Mystery Walk

49

Indian summer had lingered late. The blue evening light was darkening as yellow leaves stirred on the trees and a few of the dead ones chattered on the roof of the Creekmore house.

Ramona turned up the lamp wicks in the front room as darkness gathered outside. A small fire burned in the hearth, her chair pulled up so she could warm herself near it—she followed the Choctaw custom of building little fires and stepping close, instead of the white man's belief in making a bonfire and standing back. On a table next to her a lamp burned, a metal reflector behind it, so she could read for the third time the letter she'd gotten from her son today. It was written on lined notebook paper, but the envelope had Hillburn Institute and the address in nice black print up in the left-hand corner. Billy had been in Chicago for almost two weeks, and this was the second letter he'd sent. He described what he'd seen of the city and told her all about the Hillburn Institute. He'd had long talks with Dr Mary Hillburn, he'd said, and also with the other doctors who worked on a volunteer basis.

Billy said he'd met some of the other people, but many of them seemed withdrawn and kept to themselves. There was a Mr. Pearlman, a Mrs. Brannon, a Puerto Rican girl named Anita, and a scruffy-looking hippie named Brian; all of them, it seemed, had had an experience with what Dr Hillburn termed "theta agents" or "discarnate entities." Billy also mentioned a girl named Bonnie Hailey; she was very pretty, he'd written, but she stayed apart from the others and he saw her only infrequently.

He was taking tests. Lots of tests. They'd punched him with needles, wired electrodes to his head and studied squiggles on long pieces of paper that came from the machines he'd been connected to. They'd asked him to guess what kind of geometric shapes were printed on something called Zener cards, and he was keeping a diary of his dreams. Dr. Hillburn was very interested in his experiences with the shape changer, and whenever they talked she took everything down on a tape recorder. She seemed more demanding of him than of the others, and she'd said that she looked forward to meeting Ramona sometime. Next week there would be hypnosis sessions and sleep deprivation, not something he particularly looked forward to.

Billy said he loved her, and that he'd write again soon.

Ramona put his letter aside and listened to the wind. The fire crackled, casting a muted orange light. She'd written a reply to Billy and had mailed it this afternoon. It had said:

Son, you were right to leave Hawthorne. I don't know how things will tum out, but I have a lot of faith in you. Your Mystery Walk has led you out into the world, and it won't end in Chicago. No, it'll go on and on, right to the end of your days. Everybody's on their own kind of Mystery Walk, following the trail of their days and doing the best with what life throws at them. Sometimes its mighty hard to figure out what's right and wrong in this mixed-up world. What looks black can sometimes really be white, and what appears like chalk can sometimes be pure ebony.

I've been thinking a lot about Wayne. I drove over there once, but his house was dark. I'm afraid for him. He's pulled toward you, just like you are to him, but he's scared and weak. His Mystery Walk might've led him into teaching others how to heal themselves, but it's been warped now by greed and I don't think he can see his path clearly. You may not want to stomach this, but if ever in your life you can help him, you have to. You're bound by blood, and though the Walk took you off in different directions, you're still part of each other. Hate's easy. Loving's damned hard.

You know what's a greater mystery than death, Billy? Life itself, the way it twists and turns like a carnival ride.

By the by, I think I catch a little peacock-strutting when you talk about that Bonnie girl. I know she must be special if you've taken a shine to her.

I'm very proud of you. I know you'll make me even prouder. I love you.

She picked up the lamp and went to the bedroom to get her needlepoint.

Catching her reflection in a mirror, she stopped to examine herself as she combed out her hair. She saw more gray hairs than dark, and there were so many wrinkles in her face. Still, there remained deep in her eyes the awkward girl who'd seen John Creekmore standing across the barn at a hoedown, the girl who'd wanted that boy to hold her until her ribs ached, the girl who'd wanted to fly above the hills and fields on the wind of dreams. She was proud that she'd never lost that part of herself.

Her Mystery Walk was almost over, she realized with a touch of sadness. But, she thought, look at all she'd done! She'd loved a good man and been loved by him, had raised a son to manhood, had always stood up for herself and had done the painful work her destiny demanded. She had learned to take life for good or bad, and to see the Giver of Breath in a dewdrop or a dying leaf. She had only one pain, and that was the red-haired boy—the image of his father—that J.J. Falconer had named Wayne.

Unsettled wind whooped around the house. Ramona put on a sweater and took her needlepoint to the fireside, where she sat and worked steadily for over an hour. There was a prickling sensation at the back of her neck, and she knew it wouldn't be very much longer.

Something was coming through the night. She knew it was coming for her. She didn't know what it would look like, but she wanted to see its face and let it know she was not afraid.

In the mirror she'd seen her own black aura.

She closed her eyes and let her mind drift. She was a child again, running wild and free across the green meadows in the heat of a summer sun. She lay down in the grass and watched the clouds change shape. There were castles up there, with fleecy towers and flags and—

"Ramona!" she heard. "Ramona!" It was her mother, calling from the distance. "Ramona, you little dickens! You get yourself home now, you hear?"

A hand brushed her cheek, and her eyes flew open. The fire and the lamp's wick had burned very low. She'd recognized that touch, and she was filled with warmth.

There was a knock at the door.

Ramona rocked on in her chair a moment more. Then she lifted her chin, stood up, and approached the door; she let her hand rest on the latch for a few seconds, then she took a deep breath and opened it.

A tall man in a straw cowboy hat, a denim jacket, and faded jeans stood on the porch. He had a grizzled gray beard and dark, deep-set brown eyes. Behind him there was a glossy black pickup truck. He chewed on a toothpick and drawled, "Howdy, ma'am. Seems I took a wrong turn up the road a ways. Sure would appreciate it if I could get some directions and maybe a glass of water. Throat's kind of—"

"I know who you are," Ramona said, and saw a little shock and unease register in the man's eyes. He wasn't a real cowboy, she'd seen, because his hands were too smooth. "I know why you're here. Come in."

He paused, the smile slipping off his face. He saw that she did know. Some of the power seemed to drain out of him, and under her firm gaze he felt like a bug that had just crawled from beneath a rock. He almost called it off right then and there, but he knew he couldn't take their money and run; they'd find him, sooner or later After all, he was a professional.

"Aren't you coming in?" she asked, and opened the door wider.

He took the toothpick out of his mouth, mumbled, "Thank you," and stepped across the threshold. He couldn't look her in the face, because she knew and she wasn't afraid and that made it unbearable for him.

She was waiting.

The man decided he'd make it as quick and painless as possible. And that this would be his last one, God help him.

Ramona closed the door to shut away the cold, then turned defiantly toward her visitor.

ELEVEN

The Test

50

A muffled cry burst from Billy's throat, and he sat up in the darkness as the cot's hard springs squealed beneath him. His mind was jumbled with terrors. He switched on the lamp and sat with the blanket around his shoulders as rain crashed against the window.

He couldn't remember the details of the nightmare, but it had to do with his mother. And the house. Sparks flying into the night sky. The awful face of the shape changer, glowing dark red with reflected light.

Billy got out of bed and trudged into the corridor. On his way to the men's bathroom he saw a light on downstairs, in the parlor. He descended the stairs, hoping to find someone he could talk to.

In the parlor, a single lamp burned. The television was on, silently showing a ghostly test pattern. And curled up on the sofa, lying beneath a brown raincoat with patched elbows, was the girl with different-colored eyes. Except her eyes were closed now, and she was asleep. Billy stood over her for a moment, admiring the dark auburn of her hair and the beauty of her face. As he stared, she flinched in her sleep. She was even prettier than Melissa Pettus, he thought, but she seemed to be a troubled person. He'd found out from Mr Pearlman that she was nineteen and her family lived in Texas. No one else knew anything about her.

Suddenly, as if she'd sensed him in the room, her eyelids fluttered. She sat up so abruptly he was startled and stepped back a pace. She stared at him with the fierce concentration of a trapped animal, but her eyes looked glazed and dead. "They're going to burn up," she whispered, in a barely audible voice. "Cappy says they will, and Cappy's never wrong—"

Then Billy saw her gaze clear, and he realized she'd been talking in her sleep. She blinked uncertainly at him, a red flush creeping across her cheeks. "What is it? What do you want?"

"Nothing. I saw the light on." He smiled, trying to ease her obvious tension. "Don't worry, I won't bite."

She didn't respond, but instead drew the coat tighter around her. Billy saw she still wore jeans and a sweater, and either she'd gotten dressed after she was supposed to be in bed or she'd never been to bed at all.

"Doesn't look like there's much on TV," he said, and switched it off. "How long have you been in here?"

"Awhile," she replied, in her distinctive Texas drawl, topped with frost.

"Who's Cappy?"

She flinched as if he'd struck her. "Leave me alone," she said. "I don't bother folks, and I don't want to be bothered."

"I didn't mean to disturb you. Sorry." He turned his back on her. She was surely a pretty girl, he thought, but she lacked in manners. He had almost reached the stairs when she said, "What makes you so special?"

"What?"

"Dr. Hillburn thinks you're special. Why is that?"

He shrugged. "I didn't know I was."

"Didn't say you were. Only said that Dr Hillburn thinks so. She spends a lot of time with you. Must think you're important."

Billy paused at the bottom of the stairs, listening to the noise of the rain hammering at the walls. Bonnie sat with her legs drawn up defensively to her chest, the coat around her shoulders; there was a scared look in her eyes, and Billy knew she was asking for company in her own way. He walked back into the parlor. "I don't know why. Really."

A silence stretched. Bonnie wouldn't look at him. She stared out the bay window into the icy storm.

"It's sure been raining a lot today," Billy said. "Mrs. Brannon says she thinks it'll snow soon."

Bonnie didn't respond for a long while. Then she said softly, "I hope it keeps rainin'. I hope it rains and rains for weeks. Nothin' can burn if it rains like this, can it?" She looked at him appealingly, and he was struck by her simple, natural beauty. She wore no makeup, and she looked freshly scrubbed and healthy but for the dark hollows under her eyes. Not enough sleep, he thought.

He didn't understand her comment, so he didn't reply.

"Why do you always carry that?" she asked.

And it was only then that he realized he held the piece of coal gripped in his left hand. He must've picked it up when he left his room. He was seldom without it, and he'd explained its significance to Dr Hillburn when she'd inquired.

"Is it like a good-luck charm or somethin'?"

"I guess so. I just carry it, that's all."

"Oh."

Billy shifted his weight from foot to foot. He was wearing pajamas and a robe and slippers provided by the institute, and even though it was well after two in the morning he was in no hurry to return to bed. "Where are you from in Texas?"

"Lamesa. It's right between Lubbock and Big Spring. Where are you from in Alabama?"

"Hawthorne. How'd you know I was from Alabama?"

She shrugged. "How'd you know I was from Texas?"

"I guess I asked somebody." He paused, studying her face. "How come you've got one blue eye and one green?"

"How come you've got curly hair if you're an Indian?"

He smiled, realizing she'd been asking as many questions about him as he had about her. "Do you always answer a question with a question?"

"Do you?"

"No. I'm only part Indian. Choctaw. Don't worry, I won't take your scalp."

"I wasn't worryin'. I come from a long line of Indian hunters."

Billy laughed, and he saw from the sparkle in her eyes that she wanted to laugh, too, but she turned away from him and watched the rain. "What are you doing so far from Texas?" he asked.

"What are you doing so far from Alabama?"

He decided to try a different tack. "I really think your eyes are pretty."

"No, they're not. They're different, is all."

"Sometimes it's good to be different."

"Sure."

"No, I mean it. You ought to be proud of the way you look. It sets you apart."

"It does that, all right."

"I mean it sets you apart in a good way. It makes you special. And who knows? Maybe you can see things more clearly than most folks."

"Maybe," she said quietly, in an uneasy tone of voice, "it means I can see a lot of things I wish I couldn't." She looked up at him. "Have you been talkin' to Dr. Hillburn about me?"

"No."

"Then how'd you know about Cappy? Only Dr. Hillburn knows about that."

He told her what she'd said when she was startled out of sleep, and it was clear she was annoyed. "You shouldn't be creepin' around, anyway," Bonnie told him. "You scared me, that's all. Why'd you come sneakin' down here?"

"I didn't sneak. I had a nightmare that woke me up."

"Nightmares," she whispered. "Yeah, I know a lot about those."

"Haven't you been to bed?"

"No." She paused, a frown working across her face. She had a scatter of freckles across her cheeks and nose, and Billy could envision her riding a horse under the Texas sun. She was a little too thin, but Billy figured she could take care of herself just fine. "I don't like to sleep," Bonnie said after another moment. "That's why I was down here. I wanted to watch TV and read as long as I could."

"Why?"

"Well . . . it's just because I . . . have dreams sometimes. Nightmares. Sometimes they're . . . really awful. If I don't sleep, I won't see them. I . . . was even going to go out for a walk tonight, until it started rainin' so hard. But I hope it keeps on rainin' like this. Do you think it will?"

"I don't know. Why's it so important to you?"

"Because," she said, and gazed up at him, "then what Cappy's been showing me won't come true. Nothin' can burn like what he's been making me see."

The tone of her voice bordered on desperation. Billy sat down in a chair, prepared to listen if she wanted to talk.

She did, and Billy listened without interrupting. The story came hesitantly: when Bonnie Hailey was eleven years old, she was struck by lightning on the stark Texas plain. All her hair burned off, her fingernails turned black, and she lay near death for almost a month. She recalled darkness, and voices, and wanting to let go; but every time she wanted to die she heard a clear, high childish voice tell her no, that letting go wasn't the answer The voice urged her over and over to hang on, to fight the pain. And she did, winning by slow degrees.

She had a nurse named Mrs. Shelton, and every time Mrs. Shelton would come into the room Bonnie would hear a soft ringing sound in her ears. She began to have a strange recurring dream: a nurse's cap rolling down a flight of moving stairs. A week later, Bonnie found out that Mrs. Shelton had tripped on an escalator in a Lubbock department store and broken her neck. And that was the start of it.

Bonnie called the strange, high voice in her head Cappy, after an invisible playmate she'd had when she was five or six. She'd had a lonely childhood, spending most of the time on the small ranch her stepfather owned near Lamesa. Cappy's visits became more frequent, and with them the dreams. She foresaw suitcases falling from a clear blue sky, over and over again, and she could even read a nametag and a flight number on one of the cases. Cappy told her to tell somebody, quickly, but Bonnie's mother had thought it was utter foolishness. Two planes collided over Dallas less than a week later, and suitcases were strewn over the plains for miles. There had been many other incidents of dreams and hearing what she called Death Bells, until finally her stepfather had called the National Star and they'd come out to interview her. Her mother was horrified at the attention that followed, and in came in a flood of crackpot letters and obscene telephone calls. Her stepfather wanted her to write a book—oh, just make it up! he'd told her—and for her to go on tour talking about the Death Bells.

Bonnie's parents had split up, and it was clear to Bonnie that her mother was afraid of her and blamed her for the divorce. The dreams kept coming, and Cappy's voice with them, urging her to act. By this time, the National Star touted her as the Death Angel of Texas.

"A psychiatrist at the University of Texas wanted to talk to me," Bonnie said, in a quiet, tense voice. "Mom didn't want me to go, but I knew I had to. Cappy wanted me to. Anyway, Dr. Callahan had worked with Dr. Hillburn before, so he called her and made arrangements to send me up here. Dr. Hillburn says I've got precognition, that maybe the lightning jarred something in my brain and opened me up to signals from what she calls a 'messenger' She believes there are entities that stay here, in this world, after their bodies have died . . ."

"Discarnates," Billy offered.

"Right. They stay here and try to help the rest of us, but not everybody can understand what they're trying to say."

"But you can."

She shook her head. "Not all the time. Sometimes the dreams aren't clear. Sometimes I can hardly understand Cappy's voice. Other times . . . maybe I don't want to hear what he's saying. I don't like to sleep, because I don't want to see what he shows me."

"And you've been having dreams just recently?"

"Yes," she said. "For several nights now. I ... I haven't told Dr Hillburn yet. She'll want to hook me up to those machines again, and I'm sick of those tests. Cappy's . . . shown me a building on fire. An old building, in a bad part of town. The fire's fast, and it's . . . it's so hot I can feel the heat on my own face. I can hear the fire engines coming. But the roof collapses, and I . . . can see people jumping out of the windows. It's going to happen, Billy. I know it is."

"But do you know where this building is?"

"No, but I think it's here, in Chicago. All the other dreams I've had came true within a hundred miles or so of where I was. Dr Hillburn thinks I'm like . . . like a radar or something. My range is limited," she said, with a frightened little smile. "Cappy says they're going to die if I can't help them. He says it's going to start in the wires, and it's going to be fast. He keeps saying something that sounds like 'spines,' but I can't figure out what he means."

"You need to let Dr Hillburn know," Billy told her. "Tomorrow morning. Maybe she can help you."

She nodded vaguely. "Maybe. But I don't think so. I'm so tired of being responsible, Billy. Why did it have to be me. Why?" When she looked up at him, there were tears glimmering in her eyes.

"I don't know," he said, and he reached out to take her hand as the rain flailed against the windows. For a long time they sat together, listening to the storm, and when the rain stopped Bonnie let out a soft, despairing whisper.

51

As Billy sat with Bonnie Hailey at the Hillburn Institute, the telephone was ringing at the Hodges's house in Fayette. George Hodges stirred, feeling his wife's back pressed against his own, and fumbled for the receiver.

It was Albert Vance, an attorney he'd met at a business conference in Fort Lauderdale the year before, calling from New York City. Hodges told him to stay on the line, nudged Rhonda, and asked her to hang up when he yelled from downstairs. He went down to the study, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and took the call. "Okay!" he shouted, and the upstairs phone clicked down.

He didn't want Rhonda overhearing. His heart was pounding as he listened to what Vance had to say.

"I had to go through red tape like you wouldn't believe," Vance said, in a northern accent abrasive to Hodges's eat "Ten High owns a few companies here in New York, and on the surface they're as clean as polished glass. No IRS trouble, no union problems, no bankruptcies. They're real Boy Scouts."

"So what does that mean?"

"It means I had to dig five thousand dollars deeper, and I had to cover my tracks. That's why I'm calling so late. I don't want anyone in my office to know what I found out about Ten High . . . just in case."

"I don't understand."

"You will. Ten High may or may not be connected."

"Connected? With what?"

"The organized boys. Got the picture? I said may or may not be. They've insulated themselves pretty damned well. But the word I get is that Ten High has sunken its claws into the West Coast porno business, the garment trade, owns a sizable slice of Vegas action, and controls most of the Mexican illegal-alien flow. Ten High is strong, prospering, and lethal."

"Oh . . . Jesus. . . ." Hodges's hand clenched around the receiver Wayne and Henry Bragg were still out there! Wayne had missed a television taping, and now the Houston date had passed and still Wayne showed no intent of coming back to Fayette! God only knew what hold Krespin had on him! He said weakly, "I . . . Al, what can I do?"

"You want my advice? I'll give you a fifty-buck warning for free: keep your ass away from those people! Whatever's going on between them and your client, it's not worth being made into dog food over. Right?"

Hodges's mouth was numb. He said in a whisper, "Yes."

"Okay, that's it. Send me the money and a case of Jack Daniel's, I'll call it even. But listen to me, and I'm serious about this: you never called me to check into Ten High. I never heard of Ten High before. Got it? Those guys have very long arms. Okay?"

"Al, I appreciate your help. Thank you."

"Sleep tight," Vance said, and the telephone was hung up in New York City.

George Hodges slowly returned the receiver to it cradle. He was shaking, and couldn't find the strength to rise from his desk.

For all intents and purposes, the Falconer Crusade—the foundation, the scholarship fund, everything!—was in the grip of Augustus Krepsin, chairman of the board of the Ten High Corporation. Surely Henry Bragg could see what was happening! Couldn't he?

No, he thought bitterly. Henry was too busy lying around that pool and meeting the young girls Niles introduced him to. Palm Springs was all the things Henry had ever fantasized about, and he was hooked as deeply as Wayne!

Hodges reached for the phone again, and dialed 0. When the operator answered, he said, "I'd like to make a long-distance call please. To Birmingham, to the Federal Bureau of . . ." And then he tasted ashes in his mouth, because what could he say? What could he do? Wayne wanted to be out there. Wayne felt safe in that stone tomb, hidden from his responsibilities.

Those guys have very long arms, Al Vance had said.

"Yes sir?" the operator asked.

Hodges thought of Rhonda, and of Larry in his freshman year at Auburn. Long arms. He'd seen Niles's eyes: the eyes of a killer. His gut lurched, and he hung up.

Things had been coming loose at the seams ever since J.J.'s death. Now the whole package was coming apart. Hodges feared what might be at its dark center.

But he had his family, his stocks and bonds. His house and money. He was alive.

Hodges rose wearily from his desk, and as he started across the room he thought he saw, through the picture window, a red glow in the sky when wind whipped through the trees. A fire? he wondered. In that direction lay Hawthorne. What could be burning?

Still, it couldn't be a very large fire. And it was several miles away. It would be put out. He'd find out what it was in the morning.

"God help me," he said quietly, and hoped he would be heard. Then he turned off the lights and climbed the stairs. He felt as if his soul had been scorched to a cinder.

52

"I'll be perfectly honest with you, Billy," Mary Hillburn said. She put on her reading glasses and opened a file folder that lay before her atop the desk. "I have all your test results right here, everything from Zener cards to biofeedback. You checked out just fine on your physical, incidentally."

"That's good to know." It had been several days since Billy's talk with Bonnie Hailey, and just yesterday morning he'd finished the last of the tests Dr Hillburn had planned for him. It had been a long hypnosis session conducted by Dr Lansing, and Billy had felt as if he were floating in a dark pool as the therapist tried to take him to different levels of consciousness. From the disappointment on Lansing's face, Billy could tell it had been a dismal failure.

"Oh," Billy said quietly. All that work for nothing? he thought. "Then . . . you don't think I can do what I say I can, is that right?"

"Take on pain from the dead? I really don't know. As I say, the tests—"

"They're not the right tests," Billy said.

She pondered that for a moment. "Perhaps you're right. But then, what would the proper test be, young man? Can you come up with one? You see, parapsychology—and death survival research in particular—is a very, very tricky enterprise. It's a fledgling science—a new frontier; we make up the tests as we go along, but even our tests have to be tested. We have to prove ourselves as being serious every day, and most scientists won't even listen to our findings." She closed his file. "Unfortunately, we have proven nothing. No proof of death survival, no proof of an afterlife . . . nothing. But still people come to us with sightings of discarnates. They come to us with precognitive dreams, with the ability to suddenly speak in different languages, or to play musical instruments that they had no prior experience with. I've seen individuals go into trancelike states and write in a completely different handwriting style. I've heard a little girl, also in a trance, speak in a man's voice. What does it mean? Simply that we have reached the edge of a new unknown, and we don't understand what lies before us."

Dr. Hillburn took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She was suddenly very tired, and she'd so hoped this young man from Alabama would be the one she was looking for "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't disbelieve what you've told me about yourself and your family. Your friend Mr. Merkle was certainly convinced. But . . . how can we test that black aura you say you see? How can we test someone who feels he can calm the dead? I don't know. Until we come up with new, verifiable test procedures, we cannot. So I'm going to send your file around to some other parapsychologists. In the meantime . . . I'm sorry, but I've got a list of people waiting to come in. I'm going to have to ask you to vacate your room."

"You . . . want me to leave?"

"No, I don't want you to; but I'm afraid you'll have to. I can give you until the end of the week, and we'll put you on a bus back home. I'm hopeful one of the other parapsychologists who get your file can ..."

Heat pulsed in Billy's face. He stood up abruptly, thinking of all the money he'd spent to come up here. "I'll leave tomorrow," he said. "And nobody has to see me off. I thought you were going to help me!"

"I said we'd put you through some tests. We have. I'm groping through the dark, just as you are, and I wish I had room for everyone here who has psi potential, but we don't. It's not that I don't believe in your abilities. But right now there's only your word for them."

"I see," Billy said, confused and angry. All this time, wasted! "I shouldn't have come up here. I was wrong, I know that now. You can't understand or help me, because you look at everything through machines. How can a machine know what's in my mind and soul? My mother, and her mother before her, never needed machines to help them do their work—and I don't, either." He glowered at her and then stalked out of the office.

Dr. Hillburn couldn't blame him. She turned her chair toward the window to look at the park in the gray midafternoon sunlight. She hated to let Billy Creekmore go, because she sensed something about him—something important that she couldn't quite understand. But she needed the space he was occupying, and that was that. She drew in a deep breath and turned to her next priority, Bonnie Hailey's dream diary. Bonnie was still having dreams about a burning building, and her messenger was still trying to impress a word on her. Something that sounded like "spines"? She reread Bonnie's latest dreams—all of them similar except for minor details—and then took a Chicago street map from a bookshelf behind her desk.

53

They came for Henry Bragg at a quiet hour, just before three in the morning, and turned on all the lights in his mirrored bedroom.

Niles was standing over the bed when Bragg got his eyeglasses on. "Mr. Krepsin would like to see you," Niles said. "You won't need to get dressed, just your robe and slippers will do."

"What's going on? What time is it?"

"It's early. Wayne's repaying a debt to Mr. Krepsin. It's important that you be there."

Niles and a sturdy blond bodyguard named Dorn escorted Bragg into the east wing of the house, Krepsin's private domain. In the week since George Hodges had been gone, Bragg had felt as pampered as a prince. He was getting a good suntan and becoming addicted to piña coladas. When the young girls that Niles introduced to him fawned over him, he conveniently forgot about his wife, children, his house and legal practice. He'd begun wearing a chain around his neck with his zodiac sign on it. He was doing his job: staying close to Wayne. If there just happened to be one hell of a lot of fringe benefits, was it his fault?

Niles pressed the button outside Krepsin's study. The doors unlocked, and Bragg stepped into the room. Track lights were aimed on him, and the mounted skeletons threw dark slats upon the walls. Krepsin sat behind his desk, his hands folded before him, his head in a pool of light.

Bragg had to visor his hand over his eyes because the light in his face was almost painful. "Mr. Krepsin? Did you want to see me, sir?"

"Yes. Step forward, will you?"

Bragg did. The feel of the Persian carpet under his feet changed. He realized he was standing on a wide piece of thin, clear plastic that had been laid down over the carpet.

"That's fine," Krepsin said. "Right there, if you please."

"What's going on?" Bragg grinned.

"Wayne?" Krepsin looked to his left, at the figure sitting in a high-backed chair "Are you ready?"

It took Bragg a few minutes to recognize Wayne. The boy's face was pallid, haunted-looking. It had been several days since he'd last seen Wayne, and the boy looked like a stranger. Wayne held a small box in his lap and was rubbing something between his fingers. Was it . . . hair? he wondered.

"I don't know," Wayne said softly.

"What did I tell you before, son? You're either ready or not for your test."

"Hey," Bragg said, "is anybody going to tell me what's going on?"

Dorn was covering some of the skeletons nearest Bragg with clear plastic sheets. He moved a coffee table and chair to the far side of the room. Wayne sat staring at the hair in his hand; most of it was gray, and it had a luster that shone like starlight. He got a strange feeling from holding it. The Creekmore boy's face was fresh in his mind, and for an instant it didn't look evil at all. But then he remembered what his father had told him, about things of the Devil not always looking black as sin. "I'm ready," he said, and let Ramona Creekmore's hair slip back into the box. He could call it up from deep within, he knew he could. He rose to his feet, clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides.

"Let's begin," Krepsin said.

Before Bragg could turn, Dorn gripped his wrists and pinned his arms behind him. Bragg cried out in pain as Dorn held him so tightly he could barely breathe.

"Mr Niles?" Krepsin said softly.

Niles had taken what looked like a set of brass knuckles from a black leather pouch. He slipped the weapon on his right fist, and Bragg whined with fear as he saw the wicked glint of broken razor blades studding the weapon's surface.

"Wayne!" Bragg screamed, his glasses hanging from one ear. "For God's sake, don't let them kill me!" He tried to kick out at Niles, but the other man neatly sidestepped. Niles gripped his hair and jerked his head back while Dorn increased the pressure on his lockhold.

And then Niles's arm swept outward in a blurred arc, across Bragg's exposed throat. Fountains of bright red blood leaped into the air, jetting upon the plastic sheets. Niles leaped aside, but not in time: his gray suit was splattered with scarlet. Bragg's face had gone marble white.

"Let him go," Krepsin ordered. Bragg crumpled to his knees, his hands clasped around his throat, blood streaming between the fingers. Krepsin had clicked a stopwatch on when Bragg's throat was slashed, and the seconds were running; he inclined his head toward Wayne. "Now heal him," he said. "You have about three minutes before he bleeds to death."

Wayne had had no idea what the test was going to be. He was transfixed by the sight of all that blood.

"Please," Bragg whispered, and reached a gore-covered hand out for him. "Oh Jesus, oh Jesus don't let me die . . ."

"Hurry, Wayne," Krepsin urged.

Gripping the man's slippery hand, Wayne got on his knees beside him. Red tides rippled across the plastic. Wayne clamped his free hand over the gushing, ragged wound. "Be healed," he said, his voice shaking. "I . . . command you to be healed!" He tried to visualize the veins and arteries melding together as if by a cauterizing torch, but fie knew it wasn't working. "Please," he whispered. "Please be healed!"

Bragg moaned hoarsely and fell on his side.

The stopwatch on Krepsin's desk continued to ticktickticktick.

Wayne felt trapped in rust. He had felt the healing fire when he'd touched Toby; he had felt it when he'd healed a little girl's numbed legs; he had felt it a hundred times in those old days, before he felt so pushed and squeezed and pressured to keep doing it day after day. But he couldn't pretend anymore, not with Henry dying in front of him. He had to find the blue fire again, and he had to find it fast. When he looked pleadingly up at Krepsin, he saw the man's impassive face like a huge chunk of eroding stone. Krepsin had put on a surgical mask.

"Wayne . . ." Bragg whispered.

He clamped both hands to the wound. "Be healed be healed dear God heal this man please heal him." He squeezed his eyes shut. It wouldn't happen! Where was the blue fire? Where was the power? "Burn it shut!" he shouted. Still nothing. He thought of the Creekmore witch, scorching in Hellfire. He thought of the Creekmore boy, still out there roaming the earth. One had been dealt with, the other must follow. "BURN IT SHUT!" he screamed, his mind turning toward revenge for the death of his father.

A faint jolt shuddered through his hands, like a spark plug misfiring. He was covered with blood and sweat, and as he concentrated he bowed his back and screamed for his daddy to help him heal Henry Bragg.

Spark plugs fired. Fired. Fired. "Yes, I command you to be healed! I command you to be heal—" a terrific pain suddenly ripped across his head. His brain felt as if it were about to explode. "BE HEALED!" he shouted, as blood oozed from his nostrils. His eyes bulged from his head.

Bragg's body writhed, his mouth opening in a moan.

Krepsin, breathing hard, began to rise from his chair.

Pain crisscrossed Wayne's head in savage waves. His hands, curled into rigid claws, were locked against Bragg's throat. A fire was coming up from his soul, sizzling through sinew and muscle and flesh. With it there was an agony that made Wayne throw back bis head and shriek.

Krepsin thought he smelled charring flesh.

Wayne shook violently, the eyes rolling back in his head, as his hands convulsively twitched around Bragg's throat. The man's body was shaking too, his mouth making low gasping sounds.

And then Wayne fell backward as if thrust away by a physical force. He lay curled up on the bloody plastic. Agony throbbed through him like the vibration of a bass fiddle.

Bragg moaned, "Oh God help me . . . please help me . . . the pain ..."

Krepsin released his breath in a hiss. The second hand of the stopwatch was sweeping past three minutes. "Check him," he rasped.

Niles bent over Bragg. "Pulse irregular The bleeding's almost stopped. The blood's coagulated into a hard crust. I ... I think the wound's sealed, Mr Krepsin."

"Hurts." Bragg whispered.

Krepsin's bulk leaned over the desk. "That man should be dead by now," he said. "He should be dead!" Breathing like a steam engine, he came around the desk and stepped onto the plastic film, avoiding the blood. "Get away, get away," he told Niles, who moved quickly aside. Very slowly Krepsin dared to bend forward and touch with one finger the hard crust of dried blood that had effectively sealed Bragg's wound. He drew his finger back as if it had been burned. "He's going to live," Krepsin whispered. Then, in a shout that seemed to shake the room: "He's going to live!"

Wayne sat up, staring blankly ahead as blood dripped from his nose. His head was full of black, consumptive pain.

"He's a healer," Krepsin breathed, his eyes wide and astonished. "He's a healer, he's a healer, he's a goddamned healer! I've found a healer!" He turned toward Wayne, one of his shoes sinking into a puddle of blood. "You always knew you could do it, didn't you? You never doubted it! Oh, I've looked for someone like you for such a long time, Wayne! You can heal anything, can't you? Cancers, fevers, plagues, anything!"

The son of Satan, Wayne thought through a haze of pain. Loose in the world. Mocking me. I always knew I could do it. Death deserves death. Send the demon boy to join the witch in Hellfire. I always knew I could get it up!

"My God, Wayne!" Krepsin was saying. "What a gift you have! I'll give you anything you want, anything in the world! You want to stay here with me, don't you? Here where it's safe, where nothing can get at you? What do you want, Wayne? I'll give you—"

"The demon boy," Wayne whispered. "I . . . want the demon boy dead. He's loose in the world, spreading death like a plague. Death deserves death."

"The Creekmore boy? Anything you want done, anything in the world. We know he's in Chicago, at the . . ." He couldn't recall, and snapped his fingers at Niles.

"The Hillburn Institute," Niles answered. The courier had come this morning, bringing a package containing snippets of hair and an envelope Travis Bixton had found in the Creekmore house. On that envelope had been the institute's address, and inside a letter from the Creekmore boy.

"Right," Krepsin said. "But that boy can't hurt you, Wayne. It was his mother you feared, wasn't it? And now that she's ..."

"Dead," Wayne said, his haunted gaze burning toward the other man. "Dead dead I want the demon boy dead."

Krepsin glanced quickly over at Niles, then returned his attention to Wayne. "I want you to go back to your room now. Mr Dorn will give you something to help you relax. Tomorrow you can go up in the Challenger with Coombs. All day if you want. Would you like that?"

"Yes sir."

Dorn helped Wayne to his feet. Bragg stirred and whispered, "Wayne, don't leave me."

"Henry's still hurting," Wayne said dazedly. "What's going to happen to him?"

"We'll see to Mr. Bragg. Go along now. And Wayne—you've passed your test magnificently!"

When Wayne had gone, Niles bent down beside Bragg and examined the throat wound as Krepsin raved on about Wayne's powers. Niles was fascinated at the way the blood had crusted; he'd never seen anything like this before. Bragg's bloodshot eyes were fixed on him. After a period of observation, Niles knew, Bragg would go into the incinerator "What about the boy at that institute, Mr Krepsin?" he asked.

"Wells won't have any problem with that, will he?"

"No sir." He stood up and stepped away from the body. "No problem. But aren't you curious about this Creekmore boy? He has some kind of hold over Wayne. Should we find out what it is?"

Krepsin recalled something Wayne had told him, in one of their first conversations: The Creekmores serve the Devil, and they know all the secrets of death. He narrowed his eyes and regarded Niles for a silent moment.

"Something about that boy and his mother has preyed on Wayne's mind for a long time," Niles said quietly. "What could it be? And could it be used to bind Wayne closer to you?"

"He'll never leave me," Krepsin said. "How long could a man live, Mr Niles, if he cannot be touched by injuries or disease? A hundred years? Longer?" Then he said in a soft, dreamy voice, "Not to die, but to know the secrets of death. That would . . . make a human being godlike, wouldn't it?"

"The Creekmore boy," Niles said, "may know something about Wayne that you should know. Possibly we acted prematurely on the woman, as well."

"What's your advice, then?"

Niles told him, and Krepsin listened very carefully.

54

It was Billy's last afternoon at the Hillburn Institute, and he was packing his suitcase when he heard the scream from downstairs. He knew, almost instinctively, that it was Bonnie's voice.

He found her in the parlor, hugging Mr Pearlman with tears streaming down her face. A few others were watching something on television. Billy stared numbly at the screen.

It was a nighttime scene of a blazing building, firemen wearing oxygen masks and scaling ladders to the upper floors as sparks exploded into the sky. The camera had caught pictures of people leaping to their deaths from the window.

"It wasn't a cigarette," Bonnie said, staring at Billy. "It was the wiring. It happened just like I knew it would, and I couldn't stop it, I couldn't do anything. . . ."

"There's nothing you could have done," Dr Hillburn said. She was standing at the foot of the stairs, and had seen the news bulletin. This morning she'd read in the paper about the fiery destruction of the Alcott Hotel, on South Spines Street, and had known that Bonnie's messenger had been right again.

"Yes there was. I could've told somebody. I could've—"

"You told me," Dr. Hillburn said. She glanced at Billy and the others and then her gaze returned to Bonnie. "I found Spines Street on a Chicago map. It's in a very bad area on the South Side, full of flophouses for derelicts. Two days ago I called the local police station and the fire department's prevention bureau. I explained who I was, and my conversation ended with, respectively, a desk sergeant and a secretary. I was told there were dozens of transient hotels on Spines Street, and an inspection of them all was impractical. You did the best you could, Bonnie, and so did I."

Forty people dead, Billy thought. Maybe more, their bodies buried in the rubble. The Alcott Hotel, South Spines Street. Forty people dead. He could envision them awakening from drunken sleep as fire roared through the corridors. They would've had no time, no chance to escape. It would have been a terrifying, agonizing way to die. Forty people.

Bonnie, her face strained and tear-streaked, took her coat from the closet and went out into the cold. She walked into the park, her head bowed.

"She'll survive," Dr. Hillburn said. "She's a fighter, and she knows I'm right. Billy, what time does your bus leave?"

"Four o'clock."

"Whenever you're ready, I'll drive you to the station." Dr. Hillburn watched Bonnie walking in the park for a moment, then started up the stairs.

Billy kept thinking about the Alcott Hotel. The raw image of people leaping from the windows was imprinted on his brain. What would his mother want him to do? He already knew; but he didn't know if he was strong enough for that many of them. He had two hours before his bus left. No, he should forget about the Alcott, he told himself. He was going home, back where he belonged.

Dr. Hillburn was about to enter her office when Billy said quietly, behind her, "I'd like to talk to you, please."

"Yes?"

"That hotel fire. All those people, trapped in there. I . . . think that's where I should go."

"Why? Are you presuming that just because there was fast and painful death, discarnates are present? I don't think that's a very valid—"

"I don't care what you think," Billy said firmly. "I know that some souls need help in crossing over, especially if death came so fast they didn't have time to prepare themselves. Some of them—a lot of them, I think—are probably still in that place, and they're still burning up. They don't know how to get out."

"So what are you suggesting?"

"I want to go there. I want to see for myself." He frowned when she didn't respond. "What my mother taught me had to do with compassion, with feeling. Not with brainwaves or machines. They need me at that place. I have to go, Dr. Hillburn."

"No," she said. "Out of the question. You're acting on an invalid, emotional assumption. And I'm sure that what remains of the Alcott is extremely dangerous. While you're in this city, I feel responsible for you, and I won't have you walking around in a burned-out building. I'm sorry. No." And she went into her office and closed the door.

Billy's face was grim. He went to his room, put on his heaviest sweater, and tucked the rest of his money into a jeans pocket. A bus stop was two blocks north, he knew. He'd have to find the Alcott Hotel by himself. Anita saw him leave, but he spoke to no one. Outside, small flakes of snow were spinning down from an overcast sky, and the wind was frigid. He saw Bonnie out in the park and almost went over to comfort her but he knew she needed to be alone, and if he paused he might lose the determination that was forcing him to the Alcott. He started walking north, and didn't hear Bonnie's voice when she looked up and called his name.

55

The bus doors hissed open, and Billy stepped onto the pavement in a chilly mix of rain and snow. On the corner was a rusted street sign that read South Spines. As the bus pulled away, Billy shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking into the wind, his teeth beginning to chatter.

For the last hour and a half he'd been transferring from bus to bus, heading deeper into Chicago's grim, gray South Side. He was almost at the edge of the city, and he'd ridden the bus to the end of the line. Rows of square, severe-looking buildings surrounded him, and on the horizon factory chimneys belched brown smoke. Metal shields were pulled down across storefront windows, and the reek of decay hung in the air.

Billy walked south, shivering. In the distance he heard a police car's siren, the wail strengthening and ebbing. The street was all but deserted. Around him snowflakes hissed as if falling on a hot griddle. From windows an occasional solemn face watched him pass.

After another block, he could smell charred timbers. The air grew denser, thick with a grayish brown haze that seemed to hang in layers. He heard an eerie chorus of police sirens, a noise that climbed the scales to a chilling dissonance. Billy could feel the hair at the back of his neck standing up.

The haze grew denser still, like a filthy fog. Billy walked into it, his eyes stinging.

And through it loomed his destination, a scorched five-story building with the letters all ott ho remaining painted in dark red just under the rooftop, which had collapsed during the fire. Windows were rimmed with black, and rooms and narrow corridors had been exposed when part of the hotel's brick skin had slid down to the ground. Smoking rubble was piled up all over the street. A safety barricade, yellow sawhorses with blinking lights, had been set up to hold back a group of fifteen or twenty curious onlookers, and two police cars were parked nearby. Firemen in long brown canvas coats were picking through the debris. A group of men in scruffy clothes stood around a blaze in an empty oil can, passing a bottle back and forth. Parked across the street was a fire engine, its hoses snaking into the rubble.

Two firemen were digging something out. A third came over to help. The blackened shape they were trying to lift fell apart in their hands, and one of the men leaned unsteadily on his shovel as the group of drunks hooted and catcalled.

Billy's heart was pounding, the chorus of sirens making his skin crawl. He saw a couple of policemen moving around in the rubble. Something within the building cracked, and bricks fell from above, causing the officers to scatter.

And then Billy realized those weren't sirens he was hearing.

They were high, dissonant, eerie screams. Coming from inside the Alcott.

And he knew that he was the only one who could hear them.

"Got another one over here!" one of the firemen shouted. "Get me a bodybag, it's a bad one!"

Billy stared across the barricades into the blackened remnants of the lobby. Furniture had been charred into lumps. A tangle of pipes leaked dirty water, and a narrow staircase, warped by intense heat and the weight of water, ascended along a sooty wall. The screams drove themselves into his brain like spikes, and he knew there were too many. He couldn't handle them all, they'd kill him. He'd never tried to help this many, not at one time!

"Step back," a policeman told him, and he obeyed.

But he knew that if he didn't at least try, give it his best and strongest effort, he'd hear that terrible screaming in his mind for the rest of his life. He paused, waiting for the chance. I am strong, he told himself. I can do it. But he was trembling, and he'd never been more uncertain in his life.

The drunks started shouting at the firemen who were zipping a black form into a bodybag. The policeman hurried over to shut them up, his broad face reddening with anger.

And Billy slipped under the barricade, then into the Alcott Hotel's ruined lobby.

He ascended the stairs as quickly as he could, ducking low beneath twisted pipes and dangling timbers. The stairs groaned under his weight, and around him shifted a curtain of gray smoke. Above the sound of the ghostly screams he could hear restless wind roaring along the upper floors. As he reached the dank second floor, noises from the outside world faded away. He could sense the pulse of agony at the heart of the Alcott Hotel.

His foot plunged through a step; he fell to his knees, ashes whirling around him, as the entire staircase shook. It took him a moment to work his foot free, and then he forced himself upward. Cold sweat and soot clung to his face. The screaming spectral voices led him to the third floor; he was aware also of individual voices—low, agonized moaning, snippets of shouts, cries of terror—that he seemed to feel vibrating in his bones. The third-floor corridor was dark, puddled with ashy water, clogged with burned, unidentifiable shapes. Billy found a shattered window and leaned against it to inhale some fresh air Down on the street, a white van marked with the eye of Chicago had pulled up to the barricade. Three people, a woman and two men—one with a camera unit braced against his shoulder—were having a heated argument with the cop while the drunks shouted and whistled.

The voices of the dead urged Billy on. He continued along the corridor, feeling something like a cold hand exploring his features as a blind man might. The floor groaned under his weight, and from above ashes shifted down like black snow. His shoes crunched on a layer of debris.

To his right there was a doorway that had been shattered by firemen. Beyond was a thick gloom of gray ashes. Billy could sense the terrible cold in that room, leaking out into the corridor. It was the chill of terror, and Billy shivered in its frigid touch.

Beyond that doorway, he knew, was what he had come here to find.

Billy braced himself, his heart hammering, and stepped through the doorway. The voices stopped.

A pall of black ashes and smoke drifted around him. It had been a large room; he looked up, saw that most of the ceiling had collapsed in a morass of charred timbers. Water was still seeping down from above and lay a half-inch deep around the objects on the floor: charred rib cages, arm and leg bones, unrecognizable shapes that might once have been human beings. Around them, like black barbed wire, was a metal framework that had been melded together by intense heat. Bed frames, Billy realized. Bunk beds. They were sleeping in here when the ceiling collapsed on top of them.

There was a silence, as of something waiting.

He could feel them all around him. They were in the smoke, in the ash, in the burned bones and malformed shapes. They were in the air and in the walls.

There was too much agony here; it weighed heavily in the dense air, and terror crackled like electricity. But it was too late to run, Billy knew. He would have to do what he could.

But there was something else here, as well. The hair at the back of his neck stirred, and his flesh prickled. Hatred oozed from this room. Something in here seethed; something wanted to tear him to pieces.

A shape stirred in a far corner and rose up from the ashes, taking hideous form. It stood seven feet tall, and its narrowed eyes glittered like red beads. The shape changer's boarlike face grinned. "I knew you'd come," it whispered, in a voice neither masculine nor feminine, young nor old. "I've been waiting for you."

Billy stepped back, into puddled water.

"Oh, you're not afraid, are you?" The shape changer came out of the corner like a drift of smoke, its bestial gaze fixed on Billy. "Not you, no. Never afraid. You're strong, aren't you?"

"Yes," Billy said. "I am." And he saw a flicker of hesitation in the shape changer's gaze. He wasn't sure of the limits of the shape changer's powers—if indeed, there were any—but it seemed to him that as he got stronger, the shape changer grew more uncertain, more threatened. Perhaps, he thought, the beast couldn't physically hurt him in that demonic, elemental shape, but it could affect his mind, possibly make him hurt himself. If the shape changer ever devised a way to attack him physically, he feared he couldn't survive against such a hideous force.

The thing's form shifted, like a reflection seen in a rippling pond of stagnant water, and suddenly it looked like Lee Sayre. "You're a meddler," it said, in Sayre's voice. "Your family's full of meddlers. Some of them couldn't stand up to me, boy. Do you think you can?"

Billy didn't reply, but stood his ground.

Lee Sayre's face grinned. "Good! Then it'll be you and me, boy, with a roomful of souls in the balance! Think fast, boy!"

The floor creaked and pitched downward, dropping Billy to his knees in the water. It's a trick! he thought, as the floor seemed to sway precariously. An illusion, conjured up by the beast!

A blizzard of lighted matches swirled around Billy, burning him on the face and hands, sparking his hair and sweater. He cried out and tried to shield his face with his arms. A trick! Not really burning, not really . . . ! If he was strong enough, he knew, he could overcome the shape changer's tricks. He looked up into the matches that sizzled off his cheeks and forehead, and he tried to concentrate on seeing the shape changer not as Lee Sayre, but as it really looked. The blizzard of matches faded away, and the boar-thing stood before him.

"Tricks," Billy said, and looked up through the darkness at Melissa Pettus.

A fireball suddenly came crashing through the ceiling upon him, burying him in flaming debris. He could smell himself burning—a May Night smell—and he screamed as he tried to fight free. He ran, his clothes on fire, his mind panicked.

Before he reached the doorway, he stepped through a gaping hole in the floor that had been hidden by rubble.

As he plunged through, he caught a jagged piece of twisted metal bed frame that cut into his hand. His body hung halfway through the hole, his legs dangling twenty feet over a pile of timbers studded with blackened nails. His clothes were still on fire, and he could hear his skin sizzling.

"Let go, Billy," Melissa whispered. "It hurts, doesn't it? It hurts to burn."

"No!" he shouted. If he let go, he knew he'd fall to his death. The shape changer had wanted him to flee, had wanted him to step through this hole. Panic, terror, illusions, and insanity—those were the shape changer's most lethal weapons.

"Your mother's dead," Melissa's pretty face said. "The cowboy came and cut her throat. Your little house is a heap of ashes. Billy, your hand's bleeding—"

"Somebody up there?" a voice shouted from below.

"Let go, let go!" the shape changer, in Melissa's skin, said urgently.

Billy concentrated on the pain in his hand. His flesh had stopped sizzling. He turned his full attention to getting out of the hole. His clothes weren't on fire, weren't even scorched. He was strong, he told himself; he could resist the shape changer's weapons. Melissa's form began to fade away, and in its place was the boar. Billy climbed up and crouched on his knees in the water. What had the thing said about his mother? Lies, all lies! He had to hurry, he told himself, before the firemen found him in here.

There were scorched bones lying around him. A rib cage lay nearby. In the corner was a hideous, blackened form still wearing the shreds of clothes, its black skull-like head lolling.

Billy could feel them all around him, terrified and confused. They murmured and moaned, crowding around him to flee the dark power of the shape changer.

"No fear," Billy whispered. "Give up the pain, give up . . ."

"Get out of the dark place!" Jimmy Jed Falconer bellowed, his eyes blazing with righteous anger.

Something as soft as silk brushed Billy's face. A formless, pale bluish white mass had begun seeping out of the wall, reaching tentatively toward him. A second revenant hung in a corner like a spider web, clinging fearfully to the wall.

"You're not strong enough!" Falconer shouted. "You can't do it!"

"Give up the pain," Billy whispered, trying to mentally draw them closer. He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating. When he opened them, he saw a third revenant drifting nearer, taking on a vague human shape, arms reaching to grasp for him.

"You have to leave this place," Billy said. "You don't belong here." And suddenly he shivered, as a cold white shape drifted over him from behind; it was as soft as velvet, and was so cold it made his bones ache. Two appendages that might have been arms enfolded him.

"No!" the shape changer thundered, reverting to the beast.

The revenant began to sink into him. Billy gritted his teeth as its human memories filled him; first the panic as the fire spread and the ceiling crashed down, then the agony of burning flesh. Then in his mind he saw a splay of cards on a table, a hand reaching for a bottle of Red Dagger wine, golden wheatfields seen from a speeding boxcar, dreaded policemen swinging clubs. Memories and emotions swept through him like leaves blown from dying trees.

Another form drifted closer, gripping Billy's hand and crawling up his arm.

Again, the agony of the blaze streaked through Billy's mind. Then a needle sinking into flesh. A thin woman standing in a doorway, cradling a child.

Billy shuddered and moaned from the intensity of the pain and emotions he was taking on. He saw dozens of white forms sifting through the room, rising from the heaps of bones and ashes. They were oozing out of the walls, some of them hurrying toward him, others still as frightened as little children and clinging to the corners.

"Let go of the pain," he whispered, as the forms clung to him. "No pain, no fear . . ." Images from other lives crackled through his mind: a knife fight in an alley, a bottle uptilted for the last precious drops.

"LOOK AT ME, BOY!" the shape changer shouted, and rippled into Fitts, standing with a python curled around his neck. "Your mother's dead, your mother's dead! The cowboy came and sheared her head!"

The revenants were all over Billy. Though they were weightless, the tonnage of the emotions they were shedding bore him to the floor, where he lay gasping on his side in ashes and water He heard the shape changer roar, "It's not over! It's not over yet, you'll see!" but he closed his mind to the thing's taunts, mentally fixed on bringing the revenants into him.

The shape changer vanished. But, behind Billy, the charred corpse in the corner stirred. Its dead, burned-out eye sockets began to show a gleam of red. The thing moved, slowly, slowly, and started to drag itself toward the boy. One skeletal hand closed around a piece of metal, and lifted it to strike Billy from behind.

Burned bone cracked. The arm dangled uselessly, and as Billy turned to look over his shoulder, he recognized in the reanimated corpse's face the shape changer's red, hate-filled eyes. He lay immobile as the corpse crawled toward him, its mouth opening to emit a hoarse whisper through burned vocal cords; then the head lolled, ripping loose from the neck. The body shuddered and settled again into the ashes, as the shape changer gave it up.

Someone shouted, "Jesus Christ!"

And another voice, rising frantically, "Get the lights on!"

A stunning beam of light flooded the room. Some of the wraiths scattered away from Billy, fleeing the harsh illumination. Others floated above the floor, transfixed.

The fireman with his spotlight backed away, stumbling into the camera crew from WCHI, who were doing a documentary on firetrap hotels. The room was filled with strange white shapes, some of them vaguely in human form. "What the hell? . . ." the fireman whispered.

"Barry!" a tall woman with red hair said. "Film it!" Her eyes were wide and startled, and she was fighting the urge to run like hell from whatever those things were. The cameraman paused, stunned, and at once the woman switched on a power-pack strapped to his back. She lifted the video-tape camera from its mount on his shoulder, popped off the plastic lens cap, and started filming. Two intense lights attached atop the camera came on, illuminating every corner of the room. "Give me more cable! Now, damn it!" She stepped into the room, panning from corner to corner:

"Nothing there," the fireman was babbling. "Nothing there. Just smoke. Just—" And then he fled the room.

The camerawoman stepped over the boy passed out on the floor, jerked at the cable to make sure it wasn't snagged, and filmed a white shape with a head and arms as it fled into a wall.

56

When Cammy Falconer saw her son, she was amazed at how much older he looked. He was growing into a handsome man, but he was getting fat. He sat out at a table by the glass-enclosed swimming pool that was part of the Krepsin house, working on a plastic airplane model.

"Wayne?" Niles said quietly. "Your visitors are here."

Wayne looked up incuriously, and Cammy saw that his eyes seemed dead. She managed a weak smile as she stepped forward. "Aren't you going to say hello to your mother?"

"You've been smoking," Wayne replied. "I can smell it on your clothes." He glanced up at the husky, curly-haired man who stood a few paces behind her, and frowned. One of her boyfriends, he thought. He'd heard she had a lot of boyfriends out in Houston, where she'd moved after the Falconer Foundation had bought her a condominium.

"Wayne, this is Darryl Whitton," she said uneasily. "He plays for the Oilers."

"I don't like football." He concerned himself with putting together the fuselage of a Concorde. "How'd you find me?"

"Where you are isn't a secret." She glanced quickly at Niles, who seemed determined to stay around. "Can I be alone with my son, please?" Niles nodded in accordance, wished them a good visit, and returned to the house. "It's been a long time since I've seen you, Wayne."

"Did they send you?"

"No," she said, but she was lying. The Crusade people had called her and explained that they needed her help. Little Wayne was out in Palm Springs, they told her, and he didn't want to come home. Henry Bragg was missing, and George Hodges had quit the Crusade only a few days ago. Cammy inwardly shuddered when Wayne looked at her; she feared he could see the lie through those scorched, haunted eyes.

Whitton, an affable lout, picked up one of the plastic pieces and grinned. "Mighty good job you're doin' there, Wayne. Your momma tells me you like ..." And then the grin froze when Wayne's gaze fixed on him. Whitton cleared his throat, put the piece down, and ambled away along the edge of the large swimming pool.

"What's this all about?" Cammy asked. She was well tanned and obviously prosperous, and had broken out of the crystalline cocoon J.J. Falconer had spun around her. "Don't you want to continue the Crusade anymore?"

"They did send you, didn't they?"

"Wayne, you're the head of a multimillion-dollar corporation! And here you are, putting together kids' toys! Who is this Krepsin man, and why did he make it so hard for me to see you? I've called half a dozen times!"

"Mr. Krepsin is my friend," Wayne replied. "I'm resting. And you got in to see me, didn't you?" He concentrated on getting the wings done just right.

"Resting? For what?"

"The future," he said softly. "But you don't care, not really. You stopped caring after my daddy died. But I'll tell you about the future anyway. Mr Krepsin is going to help me build a church, right out in the desert. It's going to be the biggest church in the world, and it's going to last forever. It's going to be built in Mexico, and Mr. Krepsin is going to show me where ..." His voice trailed away, and he sat staring into space for a moment. "We can build our own television network, Mr. Krepsin says. He wants to help me, every step of the way."

"In other words, this man's got control over you."

He shot a dark glance at her "You can't see the future, can you? I don't have any friends back in Fayette. They just want to use me. Back there I'm still Little Wayne Falconer, but here I'm Mr Wayne Falconer. I can have anything I want here, and I don't have to be afraid of anything. And know what? They let me fly a jet. Night or day, whenever I choose. I take those controls and I fly over the desert and I feel so ... so free. Nobody demands anything from me here."

"And what do you do for money?"

"Oh, I've had my bank accounts transferred from Fayette. I've got a new lawyer, too. Mr Russo. We're going to put all the foundation money in a Mexican bank, because the interest rates are higher. So you see? I'm still in control."

"My God!" Cammy said incredulously. "You've handed over the foundation to a stranger? If the press finds out about this, you're through."

"I don't see it that way." He carefully squeezed plastic cement out of a tube, applying it to a tail fin. "Daddy doesn't either."

Cammy went cold. "What?"

"Daddy. He's come back to me, now that the Hawthorne witch is dead. He says what I'm doing is right, and he says he can rest in Heaven when the demon boy is dead."

"No," she whispered. "Wayne . . . where's Henry? Is Henry here with you?"

"Henry? Oh, he went on to Mexico."

Cammy realized her son was out of his mind. Her eyes stung with tears. "Please," she said. "Wayne, listen to me. I'm begging you. Please go back to Fayette. They can talk to you, and…" She touched his arm.

Instantly he jerked away, and the half-finished airplane scattered across the table and to the ground. "Don't touch me!" he told her. "I never asked you to come here!" His face reddened as he realized the model he'd worked so hard on was ruined. "Look what you made me do! You . . . you've broken it!"

"Wayne . . . please ..."

"Get out!" he said angrily. "I don't want you near me!"

"You're destroying everything J.J. built. Don't throw it all away! You need help, Wayne! Please go back to Fayette, where they can—"

"GET OUT!" Wayne howled, rising to his feet. Whitton was hurrying over "You Jezebel!" Wayne shouted, and tore away the necklace she was wearing. Pearls rolled across the ground. "You painted whore! You're not my mother anymore, so GET OUT!"

A glass partition separating the pool from the house slid open. Felix, the butler, looked out and then went to summon Niles.

Cammy stared at her son. He was too far gone now to be helped. She knew she'd never see him again. She touched a red welt across her neck where he'd scratched her. And it came out of her before she could stop it: "You're right, Wayne," she said in a quiet, firm voice, "I'm not your mother. I never was."

"Don't, Cammy!" Whitton said.

But Cammy's anger and disgust at what her son had become was pouring out of her. "I was never your mother," she said, and saw Wayne blink. "You spoiled little bastard! Jimmy Jed Falconer bought you, because he wanted a son to carry on the Crusade, and it had to be done quickly. Do you hear me, Wayne?"

Wayne was motionless, his eyes narrowed into slits and his mouth half open.

"He paid hard cash for you!" And then she shouted it for the world to hear: "Jimmy Jed Falconer was impotent! God only knows who your mother and father really were!"

Niles, who'd just come up behind the woman, grabbed Cammy's elbow. "I'll have to ask you to—"

"Get your hand off me!" She pulled away. "What kind of tricks are you people playing? Why don't you let Wayne go?"

"He can leave anytime he likes. Can't you, Wayne?"

The boy's eyes had frozen into chunks of blue ice. "You're a liar," he whispered to the woman. "I'm J.J. Falconer's son."

"Not by blood. There's a man who buys and sells babies. It was done in secret, and I was expected to go along with it. Oh, he loved you like you were his blood, and I tried my best, but I can't stand to see you throwing everything away like this!"

"Liar," Wayne whispered.

"The visit is over," Niles said. "Felix, will you show these people to the door, please?"

"Go back to Fayette," Cammy pleaded. "Don't destroy J.J.'s lifework!" Tears filled her eyes. Whitton gently took her hand and they followed the Mexican butler. Cammy looked back only once, and saw the man named Niles put his hand firmly on Wayne's shoulder "That was kind of cruel, wasn't it?" Whitton asked.

She wiped her eyes. "Take me to a bar, Darryl. The nearest damned bar you can find."

Niles watched them leave through hooded eyes. "Are you all right, Wayne?"

"I'm J.J. Falconer's son," the boy replied in a dazed voice.

"Of course you are." He recognized the shock settling into Wayne's face, and he took a plastic bottle of small white pills from his inside coat pocket. He shook out a couple into his hand. "Your sedatives, Wayne. Chew these up."

"NO!" The boy struck out at Niles's wrist, and the pills went flying into the swimming pool. Wayne's face was mottled and stricken. "I'm J.J. Falconer's son!" he shouted.

"That's right." Niles tensed, ready for anything. If the boy went out of control, there was no telling what he might try. "Of course you're his son," he said soothingly. "Now why don't you finish your model? They're gone now; they won't bother you again. I'll have Felix bring you a nice glass of fresh orange juice." The juice would be laced with Valium, enough to turn him into a zombie again.

"My airplane." Wayne stared down at the scattered plastic pieces. "Oh," he whispered, and a tear dripped down his right cheek. "It's broken. . . ."

"You can fix it. Come on, sit down." Niles led him to his chair "What would you like to go with that orange juice?"

Wayne frowned, staring at the sun's reflection in the swimming pool. "Zingers," he said. "Vanilla."

"Remember, we leave for Mexico early in the morning. You'll need your sleep. Are your bags packed?"

"No sir."

"Felix will give you a hand with them." Niles hadn't understood all of what that damned woman had said, but she'd really given Wayne a jolt. Taped to the underside of the table was a voice-activated tape recorder about the size of a cigarette pack. Niles knew Mr Krepsin would be interested in hearing it. He left the poolside.

Wayne had gathered up the plastic pieces when Felix brought out his orange juice and Zingers. He stuffed the cakes into his mouth after Felix had gone; the orange juice seemed more bitter than usual today. He didn't like it, so after one swallow he poured it into the pool and stirred away the color with his hand. Mr. Niles always insisted he finish everything that was put in front of him, and Wayne didn't want to get Mr. Niles mad. Then Wayne sat cross-legged on the edge of the pool, telling himself over and over again that the painted Jezebel had lied.

57

Billy Creekmore was watching The House on Haunted Hill on TV in his room at Chicago's Armitage General Hospital when Bonnie Hailey knocked softly at the door and came in.

"Hi," she said. "How're you doin' today?"

"Better." He sat up and tried to make himself presentable by running a hand through his unruly hair. His bones still ached, and his appetite had dropped to almost nothing. Sleep was a confusion of nightmares, and in the television's blue glow Billy's face looked ghostly and tired. He'd been in the hospital for two days, suffering from shock and exhaustion. "How about you?"

"I'm fine. Here, I brought you somethin' to read." She gave him a copy of the Tribune she'd bought down at the newsstand. "Helps to pass the time, I guess."

"Thank you." He didn't tell her that every time he tried to read, the lines ran together like columns of ants.

"You okay? I mean ... are they treatin' you right around here? Everybody at the institute wants to come over, but Dr. Hillburn says nobody can come for a while. But me, that is. I'm glad you wanted to see me."

It was late afternoon, and the last rays of sunlight were slanting through the blinds beside Billy's bed. Dr. Hillburn had spent most of yesterday with him and had been there this morning as well.

"Did Dr Hillburn call Hawthorne like she promised she would?" Billy asked.

"I don't know."

"I haven't heard from my mother for a while. I want to know if she's all right." Billy remembered the shape changer's mocking singsong: Your mother's dead, the cowboy came and sheared her head.

Bonnie shrugged. Dr. Hillburn had told her not to mention Billy's mother. The owner of a general store in Hawthorne—the number Billy had said to call—had told Dr Hillburn that Ramona Creekmore had perished when her cabin had caught fire in the middle of the night. Embers stirred by the wind in the hearth, the man had said. The place went up quick.

"I'm so tired," Billy said. Had a dark cloud passed over Bonnie's face, or not? His brain was still teeming with the emotions and memories he'd absorbed in the Alcott Hotel; he realized he had narrowly escaped death from the shape changer. The beast hadn't been able to crack his mind or erode his determination, but Billy shivered when he thought of that burned corpse dragging itself slowly through the ashes toward him. Had it been another mental trick, another assumed shape, or did the beast have the power to animate the dead as if they were grisly puppets? There had been utter hatred—and grim desperation—burning in those hollow eye sockets. When the shape changer had given up that husk of crisped flesh, the red glint of its eyes had extinguished like spirit lamps. And where was the beast now? Waiting, for another chance to destroy him?

They were going to meet again, somewhere. He was sure of it.

"Dr. Hillburn told me the people at the television station have a video tape," Billy said quietly. "They're keeping it locked in a safe, but they showed it to her yesterday. It shows everything. Me, the revenants in the room . . . everything. She said it shows some of the revenants being drawn into me, and some seeping into the walls. She said they're trying to decide whether to show the tape on TV or not, and they may do a documentary on the institute." He remembered the charge of emotion in Dr. Hillburn's voice as she'd told him other parapsychologists were going to want to see that film, and to meet him, and that very soon his life was going to change. He might not stay in Chicago, she'd said; Chicago—and specifically the institute—might be for him just the first step in a long, arduous journey. Dr Hillburn's eyes had been bright with hope.

Pain stitched across Billy's forehead. His body felt like a damp rag. "I wonder if there's a piano somewhere around here," he said.

"A piano? Why?"

"I like to play. Didn't I tell you? There's a lot I want to tell you, Bonnie. About my family, and about something called the Mystery Walk. I'd like to show you Hawthorne someday. It's not much, but it's where I was born. I'll show you my house, and the high school; I'll show you the trails I used to wander when I was a kid. I'll take you to a place where a creek sings over the rocks, and where you can hear a hundred different birds." He looked up at her, hopefully. "Would you like that?"

"Yes," she replied. "I ... I think I'd like that. A lot."

"It won't take me long to get well." His heartbeat had quickened. "I want to know the things that are important to you. Will you take me to Lamesa sometime?"

Bonnie smiled and found his hand under the sheet.

"Do you think a cowgirl could get along with an Indian?" he asked her.

"Yep. I think they could get along just fine."

Someone screamed from The House on Haunted Hill. It startled Bonnie, but then she laughed. It was a sound that warmed Billy's bones as if he were standing before a fireplace. Suddenly he was laughing too; then she leaned close to him, those strange and beautiful eyes luminous, and their lips gently touched. Bonnie pulled back, her face blooming with color—but Billy cupped his hand behind her head and this time their kiss was long and lingering.

"I'd better go," Bonnie said finally. "Dr. Hillburn wanted me back before dark."

"Okay. But you'll come back tomorrow?"

She nodded. "As early as I can."

"Good. Will you say hello to everybody else for me? And thanks for coming to see me. Thanks a lot."

"Get your rest," she said, and kissed him lightly on the forehead. At the door, she paused to say, "I do want to see Hawthorne with you, Billy. Very much." And then she left, while Billy grinned and stretched and dared believe that everything was going to be just fine.

She's dead, she's dead, the cowboy came and sheared her head.

I'll be waiting for you.

When a nurse brought in his dinner at five-thirty, Billy asked about finding a piano. There was one up on the fourth floor, in the chapel, she told him—but he was supposed to lie right there and get plenty of rest. Doctor's orders.

After she'd gone, Billy picked at his dinner. He paged through the Tribune for a while and then, restless and troubled, he put on the robe the hospital had provided and slipped down the hallway to the staircase. He hadn't noticed a heavyset Mexican orderly who'd been mopping the corridor outside his room. The man put aside his mop and took a beeper from his back pocket.

On the fourth floor, Billy was directed to the chapel. It was empty, and an old piano stood next to an altar with a brass crucifix. The walls were covered with heavy red drapes that would muffle sound, but he closed the chapel doors. Then he sat down at the piano as if gratefully greeting an old friend.

What came out was a quiet song of pain, made up of the emotions he'd drained from the revenants at the Alcott Hotel. It was dissonant at first, an eerie melody that advanced up the keyboard until the high notes sounded like strident human voices, but as Billy played he felt the terrors begin to leave him. Gradually the music became more harmonious. He ended only when he felt cleaned out and renewed, and he had no idea how long he'd been playing.

"That was nice," a man standing near the door said. Billy turned toward him and saw he was an orderly. "I enjoyed that."

"How long have you been there?"

"About fifteen minutes. I was out in the hallway and heard you." He smiled and came along the center aisle. He was a stocky man with close-cropped brown hair and green eyes. "Did you make that up yourself?"

"Yes sir."

The orderly stood beside Billy, leaning against the piano. "I always wanted to play an instrument. Tried the bass fiddle once, but I wasn't no good. My hands are too big, I guess. What's your name?"

"Billy Creekmore."

"Well, Billy . . . why don't you play something else? Go on. For me."

He shrugged. "I don't know what else to play."

"Anything. I've always liked piano music. Do you know any jazz?"

"No sir. I just play what I feel."

"Is that so?" He whistled appreciatively. "I sure wish I could do that. Go ahead, okay?" He motioned toward the keyboard, a smile fixed to his broad face.

Billy started playing, picking out a few chords, as the man nodded and moved around behind so he could watch the way Billy's hands worked. "I'm not really very good," Billy said. "I haven't practiced like I ought . . ." Suddenly he was aware of a sharp, medicinal aroma. He started to turn his head, but a hand clamped around the back of his neck. A wet cloth was pressed to his mouth and nose, stifling his cry.

"I like music," the man said. "Always have."

It only took a minute or two for the chloroform solution to work. He would've preferred to use a needle on him, but he didn't want it breaking off in the boy's skin. Anybody who could play a piano like that deserved some respect.

The Mexican orderly who'd been guarding the doors wheeled in a clothes hamper filled with dirty laundry. Billy was stuffed into the bottom, covered over with sheets and towels. Then the hamper was taken out and rolled along the corridor to a service elevator. A car was waiting outside, and a plane was waiting at an airstrip south of the city. Within ten minutes, Billy was asleep in the car's trunk. At the airport he would be given an injection that ensured he would sleep all the way to Mexico.

58

Moonlight shimmered on the swimming pool's surface. In his pajamas, Wayne switched on the underwater light, then slid the glass partition open and stepped into the poolhouse. He was trembling, and there were dark blue circles under his eyes. He'd tried to sleep, but what the woman had told him this morning had driven him crazy with doubts. He hadn't taken his sleeping pill before bedtime, and his nerves jangled like fire alarms; instead, he'd flushed the pill down the toilet because he'd wanted his mind clear, to think about what Cammy had told him.

The pool glowed a rich aquamarine. Wayne sat on the edge; he twitched with nervous energy, and his brain seemed to be working so fast he could smell the cells burning up. Why would Cammy have said that if it wasn't true? To hurt him? She was jealous of his power and stature, that was it. Yes. She was jealous.

His head ached. But hadn't he loved his "mother" at one time? he asked himself. What had made things change? How had they gotten so out of control? He raised up his healing hands and stared at them. Where was Henry Bragg? Waiting for them in Mexico?

All that blood, he thought. All that awful blood.

It hadn't been right to hurt Henry Bragg like that. Henry was a good man. But what kind of man was Mr. Krepsin, if he'd ordered that Henry be hurt?

His daddy had visited him in the night, and told him to trust Mr. Krepsin completely. But, Wayne thought, his daddy had tricked him because if he wasn't of J.J. Falconer's blood, then whose blood ran in his veins? And if his daddy had tricked him about that, if he'd failed to tell Wayne the whole truth, then could he be tricking him about Mr. Krepsin too?

A sudden clear thought rang in Wayne's head, a sharp peal of pain: My daddy is dead. I tried to raise him and couldn't, and I saw the coffin go into the ground. He's dead.

Then what came in the night, wearing his father's skin and yellow suit?

He was confused, his head a ball of pain breeding black thoughts. The witch was dead, and the demon boy would be dead soon ... so why did he still feel Evil in the air, all around him, like one of the plagues Mr Krepsin talked about? He trembled, clasping his arms around himself for warmth.

The witch was dead. There was no need to fear going home anymore. And Cammy was right; there was so much to be done to keep the Crusade going, just as his daddy—if J.J. had been his daddy—had wanted him to do. And only by returning to Fayette, Wayne realized, would he ever find out who his parents actually were. He stared blankly out across the water. So many decisions to be made; it was so safe here in Palm Springs, and what about the church to be built?

God help me, he prayed. Please help me decide what I should do.

The answer came to him with electric, painful clarity: he would not go with Mr. Krepsin to Mexico in the morning. He would return to Fayette, first to find out if that woman had been lying or not, and then to make sure the Crusade was in good shape because, no matter who had given him birth, he was a child of the Crusade as well, and now he must in turn take care of it.

And perhaps, he thought, in finding out who his parents were he would learn more about himself and the healing power that had shaped his life.

Yes. He would go back to Fayette in the morning.

He trembled and jittered, his nerves sputtering like raw fuses. He needed a Valium, he thought. No, no—his mind had to be sharp and clear when he went back home, so he could deal with all the problems. He was going to have to sweat all the Valiums, Dalmanes, and Tuinals out of his system. But fear throbbed through him, and he didn't know if he was strong enough to leave Mr Krepsin and go back to that place where he would have to work and pray and preach and heal. It seemed there were so many problems, and so many people in the world who wanted his healing touch. And if he really healed them, if he reached down deep inside and brought up the cleansing power instead of prancing on a stage and pretending, in time the pain would tear him apart.

The voice came drifting into his head like a distant whisper: Do you know what you're doing, son?

"No," Wayne said, and shivered. "Oh God help me, I don't. ..."

He leaned forward and put his hand into the water; it was comfortably warm. He sat for a moment listening to the noise of the desert wind outside the poolhouse, and a slight movement pulled his gaze toward a far corner He thought something had shifted over there, like a haze of dark smoke, but now there was nothing. He stood up, took off his pajamas, and eased himself into the pool.

He slowly swam the pool's length. He was winded when he reached the deep end, and he treaded water beneath the diving board; then he reached up and gripped the board's edge, letting his body relax.

Water gurgled softly behind him.

A pair of purplish brown, rotting arms wound around his neck, like a lover's embrace. The foul odor of lake mud bubbled up. Black fingernails on skeletal hands playfully scratched at Wayne's cheeks.

He screamed, lost his grip on the board, and sank. Water flooded his mouth; he flailed and kicked, trying to get away from the thing that clutched at him. In the glare of the underwater light he saw a misshapen form with long black hair. Its bony arms reached for him, its purple rotten face pressed close, the lips seeking his. The thing kissed him, trying to plunge its bloated tongue into his mouth.

Wayne got his knee up against its chest and pushed it away. As he fought wildly to the surface, air exploded from his lungs. He swam frantically, tried to scream. Then he felt concrete underneath and he stood in water up to his waist; he turned toward the deep end, wiping hair and water out of his eyes, to see what had attacked him.

Water sloshed against the pool's sides. There was nothing in the deep end; nothing between him and the underwater light.

He whimpered softly, the breath burning in his lungs. Nothing there, he thought. Nothing. . . .

Something reached between his legs from behind, grabbing at his genitals. He gave a hoarse bark of fear and whirled around.

She was nude, too; but her breasts had decayed and fallen and Wayne could see the yellow bones of her rib cage through the slack, purple flesh. The gases in her body had long since swelled and exploded, and the skin hung down in putrid tatters. Her nose had collapsed or been nibbled away by fish; there was a hole in the center of her face. Her eyeballs were gelatinous, as yellow-white as pools of lake water about to break over her ruined cheeks. But her hair was the same: long and black and lustrous, as if the years of immersion had preserved it.

"Wayne," the awful mouth whispered. There was a shattered place at the side of her head, where she'd struck a diving platform a long time ago.

He moaned and backed away, toward deeper water.

What was left of Lonnie's face grinned. "I'm waiting for you in Fayette, Wayne. I need you sooooo bad." She came closer, bits of her floating away in the water "I'm still waiting, right where you left me."

"I didn't mean to!" he screamed.

"Oh, I want you to come back to Fayette. I'm so tired of swimmin', and I need my sweet lover boy back again. . . ."

"Didn't mean to . . . didn't mean to . . . didn't mean . . ." He stepped into deep water, sank, and heard himself scream underwater. He fought back to the surface, and now Lonnie was nearing him, holding out one purple claw.

"I need you, sweet thang," she said. "I'm waitin' for you to come home. I need you to heal me."

"Leave me . . . alone . . . please . . . leave me . . ."

He tried to swim away, but then she splashed behind him and her arms curled around his neck again. Her teeth nipped at his ear, and she whispered, "Let me show you what death is like, Wayne."

He sank as her weight became monstrous, as if she were made of concrete instead of rotten flesh and bone. She bore him deep. He opened his mouth; bubbles rushed from him, rising to the churning surface. They turned over and over, locked together as if in some hideous underwater ballet.

The light darkened. His cheek scraped against the bottom of the pool.

And then he was being pulled upward, wrenched to the surface, and dragged out onto the Astro turf. Someone turned him over on his stomach, and pressure squeezed the small of his back. Water streamed from his mouth and nose, and then he was throwing up his dinner and the three Zingers he'd eaten. He moaned, curled up on his side, and began sobbing.

"He'll be all right," Dorn said, stepping away from the body. His suit was soaked, and he glanced at Niles, who stood a few feet away with Felix. "What'd he try to do, drown himself?"

"I don't know." If Felix hadn't heard Wayne scream, Niles knew, the boy would be dead by now. When Dorn had leaped in, Wayne had been down in the deep water, struggling weakly as if trying to escape from something. "Bring me a canister of oxygen," he told Felix. "Fast." The boy's body was almost blue, and he was shivering violently. "And bring a blanket, too. Move it!"

They covered Wayne with the blanket and cupped an oxygen mask to his mouth and nostrils.

The boy shuddered and moaned, and then finally drew a rattling breath. His eyes came open, bulging with terror. Tears slid down his cheeks. He gripped Niles's hands, his fingers digging into the man's flesh.

Niles said quietly to the others, "Mr. Krepsin doesn't have to know about this. It was an accident. Wayne went swimming, and he got water in his lungs." He looked up at them, his eyes darkening. "Mr. Krepsin would be very upset if he thought we almost let Wayne . . . hurt himself. Do you both understand? Okay, he's breathing fine now. Shit, what a mess! Felix, I want you to go to the kitchen and pour Wayne a large glass of orange juice. Bring it up to his room."

Wayne pushed the oxygen mask away from his face. "She was here in the pool and she grabbed me and wanted me to die she's waiting for me she said she wanted me to know what death was like. . . ." His voice cracked, and he clung to Niles like a little boy.

"Help me with him," he told Dorn. "He's got to be ready to leave in the morning."

"No don't make me go back," Wayne moaned. "Please don't make me go back she's waiting for me in the lake she wants me to come back. ..."

"He's flipped his fucking lid!" Dorn picked up the pajamas, his wet shoes squeaking.

"So what else is new? Come on, let's get him upstairs."

"Don't make me go back!" Wayne blubbered. "I want to stay with Mr Krepsin, I want to stay and I'll be a good boy, I'll be good I swear I swear it. ..."

As they reached the glass partition, Niles looked over his shoulder at the pool and thought he saw a shadow—a huge shadow, maybe seven feet tall, that might have been some kind of animal standing on its hind legs—in the corner where there should have been no shadows. He blinked; the shadow was gone.

"What is it?" Dorn asked.

"Nothing. Damn it, this door should've been locked!"

"I thought it was."

"Forever," Wayne said, the tears dripping down his face. "I want to stay here forever Don't make me leave . . . please don't. ..."

Niles turned off the pool's light. For an instant the rippling of disturbed water sounded like a high, inhuman giggle.

TWELVE

Inferno

59

Lizards scampered over rocks baking in the sun. A distant line of sharp-edged mountains shimmered in the midday Mexican heat. As Niles came out of the air-conditioned interior of Krepsin's concrete bunker twenty-five miles north of Torreon, he slipped on his sunglasses to keep from being blinded by a world of burning white.

Niles, immaculate in a khaki suit, walked past Thomas Alvarado's copper Lincoln Continental toward the concrete garage where a few electric carts were kept. Under a brightly striped canvas awning, Wayne Falconer was hitting golf balls out into the desert, where pipe-organ cactus and palmetto grew like a natural barbed-wire fence. Wayne had been urged to find something to do while Krepsin went over business matters with Alvarado, Ten High's Mexican connection.

Wayne hit a ball and shielded his eyes from the glare, watching it bounce across the rocky terrain. It came to rest about twenty yards from one of the observation towers, where a bored Mexican security man dreamt of a cold margarita.

"Nice shot," Niles observed.

Wayne looked up. His eyes were drugged from the extra Valium in his system, his movements slow and heavy. Since the incident at the swimming pool several days before, Wayne had needed careful watching. He fawned over Mr. Krepsin at every opportunity, and Niles was sick of him. Wayne's face was puffy with sunburn.

"I'm almost through with this bucket of balls," he told Niles, his speech slurring. "Get another one."

"Mr Krepsin says my church is going to be the biggest one in the world."

"That's fine." Niles walked past him, in a hurry.

"Are you going out there again?" Wayne asked, motioning with his golf club toward the little white concrete structure about a mile away from the main house. "I saw Lucinda go out there with some food this morning. I saw her come back. Who's out there, Mr Niles?"

The man paid no attention to him. Suddenly there was the whoosh of the golf club, and a ball cracked off the garage wall and ricocheted dangerously close to Niles. He tensed and turned toward Wayne.

Wayne was smiling, but his face was slack and Niles sensed his belligerence. Niles had realized in the last few days that Wayne was jealous of his closeness to Mr. Krepsin. "You thought you could fool me, didn't you?" Wayne asked. "You thought you could put him right under my nose and I wouldn't know."

"No one's trying to fool you."

"Oh yes you are. I know who's over there. I've known all along!"

"Who, Wayne?"

"Henry Bragg." Wayne's smile stretched wider "He's resting, isn't he? And that's why I'm not supposed to go over there."

"That's right."

"When can I see him? I want to tell him I'm sorry he got hurt."

"You'll see him soon."

"Good." Wayne nodded. He wanted to see Henry very much, to let him know what he was doing for Mr. Krepsin. Last night Krepsin had asked him to feel a lump in his neck because he was afraid it might be a cancer. Wayne hadn't been able to feel any lump at all, but said he did anyway, and that Mr Krepsin would be just fine. "I've been having that nightmare again, Mr Niles."

"Which one?"

"The one I have all the time. I thought I wouldn't have nightmares anymore, after she was dead. The snake and the eagle are trying to kill each other, and last night the snake bit the eagle in the neck and pulled it to the ground." He blinked, staring out at the horizon. "The snake's winning. I don't want it to win. But I can't stop it."

"It doesn't mean anything. It's just a dream."

"No sir. It's more. I know it is. Because . . . when the eagle dies, I'm scared something inside me—something important—is going to die too."

"Let's see you hit another ball," Niles said. "Go ahead, tee it up."

Wayne moved like an obedient machine. The ball sailed out toward another observation tower.

Niles continued to the garage, got in one of the electric carts, and drove out toward the white structure. A fly buzzed around his head in the heat, and the air smelled like scorched metal.

Niles rapped on the door. Lucinda, a short squat Mexican woman with gray hair and a seamed, kindly face, opened it at once. He stepped into a sparsely furnished living room where a fan blew the heavy air around. "How is he?" he asked in Spanish.

She shrugged. "Still sleeps. I gave him another shot about an hour ago."

"Was he coming out of it?"

"Enough to be talking. He spoke a girl's name: Bonnie. After this morning when he threw his breakfast all over the wall, I wanted to take no chances."

"Good. Mr. Krepsin wants to see him tonight. Until then, we'll just keep him under." Niles unlocked a slatted door across the room and stepped into a darkened, windowless bedroom with cinder-block walls. The boy was lying on the bed with a strap across his chest, though the precaution was hardly necessary; he was deeply asleep from the drug Lucinda had injected. The boy had been kept drugged since he'd been brought in on the private airstrip behind Krepsin's bunker several days before. Niles stood over him, felt the boy's pulse, hooked up an eyelid and then let it fall. This was the boy Wayne feared so much? Niles wondered. Why? What hold did this boy and his mother have on Wayne?

Niles said, "I'll call before I come to get him tonight. You might want to give him some sodium pentothal around nine o'clock. Just enough to keep him settled down for Mr Krepsin. Okay?"

Lucinda nodded in agreement. She was as familiar with drugs as she was with fried tortillas.

Satisfied with Billy's condition, Niles left the white house and drove back to the bunker. Wayne had started on a new bucket of balls, chopping them in all directions.

The bunker's front door was metal covered with oak, and it fit into the concrete wall like the entrance to a bank vault. Niles pressed a little beeper clipped to his belt, and electronic locks disengaged. Disinfectant filled the entrance foyer, which led to a honeycomb of rooms and corridors, most of which were underground. As Niles closed the door behind him, he failed to notice the fly that circled quickly above his head and flew off through a faint swirl of air-cleansing chemicals.

He found Mr. Krepsin in his study, talking to Thomas Alvarado, a gaunt dark-skinned man with a diamond in his right earlobe.

"Twenty-six?" Krepsin, wearing a white caftan and surgical gloves, was saying as he ate from a plate of Oreo cookies. "Ready to come across by when?"

"Next week. Thursday at the latest. We're bringing them in a truckload of uncured iguana hides. They'll have to bear the stink, but at least the federales won't poke their noses in."

Krepsin grunted and nodded. The cheap Mexican labor that Alvarado provided was used by Ten High in a number of ways, from the orange groves to the Sundown Ranch in Nevada. On the floor beside Krepsin's chair was a can of film, another gift from Alvarado, who owned a motion-picture studio that cranked out cheap westerns, horror films, and martial-arts gore-fests. "How is he, Mr. Niles?"

"Sleeping. He'll be ready."

"A secret project?" Alvarado asked.

"In a manner of speaking," Krepsin said. Behind his desk was a stack of newspapers, all carefully sprayed with disinfectant, carrying articles on Chicago's vanished "Mystery Medium" and photographs from a video tape that had been made in a burned-out vagrants' hotel. The boy's sudden disappearance from the hospital had fueled a controversy over the authenticity of that tape, and emotions were running high. Krepsin was intrigued, and wanted to know more about Billy Creekmore.

Krepsin had been explaining to Alvarado how the Falconer Crusade's assets were being transferred to Mexican banks, and how Wayne was fully in favor of the idea.

"But what about his own people? Won't they cause trouble?"

"It's not to their advantage to rock the boat, and that's what Mr Russo is telling them right now. They'll still run part of the show and draw their salaries. Every penny donated to the Crusade will first go to Alabama. In time, we'll build a television center outside Palm Springs so Wayne can continue his network ministry."

Alvarado smiled slyly. "It's a bit late for you to become a man of God, isn't it, Señor Krepsin?"

"I've always been a man of God," he replied, chewing another cookie. "God's green, and he folds. Now let's go on to the next item of business, shall we?"

60

When an amber oval moon had risen over the stark mountain peaks and Wayne Falconer was asleep in his room, Niles and Dorn came for Billy.

Floating in the darkness, unaware of where he was or how he'd gotten here, Billy heard the lock click and thought it was the woman again. He was startled when the overhead light came on, blazing into his eyes. There were two men in suits standing over him. A strap cut across his stomach as he weakly tried to lift his head. He remembered a tray of food, and the way it had splattered against the wall. The woman with the needle had said some very nasty things to him.

"Mr Krepsin wants him scrubbed," one of the men said.

The woman started on Billy with a soapy, rough sponge, and scrubbed him until blood was almost drawn. Billy had come to like the woman in a way, to depend on her. She helped him find the bedpan when he needed to go to the bathroom, and she fed him when he was hungry.

The strap was loosened.

The man who'd spoken put a finger against Billy's throat to check his pulse.

"Is Bonnie here?" Billy asked. "Where's Dr. Hillburn?"

The man ignored his questions. "We want you to stand up now. We've brought you some clothes." He motioned toward a chair across the room, and Billy made out a pair of yellow pants and a pale blue short-sleeved shirt. Something about the yellow pants jarred him—the color was familiar From where? he wondered.

"Stand up, now."

Billy did, and his legs collapsed. The two men waited until he could stand up by himself. "Need to call my mom," Billy said.

"Right. Come on, get dressed. Mr Krepsin's waiting."

Dazed and weak, Billy put on the clothes. He couldn't understand why they hadn't brought him any shoes. He almost cried because he had no shoes, and the pants were so loose they bagged around the thighs and hips. The shirt had a monogram: a scrolled W.

"These aren't my clothes," he said. The two men were blurred shapes in his fogged vision. "I went up to play the piano."

"Let's go."

The night was chilly. During a ride in a little car, Billy felt the cold wind in his face. Its chill helped to clear his senses a bit. He could see lights on towers that stood high off the ground. "Where is this place?" he asked the two men, but neither of them answered.

They approached what looked to Billy like a huge square of concrete. He almost fell twice on the flagstone walkway, and the man in the gray suit had to help him walk. Billy felt a coldness coming off the man, like a bitter frost.

And then he remembered the shape changer saying his mother was dead.

The memories came back in a rush: the hospital, the chapel, the man behind him pressing a strong-smelling cloth to his face. A distant memory of engines whining. The sun beating down on a runway, and on the horizon nothing but white desert. He tried to pull free from the gray-suited man, but he was held in a viselike grip. Inside the concrete structure, Billy was made to put on a pair of cotton slippers. The air smelled like the hospital room. The two men led him along a hallway to a closed door, and one of them knocked on it. A voice said, "Come in."

They took him in and left him, and the door closed behind him. Billy weaved on his feet, his vision blurring in and out. The largest man he'd ever seen was waiting in a chair before him, next to a table that held a lamp and a cassette recorder. The man wore a long white caftan trimmed in gold, was bald, and had small black eyes.

"Hello, Billy," Krepsin said, and put aside the file folder of newspaper clippings he'd been going through. "Please sit down." He motioned toward one of the two chairs that faced him.

"Think." Billy told himself. He knew he'd been drugged, knew he was a long way from home. And knew also that he was in danger "Where am I?"

"In a safe place. Don't you want to sit down?"

"No."

"My name is Augustus Krepsin. I'm a friend of Wayne Falconer's."

"Wayne Falconer? What's he got to do with this?"

"Oh, everything! Wayne asked that you be brought here. He wants very much to see you. Look here at what Wayne's been doing." He showed Billy the folder, full of clippings about the Alcott Hotel video tape. "He's been cutting these out. You're a famous young man, did you know that?"

"Then . . . Wayne's here?"

"Of course. He even loaned you his clothes. Come on, sit down! I'm not going to bite you!"

"What do you want with me? I was playing the piano. Somebody came up behind me and—"

"Just to talk," Krepsin said. "Just a few minutes of your time, and then we'll take you wherever you'd like to go." He offered a plateful of Oreos, Lorna Doones and vanilla wafers. "Have one."

Billy shook his head. Everything was mixed up in his mind, nothing was clear. Wayne wanted to see him? Why? "The woman with the needles," he said, pressing a hand to his forehead. "Why'd she keep sticking me?"

"What woman, Billy? Oh, I imagine you've been under a lot of strain. With what you did at that hotel, I mean. You're in newspapers all across the country. Wayne's very interested in you, Billy. He wants to be your friend."

"No. I don't believe you." Exhausted, he sank down into one of the chairs. "I want to call Dr. Hillburn, tell her where I am."

"Of course you do. And you will. Tomorrow morning. It's late, and the telephone system here isn't very reliable. Wayne wanted you brought here—to Mexico—as his guest. I'm sorry if you've been under a strain, but—"

"Why didn't Wayne just ask me to come?"

"He did. Well, he asked Dr. Hillburn. Several times. But evidently that woman was resistant to your leaving Chicago. Perhaps some of the staff misinterpreted Wayne's request. Wayne's told me so much about you, I feel I know you already. You and Wayne . . . you're alike in many ways. You're both well on your way in making a mark for yourselves—and you're both special, aren't you? He's a healer, and you're . .. . blessed with a sight few other men ever know. To see beyond this world, and into the next. The pictures in those clippings aren't faked, are they?"

Billy didn't want to answer, but he was so sluggish and lazy it didn't seem to matter "No, they're real."

"I knew they weren't faked. How could you fake something like that, in front of so many witnesses? No, no; you can see the dead, can't you? And you can speak to them?"

"Yes."

Krepsin ate another cookie; his black eyes gleamed with the desire to pick the secrets from Billy Creekmore's mind. "You've seen life after death, haven't you? And you can control the dead? You can speak to them and make them do as you please?"

"I don't try to control them. I try to help them. Why are you taping all this? Why's it so important to you?"

"It's just . . . this subject excites me. And it excites Wayne, too."

"What do you mean?"

Krepsin smiled. "You really don't see it, do you? You don't understand your own potential! What you've done up to now is important, but you can go much, much further. Oh, the secrets you could know about Death! The power you could hold! You could reach anyone on the other side, you could relay messages back and forth. People would pay a lot for that. You could find out where lost treasures were, you could bring back messages that would shock the world! You'd be a famous and powerful young man! Don't you see that?"

"No."

"Wayne does," Krepsin said quietly. "He wants you to join the Crusade, Billy. He wants you to tour with him."

"What?"

"Yes. Tour with him. Wayne would be the healer, and you would be the ... the spiritual adviser! With all this publicity, it would be a simple thing! People would pay to see you summon the dead. Oh, they'd sit in awe of you, Billy! You'd have your own television show, and you'd speak to the dead right on the air before millions of people!"

Staring at the man, Billy shuddered inwardly. It would be like digging up graves so people could gawk at the bones, like a Ghost Show using real revenants, a hideous entertainment.

"Think of it!" Krepsin said. "You've only scratched the surface! You and Wayne, touring together! There are no secrets that would be hidden from you. Billy, you'd even hold power over the dead!"

Billy felt dizzy and sick. But he looked into the man's black eyes and saw the truth. The man wanted power over the dead himself. The man wanted to use him like some puppet in a sideshow, pulling in the paying customers with hints of dark mysteries. He couldn't believe that Wayne had any part in this! "No," he said. "I can't do that. I won't do it."

"And why not? Why not? Of course you may be afraid and reluctant now, but after you think about it—and after Wayne's talked to you—you'll see the light. Ever since I saw those newspaper articles—no, ever since Wayne told me all about you and your mother, I knew there was something special about you. I knew you had the power to—"

And then he stopped, a strangled whine bubbling in his throat.

Billy stared at him. On Krepsin's hand a fly had landed.

The man leaped up with a scream, knocking over the chair and table as he tried to get away from the thing. He batted wildly at the air as the fly buzzed around his head. In his mind he was back on the refugee ship that had brought him and his family from Greece, and he was seven years old and watching the flies crawl over his parents' stiffened corpses as fever killed half the people aboard.

Krepsin's eyes bulged from their sockets. The fly had touched him. Disease had broken through his barriers. Rats chittered in the ship's hold, his parents' bodies moldering and full of maggots. He screamed with pure terror as the fly danced across his cheek, and he fell to his knees.

Billy stood up and waved the fly away from his face. The men would be coming back for him, he knew, and they'd take him back to the woman with the needles. Danger was here, all around. He had to shake off the dizziness, had to find a way out of this place! He turned the doorknob and stepped out into the empty corridor as Krepsin shrieked again behind him.

He started along the corridor, trying to remember how he'd come in. Krepsin's voice echoed behind him. Billy broke into a run, stumbled and fell, then got up and ran again. The walls around him seemed to breathe, as if he were caught inside a huge beast that was trying to consume him.

And then he turned a corner and abruptly stopped.

A young man with electric-blue eyes and a shock of curly red hair was standing in his pajamas less than ten feet away, in front of an open doorway. He had frozen when he saw Billy. The sweat of a nightmare sheened his sunburned cheeks.

"Wayne?" Billy said.

Wayne's mouth hung half open. His eyes were glazed and dull with shock.

Billy took a step toward the other boy, and saw Wayne cringe. "What have they done to you?" Billy whispered. "Wayne? What have they—"

A hand gripped his shoulder. Niles wrenched upward on Billy's arm to keep him from running. Krepsin was still screaming like a madman.

Wayne was pressed against the wall. He had seen that they had even provided the Hawthorne demon boy with his clothes. They had brought him here and hidden him in the white house, and they had given him his clothes! "You said I was safe," Wayne whispered to Niles. "You said as long as I stayed here, I was—"

"Shut up, goddamn it!" Niles told him.

"Wayne, they brought me here!" Billy said, the pain clearing his head. "They're trying to use me, Wayne, just like they're trying to use you!"

Niles said, "Wayne, I want you to get dressed and pack your bag. Do it quickly. Mr. Krepsin wants to leave here in fifteen minutes."

"Demon," Wayne whispered, as he huddled against the wall.

"Get ready to go! Move.'"

"Kill him for me," Wayne said. "Right here. Right now. Kill him like you had the witch killed."

Billy almost got free with a sudden burst of strength, but Niles pinned him tighter.

And then Wayne knew the truth. "You did bring him here," he said, tears in his eyes. "Why? To hurt me? To make me have nightmares? Because," he moaned softly, "that boy's evil . . . and Mr. Krepsin is too?"

"I won't tell you again to get your fat ass moving!" Niles said, and forced Billy back along the corridor, toward where Krepsin was babbling about returning to Palm Springs because there was disease in the bunker.

It was all a trick, Wayne realized. They'd never really been his friends; they'd never really wanted to protect him. They'd brought the demon right to his door! Everything had been a trick to get the Crusade!

It was all clear to him now, and his mind crackled with wild currents. Maybe they'd even brought Billy Creekmore here, he realized, to replace him.

Even his daddy had tricked him and wasn't his daddy. He'd been tricked and lied to from the very start. Had been told Keep healing, Wayne, keep healing keep healing even though you don't feel the fire anymore keep healing. . . .

His mind was cracking. The snake was winning.

But not yet! He was still Wayne Falconer, the South's Greatest Evangelist! And there was one last way to destroy the corruption that had surrounded and finally trapped him. He wiped the tears from his face.

The eagle might still destroy the snake.

61

Jim Coombs took the Challenger to sixteen thousand feet. He checked his instruments and turned on the automatic pilot. Below the jet, as indicated by a downward-tilted radar mechanism set in the nose, was a rough terrain of desert and mountains. A scan of the weather ahead showed clear skies. The takeoff and landing were the skillful parts of flying the Challenger; now, with the jet flying itself and visibility almost perfect, Coombs could sit back and relax. He'd been awakened in his quarters at the jet hangar about half an hour earlier, and told by Dorn that Mr. Krepsin wanted to go back to Palm Springs immediately. Krepsin was a nervous wreck back in the passenger section; the man had waddled aboard wearing his white caftan, his face as pale as milk, and had started sucking at an oxygen mask as soon as he'd strapped in. Niles and Dorn were even more quiet than usual. Wayne was silent and brooding, not even bothering to answer when Coombs had spoken to him. And there was another passenger aboard, as well: the dark-haired boy that Coombs had flown down from Chicago. The boy had a hard, shiny look in his eyes, something between fear and rage and probably a bit of both. Coombs didn't know what was going on, but for some reason he was very glad he wasn't that boy.

Coombs yawned, still weary from his interrupted sleep. They'd be in Palm Springs in a couple of hours.

From his seat at the middle of the plane, Billy watched Krepsin's chest heaving as the huge man breathed through an oxygen mask. Krepsin sat toward the front, where he had plenty of room; his breathing sounded like that of a man in agony. Abruptly, he reached out and drew the clear plastic curtain around his seat, cutting himself off from the rest of the cabin. Niles sat sleeping just behind Billy, Dorn across the aisle. Across from Krepsin, Wayne sat like a statue.

What had they done to him? Billy wondered. How had these people gotten control of the Falconer Crusade? There had been madness and terror in Wayne's eyes, and Billy feared his brother was beyond help. But still, somehow, he had to try. He saw that, too, as part of his Mystery Walk—breaking through the barrier of fear that kept them apart, that had put Wayne on a twisted path leading into the clutches of Augustus Krepsin. His mother—their mother—was probably dead. Wayne's madness had wanted it done, and Krepsin had obliged. Fear and hatred had been Jimmy Jed Falconer's legacy to his adopted son.

And now Billy recalled something his mother had told him: that Wayne wouldn't be able to recognize true Evil when it reached out for him. That Wayne might be his weak link, that the shape changer might be able to work on Wayne to get at Billy. He leaned his head back, squeezing his eyes shut. What would she want him to do now? When he opened his eyes, he saw Wayne looking back at him over his shoulder They stared at each other for a long moment; Billy thought he could feel electricity passing between them, as if they were batteries feeding off each other. Then Wayne rose from his seat and came back along the aisle, averting his gaze from Billy.

"What is it?" Niles asked him, when Wayne had prodded him awake.

"I want to go up to the cockpit," Wayne said. His eyes were glassy, and a pulse beat rapidly at one temple. "Can I?"

"No. Go sit down."

"Mr Krepsin always lets me," Wayne told him. "I like to sit up front, where I can see the instruments." One side of his mouth hitched up in a slight sneer. "Mr Krepsin wants me to be happy, doesn't he?"

Niles paused for a moment. Then he said irritably, "Go on, then. I don't care what you do!" He closed his eyes again.

"Wayne?" Billy said, and the other boy looked at him. "I'm not your enemy. I never wanted things to be like this."

"You're going to die." Wayne's eyes flared, two hot bursts of blue. "I'm going to make sure of that, if it's the last thing I do. God's going to help me."

"Listen to me," Billy said; it was burning to come out of him. He had to tell him, right now, and he had to make him understand. "Please. I'm not evil, and neither is . . . was my mother. Didn't you ever wonder where your healing power came from? Didn't you ever wonder, why you? I can tell you why. Don't turn away! Please! The Falconers weren't your real parents, Wayne. . . ."

Wayne froze. His mouth worked for a few seconds, and then he whispered, "How did you know that?"

"I know, because my mother—our mother—told me. I'm telling you the truth. Ramona Creekmore was your mother Wayne. John Creekmore was your father You were born the same day as me: November 6, 1951. Jimmy Jed Falconer bought you from a man named Tillman, and he raised you as his son. But it wasn't because our parents didn't love you, Wayne. They did. But they wanted you to have a good home, and they had to—"

"Liar!" Wayne said in a strangled voice. "You're lying, trying to save your own life."

"She loved you, Wayne," Billy said. "No matter what you did. She knew who you were from the first time she saw you, at the tent revival. But she saw you were being used, and she couldn't stand it. Look at me, Wayne! I'm telling you the truth!"

He blinked, touched his forehead. "No. Lies . . . everybody's lied to me. Even ... my own daddy. ..."

"You've got Creekmore blood in you. You're strong; stronger than you think. I don't know what they've done to you, but you can fight it. You don't have to let them win!"

Niles, who'd been dozing in his seat, stirred and told Billy to shut his mouth.

"You're going to burn in Hell," Wayne told Billy. And then he turned away, and walked toward the flight deck. He stood staring at Augustus Krepsin for a moment; Krepsin's eyes were closed, the breath rasping in and out of his lungs like a bellows. "You'll see," Wayne whispered, and then he stepped through onto the flight deck, where Jim Coombs sat half dozing in the pilot's seat.

Coombs yawned and sat up, quickly checking the instruments. " 'Lo, Wayne," he said.

"Hi."

"Glad you came up. I was just about to ask you to sit in for me while I go to the john. We're on auto, you don't have to touch a thing. Pretty moon, isn't it?"

"Sure is."

"Well . . ." He stretched, then unstrapped his belt and stood up. "I'll be as quick as I can. Listen to those engines hum. Man, that can just about put you to sleep!"

"Yes sir." Wayne eased into the co-pilot's seat, fastened his belt tightly, and glanced over the instrumentation panel. Airspeed 431 knots. Altitude sixteen thousand. Compass showing a northwest heading.

"Good boy," Coombs said, and left the cockpit.

Wayne listened to the headphones, hearing signals floating through space from navigational beacons. He watched the control yoke, moving at the command of the autopilot. A sense of power thrummed through him, setting him on fire. He had them all now, right where he wanted them; he knew he couldn't let them take him back to Palm Springs. He'd failed the Crusade, failed in his healing mission, failed, failed. . . .

But now, up here in the sky, he could forget all about that. He could be in control. He lifted a trembling hand and cut off the autopilot.

"Don't do it, son." Jimmy Jed Falconer, in his bright yellow suit, was sitting in the pilot's seat; there was an earnest, concerned look on his face. "You can trust Mr Krepsin; he cares about you, son. He'll let you do what you like with Billy Creekmore. Anything you like. But don't do what you're thinking. That'll . . . that'll ruin everything. ..."

Wayne stared at him, then shook his head. "You lied to me. All the time. I'm not your son, am I? I never was. ..."

"Yes you are! Don't listen to that shit! Listen to me! Trust Mr Krepsin, Wayne. Don't do what you're about to try. . . ."

Wayne saw the frightened look in the man's eyes. It pleased him. "You're scared," he said. "You're scared to death, aren't you? Why? You're already dead. ..."

"DON'T DO IT, YOU LITTLE FUCK!" Falconer's face began to crack like a waxen mask. One red, animalish eye glared out at Wayne.

In the cabin, Billy felt a cold chill and opened his eyes. The pilot was just moving past him, on his way to the bathroom at the rear of the plane. Billy jerked his head up and looked around, because he'd seen the thing that had made his heart hammer in his chest.

The pilot stopped and looked back, his forehead creasing. "What's wrong?" he asked uneasily.

Billy stared. The man's body was surrounded by a malignant purplish black haze; stubby, vaporous tentacles undulated around him.

"What're you looking at?" Coombs asked, transfixed by Billy's dark, intense gaze.

Billy turned his head and looked across the aisle at Dorn. The black aura clung to him like a shiny, dark skin. Niles's hand came over the seat and grasped Billy's shoulder. The hand was coated with the black harbinger of death. Niles's face, surrounded by the roiling black aura, thrust forward. He said, "What's your problem, kid?"

They were all about to die, Billy realized. And possibly himself, as well. The jet. Who was at the controls? Wayne? Suddenly Death's cold chill had filled the cabin. When Wayne had entered the cockpit, things had abruptly changed. Wayne was going to do it. Wayne was going to kill them all.

"NO! DON'T DO THAT, YOU LITTLE SHIT!" the thing in the pilot's seat roared. "DON'T DO IT!" Its J.J. Falconer mask had melted away, and now Wayne saw it for what it was: a bestial thing with flaring red eyes and the hideous snout of a wild, savage boar. Wayne knew he was seeing Evil for what it was. The thing made a garbled, babbling noise as Wayne gripped the control column, his foot finding the rudder pedals. Then he whipped the Challenger to the right and upward, at the same time throttling more fuel to the engines.

Billy heard the shape changer's roar an instant before the jet's nose lurched upward; the plane veered over on its right side, its engines screaming. Billy's body pressed backward in his seat, the pressure so great against his chest he couldn't draw a breath. Everything that wasn't strapped or bolted down in the cabin— briefcases, glasses, bottles of Perrier—took dangerous flight, slamming and crashing against the bulkheads. Jim Coombs was jerked upward so fast he never knew what had happened; his head hit the cabin roof with a sharp sound of cracking bone, and his body stayed glued in place until the jet rolled over and leveled off. Then Coombs slithered into the aisle, his eyes open and his teeth clenched through the bloody stub of his tongue. His hands twitched as if he were trying to snap his fingers.

Billy gasped for air. The jet rolled suddenly to the left and went into a steep dive. A bottle of Perrier whirled past Billy's head and exploded against the wall. Krepsin was screaming through his oxygen mask. Dorn's face was marble white, his hands gripped deeply into the armrests of his seat; he was squealing like a child on a scary fairgrounds ride.

The thing in the pilot's seat shimmered like a mirage and dissolved. Wayne's face was set in a rigid grin, the flesh of his cheeks pushed back by the intense g-forces. Now he'd show them, he thought. He'd show all the liars. He laughed aloud and cut back on his airspeed, rolling the jet over; the Challenger responded immediately. A loose clipboard smacked him in the middle of his head; a pencil and paper clips danced around him. He pushed the control column forward, putting the Challenger into a shallow dive toward the dark plain below. There was a high whine of air around the nose cone. He watched the altimeter falling. Thirteen thousand. Twelve thousand. Eleven thousand. Ten.

"WAYNE!" Niles shrieked from his seat behind Billy. "STOP IT!" He started to unstrap his belt, but he saw Coombs's corpse folded over a teakwood table, blood leaking from the cracked skull, and he realized with a cold certainty that he was a dead man if he left the safety of his seatbelt.

Wayne grinned, his eyes filling with tears. Up here, at the throttle of this fantastic machine, he was in full control. He saw the altimeter reach four thousand feet, and then he whipped the jet off to the right. Airspeed fell dramatically; the control column shivered in his grip. He had never felt so free and full of power before in his life. The engines moaned; the entire plane began shuddering, straining to its limits. He couldn't breathe, and black motes danced before his eyes.

With an effort that almost tore his arms from their sockets, Billy unsnapped his belt. Instantly he was pushed over the top of his seat, almost into Niles's lap; he clutched at the seat in front of him, trying to pull himself toward the flight deck.

Wayne leveled the Challenger off and then threw it into a dive again. Billy was tossed like a cork inside the cabin; he rolled head over heels, trying to grab anything to steady himself. His chin cracked against a table; dazed, he tumbled forward. His left shoulder smashed into something, and white-hot pain filled him. Then he gripped the plastic curtain around Krepsin's seat; it ripped down, and through the haze of pain Billy saw feral fear stitched across Augustus Krepsin's pallid face.

At less than five hundred feet, Wayne wrenched back on the control column. The Challenger shuddered and leveled off; the altimeter read four-nine-two. He was aware of strange shapes on the landscape before him, bathed in amber moonlight; he pulled the throttles back, cutting airspeed. Something huge and dark and jagged passed to the right, barely fifty yards away.

Billy was at the flight deck, and Wayne looked over his shoulder with a half-snarl, half-grin.

And then Billy saw it; it loomed up, filling the windshield. Moonlight glinted off wind-etched rock. Wayne twisted around, and instinctively tried to lift the jet over the mountain peak they were almost upon. The Challenger shuddered, caught by an updraft. Then there was a banshee scream of ripping metal as the right wingtip was clipped by rock. The violent motion of collision threw Billy against a bulkhead; he heard bone snap, and then he was on his knees watching blood drip from his nostrils.

The underside of the fuselage scraped rock, splitting open like a sardine can; sparks and fire rippled along the seam, being sucked upward into the starboard jet engine. It exploded, first crumpling the starboard fuselage wall and then bursting through with the scream and whine of popping rivets. Red-hot daggers of metal impaled Niles from behind, going through him and into the seat Billy had left. A flying sheet of metal, rippling with flame, took off the top of Niles's head and splattered Dorn with brains.

Warning buzzers went off all over the instrument panel. The rear of the plane was on fire, the starboard engine gone, the starboard wingtip and ailerons mangled. The rudder wouldn't respond. Wayne saw the airspeed falling. They were going down, toward a wide flat plain rimmed with mountains. Fuses were burning, the cockpit filling with acrid smoke. The ground was coming up fast, a blur of amber-colored earth strewn with sparse vegetation.

Wayne had time only to cut the remaining engine's power. The jet hit, and bounced. Hit again. Dust boiled up, obscuring his vision. He was thrown forward and then backward, the belt almost squeezing him in two, and he lost his grip on the yoke. The jet ground forward on a sizzling sheet of sparks. It split in half, lost its wings, spun, and careened onward over a rough runway of pebbled desert. Wayne's head rocked forward, slarnming into the yoke. The skeletal remains of the jet slid on a hundred more yards, then lay still.

Billy stirred from the floor of the flight deck, where he'd been pinned against the back of the pilot's seat. He saw that the cabin was a mangled mass of burning cables and furniture. Where the jet had cracked in half he could see out across the desert plain—for over three hundred yards there was a litter of burning debris and a trail of flaming jet fuel. The rear section had been ripped away. Through a haze of eye-stinging smoke, Billy saw that Krepsin's seat had been torn away, too. The man was gone.

He tried to stand. There was no feeling in his left arm; looking at it, he saw white bone gleaming at the severe break of his left wrist. A wave of pain and nausea passed over him, and cold sweat broke out on his face. Wayne moaned softly and began sobbing. In the remains of the passenger cabin, the carpet and seats were on fire. The plastic curtain that had hung around Krepsin's seat was melting. Billy forced himself up, cradling his injured arm against his chest. He grasped Wayne's shoulder and eased the boy back; Wayne's head lolled. There was a purple lump over his right eye, and the eye itself was swelling shut.

Moving as if in agonized slow motion, Billy unstrapped Wayne's seatbelt and managed to haul him from the seat. "Wake up, wake up," he kept saying as he dragged Wayne out through the burning cabin with his good arm. With the last of his ebbing strength, Billy half carried, half dragged Wayne as far as he could before his legs gave out. He fell to the ground, smelling his own burned flesh and hair Then the long, terrible pain racked him and he curled up like a fetus against the oncoming darkness.

62

He knew he was moving. Hurtling rapidly through darkness. He was in a tunnel, he thought, and soon he'd reach the far end. He wasn't hurting anymore. He was afraid, but he felt fine.

In the distance there was a sudden glint of bright, hazy golden light. As if a door were slowly being opened.

For him, he realized. For him.

It was the most beautiful light he'd ever seen. It was all the sunrises and sunsets he'd ever witnessed, all the golden sunny summer days of his childhood, all the colors of sunlight streaming through the multicolored leaves of an autumn forest. He'd soon reach that light, if he hurried; he desperately wanted to get there, to feel that warmth on his body, to bask in it and just let everything go. He was able to turn his head—or he thought he turned his head, but he wasn't sure—and looked back along the tunnel at what he was leaving behind. There was something back there on fire.

The door was opening wider, flooding the tunnel with that wonderful glow. He had to reach it, he knew, before it closed again. His forward progress seemed to be slowing . . . slowing .. .

The door was wide open, the light so bright it stung his eyes. Beyond the doorway was a suggestion of blazing blue sky, green fields, and hills and forest stretching on as far as he could see. There were wonders over there, a beautiful place of peace and rest. There would be new paths to explore, new secret places, new journeys to be made. Joy surged through him, and he stretched out his arm to reach the opening.

A figure stepped into the threshold. A woman, with long russet hair that flowed over her shoulders. He knew instantly who it was, and she looked at him with an expression of sadness and compassion.

"No," she said softly. "You can't give it up yet. It's too soon." And the door began closing.

"Please!" Billy said. "Help me . . . let me stay!"

"Not yet," she replied.

He shouted, "No!" but he was already falling away from it, falling faster and faster as the door closed and the light faded. He sobbed and fought as he tumbled along the tunnel, returning to the place where pain waited to grip into him again. Memory ripped through him: Wayne at the controls, Krepsin screaming, the jet skidding along the ground while flames chewed at the cabin, a shriek of metal as the wings tore away, the final violent thrashing of the fuselage. ...

He moaned and opened his eyes. Two dark forms that had been poised near his head spread their wings, making startled cries as they flew away. They circled overhead in the graying sky, then dropped down onto something about a hundred yards away.

I'm not dead, Billy thought. But the memory of the golden light and the beautiful landscape almost cracked his heart; his mother had been there, waiting for him, but had turned him away instead. Why? Because his Mystery Walk wasn't yet finished?

He braced himself with his right arm and tried to sit up. Pain pounded through his head, broken bones grinding in his jaw where his head had struck the table. Then he had forced himself into a sitting position, and he looked across the desert.

The first orange rays of the sun were slicing the sky over a line of purple mountains to the east. Small fires still flickered everywhere; a large section of the jet—the rear of the cabin and the tail—had burned itself out into a black mass of tangled metal. Debris was scattered for more than a mile. Billy watched sunlight explode over the mountains. The heat was already stifling; in another hour or so it would be unbearable, and there wasn't a scrap of shelter.

He heard a soft, shuddered moan behind him. With an effort, he turned his head and saw Wayne Falconer—his face swollen, his hair scorched, his clothes ripped and burned—lying about ten feet away, his back supported by part of a seat that had been blown out of the aircraft. There was crusted blood all over Wayne's face, and one eye was swollen shut. The other was deep-sunken, bright blue, and was fixed on the Challenger's strewn wreckage. The eye moved and came to rest on Billy.

Wayne whispered, "The beautiful eagle. It's dead. It's all torn up and dead." A tear glittered in his eye, overflowed, and ran down his blood-streaked cheek.

Billy watched the vultures circle and swoop. A few of them were fighting over something that lay about thirty yards or so away—something twisted and charred black. "Do you know where we are?" he asked Wayne.

"No. What does it matter? Krepsin's dead; they're all dead . . . except you."

"Can you move?"

"My head hurts. And so does my side. But I landed her, didn't I? We were on fire, and I put her right down. What did we hit?"

"One of those, I think." Billy motioned toward the peaks with his right hand. "Somebody'll help us. They'll see the smoke."

Wayne watched the smoke rising. The sun painted his bruised face bright orange. "I wanted them all dead . . . but you, most of all. I wanted to die, too. I don't remember much after we hit the ground; but I remember somebody pulling me out of the flight deck." He turned his head, the single eye unblinking. "Why didn't you leave me there to burn?"

"I don't hate you," Billy said. "No matter what you think, I'm not your enemy. Krepsin was, because he wanted to own you— and he wanted to own me, too. They brought me here from Chicago, to make me do . . . awful things. If you hate me, it's because J.J. Falconer owned you, and he taught you how to hate."

"Daddy . . ." Wayne said softly. "He used to visit me, all the time. Late at night, just before I slept. But ... he lied to me, didn't he? No, no; it wasn't my daddy. It was . . . something else, something that . . . looked like an animal. I saw it, in the flight deck, just before we went down. It was lying to me, all the time, making me think my ... my daddy was still alive. And it told me to trust Mr Krepsin, to stay with him and do whatever he wanted. They hurt Henry Bragg. They hurt him bad, and I had to heal him." Wayne lifted his hands and looked at them. "I just wanted to do good," he said. "That's all. Why was it always so hard?" There was pleading in his voice.

Billy slowly rose to his feet. He was still wearing the cotton slippers that had been issued to him at Krepsin's hacienda. The ground was a pavement of rough pebbles, interrupted here and there by gnarled growths of cactus and spikes of palmetto. "We've got to find some shade," he told Wayne. "Can you walk?"

"I don't want to move."

"The sun's still low. In a couple of hours it's going to be over a hundred degrees out here. Maybe we can find a village. Maybe ..." His gaze passed across the rise of mountains that stood to the north, and he squinted in the fierce, hot glare. The mountains seemed to be only a mile or so away, shimmering in the heat waves. There were rippled outcrops of rock that might throw enough shade to keep them alive. "Up there," he said, and pointed. "It's not too far. We can make it."

Wayne balked for another moment, then stood up. He grasped Billy's shoulder for support, and something like a charge of electricity passed between them, stunning and energizing both of them. The pain seemed to drain out of Billy's body; Wayne's head was cleared as if he'd inhaled pure oxygen. Startled, Wayne drew his hand back.

"We can make it," Billy said firmly. "We have to."

"I don't understand you. Why don't you just leave me and walk away? Whenever I saw you and your mother, whenever I heard your names, I was afraid; and I was ashamed, too, because I liked the power I had." His face was agonized. "But I had to start lying about the healing, because I couldn't heal everybody. I had to make them think I could, or they wouldn't listen to me anymore. I wouldn't have the power anymore. Even when I was a child, I was lying about it . . . and I knew it. And somehow, you and she knew it too, right from the start. You could see right through me. I ... I hated both of you, and I wanted to see you dead." He squinted up toward the sun. "But maybe it was because I hated what I was, and I wanted to die . . .1 still want to die. Just leave me here. Let me rest."

"No. I don't know what Krepsin did to you, but you can get help. Now let's start walking." He took the first step, then the next and the next. The pebbles felt like glass under his feet. When he looked back, he saw that Wayne was following, but at a dazed, unsteady pace.

They passed through the wreckage. Puddles of jet fuel still burned. Cocktail napkins with Ten High, Inc. printed on them fluttered past on a hot breath of wind. There was a litter of burned cables, shredded seats, broken glass, and razor-edged sheets of metal. A headless body in a scorched suit lay draped over the crisp remnant of a black leather sofa. The vultures were at work, stopping only to eye Billy and Wayne as they passed.

They found Krepsin's a few minutes later. The massive body was still strapped in its seat, lying on its side in a thatch of sharp palmettos, which had kept most of the vultures away. Krepsin, the clothes almost all ripped away from his body, was covered with mottled bluish black bruises. The tongue lolled from his head, and his eyes protruded as if they were about to explode. The body was already swelling, the face, neck, and arms grown to even more freakish proportions.

Billy heard the thin, high screaming in his head; the noise grew louder and then ebbed. He said, "Wait," and Wayne stopped. The screaming was agonized, terrified; Krepsin and the others were still here, caught at the instant of their deaths. Abruptly, the screaming stopped as if it had been squeezed off. Billy listened, feeling a cold chill work through him. Now there was only silence.

Something was different, Billy thought. Something was wrong. The hair at the back of his neck was standing up. He felt danger here. The shape changer, Billy thought, and was suddenly afraid. What had happened to the shape changer? If it fed off the evil in Krepsin, Niles, and Dorn, might it not swell with hideous, consumptive strength?

Billy said, "Let's get out of here. Right now." He started off again. Wayne stared down at Krepsin's corpse for a moment, then followed.

Behind them, one of Krepsin's swollen, burned hands moved. The fingers crept down and worked the seatbelt loose. It shrugged free of the seat, and grinned with a mouthful of shattered teeth. Its face turned toward the figures who were walking fifty yards away; its eyes had changed, now burning red and animalish. The reanimated corpse crawled through the palmetto, muttering and chuckling. Powered by a surge of evil stronger than anything it had ever consumed, the shape changer rose slowly on its scorched, swollen legs. Its hands clenched into fists as it watched the figures walking away. This body was still strong, not like the others that had been torn to pieces and gnawed on by the vultures. This body could be used.

The thing prowled through the wreckage, getting used to the feel of its fleshy cocoon. It giggled and muttered, ready now to smash and crush and rip. Vultures squalled and flew away from the lumbering thing; it sought Niles's headless body, ripped open the coat, and dug a thick hand into the pocket. It brought out a leather pouch, tied with a drawstring. The prize inside wouldn't fit on the swollen hand; impatiently, the shape changer snapped off the first joints of the fingers and jammed the prize onto the stubs.

Sharp pieces of razor blades gleamed in the sunlight. It was the weapon that Niles had used to slash Henry Bragg's throat.

Krepsin's face turned toward the distant figures; the red eyes glared out as if through a bloated, bruised mask of flesh. Now it had human form—and superhuman, evil-charged strength—and it would show them it would not be cheated. The thing swung its arm in a vicious arc and grinned. Now it would show them both.

The corpse waddled after them, with murder flaring in its eyes.

63

The sun burned down relentlessly. Cradling his injured arm, Billy saw that he'd misjudged the distance to that range of mountains. They'd been walking for over thirty minutes, and still the cactus-covered foothills seemed at least another half-mile away. The mountains were boulder-strewn ridges of tortured earth, red rock shimmering in rising heat waves. He could see a few scattered caves, though; there were maybe twelve, most of them little more than shallow cracks. He was losing liquid in rivulets, his head pounding from the deadly weight of the sun. His feet, bruised and cut by the rough desert pavement, were leaving bloody prints.

Wayne staggered, about to pass out. His nose was bleeding again, the liquid attracting a horde of flies. His face felt like a sheet of hot metal, and as he lifted his gaze toward the sky his single eye saw the two vultures that were circling overhead. One for each of them, he thought, and almost giggled. One would get the dark meat, one would get the white. They were going to die out here. It would be soon, and it was no use to keep walking. They might as well just lie down right here and let the vultures go to work. He lagged behind Billy, then abruptly sat down.

Billy turned and stopped. "Get up."

"No. I'm hurting too much. It's too hot." He sucked in a lungful of searing air, and the pain in his side flared. He watched as Billy stepped back toward him. "Want me to heal you?" he asked, and grinned. "Want me to lay my hands on you and make you all right? Take a number."

"We don't have much farther to go. Come on."

He shook his head. "I'm burned out. There's nothing left." Wayne's eyes closed. "The snake's won," he said. "It's killed the eagle. ..."

"What? What snake and eagle?"

"I see them in a dream, fighting. The snake bit the eagle, bit it right in the heart, and pulled it down from the sky."

Billy remembered how his eagle had clamped its beak down on the snake's head, how in his dream it seemed to be winning. "The eagle's smoke?" he said. "And the snake's fire?"

Wayne's eyes snapped open, his head cocked to one side. "How'd you know that?"

"What I told you on the plane, about your mother," Billy said, "was true. You have to believe me. There's still time for you to be strong; there's still time for the eagle to win."

Sweat dripped off Wayne's chin, making a dark puddle on the ground. "I always wanted to fly. But somehow I . . . always ended up crawling. I wish I'd known more about her. And about you, too. Maybe things would've been different. Go on, now. Leave me alone."

But Billy was looking out across the desert, toward the haze of black smoke where the Challenger lay. He saw the figure approaching, now about a hundred yards away. The mottled, bloated body waddled toward them, legs pumping in a frantic hurry.

Wayne peered over his shoulder, his vision blurring in and out. "Krepsin," he said hoarsely. "He's not dead. ..."

The body was moving in a jerky pantomime of life; with each step, the head joggled from side to side as if the neck had been snapped. Its shoes stirred up puffs of dust. The shattered left shoulder made the arm swing like a fleshy pendulum.

No, Billy thought; that's not Krepsin. That's something wearing Krepsin's flesh, something hurrying now to catch them before they reached the foothills.

"Wait for me, boys!" the thing roared, a rasping voice forced through Krepsin's dead vocal cords. "I've got a present for you! Look, it's something shiny!" The thing bellowed and snorted, and swung its right hand in a quick arc. Billy saw sunlight glint off a metal object. "Wayne? Billy? Wait for me right there! I'm coming!"

The shape changer, Billy knew. Only now it wasn't playing games, wasn't shifting masks to confuse him and Wayne. It was wearing human flesh, muscle, and sinew; it was tracking them down, gobbling and snorting with glee. And in that form, Billy realized, no mental tricks were needed; it would tear them to pieces. "Get up, Wayne. Hurry."

Wayne rose to his feet, wincing from the pain. Then he and Billy were hobbling away, trying to put distance between them and the thing. It shouted, "YOU CAN'T RUN! THERE'S NOWHERE TO HIDE!" It tried to break into a run too, but the lumbering unwieldy legs collapsed and the shape changer fell to the ground. Sputtering with rage, it forced itself up again and moved onward.

The heat quickly slowed Billy and Wayne down. The behemoth stalked after them, keeping a steady pace.

"WAYNE!" the shape changer shouted. "He's trying to trick you! He's a demon, the son of Satan! He's trying to mix up your head! Can't you see me? I'm alive!"

"No," Wayne whispered, "you're dead . . . you're dead . . . you're ..."

The voice changed, became feminine and softly seductive. "Wayne? I'm waiting for you at the lake! Want to go swimmin'? Don't run away, Wayne! Wait for me!" And then, thunderously, "I'LL KILL YOU, YOU LITTLE FUCK!"

"Don't listen!" Billy said.

"Billy?" the thing called out. "Do you know who you're trying to help? He had them kill your mother, Billy. Know how it was done? They cut her throat. They cut it right to the spine. Then your pretty little Hawthorne house was set on fire so everything would be ashes! He wanted to have you killed, too! Oh, he dreamed of killing you! GO ON, ASK HIM!"

"Don't look back," Billy told Wayne; his voice was choked with conflicting emotions.

They reached the foothills and began climbing. The terrain grew rockier and steeper. Behind them, the shape changer muttered and shouted and babbled, swinging its weapon back and forth with malicious glee. They climbed over sharp-edged boulders, the breath of pain hissing from between their teeth. They were slowing down as their strength burned away, but the shape changer was gaining ground. Black, stomach-wrenching pain hit Billy as his injured arm grazed an outcrop of rock, but he clenched his teeth to contain the scream. In another few moments their progress was slowed to a crawl; they left sweat stains wherever they touched, and bloody prints where Billy's feet had gripped rock. The caves were above them, less than fifty feet away over a torturous trail of jagged stone. Wayne looked back, saw the bloated thing grinning thirty feet or so beneath them as it clambered up. He recognized the weapon on its right hand.

"Running out of steam, boys?" the walking corpse called out, showing its mangled teeth.

Billy reached up with his good hand to climb onto a ledge. His feet slipped on loose stones, and he almost tumbled down, but then Wayne was pushing him up from below. He crawled upward, onto the ledge about six feet wide and exposed to burning sunlight. A large cave was twenty feet above, but his strength was gone. He lay panting with pain as Wayne crawled up beside him.

Wayne tried to drag Billy the rest of the way, but he was too weak to go more than a few feet. Sweat burned into his eye, blinding him for a few seconds; when he cleared his vision, Krepsin's dead face was rising over the ledge.

Wayne let go of Billy and kicked out at the thing. Bone cracked in the corpse's neck, and watery blood gushed from the nose, but it was still pulling itself onto the ledge. Wayne kicked out again, but the shape changer's arm swung to stop the blow. The razored weapon slashed into Wayne's ankle, scraping the bone. Wayne fell onto his injured ribs, curled up, and lay still with blood pooling under his leg.

"Two very naughty boys," the shape changer whispered as it rose on Krepsin's legs. "They must be punished."

Billy was transfixed with fear, too weak to even try to crawl away. The shape changer had them now. His Mystery Walk—and Wayne's, too—would end here, on a scorched slab of rock a hundred feet above the Mexican desert.

"You won't steal the food from my table anymore, you whelp." It lumbered forward, bloodied head lolling. "I'm going to take my time with you, I'm going to enjoy this. You remember what I told you, a long time ago? In that bitch's smokehouse? I said I'd be seeing you again. Oh, it's worked out just fine, hasn't it? The little ghost boy is about to see what Death is like from the other side; and I'll keep you screaming for a long, long time: . . ." It grinned, ready to feast on more agony, already drawing on Billy's fear to make itself stronger It swelled with the terror and evil it had drawn from the dead men in the jet.

The shape changer gripped Billy's hair and thrust his head back, glaring into the boy's eyes. "First, a scalp," it whispered, raising its arm. "A scalp from an Indian."

And then Wayne grabbed the corpse's chin from behind, wrenching its head backward.

Jagged edges of bone ripped through the throat with a noise like tearing cloth. The immense football-shaped head was jammed backward, the shape changer's eyes were blinded by the sun. The head, now separated from the spine, hung back like a sack of flesh; the shape changer couldn't see. It turned upon Wayne, flailing blindly with the razored knuckles.

Wayne ducked the first blow, trying to balance on his good leg, but a backhanded swipe laid his cheek open and he staggered toward the edge. The shape changer danced with rage, striking at empty air, coming closer and closer to Wayne. Then Krepsin's corpse found him and they grappled, Wayne's hand closing around the thing's right wrist, trying with the last of his strength to hold back the razors. They were balanced on the edge, the shape changer unable to see forward, the ruined head hanging back over the corpse's shoulder.

Wayne lost his grip. The razors glinted, the swollen hand burying itself in Wayne's stomach.

Wayne caught his breath, felt warmth oozing down his legs. His vision hazed, but his brain was clear and for the first time in his life he knew what had to be done. The shape changer was making croaking sounds of triumph through Krepsin's ripped throat. Its hand twisted, driving the razors deeper into Wayne's stomach.

"NO!" Billy shouted, and tried to rise. He'd seen the death aura flare around Wayne; it undulated, shimmering a deep purplish black. Blood was streaming from Wayne's stomach, his face quickly bleaching.

But there was no fear in his unswollen eye. It caught Billy's gaze, locked, and then quickly shifted back to the struggling shape changer. This was the thing that had taunted him all along, that had tricked him by taking his daddy's form . . . and the form of a young brunette girl who'd never really existed at all, except in his own head. The hot pain that shot through his body was thawing rusted, cobwebbed gears in bis brain. He wasn't afraid.

He could still learn to fly, he realized. Yes. There was still time to kill the snake!

Now! he thought. Do it now!

And he twisted himself off the ledge, taking Krepsin's corpse with him.

Billy heard the shape changer's mangled roar, and then they were gone.

The air was bright and blue and whistled around Wayne's ears. He was falling toward the surface of water, there in the Fayette Public Swimming Pool, and everything was all right. He had finally gathered the courage to soar from the Tower, and no one was laughing at him anymore. The water shimmered beneath him, coming up fast. He closed his eyes and saw the fighting shapes, the smoke-eagle and the fire-serpent. The eagle was mortally wounded, but it was still strong; it dug its claws into the reptile and gripped the burning spade-shaped head in its beak. With a triumphant cry, the eagle beat its tattered wings toward the sky and lifted the writhing snake up . . . higher, and higher, and higher, until the snake crisped into ashes and whirled away on the bright currents of air.

He would be all right now. He'd done the best he could, and he was ready to soar.

Billy heard them hit. Rocks cascaded down the mountainside, and then there was a long silence but for the noise of sliding grit. He crawled painfully toward the edge and peered over.

Wayne lay on his stomach forty feet below, his arms outstretched. Fifteen feet beyond him, Krepsin's corpse had exploded like a gasbag on impact with a truck-sized boulder.

Something dark and leprous rose like a mist from Krepsin, moving slowly toward Wayne's body.

"Get away from him!" Billy shouted. "GET AWAY!"

The wraith picked and probed at Wayne. But Billy had seen the twisted angle of Wayne's head, the torn ankle and a protrusion of bone through the other leg. For the shape changer, the body was useless. The mist rose, took on the murky appearance of the huge boarlike beast. Its red eyes blinked; it was stunned and confused, unable to strike physically at Billy again. Within it, Billy saw roiling ectoplasm—a spectral hand clawing at the air, a football-shaped head with an open, silently screaming mouth, another face that might have been Niles's mirroring shock and agony. The forms churned, slowly losing their clarity—as if they were being digested in the belly of the beast.

"You've lost," Billy said. "Now run. Hide. RUN!"

The thing glowered at him for a moment, clutching its clawed arms around its stomach; the souls it had snatched writhed in soundless pain.

It looked down at Wayne's broken body, and its hideous face rippled with a snarl of hatred and frustration. The boy had escaped, was now far beyond the shape changer's control. The thing began to fade, taking its prizes with it. Before it had drifted away completely it glared up toward Billy and said, "There'll be a next time." But the voice—a mixture of Krepsin's, Niles's and Dorn's—was weaker, and carried an undercurrent of what might have been fear.

"I'll be ready," he replied, but the thing had already gone, leaving a slight turbulence of dust and grit.

The air settled. The sun baked down, and the vultures began to gather.

Billy waited, his head bowed with concentration. He was certain that Wayne was gone. Wayne had found the tunnel, and was now on a different kind of Mystery Walk. He wanted to bury the body, but the rocks that had slid down over it would keep the vultures away for a while, and he knew he was too weak to climb down and then back again. He said a silent prayer for Wayne. The air was clear and untroubled. After another few minutes Billy crawled away and painfully climbed to the large cave just above.

There was no water, but the shade was deep and cool. Lizards scurried over the rocky floor, chasing small beetles. Billy crouched in a corner, ripped off the rags of his shirt, and fashioned a sling for his arm—not much, but it would serve to keep the bones from moving. He was full of fever, his head pounding with heat; if he didn't find liquid soon, he knew, he was going to die. He could let go; it would be easy to curl up and die, and so much pain would be avoided, but he knew his mother wouldn't want that. He didn't want it. He and Wayne had come so far from Hawthorne, both over twisted and treacherous ground—their paths had split early, their Mystery Walks leading them in such different directions, but at the end they'd faced the shape changer together. And Wayne had been stronger than the evil thing that had toyed with him for so long.

The fever was burning Billy dry. He was getting chills now, and he knew that must be a bad sign. He closed his eyes, concentrating on Bonnie, waiting for him in Chicago. He tumbled into sleep, escaping fever and thirst.

"Billy?" someone said quietly.

He stirred and forced his eyes open.

There was a figure standing in the cave entrance, silhouetted against harsh white sunlight. It was a little boy, Billy realized, but he couldn't see the face. A little boy? he thought. Out here? No, no; he was dreaming—hallucinating. The little boy wore a clean shirt and trousers, not a spot of dust or drip of sweat on him.

"Who's that?" Billy asked, his tongue so swollen he could hardly speak. "I can't see what you look like."

"It's me! You remember, don't you, Billy? It's me from a long time ago! We used to play together! Remember?"

"Who? I don't know you." The shape changer, he thought, and went cold. "Get away from me."

"I'm not trying to trick you. Honest. I want to help you, if I can. But you've got to help yourself, too. You can't lie there too much longer. You'll die."

"Maybe I will."

"But why? You've come a long way, Billy. You've . . . you've grown up. You helped me once, a long time ago."

"I want to sleep. Whatever you are, leave me alone. You can't hurt me anymore."

"I don't want to. I . . . know how bad it can be. It can be real bad here, but you can't give up. You can never give up, and you're not ready ... not yet." The little boy watched him for a moment, his head cocked to one side in a way that Billy thought was familiar. Was it . . . no, no not him. . . .

"Leave here when it gets dark," the little boy said. "But watch how the sun goes down, so you can figure out which way is due west. That's the direction you've got to walk, right where the sun sets. There are others trying to help you, too, but sometimes it's not easy. You still think I'm trying to fool you, don't you? I'm not, I promise. You've got to start walking when it gets dark. It's going to be hard, but you have to keep going. Okay?"

"No. I'm staying right here until someone finds me."

"Go away. Leave me alone."

“They won't,” he said quickly. “You're a long way from where people are, Billy. You have to get out of here.”

“Go away. Leave me alone.”

"No; first you have to say you will. Okay?"

Billy closed his eyes. It was the shape changer, he knew, trying to make him lose himself in the desert. Trying to make him walk in the wrong direction and away from where the villages were.

"Do it, Billy. West, okay? Okay?"

The last plea hung in the air. When he opened his eyes again, he saw the cave entrance was empty. The fever was making him hear and see things. No, it was best to stay right here where he was cool and safe, where someone would eventually find the jet's wreckage. Surely someone would see the smoke!

But there was something lying in the palm of his right hand. He stared at it, his heart beating rapidly.

It was a piece of coal that had been covered with shellac so that the black wouldn't rub off.

He stood up, hobbling to the entrance. There were no prints but his own bloody ones in the dust. The fierce heat forced him back into the shadow, where he sat down again and clenched the coal tightly in his fist. Had he had the coal with him all the time? No, no; it had been left in Chicago, two thousand miles away. Hadn't it? He couldn't remember through the fire in his head. He put the coal in his pocket and waited for the sun to sink.

In deep blue twilight, Billy carefully descended over the rocks to where Wayne and Krepsin's corpses lay sprawled. A flurry of vultures sailed away; they'd already feasted on much of Krepsin. They'd been working on Wayne's back and legs, but hadn't marked the face yet. Billy took Wayne's shoes and squeezed his swollen feet into them. He sat for a few moments beside Wayne, then he arranged rocks over the body to keep the vultures away awhile longer.

He began walking westward; he stopped once to look back over his shoulder, where his brother's body lay. But his brother was gone, and there was no reason to mourn his passage to the other side. He wished he'd known more about Wayne, that they could've learned to understand each other. That they could've been friends, instead of two young men who'd walked separately, each seeking some kind of answer to the forces that had taken over their lives.

Billy left his brother's corpse, and went on.

He alternated walking and resting all through the long, chilly night. His feet were bleeding again, his broken wrist swollen to twice its size, but he had to keep going. Just before dawn, when he was exhausted and staggering, he climbed a small hill and came upon a squatter's cabin. The place was falling in, but inside there was a dirty mattress on the floor; on a table were plates with green-molded food not fit to touch, much less eat. But there was a coffee pot, too, and something faintly sloshed inside when Billy picked it up. He eagerly poured a few drops into the palm of his hand; the water was slimy and green and alive with bacteria. He took one of the plates outside, scraped it clean with coarse sand, and then brought it back in. He tore a square of his pants leg off and stretched it over the plate, then carefully poured the water through the cloth to catch the bigger clumps of green growth. What remained at the bottom of the plate—barely three swallows, brackish and stagnant—was quickly tipped into Billy's mouth. He wet his face with the damp cloth, and then he slept for several hours on the filthy mattress.

When he awakened, bright swords of sunlight pierced gaping holes in the rotting walls around him. He was feverish and very weak, his legs cramped into knots. His arm was a burning, leaden weight, the wound oozing yellow fluids. He shut his mind to the pain, and concentrated on Bonnie. He would show Hawthorne to her, and he wanted to see Lamesa, and he wanted to know everything about her from the day she was born. He hung her face up in his mind like a picture. He would get back to her.

He stepped outside the cabin and was jolted by a sudden shock.

About three or four miles away, sitting right in the middle of brown sand desert, was a large lake. It was surrounded by motels and restaurants with high signs that could be seen from the highway that passed about a half-mile from the cabin. There were cars and dune buggies on the road, and out on the lake Billy could see a sleek red speedboat pulling a water-skier. Palm trees waved in the streets of some resort town built around a desert spring. The entire scene shimmered in the heat waves; Billy stood motionless, expecting the whole thing to vanish suddenly.

He began to walk toward the mirage. On the highway a dune buggy swerved to avoid him, blasting its horn. He walked slowly down the center, being passed by cars and motorcycles and dune buggies. Some of the cars were hauling speedboats, and kids were hanging out the windows. The lake glittered like liquid gold in the strong sunlight.

Billy stood in the center of the highway and started laughing. He couldn't stop, even though his jaw was aching and he was so weak he was about to fall on his face. He was still laughing when a Mexican police officer on a motorcycle pulled up beside him and shouted something that included the word loco.

THIRTEEN

Home

64

They'd rented a brown Gremlin at the Birmingham airport, using Bonnie's driver's license, and had driven the two-hour trip to Fayette under a gray late-December sky. The southern winter had set in, a wave of cold air and rain had rolled down from the northwest scattering brown leaves before it. Christmas was two days away.

They passed a large sign, punctured by .22 bulletholes, that said welcome to fayette! home of little wayne falconer, the south's greatest evangelist! The second line, Billy saw, was being allowed to weather away. It would not be repainted. Home for Wayne's body was now a meticulously kept cemetery near the Falconer estate; he'd been buried next to his daddy, and there were always fresh flowers on the grave.

"I've never seen so many hills," Bonnie said. She'd noticed him wince, as if from an old injury, as they'd passed the sign. "Lamesa's about as flat as a flapjack. Are we gettin' near?"

"We'll be there in a few minutes. It's just past Fayette." There were still dark hollows under his eyes, and he needed to gain five or six pounds so his face would fill out, but he was doing much better. He'd been able to walk without crutches for the first time just a week before. There were a few lost weeks in which Billy had faded in and out, his body fighting against massive infection. His jaw was wired and was healing well, as was his left arm in its thick elbow cast. Dr. Hillburn had been straight with him: the doctors didn't know why he hadn't died out in that desert. The injuries he'd received in the crash had been severe enough to begin with, but the exposure and the infection from his broken wrist should have finished him off.

Dr Hillburn hadn't replied when Billy told her that he had died, but had been sent back from the other side. And those people had been right, Billy said; it was beautiful over there. But he planned on sticking around here for a while longer, if Dr. Hillburn didn't mind.

Dr. Hillburn had smiled and said she didn't mind at all.

Later, Billy had asked about his mother. Dr. Hillburn confirmed what Billy already knew: Ramona Creekmore had died in a house fire of indeterminate origin. The cabin was almost a total ruin.

He'd told Bonnie fragments of what had happened in Mexico, but she knew it was hard for him to talk about it. She didn't want to push him; if and when he was ready to tell her, she would be there to listen.

Now they were passing through Fayette, and Hawthorne was only fifteen miles away.

Billy had turned twenty-one while still in a semiconscious state in the hospital. He was different now, he knew, from the person who'd left Hawthorne that first time to join Dr. Mirakle's Ghost Show. He saw his direction more clearly, and he was secure with his own place in the world. He'd fought his way, he realized, through a rite of passage that had begun when he'd stepped down into the dark Booker basement a long time ago; he was strong now, strong in his heart, and he knew that in his life the eagle was winning.

His Mystery Walk was pulling him onward, out into the world.

But first, before he could walk forward—to the University of California, Duke University, or even to Oxford in England, where parapsychologists had been studying the Alcott Tape and were eager to get Billy into their death survival research programs—he had to look back over his shoulder. There were good-byes to be said, both to people and to places.

The Gremlin rounded a bend, and Billy saw the old weather-beaten high-school building with its brick gym addition. There was a large, ragged scar in the football field, as if grass wouldn't grow where the bonfire had exploded.

Billy touched Bonnie's arm and asked her to stop.

The parking lot was empty, all the students out for Christmas holidays. Billy rolled down his window and stared out at the football field, his eyes dark with the memory of May Night.

"Something bad happened here, didn't it?" Bonnie asked.

"Yes. Very bad."

"What was it?"

"A lot of kids got hurt. Some of them were killed." He ran his gaze along the new fence, remembering the pain of his hands being ripped as the shock wave blustered past. He waited for a few minutes, listening to the sigh of wind out on the field. Pines swayed in the distance, and clouds seemed to skim the hills.

"They're gone," he said. "There's nothing here. Thank God. Okay. I'm ready to go."

They drove on, following the road into Hawthorne. When Billy saw the tangle of black timbers and the standing chimney where his house had once stood, his heart sank. The field was overgrown, the scarecrow sagging, everything gone to ruin. He didn't ask Bonnie to slow down, though, until they'd almost reached the lot where the decaying hulk of the Booker house had stood.

The rubble had been cleared away, and now a trailer sat on the property. It was there to stay, sitting on concrete supports sunken into the earth. A Christmas tree stood in a front window, white lights blinking. A little boy—who looked not at all like Will Booker—sat outside, roughhousing with a big brown dog that was trying to lick him in the face. The boy saw the Gremlin and waved. Billy waved back. There was warmth surrounding that trailer, and he hoped the people who lived there were happy. Hawthorne's "murder house" was long gone.

He heard the sawmill's high whine as they approached the cluster of grocery store, gas station, and barbershop. A couple of farmers sat outside the gas station, watching with interest to see if the Gremlin would pull in. Someone was loading a sack of groceries into a pickup truck. A television flickered from within Curtis Peel's barbershop, and Billy saw figures sitting around the red glow of the old heater Life was going on in Hawthorne at its own slow, steady pace. The world had touched it—there was a poster on a telephone pole that said now hiring qualified labor. apply at the chatham personnel office. we are an equal opportunity employer—but the essence of life, easy and unhurried, would never totally change. Maybe that was for the best, Billy thought; it was comforting to know that some places in the world remained the same, though the people living in them grew and matured and learned from their mistakes.

"Would you stop here?" Billy asked, motioning to the curb near Peel's barbershop. "I want to go in there for a minute. Want to come with me?"

"That's why I'm here," she replied.

When Billy opened the barbershop door, the three men sitting around the heater looked up from their television show—"Let's Make a Deal"—and froze. Curtis Peel's mouth dropped open. Old Hiram Keller, as tough as leather, simply blinked, then returned his attention to Monty Hall. The third man, younger than the others, with curly brownish blond hair and a plump-cheeked face tinted red by the heater, leaned forward as if he were staring at a mirage.

"Damn my eyes!" Peel said, and stood up. "Is that . . . Billy Creekmore?"

"That's right." He stood tensed, ready for anything. He'd recognized the younger man, and saw Duke Leighton's eyes narrow.

"Well, I'll be a . . ." And suddenly Peel's face broke into a grin. He came forward, clapped Billy on the shoulder, and then, embarrassed by his own ebullience, stepped back a pace. "Uh ... we didn't expect to see you back, after ... I mean, we . . ."

"I know what you mean. I want you to meet my friend, Bonnie Hailey. This is Curtis Peel. That's Hiram Keller, and Duke Leighton."

"Howdy," Hiram said without looking up.

"I didn't figure you'd recognize me, Billy." Duke patted his bulging beer-belly. "I guess I've changed a lot. You have, too. You look like you've been in an accident."

"Could be."

They were silent for a long moment. Then Curtis said, "Hey! You two young folks want a Coke? I've got some in the back, just as cold as they can be! No? Weather's turned for the worse, I hear. Supposed to get a hard freeze tonight. Listen, y'all take a chair and make yourself—"

"We're not staying," Billy told him. "I've come to visit the cemetery."

"Oh. Yeah. Well . . . Billy, that was a bad thing. A real terrible thing. The fire burned everything up so fast, and the wind was bad that night too. I . . . I'm sorry."

"So am I."

Peel turned and stared into Bonnie's face for a few seconds, seemingly entranced by her eyes. He smiled uncertainly, then looked back at Billy. "You need a haircut, Bill. Come on, get in the chair here and we'll fix you up. On the house, okay? I recall you used to like the smell of Vitalis. You still do?"

"No," he said, and smiled slightly at Peel's willingness to please. "Afraid not." He was aware of Leighton's unyielding gaze on him, and he felt anger begin to simmer.

"Well . . ." Peel nervously cleared his throat. "Most everybody's heard about you, Bill. You're a celebrity. I mean, I don't rightly understand what you've been up to and all, but . . . look here." He stepped next to the shelves of hair tonic, shampoo, and pomades and pointed to something mounted on the wall; he smiled proudly, and Billy saw it was a bulletin board. It was covered with newspaper clippings about the "Mystery Medium," and the Alcott tape, and pictures of Billy. "See here, Bill? I've been keepin' them. People come in here to read 'em all the time. You're a real celebrity hereabouts! And look up there on the wall. Recognize that?" He'd motioned to a framed needlepoint picture of an owl sitting on a tree limb; the features were a bright mixture of colors, the eyes so sharp and lifelike they followed you around the room. Billy recognized his mother's handiwork. "Fella from Montgomery came through here about a month ago, offered me a hundred dollars for it," Curtis said. He swelled his chest proudly. "I said no. I said it was done by a local artist, and you couldn't put any price on something done with as much feeling as that's got in it. Didn't I say that, Hiram?"

"Yep."

"I've got another one at home. It shows a mountain and a lake, and an eagle flying way up far in the sky. I think it's the prettiest thing I've ever seen. See, I've put this one where I can look at it all the time!"

Hiram suddenly stirred and regarded the picture. "Fine work," he said, lighting his corncob pipe and sticking it in his grizzled face. "You'd go a far piece to find anything finer, I'll tell you that." He cocked his head and looked at Billy. "Your mother was full of magic, boy. She was a damned fine woman, and it took us a long time to realize it. Any woman who could run a farm like she did, and make pictures like that, and never complain 'bout her lot in life . . . well, I remember that night at the tent revival. Maybe we didn't want to hear what she said, but she had guts, boy. Looks like you've got your share too." He motioned with his pipe toward the bulletin board.

"What . . . ?" Billy managed to say. He was stunned, and he felt hot tears in his eyes. "You mean you ..."

Duke Leighton started to rise. His gaze was baleful in the red light. When he stood erect, his back was hunched over; with his first step, Billy saw that he walked with a terrible limp, much worse than his father's. As he approached Billy, Duke seemed to grow smaller and paler and thinner He saw Billy staring and stood in front of him, his lower lip trembling. "It happened just after you left. I was ridin' in the car with my dad. He was ... he was drinking pretty heavily. He'd taken to drinkin' a lot since Mom died. Anyway, he . . . the car was going too fast, and we went off the trestle bridge. I just got cut up, but my dad was dead by the time the ambulance came." His face was set and grim. "About a week later, Coy Granger came to see me, and he said he'd seen my dad standing at the side of the road, right at the trestle bridge where the car had gone off. . . ."

"Saw him myself," Hiram said quietly. "Plain as day. Plain as I can see you."

"My dad . . . couldn't leave." Duke's voice cracked, his eyes swimming. "I saw him, and I called out to him, and he looked like he was tryin' to answer but he ... he couldn't speak. His . . . throat was crushed in the wreck, and he strangled to death. And when I tried to touch him, I felt so cold. Then he was gone, just faded away in an instant." He looked helplessly at Bonnie, then back to Billy again. "Who else could I go to?" he asked. "I had to help my dad!"

"And my mother freed him?"

"I saw her do it." Hiram puffed out a wreath of blue smoke. "We all did. She stood right there on the trestle bridge and opened up her arms, and we all saw Ralph Leighton with our own eyes." He set his jaw and grunted. "Damnedest thing I ever saw. And Ralph just . . . disappeared, just kinda eased away, I guess. Ramona fell down, and she had to be helped home. ..."

"My wife stayed the night with her," Peel said. "She took care of her."

Duke wiped his face with a sleeve. "Sorry. I didn't mean to . . . act like a fool. I never believed in such a thing as spirits until I saw my own father standin' there, trying to call out to me. . . ."

"Sheer guts," Hiram said. "She did it in front of everybody who cared to watch. Oh, at first some laughed. But after it was over and done . . . wasn't nobody laughin' no more."

"I bought this picture from her soon after that," Peel said. "She didn't want to take the money. Said she had no need for it. But I made her take it. The very next night . . . well, that fire was so fast and windblown it was over before we knew it."

"I didn't know." Billy looked at all of them in turn. "She never wrote me about what happened on the trestle bridge."

"Maybe she figured you had your own worries." Hiram relit his pipe, clenched it between his teeth, and watched the game show again.

"I'm sorry about your father," Billy said.

"Yeah. Well, things hadn't been too good between me and him for a long time. He took me down to the Marine recruiting station in Tuscaloosa right after high school. I never went to college like I was supposed to. I went to 'Nam—another kind of college, I guess. I got into demolition, but I guess you heard. That's funny, huh? Me, in demolition?" He tried to smile, but his face was too loose and weary, his eyes too haunted.

"Funny? Why?"

Duke stared at him for a long moment. "You . . . you don't know, do you? Well, why would you? I came back from 'Nam in seventy-one with a shot-up hip and a Purple Heart. Then what I'd done kept eatin' at me, so . . . I went to the sheriff and told him. I served my time—one year on a two-year sentence. I've just been out since October. But I want you to know, Billy, that it was never my idea. I wasn't the one who came up with the idea. . . ."

"What idea?"

"The fireworks," Duke said quietly. "I thought you knew; I thought everybody knew. I was one of the boys who put all those fireworks in the bonfire. It was . . . supposed to be a joke. Just a joke. I thought it'd make pretty colors. I thought people would laugh. I swear, I never knew it would blow up like that. My dad found out about it, and he shipped me off to the Marines damned fast. I can't ever forget that night, Billy. I don't sleep too good. I can still, y'know, hear the sounds they made. Billy, you'd . . . you'd know if any of them were still there, wouldn't you? I mean, you could tell, and you could help them?"

"They're gone," he replied. "I'm sure of it."

But Duke shook his head. "Oh, no they're not. Oh, no." He opened his eyes and tapped a finger against his skull. "They're all still in here, every one of them who died that night. You can't help me, can you?"

"No."

"I didn't think so. I served my time, got out on good behavior. My dad pretended I was away, workin' in Georgia. Well ..." He moved past Bonnie and took his hat off the rack on the wall. It was a gas-station cap. "I'd best get back to work. The gas won't pump itself. I thought you knew about all that, Billy. I surely did."

"They're gone," Billy said as he reached the door "You don't have to keep them inside you anymore."

"Yes I do," Duke said, and then he opened the door—the little bell over it tinkled merrily—and he was gone.

"We were wrong about your mother," Peel said. "All of us were wrong. It wasn't evil. It never was, was it?"

Billy shook his head; his eyes were watering, and Bonnie pressed close to his side to support him.

"Terrible thing about that Falconer boy. Heard he died in a plane crash in Mexico, of all places. God only knows what he was doin' down there. I heard he went off the deep end, just gave up everything. ..."

"Not everything," Billy said. "Just the things that didn't matter."

"Huh?"

"Nothing." He looked again at the needlepoint owl. It was a beautiful picture, and would be seen by a lot of people. He couldn't think of a better place for it to be hanging.

Peel touched his shoulder. "Bill, I've got a fine idea! Why don't you and the little lady join my family and me for dinner tonight? I'll call her, and I guarantee you the finest fried-chicken dinner you ever put in your mouth! All right?"

"You got room at that table for me?" Hiram asked.

"Maybe we do. What the hell . . . sure. We got room for everybody! Okay, Bill? How about it?"

He smiled, glanced at Bonnie, and then nodded. "We'd like that very much."

"Fine! Let me get on the horn right now!"

"Curtis," Billy said as he moved to the phone, "I'm going to see my mother. She is in the cemetery isn't she?"

"Oh. Yes, she is. Don't you worry about a thing. We took care of her real good, Bill. You'll see."

"We'll be back." They walked to the door, and as Billy opened it he heard Peel say over the phone, "Ma? You're gonna have a real celebrity over tonight! Guess who's ..."

"Sheer guts," Hiram granted.

Fifteen minutes later, Billy was standing with Bonnie beside his mother's grave. His father was buried a few feet away. Pine needles covered the ground, and the chill wind whispered softly through the trees. Billy could smell pine sap: the aroma of life, waiting to burst free in April.

A stone marker had been planted at the head of Ramona's grave. It was fine cut, simple but proud. It gave her name, her date of birth and death, and underneath that, in expertly etched block letters: daughter of hawthorne.

Billy put his arm around Bonnie. His mother wasn't here, he knew; her body was, returning now to the earth as all bodies must, but her soul—that part of her that had made her very special—was somewhere else, still carrying on her Mystery Walk. And his would go on too, from this place and moment. He would meet the shape changer again, because it was part of the Evil that lived in the world, but he knew now that, though it couldn't be totally destroyed, it could be bested. The eagle could win over the snake. Courage could win over fear.

A few tough stalks of goldenrod grew in the brush a few feet from Ramona's grave. Billy picked some, scattering the yellow wild flowers over the earth. "Flowers for the dead," he said, "and for the living." He gave Bonnie the remaining stalk, and saw her strange and beautiful eyes shine.

They stood together, as the clouds moved overhead in a slow and graceful panorama of white and gray. Snow flurries began to spin before the wind, clinging to their hair and eyelashes, and Billy remembered the infant step of his Mystery Walk—when he and his father had left the cabin to walk in the snow and had passed the Booker house. Now he had someone else to walk beside—someone who could understand him and believe in him, as much as he in her.

"I knew you'd come back," Bonnie said. "I knew it. You left the piece of coal, and I didn't think you'd leave without it. I kept it by my bed all the time, until one morning when I woke up and it wasn't there. I had a dream that night. . . ."

"About what?"

"You," she replied. "And me, too. We were . . . together, and we were old. We were tired, but it was a good tired, like you've done a hard day's work and you know you'll have a peaceful sleep. I don't know where we were, but we were sitting in the sun and we could see the ocean. We were holding hands." She shrugged, a blush creeping across her freckled cheeks. "I don't know, but . . . after that dream, I knew you'd be all right. I knew you'd come back. Funny, huh?"

"Why?"

"It's the first dream I ever had that I wasn't afraid of," Bonnie said.

It was time to go. They walked down the hill to the car and got in. His Mystery Walk was about to carry him—and possibly Bonnie as well—far away from Hawthorne, he realized. Life and Death were part of the same puzzle, part of the same strange and miraculous process of growth. He hoped someday to work in the parapsychology labs himself, to go to school, to study as much as he could; he wanted to help others understand that Death wasn't an ending, and that Life itself was a wonderful mystery full of chances and challenges.

"Have you ever wanted to see England?" he asked her.

"Why?"

He smiled faintly. "Dr. Hillburn told me there are supposed to be more haunted houses in England than in any country on earth."

They drove away from the cemetery. Billy looked back over his shoulder, through the snow's thin white curtain, until the marble marker was out of sight. So much to be done! he thought. So much to be learned!

Billy turned his attention to the road that stretched out ahead, out of Hawthorne and into the world. And he would carry with him his mother's words of courage:

No fear.

About the Author

Robert R. McCammon majored in journalism at the University of Alabama. After graduation, he worked at various jobs before being hired by The Birmingham Post Herald, where he was employed when he began writing BAAL, his first novel. After its publication he left the newspaper to write full-time. His other novels include THEY THIRST, BETHANY'S SIN, and NIGHT BOAT. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with his wife, Sally, a first-grade schoolteacher.