He’d been choking her out, and—
Fuck.
That was all he remembered…
He clamped his teeth shut against the pain. Yeah, some son of a bitch fucked me up good, he deduced. It’s a scam Natter’s got going in there. The whore set me up, then I’ll bet that bighead kid snuck up behind me and put a wallop on my head. But what the fuck’s Natter got against me? I ain’t done shit to that ugly Creeker fuck. Don’t make no sense to whack me out.
One thing Blackjack did know:
I gotta get the fuck outta here.
Wherever here was.
The house, he thought. Yes, he must still be at the house. She’d taken him up to a small room on the second floor. But this couldn’t be the same room. It was hotter than embers here, and he remembered old carpet on the floor of the whore’s room, but this floor was bare wood.
Get up. Gotta move, he ordered himself. Gotta get out of this joint before Bighead comes back to finish the job…
It was nearly impossible not to cry out when he lifted himself to his hands and knees. He had to rest, shuddering. His brain throbbed like something fit to bust out of his skull. The only bearing he could make for himself was the shutterless, uncurtained window and the moon glowing in its frame. The smudged panes stood just above him to the right, but the pain made it seem hundreds of feet away. He could hear his sweat dripping onto the wood floor as he crawled forward, toward the flaking sill.
Goddamn, what a job they done on me!
His left hand was all but useless. His right grabbed the lip of the sill and pulled.
It was a concerted effort; Blackjack never would’ve thought that simply standing up would be so difficult. Nevertheless, after much wincing, gasping, and grunting, he stood on his own two feet, leaning racked against the wall.
He peered out the window.
Christ…
Yeah, this was the same house, all right. He recognized the front yard and that shitty dirt road leading down the hill. But the bighead kid’s rattletrap truck was gone—
Motherfuckin’ Creeker motherfuckers!
—and so was his own.
God knew how he was going to get out of here, and once he did, what would he do? Walk around the woods buck naked? He didn’t even really know where he was. Some unmarked road off the Route, then a couple of turns he’d never remember. But—
Fuck it, he concluded.
Better to walk around naked and lost than stay here and buy the farm.
Peering out, he figured he must be on the third floor, not the second. From earlier, he vaguely recalled a narrow flight of steps going up from the floor the whore’s room was on. The window was his only way out…
He’d have to crawl out the window, slide down the shingled awning, then drop to the roof. That would be tough in any case, but with his left arm and leg so numb they felt dead, it would be damn near impossible. Still, though, what choice did he have?
Just gonna have to do it, he told himself. Just gonna have to flop outta this window and get the fuck outta this freak-house.
Just as he tried to push open the window, he noticed—
Aw, fer shit’s sake, no!
—that it had been nailed shut.
But before he could think further…
Whuh? What the fuck was that?
Had he heard something?
Voices, or something like voices, seemed to tickle his mind. He stared back wide-eyed in the dark…
Ona…
“Ah-no-pray-bee…
Redeemer…
“Mannona-come…
Sanctifier…
“Save us—”
They were like words mixed with thoughts. Etched whispers melded to blobs of swarming head-sounds. But one thing was clear to Blackjack: Someone else was in the room.
“Wh-who’s there?” Blackjack challenged.
The dark stood before him, impenetrable, a solid black wall.
“I know someone’s there, so how’s ’bout tellin’ me what the fuck’s goin’ on?”
No reply. Just the grainy dark staring back.
Then—
Blackjack jerked right.
Did he see something? Did he see something moving there in the corner to his right?
Something seemed to have shifted. A wet slither behind something blacker than the darkness…
“Mannona-come…”
“Onnamann…”
Blessed Ona, we give thee thanks!
A scream froze in Blackjack’s throat when something slimy, humid, and hideous reached out of the dark and very gently touched his shoulder.
— | — | —
Twenty
Something hot seemed to insinuate itself along Phil’s nerves to his brain, where it then lodged and seemed to hum. At once, he felt edgy, disjointed, but at the same time tranquilized. He knew there was no way to fake it, not around these guys. They were pros. He’d taken most of the drag in his mouth, holding it, then snorting it out through his sinuses, and had actually inhaled only a trace.
But only a trace had been enough.
Goddamn, he thought, flabbergasted. What a buzz…
Sullivan took the joint back. “Hey, bub, don’t be a bogart.” Then he laughed and began to smoke it himself.
Thank God, Phil thought. The stuff packed a heavy wallop; he knew that if he had to smoke any more of it, he wouldn’t be able to stand up, much less drive a car. Got to shake this off, he told himself. He started the Malibu. “Decent flake,” he said. “Big buzz. So where are we going?”
“North up the Route,” Eagle said.
Once he got going, he began to feel better. He let the fresh air from the open window rush into his face. His brow prickled, dark splinters seemed to twitch at the farthest peripheries of his vision, and every so often he was touched by a chill that was somehow hot.
Sullivan finished the flake joint as though he were eating the dense smoke. “Okay, bub, now I know you’re for real. One of our partners beat town a couple weeks ago, so we need a new driver full-time. You’re it.”
“Sounds good,” Phil said.
“What we do is pick up the finished product from our supplier, then drop it off at our points. The money’s good, and the cops aren’t on to us.”
Oh, yeah? Phil thought. I can’t wait to send you up to the slam for five…bub. “What’s your circuit?”
“Just north county,” Eagle said from the back of the Malibu. “Millersville, Lockwood, Waynesville, thereabouts. Rednecks buy this shit hand over fist. Our product’s better and cheaper than the regular supplier. We’re gonna cut
