He looked at the doors again. For a moment there was still nothing but the fading auras of Short-Timers like himself -… and then what he was looking for suddenly came clear, rising into his view as a message which has been written in lemon-juice rises into sight when it is held close to a candle-flame.
He had expected something which would look and smell like the rotting guts in the bins behind Mr. Huston’s knacker’s shop, but the reality was even worse, possibly because it was so unexpected. There were fans of a bloody, mucusy substance on the doors themselvesmarks made by Atropos’s restless fingers, perhaps-and a revoltingly large puddle of the same stuff sinking into the hardened residue in front of the doors.
There was something so terrible about this stuffso alien-that it made the color-bugs look almost normal by comparison. It was like a pool of vomit left by a dog suffering from some new and dangerous strain of rabies. A trail of this stuff led away from the puddle, first in drying clots and splashes, then in smaller drips like spilled paint.
Of course, Ralph thought. That’s why we had to come here. The little bastard can’t stay away from the place. It’s like cocaine to a dope addict.
He could imagine Atropos standing right here where he, Ralph, was standing now, looking… grinning… then stepping forward and putting his hands on the doors. Caressing them. Creating those filthy, filmy marks. Could imagine Atropos drawing strength and energy from the very blackness which was robbing Ralph of his own vitality.
He has other places to go and other things to do, of course-veri dai, is undoubtedly a buy day when you’re a supernatural Psycho like(’ him-but it must be hard for him to stay away from this place for long, no matter how busy he is. And how does it make him feel?
Like a tight fuck on a summer afternoon, that’s how.
Lois tugged his sleeve from behind and he turned to her. She was still smiling, but the feverish intensity in her eyes made the expression on her lips look suspiciously like a scream. Behind her, Connie Chung and Rosenberg were strolling back toward the building.
“You’ve got to get me out of here,” Lois whispered. “I can’t stand it anymore. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
[“Okay-no problem.”] “I can’t hear you, Ralph-and I think I can see the sun shining through you. Jesus, I’m sure I can!”
[“Oh-wait-“] He concentrated, and felt the world slide slightly around him. The colors faded; Lois’s aura seemed to disappear back inside her skin.
“Better?”
“Well, soldier, anyway.”
He smiled briefly. “Good. Come on.”
He took her by the elbow and began guiding her back toward where Joe Wyzer had dropped them off. It was the same direction in which the bloody splashes led.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Yes.”
She brightened at once. “That’s great! I saw you go up, you know-it was very odd, like watching you turn into a sepia-toned photograph. And then… thinking I could see the sun shining through you… that was very peculiar.” She looked at him severely.
“Bad, huh?”
“No… not bad, exactly. just peculiar. Those bugs, now… they were bad. Ugh!”
“I know what you mean. But I think they’re all back there.”
“Maybe, but we’re still a long way from being out of the woods, aren’t we?”
“Yeah-a long way from Eden, Carol would have said.”
“Just stick with me, Ralph Roberts, and don’t get lost.”
“Ralph Roberts? Never heard of him. Norton’s the name.”
And that, he was happy to see, made her laugh.
CHAPTER 24
They walked slowly across the asphalt parking lot with its gridwork of spray-painted yellow lines. Tonight, Ralph knew, most of these spaces would be filled. Come, look, listen, be seen… and, most important, show your city and a whole watching country beyond it that you cannot be intimidated by the Charlie Pickerings of the world.
Even the minority kept away by fear would be replaced by the morbidly curious.
As they approached the racetrack, they also approached the edge of the deathbag. It was thicker here, and Ralph could see slow, swirling movement, as if the deathbag were made up of tiny specks of charred matter. It looked a bit like the air over an open incinerator, shimmering with heat and fragments of burnt paper.
And he could hear two sounds, one overlaying the other. The top one was a silvery sighing. The wind might make a sound like that, Ralph thought, if it learned how to weep. It was a creepy sound, but the one beneath it was actively unpleasant-a slobbery chewing noise, as if a gigantic toothless mouth were ingesting large amounts of soft food somewhere close by.
Lois stopped as they approached the deathbag’s dark, particle-flecked skin and turned frightened, apologetic eyes up to Ralph.
When she spoke, it was in a little girl’s voice: “I don’t think I can go through that.” She paused, struggled, and at last brought out the rest. “It’s alive, you know. The whole thing. It sees them”-Lois jerked a thumb back over her shoulder to indicate both the people in the parking lot and the news crews closer in to the building-and that’s bad, but it also sees us, and that’s worse… because it knows that we see it. It doesn’t like being seen. Felt, maybe, but not seen.
Now the lower-pitched sound-the slobbery eating soundseemed almost to be articulating words, and the longer Ralph listened, the more sure he became that that was actually the case.
[Geddout-Fuck off Beedit “Ralph,” Lois whispered. “Do you hear it?”
[Hatechew. Killyew. Eeechew.] He nodded and took her by the elbow again. “Come on, Lois.”
“Come-? Where?”
“Down, All the way.”
For a moment she only looked at him, not understanding; then the light dawned and she nodded. Ralph felt the blink happen inside him-a little stronger than the eyelash-flutter of a few moments ago-and suddenly the day around him cleared. The swirling, foggy barrier ahead of them melted away and was gone. Nevertheless, they closed their eyes and held their breath as they approached the place where they knew the edge of the deathbag lay.
Ralph felt Lois’s hand tighten on his as she hurried through the invisible barrier, and as he passed through himself, a dark node of tangled memories-the slow death of his wife, the loss of a favorite dog as a child, the sight of Bill McGovern leaning over with one hand pressed against his chest-seemed to first lightly surround his mind and then clamp down on it like a cruel hand. His ears filled with that silvery sobbing sound, so constant and so chillingly vacuous; the weeping voice of a congenital idiot.
Then they were through.
As soon as they had passed beneath the wooden arch on the far side of the parking lot (WE’re OFF TO THE RACES AT BASSEY PARK! was printed along its curve), Ralph drew Lois over to a bench and made her sit down, although she insisted vehemently that she was just fine.
“Good, but I need a second or two to get myself back together.”
She brushed a lock of hair off his temple and planted a gentle kiss in the hollow beneath. “Take all the time you need, dear heart.”
That turned out to be about five minutes. When he felt reasonably confident that he could stand up without coming unlocked at the knees, Ralph took her hand again and they stood up together.
“Did you find it, Ralph? Did you find as trail?”
He nodded. “In order to see it, we have to go up about two jumps.
I tried going up just enough to see the auras at first, because that doesn’t seem to speed everything up, but it didn’t work. It has to be a little more than that.”