Black House

Dale Gilbertson has lived in the Coulee Country his entire life, and he’s used to greenery. To him trees and lawns and fields that roll all the way to the horizon are the norm. Perhaps this is why he looks at the charred and smoking lands that surround Conger Road with such distaste and growing dismay.

“What is this place?” he asks Jack. The words come out in little puffs. The Sawyer Gang has no golf cart and must hoof it. In fact, Jack has set a pace quite a bit faster than Ty drove the E-Z- Go.

“I don’t exactly know,” Jack says. “I saw a place like it a long time ago. It was called the Blasted Lands. It—”

A greenish man with plated skin suddenly leaps at them from behind a tumble of huge boulders. In one hand he holds a stumpy whip—what Jack believes is actually called a quirt. “Bahhrrr!” this apparition cries, sounding weirdly like Richard Sloat when Richard laughs.

Jack raises Ty’s bat and looks at the apparition questioningly—Did you want some of this? Apparently the apparition does not. It stands where it is for a moment, then turns and flees. As it disappears back into the maze of boulders, Jack sees that twisted thorns grow in a ragged line down both of its Achilles tendons.

“They don’t like Wonderboy,” Beezer says, looking appreciatively at the bat. It is still a bat, just as the 9mm’s and .357 Rugers are still pistols and they are still they: Jack, Dale, Beezer, Doc. And Jack decides he isn’t much surprised by that. Parkus told him that this wasn’t about Twinners, told him that during their palaver near the hospital tent. This place may be adjacent to the Territories, but it’s not the Territories. Jack had forgotten that.

Well, yes—but I’ve had a few other things on my mind.

“I don’t know if you boys have taken a close look at the wall on the far side of this charming country lane,” Doc says, “but those large white stones actually appear to be skulls.”

Beezer gives the wall of skulls a cursory glance, then looks ahead again. “What worries me is that thing,” he says. Over the broken teeth of the horizon rises a great complication of steel, glass, and machinery. It disappears into the clouds. They can see the tiny figures who surge and struggle there, can hear the crack of the whips. From this distance they sound like the pop of .22 rifles. “What’s that, Jack?”

Jack’s first thought is that he’s looking at the Crimson King’s Breakers, but no—there are too many of them. Yonder building is some sort of factory or power plant, powered by slaves. By children not talented enough to qualify as Breakers. A vast outrage rises in his heart. As if sensing it, the drone of t`e bees grows louder behind him.

Speedq’s voice, whispering in his head: Save your anger, Jack—your first jgb is that little `oy. And time has grown very, very short.

“Oh Christ,” Dale says, and points. “Is that what I think it is/”

The gibbet hangs like a skeleton over the slanting road.

Doc says, “If you’re thinking gallows, I believe you win the stainless steel flatware and get to go on to the next round.”

“Look ad all the shoes,” Dale says. “Why would they pile the shoes up like that?”

“God knowc,” Beezer says. “Just the custom of the country, I guess. How close are we, Jack? Do you have any idea at all?”

Jack looks at the road ahead of them, then at the road leading away to the left, the one with the ancient gallows on its corner. “Close,” he says. “I think we’re—”

Then, from ahead of them, the shrieks begin. They are the cries of a child who has been pushed to the edge of madness. Or perhaps over it.

Ty Marshall can hear the approaching drone of the bees but believes it is only in his head, that it is no more than the sound of his own growing anxiety. He doesn’t know how many times he’s tried to slide Burny’s leather bag up the side of the shed; he’s lost count. It does not occur to him that removing the odd cap—the one that looks like cloth and feels like metal—might improve his coordination, for he’s forgotten all about the cap. All he knows is that he’s tired and sweating and trembling, probably in shock, and if he doesn’t manage to snag the bag this time, he’ll probably just give up.

I’d probably go with Mr. Munshun if he just promised me a glass of water, Ty thinks. But he does have Judy’s toughness bred in his bones, and some of Sophie’s regal insistence, as well. And, ignoring the ache in his thigh, he again begins sliding the bag up the wall, at the same time stretching down with his right hand.

Ten anches . . . eight . . . the closest he’s gotten so far . . .

The bag slips do the left. It’s going to fall off his foot. Again.

“,No,” Ty says softly. “Not this time.”

He presses his snaaker harder against the wood, then begins to raise it again.

Shx inches . . . four inches . . . three and the bag starts to tilt farther and farther to the left, it’s going to fall off—

“No!” Ty yells, and bends forward in a strenuous bow. His back creaks. So does his tortured left shoulder. But his fingers graze across the bag . . . and then snag it. He brings it toward him and then damned near drops it after all!

“No way, Burny,” he pants, first juggling the leather sack and then clutching it against his chest. “You don’t fool me with that old trick, no way in hell do you fool me with that one.” He bites the corner of the bag with his teeth. The stink of it is awful, rotten—eau de Burnside. He ignores it and pulls the bag open. At first he thinks it’s empty, and lets out a low, sobbing cry. Then he sees a single silver gleam. Crying through his clenched teeth, Ty reaches into the dangling bag with his right hand and brings the key out.