Shadowland

    'So was I,' Del confessed.

    Down they went, feeling as much as seeing their way. The air in the tunnel grew damper and colder. Rose's flashlight picked out beads of moisture on the wall.

    'Did you really come here this summer to . . . you know. Protect me?' Del could ask this because of the darkness which hid his face.

    'I guess I did.' Tom's voice, like Del's, went out into pure blackness.

    'But how did you know I'd need it?' Del's piping voice seemed to hang in the air, surrounded by charged space. How could he answer it? Well, I had this vision about a wizard and an evil man, and then later I saw that the evil man had overtaken the wizard. Bad things were coming for you, and I had to put myself in their way. It was the truth, but it could not be spoken: he could not send out his own voice into the waiting blackness if it were going to say those things.

    'I guess it was that 'towers-of-ice' night — remember?'

    'When I didn't know if you were taking Uncle Cole away from me or not,' Del said.

    'God.'

    Del actually giggled.

    Then he had it, the memory: Registration Day: walking down the headmaster's stairs after filling out forms in the library, following Mrs. Olinger's flashlight and fat Bambi Whipple's candle. Going toward their first sight of Laker Broome.

    For a long time they walked in silence as well as darkness, going always down, down, as if the tunnel led to the center of the earth instead of Hilly Vale.

6

A long time later, Tom felt the ground changing. The drag forward which had tired his legs had become a drag backward. They were going uphill now: muscles on the tops of his thighs twanged like rubber bands.

    ''Was that halfway?' Del asked.

    'More,' Rose said. 'Pretty soon we get out.'

    Thank God, Tom said silently: the constant darkness had begun to prey on him.

    A face sewn together like Thorn's, a jigsaw of flesh and scars, floated up through the air and winked.

    'Something wrong?' Del asked.

    'Tired.'

    'I felt you jump.'

    'You're imagining things.'

    'Maybe you are,' Del said slyly.

    'Remember when you said you heard something?' Rose asked.

    'Sure.'

    'Well, now I think I do. Stop talking and listen.'

    That surge of fear again: unavoidable. The flashlight clicked off, and for a moment its afterimage burned in Tom's eyes.

    'I don't . . . ' Del began. He stopped: he, and Tom beside him, had heard it too — a complicated, rushing, pounding noise.

    'Oh, God,' Del breathed. 'They're after us.'

    'Hurry, hurry, hurry,' Rose pleaded. The light went on, blindingly bright, and searched past them. The long tunnel snaked down and away, empty behind them as far as they could see. 'Please.'

    Carrying the light, Rose started to run. Tom heard the pack behind them — it could have been two men, or four, or five, and they sounded a good way off — and then he too ran after Del and Rose. He heard Del sobbing in panic, making a trapped witless noise in his chest and throat. The flashlight bobbed crazily ahead.

    'They knew where to look,' he shouted.

    'Just run!' Rose shouted back.

    He ran. His shoulders knocked painfully against a wooden support. He almost fell, pain shooting all the way down his arm; scraped his hand against a rock protruding from the wall and righted himself.

    As soon as he got back into his stride he ran straight into Del. Del was still making a sound of utter panic.

    'Get up and run,' Tom said. 'Here — here's my hand.' Del caught at him and pulled himself up. Rose was twenty feet away, jerking the flashlight impatiently, shining it in their eyes.

    Del sprinted away like a rabbit.

    'Gotcha!' a man yelled from far back in the tunnel.

    Dogs and badgers; the bloody greasy pit. Had Collins known even then that they would end like this? Tom pushed himself forward.

    'Gotcha!'

'The stairs!' Del screamed. 'I found the stairs!'

    A huge bubble of relief broke in Tom's chest. They could still escape; there was still a chance. He pounded on, panting harshly. Over all the other noises he could hear Del scrambling up the steps to the outside.

    'Tom.' Rose touched his arm and stopped him.

    'We can make it,' he panted. 'They're far enough back — we can do it.'

    'I love you,' she said. 'Remember that.' Her arms caught his chest and her mouth covered his. Sudden light flooded into the tunnel.

    'Rose,' he pleaded, and stepped toward the light, half-carrying her. Her face was wild. He twisted her around to see the steps, the open door.

    Something wrong. Some detail . . . His heart boomed.

    A huge roulette wheel, so dusty that red and black were

    both gray, tilted against the side of the steps. Del's legs

    abruptly soared up and out of the opening as he was

    grabbed from above.

    In the next instant, Del screamed.

    'What. . . ?' He still could not believe what was hap­pening. Del screamed again. 'Rose. . . ?' She was out of his arms and walking toward the broad concrete stairs. 'You'd better come,' she said. 'It has to be like this.'

    He was numb; he watched her mount the first of the steps and turn to face him. Straight in her green dress and high heels, walking away from him; her job done.

    Don't hate me.

'You brought us back,' he said. His lips and fingers had lost all feeling. 'What are you?'

    'It has to be like this, Tom,' Rose said. 'I can't say anymore now.'

    Del's screams had broken down into ragged animallike groans. Tom turned his head to look back down the tunnel. Root and Thorn, not running, came dimly into sight. They paused at the very edge of the penumbra of brightness from the open trapdoor, waited for him to act. He looked back at Rose, who also waited, her face expressionless. Thorn and Root were a wall of crossed arms and spread legs. Rose mounted another step, and he went toward her.

    Coleman Collins gaily sang, 'Come out, come out, wherever you are,' and before Tom got to the steps, a sudden fearful clarity visited him and he thought to tug his shirt out of his trousers, hiding the gun.

    As soon as he reached the steps, he looked up and recognized the ending of the tunnel: it was the forbidden room. Then he knew how the 'Brothers Grimm' had come and gone.

    'So the birds have come home once again,' Collins said.

7

Tom came up into the crowded room. Rose was standing next to Coleman Collins, and the magician was gazing at him with a gleeful, deranged impishness, gently massaging his upper lip with an index finger. The other four Wandering Boys stood off to one side, dogs on the leash. 'Dear me, what a face,' Collins said. 'Can't have that sort of thing, not for our stirring finish — not for the farewell performance. Tears, perhaps, but never scowls.'

    Just behind Collins, Mr. Peet was gripping Del by the bicep, squeezing hard enough to hurt. Del's face was gray and rubbery with shock. Mr. Peet, dressed in the old-fashioned clothes from the train, grinned maliciously and shook Del — jerked him like a doll.