Black House

park and gets out. They all get out, looking back at Black House. Its shape remains ordinary, but it has not quite given up all of its magic after all, it seems. Somewhere a door—perhaps in the cellar or a bedroom or a dirty and neglected but otherwise perfectly ordinary kitchen—remains open. On this side is the Coulee Country; on the other is Conger Road, the smoking, newly stopped hulk of the Big Combination, and the Din-tah.

Bees are coming out onto the porch of Black House. Bees, and the children the bees are leading. They come in droves, laughing and crying and holding hands. Jack Sawyer has a brief, brilliant image of animals leaving Noah’s Ark after the flood.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Dale whispers again. The yard is filling with laughing, crying, murmuring children.

Jack walks up to Beezer, who turns to him with a brilliant smile.

“After all the children come through, we have to close the door,” Jack says. “For good.”

“I know we do,” says Beezer.

“You happen to have any brilliant ideas?”

“Well,” Beezer says, “let me put it this way. If you promise me, and I mean promise me, not to ask any awkward questions or say anything about it later, before midnight tonight I might find it possible to lay my hands on a substantial quantity of something pretty damn effective.”

“What? Dynamite?”

“Please,” Beezer says. “Didn’t I say effective?”

“You mean . . . ?”

Beezer smiles, and his eyes become slits.

“I’m glad you’re on my side,” Jack says. “See you back on the road before midnight. We’ll have to sneak in, but I don’t think we’ll have any trouble.”

“Sure won’t have any on the way out,” Beezer says.

Doc claps Dale on the shoulder. “I hope you’ve got some on-the-ball child-welfare organizations in this part of the world, Chiefy. I think you’re going to need them.”

“Holy . . .” Dale turns stricken eyes to Jack. “What am I going to do?”

Jack grins. “I think you better make a call to . . . what does Sarah call them? The Color Posse?”

A gleam of hope dawns in Dale Gilbertson’s eyes. Or maybe it’s incipient triumph. John P. Redding of the FBI, officers Perry Brown and Jeffrey Black of the Wisconsin State Police. He imagines this trio of bungholes faced with the appearance of a medieval children’s crusade in western Wisconsin. Imagines the Dickensian piles of paperwork such an unheard-of event must certainly generate. It will keep them occupied for months or years. It may generate nervous breakdowns. Certainly it will give them something to think about other than Chief Dale Gilbertson of French Landing.

“Jack,” he says. “What exactly do you suggest?”

“In broad strokes,” Jack says, “I suggest that they should get stuck with all the work and you should hog all the credit. How does that sound to you?”

Dale thinks about it. “Very fair,” he says. “What do you say we get this kiddo to his dad, then both of them up to Arden to see his mom?”

“Good,” Jack says. “I only wish Henry was here, too.”

“That makes us a pair,” Dale says, and slides back behind the wheel. A moment later, they are rolling up the lane.

“What about all those kids?” Ty asks, looking out through the back window. “Are you just going to leave them?”

“I’ll call WSP as soon as we’re back on the highway,” Dale says. “I think they should get on this right away, don’t you guys? And the Feebs, of course.”

“Right,” Beezer says.

“Fuckin’ A,” Doc says.

“An excellent administrative call,” Jack says, and sits Tyler down on his lap. “In the meantime they’ll be fine,” he says in the boy’s ear. “They’ve seen a lot worse than Wisconsin.”

Let us slip now from the driver’s window like the breeze we are and watch them go—four brave men and one brave child who will never be so young (or so innocent) again. Behind them, the now harmless and unmagicked yard of Black House is alive with children, their faces dirty, their eyes wide with wonder. English is a minority tongue here, and some of the languages being spoken will puzzle the world’s best linguists in the years ahead. This is the beginning of a worldwide sensation (Time’s cover story the following week will be “The Miracle Children from Nowhere”) and, as Dale has already surmised, a bureaucratic nightmare.

Still, they are safe. And our guys are safe, too. All of them came back in one piece from the other side, and surely we did not expect that; most quests of this type usually demand at least one sacrifice (a relatively minor character like Doc, for instance). All’s well that ends well. And this can be the end, if you want it to be; neither of the scribbling fellows who have brought you this far would deny you that. If you do choose to go on, never say you weren’t warned: you’re not going to like what happens next.

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX

FRENCH LANDING PD CHIEF REFUSES TO CANCEL PRESS CONFERENCE, CITES SUPPORT OF TOWN OFFICIALS; SOURCES CONFIRM CELEB L.A. COP WILL ATTEND; FBI, WISC S.P. EXPRESS STRONG DISAPPROVAL

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