'Help him, Steve.' Beside him, she crouched.
'I think the kid's in that ticket booth,' he mouthed into her ear. 'I'm going to try to get to him. Promise me you'll stay here.'
'I can't move anyway. Ssh. Listen.'
The voices swirled.
'...hate you?'
They soared, disembodied, like the moaning of specters.
'...know how much I love you? Little Perry, you can't die thinking I don't love you.'
She watched Steve crawl away, while the wind howled like demented goblins.
'You're my brother,' Ramsey called softly, inching farther along the wall. 'Family is all we have now.'
He twisted around the corner to peer through the rough tunnel of a window swept clear of glass and casement. 'Why do you run from us?'
The wind floated an answer to him. '...want to hurt me?' It came finally in the voice of a child--without toughness or cunning--the voice of a small lost boy, so near.
'Perry? Come to me.'
Steve crawled along the base of the tilt-a-whirl, his elbows sinking into the soft ground as he tried to hold the revolver up out of the muck. He got to his feet, and bolted for the ticket booth, trying to gauge the boy's exact position, but the voices veered again.
Cautiously, he peered about. Now the voices seemed to drift from behind the fun house. He turned toward a hint of movement.
The earth undulated.
Beyond the broken derricks and the fallen Ferris wheel, a cloud rolled slowly into the lot. He felt his body go rigid. Solid blankness, the cloud oozed nearer, obliterating everything in its path.
Panic tightened in his chest. If the fog reached them, they would vanish. Steve knew he had to move now.
'...won't make it hurt, Perry.' Fading wind slapped the words away. 'I am sorry, but you know I have to do it. And you know why. Trust me--I don't want to. But it's up to me now. My responsibility. You must see that. You're out of control. Soon everyone will see. Everyone will know.' The voice grunted with sudden exertion. '...know I don't want this. Even when you were only an infant, you were the one I took the beatings for. Always you. You were the reason I let him...to keep him off you.' The words droned faster, became a searing monotone. '...thought you would be the one untouched by it all. But when I read about the killings, I knew. Knew you took after his family--the stories he used to tell us. And I could not allow you to hurt her.'
Then the fog swept over them all. Impossibly, it seemed to move against the wind, sliding inexorably between eddies of air. It buried them.
'Hurt her?'
The boy's reply came from somewhere quite near, and Steve crawled blindly.
'...would never hurt her.'
Now the voices seemed to emanate from the same point in the mist, and he headed toward it.
'...not able to help yourself...must know...tears my heart out. Don't prolong this, dear boy. If you come now, I'll let you see her one last time. She...'
'No! You think...! Stupid! Stupid!' The words sliced shrilly through the whiteness. 'Run away! You...stupid, you...!'
Through a thinner patch--a sort of opaque tunnel--Steve glimpsed sudden movement.
Perry sprang up behind the shattered gate to the fun house. 'Run away!' the boy shouted. Behind him, a huge green head tilted, grinning with weathered malevolence, carved teeth yawning cavernously in the wind. 'I'm not the one!'
As the mist seemed to solidify around him, Steve froze. Certainty grew in his mind...finally...like the fragment of a forgotten tune...slowly recalled...gaining pattern and rhythm with each heartbeat. He plowed forward. He understood now. He could stop this.
Gurgling screams pierced the mist.
'No!' Blundering toward the screams, he made out the dim shape of the boy. 'Stay there!' Wraithlike, the form disappeared between the buildings. 'No, wait!' It seemed Steve ran against the cries, pumping his legs but unable to progress, while the howls rasped into a wet, hoarse choke of agony, interspersed with loud panting.
Silence settled thickly.
'Get back, Perry!' Spinning around the corner, Steve leveled the gun. Nothing stirred in the muddy field behind the buildings. Then he saw him.
Drenched and bedraggled, Ramsey lay on his back in the gravel, one shoulder propped awkwardly against a wall. His chest heaved, and his twitching legs splayed brokenly. Thick fluid puddled around him on the muddy concrete.
Steve gaped at the red ruin of the man's groin.
Ramsey stared up with lids at half-mast. His mouth hung slackly, his expression full of sadness and pain. He twitched again, a hiss gurgling in his open mouth.
Footsteps grated damply. With a moan of fear, Steve whirled.
Facing into the barrel, Kit braced herself on the wall.
'I told you to stay back.'
Her gaze traveled past him.
'Don't look.' He tried to block her line of sight. 'We can't help him.'
'god oh my god oh'
'I said, don't look.' He caught at her arm.
'He's still alive.' Pulling away, she crouched.
'Come away. Did you see the boy?'
'Why is he still alive? How?'
The mouth writhed as though Ramsey attempted speech, and she leaned closer. But his head had fallen forward on his chest, and she heard only clotted mumblings. Pink saliva beaded on his lower lip, and the hissing in his throat melted into a liquid rasp as thick fluid filled his mouth and spewed down his chin.
'He's dead now. Kit, come away.'
'You have the right to remain silent.' She began to giggle. 'If you refuse that right...'
'Kit, for God's sakes.'
'It looks like somebody circumcised him with a shovel.' A laugh cracked in her throat. 'We've got to stop that rabbi.'
'Stop it.'
'No sense of humor, Stevie-boy, that's your trouble.'
'Hang on just a little longer, Kit. Don't fall apart. Get up. Come on. Stay close to me now. There's only one place they can be.' Rapidly, he surveyed the walls: brick caves gaped where doors had been. 'Take his gun. There on the ground. No, don't look at him.'
'A mon...a mon...' she sputtered, giggling, 'a monster got him. A monster.'
'Don't look at him, I said.'
'I didn't believe you. Oh, Steve.'
'Look, we can both go to pieces later--there's no time now. Pick up that gun!'
She found it in a shallow puddle. 'Why didn't he shoot?' A single drop of blood trembled on the barrel, as she lifted it to snap open the breach. 'There's one bullet left.'
'Make it count. No hesitations. No second thoughts. The thing's cornered now.'
'Stop, please. No more monsters. Just a boy--an insane boy, chasing a frightened girl.'
'No.'
'Please, Steve. Don't make me see it. Just get me out of here.'
He marched toward the twin doorways. 'Stay behind me. You'll be all right.' Planting his feet, he raised the revolver, gripping it with both hands. 'Perry,' he shouted. 'Can you hear me?'
