"No," Lisey said. "But almost."
She peered toward the stairs leading down to the barn. It was darker at that end of the study, far more ominous, especially now that Amanda had the gun. Untrustworthy Amanda, who might do anything. Including, maybe fifty percent of the time, what you asked of her.
"What's your plan?" Amanda whispered. In the other room, Ole Hank was singing again, and Lisey knew The Last Picture Show's final credits were rolling.
Lisey put a finger across her lips in a Shhh gesture
(now you must be still)
and backed away from Amanda. One step, two steps, three steps, four. Now she was in the middle of the room, equidistant from Dumbo's Big Jumbo and the alcove doorway where Amanda held the .22 awkwardly with the barrel pointed at the bloodstained rug. Thunder rumbled. Country music played. From below: silence.
"I don't think he's down there," Amanda whispered.
Lisey took another backward step toward the big red maple desk. She still felt entirely keyed up, was almost vibrating with tension, but the rational part of her had to admit that Amanda might be right. The telephone was out, but up here on the View you could count on losing your service at least twice a month, especially during or just after storms. That thump she'd heard when she bent to pick up the gun . . . had she heard a thump? Or had it just been her imagination?
"I don't think anyone's down th--" Amanda began, and that was when the lights went out.
2
For a few seconds--endless ones--Lisey could see nothing, and damned herself for not bringing the flashlight from the car. It would have been so easy. It was all she could do to stay where she was, and she had to keep Amanda where she was.
"Manda, don't move! Stand still until I tell you!"
"Where is he, Lisey?" Amanda was starting to cry. "Where is he?"
"Why, right here, Missy," Jim Dooley said easily from the pitch blackness where the stairs were. "And I can see you both with these goggles I got on. You look a smidge green, but I can see you fine."
"He can't, he's lying," Lisey said, but she felt a sinking in her middle. She hadn't counted on him having some sort of night-vision equipment.
"Oh, Missus--if I'm lyin, I'm dyin." The voice was still coming from the stairhead, and now Lisey began to see a dim figure there. She couldn't see his paper sack of horrors, but oh Jesus she could hear it crackling. "I see you well enough to know it's Miss Tall-N-Scrawny with the peashooter. I want you to drop that gun on the floor, Missy Tall. Right now." His voice sharpened and cracked like the end of a whip loaded with shot. "Mind me, now! Drop hit!"
It was full dark out now, and if there was a moon it either hadn't risen or was occluded, but enough ambient light came through the skylights to show Lisey that Amanda was lowering the gun. Not dropping it yet, but lowering it. Lisey would have given anything to have been holding it herself, but--
But I need both hands free. So when the time comes I can grab you, you sonofabitch.
"No, Amanda, hold onto it. I don't think you'll have to shoot him. That's not the plan."
"Drop it, Missy, that's the plan."
Lisey said, "He comes in here where he doesn't belong, he calls you mean names, then tells you to drop the gun? Your own gun?"
The barely-there phantom that was Lisey's sister raised the Pathfinder again. Amanda didn't point it at the black cutout hovering in the shadows by the stairs, only held it with the muzzle pointing toward the ceiling, but she was still holding it. And her back had straightened.
"I tole you drop hit!" the dim figure nearly snarled, but something in Dooley's voice told Lisey he knew that battle was lost. His damned bag rattled.
"No!" Amanda shouted. "I won't! You . . . you get on out of here! Get out and leave my sister alone!"
"He won't," Lisey said before the shadow at the head of the stairs could reply. "He won't because he's crazy."
"You want to watch out for talk like that," Dooley said. "You seem to be forgettin I can see you like you 'us on a stage."
"But you are crazy. Just as crazy as the kid who shot my husband in Nashville. Gerd Allen Cole. Do you know about him? Sure you do, you know everything about Scott. We used to laugh about guys like you, Jimmy--"
"That's enough now, Missus--"
"We called you Deep Space Cowboys. Cole was one and you're another. Slyer and meaner--because you're older--but not much different. A Deep Space Cowboy is a Deep Space Cowboy. You toooour the Milky Smuckin Way."
"You want to stop that talk," Dooley said. He was snarling again, and this time, Lisey thought, not just for effect. "I'm here on bi'ness." The paper bag rattled and now she could see the shadow move. The stairs were maybe fifty feet away from the desk and in the darkest part of the long main room. But Dooley was moving toward her as if her words were reeling him in and now her eyes were fully adapted to the gloom. Another few steps and his fancy mail-order goggles would make no difference. They would be on equal footing. Visually, at least.
"Why should I? It's true." And it was. Suddenly she knew everything she needed to know about Jim Dooley, alias Zack McCool, alias the Black Prince of the Incunks. The truth was in her mouth, like that sweet taste. It was that sweet taste.
"Don't provoke him, Lisey," Amanda said in a terrified voice.
"He provokes himself. All the provocation he needs comes right out of the overheated warp-drive inside his own head. Just like Cole."
"I ain't nuthin like him!" Dooley shouted.
Brilliant knowledge in every nerve-ending. Exploding in every nerve-ending. Dooley might have learned about Cole while reading up on his literary hero, but Lisey knew this wasn't so. And it all made such perfect, divine sense.
"You were never in Brushy Mountain. That was just a tale you told Woodbody. Barstool talk. But you were locked up, all right. That much was true. You were in the looneybin. You were in the looneybin with Cole."
"Shut up, Missus! You listen-a me and shut up right now!"
"Lisey, stop!" Amanda cried.
She paid no attention to either of them. "Did you two discuss your favorite Scott Landon books . . . when Cole was medicated enough to talk rationally, that is? Bet you did. He liked Empty Devils best, right? Sure. And you liked The Coaster's Daughter. Just a couple of Deep Space Cowboys talking books while they got a few repairs in their smucking guidance systems--"
"That's enough, I said!" Swimming out of the gloom. Swimming out of it like a diver coming up from black water into the green shallows, goggles and all. Of course divers didn't hold paper bags in front of their chests as if to shield their hearts from the blows of cruel widows who knew too much. "I ain't goan warn you again--"
Lisey took no notice. She didn't know if Amanda was still holding the gun and no longer cared. She was delirious. "Did you and Cole talk about Scott's books in group therapy? Sure you did. About the father stuff. And then, after they let you out, there was Woodsmucky, just like a Daddy in a Scott Landon book. One of the good Daddies. After they let you out of the nutbarn. After they let you out of the scream factory. After they let you out of the laughing academy, as the saying i--"
With a shriek, Dooley dropped his paper sack (it clanked) and launched himself at Lisey. She had time to think, Yes. This is why I needed my hands free.
Amanda also shrieked, hers overlapping his. Of the three of them only Lisey was calm, because only Lisey knew precisely what she was doing . . . if not precisely why. She made no effort to run. She opened her arms to Jim Dooley and caught him like a fever.
3
He would have knocked her to the floor and landed on top of her--Lisey had no doubt this was his intention--if not for the desk. She let his weight carry her back, smelling the sweat in his hair and on his skin. She also felt the curve of the goggles digging into her temple and heard a low, rapid clicking sound just below her left ear.
That's his teeth, she thought. That's his teeth, trying for my neck.
Her butt smacked against the long side of Dumbo's Big Jumbo. Amanda screamed again.
There was a loud report and a brief brilliant flash of light.
"Leave her alone, motherfucker!"
Big talk but she fired into the ceiling, Lisey thought, and tightened her locked hands behind Dooley's neck as he bent her backward like a dance-partner at the end of a particularly amorous tango. She could smell gunsmoke, her ears were ringing, and she could feel his cock, heavy and almost fully erect.
"Jim," she whispered, holding him. "I'll give you what you want. Let me give you what you want."
His grip loosened a little. She sensed his confusion. Then, with a feline yowl, Amanda landed on his back and Lisey was forced down again, now almost sprawling on the desk. Her spine gave a warning creak, but she could see the oval smudge of his face--enough to make out how afraid he looked. Was he afraid of me all along? she wondered.
Now or never, little Lisey.
She sought his eyes behind the weird circles of glass, found them, locked in on them. Amanda was still yowling like a cat on a hot griddle, and Lisey could see her fists hammering Dooley's shoulders. Both fists. So she had fired that one shot into the ceiling, then dropped the gun. Ah well, maybe it was for the best.
"Jim." God, his weight was killing her. "Jim."
His head dipped, as if drawn by the lock of her eyes and the force of her will. For a moment Lisey didn't think she would be able to reach him, even so. Then, with a final desperate lunge--Pafko at the wall, Scott would have said, quoting God knew who--she did. She breathed the meat and onions he'd eaten for his supper as she settled her mouth on his. She used her tongue to force his lips open, kissed harder, and so passed on her second sip of the pool. She felt the sweetness go. The world she knew wavered and then began to go with it. It happened fast. The walls turned transparent and that other world's mingled scents filled her nose: frangipani, bougainvillea, roses, night-blooming cereus.
"Geromino," she said into his mouth, and as if it had only been waiting for that word, the solid weight of the desk beneath her turned to rain. A moment later it was gone completely. She fell; Jim Dooley fell on top of her; Amanda, still screaming, fell on top of both.
Bool, Lisey thought. Bool, the end.
4
She landed on a thick mat of grass that she knew so well she might have been rolling around in it her whole life. She had time to register the sweetheart trees and then the breath was driven out of her in a large and noisy woof. Black spots danced before her in the sunset-colored air.
She might have passed out if Dooley hadn't rolled away. Amanda he shrugged off his back as if she had been no more than a troublesome kitten. Dooley surged to his feet, staring first down the hill carpeted with purple lupin and then turning the other way, toward the sweetheart trees that formed the outrider of what Paul and Scott Landon had called the Fairy Forest. Lisey was shocked by Dooley's aspect. He looked like some weird flesh-and-hair-covered skull. After a moment she realized it was his narrowness of face combined with evening shadows, and what had happened to his goggles. The lenses hadn't made the trip to Boo'ya Moon. His eyes stared out through the holes where they had been. His mouth hung open. Spit ran between the upper and lower lips in silver strings.
"You always . . . liked . . . Scott's books," Lisey said. She sounded like a winded runner, but her breath was returning and the black flecks in front of her eyes were disappearing. "How do you like his world, Mr. Dooley?"
"Where . . ." His mouth moved, but he couldn't finish.
"Boo'ya Moon, on the edge of the Fairy Forest, near the grave of Scott's brother, Paul."
She knew that Dooley would be as dangerous to her (and to Amanda) over here as in Scott's study once such wits as he possessed came back to him, but she still allowed herself a moment to look over that long purple slope, and at the darkening sky. Once more the sun was going down in orange fire while the full moon rose opposite. She thought, as she had before, that the mixture of heat and cold silver might kill her with its feverish beauty.
Not that it was beauty she had to worry about. A sunburned hand fell on her shoulder.
"What are you doin-a me, Missus?" Dooley asked. His eyes bulged inside the empty goggles. "You tryin to hypno-lize me? Because it won't work."
"Not at all, Mr. Dooley," Lisey said. "You wanted what was Scott's, didn't you? And surely this is better than any unpublished story, or even cutting a woman with her own can opener, wouldn't you say? Look! A whole other world! A place made of imagination! Dreams spun into whole cloth! Of course it's dangerous in the forest--dangerous everywhere at night, and it's almost night now--but I'm confident that a brave and strapping lunatic such as yourself--"
She saw what he meant to do, saw her murder clearly in those weird socketed eyes, and cried out her sister's name . . . in alarm, yes, but also starting to laugh. In spite of everything. Laughing at him. Partly because he looked pretty silly with the glass gone out of his goggles, mostly because at this mortal moment the punchline of some ancient whore-house joke had popped into her mind: Hey, youse guys, your sign fell down! The fact that she couldn't remember the joke itself only made it funnier.
Then her breath was gone and Lisey could no longer laugh. She could only rattle.
5
She clawed at Dooley's face with her short but far from nonexistent nails and left three bleeding gouges in one cheek, but the grip on her throat didn't loosen--if anything, it tightened down. The rattle coming from her was louder now, the sound of some primitive mechanical device with dirt in its gears. Mr. Silver's potato-grader, maybe.
Amanda, where the smuck are you? she thought, and then Amanda was there. Pounding her fists on Dooley's back and shoulders had done no good. This time she fell on her knees, grasped his crotch through his jeans with her wounded hands . . . and twisted.
Dooley howled and thrust Lisey away. She flew into the high grass, fell on her back, and then scrambled to her feet again, gasping breath down her fiery throat. Dooley was bent over with his head down and his hands between his legs, a painful pose that brought Lisey a clear memory of a seesaw accident in the schoolyard and Darla saying matter-of-factly: "That's just one of the reasons I'm glad I'm not a boy."
Amanda charged him.
"Manda, no!" Lisey shouted, but too late. Even hurt, Dooley was miserably quick. He evaded Amanda easily, then clubbed her aside with one bony fist. He tore off the useless goggles with the other hand and threw them into the grass: he slang them forth. All pretense at sanity had left those blue eyes. He could have been the dead thing in Empty Devils, climbing implacably out of the well to exact its revenge.
"I dunno just where we are, but I tell you one thing, Missus: you ain't never goan home."
"Unless you catch me, you're the one who's never going home," Lisey said. Then she laughed again. She was frightened--terrified--but it felt good to laugh, perhaps because she understood that her laughter was her knife. Every peal from her burning throat drove the point deeper into his flesh.
"Don't you run 'at hee-haw sound at me, you bitch, don't you goddam dare!" Dooley roared, and ran at her.
Lisey turned to flee. She had taken no more than two running steps toward the path into the woods when she heard Dooley scream in pain. She looked over her shoulder and saw him on his knees. There was something jutting out of his upper arm, and his shirt was darkening rapidly around it. Dooley staggered to his feet and plucked at it with a curse. The jutting thing wiggled but didn't come out. Lisey saw a flash of yellow, running away from it in a line. Dooley cried out again, then seized the thing stuck in his flesh with his free hand.
Lisey understood. It came in a flash, too perfect not to be true. He had started to run after her, but Amanda had tripped him before he could do more than get started. And he had come down on Paul Landon's wooden grave-marker. The crosspiece was sticking out of his bicep like an oversized pin. Now he yanked it free and threw it aside. More blood flowed from the open wound, scarlet creeping down his shirtsleeve to the elbow. Lisey knew she had to make sure Dooley didn't turn his rage on Amanda, who was lying he
lplessly in the grass almost at his feet.
"Can't catch a flea, can't catch me!" Lisey chanted, drawing on playground lore she didn't even know she remembered. Then she stuck her tongue out at Dooley, twiddling her fingers in her ears for good measure.
"You bitch! You cunt!" Dooley screamed, and charged.
Lisey ran. She wasn't laughing now, she was finally too afraid to laugh, but she was still wearing a terrified smile as her feet found the path and she ran into the Fairy Forest, where it was already night.
6
The marker that said was gone, but as Lisey ran down the first stretch--the path a dim white line that seemed to float amid the darker masses of the surrounding trees--broken cackles arose from ahead of her. Laughers, she thought, and chanced a look back over her shoulder, thinking that if her friend Dooley heard those babies, he might change his mind about--
But no. Dooley was still there, visible in the stutters of fading light because he had gained on her, he was really flying along in spite of the black blood now coating his left sleeve from shoulder to wrist. Lisey tripped over a root in the path, almost lost her balance, and somehow managed to keep it, in part by reminding herself that Dooley would be on top of her five seconds after she fell. The last thing she'd feel would be his breath, the last thing she'd smell would be the curdling aroma of the surrounding trees as they changed to their more dangerous night-selves, and the last thing she'd hear would be the insane laughter of the hyena-things that lived deeper in the forest.
I can hear him panting. I can hear that because he's gaining. Even running at top speed--and I won't be able to keep this up for long--he can run a little bit faster than I can. Why doesn't that squeeze in the balls she fetched him slow him down? Why doesn't the blood-loss?
The answer to those questions was simple, the logic stark: they were slowing him down. Without them, she'd be caught already. Lisey was in third gear. She tried to find fourth and couldn't. Apparently she didn't have a fourth gear. Behind her, the harsh and rapid sound of Jim Dooley's breathing grew closer still, and she knew that in only a minute, maybe less, she would feel the first brush of his fingers on the back of her shirt.