Black House (Page 75)
- Page 1
- Page 1
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 2
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 3
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 4
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 5
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 6
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 7
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 8
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 9
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 10
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 11
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 12
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 13
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 14
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 15
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 16
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 17
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 18
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 19
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 20
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 21
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 22
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 23
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 24
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 25
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 26
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 27
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 28
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 29
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 30
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 168
- Page 169
- Page 169
- Page 170
- Page 170
- Page 171
- Page 171
- Page 172
- Page 172
- Page 173
- Page 173
- Page 174
- Page 174
- Page 175
- Page 175
- Page 176
- Page 176
- Page 177
- Page 177
- Page 178
- Page 178
- Page 179
- Page 179
- Page 180
- Page 180
- Page 181
- Page 181
- Page 182
- Page 182
- Page 183
- Page 183
- Page 184
- Page 184
- Page 185
- Page 185
- Page 186
- Page 186
- Page 187
- Page 187
- Page 188
- Page 188
- Page 189
- Page 189
- Page 190
- Page 190
- Page 191
- Page 191
- Page 192
- Page 192
- Page 193
- Page 193
- Page 194
- Page 194
- Page 195
- Page 195
- Page 196
- Page 196
- Page 197
- Page 197
- Page 198
- Page 198
- Page 199
- Page 199
- Page 200
- Page 200
- Page 201
- Page 201
- Page 202
- Page 202
- Page 203
- Page 203
- Page 204
- Page 204
- Page 205
- Page 205
- Page 206
- Page 206
- Page 207
- Page 207
- Page 208
- Page 208
- Page 209
- Page 209
- Page 210
- Page 210
- Page 211
- Page 211
- Page 212
- Page 212
- Page 213
- Page 213
- Page 214
- Page 214
- Page 215
- Page 215
- Page 216
- Page 216
- Page 217
- Page 217
- Page 218
- Page 218
- Page 219
- Page 219
- Page 220
- Page 220
- Page 221
- Page 221
- Page 222
- Page 222
- Page 223
- Page 223
- Page 224
- Page 224
- Page 225
- Page 225
- Page 226
- Page 226
- Page 227
- Page 227
- Page 228
- Page 228
- Page 229
- Page 229
He walks on, and has almost reached the road when he realizes there is more than smoke in the southwest. There is a kind of vibration, as well. It beats into his head like the start of a migraine headache. And it’s strangely variable. If he stands with his face pointed dead south, that unpleasant pulse is less. Turn east and it’s gone. North and it’s almost gone. Then, as he continues to turn, it comes all the way back to full. Worse than ever now that he’s noticed it, the way the buzz of a fly or the knock of a radiator in a hotel room is worse after you really start to notice it.
Jack turns another slow, full circle. South, and the vibration sinks. East, it’s gone. North, it’s starting to come back. West, it’s coming on strong. Southwest and he’s locked in like the SEEK button on a car radio. Pow, pow, pow. A black and nasty vibration like a headache, a smell like ancient smoke . . .
"No, no, no, not smoke," Jack says. He’s standing almost up to his chest in summer grass, pants soaked, white moths flittering around his head like a half-assed halo, eyes wide, cheeks once more pale. In this moment he looks twelve again. It is eerie how he has rejoined his younger (and perhaps better) self. "Not smoke, that smells like . . ."
He suddenly makes that urking sound again. Because the smell — not in his nose but in the center of his head — is rotted baloney. The smell of Irma Freneau’s half-rotted, severed foot.
"I’m smelling him," Jack whispers, knowing it’s not a smell he means. He can make that pulse whatever he wants . . . including, he realizes, gone. "I’m smelling the Fisherman. Either him or . . . I don’t know."
He starts walking, and a hundred yards later he stops again. The pulse in his head is indeed gone. It has faded out the way radio stations do when the day warms and the temperature thickens. It’s a relief.
Jack has almost reached the road, which no doubt leads one way to some version of Arden and the other way to versions of Centralia and French Landing, when he hears an irregular drumming sound. He feels it as well, running up his legs like a Gene Krupa backbeat.
He turns to the left, then shouts in mingled surprise and delight. Three enormous brown creatures with long, lolloping ears go leaping past Jack’s position, rising above the grass, sinking back into it, then rising above it again. They look like rabbits crossed with kangaroos. Their protruding black eyes stare with comic terror. Across the road they go, their flat feet (white-furred instead of brown) slapping up dust.
"Christ!" Jack says, half-laughing and half-sobbing. He whacks himself in the center of his forehead with the heel of his palm. "What was that, Richie-boy? Got any comments on that?"
Richie, of course does. He tells Jack that Jack has just suffered an extremely vivid . . . ba-haaa! . . . hallucination.
"Of course," Jack says. "Giant bunny rabbits. Get me to the nearest A.A. meeting." Then, as he steps out onto the road, he looks toward the southwestern horizon again. At the haze of smoke there. A village. And do the residents fear as the shadows of the evening come on? Fear the coming of the night? Fear the creature that is taking their children? Do they need a coppiceman? Of course they do. Of course they —
Something is lying on the road. Jack bends down and picks up a Mil-waukee Brewers baseball cap, jarringly out of place in this world of giant hopping range rabbits, but indubitably real. Judging from the plastic adjustment band in the back, it’s a child’s baseball cap. Jack looks inside, knowing what he’ll find, and there it is, carefully inked on the bill: TY MARSHALL. The cap’s not as wet as Jack’s jeans, which are soaked with morning dew, but it’s not dry, either. It has been lying here on the edge of the road, he thinks, since yesterday. The logical assumption would be that Ty’s abductor brought Ty this way, but Jack doesn’t believe that. Perhaps it is the lingering pulse of vibration that gives rise to a different thought, a different image: the Fisherman, with Ty carefully stashed away, walking out this dirt road. Under his arm is a wrapped shoe box decorated with bogus stamps. On his head is Ty’s baseball hat, kind of balancing there because it’s really too small for the Fisherman. Still, he doesn’t want to change the adjustment band. Doesn’t want Jack to mistake it for a man’s cap, even for a single second. Because he is teasing Jack, inviting Jack into the game.
"Took the boy in our world," Jack mutters. "Escaped with him to this world. Stashed him someplace safe, like a spider stashing a fly. Alive? Dead? Alive, I think. Don’t know why. Maybe it’s just what I want to believe. Leave it. Then he went to wherever he stashed Irma. Took her foot and brought it to me. Brought it through this world, then flipped back to my world to leave it on the porch. Lost the hat on the way, maybe? Lost it off his head?"
Jack doesn’t think so. Jack thinks this f**k, this skell, this world-hopping dirtbag, left the cap on purpose. Knew that if Jack walked this road he’d find it.
Holding the hat to his chest like a Miller Park fan showing respect to the flag during the national anthem, Jack closes his eyes and concentrates. It’s easier than he would have expected, but he supposes some things you never forget — how to peel an orange, how to ride a bike, how to flip back and forth between worlds.
Boy like you don’t need no cheap wine, anyhow, he hears his old friend Speedy Parker say, and there’s the edge of a laugh in Speedy’s voice. At the same time, that sense of vertigo twists through Jack again. A moment later he hears the alarming sound of an oncoming car.
He steps back, opening his eyes as he does so. Catches a glimpse of a tarred road — Norway Valley Road, but —
A horn blares and a dusty old Ford slams by him, the passenger side-view mirror less than nine inches from Jack Sawyer’s nose. Warm air, once again filled with the faint but pungent odor of hydrocarbons, surfs over Jack’s cheeks and brow, along with some farm kid’s indignant voice:
- Page 1
- Page 1
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 2
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 3
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 4
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 5
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 6
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 7
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 8
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 9
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 10
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 11
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 12
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 13
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 14
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 15
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 16
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 17
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 18
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 19
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 20
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 21
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 22
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 23
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 24
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 25
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 26
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 27
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 28
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 29
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 30
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 168
- Page 169
- Page 169
- Page 170
- Page 170
- Page 171
- Page 171
- Page 172
- Page 172
- Page 173
- Page 173
- Page 174
- Page 174
- Page 175
- Page 175
- Page 176
- Page 176
- Page 177
- Page 177
- Page 178
- Page 178
- Page 179
- Page 179
- Page 180
- Page 180
- Page 181
- Page 181
- Page 182
- Page 182
- Page 183
- Page 183
- Page 184
- Page 184
- Page 185
- Page 185
- Page 186
- Page 186
- Page 187
- Page 187
- Page 188
- Page 188
- Page 189
- Page 189
- Page 190
- Page 190
- Page 191
- Page 191
- Page 192
- Page 192
- Page 193
- Page 193
- Page 194
- Page 194
- Page 195
- Page 195
- Page 196
- Page 196
- Page 197
- Page 197
- Page 198
- Page 198
- Page 199
- Page 199
- Page 200
- Page 200
- Page 201
- Page 201
- Page 202
- Page 202
- Page 203
- Page 203
- Page 204
- Page 204
- Page 205
- Page 205
- Page 206
- Page 206
- Page 207
- Page 207
- Page 208
- Page 208
- Page 209
- Page 209
- Page 210
- Page 210
- Page 211
- Page 211
- Page 212
- Page 212
- Page 213
- Page 213
- Page 214
- Page 214
- Page 215
- Page 215
- Page 216
- Page 216
- Page 217
- Page 217
- Page 218
- Page 218
- Page 219
- Page 219
- Page 220
- Page 220
- Page 221
- Page 221
- Page 222
- Page 222
- Page 223
- Page 223
- Page 224
- Page 224
- Page 225
- Page 225
- Page 226
- Page 226
- Page 227
- Page 227
- Page 228
- Page 228
- Page 229
- Page 229