changer muttered and shouted and babbled, swinging its weapon back and forth with malicious glee. They climbed over sharp-edged boulders, the breath of pain hissing from between their teeth. They were slowing down as their strength burned away, but the shape changer was gaining ground. Black, stomach-wrenching pain hit Billy as his injured arm grazed an outcrop of rock, but he clenched his teeth to contain the scream. In another few moments their progress was slowed to a crawl; they left sweat stains wherever they touched, and bloody prints where Billy's feet had gripped rock. The caves were above them, less than fifty feet away over a torturous trail of jagged stone. Wayne looked back, saw the bloated thing grinning thirty feet or so beneath them as it clambered up. He recognized the weapon on its right hand.
'Running out of steam, boys?' the walking corpse called out, showing its mangled teeth.
Billy reached up with his good hand to climb onto a ledge. His feet slipped on loose stones, and he almost tumbled down, but then Wayne was pushing him up from below. He crawled upward, onto the ledge about six feet wide and exposed to burning sunlight. A large cave was twenty feet above, but his strength was gone. He lay panting with pain as Wayne crawled up beside him.
Wayne tried to drag Billy the rest of the way, but he was too weak to go more than a few feet. Sweat burned into his eye, blinding him for a few seconds; when he cleared his vision, Krepsin's dead face was rising over the ledge.
Wayne let go of Billy and kicked out at the thing. Bone cracked in the corpse's neck, and watery blood gushed from the nose, but it was still pulling itself onto the ledge. Wayne kicked out again, but the shape changer's arm swung to stop the blow. The razored weapon slashed into Wayne's ankle, scraping the bone. Wayne fell onto his injured ribs, curled up, and lay still with blood pooling under his leg.
'Two very naughty boys,' the shape changer whispered as it rose on Krepsin's legs. 'They must be punished.'
Billy was transfixed with fear, too weak to even try to crawl away. The shape changer had them now. His Mystery Walk—and Wayne's, too—would end here, on a scorched slab of rock a hundred feet above the Mexican desert.
'You won't steal the food from my table anymore, you whelp.' It lumbered forward, bloodied head lolling. 'I'm going to take my time with you, I'm going to enjoy this. You remember what I told you, a long time ago? In that bitch's smokehouse? I said I'd be seeing you again. Oh, it's worked out just fine, hasn't it? The little ghost boy is about to see what Death is like from the other side; and I'll keep you screaming for a long, long time: . . .' It grinned, ready to feast on more agony, already drawing on Billy's fear to make itself stronger It swelled with the terror and evil it had drawn from the dead men in the jet.
The shape changer gripped Billy's hair and thrust his head back, glaring into the boy's eyes. 'First, a scalp,' it whispered, raising its arm. 'A scalp from an Indian.'
And then Wayne grabbed the corpse's chin from behind, wrenching its head backward.
Jagged edges of bone ripped through the throat with a noise like tearing cloth. The immense football-shaped head was jammed backward, the shape changer's eyes were blinded by the sun. The head, now separated from the spine, hung back like a sack of flesh; the shape changer couldn't see. It turned upon Wayne, flailing blindly with the razored knuckles.
Wayne ducked the first blow, trying to balance on his good leg, but a backhanded swipe laid his cheek open and he staggered toward the edge. The shape changer danced with rage, striking at empty air, coming closer and closer to Wayne. Then Krepsin's corpse found him and they grappled, Wayne's hand closing around the thing's right wrist, trying with the last of his strength to hold back the razors. They were balanced on the edge, the shape changer unable to see forward, the ruined head hanging back over the corpse's shoulder.
Wayne lost his grip. The razors glinted, the swollen hand burying itself in Wayne's stomach.
Wayne caught his breath, felt warmth oozing down his legs. His vision hazed, but his brain was clear and for the first time in his life he knew what had to be done. The shape changer was making croaking sounds of triumph through Krepsin's ripped throat. Its hand twisted, driving the razors deeper into Wayne's stomach.
'NO!' Billy shouted, and tried to rise. He'd seen the death aura flare around Wayne; it undulated, shimmering a deep purplish black. Blood was streaming from Wayne's stomach, his face quickly bleaching.
But there was no fear in his unswollen eye. It caught Billy's gaze, locked, and then quickly shifted back to the struggling shape changer. This was the thing that had taunted him all along, that had tricked him by taking his daddy's form . . . and the form of a young brunette girl who'd never really existed at all, except in his own head. The hot pain that shot through his body was thawing rusted, cobwebbed gears in bis brain. He wasn't afraid.
He could still learn to fly, he realized.
And he twisted himself off the ledge, taking Krepsin's corpse with him.
Billy heard the shape changer's mangled roar, and then they were gone.
The air was bright and blue and whistled around Wayne's ears. He was falling toward the surface of water, there in the Fayette Public Swimming Pool, and everything was all right. He had finally gathered the courage to soar from the Tower, and no one was laughing at him anymore. The water shimmered beneath him, coming up fast. He closed his eyes and saw the fighting shapes, the smoke-eagle and the fire-serpent. The eagle was mortally wounded, but it was still strong; it dug its claws into the reptile and gripped the burning spade-shaped head in its beak. With a triumphant cry, the eagle beat its tattered wings toward the sky and lifted the writhing snake up . . . higher, and higher, and higher, until the snake crisped into ashes and whirled away on the bright currents of air.
He would be all right now. He'd done the best he could, and he was ready to soar.
Billy heard them hit. Rocks cascaded down the mountainside, and then there was a long silence but for the noise of sliding grit. He crawled painfully toward the edge and peered over.
Wayne lay on his stomach forty feet below, his arms outstretched. Fifteen feet beyond him, Krepsin's corpse had exploded like a gasbag on impact with a truck-sized boulder.
Something dark and leprous rose like a mist from Krepsin, moving slowly toward Wayne's body.
'Get away from him!' Billy shouted. 'GET AWAY!'
The wraith picked and probed at Wayne. But Billy had seen the twisted angle of Wayne's head, the torn ankle and a protrusion of bone through the other leg. For the shape changer, the body was useless. The mist rose, took on the murky appearance of the huge boarlike beast. Its red eyes blinked; it was stunned and confused, unable to strike physically at Billy again. Within it, Billy saw roiling ectoplasm—a spectral hand clawing at the air, a football- shaped head with an open, silently screaming mouth, another face that might have been Niles's mirroring shock and agony. The forms churned, slowly losing their clarity—as if they were being digested in the belly of the beast.
'You've lost,' Billy said. 'Now run. Hide. RUN!'
The thing glowered at him for a moment, clutching its clawed arms around its stomach; the souls it had snatched writhed in soundless pain.
It looked down at Wayne's broken body, and its hideous face rippled with a snarl of hatred and frustration. The boy had escaped, was now far beyond the shape changer's control. The thing began to fade, taking its prizes with it. Before it had drifted away completely it glared up toward Billy and said, 'There'll be a next time.' But the voice—a mixture of Krepsin's, Niles's and Dorn's—was weaker, and carried an undercurrent of what might have been fear.
'I'll be ready,' he replied, but the thing had already gone, leaving a slight turbulence of dust and grit.
The air settled. The sun baked down, and the vultures began to gather.
Billy waited, his head bowed with concentration. He was certain that Wayne was gone. Wayne had found the tunnel, and was now on a different kind of Mystery Walk. He wanted to bury the body, but the rocks that had slid down over it would keep the vultures away for a while, and he knew he was too weak to climb down and then back again. He said a silent prayer for Wayne. The air was clear and untroubled. After another few minutes Billy crawled away and painfully climbed to the large cave just above.
There was no water, but the shade was deep and cool. Lizards scurried over the rocky floor, chasing small beetles. Billy crouched in a corner, ripped off the rags of his shirt, and fashioned a sling for his arm—not much, but it would serve to keep the bones from moving. He was full of fever, his head pounding with heat; if he didn't find liquid soon, he knew, he was going to die. He could let go; it would be easy to curl up and die, and so much pain would be avoided, but he knew his mother wouldn't want that.
