Violent streams of electricity roared down from the Akishra Magnus and into the More Man; into the wreckage of Jeff and his murderer by the doorway to the back house; into the weave of rose bushes up the outer walls of the guest house. The rose bushes writhed like a nest of neon snakes, wailing in despair. The vast currents of electricity crackled into the eight Followers and Feasters standing back of the fireplace, and into two worm-driven corpses – the ragged remains of Lissa and Arthwright – crawling along the stone flags. Fingers of electricity dabbed like the fingers of a blind man at Garner, and seemed to find him not to their taste; they moved on to Constance, pausing over her so that she went momentarily rigid, and glowed faintly in his arms as a starburst of worms fled from her, disintegrating in the air. The charge left her, and passed over Lonny and Prentice and the black girl; and went on.
The electricity crackled more powerfully yet into the More Man, into the worm-haunted hamburger that had taken Jeff Teitelbaum, into the More Man's followers – and they shook and screamed, electrocuting physically and spiritually, each surrounded by a spark-spitting corona of brilliant blue-white discharge, human fireworks displays; they ran spasmodically to one another and, as if galvanized to act out the archetypes of their compulsions, they lunged at whoever was nearest. The Handy Man tearing into the body of the More Man with his bare hand – the rest crowding together, doing the same to each other, a crowd of about ten of them closely clumped, tearing one another to pieces with teeth and bare hands, so that rags and gobbets of flesh flew through the halos of sparks, each flying handful of bloody flesh itself flaring with electrical discharge and exploding in sparks; the More Man and companions bodily burrowing into one another, a woman thrusting her head into her partner's guts and emerging beside the shattered spine as someone else, electrified into superhuman strength, ripped her leg out of its socket and then thrust his hand into the wound to yank out her intestines, and someone else sank teeth into the side of the face of the one who'd torn the leg away and someone else popped out the eyes and then the brains of the one who bit the woman who…
It took five seconds, as the old red truck boiled like a lobster in the pool. The human hosts of the Akishra tore one another to pieces, faster and faster till it was too fast for the eye to follow and then they – and the worms that motivated them – were lost in a seething cloud of exploding flesh -
Garner turned away to see a raging ball of electricity double back from this hand-made Wetbones and up the connective tendrils into the Akishra Magnus, which detonated like a sobbing and suffering roman candle, expelling a hundred thousand trapped spirits that spiral-led away into void and…
The Akishra burned in the air, ten thousand thousand worms fluttered up and burned out. Or burned out of this world, Garner supposed. There was no exterminating them, not completely.
And then the fog dispersed. Sunlight expanded around the pool. The apparitions vanished from the sky. The Magnus was no more. The More Man and compan ions were steaming heaps of burnt flesh, without the Akishra to animate them. Lonny was helping Prentice carry the poor, charred, black girl away.
Garner was abruptly aware that he was dizzy, in danger of falling over with Constance in his arms. His heart was playing a drum roll, his mouth as dry and foul as a road kill. But he had to see one more thing. He turned to glance into the pool…
In the pool, Drax was, of course, quite dead. The pool had lost its colour, was now crystal clear, illuminated with an inner glow. The truck was glowing with violet fire; and inside it, like a filament in a bulb, Drax glowed with a psychedelic coruscation all his own, his shining corpse grinning in triumph.
14
Berkeley, California… One Year Later
Garner was glad he'd thought to bring flowers. There were none in Constance's room. She was wearing shorts and a rather old The Simpsons t-shirt and no shoes. She'd put on weight, a little too much. Earlier in the year, in the months after the Ranch, she'd barely eaten at all. Now she was eating too much. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad.
She sat by the window, at her desk, with a copy of Cosmopolitan open in front of her. She was looking at the pictures. Next to her was a broad window looking out on the hospital's Activities Lawn, a sort of commons where sports were played and picnics held and catatonics wheeled about. The sky was overcast; the light that came in through the window was muted. The trees sheltering the sanitarium from the world were beginning to streak with russet and yellow.
He stood looking at her a moment, readying himself. She was better, he told himself. She'd really gotten better. The months of withdrawal symptoms were over. She had stopped trying to slash her arms up; she'd long since stopped attacking people.
"Hey dudette," he said, putting the flowers on the table across from her bed. He put the sack of cookies down next to them. "Smell anything good? Not me and not the food around here. Not even the cookies. I mean the flowers. You like carnations?"
"Sure." She looked out the window. "You gonna watch TV with us again tonight?"
Something about the question hinted a gray continuum of hopelessness. It dug a hole through him. But he said, "That's the plan. I brought cookies for the whole floor."
"Next time bring candy for Marcia. She doesn't like cookies. She's weird about cookies. Somebody choked her by forcing 'em down her once. Her mom said she was over-eating so she tried to teach her a lesson and she almost died. From cookies."
Her voice was a monotone.
He wanted to hug her. He knew better.
She turned a page of the magazine. He carefully didn't stare at the stump where she'd lost a finger. After a moment, she asked, "You been going to meetings?"
"Sure. I got a year clean and sober next week. I didn't tell you, I was elected secretary of a Narcotics Anonymous meeting over in the city."
"That's good." Her voice was as flat as the line on Aleutia's EKG.
"So -" He was afraid to ask it. It might push her into one of her screaming fits, and he found those hard to bear up under. But it was September and her therapist said he was supposed to ask her around the beginning of every month. He took a deep breath and plunged in. "How about it? You want to come home for a weekend? Get you back here bright and early on Monday. I was thinking this Friday -''
"No."
"We could talk about it."
"No."
Floundering, he blurted, "Constance – why not?"
"I lived in that house." She was still looking out the window. Her voice was still a monotone but now it seemed an octave lower.
He waited. She didn't say anything else. He prompted, "Go on – please."
She shook her head. He wanted to go to her, to put his arms around her, at least touch her on the shoulder. But he knew she didn't like that.
Still – he had told him something. I lived in that house.
She'd lived in that house, their house when she'd met Ephram Pixie.
"Why didn't you tell me before, it was the house? The reason you didn't want to do home visits… I thought it was me…"
She shrugged.
He said, "Want to come and stay with me someplace else? Um… How about we visit your aunt in Portland?"
He waited on tenterhooks for twenty seconds. Then she nodded. Relief flooded through him. He remembered a Barbie doll. He wondered how her therapy was going, but didn't want to ask her. "Sooner or later," he said, "you have to look at what you went through. I know it's hard here, because they don't believe a lot of it. But I know what happened. And I'm willing to listen as much as you need."