Can’t let it drive me to the house, he thinks. I have to get out of this before it can get me there . . . but how? How?
It comes to him with startling simplicity. All he has to do is wake up. Because this is a dream. This is just a—
“It’s a dream!” Henry cries out, and jerks forward. He’s not walking, he’s sitting, sitting in his very own easy chair, and pretty soon he’s going to have a very wet crotch because he fell asleep with a can of Kingsland Lager balanced there, and—
But there’s no spill, because there’s no can of beer. He feels cautiously to his right and yep, there it is, on the table with his book, a braille edition of Reflections in a Golden Eye. He must have put it there before first falling asleep and then falling into that horrible nightmare.
Except Henry’s pretty sure he didn’t do any such thing. He was holding the book and the beer was between his legs, freeing his hands to touch the little upraised dots that tell the story. Something very considerately took both the book and the can after he dropped off, and put them on the table. Something that smells of My Sin perfume.
The air reeks of it.
Henry takes a long, slow breath with his nostrils flared and mouth tightly sealed shut.
“No,” he says, speaking very clearly. “I can smell flowers . . . and rug shampoo . . . and fried onions from last night. Very faint but still there. The nose knows.”
All true enough. But the smell had been there. It’s gone now because she’s gone, but she will be back. And suddenly he wants her to come. If he’s frightened, surely it’s the unknown he’s frightened of, right? Only that and nothing more. He doesn’t want to be alone here, with nothing for company but the memory of that rancid dream.
And the tapes.
He has to listen to the tapes. He promised Jack.
Henry gets shakily to his feet and makes his way to the living-room control panel. This time he’s greeted by the voice of Henry Shake, a mellow fellow if ever there was one.
“Hey there, all you hoppin’ cats and boppin’ kitties, at the tone it’s seven-fourteen P.M., Bulova Watch Time. Outside the temp is a very cool seventy-five degrees, and here in the Make-Believe Ballroom it’s a very nifty seventy degrees. So why not get off your money, grab your honey, and make a little magic?”
Seven-fourteen! When was the last time he fell asleep for almost three hours in the daytime? For that matter, when was the last time he had a dream in which he could see? The answer to that second question, so far as he can remember, is never.
Where was that lane?
What was the thing behind him?
What was the place ahead of him, for that matter?
“Doesn’t matter,” Henry tells the empty room—if it is empty. “It was a dream, that’s all. The tapes, on the other hand . . .”
He doesn’t want to listen to them, has never wanted to listen to anything any less in his life (with the possible exception of Chicago singing “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”), but he has to. If it might save Ty Marshall’s life, or the life of even one other child, he must.
Slowly, dreading every step, Henry Leyden makes his blind way to his studio, where two cassettes wait for him on the soundboard.
“In heaven there is no beer,” Mouse sings in a toneless, droning voice.
His cheeks are now covered with ugly red patches, and his nose seems to be sinking sideways into his face, like an atoll after an undersea earthquake.
“That’s why we drink it here. And when . . . we’re gone . . . from here . . . our friends will be drinking all the beer.”
It’s been like this for hours now: philosophical nuggets, instructions for the beginning beer-making enthusiast, snatches of song. The light coming through the blankets over the windows has dimmed appreciably.
Mouse pauses, his eyes closed. Then he starts another ditty.
“Hundred bottles of beer on the wall, one hundred bottles of beer . . . if one of those bottles should happen to fall . . .”
“I have to go,” Jack says. He’s hung in there as well as he can, convinced that Mouse is going to give him something, but he can wait no longer. Somewhere, Ty Marshall is waiting for him.
“Hold on,” Doc says. He rummages in his bag and comes out with a hypodermic needle. He raises it in the dimness and taps the glass barrel with a fingernail.
“What’s that?”
Doc gives Jack and Beezer a brief, grim smile. “Speed,” he says, and injects it into Mouse’s arm.
For a moment there’s nothing. Then, as Jack is opening his mouth again to tell them he has to go, Mouse’s eyes snap wide. They are now entirely red—a bright and bleeding red. Yet when they turn in his direction, Jack knows that Mouse is seeing him. Maybe really seeing him for the first time since he got here.
Bear Girl flees the room, trailing a single diminishing phrase behind her: “No more no more no more no more—”
“Fuck,” Mouse says in a rusty voice. “Fuck, I’m fucked. Ain’t I?”
Beezer touches the top of his friend’s head briefly but tenderly. “Yeah, man. I think you are. Can you help us out?”
“Bit me once. Just once, and now . . . now . . .” His hideous red gaze turns to Doc. “Can barely see you. Fuckin’ eyes are all weird.”
“You’re going down,” Doc says. “Ain’t gonna lie to you, man.”
“Not yet I ain’t,” Mouse says. “Gimme something to write on. To draw a map on. Quick. Dunno what you shot me with, Doc, but the stuff from the dog’s stronger. I ain’t gonna be compos long. Quick!”
Beezer feels around at the foot of the couch and comes up with a trade-sized paperback. Given the heavy shit on the bookcases, Jack could almost laugh—the book is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Beezer tears off the back cover and hands it to Mouse with the blank side up.
“Pencil,” Mouse croaks. “Hurry up. I got it all, man. I got it . . . up here.” He touches his forehead. A patch of skin the size of a quarter sloughs off at his touch. Mouse wipes it on the blanket as if it were a booger.
Beezer pulls a gnawed stub of pencil from an inside pocket of his vest. Mouse takes it and makes a pathetic effort to smile. The black stuff oozing from the corners of his eyes has continued to build up, and now it lies on his cheeks like smears of decayed jelly. More of it is springing out of the pores on his forehead in minute black dots that remind Jack of Henry’s braille books. When Mouse bites his lower lip in concentration, the tender flesh splits open at once. Blood begins dribbling into his beard. Jack supposes the rotted-meat smell is still there, but Beezer had been right: he’s gotten used to it.
Mouse turns the book cover sideways, then draws a series of quick squiggles. “Lookit,” he says to Jack. “This the Mississippi, right?”
“Right,” Jack says. When he leans in, he starts getting the smell again. Up close it’s not even a stench; it’s a miasma trying to crawl down his throat. But Jack doesn’t move away. He knows what an effort Mouse is making. The least he can do is play his part.
“Here’s downtown—the Nelson, Lucky’s, the Agincourt Theater, the Taproom . . . here’s where Chase Street turns into Lyall Road, then Route 35 . . . here’s Libertyville . . . the VFW . . . Goltz’s . . . ah, Christ—”
Mouse begins to thrash on the couch. Sores on his face and upper body burst open and begin leaking. He screams with pain. The hand not holding the pencil goes to his face and paws at it ineffectually.
Something inside Jack speaks up, then—speaks in a shining, imperative voice he remembers from his time on the road all those years ago. He supposes it’s the voice of the Talisman, or whatever remains of it in his mind and soul.
It doesn’t want him to talk, it’s trying to kill him before he can talk, it’s in the black stuff, maybe it is the black stuff, you’ve got to get rid of it—
Some things can only be done without the mind’s prudish interference; when the work is nasty, instinct is often best. So it is without thinking that Jack reaches out, grasps the black slime oozing from Mouse’s eyes between his fingers, and pulls. At first the stuff only stretches, as if made of rubber. At the same time Jack can feel it squirming and writhing in his grip, perhaps trying to pinch or bite him. Then it lets go with a twang sound. Jack throws the convulsing black tissue onto the floor with a cry.