"I'm gonna go to the funeral!"
"No, Billy."
"Yes I am, Mom! I have to!"
Dad talked, his voice low. "Billy, you're in the hospital. You aren't even near well yet. You have bandages all over your bottom and you—"
His brothers were all yelling and screaming. He had to go!
"I can go in my bandages. Don't you want me ever to get well?"
That shut them right up, as he had figured it would. Sally, who was sitting over by the window working a puzzle and not saying anything, gave him a wink. She knew all about why he had to go to the funeral.
"We'll have our own funeral, Billy," Dr. Klass said. He was a nice guy, but he could dork out at a moment's notice. He had just dorked out.
Billy knew how to shut him up. "Gee, I'll make the gravestone and we can use a real coffin," he said like he was all excited about it. "I know they have coffins in hospitals for when people die."
"Ah—"
He looked up at Mom and Dad. "I've gotta go. It's real important to me."
His father bowed his head, then came down on the bed with him and Mom. They held each other's hands.
"I'll navigate," Sally said.
It was a long drive to Anaheim, and they had to start out right away. Mom drove, Dad sat beside her. Billy lay with his head in Sally's lap. Although she claimed she was finding lice and cooties and stuff, he knew she was just rubbing his head.
Billy had never been to a graveyard before. When they got there all kinds of reporters came thundering up yelling questions. Ever since he had seen himself on TV in just his underpants Billy didn't like those jerks.
It wasn't a very good graveyard, he decided. The headstones were mostly small. Here and there somebody had left a few withered flowers in a bottle. When the wind blew, sand swept the stones like dry rain.
Barton's grave site was the only active spot in the whole enormous place. There were three folding chairs, a couple of men in white T-shirts with shovels in their hands, another man in a frayed black suit.
There was also a woman, as Billy had hoped there would be. His brothers had been worried she wouldn't come. He could feel their relief.
The woman sat very still on one of the folding chairs, her brows knitted in the merciless sun. All the time as Billy and his family were coming closer, she watched them.
By the time they had arrived she was staring down at her own feet. She stood. "Make it quick, please, Reverend," she said. Her voice sounded so much like Barton's it made Billy want to vomit.
The man opened a paperback of the Bible and read in a nervous voice: "In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves—"
"Two verses after," the woman snapped. She blinked her eyes. "Where I marked."
The Reverend cleared his throat. "Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish . . ."
Billy heard his brothers repeating in the air, "and the grasshoppers shall be a burden, and desire shall fail. .." He joined his living voice to their dead ones: "because man goeth to his long home ..." which was all he remembered.
Barton's mother clutched her hands together, looking straight at him. She looked sad, but also scared.
Dad raised his head. Billy saw the pride that had come into his face, and was glad. "Or ever the silver cord be loosed," Dad and Mom said together, "or the golden bowl be broken—"
They stopped, silenced by the power of the same deep feelings that had compelled Billy to bring them here in the first place.
Barton's mother spoke in tiny words. "Then shall the dust— the dust—" Her composure was broken by the most desperate grief.
She covered her face and shook.
The coffin was lowered by a machine with an angry, screaming whine. Billy watched it drop into the dark hole and with it his life with Barton, and the dim life before. He had come here seeking an ending. He asked his heart, 'Do I hate Barton?' and heard a silence that let him raise his eyes from the grave.
Barton's mother recovered herself enough to throw a clod of soil into the hole. Billy heard it rattle on the coffin.
Now it was time to perform his mission. His brothers gathered around him. They were excited. He had taken them on a big adventure. He dug in his pocket and pulled out the fourteen construction paper notes. On each he had written a name. One by one he dropped them into the grave. Sally, who had helped him make them, said his brothers' names with him.
"Chuck."
"Danny."
"Jack."
"Timmy."
"Andy."
Dad added his voice.
"Ezra."
Mom did, too. Their chant was ragged because only he and Sally knew the names by heart.
"Liam."
"Unknown Child Number One."
"Unknown Child Number Two."
The sweating preacher and the two workers joined their voices.
"Unknown Child Number Three."
"Unknown Child Number Four."
"Unknown Child Number Five."
Mrs. Royal started to do it, too.
"No," Billy said. "Not you."
She nodded her head. She whispered, "No."
"Unknown Child Number Six."
"Unknown Child Number Seven."
Billy stopped. He looked to Barton's mother. He had a last note, which he handed to her.
When she saw what it said she gasped as if stabbed.
"Read it aloud," he told her.
She shook her head. Her eyes were closed tight.
"Read it," one of the workers said.
She muttered something. Then she cleared her throat. "Billy."
"OK." Billy nodded at the grave.
"I want to keep it," she said in a quavering voice.
"Throw it in!"
Billy watched it flutter down, twirling round and round and round, until it hit the side of the coffin and slid into the dark.
A crow rose from a tree, wheeled screaming over the party, and strove for the sky on its black wings. Billy looked from the cheap, gray coffin in its hole up to the raucous, flapping creature in the sky.
"I'm ready to go," he said to his parents.
His father took his hand. In the rough coolness of his fingers Billy felt the future, he and Sally growing up, Mom and Dad getting old and dying. The thought did not upset him. On the contrary, it filled him with a joy that seemed deeper than his own soul, as if it entered him not only from his father's trembling hand, but from the whole contents of the world.
When they got into the car together, Billy was fascinated by details for the first time since his passion. He noticed the way the radio worked and the fact that it had no cassette player. He noticed that there was a climate control as well as a cruise control. He noticed the hole where the cigarette lighter was supposed to be—and wondered what would happen if he put his finger in.
As they pulled away from the curb Billy looked back. Mrs. Royal remained at the grave. She stood watching them leave, her body as narrow as a stake. One hand came up, hesitating, tentative, as if to wave. But she did not wave. Instead her fingers touched her cheek, trembled against the empty skin.
He closed his eyes, listening to the kind old hum of the tires.
By the time they turned onto the highway the day had reached its moment of high sun. Everywhere the shadows were in retreat. Sally started to sing:
"The ants go marching two by two,
The little one stops to go to the zoo —"
"Those aren't the right words."
"You're supposed to make up the words, Billy."
"Are not."
"Are!"
"Are absolutely not no way uh-uh."
"Well, I do!"
Billy sang, "The little one stops to do some doo!"
"Billy Neary, that's gross!"
The journey back had begun.
Author's Note
The theft of a child is perhaps the cruelest of all crimes,
unique for its spectacular inhumanity and corrosive potency. Fortunately it is not an everyday crime; neither, however, should it be ignored. The numbers do not matter; the spectre of this crime diminishes as does no other the joy of parenthood and the innocence of the young. Childhood is not immortal; childhood could die. If it does, this will have been among its harshest poisons.
Readers wishing more information about how to help missing and exploited children can write:
The National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children
Publications Department
2101 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22201
—Whitley Strieber
(Continued from front flap)
forty-four-year-old, fat and sweaty, searching the world for his own lost boyhood. When he sees Billy he knows that he has found the extraordinary creature he has been looking for—the perfect child that he never was. And he knows that in a matter of a few short hours he will have Billy all to himself, to love, to cherish— But Barton Royal is a very angry man. And Billy is very small.
Though Mary and Mark Neary can hardly believe that their son is gone, they suspect with every passing minute that he is in ever deepening danger. But even their worst fears cannot comprehend the gruesome and chilling reality of Barton's hideous world and the secret black room beneath his house where Billy is held prisoner.
Presented from both Billy's and his kidnapper's points of view, Billy is a story so terrifying—and yet so passionately committed to the value of the human spirit—that it will leave you breathless.
Whitley Strieber has long been hailed as a master of suspense. In Billy, he delivers a psychological thriller that will establish him as a writer of awesome versatility and power.
Whitley Strieber is the author of the bestsellers Communion, Transformation, and Majestic. He lives in New York City.
Jacket design by Ann Spinelli
Jacket illustration © 1990 by Don Brautigam
Photograph of the author
© by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Printed in the United States of America
This book made available by the Internet Archive.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
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Table of Contents
Back Cover
Whitley Strieber, Billy
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