The Waste Lands (Page 72)

It slumped in the hot light, a ramshackle slate-roofed revenant grow-ing out of a hummocky trash-littered yard, somehow making Jake think of a dangerous dog which pretended to be asleep. Its steep roof overhung the front porch like a beetling brow. The boards of the porch were splintery and warped. Shutters which might once have been green leaned askew beside the glassless windows; ancient curtains still hung in some of these, dangling like strips of dead skin. To the left, an elderly trellis leaned away from die building, now held up not by nails but only by die nameless and somehow filthy clusters of vine which crawled over it. There was a sign on the lawn and another on die door. From where Jake stood, he could read neither of them.

The house was alive. He knew this, could feel its awareness reaching out from the boards and the slumping roof, could feel it pouring in rivers from the black sockets of its windows. The idea of approaching that terrible place filled him with dismay; the idea of actually going inside filled him with inarticulate horror. Yet he would have to. He could hear a low, slumbrous buzzing in his ears—the sound of a beehive on a hot summer day—and for a moment he was afraid he might faint. He closed his eyes . . . and his voice filled his head. You must come, Jake. This is the path of the Beam, the way of the Tower, and the time of your Drawing. Be true; stand; come to me. The fear didn’t pass, but that terrible sense of impending panic did. He opened his eyes again and saw that he was not the only one who had sensed the power and awakening sentience of the place. Eddie was trying to pull away from the fence. He turned toward Jake, who could see Eddie’s eyes, wide and uneasy beneath his green head-band. His big brother grabbed him and pushed him toward the rusty gate, but the gesture was too half-hearted to be much of a tease; however thick-headed he might be, Henry liked The Mansion no better than Eddie did. They drew away a little and stood looking at the place for a while. Jake could not make out what they were saying to each other, but the tone of their voices was awed and uneasy. Jake suddenly remembered Eddie speaking in his dream: Remember there’s danger, though. Be care-ful . . . and be quick. Suddenly the real Eddie, the one across the street, raised his voice enough so that Jake could make out the words. “Can we go home now, Henry? Please? I don’t like it.” His tone was pleading.

“Fuckin little sissy,” Henry said, but Jake thought he heard relief as well as indulgence in Henry’s voice. “Come on.”

They turned away from the ruined house crouching high-shouldered behind its sagging fence and approached the street. Jake backed up, then turned and looked into the window of the dispirited little hole-in-the-wall shop called Dutch Hill Used Appliances. He watched Henry and Eddie, dim and ghostly reflections superimposed on an ancient Hoover vacuum cleaner, cross Rhinehold Street. “Are you sure it’s not really haunted?” Eddie asked as they stepped onto the sidewalk on Jake’s side.

“Well, I tell you what,” Henry said. “Now that I been out here again, I’m really not so sure.”

They passed directly behind Jake without looking at him. “Would you go in there?” Eddie asked.

“Not for a million dollars,” Henry replied promptly. They rounded the corner. Jake stepped away from the window and peeped after them. They were headed back the way they had come, close together on the sidewalk, Henry hulking along in his steel-toed shit-kickers, his shoulders already slumped like those of a much older man, Eddie walking beside him with neat, unconscious grace. Their shadows, long and trailing out into the street now, mingled amicably together.

They’re going home, Jake thought, and felt a wave of loneliness so strong that he felt it would crush him. Going to eat supper and do homework and argue over which TV shows to watch and then go to bed. Henry may be a bullying shit, but they’ve got a life, those two, one that makes sense . . . and they’re going back to it. I wonder if they have any idea of how lucky they are. Eddie might, I suppose.

Jake turned, adjusted the straps of his pack, and crossed Rhinehold Street.

SUSANNAH SENSED MOVEMENT IN the empty grassland beyond the circle of standing stones: a sighing, whispering rush.

“Something comin,” she said tautly. “Comin fast.” “Be careful,” Eddie said, “but keep it off me. You understand? Keep it off me.” “I hear you, Eddie. You just do your own thing.” Eddie nodded. He knelt in the center of the ring, holding the sharp-ened stick out in front of him as if assessing its point. Then he lowered it and drew a dark straight line in the dirt. “Roland, watch out for her. . .” “I will if I can, Eddie.”

“. . . but keep it off me. Jake’s coming. Crazy little mother’s really coming.” Susannah could now see the grasses due north of the speaking ring parting in a long dark line, creating a furrow that lanced straight at the circle of stones. “Get ready,” Roland said. “It’ll go for Eddie. One of us will have to ambush it.”

Susannah reared up on her haunches like a snake coming out of a Hindu fakir’s basket. Her hands, rolled into hard brown fists, were held at the sides of her face. Her eyes blazed. “I’m ready,” she said and then shouted: “Come on, big boy! You come on right now! Run like it’s yo birfday!” The rain began to fall harder as the demon which lived here re-entered its circle in a booming rush. Susannah had just time to sense thick and merciless masculinity—it came to her as an eyewatering smell of gin and juniper—and then it shot toward the center of the circle. She closed her eyes and reached for it, not with her arms or her mind but with all the female force which lived at the core of her: Hey, big boy! Where you goan? D’pussy be ovah heah! It whirled. She felt its surprise . . . and then its raw hunger, as full and urgent as a pulsing artery. It leaped upon her like a ra**st springing from the mouth of an alley.