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BUT AT FIRST there is nothing

The four of the for all the world like roup photo that will eventually show up on sorapher would be on Black House’s porch ¡ª that’s the way they’re facing ¡ª and the porch is eainst a peeling newel post Sorease pencil Burny? Soer who came all the way up to the house on a dare? Dale did sos when he was seventeen, risked his life with a spray-paint can more than once, but he still finds that hard to believe

The air is sullen and silent, as if before a thunderstorm It stinks, too, but the honey see makes a thick sound Dale has never heard before Groo-oooo

"What’s that?" he asks Jack

"I don’t know," Jack replies

Doc says, "I’ve heard bull gators That’s what they sound like when they’re feeling horny"

"This isn’t the Everglades," Dale says

Doc gives him a thin smile "It ain’t Wisconsin anymore, either, Toto Or maybe you didn’t notice"

Dale has noticed plenty There’s the way the house won’t hold its shape, for one thing ¡ª the way it sometimes seems enormous, as if it is many houses somehow all overlaid A city perhaps the size of London folded under a single weird roof And then there are the trees There are old oaks and pines, there are birches like skinny ghosts, there are red enous to the area ¡ª but he also sees twisted, rooty growths that look like ? Christ, Dale hopes not But whether they are or not, they’re whispering He’s alh the buzzing in his head, and they’re not encouraging words, not by a longshot

Killyeweatchewhatechew

"Where’s the dog?" Beezer asks He’s holding his 9 yurowl drifts out of the woods again, this time closer: GROO-OOOOO! And the trees whisper Dale looks up at the house, watches it suddenly stack floors into a sky that has gone white and cold, and vertigo rolls through his head like a wave of war his elbow to steady hi’s chief of police twists to the left and vomits

"Good," Jack says "Get it out Get rid of it What about you, Doc? Beez?"

The Thunder Two tell him they’re okay For now it’s true, but Beezer doesn’t kno long equilibriu, low and slow Well, so what if I blowto Jack, Burnside’s dead, he won’tto boot the rusted NO TRESPASSING sign with its death’s-head graffiti over the side and into a clutch of weeds that close over it at once, like a greedy hand Dale is reminded of how Jack spit on the crow His friend see to trespass," Jack says "We’re going to trespass our asses off"

At first, however, it seems they will not The front door of Black House isn’t just locked There’s no crack at all between the door and the jamb In fact, once they’re close up, the door looks painted on, a tro screah note, breaks into a peal of one

"Natives are fuckin’ restless," Doc comments

"Want to try a ?" Beezer asks Jack

"Nope We’re going in the front way"

Jack has been raising the Richie Sexson bat as he speaks Now he lowers it, looking puzzled There is a droning sound froht, thin already in this strange forest dell, see even further

"What now?" Beezer asks, turning back toward the drive and the parked cruiser He’s holding the 9ht ear "What the ¡ª " And then he falls silent The gun sags outward and doard His mouth drops open

"Holy shit," Doc says quietly

Dale, even , Jack? If it is, you really have been hiding your light under a bushel"

The light has di in front of Black House has now acquired a canopy of bees More are streaive off a sleepy, benevolent droning sound that drowns out the harsh fire-alar in the woods falls silent, and the flickering shapes in the trees disappear

Jack’s es of hisaround behind one of the caarette cla-roos "Crazy Arms"

In another world, of course, she’d been another kind of queen, and what is a queen without a loyal retinue?

Jack Sawyer looks at the vast cloud of bees ¡ª millions of them, perhaps billions; every hive in the Midwest must be ees the shape of his eyes and the tears that have been growing there spill down his cheeks Hello, he thinks Hello there, boys

The low pleasant huhtly, as if in answer Perhaps it’s only his iination

"What are they for, Jack?" Beezer asks His voice is resonant with awe

"I don’t exactly know," Jack says He turns back to the door, raises the bat, and knocks it once, hard, against the wood "Open!" he cries "I demand it in the name of Queen Laura DeLoessian! And in the nah-pitched crack, so loud and piercing that Dale and Beez both draw back, wincing Beezer actually covers his ears A gap appears at the top of the door and races along it left to right At the door’s upper right corner, the gap pivots and plunges straight down, creating a crack through which aboth sour and familiar: the deathsmell they first encountered at Ed’s Eats

Jack reaches for the knob and tries it It turns freely in his hand He opens the way to Black House

But before he can invite theins to scream

Sooofy old Ronnie Metzger ¡ª is yanking Ty’s arun, but that’s not the worst The ar noise that see noise as well

(the Big Co! Man, that hu hurts

"Quit it," Ty mumbles "Quit it, Ebbie or I’ll ¡ª "

Faint screa sound, and Ty Marshall opens his eyes There’s no race when he’s unsure about where he is or what’s happened to him It all comes back with the force of some terrible picture ¡ª a car accident with dead people lying around, say ¡ª that is shoved into your face before you can look away

He’d held on until the old man was dead; had obeyed the voice of hisfor help, panic had come back and sed him Or maybe it was shock Or both In any case, he’d passed out while still screa here by his shackled left arht spilling through the shed door; that sees of the hugewith the screams of the children and the crack of the whips as the unspeakable guards press the work ever onward The Big Combination never shuts down It runs on blood and terror and never takes a day off

But that buzzing ¡ª that juicy electric buzzing, like the world’s biggest Norelco razor ¡ª what the hell is that?

Mr Munshun’s gone to get the mono Burny’s voice in his head A vile whisper The End-World mono

A terrible dismay steals into Ty’s heart He has no doubt at all that what he hears is that veryunder the canopy at the end of Station House Road Mr Munshun will look for his boy, his sbecial bouy, and when he doesn’t see hi?

"Course he will," Ty croaks "Oh boy Suck an elf"

He looks up at his left hand It would be so easy to yank it back through the oversized shackle if not for the handcuff He yanks doard several tiainst the shackle The other cuff, the one Burny was reaching for when Ty grabbed his balls, dangles and twitches, ibbet at this end of Station House Road

That eye-watering, tooth-rattling buzz suddenly cuts out

He’s shut it down Now he’s looking forsure I’m not there And when he is sure, what then? Does he know about this place? Sure he does

Ty’s dis into an icy chill of horror Burny would deny it Burny would say that the shack down here in this dry as his secret, a place special to hiance, it would never have occurred to hiht serve his supposed friend’s purpose

His ain, and this time he’s reasonably sure it really is his ht coht not You have to assuet out of this yourself

But how?

Ty looks at the twisted body of the oldon the bloody dirt with his head alht of Mr Munshun tries to intrude, Burny’s friend hurrying down Station House Road even now (orto scoop hie away It will lead him back to panic, and he can’t afford any more of that He’s all out of time

"I can’t reach him," Ty says "If the key’s in his pocket, I’ame over, zip up your f ¡ª "

His eye happens on so on the floor It’s the sack the oldThe one with the cap in it And the handcuffs

If the handcuffs were in it, maybe the key’s in there, too

Ty reaches forith his left foot, stretching as far as he can It’s no good He can’t quite reach the bag He’s at least four inches short Four inches short and Mr Munshun is co

Ty can almost smell him

Doc shrieks and shrieks, distantly aware that the others are shouting at hi to be afraid of, distantly aware that he is hurting his throat, probably s don’topen the front door of Black House, he exposed the official greeter

The official greeter is Daisy Te a pretty pink dress Her skin is pale as paper, except on the right side of her forehead, where a flap of skin falls down, exposing the red skull beneath

"Come in, Doc," Daisy says "We can talk about how you killedto rin exposes ato me forever"

Doc takes a blunder-step backward, turns to flee, and that is when Jack grabs him and shakes him Doc Amberson is a hefty fellow ¡ª two-sixty out of the shower, alia as he is now ¡ª but Jack shakes hihair flops and flies

"They’re all illusions," Jack says "Picture-shows designed to keep out unwanted guests like us I don’t knohat you saw, Doc, but it’s not there"

Doc looks cautiously past Jack’s shoulder For awhirl ¡ª it’s like the co, only backward ¡ª and then it’s gone He looks up at Jack Tears are rolling slowly down his sunburned face

"I didn’t mean to kill her," he says "I loved her But I was tired that night Very tired Do you know about being tired, Hollywood?"

"Yes," Jack says "And if we get out of this, I intend to sleep for a week But for now" He looks fro to see ainst you: the things you did wrong, the people you hurt But on the whole, I’ed I think a lot of the poison went out of this place when Burny died All we have to do is find our way through to the other side"

"Jack," Dale says He is standing in the doorway, in the very spot where Daisy greeted her old physician His eyes are very large

"What?"

"Finding our way throughthat ather around hiantic circular foyer, a place so big it ly of St Peter’s Basilica On the floor is an acre of poison-green carpet entwined with scenes of torture and blasphemy Doors open off this room everywhere In addition, Jack counts four sets of crisscrossing stairways He blinks and there are six Blinks again and there are a dozen, as bewildering to the eye as an Escher drawing

He can hear the deep idiot drone that is the voice of Black House He can hear sohter

Co them Come in and wander these rooms forever

Jack blinks and sees a thousand stairways, soalleries of paintings, galleries of sculpture, on whirling vortexes, on emptiness

"What do we do now?" Dale asks bleakly "What the hell do we do now?"

Ty has never seen Burny’s friend, but as he hangs froine him quite easily In this world, Mr Munshun is a real creaturebut not a huure in a black suit and a flowing red tie bustling down Station House Road This creature has a vast white face dole blurry eye The abbalah’s eination, like Huone bad It wears a vest buttoned with bones

Got to get out of here Got to get that bagbut how?

He looks at Burny again At the hideous tangle of Burny’s spilled guts And suddenly the answer coain, but this ti He hooks the toe of his sneaker under a dirt-smeared loop of Burny’s intestines, instead He lifts it, pivots, and then kicks softly The loop of gut leaves the toe of his sneaker

And loops over the leather bag

So far, so good Now if he can only drag it close enough to get his foot on it

Trying not to think of the stocky, hurrying figure with the grotesquely long face, Ty gropes out with his foot again He gets it under the dirty snarl of intestine and begins to pull, slowly and with infinite care

"It’s i You know that, don’t you?"

Jack takes a deep breath, lets it out, takes another, and speaks a single word in a low, firm voice

"Dee-yamber?" Beez asks suspiciously "What the hell’s dee-ya Fro over the clearing (Dale’s cruiser is now nothing but a furry black-gold lues It ¡ª she, for this is undoubtedly a queen bee ¡ª flies between Dale and Doc, pauses for ahienerously lathered himself ), and then hovers in front of Jack She is plump and aerodynamically unsound and ludicrous and soer like a professor about to make a point or a bandleader about to deliver the downbeat The bee lights on the end of it

"Are you from her?" He asks this question in a low voice ¡ª too low for the others to hear, even Beezer, who is standing right next to him Jack isn’t quite sure who he means His mother? Laura DeLoessian? Judy? Sophie? Or is there so? This soht, but he supposes he’ll never know for sure

In any case, the bee only looks at hi And Jack realizes that these are questions to which he needs no answer He has been a sleepyhead, but now he’s up, he’s out of bed This house is huge and deep, a place stacked with vileness and layered with secrets, but what of that? He has Ty’s prize bat, he has friends, he has d’yah He’s good to go Better ¡ª perhaps best of all ¡ª he’s glad to go

Jack raises the tip of his finger to his ently into Black House’s foyer She circles aih a door with an oddly bloated, obese shape

"Come on," Jack says "We’re in business"

The other three exchange uneasy glances, then follow hi

It is i spends in Black House, that hole which spewed the slippery stuff into French Landing and the surrounding towns It is likewise impossible to say with any clarity what they see there In a very real sense, touring Black House is like touring the brain of a deranged madman, and in such a mental framee can expect to find no plan for the future orpresent exists, with its endless shouting urges, paranoid speculations, and grandiose assus they see in Black House should fade froone froue whispers of unease that ht be the distant cry of the opopanax This amnesia is merciful

The queen bee leads them, and the other bees follow in a swarh rooms that have been silent for centuries (for surely we understand ¡ª intuitively if not logically ¡ª that Black House existed long before Burny built its ) At one point the quartet descends a staircase of green glass In the abyss below the steps, they see circling birds like vultures with the white, screa, narrow roo cartoons ¡ª two rabbits, a fox, and a stoned-looking frog wearing white gloves ¡ª sit around a table catching and eating what appear to be fleas They are cartoons, 1940s-era black-and-white cartoons, and it hurts Jack’s eyes to look at the wink as the Sawyer Gang goes by, and in the eye that doesn’t close Jack sees flatin soe that sounds like French but isn’t There is a roo tropical sun Hanging from one of the trees is a vast cocoon that appears to hold a baby dragon still wrapped in its oings "That can’t be a dragon," Doc Amberson says in a weirdly reasonable voice "They either coons Maybe both" They walk down a long corridor that slowly rounds itself off, becoreasy slide as crazy percussion beats from unseen speakers To Jack it sounds like Cozy Cole, or maybe Gene Krupa The sides fall away, and for aover a chasm that literally seems to have no bottom "Steer with your hands and feet!" Beezer shouts "If you don’t want to go over the side, STEER!" They are finally spilled off in what Dale calls the Dirt Roo earth under a rusty tin ceiling festooned with bare light bulbs Platoons of tiny greenish-white spiders school back and forth like fish By the ti and out of breath, their shoes muddy, their clothes filthy There are three doors here Their leader is buzzing and doing Immelmann turns in front of the one in the middle "No way," Dale says "I want to trade for what’s behind the curtain"

Jack tells hiot a future in stand-up comedy, no doubt about it, and then opens the door the bee has chosen for thee automated laundry, which Beezer iether, they follow the bee down a hu, shuddering dryers The air smells like baked bread The washers ¡ª each with a single glaring portholed eye ¡ª are stacked up to a height of fifty feet or eons flock in restless currents Every now and then they pass piles of bones, or soht) this way In a hallway they find a scooter overgroith cobwebs Farther on, a pair of girl’s in-line skates, thick with dust In a vast library rooany table In a richly appointed (if obviously neglected) parlor through which the bee leads theht line, Dale and Doc observe that the art on one wall appears to consist of human faces that have been cut off, cured, and then stretched on squares of wood Huge bewildered eyes have been painted into the enizes at least one of the faces: Mil-ton Wanderly, a schoolteacher who dropped out of sight three or four years back Everyone had assumed that Don Wanderly’s kid brother had siht Halfway down a stone-throated corridor lined with cells, the bee darts into a squalid little chaed futon At first none of them speak They don’t need to Ty was here, and not that long ago They can almost smell him ¡ª his fear Then Beezer turns to Jack The blue eyes above the lush red-brown beard are narrowed in fury

"The old bastard burned hi Or zapped hih whether he does so with his nose or his mind he neither knows nor cares "Burnside won’t be zapping anyone else," he says

The queen bee zips between them and whirls impatiently in the corridor To the left, back the way they caht instead, and soon the bee is leading thely endless stairway At one point they walk through a brief, drippy drizzle ¡ª somewhere above this part of the stairs, a pipe in Black House’s unio Half a dozen of the risers are wet, and they all see tracks there They’re too blurry to do a forensics teaht), but the Sawyer Gang is encouraged: there’s a big set and a little set, and both sets are relatively fresh Now they are getting soin to move faster, and behind theue out of the Old Testa, but for Ty Marshall it has beco presence He can’t be sure if his sense of Mr Munshun’s approach is inition, but he’s terribly afraid it’s the latter He has to get out of this shed, has to, but the daed to pull it close to him with the loop of intestines; ironically, that was the easy part The hard part is actually getting hold of the da

He can’t reach it; no matter how he stretches or how cruelly he tests his left shoulder and shackled left wrist, he comes up at least two feet short Tears of pain roll down his cheeks Any moisture lost that way is quickly replaced by the sweat that runs stinging into his eyes froreasy forehead

"Foot it," he says "Just like soccer" He looks at the disfigured sprawl in the doorway ¡ª his erstwhile torets the side of his foot against the bag, pushes it to the wall, and then begins to slide it up the bloodstained wood At the same time he reaches downnow fourteen inchesnow only a footreaching

and the leather bag tumbles off the toe of his sneaker and onto the dirt Plop

"You’re watching out for him, aren’t you, Burny?" Ty pants "You have to, you know, ht? You’re ¡ª Fuck!" This tiin to raise it Ty slaainst the wall

Why do you do that? a voice inquires coolly This is the one who sounds like his mother but isn’t his mother, not quite Will that help you?

"No," Ty says resentfully, "but itfree will ain

Ty once ainst the wall He presses his foot against it, feeling for anything else that ht be inside ¡ª a key, for instance ¡ª but he can’t tell Not through his sneaker He begins to slide the bag up the wall again Carefullynot too fastlike footing the ball toward the goal

"Don’t let him in, Burny," he pants to the dead o on the o to End-World And I don’t want to be a Breaker Whatever it is, I don’t want to be it I want to be an explorermaybe underwater, like Jacques Cousteauor a flier in the Air Forceor maybeFUCK!" This ti falls off his foot but rage and near panic

Mr Munshun, hustling and bustling Getting closer Meaning to take him away Din-tah Abbalah-doon For ever and ever

"Damn old key’s probably not in there, anyway" His voice wavering, close to a sob "Is it, Burny?"

"Chu in there at all Except maybeI don’t knowa roll of Tuestion"

Nonetheless, Ty captures the bag with his foot again, and again begins the laborious job of sliding it up the wall far enough so that perhaps his stretching fingers can grasp it

Dale Gilbertson has lived in the Coulee Country his entire life, and he’s used to greenery To him trees and lawns and fields that roll all the way to the horizon are the nor lands that surround Conger Road with such distaste and growing dismay

"What is this place?" he asks Jack The words coolf cart and must hoof it In fact, Jack has set a pace quite a bit faster than Ty drove the E-Z-Go

"I don’t exactly know," Jack says "I saw a place like it a long tio It was called the Blasted Lands It ¡ª "

A greenish man with plated skin suddenly leaps at thee boulders In one hand he holds a stumpy whip ¡ª what Jack believes is actually called a quirt "Bahhrrr!" this apparition cries, sounding weirdly like Richard Sloat when Richard laughs

Jack raises Ty’s bat and looks at the apparition questioningly ¡ª Did you want some of this? Apparently the apparition does not It stands where it is for a moment, then turns and flees As it disappears back into the ed line down both of its Achilles tendons

"They don’t like Wonderboy," Beezer says, looking appreciatively at the bat It is still a bat, just as the 9ers are still pistols and they are still they: Jack, Dale, Beezer, Doc And Jack decides he isn’t much surprised by that Parkus told hi their palaver near the hospital tent This place may be adjacent to the Territories, but it’s not the Territories Jack had forgotten that

Well, yes ¡ª but I’ve had a few other things on my mind

"I don’t know if you boys have taken a close look at the wall on the far side of this chare white stones actually appear to be skulls"

Beezer gives the wall of skulls a cursory glance, then looks ahead again "What worries ," he says Over the broken teeth of the horizon rises a great colass, and machinery It disappears into the clouds They can see the tiny figures who surge and struggle there, can hear the crack of the whips From this distance they sound like the pop of 22 rifles "What’s that, Jack?"

Jack’s first thought is that he’s looking at the Cri’s Breakers, but no ¡ª there are toois some sort of factory or power plant, powered by slaves By children not talented enough to qualify as Breakers A vast outrage rises in his heart As if sensing it, the drone of the bees grows louder behind hier, Jack ¡ª your first job is that little boy And tirown very, very short

"Oh Christ," Dale says, and points "Is that what I think it is?"

The gibbet hangs like a skeleton over the slanting road

Doc says, "If you’re thinking gallows, I believe you win the stainless steel flatware and get to go on to the next round"

"Look at all the shoes," Dale says "Why would they pile the shoes up like that?"

"God knows," Beezer says "Just the custouess How close are we, Jack? Do you have any idea at all?"

Jack looks at the road ahead of the away to the left, the one with the ancient gallows on its corner "Close," he says "I think we’re ¡ª "

Then, froin They are the cries of a child who has been pushed to the edge of madness Or perhaps over it

Ty Marshall can hear the approaching drone of the bees but believes it is only in his head, that it is noanxiety He doesn’t knoup the side of the shed; he’s lost count It does not occur to hi the odd cap ¡ª the one that looks like cloth and feels like ht iotten all about the cap All he knows is that he’s tired and sweating and tree to snag the bag this tio with Mr Munshun if he just prolass of water, Ty thinks But he does have Judy’s toughness bred in his bones, and so the ache in his thigh, he again begins sliding the bag up the wall, at the saht hand

Ten incheseightthe closest he’s gotten so far

The bag slips to the left It’s going to fall off his foot Again

"No," Ty says softly "Not this tiainst the wood, then begins to raise it again

Six inchesfour inchesthree and the bag starts to tilt farther and farther to the left, it’s going to fall off ¡ª

"No!" Ty yells, and bends forward in a strenuous bow His back creaks So does his tortured left shoulder But his fingers graze across the bagand then snag it He brings it toward him and then damned near drops it after all!

"No way, Burny," he pants, first juggling the leather sack and then clutching it against his chest "You don’t fool me with that old trick, no way in hell do you foolwith his teeth The stink of it is awful, rotten ¡ª eau de Burnside He ignores it and pulls the bag open At first he thinks it’s ele silver glealing bag with his right hand and brings the key out

Can’t drop it, he thinks If I drop it, I’ll lose my mind I really will

He doesn’t drop it He raises it above his head, sticks it in the little hole on the side of the cuff holding his left wrist, and turns it The cuff springs open

Slowly, slowly, Ty draws his hand through the shackle The handcuffs fall to the shed’s dirt floor As he stands there, a queerly persuasive idea occurs to Ty: he’s really still back in Black House, asleep on the ragged futon with the slop bucket in one corner of his cell and the dish of re-heated Dinty Moore beef stew in the other This is just his exhausted oes into the stewpot hi Combination and the screa footsies, running it Somewhere is Mr Munshun, ants to take him someplace even worse than this

It’s no dreao froet back to his oorld, but the first step is getting out of this shed and this general vicinity Moving on tre out of bed for the first ti stay, Ty Marshall steps over Burny’s sprawled corpse and out of the shed The day is overcast, the landscape sterile, and even here that rickety skyscraper of pain and toil doladness just to be in the light again To be free It is not until he stands with the shed behind him that he truly realizes how completely he expected to die there For a ray sky Thus he never sees the figure that has been standing to one side of the shed, prudently waiting tothe cap when he comes out Once he’s sure he is, Lord Malshun ¡ª this is as close to his real narotesque face is like the bowl of a huge serving spoon upholstered in skin The one eye bulges freakishly The red lips grin When he drops his arins to shriek ¡ª not just in fear and surprise, but in outrage He has worked so hard to be free, so dreadfully hard

"Hush," Lord Malshun whispers, and when Ty continues to loose his wild screa Combination, some of the children turn toward those cries until the brutish ogres who serve as foremen whip theain, a single word in the Dark Speech "Pnung"