Black House

commission. Maybe he’s honest . . . maybe he’s still my friend . . . but I think I’ll just take my share first, and make sure. Most agents take their ten percent off the top.” He reached out and poked Ty just below the belt-line. Even through his jeans, the boy could feel the tough, blunt edge of the old man’s nail. “I think I’ll take mine off the bottom.” A wheezy, painful laugh, and Ty was not exactly displeased to see a bright bubble of blood appear between the old man’s cracked lips. “Off the bottom, get it?” The nail poked the side of Ty’s buttock again.

“I get it,” Ty said.

“You’ll be able to break just as well,” Burny said. “It’s just that when you fart, you’ll have to do the old one- cheek sneak every time!” More wheezing laughter. Yes, he sounded delirious, all right— delirious or on the verge of it—yet still the tip of the Taser remained rock-steady. “Keep on going, boy. ’Nother half a mile up the Conger Road. You’ll see a little shack with a tin roof, down in a draw. It’s on the right. It’s a special place. Special to me. Turn in there.”

Ty, with no other choice, obeyed. And now—

“Do what I tell you! Face the fucking wall! Put your hands up and through those loops!”

Ty couldn’t define the word euphemism on a bet, but he knows calling those metal circlets “loops” is bullshit. What’s hanging from the rear wall are shackles.

Panic flutters in his brain like a flock of small birds, threatening to obscure his thoughts. Ty fights to hold on— fights with grim intensity. If he gives in to panic, starts to holler and scream, he’s going to be finished. Either the old man will kill him in the act of carving him up, or the old man’s friend will take him away to some awful place Burny calls Din-tah. In either case, Ty will never see his mother and father again. Or French Landing. But if he can keep his head . . . wait for his chance . . .

Ah, but it’s hard. The cap he’s wearing actually helps a little in this respect—it has a dulling effect that helps hold the panic at bay—but it’s still hard. Because he’s not the first kid the old man has brought here, no more than he was the first to spend long, slow hours in that cell back at the old man’s house. There’s a blackened, grease- caked barbecue set up in the left corner of the shed, underneath a tin-plated smoke hole. The grill is hooked up to a couple of gas bottles with LA RIVIERE PROPANE stenciled on the sides. Hung on the wall are oven mitts, spatulas, tongs, basting brushes, and meat forks. There are scissors and tenderizing hammers and at least four keen-bladed carving knives. One of the knives looks almost as long as a ceremonial sword.

Hanging beside that one is a filthy apron with YOU MAY KISS THE COOK printed on it.

The smell in the air reminds Ty of the VFW picnic his mom and dad took him to the previous Labor Day. Maui Wowie, it had been called, because the people who went were supposed to feel like they were spending the day in Hawaii. There had been a great big barbecue pit in the center of La Follette Park down by the river, tended by women in grass skirts and men wearing loud shirts covered with birds and tropical foliage. Whole pigs had been roasting over a glaring hole in the ground, and the odor had been like the one in this shed. Except the smell in here is stale . . . and old . . . and . . .

And not quite pork, Ty thinks. It’s—

“I should stand here and jaw at you all day, you louse?”

The Taser gives off a crackling sizzle. Tingling, debilitating pain sinks into the side of Ty’s neck. His bladder lets go and he wets his pants. He can’t help it. Is hardly aware of it, in truth. Somewhere (in a galaxy far, far away) a hand that is trembling but still terribly strong thrusts Ty toward the back wall and the shackles that have been welded to steel plates about five and a half feet off the ground.

“There!” Burny cries, and gives a tired, hysterical laugh. “Knew you’d get one for good luck eventually! Smart boy, ain’tcha? Little wisenheimer! Now put your hands through them loops and let’s have no more foolishness about it!”

Ty has put out his hands in order to keep himself from crashing face-first into the shed’s rear wall. His eyes are less than a foot from the wood, and he is getting a very good look at the old layers of blood that coat it. That plate it. The blood has an ancient metallic reek. Beneath his feet, the ground feels spongy. Jellylike. Nasty. This may be an illusion in the physical sense, but Ty knows that what he’s feeling is nonetheless quite real. This is corpse ground. The old man may not prepare his terrible meals here every time—may not have that luxury—but this is the place he likes. As he said, it’s special to him.

If I let him lock both of my hands into those shackles, Ty thinks, I’ve had it. He’ll cut me up. And once he starts cutting, he may not be able to stop himself—not for this Mr. Munching, not for anyone. So get ready.

That last is not like one of his own thoughts at all. It’s like hearing his mother’s voice in his head. His mother, or someone like her. Ty steadies. The flock of panic birds is suddenly gone, and he is as clearheaded as the cap will allow. He knows what he must do. Or try to do.

He feels the nozzle of the Taser slip between his legs and thinks of the snake wriggling across the overgrown driveway, carrying its mouthful of fangs. “Put your hands through those loops right now, or I’m going to fry your balls like oysters.” Ersters, it sounds like.

“Okay,” Ty says. He speaks in a high, whiny voice. He hopes he sounds scared out of his mind. God knows it shouldn’t be hard to sound that way. “Okay, okay, just don’t hurt me, I’m doing it now, see? See?”

He puts his hands through the loops. They are big and loose.

“Higher!” The growling voice is still in his ear, but the Taser is gone from between his legs, at least. “Shove ’em in as far as you can!”

Ty does as he is told. The shackles slide to a point just above his wrists. His hands are like starfish in the gloom. Behind him, he hears that soft clinking noise again as Burny rummages in his bag. Ty understands. The cap may be scrambling his thoughts a little, but this is too obvious to miss. The old bastard’s got handcuffs in there. Handcuffs that have been used many, many times. He’ll cuff Ty’s wrists above the shackles, and here Ty will stand—or dangle, if he passes out—while the old monster carves him up.

“Now listen,” Burny says. He sounds out of breath, but he also sounds lively again. The prospect of a meal has refreshed him, brought back a certain amount of his vitality. “I’m pointin’ this shocker at you with one hand. I’m gonna slip a cuff around your left wrist with the other hand. If you move . . . if you so much as twitch, boy . . . you get the juice. Understand?”

Ty nods at the bloodstained wall. “I won’t move,” he gibbers. “Honest I won’t.”