Mystery Walk

Again, the agony of the blaze streaked through Billy's mind. Then a needle sinking into flesh. A thin woman standing in a doorway, cradling a child.

Billy shuddered and moaned from the intensity of the pain and emotions he was taking on. He saw dozens of white forms sifting through the room, rising from the heaps of bones and ashes. They were oozing out of the walls, some of them hurrying toward him, others still as frightened as little children and clinging to the corners.

'Let go of the pain,' he whispered, as the forms clung to him. 'No pain, no fear . . .' Images from other lives crackled through his mind: a knife fight in an alley, a bottle uptilted for the last precious drops.

'LOOK AT ME, BOY!' the shape changer shouted, and rippled into Fitts, standing with a python curled around his neck. 'Your mother's dead, your mother's dead! The cowboy came and sheared her head!'

The revenants were all over Billy. Though they were weightless, the tonnage of the emotions they were shedding bore him to the floor, where he lay gasping on his side in ashes and water He heard the shape changer roar, 'It's not over! It's not over yet, you'll see!' but he closed his mind to the thing's taunts, mentally fixed on bringing the revenants into him.

The shape changer vanished. But, behind Billy, the charred corpse in the corner stirred. Its dead, burned-out eye sockets began to show a gleam of red. The thing moved, slowly, slowly, and started to drag itself toward the boy. One skeletal hand closed around a piece of metal, and lifted it to strike Billy from behind.

Burned bone cracked. The arm dangled uselessly, and as Billy turned to look over his shoulder, he recognized in the reanimated corpse's face the shape changer's red, hate-filled eyes. He lay immobile as the corpse crawled toward him, its mouth opening to emit a hoarse whisper through burned vocal cords; then the head lolled, ripping loose from the neck. The body shuddered and settled again into the ashes, as the shape changer gave it up.

Someone shouted, 'Jesus Christ!'

And another voice, rising frantically, 'Get the lights on!'

A stunning beam of light flooded the room. Some of the wraiths scattered away from Billy, fleeing the harsh illumination. Others floated above the floor, transfixed.

The fireman with his spotlight backed away, stumbling into the camera crew from WCHI, who were doing a documentary on firetrap hotels. The room was filled with strange white shapes, some of them vaguely in human form. 'What the hell? . . .' the fireman whispered.

'Barry!' a tall woman with red hair said. 'Film it!' Her eyes were wide and startled, and she was fighting the urge to run like hell from whatever those things were. The cameraman paused, stunned, and at once the woman switched on a power-pack strapped to his back. She lifted the video-tape camera from its mount on his shoulder, popped off the plastic lens cap, and started filming. Two intense lights attached atop the camera came on, illuminating every corner of the room. 'Give me more cable! Now, damn it!' She stepped into the room, panning from corner to corner:

'Nothing there,' the fireman was babbling. 'Nothing there. Just smoke. Just—' And then he fled the room.

The camerawoman stepped over the boy passed out on the floor, jerked at the cable to make sure it wasn't snagged, and filmed a white shape with a head and arms as it fled into a wall.

56

When Cammy Falconer saw her son, she was amazed at how much older he looked. He was growing into a handsome man, but he was getting fat. He sat out at a table by the glass-enclosed swimming pool that was part of the Krepsin house, working on a plastic airplane model.

'Wayne?' Niles said quietly. 'Your visitors are here.'

Wayne looked up incuriously, and Cammy saw that his eyes seemed dead. She managed a weak smile as she stepped forward. 'Aren't you going to say hello to your mother?'

'You've been smoking,' Wayne replied. 'I can smell it on your clothes.' He glanced up at the husky, curly- haired man who stood a few paces behind her, and frowned. One of her boyfriends, he thought. He'd heard she had a lot of boyfriends out in Houston, where she'd moved after the Falconer Foundation had bought her a condominium.

'Wayne, this is Darryl Whitton,' she said uneasily. 'He plays for the Oilers.'

'I don't like football.' He concerned himself with putting together the fuselage of a Concorde. 'How'd you find me?'

'Where you are isn't a secret.' She glanced quickly at Niles, who seemed determined to stay around. 'Can I be alone with my son, please?' Niles nodded in accordance, wished them a good visit, and returned to the house. 'It's been a long time since I've seen you, Wayne.'

'Did they send you?'

'No,' she said, but she was lying. The Crusade people had called her and explained that they needed her help. Little Wayne was out in Palm Springs, they told her, and he didn't want to come home. Henry Bragg was missing, and George Hodges had quit the Crusade only a few days ago. Cammy inwardly shuddered when Wayne looked at her; she feared he could see the lie through those scorched, haunted eyes.

Whitton, an affable lout, picked up one of the plastic pieces and grinned. 'Mighty good job you're doin' there, Wayne. Your momma tells me you like ...' And then the grin froze when Wayne's gaze fixed on him. Whitton cleared his throat, put the piece down, and ambled away along the edge of the large swimming pool.

'What's this all about?' Cammy asked. She was well tanned and obviously prosperous, and had broken out of the crystalline cocoon J.J. Falconer had spun around her. 'Don't you want to continue the Crusade anymore?'

'They did send you, didn't they?'

'Wayne, you're the head of a multimillion-dollar corporation! And here you are, putting together kids' toys! Who is this Krepsin man, and why did he make it so hard for me to see you? I've called half a dozen times!'

'Mr. Krepsin is my friend,' Wayne replied. 'I'm resting. And you got in to see me, didn't you?' He concentrated on getting the wings done just right.

'Resting? For what?'

'The future,' he said softly. 'But you don't care, not really. You stopped caring after my daddy died. But I'll tell you about the future anyway. Mr Krepsin is going to help me build a church, right out in the desert. It's going to be the biggest church in the world, and it's going to last forever. It's going to be built in Mexico, and Mr. Krepsin is going to show me where ...' His voice trailed away, and he sat staring into space for a moment. 'We can build our own television network, Mr. Krepsin says. He wants to help me, every step of the way.'

'In other words, this man's got control over you.'

He shot a dark glance at her 'You can't see the future, can you? I don't have any friends back in Fayette. They just want to use me. Back there I'm still Little Wayne Falconer, but here I'm Mr Wayne Falconer. I can have anything I want here, and I don't have to be afraid of anything. And know what? They let me fly a jet. Night or day, whenever I choose. I take those controls and I fly over the desert and I feel so ... so free. Nobody demands anything from me here.'

'And what do you do for money?'

'Oh, I've had my bank accounts transferred from Fayette. I've got a new lawyer, too. Mr Russo. We're going to put all the foundation money in a Mexican bank, because the interest rates are higher. So you see? I'm still in control.'

'My God!' Cammy said incredulously. 'You've handed over the foundation to a stranger? If the press finds out about this, you're through.'

'I don't see it that way.' He carefully squeezed plastic cement out of a tube, applying it to a tail fin. 'Daddy doesn't either.'

Cammy went cold. 'What?'

'Daddy. He's come back to me, now that the Hawthorne witch is dead. He says what I'm doing is right, and he says he can rest in Heaven when the demon boy is dead.'

'No,' she whispered. 'Wayne . . . where's Henry? Is Henry here with you?'

'Henry? Oh, he went on to Mexico.'

Cammy realized her son was out of his mind. Her eyes stung with tears. 'Please,' she said. 'Wayne, listen to me. I'm begging you. Please go back to Fayette. They can talk to you, and…' She touched his arm.

Instantly he jerked away, and the half-finished airplane scattered across the table and to the ground. 'Don't