She started to turn, looking for the Death-Boy, and her eyes came to rest on an area of stunted trees and ambitious weed on the far side of the lot. There were lanterns hanging in the branches, she saw, giving off a sickly phosphorescence. And somebody standing in their midst, more than half hidden. Before she could start towards the place a voice behind her said, “What the hell’s goin’ on out here?”
She looked back to see the motel manager appearing from his office. He was sixty or more, with a bald pate, a gravy-stained shirt, and a can of beer in his hand. By his staggering step it was plain he was the worse for its influence.
“Go back inside,” Tesla told him.
But the man had seen the lights in the thicket now, and he strode on past Tesla towards them. “You put them up?” he demanded.
“No,” Tesla said, following after him. “Somebody very—”
“That’s my property. You can’t just go hangin’—”
He stopped in mid-stride, as he came close enough to see exactly what these lanterns were. The can of beer dropped from his hand. “My God . . . ” he said.
The branches of the trees and bushes had been hung with horrific trophies, Tesla saw. Heads and arms, pieces of a torso, and much else that was not even recognizable. All of them shone, even the scraps, charged up with a luminescence she assumed was the Death-Boy’s gift.
The manager, meanwhile, was stumbling back the way he’d come, his throat loosing a series of panicked animal noises. Instantly, the cloud of phantoms rose up, excited by his terror, and moved to intercept him. He was swept off his feet and pitched ten yards or more, coming to rest a little way from his office door.
“Tommy-Ray?” Tesla yelled back into the thicket. “Stop them!” Getting no response, she strode towards the bushes, haranguing the Death-Boy. “Call them off, damn you! Hear me?”
Behind her, the manager had started to shriek. She looked back in time to glimpse the man in the midst of the swarming cloud, sinking to the ground. He went on shrieking for a little longer, while they tore at his head. It was twisted left, then right, then left again with such violence his neck ripped. The shriek stopped. The head came off.
“Don’t look,” the man in the thicket said.
She turned back and stared into the mesh of twigs, trying to see him better. The last time she’d laid eyes on Tommy-Ray McGuire, back in Kissoon’s Loop, he’d been a shadow of his former glory, wasted and crazed. But it seemed the years had been kinder to him than anybody else in this drama. Whatever duties he’d performed for Kissoon, and whatever he’d witnessed (or perpetrated) along the way, his blond beauty had been preserved. He smiled at her out of his grove of lanterns, and it was a dazzling smile.
“Where is she, Tesla?” he said.
“Before you get to Jo-Beth—”
“Yes?”
“I just wanted to talk a moment. Compare notes.”
“About what?”
“About being Nunciates.”
“Is that what we are?”
“It’s as good or bad as any.”
“Nunciates . . . ” He turned the word on his tongue. “That’s cool.”
“Being one seems to suit you.”
“Oh yeah, I feel fine. You don’t look so good yourself. You need to get some slaves, like me, ’stead of wandering around on your own.” His tone was completely conversational. “You know a couple of times, I almost came to find you.”
“Why would you do that?”
He shrugged. “I guess I felt close to you. Both of us having the Nuncio. Both of us knowing Kissoon—”
“What’s he doing here, Tommy-Ray? What does he want with Everville?”
Tommy-Ray took a step towards her. She had to fight the instinct to retreat before him. Any sign of weakness, she knew, and her status as fellow Nunciate would be forfeited. As he approached, he answered the question. “He lived there once,” Tommy-Ray said.
“In Everville?”
He was almost free of the thicket now. There were blood stains on his jeans and T-shirt, and on his face and arms a gloss of sweat. “Where is she?” he said.
“We were talking about Kissoon.”
“Not any more we’re not. Where is she?”
“Just give her a little time,” Tesla replied, glaring back towards the room as though she expected Jo-Beth to emerge at any moment. “She wanted to look her best.”
“She was excited?”
“Oh yes.”
“Why don’t you go fetch her?”
“She won’t be—”
“Fetch her!”
There was a murmur from the ghosts, who were still attending upon the headless body. “Sure,” Tesla said. “No problem.”
She turned back towards the motel and started across the lot, taking her time. She was about five yards from the door when Jo-Beth stepped into view, with Amy cradled in her arms.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Tesla under her breath. “We belong to him. It’s as simple as that.”
From the lot behind her, Tesla heard the Death-Boy sigh at the sight of his sister.
“Oh baby,” he said. “You look so fine. Come here.”
Jo-Beth stepped over the threshold. Tesla made no attempt to stop her. She’d only lose her head for her troubles. Besides, by the look on Jo-Beth’s face it was plain she was happy to be going into her brother’s embrace. The wind, whether natural or no, had died away completely. Night birds had started to sing, and crickets to chirp in the grass, as though conspiring to celebrate this reunion.
As she watched Tommy-Ray open his arms to welcome his sister, Tesla caught sight of a pale form out of the corner of her eye, and looked round to see Buddenbaum’s little girlfriend, the avatar, still dressed in white from bow to shoes, staring down at the manager’s corpse. She didn’t peruse it for long, but wandered in Tesla’s direction, leaving her two companions—the clown and the idiot—to study it in her stead. The latter had found the dead man’s head, and had it tucked up under his arm.
The girl in white, meanwhile, was now close enough to Tesla to murmur, “Thank you for this.”
Tesla looked down at her with a mixture of confusion and disgust. “This isn’t a game,” she said.
“We know.”
“People have died.”
The girl grinned. “And there’ll be more, won’t there?” she said lightly. “Lots more.”
As though her words had pressed the drama into a higher gear, the sound of a badly tuned engine reached Tesla’s ears and Grillo’s Mustang appeared on the dirt road leading into the lot.
Before it had even come to a halt the passenger door was flung open and Howie was out, gun in hand, screaming at Tommy-Ray, “Get away from her!”
The Death-Boy unglued his eyes from his sister and lazily stared in Howie’s direction. “No!” he said.
Without further warning, Howie fired. His aim was pitifully poor. The bullet struck the ground closer to Jo-Beth than Tommy-Ray. Amy, who had been hushed so far, started to bawl.
A flicker of concern crossed the Death-Boy’s sweaty face. “Don’t shoot,” he yelled to Howie, “you’ll hurt the kid!”
At Tesla’s side the girl in white murmured a long oh, as though she had new comprehension of what was happening here, and like two members of an audience, one prompted by the other into recognition of some wit or irony, Tesla saw a connection here she had not vaguely suspected. A breath of something like to pleasure caressed her nape, seeing this bud on the story tree, ready to burst.
“What next?” the little girl said.
A little part of Tesla simply wanted to stand back and see. But she couldn’t. Never had; never would.
“Howie . . . ” she said, “come away—”
“N-n-no-not without m-m-my wife,” Howie said.
“You did good,” Tommy-Ray said, “watching over ’em for me, but you’re out of the picture now. They’re coming with me.”
Howie dropped his gun in the dirt, and raised his hands. “Look at m-m-me, Jo-Be
th,” he said. “I’m n-n-not going to m-m-make you do anything you d-d-don’t want to—but baby, it’s me—it’s H-H-Howie—”
Jo-Beth said nothing. She simply looked down at the baby, as if deaf to Howie’s appeals. He tried again, or began to, but he’d got no further than her name when Grillo put his foot down and drove directly towards Jo-Beth. Howie flung himself aside, going down hard, as the car skewed around, kicking up a fan of dirt. The Death-Boy let out a yell to his legion, but before they could come to order Grillo had brought the car to a halt and hauled Jo-Beth and Amy into the vehicle. Tommy-Ray made a move towards it, arms outstretched, and might have somehow checked Grillo’s escape had Howie not risen from the dirt and flung himself at the Death-Boy. His fingers went to Tommy-Ray’s perfect face, and gouged at his eyes.
Grillo, meanwhile, was backing the vehicle up, yelling to Tesla, “Get in! Get in!”
She waved him on. “Go!” she hollered. “Quickly!”
She caught a glimpse of his face through the insect-spattered windshield: There was exhilaration in his eyes. He offered her a tight, grim smile, then he swung the car round and drove off.
Howie, meanwhile, had done some superficial damage to Tommy-Ray, gouging several furrows down the side of his face and neck. There was no blood. There was instead a brightness beneath the flesh, like the phosphorescence with which he’d lit his lanterns. And it was to the thicket where those lanterns hung that Tommy-Ray now headed, casually pushing Howie to the ground as he did so.
Howie started to get to his feet again, plainly intending to assault the Death-Boy afresh, but Tesla held him back. “You can’t kill him,” she said. “He’ll just end up killing you.”
On the fringe of the thicket, Tommy-Ray turned back. “That’s it. You tell him.” He looked at Howie. “I don’t want to kill you,” he said. “In fact, I swore to Jo-Beth I wouldn’t, and I don’t break my word.” Again, to Tesla, “Make him understand. She’s never coming back to him. Not tonight. Not ever. I’ve got her now, and that’s where she wants to be.”
With that he stepped into the thicket, whistling for the cloud of ghosts to come to him. They came, gushing across the lot, and entering the thicket to conceal the Death-Boy from view.
“He’s going to go after her,” Howie said.
“Of course.”
“So we have to get to her first.”
“That’s the theory,” Tesla said, already heading for her bike. Howie stumbled after her.
As she crossed the lot the girl in white called to her. “What’s next, Tesla? What’s next?”
“God knows,” Tesla said.
“No we don’t,” said the girl’s idiot companion, which much entertained all three.
“We like you, Tesla,” the girl in white said.
“Then stay out of my way,” Tesla said, climbing onto the bike. Howie hopped on behind.
As she turned the key in the ignition there was another gust of wind, and the Death-Boy’s legion rose up out of the thicket, taking the lanterns and the man who’d lit them away in its billows. Tesla caught a glimpse of Tommy-Ray as the cloud passed by. He seemed not to be walking, but to be borne up by the cloud, and carried. As for his face, it was already healing, the wounds closing to conceal the brightness that blazed behind.
“He’s going to get to her first,” Howie said, sounding close to tears.
“Hold on,” Tesla told him. “It’s not over yet.”
FOUR
I
Forgive me Everville—”
“That’s what he wrote?”
“That’s what he wrote.”
“The hypocrite.”
They were walking, Erwin and Coker Ammiano, along Poppy Lane. It was a little before nine o’clock in the evening, and to judge by the noise from every bar and restaurant along the lane, festivities were in full swing.
“They forget so easily,” Erwin said. “Just this afternoon—”
“I know what happened,” Ammiano replied. “I felt it.”
“We’re like smoke,” Erwin said, remembering Dolan’s first lessons in ghosthood.
“We’re not even that. At least smoke can make people weep. We can do nothing.”
“That’s not so,” Erwin told him. “You’ll see when we find this woman Tesla. She can hear me. At least she could once. She’s quite a woman, believe me. The way she acts, it’s like she couldn’t give a damn whether she lived or died.”
“Then she’s a fool.”
“No, I mean, she’s brave. When she was at my house, I told you, about Kissoon—”
“I remember, Erwin,” Coker said politely.
“I never saw anything braver.”
“You’re talking like you’re in love, my friend.”
“Nonsense.”
“I believe you’re quite enamored. Don’t be embarrassed.”
“I’m . . . I’m not.”
“You’re blushing.”
Erwin put his palms to his cheeks. “It’s so absurd,” he said.
“What is?”
“That I have no blood in my body—don’t even have a body—yet I blush.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to try and puzzle that out,” Coker Ammiano said.
“And did you come to any conclusions?”
“A few.”
“Tell me.”
“We invented ourselves, Erwin. Our energies belong to some great oneness—I don’t care to give it a name or I’d be trying to invent that too—and we’ve used them, these energies, in the recreation of Erwin Toothaker and Coker Ammiano. Now those men are dead, and much of that power has returned to its source. But we hold on to a bit of it, just to keep our fictions alive a little longer. And we clothe ourselves in what’s familiar, and we fill our pockets with things to comfort us. But it can’t go on forever. Sooner or later”—he shrugged—“we’ll be done.”
“Not me,” said Erwin. “I saw what happened to Dolan and Nordhoff and—”
“What things look like from the outside and what they are on the inside can be very different, Erwin. Perhaps all that was happening at the crossroads was that Dolan was going back where he came from.”
“Into your oneness?”
“It’s not mine, Erwin.” He paused, musing on this. Then he said, “No, I take that back. I think it is mine. And you know why?”
“No. But I think you’re about to enlighten me.”
“Because once I’m there, I’m everywhere.” He smiled, well pleased by this. “And the oneness is mine as much as it is anybody else’s.”
“So why haven’t you just given in to it?” Erwin wanted to know.
“I wish I had an answer to that. I think sometimes it must be some evil in me.”
“Evil?”
“As in something done in error. Against what’s good. I know—”
Erwin interrupted him in mid-flow. “That man!” he said, pointing across the street.
“I see him.”
“He was with Tesla. His name’s D’Amour.”
“He’s in quite a hurry.”
“I wonder if he knows where she is.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
“Follow him?”
“Precisely.”
* * *
II
D’Amour had put in a call to New York before he left the Cobb house. Norma had been pleased to hear from him.
“I had a visitor yesterday,” she said, sounding more unnerved than Harry could ever remember her sounding before. “She just came in through the window, and sat down in front of me.”
“Who the hell was it?”
“She said her name was Lazy Susan. At least at first. Then it changed its mind, and God knows probably its sex as well, and started calling itself the Hammermite—”
“Then Peter the Nomad?”
“It got round to him after a while,” Norma said. “So is this thing what it claims it is?”
“Yes.”
“It killed Hess?”
“He was
one of many. What did it want?”
“What do these things ever want? It crowed a bit. It did a dump on the floor. And it asked to be reminded to you—”
“How exactly?”
Norma sighed. “Well . . . it started talking about how the Devil was coming, how we’d all be crucified for what we’d done. It harped on that quite a bit. Gave me a brief history of crucifixion, which I could have done without. Then it said: ‘Tell D’Amour—’ ”
“Let me guess. ‘I am you and you are love—’” He didn’t bother to finish.
“That’s it,” Norma said.
“Then what?”
“Nothing. It told me I had very lovely eyes, and it was sure they were all the prettier because they were useless. Then it left. I still can’t get rid of the smell of its shit.”
“I’m sorry, Norma.”
“It’s okay. I got some air-freshener—”
“No. I mean the whole damn thing.”
“I tell you what, Harry. It made me think.”
“About—?”
“About our conversation on the roof, for one.”
“I’ve thought a lot about that myself.”
“I’m not saying I was completely wrong. The world does change, and it keeps changing, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere soon. But this thing, this Lazy Susan . . . ” The words fell away for a moment. All Norma could find to say was: “Horrible.” Harry said nothing. “I know what you’re thinking,” Norma said. “You’re thinking, why doesn’t the old cow make up her mind?”
“No I wasn’t.”
“Truth is, I don’t know anymore.”
“Don’t let it get you crazy.”
“Oh it’s too late for that,” Norma said, the laughter coming back into her voice. “What is it with these demons anyhow? Why are they so damn excremental?”
“ ’Cause that’s what they want the world to be, Norma.”
“Shit.”
“Shit.”
* * *
They’d talked on for a while, but it had been little more than chatter. Only at the end, when Harry said he had to be going, did Norma say, “Where?”
“Up the mountain,” he told her. “To see what the Devil looks like, face to face.”