. The cobra was still within striking range, and Billy had backed up as far as he could.

Someone hammered at the door. The cobra's head whipped to one side, toward the vibrations, and Billy threw the pillow at it with a guttural shout. He flicked off the safety, and the pistol was ready as the cobra's head started to wiggle free from beneath the pillow. Billy fired at it—one, two, three, four, five. The air stank of powder, and now the cobra was twisting madly, its head almost severed from the thick body. It started to rise, but the mangled head was out of control and the body snapped and writhed, the tail clenching around one leg of the dresser. Billy stood over the thing, and stretched his arm down. He had a glimpse of one single terrible eye, burning to his soul, and then the head exploded with the force of the sixth bullet. The body continued to jerk.

The door burst open, and two men who came in recoiled from the sight of the writhing snake. Billy was already in the steamy bathroom, pulling Santha out of the hot water; her back was a mass of blisters, and she was sobbing hysterically. He saw the snakebite, and saw the gray aura darkening. "Call an ambulance!" he shrieked to the men. "Hurry! The snake bit her!"

They wrapped her up in a sheet, and Billy struggled into his pants. A knot of people had gathered outside the trailer, trying to find out what had happened. When the ambulance came, Billy told the attendants that Santha had been bitten by a cobra, and if they didn't hurry she was going to die. He watched them roar away, and he heard someone say that the police were on their way.

He realized he still held the pistol. He went back into the trailer, avoiding the blood and mess, and found another box of bullets in the dresser drawer. He loaded the pistol, and then walked put through the gawking carnival people toward the midway. He could hear approaching sirens, but their noise neither increased his pace nor slowed him. As he passed the Octopus, he imagined he heard a high shriek of laughter. Buck Edgers, hammer still in his hand, looked up from his work through dark-circled, disturbed eyes. Billy paid him no attention. His heart was pounding, a fever of revenge burning in his brain as he reached the Killer Snakes sideshow and flicked the safety off his pistol. He pushed at the entranceway and was not surprised when the door—the reptile's mouth—noiselessly opened.

"Come out of there, you bastard!" Billy shouted.

Darkness lay thickly within. Nothing moved, but Billy thought he could hear the soft slidings of the man's pets. "I said come out, or I'll drag you out!" He aimed the gun into the darkness. "I've got a gun, you bastard!"

He steeled himself and stepped into the darkness, his hand almost melded to the pistol. "I've got a gun!" he warned, tensing for an expected attack. Nothing moved, and now he could see the vague shapes of the cages, set in orderly rows. A few feet away and above, a light bulb caught a speck of reflected light; Billy reached up, found the switch and turned it on. The bulb flickered, slightly swinging back and forth to throw huge and distorted shadows.

A short, balding man in a brown suit was lying on his back, on a mattress at the rear of the place. His hands were clamped around the grayish green boa constrictor that had strangled him to death. His glasses were off, and his face was bluish white. There was a note safety-pinned to the man's checked shirt. Billy approached the body, and ripped the note away. It said MURDER MURDER MURDER MURDER MURDER. And then, at the bottom: SUICIDE. Billy stared at it, wondering what madness had prompted this man to wrap the boa around his own throat and lie down to die. He returned the note to the body, where the police could find it, and then a wave of anguish crashed over him. He'd seen a gray aura enveloping Santha, not a black one: what did it mean? Tears searing his eyes, he left the sideshow and looked out to where he could see red and blue police lights spinning amid the trailers.

A cool breeze had kicked up, breaking his flesh into goose-bumps. Bits of paper wheeled along the midway, spinning in miniature tornadoes. Billy's cold gaze fell upon the Octopus. Buck Edgers was working like a machine.

"Billy? My God, what's going on!" Dr. Mirakle, in an old undershirt and his pajama bottoms, had staggered out of the truck parked behind the Ghost Show, next to the Volkswagen van. His eyes were swollen with heavy sleep, and he exuded the aroma of bourbon. He looked down at the pistol and stopped. "Billy?"

"It's all right. They took Santha to the hospital. The cobra bit her, it was there in the bathtub when she . . ." His voice cracked.

Mirakle eased forward and took the pistol from his hand. "You look like death warmed over, boy. Come on, I'll pour you a drink and you can tell me—"

"No. Not yet." Oblivious to the commotion, Edgers was driving his hammer up and down on a bolt that had probably never been loose in the first place. It dawned on Billy that the Octopus was wearing Edgers down, commanding all of his time and attention, using him as its puppet. There were revenants caught within the Octopus, crying out in their confusion and terror. Perhaps now, Billy thought, it possesses some part of the snakeman as well. He could hear the faint screaming, and he knew the Octopus wanted him too. It wanted to consume him, to draw his spirit and power into its black, greedy gears and pistons.

Are you strong? Are you strong in your heart, where strength counts?

Billy's hand had gone into his pocket. Now he brought the hand out and looked at the nugget of coal in his palm. He didn't remember putting it in these pants; he'd thought it was still with his belongings, in his suitcase under the cot at the rear of the Ghost Show tent. It reminded him of the strength he possessed, the risks he must take if he was to continue his Mystery Walk. If he backed down, if he failed to trust his own inner will, then whatever inhabited the Octopus would win, and in some terrible way it might even grow stronger still. He clenched the coal in his fist and returned it to his pocket.

"Billy?" Dr. Mirakle said. "Where are you going?"

"You can come with me, if you like. But don't try to stop me. I have to do this right now. Right now."

"Do . . . what? My God, have you lost your mind?" But he was following along, holding the pistol out to his side as if it were a dead fish.

Before Billy reached the Octopus, Edgers stopped hammering. He straightened up from his work, and turned to face the boy. Across his features was a hideous grin that stretched his mouth wide in eager anticipation. The Octopus had him, Billy knew. It was not Buck Edgers grinning.

When Dr Mirakle saw that grin, he was shocked motionless for a moment. He said in a nervous voice, "Billy, I don't . . . think you should ..."

"Step right up, pard!" Edgers boomed, shuffling forward. "Thought you'd never come!"

"I'm here. Start it up."

"Come on, then! Yessir! Oh, you're a special guest, you don't even need a fuckin' ticket! Been savin' a ride just for you." He moved to the shrouded gondola and tugged at the tarpaulin until it tore away. There were holes in the rusted metal, and faint streaks of bright orange paint. He pulled the warped metal-mesh canopy open, exposing the rust-riddled interior. "Perfect fit, I'd say."

"I wouldn't get in that rust-bucket if I were you," Dr. Mirakle said, tugging at Billy's arm. "No, I forbid it! I told your mother I'd take care of you, and I forbid you to do it! Now listen, come on back to the tent and we'll—"

"Shut your mouth, you old cocksucker," Edgers said softly, his eyes blazing into Billy's. "The boy's grown up now. He's a man. He's got a mind, and he knows what he wants to do. Show's about to start!" He gestured toward the open gondola.

Billy pulled free of Dr. Mirakle. He had to do this now, while there was still a rage burning in him. He moved forward, but suddenly Edgers's wife stepped out of the shadows, her round-cheeked face pasty with dread. She said, "No, please . . . don't do it, boy. You don't understand it. You don't see—"

"SHUT UP YOU GODDAMNED BITCH!" the man howled, brandishing the hammer at her. She flinched but did not step back.

"That machine," she said, staring at Billy, "is Satan's handiwork. Buck bought it out of a junkyard in Georgia, and from the first day he couldn't do anything but work on it, trying to put it back together. It slashed his face, and broke both his legs, and—"

"SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!"

He hobbled toward her, raising the hammer, and she screamed, "Please Buck, don't!" and dodged a vicious blow that might've broken her shoulder. She slipped and fell to her hands and knees; her husband stood over her, panting like an animal. She looked up at him, an awful pleading expression in her eyes, and said, "I love you, Buck. ..."

Billy saw the man's face change; he blinked uncertainly, and his terrible grimace slipped a few notches. For an instant, he resembled nothing more than a tormented man who'd been down on his luck for most of his life; then the savage grin came back, and his eyes flared. He put his booted foot against his wife's side and pushed her down into the sawdust. He said, "Now you stay right there, like a good little girl."

"Come on!" Billy said. "I'm waiting for you!"

"Oh, yes. Of course. The master speaks, the servant obeys. Of course, of course!" He giggled and watched as Billy climbed into the gondola. The seat was a hard mass of cracked vinyl and Billy could see the ground through a few quarter-sized holes in the metal. He stretched his legs out into the gondola's nose, his back straight against the seat. There was a seatbelt, and Billy drew it tightly across his lap. Edgers rushed forward and clanged the mesh canopy down, drawing a small metal bar through a safety clasp. He grinned in through the mesh. "All comfy-cozy? Good. Then we're ready to begin, aren't we?"

Edgers scuttled to the generator that powered the Octopus and switched it on; it hummed, sending electricity through cables as thick as a man's wrist. The ride's lights flickered, flickered again, and then blazed brightly. The remaining bulbs that spelled out OCTOPUS buzzed like angry hornets. Edgers stood over a small control board and turned on the ride's engine; it hooted and moaned, gears and wheels spinning. "I've got you!" he shouted. His face was ruddy and demonic as he let off the brake's foot pedal and slowly pushed forward the lever that engaged the drive-train.

"Billy!" Dr. Mirakle shouted, stepping back as the Octopus began to move.

The gondolas slowly gained momentum. Billy's head was forced back by centrifugal motion. Edgers bore down on the lever;

Billy's cheeks rippled with the rising g-forces. The gondolas began rising—five feet, ten feet, fifteen feet.

And then a garble of screams, moans, and sobbings—agonized sounds, some high-pitched and others so low Billy felt them in his bones rather then heard them—began to rise up around him, faintly at first, then with increasing intensity. He could hear a cacophony of voices, cries for help, sudden shrieks that seemed to pierce him. This gondola was the evil heart of the Octopus, Billy knew, and within it were the disembodied revenants of its victims—God only knew how many.

The gondola pitched upward suddenly, then fell with a frightening speed. It stopped with a squeal of cables and pistons, then jerked upward again. The Octopus was spinning faster, the world beyond the gondola a dizzying blur. Billy, his face twisted into a rictus, tried to force his concentration on the voices, tried to focus his energy on drawing the revenants to him.

No fear, he thought. No fear. I can help you. I can . .

A roar filled his head: No you can't! You can't reach them! I won't let you reach them!

The gondola was rising and falling, faster and faster, Billy's head brushing the mesh canopy with its upward sweep. He shut his eyes, his hands gripping the cracked vinyl armrests. There was a coldness in the air, gradually creeping up his body; he let it overtake him, and suddenly his brain was crackling with the last thoughts and images of perhaps a dozen people the Octopus had destroyed.

"No fear," Billy breathed. "Just touch me . . . no fear. . . ."

And suddenly electricity seemed to sear through him, and there was something else in the gondola with him, something laughing and shrieking.

The voice came in a triumphant cackle: "You're mine now, boy!"

Billy shouted, "NO!" The voice rippled and faded, and he knew he'd touched the pulse of wickedness in this machine. "I know you! I know what you are now!"

Do you, boy? Then come join me.

Billy heard something grind and rip. He opened his eyes, and saw with horror that the long bolts securing the mesh canopy in place were slowly unscrewing. Smaller screws that held the safety bar were being ripped out. The canopy assemblage tore away and flew into the air. Wind screamed into Billy's face, forcing his chin backward. Another bolt clattered loose down around Billy's knees. The quarter-sized holes tore open still wider, like rotten cloth. The gondola was coming to pieces around him, and when it pitched him out to his death the entire machine would break loose, off-balance, and go spinning down the midway trailing live electric cables.

"STOP IT!" Billy yelled to Buck. He caught a quick glimpse of the man, bent over the control board like a hunchback, his hand pressed down on the lever. Above him more bolts unscrewed, in the central mechanism that held the gondolas to the Octopus, and a cable tore loose to spit orange sparks.

He could feel presences all around him, trying to cling to him. He forced himself to concentrate on their anguished voices again, and now he saw a faint mist taking form and shape, a figure with many heads and arms and legs, the faces indistinct, the whole thing reaching for him, clinging to him like a frightened animal. "Oh God," he whispered, "help me do it, please help me. ..."

Bolts sheared off. A section of the flooring fell away under Billy's legs, and on the ground Dr. Mirakle ducked as the sharp metal sailed over his head.

Billy sank his arms into the mass of apparitions before him, like plunging into an ice-veined pond. His teeth chattered. "You can get away from here . . . through me!" he shouted into the wind. "I'll take your pain, if you give it up!"

No! I've got you now! I've got all of you!

"Please! I'll take it for you, I'll keep it so you can go on! Please let me! . . ."

The gondola shuddered and swayed, loosened from its supporting arm. Currents of terror ripped through Billy.

The misty shape undulated, a dozen hands reaching for him. A dozen terror-stricken faces writhed like smoke. A section of the gondola's side fell away with a shriek of torn metal.

I'm their master their keeper you can't win.

"No! You feed on them, you use their hurting to make yourself stronger!" The gondola fell and jarred, rose again with a force that clicked Billy's teeth together He gripped at the revenants, his arms inside a deep-freeze. "Let me help you get away! Please!"

And then the mass began to spread over him, to cover him up, icy threads of white matter racing over his face, into his hair around his shoulders. Many people, events, and emotions filled him up, almost to bursting, and he cried out at the force of a dozen life-experiences entering his mind. Spectral hands gripped at him, clutching at his face and body, as the cold mass began to move into him.

You can't! I won't . . .

". . . let you!" Buck shouted, his eyes bright with rage. He pressed the lever down as far as it would go, then threw his body against it. The wood cracked off, and Edgers flung it aside with a delightful grin. The machine was locked now, and would continue to spin until the gondola, hanging by only two bolts, was torn free. "I'll win! Look at the boy fly, watch him fall!"

Mirakle placed the pistol barrel against the back of his head. "Stop that damned machine or I'll put a bullet through your brain!"

Edgers turned his head; his eyes had rolled backward, just the whites exposed. He grinned like a death's-head, and whispered in a singsong, "Here we go 'round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry—"

"STOP IT NOW, I SAID!"

"You won't shoot me, old man. You won't dare shoot me!"

Mirakle swallowed, and stepped back a pace. He saw that the gondola was about to break free. Snapped cables popped through the air. Mirakle said, "Damn you to Hell!" and swung the barrel against Edger's face. The man's nose splintered, blood streaming from the nostrils. The demonic face with its fish-belly eyes began to laugh. Mirakle struck again, opening a jagged cut over one eye. Edgers howled with laughter and spat blood out of his mouth. "Here we go 'round the mulberry bush, the mul—"

Suddenly there was a sharp cracking noise, and sparks flew. The woman had picked up the length of wood, and was hammering madly at the generator, tearing the cables loose.

The thing that was inside Buck Edgers shouted, "NO! GET AWAY FROM THAT!" He started forward, pushing Dr. Mirakle aside, but then the last of the cables tore free with a blast of sparks, the wooden lever rippling with flames in the woman's hands. The rest of the live bulbs that said OCTOPUS blew out, and the lights that decorated the machine flickered and went dark. Mirakle put his foot to the brake pad and pressed down hard. Gears shrieked as the machine began to slow.

"NO!" Edgers whirled around, his face as yellow as old parchment. He took a staggering step toward Mirakle, as the gondolas slowly settled toward the ground and the machine's rotations weakened. Edgers whined, "It's not fair! Not fair!" His voice began to deepen like a record played at too slow a speed, as the Octopus continued to slow down. "Nootttt fairrrrr. Noooottttt fairrrrrr..." And then he fell to his face in the sawdust, drawing up like a fetus, and began sobbing.

The Octopus stopped. At once Mirakle was dragging Billy out. The boy was cold to the touch, was shaking and moaning. He put his hands under Billy's shoulders and pulled him away as the dead cables whipped and writhed all around. Something cracked in the guts of the machine; bolts sheared off, the huge central cylinder of the machine swayed, swayed as the four gondolas came free and fell to the ground. Then the entire machine was coming apart, collapsing in a haze of spark-smoke and sawdust. Its steel arms thudded down, as if the cement that had held the Octopus together had suddenly dissolved. Dust welled up, rolling across the midway in a yellow wave.

"No fear," Billy was saying, "please let me take it oh God I don't want to die let me out no fear no pain . . ."

Mirakle bent over him. "It's all right. It's over now ... my God!" The boy contorted in some imagined pain, trembling, freezing cold. He moaned and whimpered, his head thrashing back and forth. Mirakle looked up, and saw the woman kneeling down beside her sobbing husband.

She clung to him, rocking him like a baby. "It's done," she said, tears streaming down her face. "Oh dear Lord, we're rid of that monster. We're finally rid of it!"

Mirakle saw that there was very little left of the Octopus that wasn't fit for a junkyard. He shivered, because now he had an idea of what kind of power Billy had; he didn't understand it, but it made his blood run cold.

Suddenly Billy gasped for breath and opened his eyes, as if emerging from a nightmare. His eyes were bloodshot, ruby-red. "Are they gone?" he whispered. "Did I do it?"

Mirakle said, "I . . . think so." He was aware of figures emerging through the dust. Mirakle gripped Billy's hand; it was as cold as what he'd always imagined death to be.

For both him and Billy Creekmore, the fair was over.

41

They reached Mobile at twilight the following day, traveling in the equipment truck. Because Billy was in no shape to drive, the Volkswagen van had been left in Birmingham. Mirakle would hire someone to bring it down.

The boy's sick, Mirakle had repeatedly thought during the long drive. Billy had been racked alternately with chills and fever; he'd slept for most of the trip, but the shudderings and moanings he'd made spoke of nightmares beyond Mirakle's experience. It had been Dr. Mirakle's intention to put Billy on a bus and send him back to Hawthorne, but Billy had said no, that he'd promised to come to Mobile and he'd be all right if he could just rest.

Billy's pallor had faded to a grayish brown, his face covered with sweat as he huddled on the seat under a green army blanket. Emotions sizzled within him, and terror had a grip on his bones.

They were driving along the flat expanse of Mobile Bay, where small waves topped with dirty green foam rolled in to a bare brown shore. Mirakle glanced over and saw that Billy was awake. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah. Better."

"You should've eaten when we stopped. You need to keep up your strength."

He shook his head. "I probably couldn't keep food down."

"I don't expect you to help me now. Not after what happened. You're just too sick and weak."

"I'll be okay." Billy shivered and drew the coarse blanket closer around him, though the Gulf air was thick and sultry. He stared out the window at the rolling waves, amazed at the vista of so much water; the sun was setting behind gray clouds, casting a pearly sheen over the bay.

"I should put you on a bus and send you home," Dr. Mirakle said. "You know, I . . . don't understand what happened last night and maybe I don't want to, but . . . it seems to me you're a very special young man. And possibly you have a very special responsibility, too."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean . . . taking this power, or gift, or ability—whatever you choose to call it—and helping those parapsychologists I was telling you about. If you can communicate with the dead—'lay the dead to rest,' I suppose you might call it—then you should be working with scientists, not traveling with a two-bit carnival or spending your life in a town the size of a postage stamp. Billy, you have much to offer; perhaps the answer to a great many mysteries ... or perhaps the beginning of new ones. Does it . . . affect you like this, every time?"

"It's only happened like this once before. That was bad too, but this is . . . agony. It's like having a long scream bottled up inside you, but you can't find your voice to let it out. I feel like I'm burning up, but I'm cold too. There's too much going on in my head, and I ... I can't think straight." He sighed, more of a breathy moan, and let his head fall back against the seat, his eyes closed. He had to open them again, quickly, because strange blurred visions—the last things those people had seen before they died in the gondola: spinning sky and blinking lights, fingers curled in the mesh of the canopy, the world turning at frightening speed in a blaze of colors—whirled in his brain.

Dr. Mirakle drove the truck over a long bridge, and then turned off the road into an area of older clapboard houses; most of them were two-storied structures that spoke of the harsh hand of time and salt-air abrasion. Mirakle stopped the truck before a large house with a front porch and boarded-over windows. The white paint was peeling in long strips, showing the bleached gray wood underneath. They sat in the truck for a moment more, as the gray light darkened. "You don't have to do this," Mirakle said.

"I know. The way I feel, I don't even know if I can."

"Was what you did worth the pain?"

Billy considered the question, then nodded. "Yes. It was."

"And you'd do the same thing again?"

"I don't know. I try to . . . think I'm strong enough, but I'm afraid. And I know that when I'm afraid, I get weaker" He turned his weary gaze onto Mirakle. "I don't want to be like I am. I never asked for it. Oh God, if I just could forget about revenants and the black aura and Death for a little while! ... I want to be like everybody else."

"Everybody else is afraid, too," the man said quietly. "But don't you understand that you of all people shouldn't be afraid, because you can see past Death to another kind of life? You know that going into the ground isn't the end of it; and if you can help other people see that, then . . . your life can make a difference in the whole scheme of things! My God, what an opportunity you have! If I were in my right mind, I'd try to talk you into touring the country with me, and giving some sort of demonstration of the spirit world! We'd wind up as either millionaires or skid-row bums!"

Billy smiled grimly.

"But," Mirakle continued, "your future lies far beyond the carnival circuit, Billy. Think about that parapsychology institute I told you about in Chicago. Will you?"

"Okay," Billy said. "I will."

"Good. Well. Are you ready? We'll leave the equipment in the truck for now."

They got out, Billy following Dr. Mirakle up a weeded-over sidewalk. It was all he could do to climb the porch steps.

"Forgive the place," Mirakle said. He left the door open so air could circulate. "I had to board up the windows after the glass was broken out one summer. It wouldn't be worth putting new glass in. Thank God the electricity still works."

"Do you have a telephone?" Billy wanted to call the hospital in Birmingham again, to check on Santha Tully. Early this afternoon, when he'd called for the second time, a nurse had told him that Santha was still on the critical list and that the antivenom flown up from Florida had been administered soon after Santha had been brought in.

"No, I'm afraid not. I don't have any callers. Please, sit down." He scooped newspapers out of the sofa and dumped them on the floor "I know you're concerned about your friend, but I'm sure they're doing everything they can for her. We'll find a phone booth later, if you like."

Billy nodded, wandering over to the bookshelves. He'd seen a pale gray aura around her, not a black one—did that mean there was a chance she might survive?

Mirakle said, "Why don't you sit down and rest. I'll look in the kitchen, perhaps I can find something to eat. All right?" Billy nodded, and the man went back through a corridor to the rear of the house. "Chicken noodle okay with you?" he called out in another moment. "It's canned, so I presume it's safe to eat."

"That's fine, thanks." Billy stepped into another large room, his shoes stirring up clouds of dust. The room held a cluttered desk and an upright piano with yellow keys. He punched his finger at a few of them, hearing off-key notes ring like a stabbed cat. Then he went through another door into the hallway, and there was the staircase that Dr. Mirakle had told him about. A single bulb studded the ceiling at the top of the stairs, casting a murky gray glow.

Billy touched the banister. He could hear Mirakle wrestling with pots and pans in the kitchen, at the hallway's end. He climbed the steps slowly, his hand clenching the banister, and when he reached the top he sat down. Water was running in the kitchen. Billy said softly, "Kenneth?" He waited for a few minutes, trying to concentrate through a wall of leftover terrors. "Kenneth?" he whispered.

There was a figure at the bottom of the stairs. It stood motionlessly for a moment, then placed a foot on the first step.

Billy sighed and shook his head. "I don't think there's anyone here. There might not have ever been."

"I know," Mirakle replied softly. "I . . . had once hoped that Kenneth was here, but . . . that's a selfish hope, isn't it? If some part of him remained, that would mean he was troubled, wouldn't it?"

Billy nodded.

"I don't know what Ellen saw, if indeed she saw anything at all, but we both had to shoulder a lot of pain. I think . . . seeing Kenneth's ghost was a way for Ellen to deal with his death, but instead of laying him to rest she tried to resurrect him. He was a very good boy. You would've liked him. Is there ... is there nothing of him left?"

"Oh yes." Billy rose to his feet. "You bring him back to life when you remember him. Remembering doesn't have to be sad; it's a good thing, because you can keep your son with you all the time, in your heart and your memory. I think he's resting easy now, and he's gone on to whatever's waiting, but he's still alive inside you."

Dr. Mirakle smiled wistfully. "Yes. And I guess that's good enough, isn't it? Kenneth always remains a young man in my memories; he's always handsome in his uniform, and he's always the best son any man could ask for." He lowered his head and Billy heard him sigh deeply. Then he said, "I'd better check the soup. I've been known to burn it," and returned to the kitchen.

Billy stood at the top of the stairs for a while longer, his hand on the railing. But there was nothing there. Nothing stirred the air around him, nothing tried to make desperate contact, nothing yearned to shrug off its earthly pains and pass on. The house was silent and at peace. Billy descended the stairs and returned to the piano room. He ran his hands over the heat-cracked wood of the piano, tracing fingers over the battered and worn keyboard. He sat down on the bench and hit a single note that reverberated sharply in the air. Then another note, down in the bass register, that moaned like a low wind on a winter's night. He hit three notes at the same time, and winced at their discordant wail. The next try, though, the sound was sweet and harmonious, like a cooling balm against the fever that churned within him. Looking at the keyboard, trying to figure it out, was a mystery in itself: why were some keys black and others white? How could anybody make music out of it? What did those pedals down there do?

And suddenly he brought both fists crashing down onto the keyboard. Notes shrieked and shrilled, and Billy could feel the vibration thrumming up his wrists, up his forearms, his shoulders, his neck, and right to the top of his skull. The sound was awful, but somehow the energy he'd expended had cracked the hot cauldron of emotions in him, a tiny crack allowing a trickle to escape. Billy hammered again, with his left fist. Then with his right. Then both fists were coming down like pistons, and the house was pounding with a rough, jarring noise that perhaps harmonized with the music of terror and confusion. The old piano seemed about to burst with explosive noise; under Billy's relentless pounding several pieces of ivory flew off like rotten teeth. But when he stopped and he listened to the last echoes dying away there did seem to be a music in them: an eerie harmony of ignorantly struck chords, fading away now, fading into the very walls of the house. And Billy felt as if that cauldron had split down the middle, all the terrors and pains streaming out and flooding through him into this instrument that stood before him. He felt lightened, cleansed, and exhilarated.

And he remembered his grandmother saying, a long time ago, that it would be up to him to find a way to release the emotions he absorbed through contact with the revenants. She had her pottery, just as his mother had her needlepoint, and now . . . what was closer to human emotion than music? But how to bring out real music from this assembly of wood and metal wires? How to caress it instead of beating it half to death? How to let it soothe away the pain instead of ripping it out?

"Well," Dr Mirakle said from behind him, holding a tray with two bowls of soup, "I'm glad to see my house is still standing. I'm sure the police are on their way by now, but we'll ask them to join in the jamboree."

"Is this yours? Do you know how to play it?"

"Me? No, I couldn't play a kazoo. My wife is . . . was a piano teacher for a while. Can I venture to say that you're no Liberace?"

"Who?"

"Never mind. Then again, neither is Liberace a Billy Creekmore. Come on, we'll eat in the front room, it's too dark in here." He paused, because Billy wasn't rising from the bench. Instead, the boy was fingering the keyboard again, picking at various notes as if he'd stumbled upon Captain Kidd's treasure. "It's probably not too hard to learn," Mirakle said. "I never had the inclination, but there are a stack of old instruction books down in the basement. Are you interested?"

He struck a high note and listened to it sing. "Yes sir."

"I'll get them for you, then. They're probably so mildewed you can't read them, but ..." Mirakle came over and set the tray down atop the piano. He saw the look of excitement in Billy's eyes, and noticed also that his coloring had improved. It had been a great relief, in a way, to hear that Kenneth was resting far from the confines of this house. "You've been a great help to me," Dr. Mirakle said. "I appreciate all the work you've done. I . don't know what's ahead for you, but I think I'll be hearing frorm you again. At the very least, I hope you'll write to let me know how you're doing."

"Yes sir, I will."

"I have an idea you're the kind of young man who means what he says. That's rare enough in itself, in this day and age. In the morning I'll take you to the bus station; I would offer you a sizeable increase in pay to join me on the carnival circuit next season, but . . . you've got better things to do, I think." He smiled. The thought streaked through him that somehow he was losing a second son, and he touched Billy's shoulder. "The soup's getting cold. Come on, let's eat."

Mirakle took the tray into the front room; Billy paused at the keyboard a moment longer, then joined him. Young man, Mirakle thought, I wish you much luck. That is the very least of what you'll need on your journey.

And it was possible—no, probable, Mirakle told himself—that sometime before winter's cold set in he might drive the truck back up to Hawthorne, back to that little shack off from the road, and deliver a piano that might yet learn to sing again.

NINE

Revelations

42

"He went to sleep," Ramona said, long gray strands of her hair blowing from around her scarf. There were deep lines under her eyes and on each side of her nose, yet she refused to bend to the will of the years; she carried herself strong and straight, her chin uplifted. "I read the Bible to him that night, and we ate a good dinner of vegetables. He talked a lot about you, as he had for the few days before that, and he said he was trying very hard to understand . . . what we're like. He said he knew you were going to be a great man, and he'd be proud of you. Then he said he was going to take a nap, and I washed the dishes. When I went in later to see about him, he . . . was as peaceful as a child. I pulled the covers over him, and then I went to get the doctor."

Billy touched the granite marker A chill breeze was sweeping down into their faces from the hills, and already winter was knocking at the door though it was hardly the middle of October. He'd come walking up the road yesterday, lugging his suitcase from the Greyhound bus stop at Coy Granger's, and had seen his mother out in the field, gathering pecans in a bowl. His father wasn't sitting on the front porch. The Oldsmobile was gone—sold for scrap, he'd later learned, to pay for his father's casket. The house was the same, fixed up and painted with the money he'd sent home; but things had changed. He could see the passage of time in his mother's face, and from what she'd told him his father had died near the time Billy had dreamed of him and his dad walking along the road to Hawthorne. Billy said, "You had to know. The aura. Didn't you see it?"

"Yes, I did," Ramona replied quietly. "I knew, and so did he. Your father had made his peace with the world . . . and especially with himself. He raised you with a good, strong hand and he worked very hard for us. He didn't always agree with us or understand us, but that was never the point: at the end, he loved us just as much as he always had. He was ready."

"Ready?" Billy shook his head disbelievingly. "Do you mean he just . . . wanted to die? No, I don't believe that!"

She looked at him with a cool, level gaze. "He didn't fight it. He didn't want to. At the end he had the mind of a child, and as all children have faith, so did he."

"But . . . I . . . should've been here! You should've written me! I . . . didn't ... get to say good-bye! . . ."

"What would that have changed?" She shook her head and put a hand on his arm. A tear streaked down his cheek, and he let it fall. "You're here now," she said. "And though he is not, you'll always be John Creekmore's son, and he'll be in your child's blood as well. So is he really gone?"

Billy felt the restless wind pulling at him, heard it whispering around the pungent pines. It was true that his father lived within him, he knew, but still . . . separation was so hard to take. It was so hard not to miss someone, not to cry for him and mourn him; easy to look at death from a distance, more difficult to stare into its face. He already felt a world away from the carnival with its riotous noises and flashing lights; here on this bluff, framed by hills covered with woodland and overshadowed by gray sky, he seemed to stand at the center of a great silence. He ran his hands over the rough gravestone and remembered how his father's unshaven jaw had felt against his cheek. The world was spinning too fast! he thought; there were too many changes in the wind, and the summer of his childhood seemed lost in the past. For one thing he could be happy: before leaving Mobile yesterday morning, he'd called the hospital in Birmingham and had been told that Santha Tully was going to be all right.

"Winter's on the way," Ramona said. "It's going to be a cold one, too, from the way these pines have grown thick."

"I know." He looked at his mother. "I don't want to be like I am, Mom. I never asked for this. I don't want to see ghosts and the black aura, I want to be like everybody else. It's too hard this way; it's too . . . strange."

"Just as your father's in your blood," she replied, "so am I. No one ever said it would be easy. . . ."

"But no one ever gave me a choice, either."

"That's true. Because there can be no choice. Oh, you can live as a hermit and shut out the world, as I tried to do after you were born, but sooner or later there comes a knock at your door."

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and hunched over as a cold wind blew around him. Ramona put her arm around him. Her crying was done, but it almost broke her heart to see so much pain in her son. Still, she knew that pain sculpts the soul, molds the will, and would leave him standing stronger when he'd finally straightened up.

After another moment he wiped his eyes on his sleeve and said, "I'm all right. I didn't mean to . . . act like a baby."

"Let's walk," she told him, and together they went down the hill among the tombstones, heading toward the road. It was over two miles back to the house, but they were in no hurry.

"What do I do now?" Billy asked.

"I don't know. We'll see." She was silent for a few minutes as they walked, and Billy knew that something important was on her mind. They came to a place where a stream spoke over flat stones, and Ramona suddenly motioned for him to stop. She said, "My legs aren't what they used to be, I'll tell you. When I was a girl I could run this distance without breathing hard, and now already I'm hiccuping like a frog." She sat down on a rock that had people's initials scraped on it. He lay on his stomach in the grass, watching the pattern of water as it swirled over the stones. "There are things you need to know now," Ramona said. "I couldn't have told you while your father was living, though he was well aware of them too. I'm going to tell you, and then you'll have to make up your own mind about what to do."

"What things?"

She looked up, watching a squadron of crows fly across her field of vision. Off in the distance there was the faint reflection of sunlight off an airplane, climbing toward the clouds. "The world's changing so fast," she said, almost to herself. "People fighting in the streets, killing and hating each other; children trying to escape through God knows what kind of drugs; a war going on and on and on without clarity or point . . . these things are making me afraid, because evil's walking without fear, and it changes its shape and voice to gain its own greedy end. It's reaching out, wanting more and more. You saw it once before, a long time ago, in the smokehouse."

"The shape changer," Billy said.

"That's right. It was testing you, probing at you. It tested you again, at the carnival, but you were stronger than it took you to be."

"Have you ever seen it?"

"Oh yes. Several times." She looked at him through narrowed eyes. "It always taunted me and tried to trick me, but I saw through its tricks. I wouldn't let it get into my mind; I wouldn't let it make me doubt myself, or my abilities. But now my work's almost done, Billy. Now the shape changer sees no threat in me; it wants you, and it'll do everything it can to destroy you."

"But I'll be all right, won't I? As long as I don't let it into my mind?"

She paused, listening to the sound of wind through the trees. "The shape changer never gives up, Billy," she said quietly. "Never It's as old as time, and it knows the meaning of patience. It means to catch you unawares, in a weak moment. And I think it's most dangerous when it's feeding off the dead, like a beast gnawing on bones. It draws in a revenant's energy to make itself stronger. I wish I could tell you that I know the limits of the shape changer's powers, but I don't. Oh, there's so much you need to know, Billy!" She gazed at him for a moment. "But I can't teach you. Life will."

"Then I'll learn," he replied.

"You'll have to." Ramona sighed deeply. "This is what I have to tell you: you were not born into this world alone."

Billy frowned. "What?"

"You were one of two," she said, staring off at the trees. "You were born first, but behind you there was a second child. You were so close inside me that the doctor could only hear one heartbeat, and in those days the medical facilities weren't very good. So: there were two children, born in a pickup truck on the way to the hospital on a cold night in November. Both of you were born with cauls, a sure sign of spiritual powers. Yours covered your face. His . . . had torn loose, and he was gripping it in his hands. Even so young, something within your brother made him want to escape his Mystery Walk. You weren't identical twins, though; you had my coloring, while he looked more like his father."

Her eyes were dark pools as she gazed solemnly at Billy. "You see, your father and I were very poor. We could hardly feed ourselves, much less two more mouths. We were expecting one, and we had to choose. That was the most terrible decision of my life, son. There's ... a man named Tillman, who buys and sells babies. He bought your brother from us, and he promised to find him a good home." Her hands clenched into fists, and strain showed on her lined face. "It was ... the only thing we could do, and we both agonized over it so long. Your father was never the same after we went through with it. We had to choose, and we chose you. Do you understand?"

"I . . . think so." Billy recalled the woman at the tent revival, a long time ago, confessing the sin of selling her baby. God, how that moment must've pained his mother!

"For years I thought nothing would come of it," she said. "Your father and I often wondered what had happened to him, but you were our son and we wanted to give you our full love and attention. But then ... I saw him, and I knew from the first minute who he was. I knew that he might have a special power too, but that it might be different from yours . . . and I saw in his eyes that he was being used without knowing it. I saw him that summer night at the Falconer Crusade. He looks just like your father, but enough like Jimmy Jed Falconer to pass as his son."

Billy sat frozen for a moment, shocked numb. "No," he whispered. "No, not him. . . ."

"You know it's true. I've seen the way you look at each other. You've felt the same thing, probably, as him—maybe a kind of curiosity or attraction. I think . . . both of you need the other, without knowing it. You understand the meaning of your Mystery Walk, but Wayne is afraid and floundering in the dark."

"Why?" he asked, rising to his feet. He was angry and confused and dazed, and he realized he had always felt a pull toward the young evangelist, but he'd fought against it. "If it was a secret for so long, why tell me now?"

"Because J. J. Falconer passed on this summer. He was all that stood between Wayne and the grinding gears of that Crusade machine he built. Wayne is a young businessman now, and his mind is sealed with Jimmy Jed Falconer's thumbprint. He'll follow his father's path, but he doesn't know what's waiting for him at the end of it. He was taught at an early age how to use the power of fear and hatred and call it religion. His spirit is weak, Billy. The shape changer looks for weakness, and if it can use Wayne Falconer against you, it will—in a minute."

Billy bent and picked up a rock, flinging it into the stream. A bird wheeled for the sky from its cover of brush. "Why does he hate us?"

"He may feel the same pull we do. He may mistake it for our trying to lure him away from what he thinks is the righteous path. He doesn't understand us, and neither did his father."

"Do you think he could . . . ever really heal?" Billy asked her.

"I don't know. He's charismatic, there's no doubt. He can make a person believe they've been healed, even if maybe nothing's wrong with them. Falconer had a hand in teaching him that. But if Wayne can heal, he has to find that power deep inside himself, just like you do when you take on the revenants. He has to hurt, just like you do. The Crusade demands that he heal time after time, with no stopping. I think he pretends to heal so he won't have to feel that pain, if indeed he ever really felt it. Oh, he may be able to throw those people a spark or two—but if you throw off enough sparks, you don't have enough left to start a fire when you really need it."

"What's going to happen to him?"

"He may crack under the weight of the Crusade, or he might find the strength to stand on his own two feet. For him, that might be turning away from the greed that's all around him, and finding out he can learn more about his healing power and he doesn't have to sell it every day on a stage." She shook her head. "I don't think he'll leave the Crusade, though. It would be too much of a leap into the dark for him."

Billy's shoulders sagged. Ramona stood up, unsteadily. "We'd better be getting home before it gets dark," she said wearily.

"No, not yet. I need to ... be alone for a while, to think. All right?"

She nodded. "Take all the time you need." She touched his cheek with a lingering hand, then started to walk away.

He asked, "Are you afraid of him?"

"Yes," she said. "There's something in him that wants to come home, but he doesn't know the way." She walked on, alongside the littered road, toward Hawthorne.

Billy watched her go, then crossed the stream to lose himself in the forest.

43

Beneath the same forbidding October sky, a group of men in business suits were slowly walking the length of the county's huge public swimming pool just outside Fayette. The pool was drained and in need of painting.

"I want it rebuilt," Wayne Falconer was saying to O'Brien, the architect from Birmingham, "in the shape of a Cross. I want the church there." He pointed to the concessions building. "I want it to be the biggest church this state has ever seen. And I want a fountain in the middle of the pool. One with colored lights. Can you do that?"

O'Brien chewed on a toothpick and nodded thoughtfully. "I think so. Have to be careful with wiring. Don't want to electrocute anybody. It would be some visual effect though, wouldn't it?" He grinned. "Not electrocution ... I mean the colors."

Henry Bragg and George Hodges laughed. Bragg was still lean and boyish-looking, only a touch of gray in his stylishly cut sandy-brown hair; as a rule he wore blue blazers and gray slacks with razor-sharp creases. He'd moved his growing family to Fayette four years ago and had taken over the job of chief attorney for the Falconer Crusade, Inc.

George Hodges, by contrast, had not aged so gracefully. He was bald except for a fringe of brown hair, and his face had slowly collapsed into folds under the pull of gravity. He wore a rumpled brown suit, his breast pocket lined with pens.

"I want this to be the biggest baptismal pool in the world," Wayne said. The Crusade had recently purchased the pool for a million and a half. "People will come here from everywhere, wanting to be baptized. Of course, there'll be regular swimming here too—for Christian youth only—but the baptisms will be the big thing. It'll be . . . like a Christian swim club, but there won't be membership fees. There'll be donations to the Falconer Memorial. . . ." His voice trailed off. He was staring at the high-diving platform, the Tower. He remembered when he was almost ten, and he'd finally gotten the nerve to climb up there and try to jump. Poised on the edge, he felt his knees shaking—and then the older kids down in the pool had started yelling for him to jump, jump, Wayne, jump. It was just too high, and from way up there it looked like a sheet of blue glass that would cut him to pieces. Coming carefully down, he'd tripped and fallen and busted his lip and, crying, had run out to where the church bus was parked to get away from the laughter.

"I want that down," Wayne said quietly. "The Tower. I want it down, first thing."

"That's been here for over twenty-five years, Wayne," George Hodges said. "It's sort of a symbol for the whole—"

"Down," Wayne told him, and Hodges was silent.

At the far end of the pool, Wayne suddenly dismissed Bragg and O'Brien. As the two men walked away, Hodges waited uneasily for Wayne to speak. The young man stared at the pool, took a small bottle from his coat, and popped a pill into his mouth. His eyes were almost the same shade as the pool's faded paint. "I know I can trust you, George. You've always been there when I needed you." Hodges had done such a good job in his years as the Crusade's business manager that he could now afford a colonial-style house a few miles from the Falconer estate.

"That's right, Wayne," Hodges replied.

Wayne looked at him. "My daddy came again last night. He sat on the foot of my bed, and we had a long talk."

Hodges's face pulled tight. Oh God! he thought. Not again!

"He told me that the Creekmore witch and her boy want me now, George. They want to destroy me, like they destroyed my daddy."

"Wayne," Hodges said quietly, "please don't do this. That woman lives in Hawthorne. She's no threat to you. Why don't you just forget about her, and let's go on like—"

"I can feel her wanting me to come to her!" Wayne said. "I can feel her eyes on me, and I can hear her filthy voice, calling to me at night! And that boy's just as bad as she is! He puts himself in my head sometimes, and I can't get him out!"

Hodges nodded. Cammy was calling him at all hours of the night now, and driving him crazy with her complaints about Wayne's fits of black temper. One night last week Wayne had left the house and gone to the airport, flying up in the company Beechcraft and doing loops and circles like a maniac. Wayne wasn't yet eighteen, yet already he was faced with decisions that would stagger a seasoned business executive. Maybe it was understandable, Hodges thought, that Wayne should pretend to be counseled by his father's ghost as a way of shouldering the burden.

"My daddy says the Creekmores should burn in Hell," Wayne was saying. "He says, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.'"

"Wayne, we sent some people over to Hawthorne to ask around about her, just as you wanted. She stays to herself and never goes out, her son went and joined the circus or something, and her husband died not too long ago. She's strange, but so what? She's nothing but a faker. If she could really see ghosts and all that junk, then why isn't she out doing seances or stuff like that for rich people? And your daddy is dead, Wayne. He doesn't come to you at night. He doesn't advise you about business deals. Please, Wayne. Let him go."

Wayne blinked and touched his forehead gingerly. "I'm tired," he said. "All these meetings make me so tired. I wish I could sleep at night. I need more sleeping pills. The ones you got me before aren't strong enough."

"They'd knock out a horse!" Hodges grasped Wayne's arm. "Now listen to me. You've got to stop taking so many pills! I swear to God I could cut my throat for getting you that damned Percodan! Now you take stuff to put you to sleep and stuff to get you up in the morning."

"Daddy says for me to," Wayne said, his face expressionless.

"No. No more pills." Hodges shook his head and started to walk away.

"George?" Wayne's voice was soft and silken. Hodges stopped in his tracks and clenched his fists at his sides. "George, you forget. If I can't sleep, I can't address all those civic groups I'm supposed to meet with. I can't do the radio and the television shows. I can't go over the magazine material. I can't plan for next year's revival circuit. Can I?"

Hodges turned, his face reddening. "You don't need any more damned pills, Wayne!"

"Get them. Or I'll find someone who will."

Oh, that would be just dandy! Hodges thought. If someone outside the organization found out that Little Wayne Falconer was turning into a junkie, and having strange delusions as well, the press would tear the Crusade to pieces! "You need help. And not the kind you get from pills."

Wayne's eyes flashed. "I said get them for me, George! I want to be able to sleep without hearing that witch and her boy calling my name!"

Hodges knew he should say no. He knew he should tell Henry about the delusions. Wayne was coming apart at the seams. The entire Crusade was in danger. But his mouth opened and he said in a harsh rasp, "This is the last time, damn it! Do you hear me? If you ask me again, I walk. I swear it!"

Wayne smiled. "Fine. Now, I want this done too: I want an electric fence put up around the house by the time I get back from Nashville. And I want a new watchman hired. A younger man. I don't feel safe in the house anymore."

Hodges nodded grimly.

Wayne patted his back. "I know I can depend on you. Daddy says so." And then Wayne walked away to rejoin Bragg and O'Brien, new confidence in his stride.

George Hodges was in agony. The boy was killing himself with those pills! He'd promised J.J. he'd do his best to help Wayne with the business, but very often now he thought that they were all in danger of being consumed by a monstrous machine that had very little to do with personal worship. The Christian rock bands, the prayer cloths and the Clowns for Jesus at those revival meetings were just too much!

"George?" Bragg called to him. "What're you dreamin' about?"

I could walk away from it, he told himself. Yes. Anytime I want to. But he switched a ragged smile on his face and said, "Nothing. You boys want to get some lunch? I know a place that serves fine barbecue."

TEN

Krepsin

44

The lights were lowered in the projection room. Mr Niles picked up the telephone receiver set into the arm of his chair. "Mr. Krepsin's ready," he said.

A thin beam of light hit the screen. Luxuriating on a deserted beach was a beautiful brunette in a black skintight bikini. Palms stirred indolently behind her as she combed her long, shining black hair She glanced at the camera, smiling as she spread suntan oil across her stomach. She undid her bikini top and tossed it aside.

Lovely young woman, Niles thought. Coarse-looking, but certainly attractive. The projector was silent, but the room itself seemed to breathe: there was a muted noise of machinery at work, and the hiss of manufactured air. Niles was a lean man of indeterminate age; though his close-cropped hair was gray, his face was as smooth as a teenager's. His deep-set eyes were such a pale tint of gray that they seemed almost white. He wore a lightweight dark blue suit, comfortable for the Palm Springs climate. Around him the room throbbed quietly; the air was being cleaned over and over again, drawn in and out of a maze of hidden ducts in the thick, windowless walls. There was a faint aroma of pine-scented disinfectant.

On the screen, the young woman smiled nervously and took off her bikini bottom. There was a small dark birthmark on her lower stomach. A man, heavyset and wearing only khaki slacks, stepped into the frame, his back to the camera. Without ceremony he took off his pants.

"This time the photography's very clear, isn't it?" A large, indistinct shape sitting in a special double-width seat a few chairs away from Niles stirred slightly. Heavy-duty springs moaned. A football-shaped bald head was tilted to one side, and tiny black eye's glinted in thick folds of flesh. "Yes, very good. You see all the details in this film." His breathing was like the harsh noise of a bellows, and he had to gulp for air between words. "I didn't like the last two films. Too grainy."

"Yes sir" Niles watched the sexual acrobatics on the screen with only mild interest.

"Popcorn?" the obese man asked, offering a box to Niles.

"No thank you."

He grunted and dug one hand into the buttered popcorn, then filled his mouth. A second man, thin and with the tattoo of a skull on his shoulder, had joined in the action.

Niles never knew what films they'd be viewing. Sometimes they were simply parodies of Roadrunner or Tom and Jerry cartoons, other times old and rare silent films. Usually, though, they were like these—sent up from Mexico by Senor Alvarado. They didn't bother Niles, but he thought they were a waste of good film.

The girl lay on her stomach in the sand, her eyes closed. She was obviously exhausted. The first man came back onscreen. He was carrying a ball peen hammer.

The bulk of bone and fat had leaned forward. He tilted the popcorn to his mouth and then put the empty box on the floor. He wore a royal-blue caftan that seemed the size of a tent. "She doesn't know, does she?" Augustus Krepsin said quietly. "She thinks she's going to take her money and go buy herself a new dress, doesn't she?"

"Yes sir."

The hammer rose and fell. Krepsin's hands clenched in his lap. The second man, now wearing a black mask, stepped back onto the screen. He pulled the cord on a chain saw he was holding, and his skinny arms vibrated.

Krepsin's breathing was audible; his eyes darted from one figure to the next as the true action and intent of the film unfolded. When the screen finally went black, Niles could hear Krepsin's soft moan of pleasure. The projectionist was smart enough not to turn the lights up yet. Then Krepsin said, in a childlike voice, "I want light now, Mr. Niles."

He relayed the order through the telephone. As the lights slowly came up, Krepsin was leaning back in his chair with an oxygen mask pressed to his face, his eyes closed.

Niles watched him for a few silent moments. He'd worked for Augustus Krepsin for almost six years, first as a liaison between Krepsin and the overlords of organized crime in Mexico, now as a companion and righthand man here in Palm Springs. Still, he knew very little about the man. Krepsin was the king of his own hard-won empire. He had originally come to this country from Greece before World War II, and somewhere along the line Krepsin had become entranced with two subjects: death and disease. He talked about each with a clinical interest, and he watched the snuff films as if he could see the center of the universe in a dismembered corpse. Krepsin had built his Palm Springs fortress with strict cleanliness in mind, and rarely ventured out of it.

The telephone in the arm of Niles's chair buzzed softly. He picked up the receiver. "Yes?"

The operator said, "Mr. Niles? Jack Braddock's on the line again from Nashville."

"Mr Krepsin doesn't want to be disturbed. Tell Braddock—"

"Just a moment," Krepsin said. "Jack Braddock?" He breathed deeply and then took off his oxygen mask. "I'll talk to him." Krepsin's organization had taken over Braddock's Essex Records Company in Nashville several years ago. Essex was continuing to lose money, and there had been a record-pirating scandal two years ago that Essex had barely squeaked out of. Krepsin was beginning to regret letting such a poor manager as Braddock stay on, though Essex had been purchased primarily as an avenue to launder dirty money.

Niles told the operator to put the call through, and Krepsin answered the phone. "What do you want?"

There was a startled intake of air almost fifteen hundred miles away. "Uh . . . sorry to bother you, Mr. Krepsin. But somethin's come up that I need to—"

"Why don't you take speech lessons, Braddock? Everyone down there sounds as if they haven't had a good bowel movement in years. I can send you some herbal pills that will clean you out."

Braddock laughed nervously.

"I hope your line is green," Krepsin said. A bugged line would be "red." After the pirating mess, Krepsin suspected the FBI tapped Essex's phones.

"I'm calling from a pay phone."

"All right. What is it?"

"Well, I got a visit from a lawyer named Henry Bragg yesterday afternoon. He represents the Falconer Crusade, and they want to start making records. They're looking for an independent company to buy, and—"

"Falconer Crusade? What is that?"

"Religious bunch. They're into publishing, radio, lots of stuff. I don't suppose you get the 'Wayne Falconer Power Hour' on TV out there, do you?"

"I don't watch television. It sends out radiation, and radiation causes bone cancer."

"Oh. Yes sir Well, this Mr. Bragg is backed by a lot of money. They want to make an offer for Essex."

Krepsin was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Essex is not for sale. Not to anyone. We worked too hard getting through our troubles with the authorities to give it up just yet. Is this the important reason you've called me?"

On the other end, Braddock coughed. Krepsin knew the man was addicted to cigars, and he thought: Throat cancer. Malignant cells, running rampant through Braddock's body. Disease breeding disease. "There is one other thing I thought you might be interested in," Braddock said. "Wayne Falconer. He runs the whole Crusade from a little town in Alabama. He's only about twenty years old, but he's a hell of a preacher And he's a healer, too."

Krepsin paused. His face folded in thought. "Healer?"

"Yes sir. Cures people of all kinds of diseases. I saw him straighten a man's back on television last week, saw him heal a pair of crippled legs, too. Bragg says they want to make self-healing records for people to listen to. He says the boy wants to tour Essex, if it's on the market."

"A healer?" Krepsin asked. "Or is he simply a good actor?"

"An awful lot of people believe in him. And like I say, that Crusade's just rollin' in the money."

"Oh?" Krepsin grunted softly, his small black eyes glittered. "A healer? Mr. Braddock, I may have been hasty. I want you to contact those people. Let them tour Essex. Talk it up. I'm going to send Mr Niles to represent the corporation. You and he will work together, and I want to know everything about this Falconer boy. Understand?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. And one more thing: I don't want Mr. Niles returning to Palm Springs with his suits fouled by cigar smoke. Now get in contact with those people at once." He hung up and turned toward Niles. "You're leaving for Nashville today. I want something called the Falconer Crusade thoroughly investigated. I want to know everything about a boy named Wayne Falconer."

"Yes sir," Niles said. "May I ask why?"

"Because he's either a cunning charlatan—or he's a genuine healer. And if that's so, I want him here. With me. It's time for my massage now."

Niles helped Krepsin rise from the chair. The man's huge bulk—over four hundred pounds on a large-boned frame five-feet six-inches tall—left its shape impressed in the leather. As they neared the door, an electric eye triggered the mechanism that both unlocked the door and started a new flow of charcoal-filtered air in the outside corridor.

After they'd gone, a Mexican maid in a long white smock entered the empty projection room and began vacuuming the carpet. She wore spotless white gloves and white cotton slippers, and across the lower half of her face was a surgical mask.

45

There was a letter from Dr. Mirakle in the mailbox today. Billy read it as he walked up the hill to the house in the clear golden light of late October.

Dr. Mirakle said he had his eye on a cottage in Florida. He asked if Billy had read the last batch of books on spiritualism he'd sent, and how his piano lessons were coming along. He asked also if Billy had given any more thought to visiting that institute in Chicago.

Billy slipped the letter back into its envelope. Since that strange autumn three years ago, Dr. Mirakle had written frequently, and often sent him books on a variety of subjects. He'd visited once, about three months after Billy had come home to find his father buried, and had brought the old piano, tuned and repaired, that now stood in the front room.

The house was painted white, its windows glinting with sunlight. A wisp of smoke curled from the chimney. Around the house the trees had burst into color, and in the breeze there was a faint chill of approaching winter. An old brown pickup truck, an ugly and unreliable beast bought over a year before with money from a sizable corn crop, rested in front of the house. The Creekmore place was now one of the last houses that didn't have electricity, but Billy didn't mind. The dark wasn't threatening, and late at night the kerosene lanterns cast a soft golden glow that was much better, to his way of thinking, than harsh white electricity.

He was less than a month shy of turning twenty-one. In the last three years he'd grown another two inches and had gained twenty pounds, all of it firm muscle that came from hard outdoor work. His face had sharpened and matured, and thick dark curls tumbled over his forehead; his dark eyes glittered with an earthy intelligence, and could shine with good humor as well. He walked up onto the front porch and went into the house, past the upright piano in the front room; he'd been taking lessons for two years from a retired music teacher at two dollars a week, and had progressed from pounding hell out of the instrument to letting it draw the moods from him as his fingers rippled across the keyboard. Many evenings his mother sat with her needlepoint, listening to the slightly warped chords but appreciating the feeling behind the music.

"Any mail?" she called from the kitchen.

"One letter, from Dr. Mirakle. He says hello." He sat down in a chair before the hearth and read Dr Mirakle's letter again. When he looked up, Ramona was standing over him, drying her hands on a dishrag. "Did he mention that place again?" she asked quietly.

He nodded and handed her the letter, but she didn't read it. "Chicago. I wonder what kind of city that is?"

"Probably dirty," Billy replied. "They've got gangsters up there, too."

Ramona smiled. "I believe that was a long time ago you're thinking of. But I suppose there are gangsters just about everywhere." She rubbed her callused fingers; they were stiff and unresponsive. The lines in her face were many and deep. "I wonder what that institute would be like. Don't you wonder sometimes?"

"No."

"We could afford a bus ticket, if you wanted to go. From what I recall, they were eager to hear from you."

Billy grunted, watching the small tongues of flame in the hearth. "They'd probably treat me like a freak."

"Are you afraid to go?"

"I don't want to go."

"That's not what I asked." She stood over him for a moment more, then she went to a window and looked out. The breeze stirred reddening leaves. "You'll be twenty-one in November," she said. "I know . . . things happened to you when you joined that Ghost Show. I know that you came back home bearing scars. That's all right. Only tough folks carry scars. Maybe I shouldn't stick my nose in where it doesn't belong, but ... I think you should go to that institute, I think you should see what they have to say."

"I don't belong up there. ..."

"No." Ramona turned toward him. "You don't belong here. Not anymore. The land and the house are in fine shape, and now you're just filling up your days trying to stay busy. What kind of life is ahead for you in Hawthorne? Answer me that."

"A good life. I'll work hard, and I'll read, and I'll keep up my music ..."

"... and there goes another year, doesn't it? Boy, have you forgotten everything your grandmother and I tried to teach you about the Mystery Walk? That you have to be strong enough to follow it wherever it leads, and that it's up to you break new ground? I've taught you all I know about the ceremony, about the use of the jimsonweed and hemp, and how to recognize the mushrooms that must be dried and crushed into powder to be smoked. I've taught you what I know of the shape changer, and how it can use other souls against yours; I've taught you to be proud of your heritage, and I thought you'd learned how to see by now."

"See? See what?"

"Your future," she said. "The Choctaw doesn't choose who's to make the Walk; only the Giver of Breath can make that choice. Oh, many before you lost their faith or their courage, or had their minds swept away by evil forces. But when evil can break the chain of the Mystery Walk, then all that's gone before is disrupted, all the learning and experience and pain might just as well be for nothing. I know that it left a scar on you that summer and autumn; but you can't let it win. The ceremony is important, but most important is what's out there." Ramona motioned toward the window. "The world."

"It's not my world," Billy said.

"It can be. Are you afraid? Are you giving up?"

Billy was silent. His experience on the Octopus was still burned into him, and there had been many nightmares of it to keep the wounds raw. Sometimes a cobra reared up in the darkness, and sometimes he had a gun that wouldn't fire as the thing coiled closer toward him. Soon after arriving home that autumn, he'd taken the bus to Birmingham and had gone to the hospital to see Santha Tully. The nurse there had told him that Santha Tully had left the day before, and had gone back to New Orleans; he'd stood in the empty room she'd occupied, knowing he'd never see her again. He silently wished her good luck.

"I'm not afraid," he said. "I just don't want to be . . . treated like a freak."

“And you think they will, at this institute in Chicago? You under who and what you are; what else matters? But if the institute works with people like us, then they can teach you . . . and learn from you as well. I think that's where you belong.”

"No."

Ramona sighed and shook her head. "Then I've failed, haven't I? You're not strong enough. Your work isn't done—it hasn't really started—and already you think you deserve rest. You don't, not yet."

"Damn it!" Billy said sharply, and abruptly stood up. "Leave me alone!" He snatched Dr. Mirakle's letter from her and angrily ripped it up, throwing the pieces into the fireplace. "You don't understand what it was like on the Octopus! You didn't hear it! You didn't feel it! Leave me alone!" He started past her, toward the front door.

"Billy," Ramona said softly. When he turned, she held out the piece of coal in the palm of her hand. "I found this on the top of your dresser this morning. Why did you take it out of the drawer?"

He couldn't remember if he had or not. Ramona tossed it to him. There seemed to be heat in it, and it gleamed like a black, mysterious amulet.

"Your home is here," she said. "It'll always be here. I can take care of myself, the house, and the land; I've done it before. But you've got to go into the world and use what you know, and learn more about yourself. If you don't you've wasted everything that's gone before you."

"I need to think," he told her. "I'm not sure what to do."

"You're sure. You're just taking your time coming around to it."

Billy clenched the piece of coal in his fist. He said, "I want to sleep out tonight, out in the forest. I want to be by myself for as long as it takes."

Ramona nodded. "I'll get some food ready for you, if you ..."

"No. If I can't catch my food or dig it up, I won't eat. I'll just need a sleeping bag."

She left the room to get what he wanted. Billy put the coal into his pocket and stepped out onto the porch; he wanted to lie on Southern earth tonight, to watch the stars move and let his mind drift. It was true that he'd felt the Hillburn Institute in Chicago pulling at him. He was curious as to what kind of place it might be and what might lie ahead of him in a city that size. Chicago seemed as far away as China, and just as foreign. It was true also that he was afraid.

He faced the horizon, ablaze with the colors of late autumn. The musky scent of dead summer wafted in the air like old wine. He didn't want to leave all the work to his mother, but he knew she was right; the Mystery Walk was beckoning him onward, and he had to follow.

Ready or not, he thought, recalling the games of hide-and-seek he used to play with Will Booker, whose symbol of faith in Billy's potential rested in his jeans pocket, here I come. . . .

46

The blue-and-silver Canadair Challenger had been in the air for less than an hour, and was now streaking over central Arkansas at twenty-three thousand feet. The late October sky was a dazzling blue, while beneath the jet a rainstorm whipped Little Rock.

Wayne Falconer, sitting in the plane's "quiet pocket"—the area just behind the flight deck—was stunned and delighted. This silent eagle made his Beechcraft seem like a clumsy moth. Leaving the ground at Fayette's airport had been one of the most sublime feelings he'd experienced. Up here the sky was so clear and blue, and he felt as if he'd left his worldly responsibilities very far behind. He wanted a jet like this, he had to have one and that was all there was to it.

The business jet's interior was done in dark blue and black, with a lot of shining chrome and waxed wood surface. The motorized swivel-and-reclining seats were upholstered in black Angus steerhide, and there was a long comfortable-looking sofa next to a fruit and vegetable juice bar. Danish teakwood tables were bolted to the carpeted floor in case of rough weather; on one of the tables were neatly arranged copies of the Falconer Crusade's magazine. Everything in the long, spacious cabin sparkled with cleanliness, as if someone had polished every fixture and surface with a strong disinfectant cleanser. The oval Plexiglass windows, George Hodges had noticed, didn't have one streak or fingerprint on them. He'd decided that this Mr Augustus Krepsin must be a very fastidious man, though something about the display of Crusade magazines bothered him; it was maybe too clever, and was trying to win Wayne over too fast. Krepsin's assistant, Mr. Niles, bothered Hodges too. The man was polite, intelligent, and well informed about the Crusade's business policies, but there was something about his eyes that disturbed Hodges; they looked soulless, and they lingered on Wayne far too often.

Hodges sat a few seats behind Wayne, closer to the high whine of the twin jet engines at the rear of the fuselage. Niles, Hodges had noticed, was quick to take the seat across the aisle from Wayne. Henry Bragg was paging through a Field and Stream a couple of seats behind him. Bragg was pleased to be away from his wife and three stairstep children; he sipped ginger ale through a straw and watched the clouds move far below, a dreamy and contented smile on his face.

Beth, their attractive young flight attendant, came down the aisle with a cup of orange juice for Wayne. The cabin was more than eight feet wide and six feet high, so she had no trouble making her way to the young man. "Here you go," she said with a sunny smile. "Can I get you a magazine?"

"No, thank you. What's our airspeed now, ma'am?"

"Beth. Oh, I think we're flying around five hundred miles per hour by now. I understand you're a pilot."

"Yes, ma'am. Beth, I mean. I've got a Beechcraft Bonanza, but it's nothing like this. I've always loved planes and flying. I . . . always feel so free when I'm up in the air."

"Have you ever been to California?"

He shook his head, sipped at the orange juice, and put the cup down on his service tray.

"Sun and fun!" Beth said. "That's the life-style there."

Wayne smiled, though uneasily. For some reason, Beth reminded him of a half-forgotten nightmare: a dark-haired girl slipping on a slick platform, the awful noise of her head hitting the sharp edge, the sound of painfully exhaled breath and water closing over her like a black shroud. In the past three years his face and body had thickened, and the texture of his red hair had become dense and wiry. His eyes were deep-set and glowed as blue as the sky beyond the jet's windows. But they were haunted eyes, holding back secrets, and there were purplish hollows beneath them. He was very pale except for a few rashes of late-blooming acne across his cheeks. "Beth?" he said. "Do you go to church?"

Mr. Niles had given her a thorough briefing on Wayne Falconer before they'd left Palm Springs. "Yes I do," she said, still smiling. "As a matter of fact, my father was a minister just like yours was."

Across the aisle, Niles's eyes were closed. He smiled very slightly. Beth was a resourceful person who could think on her feet.

"An evangelist," Wayne corrected her. "My daddy was the greatest evangelist that ever lived."

"I've never seen you on television, but I'll get it's a good show."

"I hope it does good for people. That's what I'm trying to do." He smiled wanly at her, and was pleased when she returned his smile with sunny wattage. She left him to his thoughts, and he drank his orange juice. He had just finished a three-day-long healing revival in Atlanta. It was estimated that he'd touched five thousand in the Healing Line, and he'd preached three scorching hellfire-and-brimstone messages. He was bone-tired, and in two weeks the Falconer Crusade was booked into the Houston Astrodome for yet another revival. If only he could find a record of a jet engine in flight, Wayne thought, maybe he could sleep better; the sound would soothe him, and he could pretend he was very far away from the Crusade, flying across a night sky sparkled with stars.

His daddy had told him buying this record company was a smart move to make. He should listen to this Mr. Krepsin, and trust in what the man said, his daddy had told him. It would all work out for the best.

"Wayne?" Mr. Niles was standing over him, smiling. "Come on up to the flight deck with me, will you?"

Niles led the way forward and pulled aside a green curtain. Wayne was breathless at the sight of the cockpit, with its magnificent control panel, its gleaming toggles and gauges and dials. The pilot, a husky man with a broad sunburned face, grinned below his smoke-tinted sunglasses and said, "Hi there, Wayne. Take the co-pilot's seat."

Wayne slipped into glove-soft leather. The engine noise was barely audible way up here; there was only the quiet hissing of air around the Challenger's nose. The windshield gave an unobstructed, wide-angle view of brilliant blue sky dotted with high, fleecy cirrus clouds. Wayne noticed the movements of the control yoke before him, and knew the jet was flying under autopilot command. The instruments he faced—altimeter, airspeed indicator, horizontal situation indicator, attitude director, and a few more he didn't recognize—were set in a Basic T formation, similar to the Beechcraft panel but of course much more complex. Between the pilot and co-pilot was a console holding the engine thrust throttles, the weather radar controls, the speed brake lever, and other toggle switches Wayne knew nothing about. He stared at the panel with rapt fascination.

"Everything's right there," the pilot said, "if you know where to look for it. My name's Jim Coombs. Glad to have you aboard." He shook Wayne's hand with a hard, firm grip. "Mr. Niles tells me you're a flyer. That right?"

"Yes sir."

"Okay." Coombs reached up to an overhead console and switched off the autopilot. The control yokes stopped their slight correction of ailerons and elevators; the Challenger slowly began to nose upward. "Take her and see how she feels."

Wayne's palms were sweating as he gripped the guidance wheel and placed his feet against the hard rubber pedals that controlled the rudder.

"Scan your instruments," Coombs said. "Airspeed's still on autopi, so don't worry about that. Bring your nose down a few degrees. Let's level her off."

Wayne pushed the yoke forward, and the Challenger instantly responded, the silver nose dropping back to level flight. He had overestimated, though, and had to pull slightly up from a six-degree downward pitch. The plane began to roll just a bit to the right, and Coombs let Wayne work with the yoke and pedals until he'd gotten the jet trimmed again. The controls needed a feather-light but decisive touch, and compared to this he'd had to fight the Beechcraft across the sky. He grinned and said in a shaky voice, "How was that?"

Coombs laughed. "Fine. Of course, we're about a hundred miles off our flight path, but you're okay for a prop-jockey. Want to co-pilot me into Palm Springs?"

Wayne beamed.

Less than two hours later the Challenger was landing at Palm Springs Municipal Airport. In the co-pilot's seat, Wayne watched intently as Coombs went through the landing procedure.

Two Lincoln Continental limousines awaited the Challenger. Wayne was escorted by Niles into the first one, and Hodges and Bragg climbed into the other. They started off together, but after ten minutes the Mexican driver of the second limo announced he felt "something funny" and pulled off the expressway. He got out to check, and reported that the left rear tire was going flat. Hodges watched the car carrying Niles and Wayne driving away out of sight, and he said tersely, "Fix it!"

The driver had already pocketed a small icepick-like blade as he unlocked the trunk to get the spare.

Wayne was driven along the edge of a huge golf course. A purple line of mountains undulated in the distance. Everywhere there was green grass being saturated with water from sprinklers, and palm trees sprouted bright green fans. The limo turned into a residential area where only roofs and palm trees showed high above stone walls. A uniformed watchman waved to them and opened a pair of wide wrought-iron gates. The limo continued up a long driveway bordered with bursts of red and yellow flowers, carefully trimmed hedges, and a few large species of cactus. Gardeners were at work, pruning and spraying. Wayne caught a glimpse of a red-slate roof capped with turrets, and then there was a huge structure before him that was perhaps the strangest house he'd ever seen.

It was made of pale brownish stone, and was a riot of angles and protuberances, blocks upon blocks, high towers, mansard roofs and gables and Gothic arches and masonry carved in geometric shapes and statuelike figures. It looked like the work of ten insane architects who'd all decided to build a structure on the same property and connect them with domes, parapets, and sheltered walkways. Work was still going on, Wayne saw; more stones were being placed one atop the other by workmen on a scaffolding. There was no telling how many floors the place had, because one level seemed to stop in midair and another shot up at a different place. But, oddly, only the ground floor had windows.

The limo pulled under a porte cochere, and Mr Niles escorted Wayne up a few stone stairs to a massive front door. It was opened for them by a white-jacketed Mexican butler with a brown, seamed face. "Mr Krepsin's expecting you, Mr. Falconer," the butler said. "You can go up immediately."

"This way," Niles said. He led Wayne across a gleaming hardwood floor to an elevator; when the elevator doors opened, a rush of cool dry air came out. As they ascended, Wayne could hear the quiet throbbing of machinery somewhere in the house, growing louder as they rose.

"Shouldn't we wait for the others?" he asked.

"They'll be along." The doors slid open.

They stood in a featureless white room. A pair of glass doors stood just opposite them, and beyond that was a dimly lit corridor Machinery hissed and hummed from the walls, and Wayne could smell the distinct odor of disinfectant.

"If you'll be so kind," Niles said, "as to take off your shoes? You can put these on." He stepped across to a chrome-topped desk and picked up one of the several pairs of cotton slippers. A box of surgical gloves sat atop the desk as well. "Also, if you'll take any change you might have in your pockets and put it in one of these plastic bags? Currency, too."

Wayne took his shoes off and slipped into the cotton ones. "What's this all about?"

Niles did the same, taking the change out of his pockets and putting it in a bag. "Shoes and money carry bacteria. Will you put on a pair of gloves, please? Ready? Follow me, then." He pressed a button on the wall next to the doors and they slid quickly open, like a pair of automatic supermarket doors. When Wayne followed him through, into an atmosphere that was cooler and noticeably drier than the rest of the house, the doors thunked shut like the closing of a bear trap. The corridor, illuminated by recessed lighting, was totally bare and uncarpeted; the thick stone walls radiated a chill, and somewhere in them an air-purifying system hissed faintly.

Wayne was taken almost to the end of the corridor, to a pair of large oak doors. Niles pressed a buzzer set into the wall, and a few seconds later Wayne heard the sound of the doors unlocking electronically. "Go right in," Niles said. Wayne, his stomach twisted into nervous knots and his head aching again, stepped through the doors.

There were skeletons in the room. Skeletons of fish, birds, animals, and one of a human being, laced together with wire and standing in a corner beneath a track light's beam. Smaller skeletons, of lizards and rodents, were placed under glass display cases. The doors closed automatically behind Wayne, and a lock softly clicked.

"Welcome."

Wayne looked toward the sound of that voice. In front of glass-enclosed bookcases there was a teakwood desk topped with a green blotter A man sat in a wide, high-backed black leather chair, a track light shining down upon a white, bald head. The room was wood-paneled, and on the floor was a dark blue Persian rug with gold figures. Wayne stepped closer to him, and saw that the head sat atop a mountain of caftan-dressed flesh; his face was made up of folds within folds, and small black eyes glittered. He smiled, showing tiny white teeth. "I'm so glad you could come," the man said. "May I call you Wayne?"

Wayne glanced uneasily around at the mounted skeletons. There was an entire skeleton of a horse, caught in midstride.

Augustus Krepsin waited until Wayne had almost reached the desk, then extended a hand. Only after Wayne had shaken it did he realize Krepsin was also wearing flesh-colored surgical gloves. "Please, sit down." Krepsin motioned toward a chair. "Can I offer you something? Fruit juice? Vitamins to perk you up?"

"No, thanks." Wayne took the seat. "I had a sandwich on the plane."

"Ah, the Challenger! How'd you like it?"

"It was . . . fine. Mr. Coombs is a good pilot. I . . . don't know what happened to the others. They were in the car right behind us. ..."

"They'll be along soon, I'm sure. I see you're intrigued by my collection, aren't you?"

"Well, I ... I've never seen anything quite like it."

Krepsin grinned. "Bones. The very framework of the body. Strong, durable, highly resistant to disease, yet . . . sadly, often the first thing to weaken in a body. I'm fascinated by the mysteries of the human body, Wayne: its flaws and faults as well as its strengths." He motioned toward the human skeleton. "What a grand design, isn't it? Yet . . . doomed to return to dust. Unless, of course, you treat it and varnish it and wire it together so it won't dissolve for a few hundred years."

Wayne nodded, his hands clasped together in his lap.

"You're a handsome young man," Krepsin said. "Twenty-one next month, am I right? Lived in Fayette all your life? You know, there's something about a Southern accent that's so . . . earthy. I've become quite a fan of yours, Wayne. I had Mr. Niles obtain video tapes of some of your shows when he visited Nashville, and I've watched them all several times. You have quite a commanding presence for such a young man."

"Thank you."

Krepsin's large head dipped in respect. "You've come a long way, I understand. Now you have an influential television show, a radio station that's turning at least a hundred thousand in profits every year, and a publishing company that will break even sometime in 1974. You speak before approximately a half-million people per year, and your foundation is planning to build a four-year Christian university before 1980."

"You've been checking up on me," Wayne said.

"Just as your Mr Hodges has been asking questions about the Ten High Corporation. It's only good business." He shrugged his massive shoulders. "But I'm sure you know what needs to be known: I own Ten High. Ten High owns a controlling interest in Essex Records. You want to purchase Essex Records for a million and a half, and so you're sitting in my study."

Wayne nodded. He said calmly, "Is Essex worth that much?"

Krepsin responded with a soft laugh. "Ha! My boy, you made the offer. Is it worth that much to you?"

"Essex lost two hundred thousand last year alone," Wayne replied. "It's lost clout in the country-western music business, and Essex can't afford to lure in hit-producing artists. I want to pump new money into it, and start it all over as a gospel label."

"So I understand," Krepsin said quietly. "You're a very bright young man, Wayne. You have ... a great insight, as well as a very special ability. Tell me something, now, and your answer will never go beyond this room: I've watched your television shows over and over, I've seen the expressions of these people who pass through—what do you call it?—the Healing Line." His head bent forward, jowls and chin hanging. "Are you really a healer? Or is it . . . trickery?"

Wayne paused. He wanted to get up and leave this room, get away from this strange house and this man with the black eyes. But he remembered that his daddy had told him to trust Mr Krepsin, and he knew his daddy wouldn't tell him wrong. He said, "I am a healer."

"And you can heal any kind of sickness? Any kind of . . . disease?"

From a distance of time and space Wayne seemed to hear a whispered but accusing voice: Do you know what you're doing, son? He shut his mind on years of accumulated doubts that had haunted him in the night. "Yes."

Krepsin sighed and nodded. "Yes. You can, can't you? I've seen it in your face; I've seen it in the faces of those you've healed. You conquer the fading flesh and brittle bone. You conquer the filth of disease, and drive out the germs of Death. You . . . hold the power of Life itself, don't you?"

"Not me. God works through me."

"God?" Krepsin blinked, and then his smile was back. "Of course. You could have Essex Records, as my gift to your Crusade. But I'd prefer to stay on in a consulting position. I like the idea of going gospel. There's a lot of money to be made in it."

Wayne frowned. For an instant he thought he'd seen something dark and huge standing behind Krepsin—something bestial. But then it was gone.

"I know you're tired from the flight," Krepsin said. "You and I are going to get along very well, Wayne, and we'll have plenty of time to talk later. Mr. Niles is waiting for you at the end of the corridor. He'll take you downstairs for some lunch. I'd suggest a nice afternoon steambath and then a siesta. We'll talk again this evening, all right?"

Wayne stood up, an uncertain smile on his face, and Krepsin watched as he left the room in his sanitary cotton slippers. Krepsin peeled off his rubber gloves and dropped them into a waste receptacle beneath the desk. "Plenty of time," he said softly.

47

"Here ya go," the cab driver said, and pulled to the curb. "You sure this is where you want to get out?"

"Yes sir," Billy told him; at least he thought it was the place. A crooked sign said Cresta Street, and the address on the small brownstone building was 1212. Across the street was a sad-looking little park with a rusty swing set and a few drooping trees; set around the park were other brownstone buildings and old two- story houses, many of which looked empty. The larger buildings of downtown Chicago loomed in the distance, filtered by gray haze.

There was a small round peephole in the door, and for a moment Billy felt himself being watched. Then locks began to click open—one, two, and three. He had a sudden urge to run all the way back to the Greyhound bus station, but he stood his ground.

The door opened, and standing within was a young girl, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. She had long black hair that hung almost to her waist, and Billy thought she looked Spanish. Her eyes were pretty and alert, but there was a trace of sadness in them. She glanced at his suitcase. "Yes?"

"Uh . . . this must not be the right place. I thought this was the Hillburn Institute?"

She nodded.

"Well ... my name's Billy Creekmore, and I'm here to see Dr. Hillburn." He fumbled in his back pocket for the envelope and held it out to her.

The girl said, "Come in," and then locked the door behind him.

The interior was a pleasant surprise. Dark wood paneling gleamed with oil and polish. There were clean rugs on the shining hardwood floor, and an abundance of green plants added a welcoming touch. The tempting aroma of good food wafted in the air. A staircase ascended to the second level, and just to the left of the front door, in a high-ceilinged parlor, a half-dozen people both young and old watched television, read, or played checkers. Billy's entrance caused a pause in their activities.

"I'm Anita," the girl told him. "You can leave your suitcase down here, if you like. Mr Pearlman," she said, addressing one of the men in the parlor. "It's your turn to help in the kitchen today."

"Oh. Right." The man put aside his Reader's Digest and went off through a hallway.

"Follow me, please." Anita took Billy upstairs, through a series of well-kept dormitory-like rooms. There were doors marked Testing Lab 1, Audio-Visual, Conference Room, Research Lab I. The building was very quiet, with pale green linoleum floors and tiled ceilings. Billy glimpsed other people moving about, several of them wearing white lab smocks. He saw a young woman about his own age coming out of a testing lab, and he felt a quick spark of attraction as their gazes met and held. She was wearing jeans and a blue sweater, and Billy saw that her eyes were different colors: one was a pale blue, the other a strange deep green. The young woman looked away first.

Then Anita led him around a corner to a door marked Dr. Hillburn, Ph.D., Director. Billy could hear a muffled voice within. The girl knocked on the door and waited. A moment passed. Then: "Come in." It was a woman's voice, carrying an inflection of annoyance.

Dr. Hillburn was sitting behind a battered desk in a small office cluttered with books and papers. The beige-colored walls were adorned with framed certificates and brass plaques, and a window looked out over the Cresta Street park. A green-shaded lamp burned atop the desk, which also held a blotter, a metal can with a collection of pencils and pens, and several pictures of people Billy assumed were her children and husband. Her hand was clamped around a telephone receiver.

"No," she said firmly. "I can't accept that. The grant was promised us last year and I'll fight for it right up to the capital, if I have to. I don't care that all the funds are tied up, and I don't believe that anyway! Am I just supposed to shut down everything and go out on the street? God knows we're almost on the street as it is!" She glanced up and motioned for Anita to close the door "Tell the esteemed senator that I was promised matching funds, dollar-for-dollar. No! We've cut our staff down to a skeleton crew already! Ed, just tell him that I won't stand for any more foolishness. I'll expect to hear from you by tomorrow afternoon. Good-bye." She put the receiver down and shook her head. "It's getting so deep over in Springfield you need waders to get through! Do you know what's ahead of us on the budget agenda, Anita? Consideration of a grant for a study of litter patterns on the north beach! I ask them for fifteen thousand dollars to keep our programs going for another year, and—" Her clear gray eyes narrowed. "Who are you, young man?"

"My name is Billy Creekmore. You people sent me this letter." He stepped forward and handed her the envelope.

"Alabama?" Dr. Hillburn said, with obvious surprise. "You're a long way from home, aren't you?" She was a fragile-looking woman in a white lab coat, her eyes deeply set, alert, and very intelligent. Billy thought she was probably in her late forties or early fifties. Her dark brown hair, threaded with silver, was cut short and brushed back from her high, furrowed forehead. Though she had a gentle appearance, the sound of her voice on that telephone told Billy she could spit nails if angered.

Dr. Hillburn looked up at him for a moment after reading the letter. "Yes, we sent you this some time ago. I think I recall the correspondence we got from this friend of yours, Mr Merkle. Anita, will you do me a favor please? Ask Max to go through the M files and bring me the letters from Mr. Reginald Merkle." She spelled out the name, and then Anita left. "Now. What can I do for you, Mr. Creekmore?"

"I've . . . come because your letter asked me to."

"I expected a reply by mail, not a visit. And besides, that was some time ago. Are you here in Chicago with your family?"

"No, ma'am. I'm here alone."

"Oh? Where are you staying, then?"

Billy paused, smelling disaster. "Staying? Well, I . . . left my suitcase downstairs. I thought I'd be staying here."

Dr. Hillburn was silent; she nodded and spread her hands before her on the blotter "Young man," she said, "this is not a hotel. This is a workshop and research center. The people you probably saw downstairs, and those in the labs, have been invited here after long consultation. I know nothing about you, and to be perfectly honest I can't even recall why we wrote you in the first place. We write hundreds of people who don't answer us. Our labs certainly aren't as well equipped as those at Duke University and Berkeley, but we have to make do on the budget we get from the University of Chicago and small grants. That budget is hardly enough to continue our tests and research on the individuals we select; and certainly there's no room here for someone off the street."

"I'm not here off the street!" Billy protested. "I've come a long way!"

"Of course you have, young man. But I'm saying that . . ." She looked up as a middle-aged man in horn-rimmed glasses and a lab jacket brought in a file folder containing several letters.

"Thank you, Max," she told the man, and when he'd gone she put on a pair of reading spectacles and took several letters from the folder Billy recognized Dr. Mirakle's spiky handwriting.

"What kind of place is this?" Billy asked her. "What goes on here?"

"Pardon? Don't you know?" She glanced up at him. "The Hillburn Institute is a death survival studies clinic, sponsored in part by the University of Chicago. But as I say, we . . ." She trailed off, engrossed in something she was reading.

"What do those people downstairs do?"

"They . . . they've had experiences with manifestations or spirit controls." Dr. Hillburn looked up from the letters and pushed the spectacles up onto her forehead. "Young man," she said quietly, "you evidently left your friend Mr Merkle deeply impressed. The experiences he's written down here are . . . quite interesting." She paused, returned the letters to the folder, and said, "Sit down, won't you?"

Billy took a chair in front of her desk. Dr. Hillburn swiveled her chair around to stare through the window at the park, her face illuminated by pale gray light. She took her glasses off and put them in her jacket pocket. "Young man," she said. "What do you think of our city?"

"Well, it's noisy," he replied. "And everybody's running around so fast." He didn't tell her that he'd seen the black aura twice—once clinging to an elderly black man on the bus and once surrounding a young girl a few blocks away from the bus station.

"Have you ever been this far away from home before?"

"No, ma'am."

"Then you must feel the ability you have—whatever it is—is very special. Special enough to leave Alabama and come such a distance? Why did you come here, Mr Creekmore? And I'm not talking about the letter. Why did you come?" She turned toward him again, her gaze sharp and watchful.

"Because ... my friend, Dr Mirakle, said I should. And because my mother wanted me to. And . . . maybe because I didn't know where else to go. I want to understand more of why I'm like I am. I want to know why I see things that other people don't. Like the black auras, and the entities that look like mist and carry so much pain, and the shape changer. My mother could see the same things, and her mother before her . . . and it's likely that my son or daughter will be able to, as well. I want to know as much as I can about myself. If I'm in the wrong place for that, tell me now and I'll leave."

Dr. Hillburn had been observing and listening to him carefully. She was a trained psychiatrist as well as a parapsychologist with two books on death survival studies to her credit, and she'd been looking for telltale signs of emotional instability: inappropriate gestures or grins, facial tics, a general irritability or melancholia. She sensed in Billy Creekmore only a genuine desire for self-knowledge. "Did you think, young man, that you could just present yourself on our doorsteps and we would offer easy answers for all your questions? No. I'm afraid that's not to be the case. As I say, this is a workshop; a damned difficult workshop, I might add. If there's any learning to be done, we learn together. But everything has to be verified through extensive tests and experiments. We don't deal in trickery here, and I've seen enough psychic fakers in my lifetime. Some of them have sat where you're sitting now. But sooner or later their tricks fail them.

"I don't know anything about you, except from what I've read in these letters. As far as I know, you don't understand a thing about death survival research. You may have a psi ability—though I'm not saying I'm convinced you do—but as far as I'm concerned it may only be a figment of your imagination. You may be a publicity hound. You may even want to disrupt the work we're trying to do here, though God knows we have enough disruptions. Do you believe you can communicate with the dead, young man?"

"Yes. I can."

"That remains to be seen. I'm a born skeptic, Mr. Creekmore. If you say a traffic light's red, I'll say it's purple, just for the sake of an interesting argument." Her eyes had taken on a shine. "If I decide you're worth being here, you might rue the day you ever walked through the gate. I'll throw every test I can think of at you. I'll take your brain apart and put it back together again, more or less as it was. In two or three days you'll hate me, but I'm used to that. You'll have a room the size of a closet to sleep in, and you'll be expected to work around here like everyone else. It's no free ride. Sound like fun?"

"No."

"Now you've got the idea!" She smiled cautiously. "Tomorrow morning at eight o'clock you'll be right here, telling me your life story. I want to hear about your mother, and the black auras and the entities and . . . what was it? A shape changer? Indeed. Dinner's in fifteen minutes, and I hope you like Polish sausage. Why don't you go get your suitcase?"

Billy rose from his chair, feeling confused about the whole thing. It was still at the back of his mind that he should leave this place, and he had enough money for a return ticket home. But he'd come this far, and he could stick out whatever was in store for him for at least three days. He didn't know whether to thank the woman or curse her, so he left without saying a word.

Dr. Hillburn looked at her wristwatch. She was already late getting home, and her husband would be waiting. But she took the time to read Merkle's letters again. A pulse of excitement had quickened within her. Is this boy from Alabama the one? she asked herself—the same question she asked when any new subject came to the institute.

Is Billy Creekmore the one who'll show proof positive of life after death? She had no way of knowing, but she could hope. After a moment of reflection, she stood up and took her coat from a rack beside the desk.

48

Wayne Falconer's scream cracked the silence that had fallen over the Krepsin estate.

It was just after two o'clock in the morning. When George Hodges reached Wayne's bedroom—one of the few rooms in the strange house that had windows—he found Niles already there, pressing a cold washcloth to Wayne's forehead. Wayne was curled up on the bed, his eyes feverish with fear. Niles was still dressed as if he'd just stepped out of a business meeting.

"A nightmare," Niles explained. "I was walking along the hall when I heard him. He was just about to tell me what it was, weren't you, Wayne?"

Henry Bragg came in, rubbing his eyes. "Who screamed? Wayne? What the hell's . . ."

"Wayne's fine," Niles said. "Tell me your dream, and then I'll get you something for that headache."

Hodges didn't like the sound of that. Had Wayne gone through his Percodan and codeine capsules yet again?

In a halting voice, Wayne told them what he'd dreamed. It was a hellish vision of Jimmy Jed, a skeleton in a yellow suit gone green and rotten with grave dirt, screaming that the witch of Hawthorne had sent him to Hell where he would burn forever if Wayne didn't free him. When he was finished, a terrible groan came from Wayne's throat, and tears glittered in his eyes. "She knows where I am!" he whispered. "She's out there in the night, and she won't let my daddy come to me anymore!"

Bragg had gone a sick gray. Wayne's obsession with his dead father was getting worse, Hodges realized. For the past four nights, Wayne had been awakened with nightmares of Jimmy Jed and the Creekmores. Last night, he'd even sworn that he'd seen the Creekmore boy's pallid face grinning through the window at him. Wayne was coming to pieces, Hodges thought, right out here on the sunny Coast.

"I can't sleep," Wayne gripped Niles's smooth white hand. "Please . . . my daddy's rotted, and I . . . can't make him all right again. ..."

Niles said softly, "Everything's going to be fine. There's no need for you to be afraid, not while you're in Mr Krepsin's house. This is the safest place in the world for you. Why don't you put on your robe and slippers? I'll take you to see Mr Krepsin. He can give you something to calm your nerves—"

"Now just one damned minute!" Hodges said angrily. "I don't like all these late-night 'visits' Wayne's been having with Krepsin! What's going on? We came here for a business conference and so far all we've done is hang around this crazy house! Wayne's got other obligations. And I don't want him taking any more pills!"

"Herbal medicine." Niles held Wayne's robe for him. "Mr Krepsin believes in the healing power of Nature. And I'm sure Wayne will agree that you're free to go anytime you please."

"What? And leave him here with you? Wayne, listen to me! We've got to get back to Fayette! This whole thing is as shady as the dark side of the moon!"

Wayne tied his robe and stared at him. "My daddy said I was to trust Mr. Krepsin. I want to stay here for a while longer. If you want to go, you can."

Hodges saw that the young man's eyes looked blurry and dazed. His grip on reality was lost, Hodges knew . . . and just what kind of pills was Wayne being given? "I'm begging you," he said. "Let's go home."

"Jim Coombs is going to take me up in the Challenger tomorrow," Wayne said. "He says I can learn to fly it, no trouble at all."

"But what about the Crusade?"

Wayne shook his head. "I'm tired, George. I hurt inside. I am the Crusade, and where I go, that's where the Crusade goes too. Isn't that right?" He looked at Henry Bragg.