"You're right," said Rictus, ear to the phone again. "He wants to give you an oil field, in Alaska!" Harvey kept walking. "No, no, I got that wrong! He wants to give you Alaska!"
"Too cold."
"He says: How about Florida?"
"Too hot."
"Boy! You're a difficult guy to please, Harvey Swick!"
Harvey ignored him, and turned the handle of the front door. Rictus slammed down the phone and raced toward him.
"Wait up!" he hollered, "wait up! I'm not done yet."
"You've got nothing I want," Harvey said, hauling open the front door. "They're all fakes."
"What if they are?" said Rictus, suddenly hushed. "So's the sun out there. You can still enjoy it. And let me tell you, it takes a lot of magic to conjure up all these shams and hoaxes. Mr. Hood's really sweating to find you something you like."
Ignoring him, Harvey stepped out onto the porch. Mrs. Griffin was standing on the lawn, with Stew-Cat in her arms, squinting up at the House. She smiled when she saw Harvey emerge.
"I heard such noises," she said. "What's been going on in there?"
"I'll tell you later," said Harvey. "Where's Wendell?"
"He wandered off," she said.
Harvey cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled: "Wendell! Wendell!"
His voice came back to him from the face of the House. But there was no reply from Wendell.
"It's a warm afternoon," said Rictus, idling on the porch. "Maybe he went...swimming."
"Oh no," Harvey murmured. "No. Not Wendell. Please, not Wendell..."
Rictus shrugged. "He was a goofy little kid, anyhow," he said. "He'll probably look better as a fish!"
"No!" Harvey yelled up at the House. "This isn't fair! You can't do this! You can't!"
Tears started to cloud his eyes. He wiped them away with his fists. They were both useless, fists and tears. He couldn't soften Hood's heart with weeping, and he couldn't bring down the House with blows. He had no weapon against the enemy but his wits, and his wits were about at an end.
XXII
Appetite
Oh, to be a vampire again, Harvey thought. To have claws and fangs and a hunger for blood upon him, like the hunger he'd had that distant Halloween; the hunger he'd turned from in disgust. He wouldn't turn from it now. Oh no. He'd let it swell the beast in him, so he could fly in Hood's face with his hatred razor-sharp.
But he wasn't a beast, he was a boy. It was the Vampire King who had the power, not him.
And then, as he stared up at the House, he remembered something that Rictus had told him at the door: "It takes a lot of magic to conjure up these shams and hoaxes," he'd said. "Mr. Hood's really sweating to find you something you like"
Maybe I don't need fangs to suck him dry, Harvey thought; maybe all I need is wishes.
"I want to talk to Hood," he told Rictus.
"Why?"
"Well...maybe there are some things I'd like. Only I want to tell him about them personally."
"He's listening," Rictus said, glancing back toward the House.
Harvey scanned the windows, and the eaves, and the porch, but there was no sign of any presence. "I don't see him," he said.
"Yes you do," Rictus replied.
"Is he in the House?" Harvey asked, staring through the open door.
"Haven't you guessed yet?" Rictus replied. "He is the House."
As he spoke a cloud moved over the sun. The roof and walls darkened, and the entire House seemed to swell like a monstrous fungus. It was alive! From the eaves to the foundations, alive!
"Go on!" Rictus said. "Speak to him. He's listening."
Harvey took a step toward the House. "Can you hear me?" he said.
The front door swung a little wider, and a sighing breath from the top of the stairs blew a cloud of Jive's dust out onto the porch.
"He can hear you," said Rictus.
"If I stay-" Harvey began.
"Yesss...?" said the House, making the word from creaks and rattles.
"-you'll give me anything I want?"
"For a bright boy like you..." came the reply, "...anything."
"You promise? On your magic?"
"I promise. I promise. Just say the word..."
"Well, for a start-"
"Yesss?"
"I lost my ark."
"Then you must have another, my lodestar," the Hood-House said. "Bigger. Better." And a board of the porch folded back as an ark three times the size of the first one rose into view.
"I don't want lead animals," Harvey said as he walked toward the steps.
"What then?" said Hood. "Silver? Gold?"
"Flesh and blood," Harvey replied. "Perfect little animals."
"I like a challenge, "Hood said, and as he spoke a tinny din of bellows and roars rose from the ark, and the little windows were flung open and the doors flung wide and half a hundred animals appeared, all perfect miniatures: elephants, giraffes, hyenas, aardvarks, doves.
"Satisfied?" said Hood.
Harvey shrugged. "It's okay, I suppose," he said.
"Okay?" said Hood. "It's a little miracle."
"So make me another."
"Another ark?"
"Another miracle!"
"What would you like?"
Harvey turned his back on the Hood-House and surveyed the lawn. The sight of Mrs. Griffin, watching with puzzlement, inspired the next request. "I want flowers," he said. "Everywhere! And I don't want two alike."
"What for?" asked the Hood-House.
"You said I could have whatever I wanted," Harvey replied. "You didn't say I had to give you reasons. If I have to do that all the fun goes out of it."
"Oh, I wouldn't want that," the Hood-House said. "You must have fun, at all costs."
"So give me the flowers," Harvey insisted.
The lawn began to tremble as though a minor earthquake were underway, and the next moment countless shoots pressed up between the blades of grass. Mrs. Griffin began to laugh with delight.
"Look at them!" she said. "Just look!"
It was quite a show; tens of thousands of flowers bursting into blossom at the same time. Harvey could have named a few of them if he'd been quizzed: tulips, daffodils, roses. But most of them were new to him: species that only bloomed at night on the High Himalayas, or on the windswept plateaus of Tierra del Fuego; flowers with blooms as big as his head, or as small as his thumbnail; blooms that stank like bad meat, or smelled like a breeze from Heaven itself.
Even though he knew it was all an illusion, he was impressed, and said so.
"Looks good," he told the Hood-House.
"Satisfied?" it wanted to know.
Was its voice a little weaker than it had been earlier? Harvey wondered. He suspected it was. He showed no sign of that suspicion, however. He simply said: "We're getting there..."
"Getting where?" said the Hood-House.
"Well," said Harvey, "I guess we'll know when we arrive."
A low growl of irritation came from the House, shaking the windows. One or two slates slid from the roof and smashed on the ground below.
I'm going to have to be careful, Harvey thought; Hood's getting angry. Rictus echoed that thought.
"I hope you're not stringing Mr. Hood along," he warned, "because he doesn't like that kind of game."
"He wants me happy, doesn't he?" Harvey said.
"Of course."
"So how about something to eat?"
"The kitchen's full," said Rictus.
"I don't want pies and hot dogs. I want " He paused, ransacking his memory for delicacies he'd heard about. "Roast swan and oysters and those little black eggs-"
"Caviar?" Rictus suggested.
"That's it! I want caviar!"
"Really? It's disgusting."
"I still want it!" said Harvey. "And frog's legs and horseradish and pomegranates-"
The meals were already appearing in the hallway, plate upon steaming plate. The smells were tantalizing at first, but the more dishes Harvey added to the list the more sickly the mix became. He rapidly began to exhaust his menu of real meals, however, so instead of giving the House easy recipes like meatballs and pizzas, he started to invent dishes.