The six old men turned to look at him. Barry was already shaking his head. "I don't know what's going on here, but I want no part of it."
"It's too late for that," Calhoun told him.
"I'm not fighting anybody." But at the same time, he was thinking that this was why he had come, this was the confrontation he had been seeking. He had not expected anything so simplistic or crudely literal, but he now had the opportunity he'd been seeking to combat the board. He thought of Barney the cat, thought of Ray, thought of Kenny Tolkin, thought of Dylan and Chuck and Danna, thought of Maureen and their baby, and he allowed the anger to seep in, allowed the rage to build, Calhoun grinned, and as before his smile seemed far too wide. "Barry Welch," he thundered. "I hereby challenge you to battle! In front of all and sundry neighbors! Hand-to hand combat to the death!"
A cheer went up from the other members of the board and from the volunteer women underneath the table. Behind them, the wall grew dark as the spotlight cut out, the room once again receiving only the dim illumination of sooty candles.
Yes, Barry thought. I could fight any of these assholes. I could kill all of these sons of bitches.
Calhoun's grin was positively feral. "Do you accept the challenge?"
"I accept!"
"Excellent," the president said. "Excellent." He sat down, his smile disappearing instantly. A cold stoniness hardened his features as he nodded imperiously at Ralph. "Now get this piece of shit prepared for battle."
Barry was led through a narrow doorway to the side of the taxidermy display case and then down a long corridor with rusted metal walls that looked and smelled like the inside of a disused sewer pipe. At the end was a filthy, low-ceilinged room filled with volunteers who grabbed him and stripped off his clothes. They made no sound, and that was the eerie thing. They simply yanked open his shirt, pulled at the sleeves, took off his shoes, unbuckled his belt, tugged down his pants, passing him from one to the other, the only noise in the claustrophobic chamber his own startled grunts and protestations.
He was left with only his underwear, smudged with mud and grease by dirty hands. The volunteers backed off, fanning around the edges of the room, looking at the floor, at the walls, at the ceiling, at each other, at anything except him. They seemed ashamed of what they'd done to him-of what they'd had to do to him--and he had the curious sensation that they were behind him on this, that they were on his side, that they would like to see him win.
Win what?
He didn't know. Was this supposed to be a fistfight? "Hand-to-hand combat" was a broad enough term to encompass a variety of fighting styles, and he had no idea what the rules of the bout would be. Just judging on appearances Calhoun was big and flabby and old. He should be able to kick the president's ass with no problem. But he thought of the odd, pale skin covering that strange musculature, and the aura of power that surrounded all of the board members, and he was not at all sure he would be able to beat the old man in any kind of fight.
He was not even sure Calhoun was human.
He didn't want to think about that.
Barry looked over at Ralph, who was standing impassively next to a square hole in the wall the size of a large television, a black opening that looked like the entrance to a crawlspace.
"Am I supposed to go through there?" he asked.
"When you are ready."
"Where does it go?"
He received no answer.
Barry looked around the room at the shuffling volunteers, then back at that ominous opening in the wall. He was nervous, sweating, filled with a dark dread. He'd been suppressing or avoiding the central truth of the coming fight, but now it was all he could think about. Someone was going to die. Whether it was himself or Jasper Calhoun, one of them would be dead within the next hour, killed by the other.
He didn't know if he would actually be able to murder the association president in cold blood. He hated him, yes. And he would probably be very happy if the man suddenly dropped dead. But could he do the killing? Most likely, if he won the fight, he would show mercy and let the president live. But if things progressed the way they did in novels and films, at that point Calhoun would turn the tables and attack, exploiting his weakness, and then he would be forced to kill the old man. And it would be righteous and justified because it was provoked and he was only acting in self-defense.
Someone was going to die.
That was a truth he could not seem to escape.
Taking a deep breath, he crouched down, looked into the dark hole, then got on his hands and knees. He expected some surreptitious sign of support, a nod, a smile, a whisper of "Good luck," but Ralph remained silent and stone faced as Barry crawled into the small passageway.
The floor was cold, hard concrete, and periodically, as he crawled, Barry's fingers and knees touched puddles of sticky unidentifiable liquid. There was only darkness at first, an inky black that seemed not merely the absence of light but an entity of its own, and several times he scraped his elbows or bumped his head on the hard walls and ceiling of the crawl way But gradually he began to discern grayish light up ahead, an upright rectangle that grew closer and closer, and just before he reached the tunnel's exit, the passage opened up and he was able to stand.
He stepped out into an arena.
It threw him for a moment, and for several disorienting seconds he did not know where he was or what he was looking at. Then everything sort of clicked into place. He saw the dirt floor strewn with bloody sawdust, the high surrounding walls, the circle of filled amphitheater seats above. The arena was nearly the size of a football stadium. As big as it was, there was no way Calhoun's house could accommodate something this large, yet here it stood, and as Barry looked up into the stands, he saw that all of his neighbors were here, all of the residents of Bonita Vista, dressed in suits and gowns and formal attire.
The ceiling was some sort of skylight, and through its translucent safety-wired glass Barry could see occasional flashes of far-off lightning. The lightning was accompanied by low rolling thunder. The only illumination within the arena itself came from a series of lanterns and torches lining the curved wall behind the last ring of seats. In the center of the sawdust-covered floor, hanging by a hook from a tall bamboo post, was one additional light, a lantern in the shape of a--human head.
His breath catching in his throat, Barry squinted into the dimness. It not only looked like a head, he was pretty sure it was a head. He saw flickering flames behind partially parted lips, through the empty sockets of missing eyes. He moved forward, not wanting his suspicions confirmed but needing to know.
It was Dylan.
He could see, as he drew closer, the specific features of his friend's face thrown into silhouette by the orange fire burning inside the hollowed-out skull.
He wanted to scream, wanted to lash out and hurt someone, wanted to blow up this whole fucking building and everyone in it. He looked up into the stands, saw expressions of excitement and anticipation on the faces of women he'd seen jogging by the house, couples he'd seen playing tennis. From a ringside seat off to the side, Mike waved, shouted: "We're all behind you, man." Next to him, Tina nodded.
They were not behind him, he knew. They were not here to show their support.
They wanted to see blood.
The Stewarts had already turned away, were talking to Frank and Audrey and another woman Barry did not recognize. All of them laughed.
He looked again at the lantern made from Dylan's head, remembered all the good times they'd had together, remembered when they'd first met in a junk course on the history of science-fiction films, remembered the nights they'd spent hanging out in Minderbinder's before he'd gotten married, remembered the time they'd double-dated two sisters who'd gotten into a screaming hair-pulling fight with one another in the middle of a Suzanne Vega concert.