Calhoun was getting closer.
And while the president might not be outside of his house now, he had been outside of it in his robes before. By the gate, during the confrontation with the Corbanites . And at the annual meeting, in the community center. And when he'd talked to Barry and the FBI agent.
The old man was almost upon him.
But what regulation prohibited that? What was it Mike had said? He'd mentioned it specifically, spelled out the exact rule he had broken.
Think!
Was it Article Three? Article Five?
"Article Eight!" Barry screamed. He stepped aside as the president lunged for him, pointed at the old man. "Article Eight! No one may wear a robe outside his house!" It was a paraphrase, probably a gross generalization, and it was all that he recalled from what Mike had said, but it did the trick. Calhoun stopped as if a switch had suddenly turned off inside his brain. He stood there, clawed hands opening and closing, leaking rainwater dripping onto his head.
"You broke the rules!" Barry said. He looked up at his neighbors in the stands. "He broke the rules! He violated the C, C, and Rs !" He heard distressed murmuring from around the arena, was gratified to see the other board members frantically conferring with one another.
"What's the punishment for violating Article Eight?" he asked Calhoun.
"Remain seated!" the president announced, and though his voice was as deep and resonant as ever, it contained a welcome note of unease.
"He's outside in his robes all the time! He's never without his robes! And it's against the rules!"
"Article Eight!" someone yelled.
The cry was taken up by a man across the ring. "Article Eight!"
Barry's heart was pounding. "Article Eight!" he shouted. He started chanting, trying to prod the crowd, desperate, knowing this was his one and only chance. "Article Eight! Article Eight! Article Eight!"
Calhoun's expression was one of rage and hate. He advanced on Barry.
"The battle will continue!" he declared. "Article Ninety."
Barry ran away, cutting a wide swath around the pole and Dylan's dark hanging head. "Article Eight!" he continued to shout. He raised his hands, trying to get the crowd to chant along with him. "Article Eight!"
There was still that disgruntled murmuring, but only a few individuals were chanting along with him.
The old man ran after him, then leaped, wet robes whipping back, reminding Barry once again of some huge bird of prey. It looked for a second as though Calhoun was going to be able to fly, to glide through the air and swoop down on him. But the president landed a few feet away, then took two long, quick strides toward him.
They were at the south end of the ring, where Barry had come in, Ralph and the volunteers still blocking the exit. There was nowhere for him to go, and Barry ducked left as Calhoun swung at him. He reached out to defend himself, and his hand connected with the top of the president's head.
Calhoun's hair slipped off. It was a wig, and underneath, the old man was not bald but... something else. Barry saw pulsing black tendrils beneath nearly transparent skin, saw the hint of another form under the mask of makeup, and though he'd imagined such scenarios numerous times as a writer, to experience it firsthand caused his heart to accelerate with terror.
But he was still levelheaded enough to remember one of the revised C, C, and Rs he had read in passing at the annual meeting. "No baldness in public!" he shouted.
Calhoun stopped, shrank back.
"Article Fifteen!" Liz yelled.
Barry looked up, saw her standing proud and tall in the center of the crowd above him. She caught his eye, nodded, smiled.
For Ray, he thought.
"Article Fifteen!" he echoed. He sensed a shift in the mood of the crowd, a shift in his direction, but there was an ugliness to it, an unpleasant undercurrent he did not like. The people had been unsure before, unwilling to commit one way or the other, afraid to take a stand for fear of future retaliation, but they were with f I him now.
Calhoun obviously sensed it as well, because he turned around in a slow circle, stunned, looking up at the crowd, his fellow members of the association. "Wait!" he ordered.
But the residents of Bonita Vista were all standing, pointing down into the ring, pointing at him.
"Article Eight!" the men yelled.
"Article Fifteen!" the women countered.
Calhoun seemed to wither visibly under this verbal onslaught, as though the words took a physical toll on his body.
At the north end of the arena, the other board members were trying to leave, attempting to get out of their seats and make their way up the aisle to escape the growing wrath of the mob, but gowned women and tuxedoed men were streaming into that section of the stands, pushing them down, blocking their way.
People began dropping over the wall into the sawdust. Barry backed against the concrete, glancing around warily, unsure of where this was going, unnerved by the chaos around him. From above, a shoe came sailing down, hitting Calhoun in the face. A thrown wine glass shattered against his arm.
The president laughed, a deep, booming chuckle that sounded far too loud. Makeup had smeared away from the section of cheek struck by the shoe, and again Barry saw that transparent skin, those pulsating black tendrils. If this had been a movie or a novel, Calhoun would have been revealed as an alien. Or some type of creature from another dimension.
But Barry somehow knew that neither of these were the case. The old man was not a distinct and separate being. He had been born human.
He had become this way.
From being on the association's board of directors.
Calhoun turned easily in one fluid movement. He was still chuckling, and he spread out one now definitely taloned hand and pressed it against Barry's bare chest, pushing hard.
Barry felt ribs cracking, found it suddenly hard to breathe. His own hands reached out frantically, trying to find purchase and keep himself from toppling backward. His fingers touched the soft silky material of the old man's robes. He latched on, desperately clutching the fabric even as he tumbled. The material did not rip, and the slight tethering of the robes helped break his fall, allowed him to land sitting on his butt rather than flat on his back.
Calhoun whirled to face him.
And then they were upon him.
There must have been a dozen men on the floor of the arena now, fists clenched, faces filled with anger. More were dropping from the wall.
Some were carrying weapons--pocket knives, keys, champagne bottles--and they attacked the president. "No robes!" Curtis the gate guard screamed, swinging the butt of his revolver at that strange head.
An elderly man stabbed Calhoun's back with a pen. "Article Eight!" he yelled. He pulled the pen out, stabbed again. "Article Fifteen!"
A handful of men were grabbing at Calhoun's robe, and though Barry could not hear the sound over the thunder and the screaming crowd, he saw the material rip, saw the black cloth tear lengthwise, rending the garment. Calhoun let out an ear-splitting howl. From beneath the ripped material, what looked like diseased and blackened organs came tumbling out, still leashed to the body and to each other by clumps of bile-covered ligaments. They sizzled where the leaking rain water hit them, small jets of steam shooting up from hundreds of pinpoint fissures that erupted on the strange, dark viscera.
Calhoun seemed to have no skin or muscle on his body. Barry didn't see how that was possible with the robes so loose and flowing, but it was as though the president were some type of mummy and the garments had protected him, acted like a bandage and kept in the disparate elements that made up that loathsome form.
Twitching spastically, crying out in rage and pain and hate, Calhoun dropped to his knees, then fell flat onto his face. He managed to turn himself over, all trace of makeup gone now, his head a throbbing sac of black wormlike growths, and then he was still, the hole that had once been his mouth wide open and collecting rain.