Black House

With a noise like the revving of a B-52, the enchanted bee, a creature of fiction inside the fiction, launches itself at Bill Towns’s slickly behat-ted head. The comedian’s face turns rubbery with comic terror. He waves his arms, he jigs, he screeches. The enchanted bee performs aeronautic stunts around the panicky pseudogunfighter. Towns’s splendid hat falls off; his hair disarranges itself. He edges toward a table and, with a final flurry of hand waving, dives under it and begs for help.

Eye fixed on the ambling bee, Lily walks to the bar and picks up a glass and a folded newspaper. She approaches the table, watching the bee walking around in circles. She jumps forward and lowers the glass, trapping the bee. It flies up and bumps the bottom of the glass. Lily tilts the glass, slides the folded paper underneath it, and raises her hands, holding the newspaper against the top of the glass.

The camera pulls back, and we see the cowardly gambler peeking out from under the table as Lily pushes the doors open and releases the bee.

Behind him, Lester Moon says, "Cheeseburger’s ready, mister."

For the next half hour, Jack eats his burger and tries to lose himself in the movie. The burger is great, world-class, with that juicy taste you can get only from a greased-up griddle, and the fries are perfect, golden and crunchy on the outside, but his concentration keeps wandering from The Terror of Deadwood Gulch. The problem is not that he has seen the movie perhaps a dozen times; the problem is Tansy Freneau. Certain things she said trouble him. The more he thinks about them, the less he understands what is going on.

According to Tansy, the crow — the raven — named Gorg came from a world alongside and outside the world we know. She had to be talking about the Territories. Using a phrase from Poe’s "The Raven," she called this other world "Night’s Plutonian shore," which was pretty good for someone like Tansy, but did not seem in any way applicable to the magical Territories. Gorg had told Tansy that everything in his world was on fire, and not even the Blasted Lands met that description. Jack could remember the Blasted Lands and the odd train that had taken him and Rational Richard, then a sick, wasted Rational Richard, across that vast red desert. Strange creatures had lived there, alligator-men and birds with the faces of bearded monkeys, but it had certainly not been on fire. The Blasted Lands were the product of some past disaster, not the site of a present conflagration. What had Tansy said? A big, big place made all of fire . . . going way high up. What had she seen, to what landscape had Gorg opened her eyes? It sounded like a great burning tower, or a tall building consumed by fire. A burning tower, a burning building in a burning world — how could that world be the Territories?

Jack has been in the Territories twice in the past forty-eight hours, and what he has seen has been beautiful. More than beautiful — cleansing. The deepest truth Jack knows about the Territories is that they contain a kind of sacred magic: the magic he saw in Judy Marshall. Because of that magic, the Territories can confer a wondrous blessing on human beings. The life of that extraordinary tough beloved woman making fun of Bill Towns on the big screen before him was saved by an object from the Territories. Because Jack had been in the Territories — and maybe because he had held the Talisman — almost every horse he bets on comes in first, every stock he buys triples in value, ever poker hand he holds takes the pot.

So what world is Tansy talking about? And what’s all this stuff about Gorg coming here through a burning hole?

When Jack flipped over yesterday, he had sensed something unhappy, something unhealthy, far off to the southwest, and he suspected that was where he would find the Fisherman’s Twinner. Kill the Fisherman, kill the Twinner; it didn’t matter which he did first, the other one would weaken. But . . .

It still didn’t make sense. When you travel between worlds, you just flip — you don’t set a fire at the world’s edge and run through it into another one.

A few minutes before twelve, the rumble of motorcycles drowns the voices on the screen. "Um, mister, you might want to take off," says Moon. "That’s the — "

"The Thunder Five," Jack says. "I know."

"Okay. It’s just, they scare the shit out of some of my customers. But as long as you treat ’em right, they act okay."

"I know. There’s nothing to worry about."

"I mean, if you buy ’em a beer or something, they’ll think you’re all right."

Jack gets off his stool and faces the bartender. "Lester, there is no reason to be nervous. They’re coming here to meet me."

Lester blinks. For the first time, Jack notices that his eyebrows are thin, curved wisps, like those of a 1920s vamp. "I’d better start pourin’ a pitcher of Kingsland." He grabs a pitcher from beneath the bar, sets it under the Kingsland Ale tap, and opens the valve. A thick stream of amber liquid rushes into the pitcher and turns to foam.

The sound of the motorcycles builds to an uproar at the front of the building, then cuts off. Beezer St. Pierre bangs through the door, closely followed by Doc, Mouse, Sonny, and Kaiser Bill. They look like Vikings, and Jack is overjoyed to see them.

"Stinky, turn that TV the f**k off," Beezer roars. "And we didn’t come here to drink, so empty that pitcher into the drain. The way you pour, it’s all head anyhow. And when you’re done, get back in the kitchen with your momma. Our business with this man’s got nothin’ to do with you."

"Okay, Beezer," Moon says in a shaky voice. "All I need is a second."

"Then that’s what you got," Beezer says.

Beezer and the others line up in front of the bar, some of them staring at Stinky Cheese, some, more kindly, at Jack. Mouse is still wearing his cornrows, and he has daubed some black antiglare substance beneath his eyes, like a football player. Kaiser Bill and Sonny have pulled their manes back into ponytails again. Ale and foam slide out of the pitcher and seep into the drain. "Okay, guys," Moon says. His footsteps retreat along the back of the bar. A door closes.