Black House

The members of the Thunder Five separate and spread out in front of Jack. Most of them have crossed their arms on their chests, and muscles bulge.

Jack pushes his plate to the back of the bar, stands up, and says, "Before last night, had any of you guys ever heard of George Potter?"

From his perch on the edge of the pool table nearest to the front door, Jack faces Beezer and Doc, who lean forward on their bar stools. Kaiser Bill, one finger against his lips and his head bowed, stands beside Beezer. Mouse lies stretched out on the second pool table, propping his head up with one hand. Banging his fists together and scowling, Sonny is pacing back and forth between the bar and the jukebox.

"You sure he didn’t say ‘Bleak House,’ like the Dickens novel?" Mouse says.

"I’m sure," says Jack, reminding himself that he should not be surprised every time one of these guys demonstrates that he went to college. "It was ‘Black House.’ "

"Jeez, I almost think I . . ." Mouse shakes his head.

"What was the builder’s name again?" asks Beezer.

"Burnside. First name probably Charles, sometimes known as ‘Chummy.’ A long time ago, he changed it from something like ‘Beer Stein.’ "

"Beerstein? Bernstein?"

"You got me," Jack says.

"And you think he’s the Fisherman."

Jack nods. Beezer is staring at him as if trying to see the back of his head.

"How sure are you?"

"Ninety-nine percent. He planted the Polaroids in Potter’s room."

"Damn." Beezer pushes himself off his stool and walks around to the back of the bar. "I want to make sure nobody forgets the obvious." He bends down and straightens up with a telephone book in one hand. "Know what I mean?" Beezer opens the directory on the bar, flips a few pages, flips back, and runs his thick finger down a column of names. "No Burnside. Too bad."

"Good idea, though," Jack says. "This morning, I tried the same thing myself."

Sonny pauses on his return journey from the jukebox and jabs a finger at Jack. "How long ago was this damn house built?"

"Nearly thirty years ago. During the seventies."

"Hell, we were all kids then, back in Illinois. How are we supposed to know about that house?"

"You guys get around. I thought there was a pretty good chance you might have seen it. And the place is spooky. People tend to talk about houses like that." They did in normal cases, at least, Jack thought. In normal cases, spooky houses got that way because they had been empty for a couple of years, or because something terrible had happened in them. In this case, he thought, the house itself was terrible, and the people who otherwise would have talked about it could barely remember seeing it. Judging by Dale’s response, Black House had vanished into its own nonexistent shadow.

He says, "Think about this. Try to remember. In the years you’ve been living in French Landing, have you ever heard of a house that seemed to have a curse on it? Black House caused injuries to the people who built it. The workmen hated the place; they were afraid of it. They said you couldn’t see your shadow when you got near it. They were claiming it was haunted while they worked on it! Eventually, they all quit, and Burnside had to finish the job himself."

"It’s off by itself somewhere," Doc says. "Obviously, this thing isn’t sitting around in plain view. It’s not in some development like Libertyville. You’re not going to find it on Robin Hood Lane."

"Right," Jack says. "I should have mentioned that before. Potter told me it was built a little way off what he called ‘the road,’ in a kind of clearing. So it’s in the woods, Doc, you’re right. It’s isolated."

"Hey, hey, hey," Mouse says, swinging his legs over the side of the pool table and grunting himself upright.

His eyes are screwed shut, and he claps one meaty hand on his forehead. "If I could only remember . . ." He lets out a howl of frustration.

"What?" Beezer’s voice is at twice its normal volume, and the word sounds like a paving stone hitting a cement sidewalk.

"I know I saw that f**king place," he says. "As soon as you started talking about it, I had this feeling it sounded kinda familiar. It kept hanging at the back of my mind, but it wouldn’t come out. When I tried to think about it — you know, make myself remember — I kept seeing these sparkly lights. When Jack said it was back in the woods, I knew what he was talking about. I had a clear picture of the place. Surrounded by all these sparkling lights."

"That doesn’t sound much like Black House," Jack says.

"Sure it does. The lights weren’t really there, I just saw them." Mouse offers this observation as though it is completely rational.

Sonny utters a bark of laughter, and Beezer shakes his head and says, "Shit."

"I don’t get it," Jack says.

Beezer looks at Jack, holds up one finger, and asks Mouse, "Are we talking about July, August, two years ago?"

"Naturally," Mouse says. "The summer of the Ultimate Acid." He looks at Jack and smiles. "Two years ago, we got this amazing, amazing acid. Drop a tab, you’re in for five or six hours of the most unbelievable head games. Nobody ever had a bad experience with the stuff. It was all groove, know what I mean?"

"I suppose I can guess," Jack says.

"You could even do your job behind it. For sure, you could drive, man. Get on your hog, go anywhere you could think of. Doing anything normal was a piece of cake. You weren’t f**ked up, you were operating way beyond your max."

"Timothy Leary wasn’t all wrong," Doc says.