Shadowland

    'Why does it have to be like this, Rose?' Tom asked. She looked back at him as from a great distance. Collins smiled, stopped caressing his lip, and took the girl's hand.

    'Why does it have to be like this?'

Del began to weep from terror.

    'I'll answer, if you don't mind,' Collins said. He was still smiling, 'It has to be like this because you are unfit to be my successor. As you have just proven. I am afraid that the world will just have to wait for another gifted child to appear — there's no hope left for you, Tom. You have just been sent back to the ranks. Spectator — partici­pant. Good, here are the others.'

    First Root, then Thorn, emerged from the trapdoor. Thorn was breathing hard: the run had tired him. Their shoulders nearly filled the opening.

    'I could have been your salvation,' Collins mused. 'And how I tried. But even the best potter cannot work with inferior clay.' He shrugged, but his eyes were still dancing. 'Now, let us check our scheduled.' He raised both his hand and Rose's and looked at his watch. 'We have several hours before the final act.' He bent down and brushed Rose's hand with his lips. When he gently let go of Rose's hand he turned to the lounging men. 'Thorn, Pease, and Snail. You'll bring this boy along to the big theater. Rose, darling, I want you to wait in my bedroom. You others, take my nephew outside and play with him for a couple of hours. If he whimpers, punish him. He is of no use anymore.'

    She was his girlfriend, Tom thought. His mistress. Betrayal upon betrayal sank into him like lead. Two of the trolls roughly grabbed his arms. He looked into Rose's eyes.

    Don't hate me.

'Get along, Rose,' the magician said. But she hung by his side for a moment, answering Tom's gaze. Don't hate me for what I had to do. 'I said go.' Rose turned and walked away. Collins' mad eyes snagged and held him.

    'Do you understand?' the magician said. 'I had to see if you'd really try to leave. You don't deserve your talent — but that is academic now, for you won't have it much longer. When it came down to it, you chose your wings.'

    'You killed all those people,' Tom said. 'You killed Nick. And Philly's wife. All those people from the summer cabin.'

    'And Nick's wife, for that matter,' Collins said.

    'You killed Del's parents too,' Tom said. 'For your share of their money.' He saw Del reel back, be brought sharply upright by Mr. Peet.

    'I thought I'd get Del's share too, you know.' Collins smiled. 'At one time I thought he might be my successor. It would have been better if he had been. I could control my nephew. But there you were, shining away like the biggest diamond in the golden west.'

    As Del began to wail, Tom again caught the re­semblance to Laker Broome. Collins was smiling, pre­ tending calm, but his nerves were on fire — he was burning with anger and crazy glee. 'Stay behind, Mr. Peet. You others, take that squalling boy outside. I don't care what you do with him.'

    Root, Seed, and Rock moved toward Del. Seed was grinning like a bear. He clamped his paw on Del's elbow and tore him away from Mr. Peet. 'You needn't worry about bringing him back,' Collins said. Seed began hauling Del toward the door, Root and Pease crowding after. 'Mr. Peet, I want you to open the wall between the two theaters. We'll want all the space we can get.'

    Mr. Peet nodded and followed the others through the door.

    Now only the three trolls — Thorn, Pease, and Snail — the magician and the boy were left in the room. The trolls too wore the four-button suits and Norfolk jackets from the train, and looked balloonlike, stuffed into the hot tight clothes. Thorn's sewn-together face was dripping. The three moved in closer to Tom.

    'What are they going to do to Del?'

    'Oh, it won't be as interesting as what happens to you,' the magician said. 'You're going to be crucified.'

    'Is that what you did to Speckle John?'

    'Why, no. I gave him a lifelong punishment, didn't I tell you that? I made him a servant. He was a son of Hagar, after all, or is that too biblical for you?'

    'I know what it means.'

    The magician smiled and glanced at the sweating trolls. 'Take him now.'

    Snail put hands the size of footballs on Tom's shoul­ders. With those hands he could have broken both of Tom's arms; and Tom felt an intention like this in the man's touch, which was more than brutal. It was utterly without human feeling. They were going to hurt him, and they would enjoy it, the more so because he had humili­ ated them earlier. Snail lifted him off the ground, gripping hard enough to bruise, and carried him out of the room. The other two laughed — hoarse braying barnyard laugh­ter.

    She never told him about the gun, he realized. She knew but she didn't tell him. It kept him from passing out.

8

Snail's fingers were steel bars thrust into his muscles. As the man carried him like a weightless doll down the corridor to the theaters, he bent his head forward and whispered into Tom's ear. 'My daddy used to whup me — my daddy used to near take the skin off my back — oh, how my daddy whupped me — ' he made a coarse oily noise Tom realized a second later was a chuckle. Then he put his lips on Tom's ear. ' — and I didn't have skin near as white as yours.' He bellowed with laughter.

    Tom kicked backward and hit Snail's legs with his heels. The troll responded by shaking him hard enough to break his neck.

    'Play pretty, now,' Snail said, setting him down outside the door to the little theater. The brass plaque still read:

Wood Green Empire

27 August, 1924

Collins opened the door and Snail hauled Tom in.

    One whole wall was gone. The two theaters were joined into a single massive space. Mr. Peet was up at the back of the pitched seats, looking at his picture in the mural.

    'Hey, this is pretty good,' he called down to Collins. 'That guy looks just like me.' He sounded almost childishly, egotistically pleased.

    'Are you an idiot?' Collins barked. 'Get away from there.'

    Mr. Peet looked surly and insulted, then lounged down the bank of steps.

    'Take him up to the back,' Collins said. 'Once we get started, I want him to be able to see. And turn the lights off.'

    'Hey, you're not really — ?' Tom began, but Snail slapped him, stinging a whole side of his face. 'Used to whup me real good,' he said, grinning. 'Damn near ventilated me.' Like Seed, he too was missing some teeth. He jerked Tom across the smaller stage and into the larger space. The overhead spots died, and only faint amber light from the stage showed Tom the rows of empty seats. Snail pulled him forward and up.

    'What's going to happen to me?' Tom asked.

    'I just work here,' Snail said. 'But what do you think Root's doing to your buddy?' Tom hesitated, and Snail said, 'Don't try any of that crazy stuff. You do, and I pull your legs off.'

    That crazy stuff-Snail meant levitating. But that area in him was lost anyhow. He was too frightened to find that key. They reached the last row of seats. Crucified? He remembered the dream from long ago, the vulture hop­ping forward and rending his hands with its yellow beak.

    A wooden frame in the shape of a large X had beeq screwed to the wall. It had a temporary, provisional look, the look of something thrown up in a hurry, easily dismantled after it had been used. From the center of the X hung a leather cinch. On the carpet beneath it lay two long nails and a wooden mallet.

    'He can't really do that,' Tom said.

    'As long as he don't do it to me, he can,' Snail said.