Black House

The Thunder Two tell him they’re okay. For now it’s true, but Beezer doesn’t know how long equilibrium is going to last. His stomach is churning, low and slow. Well, so what if I blow my groceries in there? he thinks. According to Jack, Burnside’s dead, he won’t mind.

Jack leads them up the porch steps, pausing to boot the rusted NO TRESPASSING sign with its death’s-head graffiti over the side and into a clutch of weeds that close over it at once, like a greedy hand. Dale is reminded of how Jack spit on the crow. His friend seems different now, younger and stronger. "But we are going to trespass," Jack says. "We’re going to trespass our asses off."

At first, however, it seems they will not. The front door of Black House isn’t just locked. There’s no crack at all between the door and the jamb. In fact, once they’re close up, the door looks painted on, a trompe l’oeil.

Behind them, in the woods, something screams. Dale jumps. The scream rises to an excruciating high note, breaks into a peal of maniacal laughter, and is suddenly gone.

"Natives are f**kin’ restless," Doc comments.

"Want to try a window?" Beezer asks Jack.

"Nope. We’re going in the front way."

Jack has been raising the Richie Sexson bat as he speaks. Now he lowers it, looking puzzled. There is a droning sound from behind them, quickly growing louder. And the daylight, thin already in this strange forest dell, seems to be weakening even further.

"What now?" Beezer asks, turning back toward the drive and the parked cruiser. He’s holding the 9mm up by his right ear. "What the — " And then he falls silent. The gun sags outward and downward. His mouth drops open.

"Holy shit," Doc says quietly.

Dale, even more quietly: "Is this your doing, Jack? If it is, you really have been hiding your light under a bushel."

The light has dimmed because the clearing in front of Black House has now acquired a canopy of bees. More are streaming in from the lane, a brownish-gold comet tail. They give off a sleepy, benevolent droning sound that drowns out the harsh fire-alarm buzz of the house entirely. The hoarse gator thing in the woods falls silent, and the flickering shapes in the trees disappear.

Jack’s mind is suddenly filled with thoughts and images of his mother: Lily dancing, Lily pacing around behind one of the cameras before a big scene with a cigarette clamped between her teeth, Lily sitting at the living-room window and looking out as Patsy Cline sings "Crazy Arms."

In another world, of course, she’d been another kind of queen, and what is a queen without a loyal retinue?

Jack Sawyer looks at the vast cloud of bees — millions of them, perhaps billions; every hive in the Midwest must be empty this afternoon — and he smiles. This changes the shape of his eyes and the tears that have been growing there spill down his cheeks. Hello, he thinks. Hello there, boys.

The low pleasant hum of the bees seems to change slightly, as if in answer. Perhaps it’s only his imagination.

"What are they for, Jack?" Beezer asks. His voice is resonant with awe.

"I don’t exactly know," Jack says. He turns back to the door, raises the bat, and knocks it once, hard, against the wood. "Open!" he cries. "I demand it in the name of Queen Laura DeLoessian! And in the name of my mother!"

There is a high-pitched crack, so loud and piercing that Dale and Beez both draw back, wincing. Beezer actually covers his ears. A gap appears at the top of the door and races along it left to right. At the door’s upper right corner, the gap pivots and plunges straight down, creating a crack through which a musty draft blows. Jack catches a whiff of something both sour and familiar: the deathsmell they first encountered at Ed’s Eats.

Jack reaches for the knob and tries it. It turns freely in his hand. He opens the way to Black House.

But before he can invite them in, Doc Amberson begins to scream.

Someone — maybe it’s Ebbie, maybe T.J., maybe goofy old Ronnie Metzger — is yanking Ty’s arm. It hurts like a son of a gun, but that’s not the worst. The arm yanker is also making this weird humming noise that seems to vibrate deep inside his head. There’s a clanking noise as well

(the Big Combination, that’s the Big Combination)

but that humming . . . ! Man, that humming hurts.

"Quit it," Ty mumbles. "Quit it, Ebbie or I’ll — "

Faint screams seep through that electric buzzing sound, and Ty Marshall opens his eyes. There’s no merciful period of grace when he’s unsure about where he is or what’s happened to him. It all comes back with the force of some terrible picture — a car accident with dead people lying around, say — that is shoved into your face before you can look away.

He’d held on until the old man was dead; had obeyed the voice of his mother and kept his head. But once he started shouting for help, panic had come back and swallowed him. Or maybe it was shock. Or both. In any case, he’d passed out while still screaming for help. How long has he hung here by his shackled left arm, unconscious? It’s impossible to tell from the light spilling through the shed door; that seems unchanged. So do the various clankings and groanings of the huge machine, and Ty understands that it goes on forever, along with the screams of the children and the crack of the whips as the unspeakable guards press the work ever onward. The Big Combination never shuts down. It runs on blood and terror and never takes a day off.

But that buzzing — that juicy electric buzzing, like the world’s biggest Norelco razor — what the hell is that?

Mr. Munshun’s gone to get the mono. Burny’s voice in his head. A vile whisper. The End-World mono.

A terrible dismay steals into Ty’s heart. He has no doubt at all that what he hears is that very monorail, even now pulling under the canopy at the end of Station House Road. Mr. Munshun will look for his boy, his sbecial bouy, and when he doesn’t see him (nor Burn-Burn, either), will he come searching?