“The one who just puked? Yeah. It’s Mrs. Bullard. She’s a real bitch.”
“Extraordinary,” Owen said.
Dorothy was pushing and shoving her way through the crowd. She was yelling something, but Owen couldn’t catch it over the din of the approaching band.
“She looks really upset,” Seth said.
“That she does,” Owen said, leaving the window and heading for the stairs.
“Maybe she saw the avatars!” Seth yelled after him.
“The same thought occurred to me,” Owen said. “The very same—”
Dorothy Bullard’s warning had not gone unheard by the crowd around Kitty’s Diner. As she strode forward they cleared a path for her, in case she intended to puke again. One girl, perhaps a little worse for drink, failed to get out of her way fast enough and was shoved aside as Dorothy charged the barricade. It fell before her, and she ran out into the middle of the crossroads, waving her hands wildly.
At the head of his shining ranks, Larry Glodoski saw the Bullard woman flailing in front of him, and was presented with a choice. Either he brought the band—and thus the parade—to a halt in the next ten seconds, or trusted that somebody would have the presence of mind to get the bitch out of his way before there was a collision. In truth, it was no dilemma at all. She was one; they were many. He lifted his baton a little higher, and marked the beats with sharper motions than ever, as if to erase the woman from the street in front of him.
“I’m listening,” Tesla murmured, “I’m listening as hard as I can.”
Every now and then she heard what might have been a murmur, but her mind was whining with hunger and heat. Even if it was the ghosts speaking she could make no sense of the sounds.
And now there was yet another distraction: some kind of brouhaha up at the crossroads. The crowd had become more frenzied than ever. She went up on her tiptoes in the hope of seeing what was happening, but her sight was blocked by heads and balloons and waving hands.
Harry had the scoop, however. “There’s a woman in the middle of the street, yelling—”
“Yelling what?”
Harry listened for a moment. “I think she’s telling people to get off the street—”
An instinct she would once have called Raul’s had her out of the doorway in a moment, back into the swelter and stench of the crowd, pushing Harry ahead of her. “Clear the way!” she yelled to him.
“Why?”
“It’s the crossroads! It’s something to do with the fucking crossroads!”
“Do you see them?” Seth said, as he and Owen carved their way to the front of the crowd. Owen didn’t answer him. He was afraid if he opened his mouth he’d cry out: in hope, in pain, in expectation. He ducked under the barricade and out into the open street.
This was the most dangerous of moments, he knew: when everything could be gained or lost. He hadn’t expected it to come upon him so suddenly. Even now, he wasn’t certain this was indeed the moment of moments, but he had to act as though it were. The sun suddenly seemed merciless, beating on his bare head, softening his thoughts, and on the bare street, softening that too. It would flow soon, the way it had in the vision he’d shared with Seth; flow into the place where flesh met flesh, and the Art ignited—
“Get away!” Dorothy yelled, turning to appeal to the crowd. “Get away before it’s too late!”
“She has seen something,” Owen thought.
There were people converging on the woman from all sides, intent on silencing her, but Owen put on a burst of speed to reach her first.
“It’s all right!” he yelled as he went, “I’m a doctor!”
It was a trick he’d used before, and as before, it worked. He was given clear access to the crazed woman.
Larry saw the doctor wrap his arms around poor Dorothy, and offered up a little prayer of thanks. Now all the guy had to do was get the Bullard woman out of the way—but quickly, quickly!— and the rhythm of the band would not be broken. He heard somebody in the ranks calling, “Larry? We gotta stop!”
Larry ignored the cry. They still had another ten strides before they would reach the spot where the doctor was talking to Dorothy.
Nine, now. But nine was plenty. Eight—
“What are you seeing?” Owen demanded of the woman.
“It’s all going to burst,” she said to him. “Oh God, oh God, it’s all going to burst!”
“What is?” he asked her.
She shook her head.
“Tell me!” he yelled at her.
“The world!” she said. “The world!”
Harry had no difficulty clearing a way through the crowd for Tesla. Now he lifted the barricade and she ducked under it, out into the open street, delivering her into the arena. There were perhaps a dozen players ahead of her—excluding the band—but only three were of significance. One was the woman at the very center of the crossroads, another the bearded man who was presently talking to her, the third the young man a few yards ahead of her, who was calling out:
“Buddenbaum!”
The bearded man glanced round at his companion, and Tesla had a clear look at his face. The expression he wore was grotesque; every muscle in his face churning and his eyes blazed.
“Mine!” he yelled, his voice shrill, and swung back towards the woman, who was in some delirious state of her own, her eyes rolling in her sockets. She started to pull herself free of Buddenbaum, and in doing so her blouse tore open from neck to belt, exposing bra and belly. She scarcely noticed, it seemed. But the crowd did. A roar rose from all sides—gasps, wolf-whistles, and applause all mingled. Flailing, the woman stumbled away from Buddenbaum—
Larry couldn’t believe it. Just as he thought things were in hand Dorothy pulled away from the doctor—practically showing her all to the world in the process—and reeled round, straight in front of the band.
Larry yelled “Halt!” but it was too late to prevent catastrophe. The Bullard woman collided with him, and he staggered backwards into the trumpet section. Two of the band members went over like bowling pins, and Larry fell on top of them. There was another roar from the spectators.
Larry’s spectacles had come off in the melee. Without them the world was a blur. Detaching himself from the knot of trumpeters he started to search the ground, patting the warm asphalt.
“Nobody move!” he yelled. “Please! Nobody move!”
His plea went unheard. People were moving all around him. He could see their blurry forms; he could hear their shouts and curses.
“We’re all going to die,” he heard somebody sob nearby. He was sure it was Dorothy, and good man that he was, forsook his search a moment to comfort her. But when he looked up from the street to seek out the blur that most resembled her, something else came into view. It was a woman, but she was not blurred; far from it. He could not have wished for a vision more perfectly in focus. She was not standing in the street, but hovering a little distance above it. No; not even hovering, standing; she was standing in the air, with a silk robe loosely knotted around her. Very loosely, in fact. He could see her breasts—they were glossy and full—and a hint of what lay between her legs. He called out to her, “Who are you?” But she didn’t hear him. She just moved off, climbing the air as though ascending a flight of invisible stairs. He started to get to his feet, wishing he could follow, and as he did so she looked back, coquettishly, not at him, he knew, but at somebody whom she was coaxing to follow her.
Oh how she smiled at him, the lucky bastard, and plucked at her robe to tease him with a glimpse of her beautiful legs. Then she continued to climb, and a few steps up the flight, seemed to encounter another woman—this one descending—the contact briefly illuminating the second beauty.
“Larry—?”
What was he seeing?
“I got your spectacles.”
“Huh?”
“Your spectacles, Larry.” They were thrust in front of him, and he fumbled for them, not wanting to take his eyes off the woman.
&
nbsp; “What the hell are you looking at?”
“Don’t you see them?”
“See what?”
“The women.”
“Put your damn spectacles on, Larry.”
He did so. The world came into focus around him, in all its confusion. But the woman had gone.
“God, no—”
He pulled his spectacles off again, but the vision had escaped him into the bright summer sky.
In the midst of this confusion—Dorothy Bullard escaping, Buddenbaum going after her, the band falling down like tin soldiers—Tesla had made her way to the center of the crossroads. It had taken her perhaps five seconds to do so, but in those seconds she had been assailed by a legion of sensations, her spirits lifted one moment and dropped the next, her body wracked and caressed by turns, as though whatever lay at the heart of the crossroads was testing her wits to breaking point. Clearly the town woman had failed the test. She was bawling like an abandoned child. Buddenbaum, however, was made of sterner stuff. He was standing a couple of yards from Tesla, staring down at the ground.
“What the fuck’s going on?” she yelled to him. He didn’t look up. Didn’t even speak. “Can you hear me?”
“Not. Another. Step,” he said. Despite the cacophony, and the fact that he spoke in a near-whisper, she heard him as clearly as if he’d murmured in her ear.
A terrible suspicion rose in Tesla, which she instantly voiced.
“Are you Kissoon?” she said.
This certainly got his attention.
“Kissoon?” he said, his lip curling. “He’s a piece of shit. What do you know about him?”
That answered her question plainly enough. But it begged another. If he wasn’t Kissoon, but he knew who Kissoon was, then who was he?
“He’s just some name I heard.”
His face was quite a sight: a mass of bulges, about to burst. “Some name?” he said, reaching for her. “Kissoon’s not some name!” She dearly wanted to retreat from him, but a part of her was irrationally possessive of this contested ground. She stood it, though he took hold of her by the neck.
“Who are you?”
She was afraid for her life.
“Tesla Bombeck,” she said.
“You’re Tesla Bombeck?” he said, plainly amazed.
“Yes,” she said, barely able to get the words out from under his thumbs. “Do you mind . . . letting go—”
He drew her closer to him. “Oh God,” he said, with a twisted little smile on his face. “You’re an ambitious little bitch, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh you don’t, huh? You came to take away all I’ve worked for and—”
“I haven’t come to take anything,” Tesla gasped.
“Liar!” Buddenbaum said, tightening his hold on her neck.
She reached up to his face and jabbed her finger in his eye, but he wasn’t about to let go.
“The Art’s mine,” he yelled. “You can’t have it! You can’t.”
She had no breath left to contest her innocence, not much strength to fight him off. The world began to throb to the rhythm of her pulse, pulsing with every heartbeat. She kicked at his legs, hoping she might knock him off his feet, but he seemed to feel nothing, to judge by his unchanging face. He just kept saying: “Mine . . . Mine . . . ” though his voice, like the whole world, was growing paler and thinner, preparing to disappear completely.
“Don’t we know that woman?” somebody said nearby.
“I believe we do,” came the reply.
She couldn’t turn to see the speakers, but she didn’t need to. She knew them by their voices. The leader of the phantoms she’d met in Toothaker’s house was here, and not alone.
Buddenbaum’s face was barely visible now, but just before it flickered out completely she saw him raise his eyes, looking past her at something nearby. He spoke, but the words were white noise. Then there was burst of heat, and a red mark appeared above his right eye. She squinted hard, trying to make sense of it, but before she could do so his fingers relaxed, and she slipped from his grasp. Her legs were too weak to bear her up. They folded beneath her, and down she went. She drew a breath as she collapsed, and her grateful brain rewarded her with a sliver of comprehension. Buddenbaum had been shot. The mark on his face was a bullet hole.
She didn’t have a chance to take satisfaction in the fact. When she struck the ground her thoughts flickered out.
One shot, and the crowd was in turmoil. Cheers turned to screams, laughter to panic. Suddenly people were running in every direction, except towards the gunman and his victim.
D’Amour slipped his gun into his jacket and started towards the middle of the street. The man he’d shot was still standing, despite the blood flooding from his brow, which fact supported the suspicion that there was magic here. Despite the sun, despite the crowds, a suit had been worked and was still being worked, in fact. The closer he got to the place where Tesla was lying, the more his ink itched.
There were other signs, too, that he did his best to keep at bay. The ground under his feet seemed to brighten and shift when he looked at it, as though it was trying to flow towards the middle of the crossroads. And there was a brightness in the air; gossamer shapes moving across his field of vision, shedding beads of light. There was more here than an invocation, he knew; far more. Reality was soft here, and getting softer. Things meeting, intersecting, trying—perhaps—to flow together.
If so, he had no doubt as to who was masterminding the affair. It was the man he’d just shot, who now, with consummate indifference, had actually turned his back on Harry and was studying the departing crowd.
Harry turned his gaze on Tesla, who was lying quite still.
Don’t be dead, he said to himself, and almost closing his eyes completely to fend off the blandishments of sky and street he stumbled on towards her.
The avatars were here. Owen knew it. He could feel their eyes upon him, and it was a feeling like no other he knew. Like being spied on by God. Terrible and wonderful at the same time.
He wasn’t the only one feeling such confusions, he knew. Though the crowd scattering around him did not possess the knowledge he possessed, they were all of them—even the dullest and the dumbest—sensing something untoward. The shot that had wounded him had wounded them too, in a different fashion: loosed a flood of adrenaline rather than blood, thus alerting their staled senses to signs they would have otherwise missed. He could see the recognition in their faces, wide with awe and terror; he could read it off their trembling lips. It wasn’t the way he’d intended things, but he didn’t care. Let them gape, he thought. Let them pray. Let them tremble. They’d have to do a lot more of that before this Day of Days was done.
He gave up on looking for the avatars—as long as they were there, what did it matter what shape they’d taken?—and went down on his haunches to touch the ground. Though there was blood running into his right eye, he could see better than he’d seen in his long life. The ground was turning to ether below him, the medallion buried far below him blazing in its bed. He pressed his hand against the ground, and let out a low moan of pleasure as he felt his fingers slip and slide down into the warm asphalt, towards the cross.
There were phenomena on every side. Voices speaking out of the ether (revenants, he thought; and why not? The more the merrier), vague, wispy forms riding on the air to left and right of him (too perfect for the past, surely; perhaps the future, coming to find the moment when it ceased to matter), agitations in the ground and sky (he would paint the heavens with stone, when he remade the world, and make the earth sprout lightning). So much happening, and all because of the object that lay inches from his fingers, the cross that had accrued the power to change the world, buried here at the crossroads.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured to it, the way he might have cooed to a pretty boy. “So, so beautiful.”
His fingers were almost there. Another foot and a half, no more—
br /> Erwin had followed Tesla as far as the edge of the crowd, but then—seeing the chaos in front of him—had held back. It was no use trying to speak to her in the midst of such tumult, he’d realized. Better to wait.
Dolan had not been so reluctant. Ever eager for fun, he’d slipped through the barricade and out across the melting ground. He’d been inches from Dorothy Bullard when her blouse tore (cause for much hilarity), and had actually stood in the path of the bullet that had struck Buddenbaum, amused to see it pass straight through him.
Suddenly, the clowning had ceased. From his place on the sidewalk, Erwin saw Dolan’s expression becoming troubled. He turned to Nordhoff, who was bending over the fallen Tesla, and let out a moaning word, “Whaaat—?”
Nordhoff didn’t reply. He was staring down at the wounded man, who was plunging his hand into too solid ground. And as he stared, his face grew longer, as though he was about to be transformed into a dog or a camel. His nose lengthened, his cheeks puffed up, his eyes were sucked from his sockets.
“Oohhh Hellll . . . ” Dolan moaned, and turning on his heel started back towards the sidewalk. It wasn’t safe terrain. Though Erwin was a good deal farther from the source of this phenomenon, he too felt something plucking at his self-invented flesh. The pockets of his coat were torn off, and a number of the keepsakes carried away towards the epicenter; his fingers were growing longer; his face, he was sure, the same.
Dolan was in even worse condition. Though he was further from the hub than Nordhoff, Dickerson and the rest, the claim of whatever force had been unleashed there was irresistible. He dropped to his knees and dug his nails into the ground, hollering at Erwin for help as he did so, but his matter had no purchase on the asphalt, and he was dragged back towards the hub, his body growing softer and longer, until he began to resemble a stream of melting flesh, coursing across the street.
Erwin covered his ears to shut out the din of his shrieks, and retreated back down the rapidly emptying street. It was hard going. The power at the hub of the crossroads was growing apace, and with every step he took it threatened to overwhelm him and drag him to his destruction. But he resisted its claim with all his will, and after twenty yards he began to outpace it. After thirty, its hold on him was dwindling rapidly. After forty, he felt sufficiently confident to slow a little and look for Dolan. He’d gone. So had Nordhoff, so had Dickerson, so had they all; all melted and run away into the ground.