Mystery Walk

touch me!' he told her. 'I never asked you to come here!' His face reddened as he realized the model he'd worked so hard on was ruined. 'Look what you made me do! You . . . you've broken it!'

'Wayne . . . please ...'

'Get out!' he said angrily. 'I don't want you near me!'

'You're destroying everything J.J. built. Don't throw it all away! You need help, Wayne! Please go back to Fayette, where they can—'

'GET OUT!' Wayne howled, rising to his feet. Whitton was hurrying over 'You Jezebel!' Wayne shouted, and tore away the necklace she was wearing. Pearls rolled across the ground. 'You painted whore! You're not my mother anymore, so GET OUT!'

A glass partition separating the pool from the house slid open. Felix, the butler, looked out and then went to summon Niles.

Cammy stared at her son. He was too far gone now to be helped. She knew she'd never see him again. She touched a red welt across her neck where he'd scratched her. And it came out of her before she could stop it: 'You're right, Wayne,' she said in a quiet, firm voice, 'I'm not your mother. I never was.'

'Don't, Cammy!' Whitton said.

But Cammy's anger and disgust at what her son had become was pouring out of her. 'I was never your mother,' she said, and saw Wayne blink. 'You spoiled little bastard! Jimmy Jed Falconer bought you, because he wanted a son to carry on the Crusade, and it had to be done quickly. Do you hear me, Wayne?'

Wayne was motionless, his eyes narrowed into slits and his mouth half open.

'He paid hard cash for you!' And then she shouted it for the world to hear: 'Jimmy Jed Falconer was impotent! God only knows who your mother and father really were!'

Niles, who'd just come up behind the woman, grabbed Cammy's elbow. 'I'll have to ask you to—'

'Get your hand off me!' She pulled away. 'What kind of tricks are you people playing? Why don't you let Wayne go?'

'He can leave anytime he likes. Can't you, Wayne?'

The boy's eyes had frozen into chunks of blue ice. 'You're a liar,' he whispered to the woman. 'I'm J.J. Falconer's son.'

'Not by blood. There's a man who buys and sells babies. It was done in secret, and I was expected to go along with it. Oh, he loved you like you were his blood, and I tried my best, but I can't stand to see you throwing everything away like this!'

'Liar,' Wayne whispered.

'The visit is over,' Niles said. 'Felix, will you show these people to the door, please?'

'Go back to Fayette,' Cammy pleaded. 'Don't destroy J.J.'s lifework!' Tears filled her eyes. Whitton gently took her hand and they followed the Mexican butler. Cammy looked back only once, and saw the man named Niles put his hand firmly on Wayne's shoulder 'That was kind of cruel, wasn't it?' Whitton asked.

She wiped her eyes. 'Take me to a bar, Darryl. The nearest damned bar you can find.'

Niles watched them leave through hooded eyes. 'Are you all right, Wayne?'

'I'm J.J. Falconer's son,' the boy replied in a dazed voice.

'Of course you are.' He recognized the shock settling into Wayne's face, and he took a plastic bottle of small white pills from his inside coat pocket. He shook out a couple into his hand. 'Your sedatives, Wayne. Chew these up.'

'NO!' The boy struck out at Niles's wrist, and the pills went flying into the swimming pool. Wayne's face was mottled and stricken. 'I'm J.J. Falconer's son!' he shouted.

'That's right.' Niles tensed, ready for anything. If the boy went out of control, there was no telling what he might try. 'Of course you're his son,' he said soothingly. 'Now why don't you finish your model? They're gone now; they won't bother you again. I'll have Felix bring you a nice glass of fresh orange juice.' The juice would be laced with Valium, enough to turn him into a zombie again.

'My airplane.' Wayne stared down at the scattered plastic pieces. 'Oh,' he whispered, and a tear dripped down his right cheek. 'It's broken. . . .'

'You can fix it. Come on, sit down.' Niles led him to his chair 'What would you like to go with that orange juice?'

Wayne frowned, staring at the sun's reflection in the swimming pool. 'Zingers,' he said. 'Vanilla.'

'Remember, we leave for Mexico early in the morning. You'll need your sleep. Are your bags packed?'

'No sir.'

'Felix will give you a hand with them.' Niles hadn't understood all of what that damned woman had said, but she'd really given Wayne a jolt. Taped to the underside of the table was a voice-activated tape recorder about the size of a cigarette pack. Niles knew Mr Krepsin would be interested in hearing it. He left the poolside.

Wayne had gathered up the plastic pieces when Felix brought out his orange juice and Zingers. He stuffed the cakes into his mouth after Felix had gone; the orange juice seemed more bitter than usual today. He didn't like it, so after one swallow he poured it into the pool and stirred away the color with his hand. Mr. Niles always insisted he finish everything that was put in front of him, and Wayne didn't want to get Mr. Niles mad. Then Wayne sat cross-legged on the edge of the pool, telling himself over and over again that the painted Jezebel had lied.

57

Billy Creekmore was watching The House on Haunted Hill on TV in his room at Chicago's Armitage General Hospital when Bonnie Hailey knocked softly at the door and came in.

'Hi,' she said. 'How're you doin' today?'

'Better.' He sat up and tried to make himself presentable by running a hand through his unruly hair. His bones still ached, and his appetite had dropped to almost nothing. Sleep was a confusion of nightmares, and in the television's blue glow Billy's face looked ghostly and tired. He'd been in the hospital for two days, suffering from shock and exhaustion. 'How about you?'

'I'm fine. Here, I brought you somethin' to read.' She gave him a copy of the Tribune she'd bought down at the newsstand. 'Helps to pass the time, I guess.'

'Thank you.' He didn't tell her that every time he tried to read, the lines ran together like columns of ants.

'You okay? I mean ... are they treatin' you right around here? Everybody at the institute wants to come over, but Dr. Hillburn says nobody can come for a while. But me, that is. I'm glad you wanted to see me.'

It was late afternoon, and the last rays of sunlight were slanting through the blinds beside Billy's bed. Dr. Hillburn had spent most of yesterday with him and had been there this morning as well.

'Did Dr Hillburn call Hawthorne like she promised she would?' Billy asked.

'I don't know.'

'I haven't heard from my mother for a while. I want to know if she's all right.' Billy remembered the shape changer's mocking singsong: Your mother's dead, the cowboy came and sheared her head.

Bonnie shrugged. Dr. Hillburn had told her not to mention Billy's mother. The owner of a general store in Hawthorne—the number Billy had said to call—had told Dr Hillburn that Ramona Creekmore had perished when her cabin had caught fire in the middle of the night. Embers stirred by the wind in the hearth, the man had said. The place went up quick.

'I'm so tired,' Billy said. Had a dark cloud passed over Bonnie's face, or not? His brain was still teeming with the emotions and memories he'd absorbed in the Alcott Hotel; he realized he had narrowly escaped death from the shape changer. The beast hadn't been able to crack his mind or erode his determination, but Billy shivered when he thought of that burned corpse dragging itself slowly through the ashes toward him. Had it been another mental trick, another assumed shape, or did the beast have the power to animate the dead as if they were grisly puppets? There had been utter hatred—and grim desperation—burning in those hollow eye sockets. When the shape changer had given up that husk of crisped flesh, the red glint of its eyes had extinguished like spirit lamps. And where was the beast now? Waiting, for another chance to destroy him?

They were going to meet again, somewhere. He was sure of it.

'Dr. Hillburn told me the people at the television station have a video tape,' Billy said quietly. 'They're keeping