“Fuck you,” Dale gasped up into Congden’s contorted death mask, and then Dale surrendered—not to Congden, not to those fuckers behind him, but to forty years of resistance, letting the wall in his mind crumble like chalk. With the last of his breath, Dale shouted into the night, “Gifr! Geri! Hurkilas! Osiris sews healf hundisces mancynnes, he haefde hundes haefod!”
Congden’s rotted fingers tightened on Dale’s windpipe, cutting into the flesh of his neck, and the mouth lowered as if ready to suck the last breath from Dale if necessary. Instead, Dale used his last breath, to howl defiance.
“Anubis! Kesta! Hapi! Tuamutef! Qebhesenuf!”
Then there was no more breath with which to shout or breathe, and the Congden thing laid its full weight upon Dale, who sensed but could not see the five hounds knocking aside four skinheads, not leaping on them but past them, and then the first and largest of the impossibly huge jackal dogs hit Congden with a noise like a sledgehammer striking a rotten watermelon and ripped Congden’s head off with one swipe of its massive jaws.
Congden’s arms and fingers continued to choke Dale.
The hounds were all on Congden now, ripping the animated, headless corpse literally limb from limb and then limb from torso, black dogs running through flames from the burning combine and then circling back as if the flames did not exist, growling, snarling, and fighting each other in their hound-frenzy over the lacerated torso and scattered parts.
“Jesus fuck,” cried one of the distant skinheads, and Dale dimly heard them running back toward the burning farmhouse and their Chevy Suburban.
Dale staggered to all fours, shaking the last of Congden off his chest and legs. Blazing-eyed hounds knocked Dale to one side and snatched up the rotted bits—a cowboy-booted foot, a fleshy ribcage trailing intestines, a half-fleshed jawbone—and then ran with them into and through the flames, disappearing into the darkness beyond. Dale rolled onto his side and looked over to where Bonheur still lay in the trampled snow. Smoke rose from the man’s dark form. Dale could not tell if he was breathing.
Dale tried to get to his feet, aware that the burning combine’s fuel tank could ignite any second, but found that he could no longer stand or even kneel. He rolled on his belly and started crawling back through the mottled snow toward the sheds and blazing farmhouse.
Flashing red lights and flashing blue lights. A half dozen vehicles, all with lights flashing, in the turnaround near the farmhouse, and more emergency vehicles just visible on the driveway. Dale caught a glimpse of the skinheads raising their arms, dropping weapons, of a fire truck, of men rushing with hoses and other men running and stumbling through the drifts toward the burning combine and him, and then Dale decided it might be a good idea to rest a minute. Belly down in the snow, he put his burned forehead on his bloody forearm and closed his eyes.
TWENTY-NINE
ON the third day, I rise again and leave this place—the hospital, the farm, the county, the state.
But on the first day I almost do not wake at all. Later that evening, the doctor confides in me that they were concerned, that my vital signs showed someone slipping more toward coma than wakefulness or recovery, and that they do not understand, since my injuries had proved essentially superficial and had been dealt with during the night. I could have explained the near-coma state to him, but would probably have found myself in a straitjacket. On that first day and evening in the hospital, Deputy Brian Presser and Deputy Taylor were there, and together they irritated the doctor by insisting on taking a videotaped statement from me, as if I were on the verge of death after all. I told them the truth, mostly, although I said that I could remember nothing after the first explosion of the combine.
When it is my turn to quiz them, I ask, “Did anyone die?”
“Only Old Man Larsen,” says Taylor.
For a second I must look blank, for Deputy Presser says, “Bebe Larsen, the guy they commandeered the Chevy Suburban from on the day before Christmas Eve. Derek and one of the other kids confirmed that the five of them were pretty pissed when they hiked out from the quarry that night. They roughed the old man up a bit before tying him up and sticking him in the back of the truck. He was dead when they got to one of the other kid’s sister’s house in Galesburg.”
“Heart attack,” says Deputy Taylor. “But the skinheads didn’t know that.”
“Lester Bonheur?” I ask. My hands are bandaged for burns. My right side and right arm hurt from where they removed bits of buckshot, and I have stitches holding my scalp in place on that side. My eyelashes and eyebrows have been burned away, my hairline has receded three inches because of the flames, and I have goopy salve over much of my face. It all feels wonderful.
“Bonheur’s still alive,” grunts Deputy Presser, “but he’s burned all to hell and gone. They’re transferring him to the St. Francis burn unit in Peoria tomorrow morning. The docs think he’ll live, but he’s going to have a shitload of skin grafts ahead of him.”
“Hey, Professor,” says Deputy Taylor, referring to something he had asked earlier during the taped interview, “who was that other guy there at the fire. . . the one the kids say they saw? The one who looked like he was dead?”
I close my eyes and pretend to sleep.
On the second day, Sheriff McKown shows up with some magazines for me to read, a Dairy Queen milkshake for me to drink, and the ThinkPad computer. “Found this in the chicken coop,” he said. “I assume it’s yours.”
I nod.
“We didn’t turn it on or anything, so I don’t know if it still works,” says McKown, pulling a chair and settling into it rather gracefully. “I presume there’s no evidence on it. . . at least none relating to this weird series of events.”
“No,” I say truthfully. “Just one bad novel and some personal stuff.” Including a suicide note, but I do not say that.
McKown does not pursue it. He ascertains that I am healthy enough to answer a few more questions, takes out an audiotape recorder and his notebook, and spends the next hour asking me very precise and logical questions. I answer as truthfully as I can, providing often imprecise and rarely logical answers. Sometimes, though, I have to lie.
“And those rope burns on your neck,” he asks. “Do you remember how you received those?”
I automatically touch the torn tissue on my throat. “I don’t remember,” I say.
“Possibly something when you were crawling through that tunnel,” says McKown, although I know that he knows that this is not the case.
“Yes.”
When he is finished and the notebook is put away and the recorder is off, he says, “Dr. Foster tells me that you can leave here tomorrow. I brought a present for you.” He sets a single key on the moveable tray hanging over the bed.
I lift it. It is darkened with carbon and the plastic base of it has melted slightly, but it looks intact.
“It still works on your Cruiser,” says Sheriff McKown. “I had Brian drive it over. It’s in the lot outside.”
“Amazing the key survived the fire and that you found it,” I say.
McKown shrugs slightly. “Metal’s like bones and some memories. . . it abides.”
I look at the sheriff through my puffy, swollen eyelids. Not for the first time am I reminded that keen intelligence can be found in unlikely places. I say, “I imagine that I will have to stay around here for quite a while.”
“Why?” says Sheriff McKown.
I start to shrug and then choose not to. The bandages are very tight around my right side and ribs, and it already hurts a bit to breathe deeply. “Arraignment?” I say. “More depositions? Investigation? Trial?”