Black House

Nothing. She just lies there.

Fred looks at her for a moment, then uncrumples one of the slimy balls of paper with which she has tried to strangle herself. It is covered with tangles of scribbled words. Gorg, abbalah, eeleelee, munshun, bas, lum, opopanax: these mean nothing to him. Others—drudge, asswipe, black, red, Chicago, and Ty—are actual words but have no context. Printed up one side of the sheet is IF YOU’VE GOT PRINCE ALBERT IN A CAN, HOW CAN YOU EVER GET HIM OUT ? Up the other, like a teletype stuck in repeat mode, is this: BLACK HOUSE CRIMSON KING BLACK HOUSE CRIMSON KING BLACK

If you waste time looking for sense in this, you’re as crazy as she is, Fred thinks. You can’t waste time—

Time.

He looks at the clock on his side of the bed and cannot believe its news: 4:17 P.M. Is that possible? He looks at his watch and sees that it is.

Knowing it’s foolish, knowing he would have heard his son come in even if in a deep sleep, Fred strides to the door on big nerveless legs. “Ty!” he yells. “Hey, Ty! TYLER!”

Waiting for an answer that will not come, Fred realizes that everything in his life has changed, quite possibly forever. People tell you this can happen—in the blink of an eye, they say, before you know it, they say—but you don’t believe it. Then a wind comes.

Go down to Ty’s room? Check? Be sure?

Ty isn’t there—Fred knows this—but he does it just the same. The room is empty, as he knew it would be. And it looks oddly distorted, almost sinister, with the dresser now on the other side.

Judy. You left her alone, you idiot. She’ll be chewing paper again by now, they’re clever, mad people are clever—

Fred dashes back down to the master bedroom and exhales a sigh of relief when he sees Judy lying just as he left her, face-down, hair spread around her head. He discovers that his worries about his mad wife are now secondary to his worries about his missing son.

He’ll be home by four, at the latest . . . take it to the bank. So he had thought. But four has come and gone. A strong wind has arisen and blown the bank away. Fred walks to his side of the bed and sits down beside his wife’s splayed right leg. He picks up the phone and punches in a number. It’s an easy number, only three digits.

“Yell-o, Police Department, Officer Dulac speaking, you’ve dialed 911, do you have an emergency?”

“Officer Dulac, this is Fred Marshall. I’d like to speak to Dale, if he’s still there.” Fred is pretty sure Dale is. He works late most nights, especially since—

He pushes the rest away, but inside his head the wind blows harder. Louder.

“Gee, Mr. Marshall, he’s here, but he’s in a meeting and I don’t think I can—”

“Get him.”

“Mr. Marshall, you’re not hearing me. He’s in with two guys from the WSP and one from the FBI. If you could just tell me—”

Fred closes his eyes. It’s interesting, isn’t it? Something interesting here. He called in on the 911 line, but the idiot on the other end seems to have forgotten that. Why? Because it’s someone he knows. It’s good old Fred Marshall, bought a Deere lawn tractor from him just the year before last. Must have dialed 911 because it was easier than looking up the regular number. Because no one Bobby knows can actually have an emergency.

Fred remembers having a similar idea himself that morning—a different Fred Marshall, one who believed that the Fisherman could never touch his son. Not his son.

Ty’s gone. Gorg fascinated him and the abbalah took him.

“Hello? Mr. Marshall? Fred? Are you still—”

“Listen to me,” Fred says, his eyes still closed. Down at Goltz’s, he would be calling the man on the other end Bobby by now, but Goltz’s has never seemed so far away; Goltz’s is in the star-system Opopanax, on Planet Abbalah. “Listen to me carefully. Write it down if you have to. My wife has gone mad and my son is missing. Do you understand those things? Wife mad. Son missing. Now put me through to the chief!”

But Bobby Dulac doesn’t, not right away. He has made a deduction. A more diplomatic police officer (Jack Sawyer as he was in his salad days, for instance) would have kept said deduction to himself, but Bobby can’t do that. Bobby has hooked a big one.

“Mr. Marshall? Fred? Your son doesn’t own a Schwinn, does he? Three-speed Schwinn, red? Got a novelty license plate that reads . . . uh . . . BIG MAC?”

Fred cannot answer. For several long and terrible moments he cannot even draw a breath. Between his ears, the wind blows both louder and harder. Now it’s a hurricane.

Gorg fascinated him . . . the abbalah took him.

At last, just when it seems he will begin to strangle himself, his chest unlocks and he takes in a huge, tearing breath. “PUT CHIEF GILBERTSON ON! DO IT NOW, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”

Although he shrieks this at the top of his lungs, the woman lying face-down on the coverlet beside him never