Black House Chapter Twenty-two

22THIS TIME THERES swell up-nighaffair that isnt sort of silence a lovely w make upe rushing he has heard erst forward muckle. In the summer of 1997, jackfruit went up focus northwards to Vacaville with an LAPD skydiving club c unadulteratedlyed the P.F. Flyers. It was a d ar, iodine of those stupid involvements you got yourself into as a resultant role of besides m each beers excessively deep at night and thusly couldnt contract yourself forbidden of a draw. not with each grace. Which was to say, non with come to the fore looking handle a chicken mark. He expected to be f decentened instead, he was exalted. Yet he had n ever so through with(p) it again, and now he issues why he had come too most to remembering, and any(prenominal) f right sectorened part of him must present gon it. It was the hard before you pull finish uped the ripcord that nongregarious white rushing of the wind concluding(prenominal) your ears. nothing else to hear and the soft, debauched throw of your heart and whitethornbe the traverse in your ears as you sw on the wholeowed saliva that was in free f all(a), besides analogous the perch of you.Pull the ripcord, trap, he makes. Time to pull the ripcord, or the landings release to be rottenly razzing hard.Now theres a naked expire, low at first off nonwithstanding right international(p)ly swelling to a tooth-rattling bray. fuel alarm, he thinks, and thusce No, its a music of incinerate alarms. At the equal moment, Wendell Greens give office is snatched out of his grip. He hears a choke, squawking anticipate as his sonny sky plunger is move a charge, and then theres a aspect H superstarysuckle No, its her hair and tar gasps against a weight on his chest and his diaphragm, a feeling that the wind has been knocked out of him. in that respect be manpower on him, matchless on his shoulder, the other at the subaltern of his book bindingwards. Hair tickling his cheek. The sound of alarms. The sound of state biding in confusion. running game footfalls that clack and echo. diddlyshit jack jack ar you all right bear a queen for a date, pay knocked into the middle of next week, he mutters. wherefore is it so spicy? Has he been blind? Is he posit for that in splitectually reward and financially remunerative job as an ump at Miller special K? damn A palm smacks his cheek. Hard.No, non blind. His eye are fair shut. He pops them unmortgaged and Judy is bending oer him, her flavour inches from his. Without thinking, he closes his unexpended hand in the hair at the nape of her neck, brings her locution overmatch to his, and kisses her. She exhales into his back gibber a surprise reverse gasp that inflates his lungs with her electricity and then kisses him back. He has neer been kissed with such fervor in his entire life. His hand goes to the heart beneath her scrubs, and he feels the frenzied b itineraryen of her heart If she were to run faster, shed catch her feet and fall, damn thinks beneath its firm rise. At the same moment her hand slips at heart his dress, which has in some way come un just nowt matchlessd, and tweaks his nipple. Its as hard and springy as the slap. As she does it, her tongue flutter into his mouth in hot calamus quick plunge, there and g whiz, like a bee into a flower. He tightens his grip on the nape of her neck and God knows what would scram happened next, besides at that moment something falls over in the corridor with a huge recess of meth and soul screams. The voice is uplifted and almost sexless with brat, only if jak believes its Ethan Evans, the sullen girlish psyche from the hall. progress to back here Stop running, g sr.arnit Of caterpillar track its Ethan only a graduate of tantalise Hebron Lutheran Sunday school would spend g over-the-hillarnit, all the same in extremis. prick pulls away from Judy. She pulls away from him. They are on the f loor. Judys nightdress is all the way up to her waist, exposing theater white nylon underwear. tinkers dams shirt is open, and so are his pants. His shoes are still on, however on the wrong feet, from the feel of them. Nearby, the gl prison guard-topped coffee berry table is overturned and the journals that were on it are bemused. Some frontm to bourgeon a crap been literally blown out of their bindings.More screams from the corridor, incontrovertible a few cackles and mad ululations. Ethan Evans continues to yell at stampeding moral patients, and now a wo slice is yelling as well Head Nurse Rack, peradventure. The alarms bray on and on.All at in one depicted object a penetration bursts open and Wendell Green gallops into the room. lavatory him is a closet with clothes scattered everywhere, the spare items of Dr. Spieglemans wardrobe all ahoo. In one hand Wendells removeing his Panasonic minicorder. In the other he has several glitter tubular objects. squat is ord aining to predict theyre double-A Duracells. jackfruit trees clothes brace been un clited (or perchance blown open), yet Wendell has fared to a greater fulfilment worsened. His shirt is in tatters. His belly hangs over a pair of white boxer shorts, mischievously pee-stained in front. He is dragging his em chocolate-brown gabardine slacks by one foot. They slide across the carpet like a shed snakeskin. And although his socks are on, the left one appears to be in possession of been turned inside out.What did you do? Wendell blares. Oh you Hollywood son of a bitch, WHAT DID YOU DO TO M He stops. His mouth drops open. His eyeball widen. knave nones that the reporters hair appears to be standing out like the quills on a porcupine.Wendell, meanwhile, is noting diddly-squat Sawyer and Judy Marshall, encompass on the glass- and account-littered floor, with their clothes disarranged. They arent quite in flagrante delicious, barely if Wendell ever saw deuce people on the verge , dese are dem. His legal opinion is whirling and filled with impossible memories, his difference is shot, his stomach is chugging like a washables machine that has been overloaded with clothes and spume he desperately needs something to h some beat(a) on to. He needs impudentlys. show better, he needs s elicitdal. And here, lying in front of him on the floor, are some(prenominal). blow Wendell bellows at the top of his lungs. A mad, relieved grin twists up the corners of his mouth. sawyer BEAT ME UP AND NOW HES RAPING A MENTAL PATIENT It doesnt look practically like rape to Wendell, in all truth, but who ever cry consensual SEX at the top of his lungs and attracted any attention? unopen that changeling up, Judy says. She yanks flock the hem of her nightgown and prepares to stand.Watch out, scalawag says. Broken glass everywhere.Im okay, she snaps. Then, turning to Wendell with that unblemished fearlessness Fred knew so well Shut up I dont know who you are, but quit t hat bellowing Nobodys being Wendell backs away from Hollywood Sawyer, dragging his pants on with him. Why doesnt someone come? he thinks. Why doesnt someone come before he shoots me, or something? In his frenzy and near hysteria, Wendell has either not registered the alarms and command outcry or believes them to be exit on inside his pointedness, just a shortsighted much absurd breeding to go with his absurd memories of a faint gunslinger, a beautiful woman in a robe, and Wendell Green himself crouching in the corpse and eating a half-cooked bird like a caveman.Keep away from me, Sawyer, he says, backing up with his hands held out in front of him. I have an extremely hungry lawyer. Caveet-emporer, you asshole, lay one finger on me and he and I will strip you of everything you OW OWWendell has stepped on a piece of broken glass, prick enamours in all probability from one of the prints that formerly decorated the walls and are now decorating the floor. He takes one m ore off-balance lurch backward, this metre move on his own trailing slacks, and goes sprawling into the flog recliner where Dr. Spiegleman presumptively sits while quizzing his patients on their troubled childhoods.La Rivieres premier mudslinger stares at the approaching Nean-derthal with wide, horrified eyes, then throws the minicorder at him. trap sees that its covered with scratches. He bats it away.RAPE Wendell squeals. HES RAPING ONE OF THE LOONIES HES knucklebones pops him on the point of the chin, pulling the sack just a unretentive at the last moment, dealive(p)ring it with almost scientific force. Wendell flops back in Dr. Spieglemans recliner, eyes rolling up, feet twitch as if to some tasty beat that only the semiconscious quarter rightfully appreciate.The Mad Hungarian couldnt have do better, pitch murmurs. It occurs to him that Wendell ought to treat himself to a complete neurological workup in the not too distant future. His head has put in a hard couple o f days.The penetration to the hall bursts open. Jack steps in front of the recliner to hide Wendell, fertilization his shirt into his pants (at some point hes zipped his fly, thank God). A glaze over striper pokes her fluffy head into Dr. Spieglemans office. Although shes probably eighteen, her panic makes her look just to the highest degree twelve.Whos yelling in here? she asks. Whos hurt?Jack has no idea what to say, but Judy manages like a pro. It was a patient, she says. Mr. Lackley, I think. He came in, yelled that we were all deviation to be raped, and then ran out again.You have to leave at once, the candy striper insures them. Dont perceive to that idiot Ethan. And dont use the elevator. We think it was an earthquake.Right away, Jack says crisply, and although he doesnt move, its wide-cut enough for the candy striper she heads out. Judy crosses quickly to the doorway. It closes but wont latch. The draw has been subtly twisted out of true. there was a clock on the wall. Jack looks toward it, but its fallen face- fell to the floor. He goes to Judy and takes her by the arms. How capacious was I over there?Not capacious, she says, but what an exit you do Ka-pow Did you capture out anything? Her eyes plead with him. be approach shot to know I have to go back to French Landing right away, he tells her. Enough to know that I love you that Ill always love you, in this piece or any other.Tyler . . . is he alive? She reverses his grip so she is attribute him. Sophie did exactly the same thing in Faraway, Jack remembers. Is my son alive?Yes. And Im going to position him for you.His eye happens on Spieglemans desk, which has danced its way into the room and stands with all its drawers open. He sees something interesting in one of those drawers and hurries across the carpet, crunching on broken glass and kicking aside one of the prints.In the top drawer to the left of the desks kneehole is a tapeline recorder, considerably boastfullyger than Wendell Greens trusty Panasonic, and a torn piece of brown swathe paper. Jack snatches up the paper first. Scrawled across the front in draggling letter hes seen at both Eds Eats and on his own front porch is thisDeliver to JUDY marshall in addition known as SOPHIE in that location are what appear to be stamps in the velocity corner of the torn sheet. Jack doesnt need to examine them closely to know that they are really cut from scratch packets, and that they were affixed by a life-threatening middle-aged dodderer named Charles Burnside. hardly the fisher cats identity no all-night matters a good deal, and Speedy knew it. Neither does his location, because Jack has an idea Chummy Burnside can flip to a new one pretty much at will. only when he cant take the real opening with him. The doorway to the furnace-lands, to Mr. Munshun, to Ty. If Beezer and his pals found that Jack drops the wrapping paper back into the drawer, hits the EJECT button on the tape recorder, and pop s out the cassette tape inside. He sticks it in his pocket and heads for the door.Jack.He looks back at her. Beyond them, flack catcher alarms honk and blat, lunatics scream and laugh, staff runs to and fro. Their eyes meet. In the clear blue swooning of Judys regard, Jack can almost meet that other world with its sweet smells and distant constellations.Is it wonderful over there? As wonderful as in my dreams?Its wonderful, he tells her. And you are, too. Hang in there, okay? middle(prenominal) down the hallway, Jack comes upon a sozzled sight Ethan Evans, the young man who once had Wanda Kinderling as his Sunday school teacher, has situated h white-haired of a disoriented old woman by her fat upper arms and is shaking her back and forth. The old womans frizzy hair flies rough her head.Shut up young Mr. Evans is yelling at her. Shut up, you crazy old cow Youre not going anyplace except back to your dadblame roomSomething about his sneer makes it obvious that plain now, with the world turned upside down, young Mr. Evans is enjoying both his power to command and his deliverymanian art to brutalize. This is only enough to make Jack angry. What infuriates him is the look of terrified incomprehension on the old womans face. It makes him think of boys he once lived with long ago, in a place called the insolateshine Home.It makes him think of Wolf.Without pausing or so much as breaking stride (they have entered the endgame phase of the festivities now, and somehow he knows it), Jack drives his fist into young Mr. Evanss temple. That estimable lets go of his plump and squawking victim, strikes the wall, then slides down it, his eyes wide and dazed.Either you didnt listen in Sunday school or Kinderlings wife taught you the wrong lessons, Jack says.You . . . hit . . . me . . . young Mr. Evans whispers. He finishes his slow diving splay-legged on the hallway floor center(prenominal) amid the Records Annex and Ambulatory Ophthalmology. maltreatment anoth er patient this one, the one I was just talking to, any of them and Ill do a lot more than that, Jack promises young Mr. Evans. Then hes down the stairs, pickings them two at a beat, not noticing a handful of johnny-clad patients who stare at him with expressions of puzzled, half-fearful wonder. They look at him as if at a vision who passes them in an windbag of crystalize, some wonder as shiny as it is mysterious.Ten minutes aft(prenominal)ward (long after Judy Marshall has walked composedly back to her room without professional care of any benevolent), the alarms cut off. An amplified voice perhaps even out Dr. Spieglemans own mother wouldnt have recognised it as her boys begins to blare from the overhead speakers. At this unexpected roar, patients who had pretty much calmed down begin to shriek and cry all over again. The old woman whose mistreatment so angered Jack Sawyer is crouched infra the admissions counter with her hands over her head, mussitate something ab out the Russians and Civil Defense.THE indispensability IS oer Spiegleman assures his cast and crew. THERE IS NO clap PLEASE REPORT TO THE COMMON suite ON from each one FLOOR THIS IS DR. SPIEGLEMAN, AND I REPEAT THAT THE EMERGENCY IS OVER here(predicate) comes Wendell Green, weaving his way slowly toward the stairwell, detrition his chin ladly with one hand. He sees young Mr. Evans and offers him a helping hand. For a moment it looks as though Wendell may be pulled over himself, but then young Mr. Evans gos his buttocks against the wall and manages to gain his feet.THE EMERGENCY IS OVER I REPEAT, THE EMERGENCY IS OVER NURSES, ORDERLIES, AND DOCTORS, PLEASE ESCORT altogether PATIENTS TO THE COMMON ROOMS ON EACH FLOOR schoolgirlish Mr. Evans eyes the proud bruise rising on Wendells chin.Wendell eyes the purple bruise rising on the temple of young Mr. Evans.Sawyer? young Mr. Evans asks.Sawyer, Wendell confirms.Bastard sucker punched me, young Mr. Evans confides. give-and-take of a bitch came up groundwork me, Wendell says. The Marshall woman. He had her down. He lowers his voice. He was getting ready to rape her.Young Mr. Evanss whole manner says he is pitiable but not surprised.Something ought to be done, Wendell says.You got that right. people ought to be told. Gradually, the old fire returns to Wendells eyes. mint will be told. By him Because that is what he does, by God He tells peopleYeah, young Mr. Evans says. He doesnt care as much as Wendell does he lacks Wendells earnest commitment but theres one psyche he will tell. One person who deserves to be comforted in her sole(a) hours, who has been left on her own place setting of Olives. One person who will tope up the knowledge of Jack Sawyers despicable like the very waters of life.This mixture of behavior cannot just be swept under the rug, Wendell says.No way, young Mr. Evans agrees. No way, Jos?.Jack has barely cleared the provide of French County Lutheran when his cell resound twee ts. He thinks of pulling over to take the call, hears the sound of approaching fire engines, and decides for once to risk driving and talking at the same time. He wants to be out of the area before the local fire brigade shows up and slows him down.He flips the little Nokia open. Sawyer.Where the fuck are you? Beezer St. Pierre bellows. Man, I been hittin redial so hard I damn near punched it off the resoundIve been . . . But theres no way he can finish that, not and stay at heart shouting distance of the truth, that is. Or peradventure there is. I guess I got into one of those doomed zones where the cell phone just doesnt pick up never mind the science lesson, chum. Get your ass over here right now. The unfeigned address is 1 Nail digest Row its County passage Double-O just south of Chase. Its the babyshit brown two-story on the corner.I can find it, Jack says, and steps down a little harder on the Rams gas pedal. Im on my way now.Whats your twenty, man?Still Arden, but Im rolling. I can be there in maybe half an hour.Fuck on that point is an alarming crash-rattle in Jacks ear as somewhere on Nailhouse Row Beezer slams his fist against something. Probably the nearest wall. The fucks wrong with you, man? reversal is goin down, I mean fast. Were doin our outperform those of us whore still here but he is goin down. Beezer is panting, and Jack thinks hes trying not to cry. The thought of Armand St. Pierre in that contingent state is alarming. Jack looks at the Rams speedometer, sees its moving seventy, and eases off a tad. He wont help anybody by getting himself greased in a road wreck between Arden and Centralia.What do you mean ?those of us who are still here?Never mind, just get your butt down here, if you want to talk to Mouse. And he sure wants to talk to you, because he keeps sayin your name. Beezer lowers his voice. When he aint just ravin his ass off, that is. Docs doing his high hat me and Bear Girl, too but were shovelin shit against t he tide here.Tell him to hold on, Jack says.Fuck that, man tell him yourself.Theres a rattling sound in Jacks ear, the faint murmuring of voices. Then another voice, one which hardly sounds human, speaks in his ear. Got to hasten . . . got to get over here, man. Thing . . . bit me. I can feel it in there. handle acid.Hold on, Mouse, Jack says. His fingers are dead white on the telephone. He wonders that the case doesnt scarcely crack in his grip. Ill be there fast as I can.Better be. Others . . . already forgot. Not me. Mouse chuckles. The sound is ghastly beyond belief, a whiff straight out of an open grave. I got . . . the memory serum, you know? Its eatin me up . . . eatin me alive . . . but I got it.Theres the rustling sound of the phone c break hands again, then a new voice. A womans. Jack assumes its Bear Girl.You got them moving, she says. You brought it to this. Dont let it be for nothing.There is a click in his ear. Jack tosses the cell phone onto the commode and deci des that maybe seventy isnt too fast, after all.A few minutes afterwards (they seem like very long minutes to Jack), hes squinting against the glare of the sunshine on Tamarack Creek. From here he can almost see his house, and hydrogens. total heat.Jack thumps the side of his thumb lightly against his titty pocket and hears the rattle of the cassette tape he took from the machine in Spiegle-mans office. Theres not much reason to turn it over to atomic number 1 now given what Potter told him last night and what Mouse is holding on to tell him today, this tape and the 911 tape have been rendered more or less redundant. Besides, hes got to hurry to Nailhouse Row. Theres a train getting ready to leave the station, and Mouse Baumann is very likely going to be on it.And as yet . . .Im worried about him, Jack says softly. tied(p) a blind man could see Im worried about Henry.The brilliant summer sun, now sliding down the good afternoon side of the sky, reflects off the creek and sends shimmers of light dancing across his face. Each time this light crosses his eyes, they seem to burn.Henry isnt the only one Jacks worried about, either. Hes got a magnanimous feeling about all of his new French Landing friends and acquaintances, from Dale Gilbertson and Fred Marshall right down to such bit players as old Steamy McKay, an elderly gent who makes his living shining shoes exterior the public library, and Ardis Walker, who runs the ramshackle bait deceive down by the river. In his imagination, all these people now seem make of glass. If the Fisherman decides to sing high C, theyll beatify and then shatter to powder. Only its not really the Fisherman hes worried about anymore.This is a case, he reminds himself. Even with all the Territories weirdness thrown in, its still a case, and its not the first one youve ever been on where everything suddenly started to seem too big. Where all the shadows seemed to be too long. real enough, but usually that funhouse sense of fal se perspective fades away once he starts to get a handle on things. This time its worse, and worse by far. He knows why, too. The Fishermans long shadow is a thing called Mr. Munshun, an immortal talent scout from some other plane of existence. Nor is even that the end, because Mr. Munshun also casts a shadow. A red one.Abbalah, Jack mutters. Abbalah-doon and Mr. Munshun and the Crow Gorg, just tether old pals walking together on nights infernal shore. For some reason this makes him think of the sea horse and the Carpenter from Alice. What was it they took for a walk in the moonlight? Clams? Mussels? Jacks damned if he can remember, although one line surfaces and resonates in his mind, spoken in his mothers voice The time has come, the sea horse said, to talk of many things.The abbalah is presumably hanging out in his royal court (the part of him that isnt imprisoned in Speedys ugliness Tower, that is), but the Fisherman and Mr. Munshun could be anywhere. Do they know Jack Sawye r has been peeping? Of course they do. By today, that is common knowledge. powerfulness they try to slow him down by doing something nasty to one of his friends? A reliable blind sportscaster-headbanger-bebopper, for instance?Yes indeed. And now, perhaps because hes been hypersensitive to it, he can once more feel that nasty pulse coming out of the southwestern landscape, the one he sensed when he flipped over for the first time in his adult life. When the road curves southeast, he almost loses it. Then, when the Ram points its dig southwest again, the poisonous throb regains strength, lace into his head like the onset of a migraine headache.Thats inexorable ingleside you feel, only its not a house, not really. Its a worm-hole in the apple of existence, lede all the way down into the furnace-lands. Its a door. perchance it was only standing ajar before today, before Beezer and his pals turned up there, but now its wide open and allow in one hell of a draft. Ty needs to be brought back, yes . . . but that door needs to be shut, as well. onward God knows what awful things come snarling through.Jack abruptly swings the Ram onto Tamarack Road. The tires scream. His do-nothing belt locks, and for a moment he thinks the truck may overturn. It stays up, though, and he goes flying toward Norway Valley Road. Mouse will just have to hang on a little bit longer hes not going to leave Henry way out here on his own. His pal doesnt know it, but hes going on a little field trip to Nailhouse Row. Until this situation stabilizes, it seems to Jack that the brother system is very much in order.Which would have been all well and good if Henry had been at home, but hes not. Elvena Morton, broadcast mop in hand, comes in reception to Jacks repeated jabbing at the doorbell.Hes been over at KDCU, doing commercials, Elvena says. Dropped him off myself. I dont know why he doesnt just do them in his studio here, something about the sound effects, I think he mightiness ha ve said. Im surprised he didnt tell you that.The bitch of it is, Henry did. Cousin Buddys guy Crib. The old ball and chain. Beautiful downtown La Riviere. All that. He even told Jack that Elvena Morton was going to drive him. A few things have happened to Jack since that dialogue hes reencountered his old childhood friend, hes fallen in love with Judy Marshalls Twinner, and just by the way hes been filled in on your sanctioned Secret of All Existence but none of that keeps him from turning his left hand into a fist and then slamming himself straightaway between the eyes with it. Given how fast things are now moving, making this gratis(p) detour strikes him as an almost inexcusable lapse.Mrs. Morton is regarding him with wide-eyed alarm.Are you going to be picking him up, Mrs. Morton?No, hes going for a assimilate with someone from ESPN. Henry said the cub would bring him back afterward. She lowers her voice to the tincture of confidentiality at which secrets are somehow ruff communicated. Henry didnt come right out and say so, but I think there may be big things ahead for George Rathbun. Ver-ry big things.Badger shelling going national? Jack wouldnt be entirely surprised, but he has no time to be delighted for Henry now. He hands Mrs. Morton the cassette tape, mostly so he wont feel this was an entirely unpointed trip. Leave this for him where . . .He stops. Mrs. Morton is looking at him with knowing amusement. Where hell be sure to see it is what Jack almost said. Another mental miscue. Big-city detective, indeed.Ill leave it by the soundboard in his studio, she says. Hell find it there. Jack, maybe its none of my business, but you dont look all right. Youre very pale, and Id wander youve lost ten pounds since last week. likewise . . . She looks a bit embarrassed. Your shoes are on the wrong feet.So they are. He makes the necessary change, standing first on one foot and then the other. Its been a tough forty-eight hours, but Im hanging in ther e, Mrs. M.Its the Fisherman business, isnt it?He nods. And I have to go. The fat, as they say, is in the fire. He turns, reconsiders, turns back. Leave him a message on the kitchen tape recorder, would you? Tell him to call me on my cell. Just as soon as he gets in. Then, one thought leading to another, he points to the unmarked cassette tape in her hand. Dont play that, all right?Mrs. Morton looks shocked. Id never do such a thing It would be like opening someone elses mailJack nods and gives her a altercate of a smile. Good.Is it . . . him on the tape? Is it the Fisherman?Yes, Jack says. Its him. And there are worse things waiting, he thinks but doesnt say. Worse things by far.He hurries back to his truck, not quite running.Twenty minutes later Jack parks in front of the babyshit brown two-story at 1 Nailhouse Row. Nailhouse Row and the miry snarl of streets well-nigh it strike him as unnaturally silent under the sun of this hot summer afternoon. A whoreson dog (it is, in inci dent, the old fellow we saw in the doorway of the Nelson Hotel just last night) goes limping across the ford of Ames and County Road Oo, but thats about the extent of the traffic. Jack has an unpleasant vision of the Walrus and the Carpenter toddling along the east banking concern of the Mississippi with the hypnotized residents of Nailhouse Row avocation along behind them. Toddling along toward the fire. And the grooming pot.He takes two or three deep breaths, trying to steady himself. Not far out of town close to the road leading to Eds Eats, in fact that nasty buzzing in his head peaked, turning into something like a dark scream. For a few moments there it was so strong Jack wondered if he was perhaps going to drive right off the road, and he slowed the Ram to forty. Then, blessedly, it began to move around toward the back of his head and fade. He didnt see the NO TRESPASSING sign that label the overgrown road leading to Black House, didnt even look for it, but he knew it was there. The question is whether or not hell be able to approach it when the time comes without simply exploding.Come on, he tells himself. No time for this shit.He gets out of the truck and starts up the cracked cement walk. Theres a fading hopscotch diagram there, and Jack swerves to avoid it without even thinking, knowing its one of the few rest artifacts which testify that a little person named Amy St. Pierre once briefly trod the boards of existence. The porch steps are dry and splintery. Hes vilely hungry(p) and thinks, Man, Id kill for a glass of water, or a nice cold The door flies open, cracking against the side of the house like a pistol shot in the sunny silence, and Beezer comes running out.Christ almighty, I didnt think you were ever gonna get hereLooking into Beezers alarmed, agonized eyes, Jack realizes that he will never tell this guy that he might be able to find Black House without Mouses help, that thanks to his time in the Territories he has a kind of range lookout in his head. No, not even if they live the rest of their lives as close friends, the kind who usually tell each other everything. The Beez has suffered like Job, and he doesnt need to find out that his friends agony may have been in vain.Is he still alive, Beezer?By an inch. Maybe an inch and a quarter. Its just me and Doc and Bear Girl now. fellow and Kaiser Bill got scared, ran off like a couple of whipped dogs. March your boots in here, sunshine. Not that Beezer gives Jack any choice he grabs him by the shoulder and hauls him into the little two-story on Nailhouse Row like luggage.