Black House

The bartender has been lurking, forgotten, by the swing door into the kitchen. Not eavesdropping—he’s too far away for that—but not wanting to move and attract attention. Now it seems that he’s attracted some anyway.

“Have you got honey?” Jack asks.

“H-honey?”

“Bees make it, Lester. Mokes make money and bees make honey.”

Something like comprehension dawns in Lester’s eyes. “Yeah, sure. I keep it to make Kentucky Getaways. Also—”

“Set it on the bar,” Jack tells him.

Dale stirs restively. “If time’s as short as you think, Jack—”

“This is important.” He watches Lester Moon put a small plastic squeeze bottle of honey on the bar and finds himself thinking of Henry. How Henry would have enjoyed the pocket miracle Jack is about to perform! But of course, he wouldn’t have needed to perform such a trick for Henry. Wouldn’t have needed to waste part of the precious word’s power. Because Henry would have believed at once, just as he had believed he could drive from Trempealeau to French Landing—hell, to the fucking moon—if someone just dared to give him the chance and the car keys.

“I’ll bring it to you,” Lester says bravely. “I ain’t afraid.”

“Just set it down on the far end of the bar,” Jack tells him. “That’ll be fine.”

He does as asked. The squeeze bottle is shaped like a bear. It sits there in a beam of six-minutes-to-noon sun. On the television, the gunplay has started. Jack ignores it. He ignores everything, focusing his mind as brightly as a point of light through a magnifying glass. For a moment he allows that tight focus to remain empty, and then he fills it with a single word:

(D’YAMB A)

At once he hears a low buzzing. It swells to a drone. Beezer, Doc, and Dale look around. For a moment nothing happens, and then the sunshiny doorway darkens. It’s almost as if a very small rain cloud has floated into the Sand Bar—

Stinky Cheese lets out a strangled squawk and goes flailing backward. “Wasps!” he shouts. “Them are wasps! Get clear!”

But they are not wasps. Doc and Lester Moon might not recognize that, but both Beezer and Dale Gilbertson are country boys. They know bees when they see one. Jack, meanwhile, only looks at the swarm. Sweat has popped out on his forehead. He’s concentrating with all his might on what he wants the bees to do.

They cloud around the squeeze bottle of honey so thickly it almost disappears. Then their humming deepens, and the bottle begins to rise, wobbling from side to side like a tiny missile with a really shitty guidance system. Then, slowly, it wavers its way toward the Sawyer Gang. The squeeze bottle is riding a cushion of bees six inches above the bar.

Jack holds his hand out and open. The squeeze bottle glides into it. Jack closes his fingers. Docking complete.

For a moment the bees rise around his head, their drone competing with Lily, who is shouting: “Save the tall bastard for me! He’s the one who raped Stella!”

Then they stream out the door and are gone.

The Kingsland Ale clock stands at 11:57.

“Holy Mary, mothera God,” Beezer whispers. His eyes are huge, almost popping out of their sockets.

“You’ve been hiding your light under a bushel, looks like to me,” Dale says. His voice is unsteady.

From the end of the bar there comes a soft thud. Lester “Stinky Cheese” Moon has, for the first time in his life, fainted.

“We’re going to go now,” Jack says. “Beez, you and Doc lead. We’ll be right behind you in Dale’s car. When you get to the lane and the NO TRESPASSING sign, don’t go in. Just park your scoots. We’ll go the rest of the way in the car, but first we’re going to put a little of this under our noses.” Jack holds up the squeeze bottle. It’s a plastic version of Winnie-the-Pooh, grimy around the middle where Lester seizes it and squeezes it. “We might even dab some in our nostrils. A little sticky, but better than projectile vomiting.”

Confirmation and approval are dawning in Dale’s eyes. “Like putting Vicks under your nose at a murder scene,” he says.

It’s nothing like that at all, but Jack nods. Because this is about believing.

“Will it work?” Doc asks doubtfully.

“Yes,” Jack replies. “You’ll still feel some discomfort, I don’t doubt that a bit, but it’ll be mild. Then we’re going to cross over to . . . well, to someplace else. After that, all bets are off.”

“I thought the kid was in the house,” Beez says.

“I think he’s probably been moved. And the house . . . it’s a kind of wormhole. It opens on another . . .” World is the first word to come into Jack’s mind, but somehow he doesn’t think it is a world, not in the Territories sense. “On another place.”

On the TV, Lily has just taken the first of about six bullets. She dies in this one, and as a kid Jack always hated that, but at least she goes down shooting. She takes quite a few of the bastards with her, including the tall one who raped her friend, and that is good. Jack hopes he can do the same. More than anything, however, he hopes he can bring Tyler Marshall back to his mother and father.

Beside the television, the clock flicks from 11:59 to 12:00.

“Come on, boys,” Jack Sawyer says. “Let’s saddle up and ride.”