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WE HAVE HAD our little conversation about slippage, and it’s too late in the game to belabor the point more than a little, but wouldn’t you say that e back? To impose at least the illusion of normality and sanity on the world? Think of Libertyville, with its corny but endearing street names ¡ª Camelot and Avalon and Maid Marian Way And think of that sweet little honey of a home in Libertyville where Fred, Judy, and Tyler Marshall once lived together What else would you call 16 Robin Hood Lane but an ode to the everyday, a paean to the prosaic? We could say the sa about Dale Gilbertson’s home, or Jack’s, or Henry’s, couldn’t we? Most of the ho, really The destructive hurricane that has blown through the town doesn’t change the fact that the hoe, as noble as they are humble They are places of sanity

Black House ¡ª like Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, like the turn-of-the-century monstrosity in Seattle known as Rose Red ¡ª is not sane It is not entirely of this world It’s hard to look at from the outside ¡ª the eyes play continual tricks ¡ª but if one can hold it steady for a few seconds, one sees a three-story dwelling of perfectly ordinary size The color is unusual, yes ¡ª that dead black exterior, even the abbed black ¡ª and it has a crouching, leaning aspect that would raise uneasy thoughts about its structural integrity, but if one could appraise it with the glammer of those other worlds stripped away, it would look almost as ordinary as Fred and Judy’s placeif not so well maintained

Inside, however, it is different

Inside, Black House is large

Black House is, in fact, alh from time to time people have ¡ª hoboes and the occasional unfortunate runaway child, as well as Charles Burnside/Carl Bierstone’s victi: bits of clothing, pitiful scratchings on the walls of gigantic rooe dimensions, the occasional heap of bones Here and there the visitor may see a skull, such as the ones that washed up on the banks of the Hanover River during Fritz Haarn of terror in the early 1920s

This is not a place where you want to get lost

Let us pass through rooe that we can return to the outside world, the sane anti-slippage world, anytihts of stairs that see corridors that dwindle to a point in the distance) We hear an eternal low hu and the faint clash of weird machinery We hear the idiot whistle of a constant wind either outside or on the floors above and below us So that is undoubtedly the abbalah’s devil dog, the one that did for poor old Mouse Sometimes we hear the sardonic caw of a crow and understand that Gorg is here, too ¡ª somewhere

We pass through rooms of ruin and roorandeur Many of these are surely bigger than the whole house in which they hide And eventually we co room furnished with an elderly horsehair sofa and chairs of fading red velvet There is a s in the air (Somewhere close by is a kitchen we must never visitnot, that is, if we ever wish to sleep without nightain) The electrical fixtures in here are at least seventy years old How can that be, we ask, if Black House was built in the 1970s? The answer is simple: much of Black House ¡ª er The draperies in this roos that have been taped to the ugly green wallpaper, it is a rooround floor of the Nelson Hotel It’s a place that is si one to earth here, who lies sleeping on the horsehair sofa with the front of his shirt turning a sinister red Black House is not his, although in his pathological grandiosity he believes differently (and Mr Munshun has not disabused his around him tell us all we need to know of Charles "Chummy" Burnside’s lethal fascinations

YES, I ATE HER, FISH DECLARES: New York Herald Tribune

BILLY GAFFNEY PLAYMATE AVERS "IT WAS THE GRAY MAN TOOK BILLY, IT WAS THE BOGEYMAN": New York World Telegra Island Star

FISH ADMITS "ROASTING, EATING" WM GAFFNEY: New York American

FRITZ HAARMAN, SO-CALLED "BUTCHER OF HANOVER," EXECUTED FOR MURDER OF 24: New York World

WEREWOLF DECLARES: "I WAS DRIVEN BY LOVE, NOT LUST" HAARMAN DIES

UNREPENTANT: The Guardian

CANNIBAL OF HANOVER’S LAST LETTER: "YOU CANNOT KILL ME, I SHALL BE

AMONG YOU FOR ETERNITY": New York World

Wendell Green would love this stuff, would he not?

And there are more God help us, there are soI WANTED ZOMBIES

The figure on the couch begins to groan and stir

"Way-gup, Burny!" This seeh his lips roans His head turns to the left "Noneed to sleep Everythinghurts"

The head turns to the right in a gesture of negation and Mr Munshun speaks again "Way-gup, dey vill be gummink You must move der buu-uoy"

The head switches back the other way Sleeping, Burny thinks Mr Munshun is still safe inside his head He has forgotten things are different here in Black House Foolish Burny, now nearing the end of his usefulness! But not quite there yet

"Can’tlea’ me ’lonesto blind man hurt my stomach"

But the head turns back the other way and the voice speaks again frohts it, not wanting to wake and face the full ferocious impact of the pain The blind ht at the ti voice that the boy is safe where he is, that they’ll never find hiain access to Black House, that they will become lost in its unknown depth of rooo mad and then die Mr Munshun, however, knows that one of them is different from any of the others who have happened on this place Jack Sawyer is acquainted with the infinite, and that makes him a problem The boy must be taken out the back way and into End-World, into the very shadow of Din-tah, the great furnace Mr Munshun tells Burny that hehierous Sorry

Burny continues to protest, but this is a battle he will not win, and we know it Already the stale, cooked-un to shift and swirl as the owner of the voice arrives We see first a whirlpool of black, then a splotch of red ¡ª an ascot ¡ª and then the beginnings of an ile black shark’s eye This is the real Mr Munshun, the creature who can only live in Burny’s head outside of Black House and its enchanted environs Soon he will be entirely here, he will pull Burny into wakefulness (torture him into wakefulness, if necessary), and he will put Burny to use while there is still use to be gotten from him For Mr Munshun cannot move Ty from his cell in the Black House

Once he is in End-World ¡ª Burny’s Sheol ¡ª things will be different

At last Burny’s eyes open His gnarled hands, which have spilled so much blood, now reach down to feel the dah his shirt He looks, sees what has bloomed there, and lets out a scream of horror and cowardice It does not strike hi so many children, he should have been mortally wounded by a blind man; it strikes him as hideous, unfair

For the first time he is visited by an extremely unpleasant idea: What if there’s s he has done over the course of his long career? He has seen End-World; he has seen Conger Road, which winds through it to Din-tah The blasted, burning landscape surrounding Conger Road is like hell, and surely An-tak, the Big Combination, is hell itself What if such a place waits for hi pain in his guts Mr Munshun, now almost fully materialized, has reached out and twisted one smoky, not-quite-transparent hand in the wound Henry inflicted with his switchblade knife

Burny squeals Tears run down the old child-murderer’s cheeks "Don’t hurt me!"

"Zen do ass I zay"

"I can’t," Burny snivels "I’et past so years old!"

"Duff brayyg, Burn-Burnbut dere are zose on z’osser zide who could hill you off your wunds" Mr Munshun, like Black House itself, is hard to look at He shivers in and out of focus So face (it obscures most of his body, like the bloated head of a caricature on soe) has two eyes, sometimes just one So up from his distended skull, and sometimes Mr Munshun appears to be as bald as Yul Brynner Only the red lips and the fangy pointed teeth that lurk inside them reree of hope His hands, meanwhile, continue to explore his stomach, which is now hard and bloated with lumps He suspects the lumps are clots Oh, that someone should have hurt him so badly! That wasn’t supposed to happen! That was never supposed to happen! He was supposed to be protected! He was supposed to ¡ª

"It iss not even peeyond ze realm of bossibility," Mr Munshun says, "zat ze yearz could be rawled avey vrum you jusst as ze stunn vas rawled avey froain," Burny says, and exhales a low, harsh sigh His breath stinks of blood and spoilage "Yes, I’d like that"

"Of gorse! And soch zings are bossible," Mr Munshun says, nodding his grotesquely unstable face "Soch gifts are ze abbalah’s to giff But zey are not bro munchkin But I cansuit and red ascot leaps forith dreadful agility His long-fingered hand darts again into Chummy Burnside’s shirt, this time clenches into a fist, and produces a pain beyond any the old h he has inflicted this andcountenance pushes up to Burny’s The single eye glares "Do you feel dat, Burny? Do you, you orse you do! It iss your in-destines I haff in my hand! Und if you do notbody, ho-ho, ha-ha, und vrap de on your own gudz! A trick I learned from Fritz himzelf, Fritz Haarman, who vas so yunk und loff-ly! Now! Vat do you say? Vill you brink hi hi hi me apart!"

"Brink him to ze station Ze station, Burn-Burn Dis one iz nodd for ze radhulls, de fogzhulls ¡ª not for ze Co foodzies for Dyler; he works for his abbalah vid dis" A long finger tipped with a brutal black nail goes to the huge forehead and taps it above the eyes (for the moment Burny sees two of theone) "Understand?"

"Yes! Yes!" His guts are on fire And still the hand in his shirt twists and twists

The terrible highway of Mr Munshun’s face hangs before hiht the other sbecial ones"

"YES!"

Mr Munshun lets go He steps back Mercifully for Burny, he is beginning to grow insubstantial again, to discorporate Yellowed clippings swile eye hangs in the air above the paling blotch of the ascot

"Mayg zure he vears za cab Ziss one ezbeshully erly He still smells faintly of My Sin perfuare-ful, Burny You are old und hurt Ze bouy is young und desberate Flitt of foot If you let hiet avey ¡ª "

In spite of the pain, Burny s away from him! Even one of the special ones! What an idea! "Don’t worry," he says "Justif you speak to himto Abbalah-doontell him I’ret it And if heA thousand Breakers"

Fading and fading Now Mr Munshun is again just a glow, aroom deep in the house he abandoned only when he realized he really did need so hi hione Burny stands and bends over the horsehair sofa Doing it squeezes his belly, and the resulting pain makes him scream, but he doesn’t stop He reaches into the darkness and pulls out a battered black leather sack He grasps its top and leaves the roo, distended belly

And what of Tyler Marshall, who has existed through es as little htened is he? Has he ed to retain his sanity?

As to his physical condition, he’s got a concussion, but that’s already healing The Fisherman has otherwise done no more than stroke his arm and his buttocks (a creepy touch that made Tyler think of the witch in "Hansel and Gretel") Mentallywould you be shocked to hear that, while Mr Munshun is goading Burny onward, Fred and Judy’s boy is happy?

He is He is happy And why not? He’s at Miller Park

The Milwaukee Brewers have confounded all the pundits this year, all the doomsayers who proclaimed they’d be in the cellar by July Fourth Well, it’s still relatively early, but the Fourth has coone and the Bre has returned to Miller tied for first place with Cincinnati They are in the hunt, in large part due to the bat of Richie Sexson, who came over to Milwaukee from the Cleveland Indians and who has been "really pickin’ taters," in the pungent tere Rathbun

They are in the hunt, and Ty is at the gaot a front-row seat Next to hisland beer in one hand and another tucked away beneath his seat for ee his Jeromy Burnitz of the Crew has just been called out at first on a bang-bang play, and while there can be no doubt that the Cincinnati shortstop handled the ball well and got rid of it fast, there can also be no doubt (at least not in George Rathbun’s ht, his sweaty bald pate glowing beneath a sweetly lavender sky, a foa up one cocked forear (you can tell he sees a lot with those eyes, just about everything), and Ty waits for it, they all wait for it, and here it is, that avatar of summer in the Coulee Country, that wonderful bray that e has been canceled

"COME ON, UMP, GIVE US A BREAK! GIVE US A FREEEEAKIN’ BRAYYYYK! EVEN A BLIND MAN COULD SEE HE WAS SAFE!"

The crowd on the first-base side goes wild at the sound of that cry, none wilder than the fourteen or so people sitting behind the banner reading MILLER PARK WELCOMES GEORGE RATHBUN AND THE WINNERS OF THIS YEAR’S KDCU BREWER BASH Ty is ju his Bre hat What ot to enter the contest this year He guesses his father (or perhaps his rand prize, which was getting to be the Bre’s batboy for the entire Cincinnati series, but what he got (besides this excellent seat with the other winners, that is) is, in his opinion, even better Of course Richie Sexson isn’t Mark McGwire ¡ª nobody can hit the tar out of the ball like Big Mac ¡ª but Sexson has been awesome for the Brewers this year, just awesome, and Tyler Marshall has won ¡ª

So his foot

Ty atte to lose this dreae from the horror that has befallen him), but the hand is relentless It shakes It shakes and shakes

"Way-gup," a voice snarls, and the dreae Rathbun turns to Ty, and the boy sees an a: the eyes that were such a shrewd, sharp blue only a few seconds ago have gone dull and e Rathbun really is a ¡ª

"Way-gup," the growling voice says It’s closer now In a moe speaks to him The voice is quiet, totally unlike the sportscaster’s usual brash bellow "Help’s on the way," he says "So be cool, you little cat Be ¡ª "

"Way-GUP, you shit!"

The grip on his ankle is crushing, paralyzing With a cry of protest, Ty opens his eyes This is how he rejoins the world, and our tale

He remeray iron bars halfway along a stone corridor lit with cobwebby electric bulbs There’s a dish of some sort of stew in one corner In the other is a bucket in which he is supposed to pee (or take a duoodness) The only other thing in the rooed hiood Now get up On your feet, asswipe I don’t have tiets up A wave of dizziness rolls through him and he puts his hand to the top of his head There is a spongy, crusted place there Touching it sends a bolt of pain all the way down to his jahich clench But it also drives the dizziness away He looks at his hand There are flakes of scab and dried blood on his palm That’s where he hit me with his da a harp

But the old man has been hurt sore’s face is waxy and pallid Behind him, the cell door is open Tyhe’s not being too obvious about it But Burny has been in this ga time He has hadfoodzies, oh ho

He reaches into his bag and brings out a black gadget with a pistol grip and a stainless steel nozzle at the tip