Mystery Walk

felt it a hundred times in those old days, before he felt so pushed and squeezed and pressured to keep doing it day after day. But he couldn't pretend anymore, not with Henry dying in front of him. He had to find the blue fire again, and he had to find it fast. When he looked pleadingly up at Krepsin, he saw the man's impassive face like a huge chunk of eroding stone. Krepsin had put on a surgical mask.

'Wayne . . .' Bragg whispered.

He clamped both hands to the wound. 'Be healed be healed dear God heal this man please heal him.' He squeezed his eyes shut. It wouldn't happen! Where was the blue fire? Where was the power? 'Burn it shut!' he shouted. Still nothing. He thought of the Creekmore witch, scorching in Hellfire. He thought of the Creekmore boy, still out there roaming the earth. One had been dealt with, the other must follow. 'BURN IT SHUT!' he screamed, his mind turning toward revenge for the death of his father.

A faint jolt shuddered through his hands, like a spark plug misfiring. He was covered with blood and sweat, and as he concentrated he bowed his back and screamed for his daddy to help him heal Henry Bragg.

Spark plugs fired. Fired. Fired. 'Yes, I command you to be healed! I command you to be heal—' a terrific pain suddenly ripped across his head. His brain felt as if it were about to explode. 'BE HEALED!' he shouted, as blood oozed from his nostrils. His eyes bulged from his head.

Bragg's body writhed, his mouth opening in a moan.

Krepsin, breathing hard, began to rise from his chair.

Pain crisscrossed Wayne's head in savage waves. His hands, curled into rigid claws, were locked against Bragg's throat. A fire was coming up from his soul, sizzling through sinew and muscle and flesh. With it there was an agony that made Wayne throw back bis head and shriek.

Krepsin thought he smelled charring flesh.

Wayne shook violently, the eyes rolling back in his head, as his hands convulsively twitched around Bragg's throat. The man's body was shaking too, his mouth making low gasping sounds.

And then Wayne fell backward as if thrust away by a physical force. He lay curled up on the bloody plastic. Agony throbbed through him like the vibration of a bass fiddle.

Bragg moaned, 'Oh God help me . . . please help me . . . the pain ...'

Krepsin released his breath in a hiss. The second hand of the stopwatch was sweeping past three minutes. 'Check him,' he rasped.

Niles bent over Bragg. 'Pulse irregular The bleeding's almost stopped. The blood's coagulated into a hard crust. I ... I think the wound's sealed, Mr Krepsin.'

'Hurts.' Bragg whispered.

Krepsin's bulk leaned over the desk. 'That man should be dead by now,' he said. 'He should be dead!' Breathing like a steam engine, he came around the desk and stepped onto the plastic film, avoiding the blood. 'Get away, get away,' he told Niles, who moved quickly aside. Very slowly Krepsin dared to bend forward and touch with one finger the hard crust of dried blood that had effectively sealed Bragg's wound. He drew his finger back as if it had been burned. 'He's going to live,' Krepsin whispered. Then, in a shout that seemed to shake the room: 'He's going to live!'

Wayne sat up, staring blankly ahead as blood dripped from his nose. His head was full of black, consumptive pain.

'He's a healer,' Krepsin breathed, his eyes wide and astonished. 'He's a healer, he's a healer, he's a goddamned healer! I've found a healer!' He turned toward Wayne, one of his shoes sinking into a puddle of blood. 'You always knew you could do it, didn't you? You never doubted it! Oh, I've looked for someone like you for such a long time, Wayne! You can heal anything, can't you? Cancers, fevers, plagues, anything!'

The son of Satan, Wayne thought through a haze of pain. Loose in the world. Mocking me. I always knew I could do it. Death deserves death. Send the demon boy to join the witch in Hellfire. I always knew I could get it up!

'My God, Wayne!' Krepsin was saying. 'What a gift you have! I'll give you anything you want, anything in the world! You want to stay here with me, don't you? Here where it's safe, where nothing can get at you? What do you want, Wayne? I'll give you—'

'The demon boy,' Wayne whispered. 'I . . . want the demon boy dead. He's loose in the world, spreading death like a plague. Death deserves death.'

'The Creekmore boy? Anything you want done, anything in the world. We know he's in Chicago, at the . . .' He couldn't recall, and snapped his fingers at Niles.

'The Hillburn Institute,' Niles answered. The courier had come this morning, bringing a package containing snippets of hair and an envelope Travis Bixton had found in the Creekmore house. On that envelope had been the institute's address, and inside a letter from the Creekmore boy.

'Right,' Krepsin said. 'But that boy can't hurt you, Wayne. It was his mother you feared, wasn't it? And now that she's ...'

'Dead,' Wayne said, his haunted gaze burning toward the other man. 'Dead dead I want the demon boy dead.'

Krepsin glanced quickly over at Niles, then returned his attention to Wayne. 'I want you to go back to your room now. Mr Dorn will give you something to help you relax. Tomorrow you can go up in the Challenger with Coombs. All day if you want. Would you like that?'

'Yes sir.'

Dorn helped Wayne to his feet. Bragg stirred and whispered, 'Wayne, don't leave me.'

'Henry's still hurting,' Wayne said dazedly. 'What's going to happen to him?'

'We'll see to Mr. Bragg. Go along now. And Wayne—you've passed your test magnificently!'

When Wayne had gone, Niles bent down beside Bragg and examined the throat wound as Krepsin raved on about Wayne's powers. Niles was fascinated at the way the blood had crusted; he'd never seen anything like this before. Bragg's bloodshot eyes were fixed on him. After a period of observation, Niles knew, Bragg would go into the incinerator 'What about the boy at that institute, Mr Krepsin?' he asked.

'Wells won't have any problem with that, will he?'

'No sir.' He stood up and stepped away from the body. 'No problem. But aren't you curious about this Creekmore boy? He has some kind of hold over Wayne. Should we find out what it is?'

Krepsin recalled something Wayne had told him, in one of their first conversations: The Creekmores serve the Devil, and they know all the secrets of death. He narrowed his eyes and regarded Niles for a silent moment.

'Something about that boy and his mother has preyed on Wayne's mind for a long time,' Niles said quietly. 'What could it be? And could it be used to bind Wayne closer to you?'

'He'll never leave me,' Krepsin said. 'How long could a man live, Mr Niles, if he cannot be touched by injuries or disease? A hundred years? Longer?' Then he said in a soft, dreamy voice, 'Not to die, but to know the secrets of death. That would . . . make a human being godlike, wouldn't it?'

'The Creekmore boy,' Niles said, 'may know something about Wayne that you should know. Possibly we acted prematurely on the woman, as well.'

'What's your advice, then?'

Niles told him, and Krepsin listened very carefully.

54

It was Billy's last afternoon at the Hillburn Institute, and he was packing his suitcase when he heard the scream from downstairs. He knew, almost instinctively, that it was Bonnie's voice.

He found her in the parlor, hugging Mr Pearlman with tears streaming down her face. A few others were watching something on television. Billy stared numbly at the screen.

It was a nighttime scene of a blazing building, firemen wearing oxygen masks and scaling ladders to the upper floors as sparks exploded into the sky. The camera had caught pictures of people leaping to their deaths from the window.

'It wasn't a cigarette,' Bonnie said, staring at Billy. 'It was the wiring. It happened just like I knew it would, and I couldn't stop it, I couldn't do anything. . . .'