Black House

That sigh comes again, derailing his mostly self-mocking train of thought. A sigh? Really? More likely just the air conditioner’s compressor, cutting off. He can tell himself that, anyway.

He can tell himself that if he wants to.

"Is anyone here?" Henry asks. There is a tremble in his voice that he hates, an old man’s palsied quaver. "Is anyone in the house with me?"

For a terrible second he is almost afraid something will answer. Nothing does — of course nothing does — and he swallows half the can of beer in three long gulps. He decides he’ll go back into the living room and read for a little while. Maybe Jack will call. Maybe he’ll get himself a little more under control once he has a little fresh alcohol in his system.

And maybe the world will end in the next five minutes, he thinks. That way you’ll never have to deal with the voice on those damned tapes waiting in the studio. Those damned tapes lying there on the soundboard like unexploded bombs.

Henry walks slowly back down the hall to the living room with one hand held out before him, telling himself he’s not afraid, not a bit afraid of touching his wife’s dead face.

Jack Sawyer has seen a lot, he’s traveled to places where you can’t rent from Avis and the water tastes like wine, but he’s never encountered anything like Mouse Baumann’s leg. Or, rather, the pestilential, apocalyptic horror show that was Mouse Baumann’s leg. Jack’s first impulse once he’s got himself back under something like control is to upbraid Doc for taking off Mouse’s pants. Jack keeps thinking of sausages, and how the casing forces them to keep their shape even after the fry pan’s sizzling on a red-hot burner. This is an undoubtedly stupid comparison, primo stupido, but the human mind under pressure puts on some pretty odd jinks and jumps.

There’s still the shape of a leg there — sort of — but the flesh has spread away from the bone. The skin is almost completely gone, melted to a runny substance that looks like a mixture of milk and bacon fat. The interwoven mat of muscle beneath what remains of the skin is sagging and undergoing the same cataclysmic metamorphosis. The infected leg is in a kind of undisciplined motion as the solid becomes liquid and the liquid sizzles relentlessly into the couch upon which Mouse is lying. Along with the almost insupportable stench of decay, Jack can smell scorching cloth and melting fabric.

Poking out of this spreading, vaguely leglike mess is a foot that looks remarkably undamaged. If I wanted to, I could pull it right off . . . just like a squash off a vine. The thought gets to him in a way the sight of the grievously wounded leg hasn’t quite been able to, and for a moment Jack can only bow his head, gagging and trying not to vomit down the front of his shirt.

What perhaps saves him is a hand on his back. It’s Beezer, offering what comfort he can. The rowdy color has completely left the Beez’s face. He looks like a motorcyclist come back from the grave in an urban myth.

"You see?" Doc is asking, and his voice seems to come from a great distance. "This ain’t the chicken pox, my friend, although it looked a little like that while it was still getting cranked up. He’s already exhibiting red spots on his left leg . . . his belly . . . his balls. That’s pretty much what the skin around the bite looked like when we first got him back here, just some redness and swelling. I thought, ‘Shit, ain’t nothin’ to this, I got enough Zithromax to put this on the run before sundown.’ Well, you see what good the Zithro did. You see what good anything did. It’s eating through the couch, and I’m guessing that when it finishes with the couch, it’ll go right to work on the floor. This shit is hungry. So was it worth it, Hollywood? I guess only you and Mouse know the answer to that."

"He still knows where the house is," Beezer says. "Me, I don’t have a clue, even though we just came from there. You, either. Do you?"

Doc shakes his head.

"But Mouse, he knows."

"Susie, honey," Doc says to Bear Girl. "Bring another blanket, would you? This one’s damn near et through."

Bear Girl goes willingly enough. Jack gets to his feet. His legs are rubbery, but they hold him. "Shield him," he tells Doc. "I’m going out to the kitchen. If I don’t get a drink, I’m going to die."

Jack takes on water directly from the sink, swallowing until a spike plants itself in the center of his forehead and he belches like a horse. Then he just stands there, looking out into Beezer and Bear Girl’s backyard. A neat little swing set has been planted there in the weedy desolation. It hurts Jack to look at it, but he looks anyway. After the lunacy of Mouse’s leg, it seems important to remind himself that he’s here for a reason. If the reminder hurts, so much the better.

The sun, now turning gold as it eases itself down toward the Missis-sippi, glares in his eyes. Time hasn’t been standing still after all, it seems. Not outside this little house, anyway. Outside 1 Nailhouse Row, time actually seems to have sped up. He’s haunted by the idea that coming here was as pointless as detouring to Henry’s house; tormented by the thought that Mr. Munshun and his boss, the abbalah, are running him around like a windup toy with a key in its back while they do their work. He can follow that buzz in his head to Black House, so why the hell doesn’t he just get back in his truck and do it?

The perfume he smells is not that of his dead wife.

What does that mean? Why does the idea of someone smelling perfume make him so crazy and afraid?

Beezer knocks on the kitchen door, making him jump. Jack’s eye fixes on a sampler hung over the kitchen table. Instead of GOD BLESS OUR HOME, it reads HEAVY METAL THUNDER. With a carefully stitched HARLEY-DAVIDSON beneath.

"Get back in here, man," the Beez says. "He’s awake again."