Black House (Page 202)

"Special boys need special toys," Burny says, and it comes out sbecial boyz, sbecial toyz. As always, Mr. Munshun’s ridiculous accent has rubbed off a little, thickening that touch of South Chicago Henry detected on the 911 tape. "Now we can go out."

Because with the cap on, I’m safe, Ty thinks, but the idea breaks up and drifts away almost as soon as it comes. He tries to think of his middle name and realizes he can’t. He tries to think of the bad crow’s name and can’t get that, either — was it something like Corgi? No, that’s a kind of dog. The cap is messing him up, he realizes, and that’s what it’s supposed to do.

Now they pass through the open doors and onto the patio. The air is redolent with the smell of the trees and bushes that surround the back side of Black House, a smell that is heavy and cloying. Fleshy, somehow. The gray sky seems almost low enough to touch. Ty can smell sulfur and something bitter and electric and juicy. The sound of machinery is much louder out here.

The thing Ty recognized sitting on the broken bricks is an E-Z-Go golf cart. The Tiger Woods model.

"My dad sells these," Ty says. "At Goltz’s, where he works."

"Where do you think it came from, asswipe? Get in. Behind the wheel."

Ty looks at him, amazed. His blue eyes, perhaps thanks to the effects of the cap, have grown bloodshot and rather confused. "I’m not old enough to drive."

"Oh, you’ll be fine. A baby could drive this baby. Behind the wheel."

Ty does as he is told. In truth, he has driven one of these in the lot at Goltz’s, with his father sitting watchfully beside him in the passenger seat. Now the hideous old man is easing himself into that same place, groaning and holding his perforated midsection. The Taser is in the other hand, however, and the steel tip remains pointed at Ty.

The key is in the ignition. Ty turns it. There’s a click from the battery beneath them. The dashboard light reading CHARGE glows bright green. Now all he has to do is push the accelerator pedal. And steer, of course.

"Good so far," the old man says. He takes his right hand off his middle and points with a bloodstained finger. Ty sees a path of discolored gravel — once, before the trees and underbrush encroached, it was probably a driveway — leading away from the house. "Now go. And go slow. Speed and I’ll zap you. Try to crash us and I’ll break your wrist for you. Then you can drive one-handed."

Ty pushes down on the accelerator. The golf cart jerks forward. The old man lurches, curses, and waves the Taser threateningly.

"It would be easier if I could take off the cap," Ty says. "Please, I’m pretty sure that if you’d just let me — "

"No! Cap stays! Drive!"

Ty pushes down gently on the accelerator. The E-Z-Go rolls across the patio, its brand-new rubber tires crunching on broken shards of brick. There’s a bump as they leave the pavement and go rolling up the driveway. Heavy fronds — they feel damp, sweaty — brush Tyler’s arms. He cringes. The golf cart swerves. Burny jabs the Taser at the boy, snarling.

"Next time you get the juice! It’s a promise!"

A snake goes writhing across the overgrown gravel up ahead, and Ty utters a little scream through his clenched teeth. He doesn’t like snakes, didn’t even want to touch the harmless little corn snake Mrs. Locher brought to school, and this thing is the size of a python, with ruby eyes and fangs that prop its mouth open in a perpetual snarl.

"Go! Drive!" The Taser, waving in his face. The cap, buzzing faintly in his ears. Behind his ears.

The drive curves to the left. Some sort of tree burdened with what look like tentacles leans over them. The tips of the tentacles tickle across Ty’s shoulders and the goose-prickled, hair-on-end nape of his neck.

Ourr boyy . . .

He hears this in his head in spite of the cap. It’s faint, it’s distant, but it’s there.

Ourrrrr boyyyyy . . . yesssss . . . ourrrrs . . .

Burny is grinning. "Hear ’em, don’tcha? They like you. So do I. We’re all friends here, don’t you see?" The grin becomes a grimace. He clutches his bloody middle again. "Goddamned blind old fool!" he gasps.

Then, suddenly, the trees are gone. The golf cart rolls out onto a sullen, crumbling plain. The bushes dwindle and Ty sees that farther along they give way entirely to a crumbled, rocky scree: hills rise and fall beneath that sullen gray sky. A few birds of enormous size wheel lazily. A shaggy, slump-shouldered creature staggers down a narrow defile and is gone from sight before Ty can see exactly what it is . . . not that he wanted to. The thud and pound of machinery is stronger, shaking the earth. The crump of pile drivers; the clash of ancient gears; the squall of cogs. Tyler can feel the golf cart’s steering wheel thrumming in his hands. Ahead of them the driveway ends in a wide road of beaten earth. Along the far side of it is a wall of round white stones.

"That thing you hear, that’s the Crimson King’s power plant," Burny says. He speaks with pride, but there is more than a tinge of fear beneath it. "The Big Combination. A million children have died on its belts, and a zillion more to come, for all I know. But that’s not for you, Tyler. You might have a future after all. First, though, I’ll have my piece of you. Yes indeed."

His blood-streaked hand reaches out and caresses the top of Ty’s buttock.

"A good agent’s entitled to ten percent. Even an old buzzard like me knows that."

The hand draws back. Good thing. Ty has been on the verge of screaming, holding the sound back only by thinking of sitting at Miller Park with good old George Rathbun. If I’d really entered the Brewer Bash, he thinks, none of this would have happened.

But he thinks that may not actually be true. Some things are meant to be, that’s all. Meant.