people talked back to the voices inside their heads. But then, there sure were a hell of a lot of crazy people around Korban Manor. Ransom Streater claimed to see people who weren't there, or those who had passed on long before. George wished one of them would have a vision now, do that Sight thing Abigail was always going on about, see him trapped under the old shed.
But Korban Manor was nearly a mile away, and not many messed around in this neck of the woods. Chances were, nobody was in shouting distance even if George could balloon his lungs up enough for a good scream. Chances were, the other hired help was busy around the house, packing in the latest batch of rich artists, Miss Mamie glaring at them if they dared to rest for even a minute. Chances were, even if he managed to crawl out from under three tons of wood and steel and glass, he'd leak away the rest of his blood before he made it back to the trail, let alone to the wagon road or manor.
But first he'd have to get free. Then he could worry about the rest of it. He looked to his right, to the side of his body that was missing a part. A section of the roof that was more or less intact sloped down from a point just above his waist to the ground fifteen feet away. The rubble above him was held up by a single bowed rafter.
If that gave way…
'Then it's 'Sayonara, Cholly,'' Old Leatherneck said, coming back from whatever shocked pocket of George's brain that the ornery bastard had been hiding out in. 'Now move it.'
A two-by-four rested near George's cheek, the grain rough against his skin. If he could maneuver it, maybe use it as a lever, he could pry his left arm free. He moved his arm, and the bone of his elbow clubbed against the wooden floor. His right arm must have been asleep, because now it came to tingling life.
He scooted the two-by-four against his side, and the payoff came. The end of his arm exploded in a bright burst of agony. This was orange pain, the color of orange that shot out of the Human Torch's hands in those Fantastic Four comics he'd read as a kid. Still, he pushed the two-by-four along until he could cradle it in the crook of his injured arm.
'There you go, Georgie-boy,' said his one-man chain of command. 'Give 'em hell. Only, what are you going to use as a fulcrum for your little make-do seesaw?'
Old Leatherneck had a point, as much as George hated to admit it. But if he gave up now, then surviving Nam and Selma and the stroke and stepping on a copperhead was all for nothing. Sliding down along those miners' rails in the dark would be that much easier. Just as an experiment, because he needed to know, he closed his eyes.
And he was deeper inside the long dark tunnel. The light at the living end was fainter now, fuzzier. And he was accelerating, sliding fast and smooth as if sledding on snow. The air was thin and cool as the final bend came nearer.
George relaxed, though he was shivering and his blood was starved for oxygen and his heart was hammering like a roofer trying to beat a rainstorm. Because in here, in the tunnel, it was okay to give up hope. Nobody in here would hold it against him. He sensed that others were waiting to welcome him, huddled in the shadows, those who had ridden the rails before him. And he was rounding the bend, hell, this was easy, this was fun, and then, the soft slithering sound pickaxed him in the skull.
What if there are SNAKES around the bend?
George opened his eyes and fought back to the mouth of the tunnel and saw that the sun was still hanging stubbornly in the sky somewhere above, and the AWOL hand was splayed out stiff and livid, wearing a bracelet of splinters and dirt. He'd almost gone under, and knew that shock was setting in.
Back in An Loc once, some of the grunts had been sitting around knocking down Schlitz tall boys with George Jones on the record player. A young medic named Haley stubbed out a joint as big as a rifle barrel and told them why shock was a dying soldier's best friend.
'Some kinds of pain, even a plungerful of morphine won't touch,' Haley said, a wreath of blue smoke around his head. 'But shock, man, it shuts you down nice and easy. Blood pressure drops, breathing gets shallow, you get all sweaty, and you don't even know your Mama's name. Crash and bleed out, man, then drift off.'
They'd told Haley to shut the hell up. And George had dodged his own run-in with fatal shock, at least so far. But lying under the crush of wreckage and running down Haley's list of symptoms, he was three-fourths of the way there. He still remembered Mama had been named Beatrice Anne.
The torn hand was slipping off the broken tip of lumber. A drop of blood hit his cheek. George gritted his loose teeth and flipped the two-by-four onto his chest. He pushed with his stump of a forearm until one end of the board was under the joist that had his left arm pinned.
He tried not to look at his ruined wrist. Blood ran down the underside of his arm. If he didn't get a tourniquet on it soon 'Don't wait for that weed-brained Haley to swoop down in his Huey, Georgie-Boy. Some things, a man's gotta do for hisself. And a fixer-upper like you, somebody who's a real handyman-course, you're only half as handy as you used to be, ain't you?'
George wanted to scream at Old Leatherneck to shut up and go away. But George needed him, needed that taunting inner voice as badly as ever. Walking the lonely roads and horse trails of the Korban estate, he'd taken what companionship he could find. Sure, some of the folks down at Stony Hampton's cafe whispered about spooks and such around the manor, but after Nam, George figured the scariest spooks were the kinds that sent their sons into battle.
So when he'd seen the flicker of pale movement inside the shed, he hadn't given the whispers much of a thought. He'd figured it was a possum or maybe a screech owl. Nothing that would have caused much damage. But George was paid to keep the place up and the critters out, or, as Miss Mamie said, 'Just the way things were when Ephram was still lord and master here.' So George had lifted the old metal latch and pushed open the creaking door, hoping that any snakes were scared away by the noise.
'But it wasn't no possum, nor no screech owl, was it?' whispered Old Leatherneck.
George's eyes popped open. He must have drifted off. That was another one of Haley's signs. The two-by- four across his chest rose and fell with his shallow breathing. The sun had slipped low, the dark angles of shadows sharp and thick in the carnage.
Fear gave him a burst of energy, and he levered the two-by-four. His stub of a wrist screamed in fire-juice red.
'Hear that? Wasn't no possum, was it, Georgie?'
Now he wished the old bastard would shut up. He needed to focus, get the job done in a hurry, he didn't need 'Might be sssnakes.'
Or it might be — the long white slithery shadow — whatever trick his eyes had played on him as he'd stepped inside the shed. Because if a fellow couldn't trust his own eyes, his days as a to-the-sixteenth-inch handyman were numbered. But right now, all that mattered was — that slippery shadow that you could see right through — the next push, prying that ceiling joist off his left arm. His chest erupted in hot blue sparks of pain, hell-blazer blue, a blue so intense it was almost white. But the joist gave a little groan and inched upward, awakening the nailed nerves in his biceps.
'She's moving, soldier! She's a-moving! And the pain ain't nothing, is it? Hell, we been through boo-koos of this kind of hurt. This is like a pansy-assed waltz through the daisies.'
A waltz. The long white shadow had been doing a waltz. Like a worn linen curtain blowing in the wind, only…
'Sure wasn't no screech owl's face, Georgie-Boy.'
The shadow had a human face.
George gurgled and the spit trickled down his cheek. He pried again and the joist lifted another cruel and precious inch. New colors of pain came, pus yellow, electric green, screaming violet, crazed ribbons of agony. A big section of the roof quivered-and the amputated hand worked free of its wooden skewer, fell and bounced off his forehead and away.
But George barely noticed, because he was back in the tunnel, riding the miners' rails. And he was rounding that slow curve into darkness, that final rum away from the bothers of breathing.
And suddenly he knew what was around the bend.
She would be waiting, the white shadow with the large round begging eyes, the thing with arms spread wide, one hand holding that dead bouquet of flowers. She looked even more afraid than George. Just before the shed collapsed, he'd seen the long see-through tail wriggling under the lace hem of her gown, a tail as scaly as a 'The snakes crawl at night, Georgie.'
'No, they don't,' George said, voice hoarse and weak. 'I know, because I looked it up.'
