Black House

"Yes," Jack says. Fred abruptly lets go of Jack's shirt and staggers backward, sobbing. Jack pays no attention to him and makes no effort to tuck in the tail of his crumpled shirt. He's still looking at the package. He half-expects sugar-packet stamps, but no, this is just a case of plain old metered mail. Whatever it is, it's been mailed Priority to Mr. Tyler Marshall, 16 Robin Hood Lane, French Landing. The return address has been stamped in red: Mr. George Rathbun, KDCU, 4 Peninsula Drive, French Landing. Below this, stamped in large black letters:

EVEN A BLIND MAN CAN SEE THAT

COULEE COUNTRY LOVES THE BREWER BASH!

"Henry, you never quit, do you?" Jack murmurs. Tears sting his eyes. The idea of life without his old friend hits him all over again, leaves him feeling helpless and lost and stupid and hurt.

"What about Uncle Henry?" Dale asks. "Jack, Uncle Henry's dead. "

Jack's no longer so sure of that, somehow.

"Let's go," Beezer says. "We got to get that kid. He's alive, but he ain't safe. I got that clear as a bell. Let's go for it. We can figure the rest out later. "

But Jack ¡ª who has not just heard Tyler's shout but has, for a moment, seen through Tyler's eyes ¡ª doesn't have much to figure out. In fact, figuring out now comes down to only one thing. Ignoring both Beezer and Dale, he steps toward Ty's weeping father.

"Fred. "

Fred goes on sobbing.

"Fred, if you ever want to see your boy again, you get hold of yourself right now and listen to me. "

Fred looks up, red eyes streaming. The ridiculously small baseball cap still perches on his head.

"What's in this, Fred?"

"It must be a prize in that contest George Rathbun runs every summer ¡ª the Brewer Bash. But I don't know how Ty could have won something in the first place. A couple of weeks ago he was pissing and moaning about how he forgot to enter. He even asked if maybe I'd entered the contest for him, and I kind of . . . well, I snapped at him. " Fresh tears begin running down Fred's stubbly cheeks at the memory. "That was around the time Judy was getting . . . strange . . . I was worried about her and I just kind of . . . snapped at him. You know?" Fred's chest heaves. He makes a watery hitching sound and his Adam's apple bobs up and down. He wipes an arm across his eyes. "And Ty . . . all he said was, ¡®That's all right, Dad. ' He didn't get mad at me, didn't sulk or anything. Because that's just the kind of boy he was. That he is. "

"How did you know to bring it to me?"

"Your friend called," Fred says. "He told me the postman had brought something and I had to bring it to you here, right away. Before you left. He called you ¡ª "

"He called me Travelin' Jack. "

Fred Marshall looks at him wonderingly. "That's right. "

"All right. " Jack speaks gently, almost absently. "We're going to get your boy now. "

"I'll come. I've got my deer rifle in the truck ¡ª "

"And that's where it's going to stay. Go home. Make a place for him. Make a place for your wife. And let us do what we have to do. " Jack looks first at Dale, then at Beezer. "Come on," he says. "Let's roll. "

Five minutes later, the FLPD chief's car is speeding west on Highway 35. Directly ahead, like an honor guard, Beezer and Doc are riding side by side, the sun gleaming on the chrome of their bikes. Trees in full summer leaf crowd close to the road on either side.

Jack can feel the buzzing that is Black House's signature starting to ramp up in his head. He has discovered he can wall that noise off if he has to, keep it from spreading and blanketing his entire thought process with static, but it's still damned unpleasant. Dale has given him one of the Ruger . 357s that are the police department's service weapons; it's now stuck in the waistband of his blue jeans. He was surprised at how good the weight of it felt in his hand, almost like a homecoming. Guns may not be of much use in the world behind Black House, but they have to get there first, don't they? And according to Beezer and Doc, the approach is not exactly undefended.

"Dale, do you have a pocketknife?"

"Glove compartment," Dale says. He glances at the long package on Jack's lap. "I presume you want to open that. "

"You presume right. "

"Can you explain a few things while you do it? Like whether or not, once we get inside Black House, we can expect Charles Burnside to jump out of a secret door with an axe and start ¡ª "

"Chummy Burnside's days of jumping out at folks are all over," Jack says. "He's dead. Ty Marshall killed him. That's what hit us outside the Sand Bar. "

The chief's car swerves so extravagantly ¡ª all the way across to the left side of the road ¡ª that Beezer looks back for a moment, startled at what he's just seen in his rearview. Jack gives him a hard, quick wave ¡ª Go on, don't worry about us ¡ª and Beez faces forward again.

"What?" Dale gasps.

"The old bastard was hurt, but I have an idea that Ty still did one hell of a brave thing. Brave and crafty both. " Jack is thinking that Henry softened Burnside up and Ty finished him up. What George Rathbun would undoubtedly have called a honey of a double play.

"How ¡ª "

"Disemboweled him. With his bare hands. Hand. I'm pretty sure the other one's chained up somehow. "

Dale is silent for a moment, watching the motorcyclists ahead of him as they lean into a curve with their hair streaming out from beneath their token gestures at obeying Wisconsin's helmet law. Jack, meanwhile, is slitting open brown wrapping paper and revealing a long white carton beneath. Something rolls back and forth inside.

"You're telling me that a ten-year-old boy disemboweled a serial killer. A serial cannibal. You somehow know this. "

"Yes. "

"I find that extremely difficult

to believe. "

"Based on the father, I guess I can understand that. Fred's . . . " A wimp is what comes to mind, but that is both unfair and untrue. "Fred's tenderhearted," Jack says. "Judy, though . . . "

"Backbone," Dale says. "She does have that, I'm told. "

Jack gives his friend a humorless grin. He's got the buzzing confined to a small portion of his brain, but in that one small portion it's shrieking like a fire alarm. They're almost there. "She certainly does," he tells Dale. "And so does the boy. He's . . . brave. " What Jack has almost said is He's a prince.

"And he's alive. "

"Yes. "

"Chained in a shed somewhere. "

"Right. "

"Behind Burnside's house. "

"Uh-huh. "

"If I've got the geography right, that places him somewhere in the woods near Schubert and Gale. "

Jack smiles and says nothing.

"All right," Dale says heavily. "What have I got wrong?"

"It doesn't matter. Which is good, because it's impossible to explain. " Jack just hopes Dale's mind is screwed down tightly, because it's apt to take one hell of a pounding in the next hour or so.

His fingernail slits the tape holding the box closed. He opens it. There's bubble wrap beneath. Jack pulls it out, tosses it into the footwell, and looks at Ty Marshall's Brewer Bash prize ¡ª a prize he won even though he apparently never entered the contest.

Jack lets out a little sigh of awe. There's enough kid left in him to react to the object that he sees, even though he never played the game once he was too old for Little League. Because there's something about a bat, isn't there? Something that speaks to our primitive beliefs about the purity of struggle and the strength of our team. The home team. Of the right and the white. Surely Bernard Malamud knew it; Jack has read The Natural a score of times, always hoping for a different ending (and when the movie offered him one, he hated it), always loving the fact that Roy Hobbs named his cudgel Wonderboy. And never mind the critics with all their stuffy talk about the Arthurian legend and phallic symbols; sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and sometimes a bat is just a bat. A big stick. Something to hit home runs with.

"Holy wow," Dale says, glancing over. And he looks younger. Boyish. Eyes wide. So Jack isn't the only one, it seems. "Whose bat?" Jack lifts it carefully from the box. Written up the barrel in black Magic Marker is this message:

To Tyler Marshall Keep Slugging! Your pal, Richie Sexson

"Richie Sexson," Jack says. "Who's Richie Sexson?"

"Big slugger for the Brewers," Dale says.

"Is he as good as Roy Hobbs?"

"Roy ¡ª " Then Dale grins. "Oh, in that movie! Robert Redford, right? No I don't think ¡ª . Hey, what are you doing?"

Still holding the bat (in fact he almost bashes Dale in the right cheekbone with the end of it), Jack reaches over and honks the horn. "Pull over," he says. "This is it. Those dopes were out here only yesterday and they're going right past it. "

Dale pulls over on the shoulder, brings the cruiser to a jerky stop, and puts it in park. When he looks over at Jack, his face has gone remarkably pale. "Oh man, Jack ¡ª I don't feel so good. Maybe it was breakfast. Christ, I hope I'm not going to start puking. "

"That buzzing you hear in your head, is that from breakfast?" Jack inquires.

Dale's eyes go wide. "How do you ¡ª "

"Because I hear it, too. And feel it in my stomach. It's not your breakfast. It's Black House. " Jack holds out the squeeze bottle. "Go on. Dab some more around your nostrils. Get some right up in. You'll feel better. " Projecting absolute confidence. Because it's not about secret weapons or secret formulas; it's certainly not about honey. It's about belief. They have left the realm of the rational and have entered the realm of slippage. Jack knows it for certain as soon as he opens the car door.

Ahead of him, the bikes swerve and come back. Beezer, an impatient look on his face, is shaking his head: No, no, not here.

Dale joins Jack at the front of the car. His face is still pale, but the skin around and below his nose is shiny with honey, and he looks steady enough on his feet. "Thanks, Jack. This is so much better. I don't know how putting honey around my nose could affect my ears, but the buzzing's better, too. It's nothing but a low drone. "

"Wrong place!" Beezer bawls as he pulls his Harley up to the front of the cruiser.

"Nope," Jack says calmly, looking at the unbroken woods. Sunlight on green leaves contrasting with crazy black zigzags of shadow. Everything trembling and unsteady, making mock of perspective. "This is it. The hideout of Mr. Munshun and the Black House Gang, as the Duke never said. "

Now Doc's bike adds to the din as he pulls up next to Beezer. "Beez is right! We were just out here yesterday, y'damn fool! Don't you think you know what we're talking about?"

"This is just scrap woods on both sides," Dale chimes in. He points across the road where, fifty yards or so southeast of their position, yellow police tape flutters from a pair of trees. "That's the lane to Ed's Eats, there. The place we want is probably beyond it ¡ª "

Even though you know it's here, Jack thinks. Marvels, really. Why else have you gone and smeared yourself with honey like Pooh-bear on a lucky day?

He shifts his gaze to Beezer and Doc, who are also looking remarkably unwell. Jack opens his mouth to speak to them . . . and something flutters at the upper edge of his vision. He restrains his natural impulse to look up and define the source of that movement. Something ¡ª probably the old Travelin' Jack part of him ¡ª thinks it would be a very bad idea to do that. Something is watching them already. Better if it doesn't know it's been spotted.

He puts the Richie Sexson bat down, leaning it against the side of the idling cruiser. He takes the honey from Dale and holds it out to the Beez. "Here you go," he says, "lather up. "

"There's no point in it, you goddamn fool!" Beezer cries in exasperation. "This . . . ain't . . . the place!"

"Your nose is bleeding," Jack says mildly. "Just a little. Yours too, Doc. "

Doc wipes a finger under his nose and looks at the red smear, startled. He starts, "But I know this isn't ¡ª "

That flutter again, at the top of Jack's vision. He ignores it and points straight ahead. Beezer, Doc, and Dale all look, and Dale's the first one to see it. "I'll be damned," he says softly. "A NO TRESPASSING sign. Was it there before?"

"Yep," Jack says. "Been there for thirty years or more, I'd guess. "

"Fuck," Beez says, and begins rubbing honey around his nose. He pokes generous wads of the stuff up his nostrils; resinous drops gleam in his red-brown Viking's beard. "We woulda gone right on, Doctor. All the way to town. Hell, maybe all the way to Rapid City, South Dakota. " He hands the honey to Doc and grimaces at Jack. "I'm sorry, man. We should have known. No excuses. "

"Where's the driveway?" Dale's asking, and then: "Oh. There it is. I could have sworn ¡ª "

"That there was nothing there, I know," Jack says. He's smiling. Looking at his friends. At the Sawyer Gang. He is certainly not looking at the black rags fluttering restively at the upper periphery of his vision, nor down at his waist, where his hand is slowly drawing the Ruger . 357 from his waistband. He was always one of the best out there. He'd only won badges a couple of times when it was shooting from a stand, but when it came to the draw-and-fire competition, he did quite well. Top five, usually. Jack has no idea if this is a skill he's retained, but he thinks he's going to find out right now.

Smiling at them, watching Doc swab his schnozz with honey, Jack says in a conversational voice: "Something's watching us. Don't look up. I'm going to try and shoot it. "

"What is it?" Dale asks, smiling back. He doesn't look up, only straight ahead. Now he can quite clearly see the shadowy lane that must lead to Burnside's house. It wasn't there, he could have sworn it wasn't, but now it is.

"It's a pain in the ass," Jack says, and suddenly swings the Ruger up, locking both hands around the st

ock. He's firing almost before he sees with his eyes, and he catches the great dark crow crouched on the overhanging branch of an oak tree entirely by surprise. It gives one loud, shocked cry ¡ª "AWWWWK!" ¡ª and then it is torn apart on its roost. Blood flies against the faded blue summer sky. Feathers flutter down in clumps as dark as midnight shadows. And a body. It hits the shoulder in front of the lane with a heavy thud. One dark, glazing eye peers at Jack Sawyer with an expression of surprise.

"Did you fire five or six?" Beezer asks in a tone of deep awe. "It was so fast I couldn't tell. "

"All of them," Jack says. He guesses he's still not too bad at draw-and-fire after all.

"That's one big fucking crow," Doc says.

"It's not just any crow," Jack tells him. "It's Gorg. " He advances to the blasted body lying on the dirt. "How you doin', fella? How do you feel?" He spits on Gorg, a luscious thick lunger. "That's for luring the kids," he says. Then, suddenly, he boots the crow's corpse into the underbrush. It flies in a limp arc, the wings wrapping around the body like a shroud. "And that's for fucking with Irma's mother. "

They are looking at him, all three of them, with identical expressions of stunned awe. Almost of fear. It's a look that makes Jack tired, although he supposes he must accept it. He can remember his old friend Richard Sloat looking at him the same way, once Richard realized that what he called "Seabrook Island stuff " wasn't confined to Seabrook Island.

"Come on," Jack says. "Everybody in the car. Let's get it done. " Yes, and they must move quickly because a certain one-eyed gent will shortly be looking for Ty, too. Mr. Munshun. Eye of the King, Jack thinks. Eye of the abbalah. That's what Judy meant ¡ª Mr. Munshun. Whoever or whatever he really is.

"Don't like leaving the bikes out here by the side of the road, man. " Beezer says. "Anybody could come along and ¡ª "

"Nobody will see them," Jack tells him. "Three or four cars have gone by since we parked, and no one's so much as looked over at us. And you know why. "

"We've already started to cross over, haven't we?" Doc asks. "This is the edge of it. The border. "

"Opopanax," Jack says. The word simply pops out.

"Huh?"

Jack picks up Ty's Richie Sexson bat and gets in on the passenger side of the cruiser. "It means let's go," he says. "Let's get it done. "

And so the Sawyer Gang takes its last ride ¡ª up the wooded, poisonous lane that leads to Black House. The strong afternoon light quickly fades to the sullen glow of an overcast November evening. In the close-pressing trees on either side, dark shapes twine and crawl and sometimes fly. They don't matter, much, Jack reckons; they are only phantoms.

"You gonna reload that Roogalator?" Beezer asks from the back seat.

"Nope," Jack says, looking at the Ruger without much interest. "Think it's done its job. "

"What should we be ready for?" Dale asks in a thin voice.

"Anything," Jack replies. He favors Dale Gilbertson with a humorless grin. Ahead of them is a house that won't keep its shape but whirls and wavers in the most distressing way. Sometimes it seems no bigger than a humble ranch house; a blink, and it seems to be a ragged monolith that blots out the entire sky; another blink and it appears to be a low, uneven construction stretching back under the forest canopy for what could be miles. It gives off a low hum that sounds like voices.

"Be ready for anything at all. "