Mystery Walk

—'

'Why didn't Wayne just ask me to come?'

'He did. Well, he asked Dr. Hillburn. Several times. But evidently that woman was resistant to your leaving Chicago. Perhaps some of the staff misinterpreted Wayne's request. Wayne's told me so much about you, I feel I know you already. You and Wayne . . . you're alike in many ways. You're both well on your way in making a mark for yourselves—and you're both special, aren't you? He's a healer, and you're . .. . blessed with a sight few other men ever know. To see beyond this world, and into the next. The pictures in those clippings aren't faked, are they?'

Billy didn't want to answer, but he was so sluggish and lazy it didn't seem to matter 'No, they're real.'

'I knew they weren't faked. How could you fake something like that, in front of so many witnesses? No, no; you can see the dead, can't you? And you can speak to them?'

'Yes.'

Krepsin ate another cookie; his black eyes gleamed with the desire to pick the secrets from Billy Creekmore's mind. 'You've seen life after death, haven't you? And you can control the dead? You can speak to them and make them do as you please?'

'I don't try to control them. I try to help them. Why are you taping all this? Why's it so important to you?'

'It's just . . . this subject excites me. And it excites Wayne, too.'

'What do you mean?'

Krepsin smiled. 'You really don't see it, do you? You don't understand your own potential! What you've done up to now is important, but you can go much, much further. Oh, the secrets you could know about Death! The power you could hold! You could reach anyone on the other side, you could relay messages back and forth. People would pay a lot for that. You could find out where lost treasures were, you could bring back messages that would shock the world! You'd be a famous and powerful young man! Don't you see that?'

'No.'

'Wayne does,' Krepsin said quietly. 'He wants you to join the Crusade, Billy. He wants you to tour with him.'

'What?'

'Yes. Tour with him. Wayne would be the healer, and you would be the ... the spiritual adviser! With all this publicity, it would be a simple thing! People would pay to see you summon the dead. Oh, they'd sit in awe of you, Billy! You'd have your own television show, and you'd speak to the dead right on the air before millions of people!'

Staring at the man, Billy shuddered inwardly. It would be like digging up graves so people could gawk at the bones, like a Ghost Show using real revenants, a hideous entertainment.

'Think of it!' Krepsin said. 'You've only scratched the surface! You and Wayne, touring together! There are no secrets that would be hidden from you. Billy, you'd even hold power over the dead!'

Billy felt dizzy and sick. But he looked into the man's black eyes and saw the truth. The man wanted power over the dead himself. The man wanted to use him like some puppet in a sideshow, pulling in the paying customers with hints of dark mysteries. He couldn't believe that Wayne had any part in this! 'No,' he said. 'I can't do that. I won't do it.'

'And why not? Why not? Of course you may be afraid and reluctant now, but after you think about it—and after Wayne's talked to you—you'll see the light. Ever since I saw those newspaper articles—no, ever since Wayne told me all about you and your mother, I knew there was something special about you. I knew you had the power to—'

And then he stopped, a strangled whine bubbling in his throat.

Billy stared at him. On Krepsin's hand a fly had landed.

The man leaped up with a scream, knocking over the chair and table as he tried to get away from the thing. He batted wildly at the air as the fly buzzed around his head. In his mind he was back on the refugee ship that had brought him and his family from Greece, and he was seven years old and watching the flies crawl over his parents' stiffened corpses as fever killed half the people aboard.

Krepsin's eyes bulged from their sockets. The fly had touched him. Disease had broken through his barriers. Rats chittered in the ship's hold, his parents' bodies moldering and full of maggots. He screamed with pure terror as the fly danced across his cheek, and he fell to his knees.

Billy stood up and waved the fly away from his face. The men would be coming back for him, he knew, and they'd take him back to the woman with the needles. Danger was here, all around. He had to shake off the dizziness, had to find a way out of this place! He turned the doorknob and stepped out into the empty corridor as Krepsin shrieked again behind him.

He started along the corridor, trying to remember how he'd come in. Krepsin's voice echoed behind him. Billy broke into a run, stumbled and fell, then got up and ran again. The walls around him seemed to breathe, as if he were caught inside a huge beast that was trying to consume him.

And then he turned a corner and abruptly stopped.

A young man with electric-blue eyes and a shock of curly red hair was standing in his pajamas less than ten feet away, in front of an open doorway. He had frozen when he saw Billy. The sweat of a nightmare sheened his sunburned cheeks.

'Wayne?' Billy said.

Wayne's mouth hung half open. His eyes were glazed and dull with shock.

Billy took a step toward the other boy, and saw Wayne cringe. 'What have they done to you?' Billy whispered. 'Wayne? What have they—'

A hand gripped his shoulder. Niles wrenched upward on Billy's arm to keep him from running. Krepsin was still screaming like a madman.

Wayne was pressed against the wall. He had seen that they had even provided the Hawthorne demon boy with his clothes. They had brought him here and hidden him in the white house, and they had given him his clothes! 'You said I was safe,' Wayne whispered to Niles. 'You said as long as I stayed here, I was—'

'Shut up, goddamn it!' Niles told him.

'Wayne, they brought me here!' Billy said, the pain clearing his head. 'They're trying to use me, Wayne, just like they're trying to use you!'

Niles said, 'Wayne, I want you to get dressed and pack your bag. Do it quickly. Mr. Krepsin wants to leave here in fifteen minutes.'

'Demon,' Wayne whispered, as he huddled against the wall.

'Get ready to go! Move.''

'Kill him for me,' Wayne said. 'Right here. Right now. Kill him like you had the witch killed.'

Billy almost got free with a sudden burst of strength, but Niles pinned him tighter.

And then Wayne knew the truth. 'You did bring him here,' he said, tears in his eyes. 'Why? To hurt me? To make me have nightmares? Because,' he moaned softly, 'that boy's evil . . . and Mr. Krepsin is too?'

'I won't tell you again to get your fat ass moving!' Niles said, and forced Billy back along the corridor, toward where Krepsin was babbling about returning to Palm Springs because there was disease in the bunker.

It was all a trick, Wayne realized. They'd never really been his friends; they'd never really wanted to protect him. They'd brought the demon right to his door! Everything had been a trick to get the Crusade!

It was all clear to him now, and his mind crackled with wild currents. Maybe they'd even brought Billy Creekmore here, he realized, to replace him.

Even his daddy had tricked him and wasn't his daddy. He'd been tricked and lied to from the very start. Had been told Keep healing, Wayne, keep healing keep healing even though you don't feel the fire anymore keep healing. . . .

His mind was cracking. The snake was winning.

But not yet! He was still Wayne Falconer, the South's Greatest Evangelist! And there was one last way to destroy the corruption that had surrounded and finally trapped him. He wiped the tears from his face.