Black House (Page 199)

For the first time he is visited by an extremely unpleasant idea: What if there’s more to pay for the things he has done over the course of his long career? He has seen End-World; he has seen Conger Road, which winds through it to Din-tah. The blasted, burning landscape surrounding Conger Road is like hell, and surely An-tak, the Big Combination, is hell itself. What if such a place waits for him? What if —

There’s a horrible, paralyzing pain in his guts. Mr. Munshun, now almost fully materialized, has reached out and twisted one smoky, not-quite-transparent hand in the wound Henry inflicted with his switchblade knife.

Burny squeals. Tears run down the old child-murderer’s cheeks. "Don’t hurt me!"

"Zen do ass I zay."

"I can’t," Burny snivels. "I’m dying. Look at all the blood! Do you think I can get past something like this? I’m eighty-five f**king years old!"

"Duff brayyg, Burn-Burn . . . but dere are zose on z’osser zide who could hill you off your wunds." Mr. Munshun, like Black House itself, is hard to look at. He shivers in and out of focus. Sometimes that hideously long face (it obscures most of his body, like the bloated head of a caricature on some newspaper’s op-ed page) has two eyes, sometimes just one. Sometimes there seem to be tufted snarls of orange hair leaping up from his distended skull, and sometimes Mr. Munshun appears to be as bald as Yul Brynner. Only the red lips and the fangy pointed teeth that lurk inside them remain fairly constant.

Burny eyes his accomplice with a degree of hope. His hands, meanwhile, continue to explore his stomach, which is now hard and bloated with lumps. He suspects the lumps are clots. Oh, that someone should have hurt him so badly! That wasn’t supposed to happen! That was never supposed to happen! He was supposed to be protected! He was supposed to —

"It iss not even peeyond ze realm of bossibility," Mr. Munshun says, "zat ze yearz could be rawled avey vrum you jusst as ze stunn vas rawled avey from ze mouse of Cheezus Chrizze’s doom."

"To be young again," Burny says, and exhales a low, harsh sigh. His breath stinks of blood and spoilage. "Yes, I’d like that."

"Of gorse! And soch zings are bossible," Mr. Munshun says, nodding his grotesquely unstable face. "Soch gifts are ze abbalah’s to giff. But zey are not bromised, Charles, my liddle munching munchkin. But I can make you one bromise."

The creature in the black evening suit and red ascot leaps forward with dreadful agility. His long-fingered hand darts again into Chummy Burnside’s shirt, this time clenches into a fist, and produces a pain beyond any the old monster has ever dreamed of in his own life . . . although he has inflicted this and more on the innocent.

Mr. Munshun’s reeking countenance pushes up to Burny’s. The single eye glares. "Do you feel dat, Burny? Do you, you mizz-er-a-ble old bag of dirt and zorrow? Ho-ho, ha-ha, of gorse you do! It iss your in-destines I haff in my hand! Und if you do not mooff now, schweinhund, I vill rip dem from your bledding body, ho-ho, ha-ha, und vrap dem arund your neg! You vill die knowing you are choking on your own gudz! A trick I learned from Fritz himzelf, Fritz Haarman, who vas so yunk und loff-ly! Now! Vat do you say? Vill you brink him, or vill you choke?"

"I’ll bring him!" Burny screams. "I’ll bring him, only stop, stop, you’re tearing me apart!"

"Brink him to ze station. Ze station, Burn-Burn. Dis one iz nodd for ze radhulls, de fogzhulls — not for ze Com-bin-ay-shun. No bledding foodzies for Dyler; he works for his abbalah vid dis." A long finger tipped with a brutal black nail goes to the huge forehead and taps it above the eyes (for the moment Burny sees two of them, and then the second is once more gone). "Understand?"

"Yes! Yes!" His guts are on fire. And still the hand in his shirt twists and twists.

The terrible highway of Mr. Munshun’s face hangs before him. "Ze station — where you brought the other sbecial ones."

"YES!"

Mr. Munshun lets go. He steps back. Mercifully for Burny, he is beginning to grow insubstantial again, to discorporate. Yellowed clippings swim into view not behind him but through him. Yet the single eye hangs in the air above the paling blotch of the ascot.

"Mayg zure he vears za cab. Ziss one ezbeshully must wear za cab."

Burnside nods eagerly. He still smells faintly of My Sin perfume. "The cap, yes, I have the cap."

"Be gare-ful, Burny. You are old und hurt. Ze bouy is young und desberate. Flitt of foot. If you let him get avey — "

In spite of the pain, Burny smiles. One of the children getting away from him! Even one of the special ones! What an idea! "Don’t worry," he says. "Just . . . if you speak to him . . . to Abbalah-doon . . . tell him I’m not past it yet. If he makes me better, he won’t regret it. And if he makes me young again, I’ll bring him a thousand young. A thousand Breakers."

Fading and fading. Now Mr. Munshun is again just a glow, a milky disturbance on the air of Burny’s sitting room deep in the house he abandoned only when he realized he really did need someone to take care of him in his sunset years.

"Bring him just dis vun, Burn-Burn. Bring him just dis vun, und you vill be revarded."

Mr. Munshun is gone. Burny stands and bends over the horsehair sofa. Doing it squeezes his belly, and the resulting pain makes him scream, but he doesn’t stop. He reaches into the darkness and pulls out a battered black leather sack. He grasps its top and leaves the room, limping and clutching at his bleeding, distended belly.

And what of Tyler Marshall, who has existed through most of these many pages as little more than a rumor? How badly has he been hurt? How frightened is he? Has he managed to retain his sanity?