She fixed her gaze on Todd, who had apparently also survived both Katya's attack and the revenants' tide.
He was half-sitting, half-slumped, against the wall further down the passageway, staring at the alcove from which he'd grabbed the antique pitcher. His breathing was ragged, but at least he was still alive. It was a short drive to Cedars-Sinai from here, if she could get help to carry him to the car.
She crawled over to him. He was doing nothing to staunch the wounds (Katya had stabbed him at least twice, possibly three times); the blood was pulsing out of him. He saw her coming from the corner of his eye. Very slowly, he turned his head towards her. "You let them in," he said.
"Yes. I let them in."
"You ... had it planned all along then?"
"Not really. It was Zeffer's idea."
He made a long, soft moan, as he saw the neatness of this. Zeffer, the first exile from the dream palace; Zeffer, who'd been the bitch-goddess's dog, finally become her undoer. And Tammy, his agent.
"So you were in this together," he said.
"I'll tell you about it later. Right now we should get out of here."
He made a very small, very weary shake of his head. "I don't think ... I'll be going anywhere anytime soon."
"She meant to kill me. And I'm afraid ... she has. She knew in the end I'd sided with you. And that meant I'd betrayed her."
"You didn't -- "
"Yes, I did. I knew the last thing she wanted was that the ghosts get in." He shook his head, his eyes sliding closed. "But I had to. It was the right thing." He opened his eyes again, and looked down at the blood. "And her killing me, that was right, too."
"Christ, no ... "
"It's all ... ended up ... the way it should."
"Don't say that," Tammy murmured. "It's not over yet." She pushed herself up onto her knees, then grabbed hold of the edge of one of the alcoves, and hauled herself to her feet. The numbness was passing from her hands. Now they simply tingled, as though they'd been trapped under her while she slept.
From outside, she heard the sound of footsteps, and she looked round to see Maxine stumbling up the steps from the garden, in a state of total disarray. In any other circumstance, Tammy might have found the sight funny; Maxine's clothes were torn, her face scratched and grimy. But right now she was just one more victim: of Katya, of the house, of the Canyon.
"My God," she said, seeing Todd sitting there, the blood pooling on the floor. "What the hell happened?"
"Katya." Tammy said. It was all the explanation she had energy for.
Once over the threshold, Maxine closed the door and locked it, her hands trembling.
"There's things out there -- "
"Yes, I know."
"They killed Sawyer."
For a moment it looked as though she was going to succumb to tears, but she fought them off, and came along the passageway, her expression turning from one of imminent tears to shock.
"Wait ... " she said. "Is that Todd?"
Was he that unrecognizable? Tammy thought. It seemed he was. In the hours since Maxine had last set eyes on him Todd taken a hell of a beating. By the sea, by Eppstadt, by Katya. Now he looked like a boxer who'd gone twenty rounds with a man twice his strength: both his eyes puffed up, his lower lip was swollen and jutting, his whole face a mass of colors, bruises old and new, cuts old and new, all spattered with dried mud.
Looking at him afresh, with Maxine's appalled gaze, Tammy realized that she could have shown this poor broken face to a thousand members of the Todd Pickett Appreciation Society and not a single one would have known who they were looking at; and that probably included herself. How far they'd all fallen; the Gods and their admirers both.
"We have to get an ambulance up here," Maxine said. She bent down to speak to Todd. "We're getting an ambulance."
"No," he said weakly, lifting his hand, "Stay with me."
Maxine looked at Tammy, who gave her a small nod. Maxine took hold of Todd's hand.
"What happened to Eppstadt?" Maxine asked.
"Last time I saw him he was in Hell," Tammy replied.
There was something rather satisfying about being able to say that, even if she didn't really know what they'd all experienced behind that door downstairs. Whatever it was, it was real. Her breast still tingled from the goat-boy's suckling.
"And the woman? Katya?"
"I don't know where she went. But if you'll take care of Todd, I'd like to find out."
Todd gave his own, misshapen reply to this suggestion. "Be ... careful."
As he spoke he raised his free hand in Tammy's direction. It was impossible to interpret the expression on his face, but the fact that he was afraid for her spoke volumes. And she in her turn was afraid; afraid that if she didn't find some excuse to leave now, she'd be left here watching him die.
She pressed his fingers, and he returned the pressure, "It's good," he said. "Better see. That bitch."
She nodded, and headed off back down the passageway. As she went she heard Maxine dialing 911 on her portable phone, which had apparently survived the traumas of her journey through the wilderness behind the house.
There was a calamitous din corning from the centre of the house. It sounded as though a hurricane had been loosed down there, and was moving from room to room, getting stronger as its frustration mounted.
Tammy went to the stairwell and stood there for a few moments, letting the tears fall. Why not? Why the hell not? What crazy person wouldn't weep, when they'd turned over the rock of the world, and they'd seen what was there, crawling around: the dead, the nearly dead, and the sorrow of every damn thing.
It wasn't just Todd she was weeping for. She was shedding a tear, it seemed, for everyone she'd ever known. For Arnie, for God's sake, who one night had told her how his grandfather, Otis, when he was in his cups, would burn the eight-year-old Arnie's knuckles with cigarettes 'for the fun of it', and how Arnie had said it was good they'd never have children because he was afraid he'd end up doing the same.
For the dead who'd waited outside this insane asylum for so long, waiting for their chance to get back over the threshold, and now they were in, they weren't happy, because what they'd come in search of was gone. That was their noise, she knew, their fury, circling below; their frustration, mounting with every turn.
For Todds and all the imperfect people who'd loved him because they'd thought he was made of purer stuff than they. All the worshippers who'd sent him messages through her, begging him just to drop them a note, pick up the phone, tell them that he knew they existed.
She'd been one of those people herself, once upon a time.
In a way she'd been the worst of them, in fact, because although she'd got so close to understanding the ways of this grotesque town, and known it was a crock of deceits and stupidities, instead of turning her back on it all, burning Todd's pictures and getting herself a life worth living, she'd let herself become a propagator of the Great Lie. She'd done it in part because it made her feel important. But more because, she'd wanted Todd to be the real thing, the dream come true, alive in the same imperfect world she'd lived in, but better than that dirty, disappointing world. And having once decided to believe that lie, she had to keep on believing it, because once he fell from grace, there was nothing left to believe in.
It'll all end in tears, as her mother had been wont to say, and Tammy had despised the woman for her lack of faith in things; for her cynical certainty that everything was bound to sorrow. But in the end she'd been right. Tammy was standing in the creaking, raging ruins of that terrible truth: tears on her own face, shed for just about everything she'd ever known.