by Peter Straub
Joan can't be moved. Can't figure it out — doctors can't either. Going crazy with this thing.
And I saw the owl over your cabin, Nick . . .
Can't get her out, can't stay . . .
And Philly's wife dead — something in the air or something in the water. . .
Heard they sold the whole place. The devil must have bought it.
Waft the gin this way, Nick. Keep having these terrible nightmares.
The other two slept in the perfect blackness. Tom lay rigid in his blanket, listening to their even breathing as the captured voices lilted from the tunnels, moving and changing until there was only one voice left.
Good-bye, all, good-bye. . . All alone. Just me, chicken inspector number 23. Better waft myself some more of this gin and keep the boogies away . . . all alone, all alone . . . with the moon a-bove, da da dum dum . . .
He knew that if he looked deeply enough into one or another of the tunnels, he'd find a skeleton. Twenties Nick, with a supply of prewar gin and something going with Philly's wife while his own wife sickened and died and while a plausible but sinister young expatriate bought up the resorts where he had come for a pleasant summer of gambling and lovemaking. Twenties Nick, who had stayed on until it was too late and now was never going to leave . . . Crooning 'Sweet Sue' in the tunnel that had allowed him and his mistress to be in two places at once.
Collins had killed them off, the ones that couldn't be scared away. Then he had taken the old resort and perfected himself, toying with Del Nightingale in the summers when he thought that Del might be his successor: later, just sharpening his skills, waiting for the successor to come, fending off anyone who tried to invite himself, knowing that in time the only person in the world who meant danger to him would appear.
And when his extorted money had run out, he had killed Del's parents. Brought their plane out of the air and claimed his share of the inheritance and bided his time, keeping his ears open — knowing that sooner or later he would hear about some young fellow who still didn't know what he was.
Waft myself some more of that good stuff, sport.
Plenty of wafting went on over the years. Here's to you, Nick.
And to you, Sweet Sue.
He heard it as though someone had spoken from the very mouth of the tunnel nearest him. Tom turned over inside his blanket — or was this too a dream? — and felt a chill breeze advancing toward him.
The devil, M., emerged wrapped in the breeze from the mouth of the tunnel. He shone palely, as if lit by moonlight. M. was no longer dressed in the uniform of a private-school teacher, but in a blazer and high stiff collar. Above the collar his face still radiated sympathy and intense but misdirected intelligence. He knelt down before Tom.
'So you took the low road after all, and here you are.'
'Leave me alone,' Tom said.
'Now, now. I'm offering you a second chance. You don't want to end up like our friend back there, do you? Salted away like a herring? That's not for you.'
'No,' Tom said. 'It's not.'
'But, dear child, can't you see that this is hopeless? I'm giving you your last chance. Stand up and get out. Leave them — they're of no use to you. Take my hand. I'll put you back in your room.' He held out his hand, which was black and smoking. 'Oh, there'll be a little pain. Nothing you won't get over. At least you'll save your life.'
Tom shuddered back from the awful hand.
'Reconsider. I promise you, that creature you think you've in love with is going to sell you out. Take my hand. I know it's not very pretty, but you have to take it.' White curls of smoke hovered over the extended hand. 'Mr. Collins has explained it all to you. She's not your way out, boy.'
Tom saw the inevitability of it: a final betrayal, like Rosa Forte's. 'Even so . . . 'he said.
M. retracted his hand, which was now pink and smooth. 'I wonder where you will end up. Down here? In the lake? Nailed to a tree to be eaten by birds? I'll come back and remind you that I tried to help.'
'Do that,' Tom said: I told you so must have been one of the devil's favorite sentences.
M. sneered and flickered away.
'Not like that,' Tom said to himself.
4
'What time is it now?' Del asked several hours later.
The flashlight flared out light: illuminated Rose's wrist and bare arm. 'Twenty minutes later than the last time you asked. Six-fifty-one. Is everybody awake?'
'Yeah,' Tom said, jolted out of deep sleep. Rose played the light around the vaulted chamber, shining it in his face, then in Del's. Finally she turned it on herself. She was sitting against the wall, and unlike Del and himself, did not look disheveled. Her hair was in place; Tom saw with astonishment that she was even wearing lipstick. 'There's still coffee in the thermos, and I've got some hardboiled eggs. We can have breakfast before we start.'
'I have to pee,' Del said, sounding embarrassed. 'So do I,' Tom said.
In pitch darkness they stumbled into the first tunnel and splashed the walls; came back guided by the light to eat the hardboiled eggs.
'Now, which tunnel do we take?' Del asked.
'That one.' Rose stabbed the light toward a gaping hole in the curving wall. She walked to the entrance of the tunnel and played the light on a white chalk line. 'I made this when I brought everything down. This is the one.'
'Didn't you say the one next to me?' Tom said.
'This was the one next to you,' Rose said. 'You got mixed up walking back here. This is the one I marked.'
'How far does it go?' Del asked.
'Long way,' Rose said. 'We'll have to be in it about half an hour.'
'You're sure this is the right one?' Tom asked.
'I marked it. I'm sure.'
. . . sell you out. Just an unhappy dream: but had it not been from this tunnel that he had heard the lost and captured voices spinning through their eternal and terrible summer? 'Shine the light on your face,' Tom said. 'Humor me.'
Rose lifted the flash and pointed at her face. She squinted in the glare, but her hand was steady. That creature you think you love. She was the girl in the window; she was the girl in the red cape carrying a basket down the wooded, path. He wrapped his fingers around the broken figure in his pocket.
Farewell, Nick.
Come back anytime, Sweet Sue.
In the lake? Nailed to a tree to be eaten by birds?
'Let's get started,' Tom said.
5
The light bobbed before them, touching timber after timber. Their feet hushed on the dirt. An unrecognized image, almost a sense of deja vu, troubled Tom. But it was not deja vu, because he knew he had never been in this place before. Still, the sense of a parallel experience hung in his mind — something that had led to . . . what? A taste of unpleasantness, a hint of wrongness, of things being not what they seemed.
'What did you think you heard back there?' Del asked quietly.
'I guess I was just nervous.'
'So was I,' Del confessed.
Down they went, feeling as much as seeing their way. The air in the tunnel grew damper and colder. Rose's flashlight picked out beads of moisture on the wall.
'Did you really come here this summer to . . . you know. Protect me?' Del could ask this because of the darkness which hid his face.
'I guess I did.' Tom's voice, like Del's, went out into pure blackness.
'But how did you know I'd need it?' Del's piping voice seemed to hang in the air, surrounded by charged space. How could he answer it? Well, I had this vision about a wizard and an evil man, and then later I saw that the evil man had overtaken the wizard. Bad things were coming for you, and I had to put myself in their way. It was the truth, but it could not be spoken: he could not send out his own voice into the waiting blackness if it were going to say those things.
'I guess it was that 'towers-of-ice' night — remember?'
'When I didn't know if you were taking Uncle Cole away from me or not,' Del said.
'God.'
Del
actually giggled.
Then he had it, the memory: Registration Day: walking down the headmaster's stairs after filling out forms in the library, following Mrs. Olinger's flashlight and fat Bambi Whipple's candle. Going toward their first sight of Laker Broome.
For a long time they walked in silence as well as darkness, going always down, down, as if the tunnel led to the center of the earth instead of Hilly Vale.
6
A long time later, Tom felt the ground changing. The drag forward which had tired his legs had become a drag backward. They were going uphill now: muscles on the tops of his thighs twanged like rubber bands.
''Was that halfway?' Del asked.
'More,' Rose said. 'Pretty soon we get out.'
Thank God, Tom said silently: the constant darkness had begun to prey on him.
A face sewn together like Thorn's, a jigsaw of flesh and scars, floated up through the air and winked.
'Something wrong?' Del asked.
'Tired.'
'I felt you jump.'
'You're imagining things.'
'Maybe you are,' Del said slyly.
'Remember when you said you heard something?' Rose asked.
'Sure.'
'Well, now I think I do. Stop talking and listen.'
That surge of fear again: unavoidable. The flashlight clicked off, and for a moment its afterimage burned in Tom's eyes.
'I don't . . . ' Del began. He stopped: he, and Tom beside him, had heard it too — a complicated, rushing, pounding noise.
'Oh, God,' Del breathed. 'They're after us.'
'Hurry, hurry, hurry,' Rose pleaded. The light went on, blindingly bright, and searched past them. The long tunnel snaked down and away, empty behind them as far as they could see. 'Please.'
Carrying the light, Rose started to run. Tom heard the pack behind them — it could have been two men, or four, or five, and they sounded a good way off — and then he too ran after Del and Rose. He heard Del sobbing in panic, making a trapped witless noise in his chest and throat. The flashlight bobbed crazily ahead.
'They knew where to look,' he shouted.
'Just run!' Rose shouted back.
He ran. His shoulders knocked painfully against a wooden support. He almost fell, pain shooting all the way down his arm; scraped his hand against a rock protruding from the wall and righted himself.
As soon as he got back into his stride he ran straight into Del. Del was still making a sound of utter panic.
'Get up and run,' Tom said. 'Here — here's my hand.' Del caught at him and pulled himself up. Rose was twenty feet away, jerking the flashlight impatiently, shining it in their eyes.
Del sprinted away like a rabbit.
'Gotcha!' a man yelled from far back in the tunnel.
Dogs and badgers; the bloody greasy pit. Had Collins known even then that they would end like this? Tom pushed himself forward.
'Gotcha!'
'The stairs!' Del screamed. 'I found the stairs!'
A huge bubble of relief broke in Tom's chest. They could still escape; there was still a chance. He pounded on, panting harshly. Over all the other noises he could hear Del scrambling up the steps to the outside.
'Tom.' Rose touched his arm and stopped him.
'We can make it,' he panted. 'They're far enough back — we can do it.'
'I love you,' she said. 'Remember that.' Her arms caught his chest and her mouth covered his. Sudden light flooded into the tunnel.
'Rose,' he pleaded, and stepped toward the light, half-carrying her. Her face was wild. He twisted her around to see the steps, the open door.
Something wrong. Some detail . . . His heart boomed.
A huge roulette wheel, so dusty that red and black were
both gray, tilted against the side of the steps. Del's legs
abruptly soared up and out of the opening as he was
grabbed from above.
In the next instant, Del screamed.
'What. . . ?' He still could not believe what was happening. Del screamed again. 'Rose. . . ?' She was out of his arms and walking toward the broad concrete stairs. 'You'd better come,' she said. 'It has to be like this.'
He was numb; he watched her mount the first of the steps and turn to face him. Straight in her green dress and high heels, walking away from him; her job done.
Don't hate me.
'You brought us back,' he said. His lips and fingers had lost all feeling. 'What are you?'
'It has to be like this, Tom,' Rose said. 'I can't say anymore now.'
Del's screams had broken down into ragged animallike groans. Tom turned his head to look back down the tunnel. Root and Thorn, not running, came dimly into sight. They paused at the very edge of the penumbra of brightness from the open trapdoor, waited for him to act. He looked back at Rose, who also waited, her face expressionless. Thorn and Root were a wall of crossed arms and spread legs. Rose mounted another step, and he went toward her.
Coleman Collins gaily sang, 'Come out, come out, wherever you are,' and before Tom got to the steps, a sudden fearful clarity visited him and he thought to tug his shirt out of his trousers, hiding the gun.
As soon as he reached the steps, he looked up and recognized the ending of the tunnel: it was the forbidden room. Then he knew how the 'Brothers Grimm' had come and gone.
'So the birds have come home once again,' Collins said.
7
Tom came up into the crowded room. Rose was standing next to Coleman Collins, and the magician was gazing at him with a gleeful, deranged impishness, gently massaging his upper lip with an index finger. The other four Wandering Boys stood off to one side, dogs on the leash. 'Dear me, what a face,' Collins said. 'Can't have that sort of thing, not for our stirring finish — not for the farewell performance. Tears, perhaps, but never scowls.'
Just behind Collins, Mr. Peet was gripping Del by the bicep, squeezing hard enough to hurt. Del's face was gray and rubbery with shock. Mr. Peet, dressed in the old-fashioned clothes from the train, grinned maliciously and shook Del — jerked him like a doll.
'Why does it have to be like this, Rose?' Tom asked. She looked back at him as from a great distance. Collins smiled, stopped caressing his lip, and took the girl's hand.
'Why does it have to be like this?'
Del began to weep from terror.
'I'll answer, if you don't mind,' Collins said. He was still smiling, 'It has to be like this because you are unfit to be my successor. As you have just proven. I am afraid that the world will just have to wait for another gifted child to appear — there's no hope left for you, Tom. You have just been sent back to the ranks. Spectator — participant. Good, here are the others.'
First Root, then Thorn, emerged from the trapdoor. Thorn was breathing hard: the run had tired him. Their shoulders nearly filled the opening.
'I could have been your salvation,' Collins mused. 'And how I tried. But even the best potter cannot work with inferior clay.' He shrugged, but his eyes were still dancing. 'Now, let us check our scheduled.' He raised both his hand and Rose's and looked at his watch. 'We have several hours before the final act.' He bent down and brushed Rose's hand with his lips. When he gently let go of Rose's hand he turned to the lounging men. 'Thorn, Pease, and Snail. You'll bring this boy along to the big theater. Rose, darling, I want you to wait in my bedroom. You others, take my nephew outside and play with him for a couple of hours. If he whimpers, punish him. He is of no use anymore.'
She was his girlfriend, Tom thought. His mistress. Betrayal upon betrayal sank into him like lead. Two of the trolls roughly grabbed his arms. He looked into Rose's eyes.
Don't hate me.
'Get along, Rose,' the magician said. But she hung by his side for a moment, answering Tom's gaze. Don't hate me for what I had to do. 'I said go.' Rose turned and walked away. Collins' mad eyes snagged and held him.
'Do you understand?' the magician said. 'I had to see if you'd really try to leave. You don't deserve your talent — but that is academic n
ow, for you won't have it much longer. When it came down to it, you chose your wings.'
'You killed all those people,' Tom said. 'You killed Nick. And Philly's wife. All those people from the summer cabin.'
'And Nick's wife, for that matter,' Collins said.
'You killed Del's parents too,' Tom said. 'For your share of their money.' He saw Del reel back, be brought sharply upright by Mr. Peet.
'I thought I'd get Del's share too, you know.' Collins smiled. 'At one time I thought he might be my successor. It would have been better if he had been. I could control my nephew. But there you were, shining away like the biggest diamond in the golden west.'
As Del began to wail, Tom again caught the resemblance to Laker Broome. Collins was smiling, pretending calm, but his nerves were on fire — he was burning with anger and crazy glee. 'Stay behind, Mr. Peet. You others, take that squalling boy outside. I don't care what you do with him.'
Root, Seed, and Rock moved toward Del. Seed was grinning like a bear. He clamped his paw on Del's elbow and tore him away from Mr. Peet. 'You needn't worry about bringing him back,' Collins said. Seed began hauling Del toward the door, Root and Pease crowding after. 'Mr. Peet, I want you to open the wall between the two theaters. We'll want all the space we can get.'
Mr. Peet nodded and followed the others through the door.
Now only the three trolls — Thorn, Pease, and Snail — the magician and the boy were left in the room. The trolls too wore the four-button suits and Norfolk jackets from the train, and looked balloonlike, stuffed into the hot tight clothes. Thorn's sewn-together face was dripping. The three moved in closer to Tom.
'What are they going to do to Del?'
'Oh, it won't be as interesting as what happens to you,' the magician said. 'You're going to be crucified.'
'Is that what you did to Speckle John?'
'Why, no. I gave him a lifelong punishment, didn't I tell you that? I made him a servant. He was a son of Hagar, after all, or is that too biblical for you?'
'I know what it means.'
The magician smiled and glanced at the sweating trolls. 'Take him now.'
Snail put hands the size of footballs on Tom's shoulders. With those hands he could have broken both of Tom's arms; and Tom felt an intention like this in the man's touch, which was more than brutal. It was utterly without human feeling. They were going to hurt him, and they would enjoy it, the more so because he had humiliated them earlier. Snail lifted him off the ground, gripping hard enough to bruise, and carried him out of the room. The other two laughed — hoarse braying barnyard laughter.