“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gardener bared his teeth in a grin.
“Boys,” he said, “we’re going to get sunlight in this boy’s soul yet. Lace up his left arm again and unlace his right.”
Sunlight Gardener opened his lighter again and waited for
them to do it, his thumb resting lightly on the striker wheel.
7
George Irwinson and Donny Keegan were still in the kitchen.
“Someone’s out there,” George said nervously.
Donny said nothing. He had finished peeling the potatoes
and now stood by the ovens for their warmth. He didn’t know what to do next. Confession was being held just down the
hall, he knew, and that’s where he wanted to be—confession
was safe, and here in the kitchen he felt very, very nervous—
but Rudolph hadn’t dismissed them. Best to stay right here.
“I heard someone,” George said.
Donny laughed: “Hyuck! Hyuck! Hyuck!”
“Jesus, that laugh of yours barfs me out,” George said. “I
got a new Captain America funnybook under my mattress. If
you take a look out there, I’ll let you read it.”
Donny shook his head and honked his donkey-laugh again.
George looked toward the door. Sounds. Scratching. That’s
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what it sounded like. Scratching at the door. Like a dog that wanted to be let in. A lost, homeless pup. Except what sort of lost, homeless pup scratched near the top of a door that was nearly seven feet tall?
George went to the window and looked out. He could see
almost nothing in the gloom. The Box was just a darker
shadow amid shadows.
George moved toward the door.
8
Jack shrieked so loud and so hard he thought that surely his throat would rupture. Now Casey had also joined them, Casey with his big swinging gut, and that was a good thing for them, because now it took three of them—Casey, Warwick, and
Sonny Singer—to grapple with Jack’s arm and keep his hand
applied to the flame.
When Gardener drew it away this time, there was a black,
bubbling, blistered patch the size of a quarter on the side of Jack’s hand.
Gardener got up, took the envelope marked JACK PARKER
from his desk, and brought it back. He brought out the guitar-pick.
“What’s this?”
“A guitar-pick,” Jack managed. His hands were burning
agony.
“What is it in the Territories?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What’s this?”
“A marble. What are you, blind?”
“Is it a toy in the Territories?”
“I don’t—”
“Is it a mirror?”
“—know—”
“Is it a top that disappears when you spin it fast?”
“—what you’re—”
“YOU DO! YOU DO TOO, YOU FAGGOT HELLBOUND
WHELP!”
“—talking about.”
Gardener drove a hand across Jack’s face.
He brought out the silver dollar. His eyes gleamed.
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“What’s this?”
“It’s a lucky piece from my Aunt Helen.”
“What is it in the Territories?”
“Box of Rice Krispies.”
Gardener held up the lighter. “Your last chance, boy.”
“It turns into a vibraphone and plays ‘Crazy Rhythm.’ ”
“Hold out his right hand again,” Gardener said.
Jack struggled, but at last they got his hand out.
9
In the oven, the turkey pies had begun to burn.
George Irwinson had been standing by the door for almost
five minutes, trying to get up nerve enough to open it. That scratching noise had not been repeated.
“Well, I’ll show you there’s nothing to be afraid of,
chicken-guts,” George said heartily. “When you’re strong in the Lord, there’s never any need to be afraid!”
With this grand statement, he threw open the door. A huge,
shaggy, shadowy thing stood on the threshold, its eyes blazing red from deep sockets. George’s eyes tracked one paw as it
rose in the windy autumn dark and whickered down. Six-inch
claws gleamed in the kitchen’s light. They tore George Irwinson’s head from his neck and his head flew across the room, spraying blood, to strike the shoes of the laughing Donny
Keegan, the madly laughing Donny Keegan.
Wolf leaped into the kitchen, dropping down to all fours. He passed Donny Keegan with hardly a look and ran into the hall.
10
Wolf! Wolf! Right here and now!
It was Wolf ’s voice in his mind, all right, but it was deeper, richer, more commanding than Jack had ever heard it. It cut through the haze of pain in his mind like a fine Swedish knife.
He thought, Wolf is riding with the moon. The thought brought a mixture of triumph and sorrow.
Sunlight Gardener was looking upward, his eyes narrowed.
In that moment he looked very much like a beast himself—a
beast who has scented danger downwind.
“Reverend?” Sonny asked. Sonny was panting slightly, and
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the pupils of his eyes were very large. He’s been enjoying himself, Jack thought. If I start to talk, Sonny’s going to be disappointed.
“I heard something,” Gardener said. “Casey. Go and listen
to the kitchen and the common room.”
“Right.” Casey took off.
Gardener looked back at Jack. “I’m going to have to leave
for Muncie soon,” he said, “and when I meet Mr. Morgan, I
want to be able to give him some information immediately. So you had better talk to me, Jack. Spare yourself further pain.”
Jack looked at him, hoping the jackhammer beat of his
heart didn’t show either in his face or as a faster, more noticeable pulse in his neck. If Wolf was out of the Box—
Gardener held up the pick Speedy had given him in one
hand, the coin Captain Farren had given him in the other.
“What are they?”
“When I flip, they turn into tortoise testicles,” Jack said, and laughed wildly, hysterically.
Gardener’s face darkened with angry blood.
“Lace up his arms again,” he said to Sonny and Andy.
“Lace up his arms and then pull down this hellbound bastard’s pants. Let’s see what happens when we heat up his testicles.”
11
Heck Bast was deathly bored with confession. He had heard
them all before, these paltry mail-order sins. I hooked money from my mother’s purse, I used to blow joints in the schoolyard, we usta put glue in a paper bag and sniff it, I did this, I did that. Little kids’ stuff. No excitement. Nothing to take his mind off the steady drone of pain in his hand. Heck wanted to be downstairs, working on that kid Sawyer. And then they
could get started on the big retard who had somehow sur-
prised him and destroyed his good right hand. Yes, getting to work on the big retard would be a real pleasure. Preferably with a set of bolt-cutters.
A boy named Vernon Skarda was currently droning away.
“. . . so me and him, we seen the keys was in her, know
what I mean. So he goes, ‘Let’s jump in the whore, and drive her around the block,’ he goes. But I knew it was wrong, and I said it was, so he goes, ‘You ain’t nothin but a chickenshit.’ So
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I go, ‘I ain’t no chickenshit.’ Like that. So he goes, ‘Prove it, prove it.’ ‘I ain’t doin no joy-ride,’ I go, so he goes . . .”
Oh dear Christ, Heck thought. His hand was really starting to yell at him, and his pain-pills were up in his room. On the far side of the room, he saw Peabody stretch his jaws in a
bone-cracking yawn.
“So we went around the block, and then he goes to me, he
goes—”
The door suddenly slammed inward so hard it tore off its
hinges. It hit the wall, bounced, struck a boy named Tom Cas-sidy, drove him to the floor, and pinned him there. Something leaped into the common room—at first Heck Bast thought it
was the biggest motherfucking dog he had ever seen. Boys
screamed and bolted up from their chairs . . . and then froze, eyes wide and unbelieving, as the gray-black beast that was Wolf stood upright, shreds of chinos and checked shirt still clinging to him.
Vernon Skarda stared, eyes bulging, jaws hanging.
Wolf bellowed, eyes glaring around as the boys fell back
from him. Pedersen made for the door. Wolf, towering so high his head almost brushed the ceiling, moved with liquid speed.
He swung an arm as thick as a barn-beam. Claws tore a chan-
nel through Pedersen’s back. For a moment his spine was
clearly visible—it looked like a bloody extension cord. Gore splashed the walls. Pedersen took one great, shambling step out into the hall and then collapsed.
Wolf turned back . . . and his blazing eyes fastened on
Heck Bast. Heck got up suddenly on nerveless legs, staring at this shaggy, red-eyed horror. He knew who it was . . . or, at least, who it had been.