Shadowland

grease of human misery. You made it, Tom thought. It's yours. The fingers weakened, and the Collector flowed out of sight.

    Tom stepped into the bathroom. He turned on the light. The mirror showed a roiling, smoky confusion. He switched the light off and tottered out.

    'You did it,' Rose breathed. 'I was hardly . . . I didn't think that anybody . . . '

    'Yeah,' Tom said. He sat down. Bud was gone; but Bud had never been there. 'Fine. Got one more thing to do.'

    Rose hovered in the dim light. 'One more. . . ?'

    'Ladies and gentlemen,' he pronounced, almost enjoy­ing the sight of Rose's tremulous uncertainty. 'Come over this way, Rose. I don't want you to get hurt. Ladies and gentlemen . . . the amazing Wall of Fire.'

    He had strength enough to reach down inside himself and find the key that had to be there. Fire, he thought, and a feeble little row of flames sprang up along the carpet directly before him. Rose stepped nearer to him. 'Not much of a wall,' he said, and giggled with exhaustion. 'More of a picket fence. Let's improve it.'

    And through his headache thought it into being. The row of flames mounted the wall and began to lick at the ceiling. Tom sat slumped in the hall and watched the fire grow. It ate the frame of the bathroom door, and looked as beautiful as a rose garden to him. He heard it spreading down the hall, feeding on the carpet, going toward the living room. It would love the staircase. Get it all, he thought, swallow every inch of it, and did not have to reach for more of his strength because the fire would swallow everything anyhow.

    He dully watched it spring up along the frames of the posters. Through the opening between the burning carpet and the fire spreading across the ceiling, he saw the flames speed into the living room.

    He giggled again. 'Forgot to think about a way out, Rose. Sit down and enjoy the pretty fire.' He picked up the glass sparrow and cradled it on his lap. 'Did you hear him singing, Rose? Did you hear that? That was the most beautiful thing . . . it sounded like he was so happy. It sounded better than that.' The fire moved toward his shoes. 'I'm sorry there isn't a way to get out, Rose.'

    'Of course there's a way to get out,' she said.

    'As a barbecue. Sit down and let's be barbecued together. I don't know what you are, but I love you anyhow.'

    She reached for him, and he raised his hand. The heat was starting to cook him now, and he imagined that there might be a minute or two of pain, only a little worse than the pain he had already suffered. But instead of sitting beside him and holding his hand, she pulled. 'I can't,' he said, and she pulled again, and he staggered up.

    'The tunnels, you dummy,' she said. 'We can go back under the lake.'

She pulled up the trapdoor, and he looked around for a last time at the forbidden room. 'You know,' he said, 'he really was a great magician. Del was right about that. And at the beginning, it's hard to believe now, but at the beginning it was even fun in a way. I kept trying to figure out what it was all about.'

    Rose looked at him with cautious but ahnost maternal curiosity.

    'There's something in this room,' he remembered. 'Rose, I can't leave until I find it.'

    'There's nothing here,' she said. And that seemed true.

    'Something he said he was going to leave here for me — when he thought I might stay with him. I have to find it.'

    'We don't have any time.'

    'I don't think it'll take any time.'

    He woozily looked over the silvery gray walls. There had been a moment, the day after his 'welcome,' when he had paused at the door and sensed the presence in here of some invisible scene: Shadowland had wanted him to read the Book.

    'Hurry!' Rose said. The noises of the fire were advancing down the hall.

    'It's here,' he said dreamily. He turned about, still amazed that he could stand. He was looking at the wall opposite the door. Tom walked past the entrance to the tunnels and ran his hands over the wall. It was already warm. He gently moved his hand over the silvery paint.

    A panel swung open onto a little recess. The Book lay on a wooden stand, opened in the middle and surrounded by plush. If he had perverted the Book, Collins had at least kept it reverentially. Tom reached in and took the leather-bound volume off the stand. He reached behind his back and slid it under his belt where he had kept the old pistol. 'All right,' he said. 'I'm ready now.'

    Rose led the way down into the tunnel.

33

The way back, as it always is, was easier than the way forward. Tom heard no voices, no Twenties Nick sang 'Sweet Sue' and wafted himself another pull of prewar gin; the only noise they heard, and it followed them for half an hour, was the whooshing of the fire that consumed Shadowland: as if that were all Twenties Nick needed to hear before he could go back to his long sleep. The owl had been fed.

    'I'm so tired,' Tom said. Rose moved steadily on before him, playing the flashlight on the wooden supports and flaking walls.

    Soon he saw then' sleeping bags unrolled in the vaulted cavern. 'Please. I'm going to fall down.'

    'The house is only about ten minutes away,' Rose said. 'I have a better idea. You can sleep on the beach. In fresh air.' He followed her back to the summer house.

34

Rubbing his eyes, he came up into the dark living room. The sparrow weighed like a heavy suitcase in his right hand. Rose glimmered before him in the green dress: he realized that she had come barefoot all the way from the house. 'You must want to lie down too,' he said. 'Aren't there beds here? I just have to . . . I could take a nap.' His eyes were burning.

    'Whose bed do you want,' Rose said. 'Thorn's or Snail's?'

    'Oh, my God.' He could not sleep in those beds. 'But why the beach?'

    She put her arm around him. 'It's so close, darling Tom. Just a few steps more.'

    She took him out of the room and onto the porch. The moon made all bright with a magical silvery light which transformed all it touched. The world was a place of wonders. The edge of the sky before them burned a faint orange-red.

    'I like that little beach,' Tom said. 'I used to look for you there sometimes. The week before I got sick.'

    'I was always looking for you,' Rose told him. 'I was looking for you long before you came here.'

    'Come back to Arizona with me. Could you do that, Rose?' She was leading him down the steps. The grass was that leaning ocean, breathed upon by moonlight, he had seen once before. 'Del wanted that. He said it to me. once. We could find you somewhere to live. I guess we could.'

    'Of course we could,' she said.

    'We could get married when I'm eighteen. I'll work. I could always work, Rose.'

    'Of course you could,' she said.

    They were walking down the overgrown roadway. Each leaf on the trees about him shone with silvery light. The trunks were made of silver and pitchy onyx. 'So you'll marry me?' he said.

    'In eternity we are married.'

    'In eternity we're married now,' Tom said! That seemed overwhelmingly delightful and overwhelmingly true. 'It's just a little way now, isn't it?'

    'Just a little way.'

They came through delicate brush onto the beach, also silvered by kindly moonlight. Across the water Shadowland gouted flame. The smoke pouring from the burning roof was darker than the sky. They stood on the sand a moment, watching it engulf itself. Tom saw flames moving behind the upper windows where Collins' temptations had been arrayed before him. 'The funny thing is, he was great,' Tom said. 'He was just what he said he was.'

    'Lie down,' Rose said. 'I don't want to look at that anymore. You need to sleep.' She stretched out on the pewter sand. 'Please lie down next to me.'

    'Hey . . . how do we get out? The wall. . . the barbed wire . . . we'll have to go back — '