“I need a compress,” Mary said. “Don’t just stand there, help me, he’s going to die if we don’t stop the bleeding right now!”
Too late, babe, Cynthia thought but didn’t say.
Steve saw what looked like a rag in one of the sinks and grabbed it. It turned out to be a very old shirt with Joe Camel on it. He folded the shirt twice, then handed it to Mary. She nodded, folded it once more, then pressed it against the side of Billingsley’s neck.
“Come on,” Cynthia said, taking Steve’s arm. “Back on stage. If there’s nothing else, I can at least wash those out with water from the bar. There’s plenty on the bottom “No,” the old man whispered. “Stay!
Got to … hear this.”
“You can’t talk,” Mary said. She pushed harder on the side of his neck with the makeshift compress.
The shirt was already darkening. “You’ll never stop bleeding if you talk.”
He rolled his eyes toward Mary. “Too late doctorin.” His voice was hoarse. “Dyin.”
“No you’re not, that’s ridiculous.”
“Dyin,” he repeated, and moved violently beneath her hands. His torn back squelched on the tiles, a sound that made Cynthia feel nauseated. “Get down here .. . all of you, close. . . and listen to me.”
Steve glanced at Cynthia. She shrugged, then the two of them knelt beside the old man’s leg, Cynthia shoulder to shoulder with Mary Jackson. Marinville and Carver leaned in from the sides.
“He shouldn’t talk,” Mary said, but she sounded doubtful.
“Let him say what he needs to,” Marinville said. “What is it, Tom?”
“Too short for business,” Billingsley whispered. He was looking up at them, begging them with his eyes to understand.
Steve shook his head. “I’m not getting you.”
Billingsley wet his lips. ~‘Only seen her once before in a dress. That’s why it took me too long to figure out … what was wrong.”
A startled expression had come over Mary’s face. “That’s right, she said she had a meeting with the comptroller! He comes all the way fromPhoenix to hear her report on something important, something that means big bucks, and she puts on a dress so short she’ll be flashing her pants at him every time she crosses her legs? I don’t think so.”
Beads of sweat ran down Billingsley’s pale, stubbly cheeks like tears. “Feel so stupid,” he wheezed.
“Not all my fault, though. Nope. Didn’t know her to talk to. Wasn’t there the one time she came into the office to pick up more liniment. Always saw her at a distance, and out here women mostly wear jeans.
But I had it. I did. Had it and then got drinking and lost track of it again.” He looked at Mary. “The dress would have been all right… when she put it on. Do you see? Do you understand?”
“What’s he talking about?” Ralph asked. “How could it be all right when she put it on and too short for a business meeting later?”
“Taller,” the old man whispered.
Marinville looked at Steve. “What was that? It sounded like he said-”
“Taller” Billingsley said. He enunciated the word carefully, then began to cough. The folded shirt Mary held against his neck and shoulder was now soaked. His eyes rolled back and forth among them. He turned his head to one side, spat out a mouthful of blood, and the coughing fit eased.
“Dear God,” Ralph said. “She’s like Entragian? Is that what you’re saying, that she’s like the cop?”
“Yes … no,” Billingsley whispered. “Don’t know for sure. Would have.. . seen that right away.. . but. .
“Mr. Billingsley, do you think she might have caught a milder dose of whatever the cop has?” Mary asked.
He looked at her gratefully and squeezed her hand.
Marinville said, “She’s sure not bleeding out like the cop.
“Or not where we can see it,” Ralph said. “Not yet, anyway.
Billingsley looked past Mary’s shoulder. “Where.. where..
He began coughing again and wasn’t able to finish, but he didn’t need to. A startled look passed among them, and Cynthia turned around. Audrey wasn’t there.
Neither was David Carver.
The thing which had been Ellen Carver, taller now, still wearing the badge but not the Sam Browne belt, stood on the steps of theMunicipalBuilding , staring north along the sand-drifted street, past the dancing blinker-light. It couldn’t see the movie theater, but knew where it was. More, it knew what was going on inside the movie theater. Not all, but enough to anger it. The cougar hadn’t been able to shut the drunk up in time, but at least she had drawn the rest of them away from the boy. That would have been fine, except the boy had eluded its other emissary as well, at least temporarily.
Where had he gone? It didn’t know, couldn’t see, and that was the source of its anger and fear. He was the source. David Carver. The goddamned shitting prayboy. It should have killed him when it had been inside the cop and had had the chance-should have shot him right on the steps of his own damned motor home and left him for the buzzards. But it hadn’t, and it knew why it hadn’t. There was a blankness about Master Carver, a shielded quality. That was what had saved Little Prayboy earlier.
Its hands clenched at its sides. The wind gusted, blowing Ellen Carver’s short, red-gold hair out like a flag. Why is he even here, someone like him? Is it an accident? Or was he sent?
Why are you here? Are you an accident? Were you sent?
Such questions were useless. It knew its purpose, tak ah lah, and that was enough. It closed its Ellen-eyes, focusing inward at first, but only for a second-it was unpleasant.
This body had already begun to fail. It wasn’t a matter of decay so much as intensity; the force inside it-can de lach, heart of the unformed-was literally pounding it to pieces . . . and its replacements had escaped the pantry.
Because of Prayboy.
Shitting Prayboy.
It turned its gaze outward, not wanting to think about the blood trickling down this body’s thighs, or the way its throat had begun to throb, or the way that, when it scratched Ellen’s head, large clumps of Ellen’s red hair had begun to come away under its nails.
It sent its gaze into the theater instead.
What it saw, it perceived in overlapping, sometimes contradictory images, all fragmentary. It was like watch-ing multiple TV screens reflected in a heap of broken glass. Primarily the eyes of the infiltrating spiders were what it was looking through, but there were also flies, cockroaches, rats peering out of holes in the plaster, and bats hanging from the auditorium’s high ceiling. These latter were projecting strange cool images that were actually echoes.
It saw the man from the truck, the one who had come into town on his own, and his skinny little girlfriend leading the others back to the stage. The father was shouting for the boy, but the boy wasn’t answering.
The writer walked to the edge of the stage, cupped his hands around his mouth, and screamed Audrey’s name. And Audrey, where was she? No way of telling for sure. It couldn’t see through her eyes as it saw through the eyes of the lesser creatures. She’d gone after the boy, certainly. Or had she already found him? It thought not. Not yet, anyway. That it would have sensed.
It pounded one hand against Ellen’s thigh in anxiety and frustration, leaving an instant bruise like a rotten place on the skin of an apple, then shifted focus once more. No, it saw, they were not all onstage; the prismatic quality of what it was seeing had misled it.
Mary was still with old Tom. If Ellen could get to her while the others were preoccupied with Audrey and David, it might solve all sorts of problems later on. It didn’t need her now, this current body was still service-able and would continue so for awhile, but it wouldn’t do to have it fail at a crucial moment. It would be better safer, if.
The image that came was of a spider web with many silk-wrapped flies dangling from it.
Flies that were drugged but not dead.
“Emergency rations,” the old one whispered in Ellen Carver’s voice, in Ellen Carver’s language.
“Knick-knack paddywhack, give the dog a bone.”
And Mary’s disappearance would demoralize the rest take away any confidence they might have gained
from escaping, finding shelter, and killing the cougar. It had thought they might manage that last; they were armed, after all, and the cougar was a physical being, sarx and soma and pneuma, not some goblin from the metaphysical wastes. But who could have imagined that pretentious old – windbag doing it?
He called the other one on a phone he had. You didn’t guess that, either. You didn’t know until the yellow truck came.