1987 - Swan Song v4

by Robert McCammon

  “It’s picking up my heartbeat. It does that when you hold it.”

  “What is it, some kind of Japanese thing? Does it run on batteries?”

  Sister smiled wryly. “I don’t think so.”

  Paul reached out and poked it with a finger. He blinked. “It’s glass!”

  “That’s right.”

  “Wow,” he whispered. Then: “Would it be okay if I held it? Just for a second?”

  She was about to answer yes, but Doyle Halland’s promise stopped her. That monster could make itself look like anyone; any of the people in this room could be the Doyle Halland-thing, even Paul himself. But no; they’d left the monster behind them, hadn’t they? How did such a creature travel? “I followed the line of least resistance,” she recalled him saying. If he wore human skin, then he traveled as a human, too. She shuddered, imagining him walking after them in a pair of dead man’s shoes, walking day and night without a rest until the shoes flayed right off his feet, and then he stopped to yank another pair off a corpse because he could make any size fit…

  “Can I?” Paul urged.

  Where was Doyle Halland? Sister wondered. Out there in the dark right now, passing by on I-80? Up ahead a mile or two, running down another pair of shoes? Could he fly in the wind, with black cats on his shoulders and his eyes filled with flame, or was he a tattered highway hiker who looked for campfires burning in the night?

  He was behind them. Wasn’t he?

  Sister took a deep breath and offered the glass ring to Paul. He slid his hand around it.

  The light remained constant. The half that Paul held took on a new, quickened rhythm. He drew it to himself with both hands, and Sister let her breath out.

  “Tell me about this,” he said. “I want to know.”

  Sister saw the gems reflected in his eyes. On his face was a childlike amazement, as if the years were peeling rapidly away. In another few seconds he appeared a decade younger than his forty-three years. She decided then to tell him all of it.

  He was quiet for a long time when she’d finished. The ring’s pulsing had speeded up and slowed down all through the telling. “Tarot cards,” Paul said, still admiring the ring. “The skeleton with the scythe stands for Death.” With an effort, he looked up at her. “You know all that sounds crazy as hell, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. Here’s the scar where the crucifix was torn off. Artie saw the thing’s face change, too, though I doubt he’ll admit it to you. He hasn’t mentioned it since it happened, and I guess that’s for the best. And here’s the glass circle, missing one spike.”

  “Uh-huh. You haven’t been slipping into my Johnny Walker, have you?”

  “You know better. I know I see things when I look into the glass. Not every time, but enough to tell me I’ve either got a hummer of an imagination or—”

  “Or what?”

  “Or,” Sister continued, “there’s a reason for me to have it. Why should I see a Cookie Monster doll lying in the middle of a desert? Or a hand coming out of a hole? Why should I see a table with tarot cards on it? Hell, I don’t even know what the damned things are!”

  “They’re used to tell the future by gypsies. Or witches.” He summoned a half smile that made him almost handsome. It faded when she didn’t return it. “Listen, I don’t know anything about demons with roaming eyeballs or dreamwalking, but I do know this is one hell of a piece of glass. A couple of months ago, this thing would’ve been worth—” He shook his head. “Wow,” he said again. “The only reason you’ve got it is that you were in the right place at the right time. That’s magic enough, isn’t it?”

  “But you don’t believe what I’ve told you, right?”

  “I want to say the radiation’s unscrewed your bolts. Or maybe the nukes blew the lid right off Hell itself, and who can say what slithered out?” He returned the ring to her, and she put it back in the bag. “You take care of that. It may be the only beautiful thing left.”

  Across the room, Artie winced and sucked in his breath when he changed position, then lay still again.

  “He’s hurt inside,” Paul told her. “I’ve seen blood in his crap bucket. I figure he’s got a splintered rib or two, probably cutting something.” He worked his fingers, feeling the warmth of the glass circle in them. “I don’t think he looks too good.”

  “I know. I’m afraid whatever’s wrong may be infected.”

  “It’s possible. Shit, with these living conditions you could die from biting your fingernails.”

  “And there’s no medicine?”

  “Sorry. I popped the last Tylenol about three days before the bombs hit. A poem I was writing fell to pieces.”

  “So what are we going to do when the kerosene runs out?”

  Paul grunted. He’d been expecting that question, and he’d known no one would ask it but her. “We’ve got another week’s supply. Maybe. I’m more worried about the batteries for the radio. When they’re dead, these folks are going to freak. I guess then we’ll get out the scotch and have a party.” His eyes were old again. “Just play spin the bottle, and whoever gets lucky can check out first.”

  “Check out? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve got a .357 Magnum in that footlocker, lady,” he reminded her. “And a box of bullets. I’ve come close to using it on myself twice: once when my second wife left me for a kid half my age, took all my money and said my cock wasn’t worth two cents in a depression, and the other time when the poems I’d been working on for six years burned up along with the rest of my apartment. That was just after I got kicked off the staff at Millersville State College for sleeping with a student who wanted an A on her English Lit final.” He continued working his knuckles, avoiding Sister’s stare. “I’m not what you’d call a real good-luck type of guy. As a matter of fact, just about everything I’ve ever tried to do turned into a shitcake. So that Magnum’s been waiting for me for a long time. I’m overdue.”

  Sister was shocked by Paul’s matter-of-factness; he talked about suicide like the next step in a natural progression. “My friend,” she said firmly, “if you think I’ve come all this way to blow my brains out in a shack, you’re as crazy as I used to—” She bit her tongue. Now he was watching her with heightened interest.

  “So what are you going to do, then? Where are you going to go? Down to the supermarket for a few steaks and a six-pack? How about a hospital to keep Artie from bleeding to death inside? In case you haven’t noticed, there’s not much left out there.”

  “Well, I never would’ve taken you for a coward. I thought you had guts, but it must’ve been just sawdust stuffing.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  “What if they want to live?” Sister motioned toward the sleeping figures. “They look up to you. They’ll do what you tell them. So you’re going to tell them to check out?”

  “They can decide for themselves. But like I say, where are they going to go?”

  “Out there,” she said, and she nodded at the door. “Into the world—what’s left of it, at least. You don’t know what’s five or ten miles down the highway. There might be a Civil Defense shelter, or a whole community of people. The only way to find out is to get in your pick-up truck and drive west on I-80.”

  “I didn’t like the world as it used to be. I sure as hell don’t like it now.”

  “Who asked you to like it? Listen, don’t jive me. You need people more than you want to believe.”

  “Sure,” he said sarcastically. “Love ’em, every one.”

  “If you don’t need people,” Sister challenged, “why’d you go up to the highway? Not to kill wolves. You can do that from the front door. You went up to the highway looking for people, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe I wanted a captive audience for my poetry readings.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, when the kerosene’s gone, I’m heading west. Artie’s going with me.”

  “The wolves’ll like that, lady. They’ll be happy to escort you.”


  “I’m also taking your rifle,” she said. “And the rifle bullets.”

  “Thanks for asking my permission.”

  She shrugged. “All you need is the Magnum. I doubt if you’ll have to worry much about the wolves after you’re dead. I’d like to take the pick-up truck, too.”

  Paul laughed without mirth. “In case you’ve forgotten, I told you it doesn’t have much gas, and the brakes are screwed up. The radiator’s probably frozen solid by now, and I doubt if there’s a gasp in the battery.”

  Sister had never met anybody so full of reasons to sit on his ass and rot. “Have you tried the truck lately? Even if the radiator’s frozen, we can light a fire under the damned thing!”

  “You’ve got it all figured out, huh? Going to make it to the highway in a broken-down old truck and right around the bend will be a shining city full of Civil Defense people, doctors and policemen doing their best to put this fine country back together again. Bet you’ll find all the king’s horses and all the king’s men there, too! Lady, I know what’s around the bend! More fucking highway, that’s what!” He was working his knuckles harder, a bitter smile flickering at the edges of his mouth. “I wish you luck, lady. I really do.”

  “I don’t want to wish you luck,” she told him. “I want you to come with me.”

  He was silent. His knuckles cracked. “If there’s anything left out there,” he said, “it’s going to be worse than Dodge City, Dante’s Inferno, the Dark Ages and No Man’s Land all rolled up in one. You’re going to see things that’ll make your demon with the roaming eyeballs look like one of the Seven Dwarves.”

  “You like to play poker, but you’re not much of a gambler, are you?”

  “Not when the odds have teeth.”

  “I’m going west,” Sister said, giving it one last shot. “I’m taking your truck, and I’m going to find some help for Artie. Anybody who wants to can go with me. How about it?”

  Paul stood up. He looked at the sleeping figures on the floor. They trust me, he thought. They’ll do what I say. But we’re warm here, and we’re safe, and—

  And the kerosene would last only a week longer.

  “I’ll sleep on it,” he said huskily, and he went through the curtain to his own quarters.

  Sister sat listening to the shriek of the wind. Artie made another gasp of pain in his sleep, his fingers pressed to his side. From off in the distance came the thin, high howling of a wolf, the sound quavering like a violin note. Sister touched the glass circle through the duffel bag’s canvas and turned her thoughts toward tomorrow.

  Behind the green curtain, Paul Thorson opened the footlocker and picked up the .357 Magnum. It was a heavy gun, blue-black, with a rough dark brown grip. The gun felt as if it had been made for his hand. He turned the barrel toward his face and peered into its black, dispassionate eye. One squeeze, he thought, and it would all be over. So simple, really. The end of a fucked-up journey, and the beginning of… what?

  He drew a deep breath, released it and put the gun down. His hand came up with a bottle of scotch, and he took it to bed with him.

  Thirty-six

  Zulu warrior

  Josh dug the grave with a shovel from Leona Skelton’s basement, and they buried Davy in the back yard.

  While Leona bowed her head and said a prayer that the wind took and tore apart, Swan looked up and saw the little terrier sitting about twenty yards away, its head cocked to one side and its ears standing straight up. For the last week, she’d been leaving scraps of food for it on the porch steps; the dog had taken the food, but he never got close enough for Swan to touch. She thought that the terrier was resigned to living off scraps, but it wasn’t enough of a beggar yet to fawn and wag its tail for handouts.

  Josh had finally taken his bath. He could’ve sewn a suit from the dead skin that peeled away, and the water looked like he’d dumped a shovelful of dirt into it. He had washed the crusted blood and dirt away from the nub where his right ear had been; the blood had gotten down deep into the canal, and it took him a while to swab it all out. Afterward he realized he’d only been hearing through one ear; sounds were startlingly sharp and clear again. His eyebrows were still gone, and his face, chest, arms, hands and back were striped and splotched with the loss of black pigment, as if he’d been caught by a bucketful of beige paint. He consoled himself with the idea that he resembled a Zulu warrior chieftain in battle regalia or something. His beard was growing out, and it, too, was streaked with white.

  Blisters and sores were healing on his face, but on his forehead were seven small black nodules that looked like warts. Two of them had connected with each other. Josh tried to scrape them off with his finger, but they were too tough, and the pain made his entire skull ache. Skin cancer, he thought. But the warts were just on his forehead, nowhere else. I’m a zebra toadfrog, he thought—but those nodules for some reason disturbed him more than any of his other injuries and scars.

  He had to put his own clothes back on because nothing in the house would fit him. Leona washed them and went over the holes with a needle and thread, but they were in pretty sorry shape. She did supply him with a new pair of socks, but even those were much too tight. Still, his own socks were bags of holes held together with dried blood, totally useless.

  After the body was buried, Josh and Swan left Leona alone beside her husband’s grave. She gathered a threadbare brown corduroy coat around her shoulders and turned her face from the wind.

  Josh went to the basement and began to prepare for the journey they’d agreed on. He brought a wheelbarrow upstairs and filled it with supplies—canned food, some dried fruit, petrified corn muffins, six tightly sealed Mason jars full of well water, blankets and various kitchen utensils—and covered the whole thing with a sheet, which he lashed down with heavy twine. Leona, her eyes puffy from crying but her spine rigid and strong, finally came in and started packing a suitcase; the first items to go in were the framed photographs of her family that had adorned the mantel, and those were followed by sweaters, socks and the like. She packed a smaller bag full of Joe’s old clothes for Swan, and as the wind whipped around the house Leona walked from room to room and sat for a while in each one, as if drawing from them the aromas and memories of the life that had inhabited them.

  They were going to head for Matheson at first light. Leona had said she’d take them there, and on their way they’d pass across a farm that belonged to a man named Homer Jaspin and his wife Maggie. The Jaspin farm, Leona told Josh, lay about midway between Sullivan and Matheson, and there they would be able to spend the night.

  Leona packed away several of her best crystal balls, and from a box on a closet shelf she took out a few yellowed envelopes and birthday cards—“courting letters” from Davy, she told Swan, and cards Joe had sent her. Two jars of salve for her rheumatic knees went into her suitcase, and though Leona had never said so, Josh knew that walking that distance—at least ten miles to the Jaspin farm—was going to be sheer torture for her. But there were no available vehicles, and they had no choice.

  The deck of tarot cards went into Leona’s suitcase as well, and then she picked up another object and took it out to the front room.

  “Here,” she told Swan. “I want you to carry this.”

  Swan accepted the dowsing rod that Leona offered her.

  “We can’t leave Crybaby here all alone, can we?” Leona asked. “Oh, my, no. Crybaby’s work isn’t done yet—not by a far sight!”

  The night passed, and Josh and Swan slept soundly in beds they were going to regret leaving.

  He awakened with gloomy gray light staining the window. The wind’s force had died down, but the window glass was bitterly cold to the touch. He went into Joe’s room and woke Swan up, and then he walked out into the front room and found Leona sitting before the cold hearth, dressed in overalls, clodhoppers, a couple of sweaters, the corduroy coat and gloves. Bags sat on either side of her chair.

  Josh had slept in his clothes, and now he shrugged into a long over
coat that had belonged to Davy. During the night, Leona had ripped and resewn the shoulders and arms so he could get it on, but he still felt like an overstuffed sausage.

  “I guess we’re ready to go,” Josh said when Swan emerged, carrying the dowsing rod and clad in a pair of Joe’s blue jeans, a thick, dark blue sweater, a fleece-lined jacket and red mittens.

  “Just a minute more.” Leona’s hands were clamped together in her lap. The windup clock on the mantel was no longer ticking. “Oh, Lordy,” she said. “This is the best house I’ve ever lived in.”

  “We’ll find you another house,” Josh promised.

  A wisp of a smile surfaced. “Not like this one. This one’s got my life in its bricks. Oh, Lordy… oh, Lordy…” Her head sank down into her hands. Her shoulders shook, but she made no sound. Josh went to a window, and Swan started to put her hand on Leona’s arm, but at the last second she did not. The woman was hurting, Swan knew, but Leona was preparing herself, too, getting ready for what was to come.

  After a few minutes, Leona rose from her chair and went to the rear of the house. She returned with her pistol and a box of bullets, and she tucked both of those under the sheet that covered the wheelbarrow. “We might need those,” she said. “Never can tell.” She looked at Swan, then lifted her eyes to Josh. “I think I’m ready now.” She picked up the suitcase, and Swan took the smaller bag.

  Josh lifted the wheelbarrow’s handles. They weren’t so heavy now, but the day was fresh. Suddenly Leona’s suitcase thumped to the floor again. “Wait!” she said, and she hurried into the kitchen; she came back with a broom, which she used to sweep ashes and dead embers from the floor into the hearth.

  “All right.” She put the broom aside. “I’m ready now.”

  They left the house and started in a northwesterly direction, through the remains of Sullivan.

  The little gray-haired terrier followed them at a distance of about thirty yards, his stubby tail straight up to balance against the wind.