"All the time?"
"All the time." Peeler nodded, smiling at the memory. "If he got mad at somebody he'd sing, son of a bitch. Like funeral music: da da da dummm."
"That's the silliest thing I ever heard," Cloudy declared.
"It's the truth, so help me. And I don't know of nobody that heard him talk normal. All he ever did was sing."
"Yeah, so what happened to him, anyway?"
"Beats me. I was gonna ask you that." Peeler looked around, and then shouted at the night sky, "Snuffy! Where are ya?"
"Ain't here," Cloudy said. "Thank God for that."
The air began to chill them, so they moved back into the baithouse to carry on drinking.
''I'm gettin' into the swing of this again," Cloudy said as he opened another can of beer.
"Might as well, now that you ain't got no red-hot mama no more," Peeler said sarcastically.
"Yeah, but this is bad for me." Cloudy drained the can, then belched. "Real bad." He reached for another.
It may have been the recollection of Snuffy Hagstrom, or simply the beer. Peeler suddenly began to sing in a loud voice.
"Won't you go home, Bill Butler, won't you go home .... "
"Hey, hey, cut that out," Cloudy protested. "Anyway, I think it was Bill Bailey."
"I didn't know no Bill Bailey, but I did know Bill Butler."
"Yeah, well ... Leave him alone. These here are mighty fragile ears I got."
"Bill Butler," Peeler mused. "Talk about watery eyes. You look at him, you'd swear you was watchin' Slide Creek go by. He was never too steady on his pins, but he was okay .... "
"Spare the bull and pass the brew."
"Hey!"
"What?"
"Let's make a night of it."
"I thought we was."
"Okay, good."
But as the night wore on they sank lower and lower in their seats and the talk wound down. Finally, Peeler stopped in the middle of a sentence, having lost his train of thought. He closed his eyes to concentrate, but he didn't open them again. A moment later, he was snoring. That didn't bother Cloudy, who had stretched out on the junked car seat and fallen asleep already.
At about the same time, Linda Covington dozed off as well, a copy of Glamour open on her lap.
* * *
27. 4:47 A.M.
The magazine slid off Linda's knees and landed on the throw rug at her feet. Her eyes opened briefly, then fell shut again. A few seconds later, she sat bolt upright and looked around anxiously. There was a painful crick in her neck and a sudden hammering behind her forehead. She had been asleep for a little over two hours.
Ned's face was covered with a ghostly sheen of perspiration. It had formed a line of tiny beads along his upper lip. His hair was smeared to his head and the pillow case was dark with moisture. When Linda touched the boy's arm it felt wet, but very hot. He's burning up, she thought. Her hands trembled as she took his temperature; the plastic strip registered one hundred and three degrees exactly. That's the limit, no more please, she prayed. This has to be the fever's crisis point. It has to break here, and soon. She felt guilty for having slept, but grateful that she had not awakened any later. A line from an old song flashed through her mind—the darkest hour is just before dawn. This was the hour.
Linda hurried downstairs to get a fresh glass of cold juice, but when she returned she couldn't get Ned to drink. He moaned and whimpered in his troubled sleep as she tried to raise his head. She forced the rim of the glass between his lips, but he wouldn't swallow. Juice ran out of the sides and trickled down his chin. She would try again in a few minutes.
There was something else about this hour of the day. Something that was trying to worm its way into Linda's conscious mind. A fact. An item of information. No, forget it. But she couldn't push it away. It was a space-filler, one of those morbid tidbits of useless knowledge that newspapers put in to take care of a two-line gap in a column. Doctors report that most deaths occur in the hour before dawn.
Linda had to do something to keep from thinking. She went to the bathroom and let the faucet run until the water was good and cold. She soaked a face cloth, wrung it out and went back into the bedroom to wipe down Ned's face, neck and arms. Even after she had done that, however, her son's skin still felt very hot. The fever was raging in him. What else could she do for him? She found a bottle of rubbing alcohol and applied it to his arms and chest. Such frail little bones, she thought as her fingers worked. He seemed to be all ribs, thin and pliable. A sparrow of a child. She buttoned up his pajama top when she finished.
Something else. Linda remembered being told once that a person's blood sugar level dropped to its twenty-four-hour low at this time of the day. The human body was at its weakest. The bottom of the pit of night. The deepest sleep, from which some never came back. Blood sugar level—that had been a contributing factor in the massive asthma attack she had suffered a few years ago. Or so the doctors said, but what did they know? After all those tests they had given her, not one of a half-dozen specialists had been able to say what had caused such an unusual attack. You believe in doctors, you had faith in them because you had no choice—but sometimes it seemed that they were just guessing too. Blood sugar ... Linda tried once more to get Ned to swallow some juice. Maybe a little went down, but not much.
Perhaps Dr. Melker was wrong, for all his good intentions and his air of confidence. Perhaps it wasn't a flu or a viral infection. It could be something more serious, something the doctor had failed to recognize. Would a small town doctor read all the journals and keep himself up-to-date? No one had known Legionnaire's Disease until all those people died a few years ago ....
Linda held Ned's hand and sat watching. ''I'm here, honey," she whispered softly. ''I'm right here with you."
It was as if the words had triggered something. Ned's face tightened into a grimace and his hand turned sharply this way and that on the pillow. It looked as if he was trying to avoid something in his sleep. Perhaps he was running or looking away, in a bad dream. Linda leaned over, close to his ear.
"It's all right, Ned," she told him. "It's all right, I'm here. Mommy's here with you."
Ned mewed pitifully, like a frightened kitten, and his face was bathed in sweat again. Linda checked his temperature. It was creeping toward one hundred and four. She began to feel panicky. Should she call the doctor now, or wait a few minutes and take one more reading? Melker had said to phone if the temperature went over that point. Nervous, struggling to impose calm on herself, Linda decided to hold on just a little longer. She wondered if she should wake Michael before doing anything else. No, not unless it became necessary to rush Ned to the hospital. Otherwise, this was in her hands. Besides, what was happening to the temperature now might be the last outburst before the fever simmered down. If only she could believe that.
The house was so still at this early (or late) hour. To Linda the silence, freighted with expectancy, was disturbing, almost threatening. The only sound raised against it was the slight whistle of Ned's shallow breathing. Linda busied herself by wiping away the boy's sweat and giving him another rubdown with alcohol. Useless gestures perhaps, she thought, but better than doing nothing. She tried to convince herself that the most important thing was simply to be there, touching Ned, holding his hand, always in contact, whispering to him, so he would know, if only on a subconscious level, that he was not alone.
Ned was anything but alone.
Out of the tumultuous black storm in his mind, a figure was taking shape. The suggestion of a woman's body, a woman's face, darkly shrouded in a swirl of darker clouds. A pale apparition glimpsed in a confusing play of shadows. She was distant, elusive, but unmistakably there. Ned was adrift on a sea and the night was a hurricane of chaos all around him. The only fixed point was that woman, drawing closer. He had no control, but part of his mind knew what was happening. The games were over now. The cross was no help; it was nothing more than a wish, an idea of a defense when there really was no defense. Vampires
and werewolves were unreal, myths people had created to give form and limits to what they feared most. Which was this woman, bearing down on him. She was real. A phantom, a lost soul, trapped between one world and another. All those years she had been unable to find peace .... But now she would, by taking Ned with her. This time, he knew, she would not be denied.
Linda stared at her son. Feelings of fear, anger and helplessness warred within her, and yet she concentrated on keeping Ned at the center of her mental focus. If sheer force of will were sufficient, she would have extinguished his fever in an instant. But all her psychic energy was funneling away, apparently into nothingness. Her instinct was to fight, but the lack of a target completely undermined her.
Ned's breathing became more labored. Linda took his temperature. How many minutes had elapsed? It didn't matter. The fever was on the verge of one hundred and four. Break, break, break, she prayed. Or even advance a little—that would at least set her on a definite course of action. But for the temperature to stay lodged at that terrible point-that was the worst thing.
Ned began to wheeze, his throat muscles contracting visibly, his breath coming in pronounced but seemingly airless spasms. At the same moment, Linda noticed the reaction in herself. It was as if her own lungs were being winched taut. The pressure of a very heavy weight was building up on her chest.
"No, not now," she said aloud, fumbling for the right inhaler. Becotide wouldn't do now, she needed the Alupent, which was a bronchial dilator and which might hold off an attack. She found it, clicked the device firmly and sucked in the mist as deeply as she could.
"Mommy ... "
Ned's eyes were screwed shut, and his face was contorted with fear and pain. His lips were turning purple-blue, set off against the rest of his face, which was incredibly white. Linda jumped to the closet and pulled out the small metal oxygen bottle.
"Don't—let—her—take—me," Ned pleaded haltingly.
His head twisted and turned, as if trying to bury itself in the pillow. It had taken considerable effort to force the words out, and even then they were as weak as bubbles, gone as soon as they surfaced.
Linda gave herself the first short blast of oxygen. It helped, and the equipment worked. She tried to hold the mask to Ned's face, but that only made him struggle more. He shook and rocked his head furiously, and then his hands flew up, swinging wildly, trying to fend the thing off.
"Ned, please, this will help you."
The boy rose up from the pillow, almost into a sitting position. His eyes opened and fixed on Linda. In the split second when their eyes met, she thought she saw pain, wonder, love and terror. The look pierced her soul. Then there was nothing to see but terror and hysteria. But before Linda could react, everything vanished from Ned's eyes. It seemed as if an invisible cord attached to his body had been violently yanked out. Ned collapsed like an unstrung marionette.
Was he breathing? Was this what it had been like the night of her big attack? Was she witnessing it from the outside now?
Linda clamped the oxygen mask over Ned's nose and mouth. She could hear the familiar, low hiss, but the boy's body wasn't moving at all. Frantic, Linda pulled the mask away and pressed her ear to his lips. Nothing.
"Michael," she called. Just one word, but her voice had gone all over the place, like a seismograph charting an earthquake.
She put the mask back over Ned's face, and with her other hand she ripped open his pajama top. She put her ear on his chest and was shocked at how cold and clammy his skin felt. She listened for something, anything, in what seemed an eternity of silence.
It was 4:47 A.M.
Ned's heart had stopped beating.
* * *
28. The Dance of Death
—Child.
Ned thought his insides had been vacuumed out of him. His body was somehow unfamiliar, and it felt as light as balsa wood. But there was neither pain nor fear.
—Child.
He was lying on the ground, which was hard, like rock, but covered with a thin layer of very fine black sand. The light, which came from no visible source, was dull red and diffuse.
Where am I?
—With me now.
She was standing over him. Ned got up and faced her. He wasn't afraid, only curious. He saw her clearly for the first time. She was truly beautiful, her features remarkably like those of his mother, but with subtle differences. She might have been his mother years before, when she had been younger and not yet married.
Who are you?
She smiled. That was all, but it was enough.
What is this place?
—The end of time.
Am 1 alive or dead?
—Alive with me forever.
I'm dead.
She smiled again.
No! 1 want to go back, let me go!
The impulse was brief and hollow. An echo from a dead past. As soon as the thought formed, Ned knew it was useless. Somewhere, in another world or another universe, his other body was lifeless on his parents' bed. And they—but as soon as sorrow approached, the woman erased it.
—Child.
She had only to communicate that single thought-word to restore Ned to a kind of airy, neutral state of being. He looked closely at her again, and her eyes held him. There was peace in them, a peace he had never known before, and now that he had experienced it he didn't want to lose it. But the woman turned and moved away.
—Come.
Ned found himself going along with her, like an object in the tow of a magnetic field. He was keeping up with her, but he could no longer see her eyes.
Where are we going?
—To the top of the mountain.
Ned looked around. They appeared to be out in the middle of a vast rocky plain. There wasn't a mountain to be seen. The entire panorama was alien, like the scorched sun-side of Mercury.
Where is the mountain?
—Come.
What will we do when we get there?
—Stay.
Are you—but he didn't get a chance to finish the thought.
—Child.
The view was deceptive, perhaps because of the strange light. Gradually, they were descending. Their path took them through a long, shallow gully and brought them to a bizarre sight. They had reached what Ned could only think of as a forest. But the trees were nothing more than bare, black trunks, ten or twelve feet tall and about a foot in diameter. The top of each tree was a fused, glassy knob, shiny, but otherwise as black as the trunks and the sand. No trees had more than two branches, and they had the same stunted, or amputated look.
The woman led Ned through the forest, not in a straight line, but by a zigzag route, as if she were following an invisible trail. They came out into a small clearing. Just ahead was a natural rock wall and a cave leading into it. The woman swept on, without hesitating. The utter darkness was spooky at first, but they moved through it easily.
The cave proved to be a short tunnel. The first thing Ned noticed when they emerged from it on the other side was the red disk on the horizon. It was not much bigger than the head of a pin.
What is that?
—The sun.
The sun?!
—Yes, what's left of it.
Then, this is the planet Earth.
—Of course.
When?
—At the end of the sun, at the end of time.
Why are we here, now?
—Child.
They came to a small city, or at least what had once been a small city. Now it was a charred ruin. The outline of streets was still clear, although blanketed with black sand and littered with debris. The buildings were mere shells, with blasted walls and beds of rubble. But new colors introduced themselves to the scene—shades of blue and green in the form of odd, coral like encrustations that rose from the ground here and there. They were anemic, spindly creations. Diseased flowers—that was all Ned could think of them as. He wondered if they were what "life" had been reduced to here, mindless chemical or crystalline growth
, a kind of hideous postscript to the past. How long ago was the past?
What year is this?
The woman's laughter filled his mind. As they passed along the street, Ned kicked one of the "plants." It disintegrated in a shower of dust. The thing had felt so flimsy and insubstantial that Ned wondered how they could exist at all; a little gust of wind would blow them all away. But, he noticed, there wasn't even the slightest hint of a breeze in this place. Then he was startled to discover that he wasn't breathing at all. Of course—why should he? The dead don't breathe.
As they moved from the outskirts toward the center of the city, the old roadway narrowed, at times becoming little more than an irregular lane through mounds of rubble and the tangle of weird growth.
—Stay close.
The woman needn't have bothered. Ned couldn't leave even if he'd wanted to, and in this place he had no desire to lose the woman. What would he do here on his own, where would he go? Only the world and the life he had left behind might attract him now, but that was a million miles and a million years away—and already it was taking on the aspect of an ancient memory. It was distant, detached, and it hardly seemed to have anything to do with Ned. Were his parents mourning him? The thought seemed unreal, and the boy let it slip out of his mind.
They turned a corner and the woman stopped for the first time since they had set out on this journey. She looked at Ned and her eyes completely relaxed him.
—It will be all right.
Why? What is it?
—You will see things now, but it will be all right.
The way ahead was a narrow path down the middle of a long street crammed full of tall, thin tubes that reared up about eight feet from the ground. They were blood red and they clicked against each other, sounding like plastic. Ned saw that they were rooted to the black earth in dense clusters. As he and the woman entered the street, the tubes bristled, as if reacting to a static charge. They leaned and swayed like a field of nightmare com in a wind. The clicking noise grew louder, but what was more disturbing was the sight of the tubes so close. Their hard casing was transparent, and they were filled with organs in a red liquid that Ned realized must be blood. These things were living creatures—Ned could see the blood pulsating now. Suddenly he looked up. At the top of each tube a fist-size head could be seen. Some of them protruded, while others lurked just inside the casing, or moved in and out. Ned felt dizzy and sick-the faces were almost human. Tiny, wizened, they looked piteously on the two people moving through their midst. Their mouths moved silently and their eyes seemed to cry out for some unknown meaning. They're trapped here forever, Ned thought, and he began to understand the terrible expression on all their faces. They were harmless, but to move among them was to be subjected to a powerful emotional and psychic assault. Ned wanted to shut his eyes and block his ears, but something in him rejected that idea. It would be too much like walking away from a paralyzed infant in need of help. But what could Ned do for these tube creatures with the haunting faces? Nothing.
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