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Mike looked up as the bell above the door jangled and he saw Crow come in looking dirty and defeated.
“Crow!” He hurried over, and actually had to support Crow across the floor to the tall chair behind the counter. “What’s wrong?”
Crow sat on the chair, arms on thighs, head low, breathing like he’d just finished a marathon. “Sorry, kiddo,” he gasped when he could manage it. “Feeling a little out of it. No sleep, no food, bad hospital coffee. ”
“Stay here,” Mike ordered, then went over and locked the front door, came back, and helped Crow into the adjoining apartment and down onto the couch. Crow’s three cats, Pinetop, Muddy Whiskers, and Koko, rushed over but then slowed to a stop when they smelled Crow’s clothes. One by one they sniffed, turned up their noses, and stalked off. Crow, steadier now that he was sitting down, looked at them and then at Mike. “When you stink so bad you offend animals that lick their balls for fun and sniff each other’s asses, then you really are in sorry shape. ”
“Well,” Mike said, “fair’s fair. You smell pretty bad. ”
“Thanks, kid, I knew you’d have my back. ” Crow picked up the CD remote and aimed it at the big Nakamichi Home Audio system. He had five disks in the trays, a mix of classic rock and blues. Leadbelly started it off by singing “Bourgeois Blues,” and the disks that followed went from The Ides of March’s “Vehicle” to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” to Albert King’s “Born under a Bad Sign,” all of it wrapped up by Big Bill Broonzy singing about “Trouble in Mind. ” It was the music he’d listened to before setting out to Dark Hollow with Newton, and he almost turned it off, but didn’t. The music wasn’t any kind of threat. The music was a safe place and even the first few notes of Leadbelly’s rough voice were immensely soothing.
Mike brought him a bottle of Gatorade and a PowerBar. “Here, these might help until I can get some food delivered. ”
“Thanks, Mike. ” He looked at the bottle. “My favorite flavor. Green. ”
Mike sat on the arm of the guest chair. “Do you want to talk about, um, anything? I mean, I heard some stuff on the news, and a lot of customers came in asking about you, and you told me some stuff, but—”
“Can it wait until I have a shower?”
“Sure,” Mike said. “You don’t…uh…need help in the bathroom or anything, do you?”
“No, and let us both give thanks for that. ”
“Amen,” Mike said, and went back into the store.
2
Vic finished his shower and dressed in fresh clothes, going slowly through the steps of washing, drying, and dressing. His body hurt as if he’d been stomped by ten skinheads wearing Doc Martens. When he pissed his urine stream was tinted red, and when he brushed his teeth he spit as much blood as toothpaste into the sink. He blew his nose carefully to clear away the clots of blood, and used a rag and then Q-tips to clean his ears. His old clothes—stained with shit, piss, and blood—he dumped in a black plastic trash bag he got from the hall closet. He wouldn’t even bother making Lois clean them up. He’d just throw them the hell out. Shoes, too. He wanted to traces, no reminders. Never, not once in his whole life, not since he’d first met Ubel Griswold in 1970, had Vic been punished. The memory of it—what he could remember after the blackout—was so humiliating, so traumatic that all he felt inside was a vast empty sadness.
He finished buttoning his shirt and then sat down on the edge of the bed, putting his face in his hands, feeling lower than he ever had.
“What do I have to do to make it up to you?” he whispered. “You tell me, Boss, and I’ll tear down Heaven for you. I’ll burn this whole town to ashes. Anything. You just tell me what I have to do to make it right. ”
The voice—that sweet, dark voice—was there in an instant. The presence of it after so much terrible silence was almost as jarring as that scream of rage had been and Vic toppled forward onto hands and knees, then collapsed onto his forearms so that his brow was pressed into the carpet.
“Tell me!” he begged.
With a whisper as soft as bat wings on an autumn night, Ubel Griswold named the price for redemption. It hit Vic hard—harder than he thought it would. Neverthless he closed his eyes and kissed the floor. He would do anything—even that—for his god.
3
Ruger touched the handle, feeling the roiling darkness beyond the door. Vic be damned, he was going out to hunt. To kill and to recruit; to build the armies of the Red Wave. He turned the knob, forcing it against the tumblers that twisted and screamed beneath his hand. Metal pinged and snapped and the door sagged open in defeat.
With a snarl of delight he pushed the door open and vanished into the night.
4
Terry Wolfe’s face was bruised meat, his body debris. He was ruined, smashed, nearly gone. The vitals on the machines sagged, and the brain activity was just above the level where families begin to discuss pulling the plug.
Yet there are some levels of the brain, some chambers of the sleep center that have thicker doors, stouter walls, fewer entries. The deepest dreams live there, playing out in shadowed corridors and in cellars where no light has ever shone. There are cobwebs and spiders down there; there are blind rats in those catacombs, and colorless things that wriggle in the relentless dark. No machine can record those dreams, no meter will ping or beep when something scampers through those places.
When the doctors and nurses came into his room to look at the patterns on his charts their faces fell into sadness, their eyes showed the defeat each of them felt. Everyone loved Terry, everyone respected him. He was Pine Deep, but it was pretty clear that Terry Wolfe had left them, had caught the night train out of town, and now all they could do—the sum effect of their years of training, their collective experience, the weight of their science—was to watch and wait for him to die. Because Terry had left.
Yet, he hadn’t. Nor had the beast.
Over and over again, through lightless passageways and darkened dungeon rooms, into one blind alley after another, in the doorless maze of his own inner oubliette, Terry Wolfe ran screaming and the beast, always hungry, followed after.
Chapter 12
