The hands that now gripped the steering wheel were not his hands—at least not the hands that he remembered. These were bloated and swollen—covered with red boils. This body was not his either. His growing gut had burst out of his pants in the middle of the night. He was forced to find a truck stop and confiscate larger clothes from a trucker whose life had come to a sudden and unexpected end. Now Dillon had to roll up the pant legs as well—he swore that he was an inch shorter than the day before. Inside he could feel many, many hungers now, coiled within him, competing for his will, all screaming to be fed.
The wrecking-hunger, however, still screamed the loudest, and its final feeding was all that mattered—a feeding so great that when it was done, there would be nothing left to devour.
Back in the Burton Library, he had studied the maps, the charts, the statistics. He had worked calculations that a supercomputer would have shied away from, and he had pulled out an answer, sifting it through a secret sixth sense. The answer he came up with was this: of all the locations in the world from which to set up the ultimate chain reaction, only one rested in North America. The epicenter of destruction was in Washington state, in the shadow of Mount St. Helens. Here, in this secret fulcrum of human existence, Dillon would have to find a human fuse. It would have to be someone with no ties to the outside world and filled with a lonely anger. Someone separate and alone. It would have to be a hermit, whose destiny Dillon could aim with the pinpoint accuracy of a sniper.
Although the calculations that brought him there were complex, the actual plan was simple: Dillon would find his hermit, then find the hermit’s weakness and fire him toward a nearby city. In the city, there would be a gathering place—a bar, perhaps—where this man would create a chain of events that would drive everyone there beyond the limit of their sanity. Those who survived would carry the insanity home with them.
At least one would board a plane.
At least ten of the people on that plane would board other planes, and in this way, the seed of destruction would be planted within the minds of thousands of travelers, moving in hundreds of different directions. In a matter of days, people around the world would suddenly be faced by the exact chain of events that would bring them to their breaking points and drive them mad. Millions of patterns collapsing like a house of cards.
In the end, the destruction of mankind would not come as a great nuclear holocaust. It would not come as a meteor splitting the earth in half. It would come from a simple thought whispered in one lonely man’s ear. A single thought, which would breed a rage of chaos that would sweep across the globe in a swift chain reaction.
Dillon remembered seeing a film once about a great steel bridge that had violently collapsed, brought down by mere resonance—the simple vibrations of the air around it. Dillon’s thought would surely resonate and bring down something far more mighty than a steel bridge. He was the hammer that would fracture every thought mankind had ever had, making civilization crumble to its very foundations.
Dillon pondered how a single thought—the right thought—had always had such power to create. Simple thoughts pushed in the right direction at the right time.
The idea of the wheel; the thought of the written word—simple ideas that had picked up momentum across the globe, swelled like a tidal wave and created civilization. How fitting that a single thought was all it took to bring it crashing down.
The power of such an act could only be surmounted by the power released when everything fell—power that would feed the wrecking-hunger like it had never before been fed. Just imagining it made Dillon drool, and he longed for the great process to begin.
For an instant the image of his dead parents flitted through his mind.
Are you proud of me now, Mom and Dad?
He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he floored the accelerator, and the engine’s powerful roar drowned out the question before it could resonate in his mind.
Part V
Between the Walls
16. THE HERMIT
* * *
SLAYTON.
He didn’t need a first name.
Most of the time he didn’t need a name at all. He’d only drive his rusty pickup down into Cougar every few weeks or so for supplies, paying with ancient, crumpled bills, then he would disappear again down a dirt road that passed from life into death, from green trees into the dead valley in the shadow of the smoking mountain.
He was forty.
His skin was beginning to age, his hair beginning to gray—but inside, his thoughts and ideas, his very perception of the world had never grown beyond age eight or nine.
He was slow.
Not only in the way he thought, but in the way he moved. He had come to accept this as the way of things, and it only bothered him when he was among others, whose thoughts and actions were quicker. For that reason, he didn’t care much for people—being around people drained him—made him feel less of a man. So he steered clear of them and made himself the center of his own solitary universe, where things moved at his own speed.
He learned to care for himself at an early age.
He built a shack in the woods, and when the timber company that owned the land kicked him off, he moved, and built another. And then another. Now, he finally thought he had found a place where no one would bother him—a dead forest gray and bleak that no one wanted. Here they would finally leave him alone.
He drank too much.
A habit he had picked up from his father, years and years ago. When the wind would blow, and the alcohol would swim through his mind, he would swear there were ghosts in the trees, like in stories his ma used to tell. Ghosts and demons were very real to Slayton. And so he was not entirely surprised when the Devil appeared at his door one bleak October evening.
The door creaked open to reveal him standing there. Slayton didn’t make a move. He just sat at his table, holding his half-full bottle of whiskey. The other half was already in his head. Slayton knew who it was without him having to say a word.
“You must be Slayton.”
“How do you know my name?”
“They told me about you in town.”
The Devil did not look quite the way Slayton expected. He was fat and young. A redheaded teenager with an awful complexion.
“I’ve been looking for you,” the Devil said.
“I’ll bet you have.”
Slayton invited the Devil in, watching him carefully as he moved. Darkness surrounded him like a black hole. Shadow flowed in his wake, rippling like a dark cape. A living fabric of death.
The Devil closed the door behind himself, and suddenly fear and anger began to overtake Slayton—but he bit it back, determined to stand toe to toe with the Devil. Slayton reached up, got a glass and poured some whiskey as the visitor sat down at the table. His darkness ebbed and flowed on the table like waves lapping the shore.
“Drink with me?” asked Slayton.
The Devil-boy shook his head, pushing the glass away.
“What’s the matter? Not old enough?” And Slayton let out a rough wheezing laugh at the thought of the Devil being underage. That was a good one!
“No time,” said his guest, looking into Slayton’s eyes, probing his thoughts. “No time, I’m in a hurry.”
Only then did Slayton notice that this Devil-boy across the table was sweating something awful. He was breathing quickly, and shallowly as if he was out of breath—as if he was panicked, but trying to hide it.
“What’s yer angle?” asked Slayton.
“Angle?”
“If ya come to take me, how come y’aint done it? Go on—get it over with. I ain’t got no patience for the likes a you!”
The Devil-boy smiled a crooked, leprous smile. “You have no idea how very important you are,” he said. “I wouldn’t touch a hair on your head.”
“Then what are ya here fer?”
“Dinner,” said the Devil.
Slayton shook his head, and the world spun in circles one way and then th
e other. He took another swig of whiskey and left to see what there was to eat in the kitchen. What was the Devil likely to eat? he wondered. Beef jerky? Saltines? When he stumbled back out of the kitchen, he saw his visitor searching through his munitions locker, which had been locked.
“You get your nose outta there!” shouted Slayton, but the fat Devil-boy didn’t move.
“You collect weapons?” asked the Devil-boy.
“What business is it of yours?”
The Devil-boy swung the door wide to reveal Slayton’s cache—a regular arsenal of all types of weaponry from rifle to pistol, from Bowie knife to crossbow. All shiny and clean.
“Most of ’em never been fired,” said Slayton. “All loaded, though. You never know when you might need one.”
“It’s a fine collection,” said the Devil-boy. Then he turned to the many items on Slayton’s shelves. Old family pictures. Knickknacks from here and there. He brushed his finger across the dusty shelf, and his eyes darted back and forth, looking at everything—first everything on the shelf, then everything in the room. His eyes moved so quickly, Slayton couldn’t keep up with him. Those awful blue-green eyes—they were invading him, weren’t they? They were violating all of his personal things. Slayton could not stand for this, so he grabbed one of the many weapons stacked in his closet—a rifle—and aimed it at the Devil.
“I don’t got no dinner for you,” Slayton said. “You’d better go now.”
The Devil-boy ignored Slayton. Instead, he tilted his head slightly, as if listening . . . then he sniffed the air . . . and then it was as if something snapped into place. He turned his eyes to Slayton once more and fixed his gaze.
“You loved your mother very much, didn’t you,” said the Devil. “It’s sad she died so young.”
“Wh . . . what do you know about it?”
“I know enough. I know your daddy worked the timberline and was always gone. I know he never gave a rat’s ass about you. I know how he and most everyone else called you names . . . but your ma, she defended you against all those cruel people, didn’t she?”
Slayton lowered the rifle a bit and nodded slightly.
“She had a special name for you. Something secret—between the two of you. What was it?”
Slayton swallowed hard and lowered the gun to his side. How does he know this?
“Little Prince,” said Slayton. “Just like the book.”
The fat Devil-boy smiled. “When she died, your daddy just left you. How old were you, fifteen?”
“Just turned it,” said Slayton. “Then he drunk hisself to death. I was glad, too.”
“I know you were.” The Devil began to move closer and Slayton couldn’t turn his eyes away.
“This is important, Slayton. After your father died, you lived in a city for a year or so, before you moved back into the woods . . . . Tell me the name of the city.”
Slayton bit his lower lip to keep it from quivering. The Devil knows everything, don’t he?
“Come on, Slayton. Tell me the name of the city.”
“Tacoma,” said Slayton weakly.
“Tacoma!” The Devil smiled in some sort of deep relief. “Listen to me, Slayton,” he said. “I’m going to make you the most important man in the world, and all you have to do is listen to me.”
“I’m listening,” said Slayton, his gaze locked onto the Devil’s swimming blue eyes.
Then the Devil got as close as he possibly could to Slayton’s ear, without touching him, and whispered in the faintest of voices:
“There’s someone in Tacoma . . . who owes you.”
It took a moment to register . . . and then the words hit home, ringing as true as a church bell in Slayton’s mind. Every fiber of his soul resonated with the thought, until he felt as if his very brain would be rattled apart. Yes! Someone in Tacoma did owe him. He didn’t know who it was, but whoever it was, Slayton would find him and make him pay!
Even Slayton could sense that this was the start of a grand chain of events that would greatly affect his life and the lives of many, many people.
He was about to turn to his munitions locker.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
WINSTON HAD GRASPED THE gun in his pocket for so long, its cold handle had grown warm in his palm. A tip in the nearest town led them to this shack, and now as they kicked in the crooked door, Winston held the revolver out in front of him, afraid to pull the trigger, but also afraid not to. Everything was crucial now. No mistakes could be made.
The room was dim as they burst in, and it was hard to see. The others filed in, creating commotion, getting in the way.
There were two figures in the room, and in a moment he had identified which one was Dillon—but as Winston’s eyes adjusted to the dim lamplight, he hesitated. They all hesitated, because they could not believe what they saw.
“Madre de Dios!” cried Lourdes.
Dillon barely looked human—his body had bloated like a balloon, his face was swollen with festering blisters. His eyes were blazing sapphire holes.
Winston could feel the presence of the creature that had laid waste to his own soul in there as well. It was true—all of their monstrosities were now inside of Dillon!
“No!” screamed Dillon. He tried to make a break for it, but the five of them lunged at him, trapping him in a web of ten hands. He twisted free of their grasp and backed into the corner, a terrified, caged animal.
Across the room, the old hermit could only stand there by the open closet door and gawk, while the little boy, Carter, looked in from the cabin’s threshold with his awful empty eyes.
“Do it!” Tory shouted to Winston. “Do it now!”
“It’s too late!” Dillon screamed. “It doesn’t matter now, whatever you do won’t matter!”
“Shut up!” shouted Winston.
“It’s too late!” cackled Dillon again.
Winston stared at this creature in the dark corner and raised his gun. The plan, the plan, follow the plan.
Winston tightened his two-handed grip on the revolver, steadied his shaking hands, then leveled his aim and pulled his trigger.
The roar from the six beasts drowned out any sound the gun could have made.
A flash of light—a flash of darkness—shadowy figures leaping in six different directions—screaming—blue flames—tentacles—horrid fangs! Six dark shadows clinging to the walls screeching and wailing in fury . . .
. . . And in fear.
“They’re afraid of us!” shouted Tory. “Look at them!”
The beasts recoiled from the kids in the room, leaping, slithering, flying from wall to wall.
“Don’t let them inside you!” shouted Michael. “Fight to keep them out!” Although none of them knew how to do that, they willed themselves to stand firm against the raging, snarling shadows, and the creatures did not dare come near them.
Without a host, the beasts could not survive long in this world.
And so they left it.
It was something the kids could not have anticipated. The six hideous leech-things came together in the center of the room, and with a blast that rocked the weak foundations of the tiny cabin, they ripped the world open.
A ragged hole tore in the fabric of space, and the creatures escaped through it, into blind darkness.
The hole! thought Winston, before he even understood what it was. We’re all too close to the—
Dillon’s limp body slipped into the gaping breach—Deanna grabbed him, losing her balance. Winston caught her, and before any of them knew what was happening they had all grabbed hold of one another in a twisted huddle as they lost their footing and slipped into the vortex, from light into darkness.
And for an instant . . . just an instant they felt it:
Wholeness.
The six of them touching.
Complete and invincible.
Perfect and joyous.
An absolute union.
But the feeling ended when the six of them came through the da
rkness and hit a hard, unearthly ground, crashing apart once more like a fragile pieces of glass.
SLAYTON WATCHED THEM GO.
It had all happened so fast, he wasn’t sure what he had seen . . . but then he realized that it didn’t matter because
someone owed him in Tacoma.
Nothing mattered but that simple fact. Not the sudden disappearance of the Devil-boy and his devil friends. Not even the hole to Hell that still hung in the middle of the room. Nothing mattered because he had a mission.
Five minutes later, he had loaded most of his weapons into his pickup truck. He hadn’t noticed the little boy who stood there watching, until the boy spoke.
“Mister, you playin’ a game?” asked the boy, his head lolled to one side like he was half dead.
Slayton didn’t have time for questions, or things that got in his way, so he reached into his pickup bed and grabbed a loaded shotgun.
“Are you a cowboy, or an Indian?” asked the boy.
Slayton took aim at the boy. No one would get in his way between here and Tacoma.
17. UNWORLD
* * *
DILLON FELT HIS MIND, BODY, AND SOUL RIPPED APART, then a moment later he was torn from the world.
He never heard the gunshot, but the pain was very real. It exploded in the back of his head where the bullet must have left his skull.
All was still now. Silent. He felt his blood pouring from the back of his head, and he moved his hand toward his forehead, certain that this would be the last action of his life. He would touch his own shattered forehead and then die.
But there was no entry wound.
And in the back of his head, there was no exit wound either. There was only a sharp stone upon which he had fallen, and a gash on the back of his scalp that spilled blood onto sands that were already the color of blood.