Black House

firing almost before he sees with his eyes, and he catches the great dark crow crouched on the overhanging branch of an oak tree entirely by surprise. It gives one loud, shocked cry—“AWWWWK!”—and then it is torn apart on its roost. Blood flies against the faded blue summer sky. Feathers flutter down in clumps as dark as midnight shadows. And a body. It hits the shoulder in front of the lane with a heavy thud. One dark, glazing eye peers at Jack Sawyer with an expression of surprise.

“Did you fire five or six?” Beezer asks in a tone of deep awe. “It was so fast I couldn’t tell.”

“All of them,” Jack says. He guesses he’s still not too bad at draw-and-fire after all.

“That’s one big fucking crow,” Doc says.

“It’s not just any crow,” Jack tells him. “It’s Gorg.” He advances to the blasted body lying on the dirt. “How you doin’, fella? How do you feel?” He spits on Gorg, a luscious thick lunger. “That’s for luring the kids,” he says. Then, suddenly, he boots the crow’s corpse into the underbrush. It flies in a limp arc, the wings wrapping around the body like a shroud. “And that’s for fucking with Irma’s mother.”

They are looking at him, all three of them, with identical expressions of stunned awe. Almost of fear. It’s a look that makes Jack tired, although he supposes he must accept it. He can remember his old friend Richard Sloat looking at him the same way, once Richard realized that what he called “Seabrook Island stuff” wasn’t confined to Seabrook Island.

“Come on,” Jack says. “Everybody in the car. Let’s get it done.” Yes, and they must move quickly because a certain one-eyed gent will shortly be looking for Ty, too. Mr. Munshun. Eye of the King, Jack thinks. Eye of the abbalah. That’s what Judy meant—Mr. Munshun. Whoever or whatever he really is.

“Don’t like leaving the bikes out here by the side of the road, man.” Beezer says. “Anybody could come along and—”

“Nobody will see them,” Jack tells him. “Three or four cars have gone by since we parked, and no one’s so much as looked over at us. And you know why.”

“We’ve already started to cross over, haven’t we?” Doc asks. “This is the edge of it. The border.”

“Opopanax,” Jack says. The word simply pops out.

“Huh?”

Jack picks up Ty’s Richie Sexson bat and gets in on the passenger side of the cruiser. “It means let’s go,” he says. “Let’s get it done.”

And so the Sawyer Gang takes its last ride—up the wooded, poisonous lane that leads to Black House. The strong afternoon light quickly fades to the sullen glow of an overcast November evening. In the close-pressing trees on either side, dark shapes twine and crawl and sometimes fly. They don’t matter, much, Jack reckons; they are only phantoms.

“You gonna reload that Roogalator?” Beezer asks from the back seat.

“Nope,” Jack says, looking at the Ruger without much interest. “Think it’s done its job.”

“What should we be ready for?” Dale asks in a thin voice.

“Anything,” Jack replies. He favors Dale Gilbertson with a humorless grin. Ahead of them is a house that won’t keep its shape but whirls and wavers in the most distressing way. Sometimes it seems no bigger than a humble ranch house; a blink, and it seems to be a ragged monolith that blots out the entire sky; another blink and it appears to be a low, uneven construction stretching back under the forest canopy for what could be miles. It gives off a low hum that sounds like voices.

“Be ready for anything at all.”

28

BUT AT FIRST there is nothing.

The four of them get out and stand in front of Dale’s cruiser, looking for all the world like men posing for the kind of group photo that will eventually show up on someone’s den wall. Only the photographer would be on Black House’s porch—that’s the way they’re facing—and the porch is empty except for the second NO TRESPASSING sign, which leans against a peeling newel post. Someone has drawn a skull on it with a Magic Marker or grease pencil. Burny? Some intrepid teenager who came all the way up to the house on a dare? Dale did some crazy things when he was seventeen, risked his life with a spray-paint can more than once, but he still finds that hard to believe.

The air is sullen and silent, as if before a thunderstorm. It stinks, too, but the honey seems to filter the worst of that out. In the woods, something makes a thick sound Dale has never heard before. Groo- oooo.

“What’s that?” he asks Jack.

“I don’t know,” Jack replies.

Doc says, “I’ve heard bull gators. That’s what they sound like when they’re feeling horny.”

“This isn’t the Everglades,” Dale says.

Doc gives him a thin smile. “It ain’t Wisconsin anymore, either, Toto. Or maybe you didn’t notice.”

Dale has noticed plenty. There’s the way the house won’t hold its shape, for one thing—the way it sometimes seems enormous, as if it is many houses somehow all overlaid. A city perhaps the size of London folded under a single weird roof. And then there are the trees. There are old oaks and pines, there are birches like skinny ghosts, there are red maples—all of them indigenous to the area—but he also sees twisted, rooty growths that look like mutated banyan trees. And are these moving? Christ, Dale hopes not. But whether they are or not, they’re whispering. He’s almost sure of that. He can hear their words slithering through the buzzing in his head, and they’re not encouraging words, not by a longshot.

Killyew . .