“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Sonny! Andy!” Gardener screamed. “Unlace his left hand. Hold it out to me.”
Warwick bent over Jack’s shoulder and did something. A moment later they were peeling Jack’s hand away from the small of his back. It tingled with pins and needles, waking up. Jack tried to struggle, but it was useless. They held his hand out.
“Now spread his fingers open.”
Sonny pulled Jack’s ring finger and his pinky in one direction; Warwick pulled his pointer and middle finger in the other. A moment later, Gardener had applied the Zippo’s flame to the webbing at the base of the V they had created. The pain was exquisite, bolting up his left arm and from there seeming to fill his whole body. A sweet, charring smell drifted up. Himself. Burning. Himself.
After an eternity, Gardener pulled the Zippo back and snapped it shut. Fine beads of sweat covered his forehead. He was panting.
“Devils scream before they come out,” he said. “Oh yes indeed they do. Don’t they, boys?”
“Yes, praise God,” Warwick said.
“You pounded that nail,” Sonny said.
“Oh yes, I know it. Yes indeed I do. I know the secrets of both boys and devils.” Gardener tittered, then leaned forward until his face was an inch from Jack’s. The cloying scent of cologne filled Jack’s nose. Terrible as it was, he thought it was quite a lot better than his own burning flesh. “Now, Jack. How long have you been Migrating? Where is the nigger? How much does your mother know? Who have you told? What has the nigger told you? We’ll start with those.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gardener bared his teeth in a grin.
“Boys,” he said, “we’re going to get sunlight in this boy’s soul yet. Lace up his left arm again and unlace his right.”
Sunlight Gardener opened his lighter again and waited for them to do it, his thumb resting lightly on the striker wheel.
7
George Irwinson and Donny Keegan were still in the kitchen.
“Someone’s out there,” George said nervously.
Donny said nothing. He had finished peeling the potatoes and now stood by the ovens for their warmth. He didn’t know what to do next. Confession was being held just down the hall, he knew, and that’s where he wanted to be—confession was safe, and here in the kitchen he felt very, very nervous—but Rudolph hadn’t dismissed them. Best to stay right here.
“I heard someone,” George said.
Donny laughed:
“Jesus, that laugh of yours barfs me out,” George said. “I got a new Captain America funnybook under my mattress. If you take a look out there, I’ll let you read it.”
Donny shook his head and honked his donkey-laugh again.
George looked toward the door. Sounds. Scratching. That’s what it sounded like. Scratching at the door. Like a dog that wanted to be let in. A lost, homeless pup. Except what sort of lost, homeless pup scratched near the top of a door that was nearly seven feet tall?
George went to the window and looked out. He could see almost nothing in the gloom. The Box was just a darker shadow amid shadows.
George moved toward the door.
8
Jack shrieked so loud and so hard he thought that surely his throat would rupture. Now Casey had also joined them, Casey with his big swinging gut, and that was a good thing for them, because now it took three of them— Casey, Warwick, and Sonny Singer—to grapple with Jack’s arm and keep his hand applied to the flame.
When Gardener drew it away this time, there was a black, bubbling, blistered patch the size of a quarter on the side of Jack’s hand.
Gardener got up, took the envelope marked JACK PARKER from his desk, and brought it back. He brought out the guitar-pick.
“What’s this?”
“A guitar-pick,” Jack managed. His hands were burning agony.
“What is it in the Territories?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What’s this?”
“A marble. What are you, blind?”
“Is it a toy in the Territories?”
“I don’t—”
“Is it a mirror?”
“—know—”
“Is it a top that disappears when you spin it fast?”
