“Dear God,” Ralph said. “She’s like Entragian. Is that what you’re saying, that she’s like the cop.”
“Yes… no,” Billingsley whispered. “Don’t know for sure. Would have… seen that right away… but…
“Mr. Billingsley, do you think she might have caught a milder dose of whatever the cop has.” Mary asked.
He looked at her gratefully and squeezed her hand.
Marinville said, “She’s sure not bleeding out like the cop.
“Or not where we can see it,” Ralph said. “Not yet, anyway.
Billingsley looked past Mary’s shoulder. “Where…
where…
He began coughing again and wasn’t able to finish, but he didn’t need to. A startled look passed among them, and Cynthia turned around. Audrey wasn’t there.
Neither was David Carver.
The thing which had been Ellen Carver, taller now, still wearing the badge but not the Sam Browne belt, stood on the steps of the Municipal Building, staring north along the sand-drifted street, past the dancing blinker-light. It couldn’t see the movie theater, but knew where it was. More, it knew what was going on inside the movie theater. Not all, but enough to anger it. The cougar hadn’t been able to shut the drunk up in time, but at least she had drawn the rest of them away from the boy. That would have been fine, except the boy had eluded its other emissary as well, at least temporarily.
Where had he gone. It didn’t know, couldn’t see, and that was the source of its anger and fear. He was the source. David Carver. The goddamned shitting prayboy. It should have killed him when it had been inside the cop and had had the chance-should have shot him right on the steps of his own damned motor home and left him for the buzzards. But it hadn’t, and it knew why it hadn’t. There was a blankness about Master Carver, a shielded quality. That was what had saved Little Prayboy earlier.
Its hands clenched at its sides. The wind gusted, blowing Ellen Carver’s short, red-gold hair out like a flag. Why is he even here, someone like him. Is it an acci-dent. Or was he sent.
Why are you here. Are you an accident. Were you sent.
Such questions were useless. It knew its purpose, tak ah lah, and that was enough. It closed its Ellen-eyes, focusing inward at first, but only for a second-it was unpleasant.
This body had already begun to fail. It wasn’t a matter of decay so much as intensity; the force inside it-can de lach, heart of the unformed-was literally pounding it to pieces… and its replacements had es-caped the pantry.
Because of Prayboy.
Shitting Prayboy.
It turned its gaze outward, not wanting to think about the blood trickling down this body’s thighs, or the way its throat had begun to throb, or the way that, when it scratched Ellen’s head, large clumps of Ellen’s red hair had begun to come away under its nails.
It sent its gaze into the theater instead.
What it saw, it perceived in overlapping, sometimes contradictory images, all fragmentary. It was like watch-ing multiple TV screens reflected in a heap of broken glass. Primarily the eyes of the infiltrating spiders were what it was looking through, but there were also flies, cockroaches, rats peering out of holes in the plaster, and bats hanging from the auditorium’s high ceiling. These latter were projecting strange cool images that were actu-ally echoes.
It saw the man from the truck, the one who had come into town on his own, and his skinny little girlfriend leading the others back to the stage. The father was shouting for the boy, but the boy wasn’t answering. The writer walked to the edge of the stage, cupped his hands around his mouth, and screamed Audrey’s name. And Audrey, where was she. No way of telling for sure. It couldn’t see through her eyes as it saw through the eyes of the lesser creatures. She’d gone after the boy, certainly. Or had she already found him. It thought not. Not yet, anyway. That it would have sensed.
It pounded one hand against Ellen’s thigh in anxiety and frustration, leaving an instant bruise like a rotten place on the skin of an apple, then shifted focus once more. No, it saw, they were not all onstage; the prismatic quality of what it was seeing had misled it.
Mary was still with old Tom. If Ellen could get to her while the others were preoccupied with Audrey and David, it might solve all sorts of problems later on. It didn’t need her now, this current body was still service-able and would continue so for awhile, but it wouldn’t do to have it fail at a crucial moment. It would be better safer, if.
The image that came was of a spiderweb with many silk-wrapped flies dangling from it.
Flies that were drugged but not dead.
“Emergency rations,” the old one whispered in Ellen Carver’s voice, in Ellen Carver’s language. “Knick-knack paddywhack, give the dog a bone.”
And Mary’s disappearance would demoralize the rest take away any confidence they might have gained from escaping, finding shelter, and killing the cougar. It had thought they might manage that last; they were armed, after all, and the cougar was a physical being, sarx and soma and pneuma, not some goblin from the metaphysical wastes. But who could have imagined that pretentious old—windbag doing it.
He called the other one on a phone he had. You didn’t guess that, either. You didn’t know until the yellow truck came.
Yes, and missing the phone had been a lapse, some thing right in the front of Marinville’s mind that it should have picked up easily, but it didn’t hold that against itself At that point its main goals had been to get the old fool jugged and replace Entragian’s body before it could fall apart completely. It had been sorry to lose Entragian, too Entragian had been strong.
If it meant to take Mary, there would never be a better time than now. And perhaps while it did that, Audrey would find the boy and kill him. That would be won derful. No worries then. No sneaking around. It could replace Ellen with Mary and pick the rest off at its leisure And later. When its current (and limited) supply of bodies ran out. Snatch more travellers from the highway7 Perhaps. And when people, curious people, came to town to see what the hell was going on in Desperation, what then. It would cross that bridge when it got to the river it had little memory and even less interest in the future. For now, getting Mary up to China Pit would be enough.
Tak went down the steps of the Municipal Building, glanced at the police-car, then crossed the street on foot. No driving, not for this errand. Once it reached the far sidewalk, it began to run in long strides, sand spurting up from beneath sneakers which had been sprung out to the sides by feet which were now too big for them.
Onstage, Audrey could hear them still calling David’s name… and hers. Soon they would spread out and begin to search. They had guns, which made them dangerous. The idea of being killed didn’t bother her—not much, anyway, not as it had at first-but the idea that it might happen before she was able to kill the boy did. To the cougar, the voice of the thing from the earth had been like a fishhook; in Audrey Wyler’s mind it was like an acid-coated snake, winding its way into her, melt-ing the personality of the woman who had been here before it even as it enfolded her. This melting sensation was extremely pleasant, like eating some sweet soft food. It hadn’t been at first, at first it had been dismaying, like being overwhelmed by a fever, but as she collected more of the can tahs (like a child participating in a scavenger hunt), that feeling had passed. Now she only cared about finding the boy. Tak, the unformed one, did not dare approach him, so she must do it in Tak’s place.
At the top of the stairs, the woman who had been five—feet-seven on the day Tom Billingsley had first glimpsed her stopped, looking around. She should have been able to see nothing-there was only one window, and the only light that fell through its filthy panes came from the blinker and a single weak streetlamp in front of Bud’s Suds-but her vision had improved greatly with each can tah she had found or been given. Now she had almost the vision of a cat, and the littered hallway was no mys-tery to her.