"And that's what you want?" Harry said.
"Oh yes. I want an end-"
"to what?" "to that damn city for one," Kissoon replied, nodding down the mountain in the direction of Everville. He came a little closer. Harry scrutinized his face, looking for some crack in the mask, but he could see none. "I spent a lot of time sealing up neirica across the continent," he said. "Making sure that when the lad finally came through it would be over thiv threshold they came."
"You don't even know what they are-"
"It doesn't really matter. They're bringing the end of things. That's what's important."
"And what'll happen to you?"
"I'll have this hill," Kissoon said, "and I'll look down from it on a world of fishes."
"Suppose you're wrong?" "About what?"
"About the lad. Suppose they're pussycats?"
"They're everything that's rotted in us, D'Amour. They're every fetid, fucked-up thing that feeds on our sbit, and waits to be loosed when nobody's looking." He came closer still, until he was just out of Harry's range. His hand had gone to his chest. "Have you looked into the human heart recently?" he said.
"Not in the last couple of days, no."
"Unspeakable, the things in there-"
"In you, maybe."
"Everyone, D'Amour, everyone! Rage and hatred an' d appetite!" He pointed back towards the door. "That's what coming, D'Amour. It won't have a human face, but it')] have a human heart. I guarantee it."
Behind Harry, the body of Kate O'Farrell was dropped to the ground. He glanced back at her, the agony of her last moments fixed upon her face.
"A terrible thing, the human heart," Kissoon was saying. "A very terrible thing."
It took Harry a moment to persuade his eyes from the dead woman's face, as though some idiot part of him thought he might learn some way to avoid her suffering by studying it. When he looked back at Kissoon, the man had turned away, and was heading up the slope again. "Enjoy the view, D'Amour," he said, then was gone.
As Joe left the city streets to follow the lad along the shoreto witness, if nothing more, to witness-the ground began to shudder. to his left, the dream-sea threw itself into a greater frenzy than ever. to his right, the highway that ran along the edge of the beach cracked and buckled, falling away in places. The mass of lad, which was now within two hundred yards of' the door, was apparently indifferent to the tremors. It had resembled many things to Joe in his brief time knowing it. A wall, a cloud, a diseased body. Now it looked to him like a swarm of minute insects so dense it kept every speck of light and comprehension out as it seethed towards its destination, The door had grown considerably in the hours since 'd first stepped through it. Though its lower regions were till wreathed in mist, its highest point was now several hundred yards above the beach, and rising even as he watched, cracking the heavens. If there were angels on the other side, he thought, this would be the time for them to show their faces; to swoop and drive the lad back with their glory. But the crack went on growing, and the lad advancing, and the only response was not from heaven, but from the earth on which his spirit stood The rock's convulsions did not go unfelt on Harmon's Heights. The tremors ran through ground and mist alike, causing some measure of alarm amongst Zury's faction. Harry couldn't see them, but he could hear them well enough, their songs of welcome-which they had only recently begun@ecaying into sobs of fearful expectation as the violence in the rock escalated.
"Something's happening on the shore," Coker said to Erwin. "We should stay away," the lawyer counseled, casting i fearful look up at the crosses. "This is worse than I thought."
"Yes it is,,' Coker said. "But that doesn't mean wt, should be cowards!"
He hurried on, past the crosses and the tethered D'Amour, up the slope, which was rolling in mounting waves. Reluctantly, Erwin followed, more out of a fear that he would lose his one companion in this insanity than from any genuine urge to know what lay ahead. He wished-ah, how he wished-for the life he'd led before he'd found McPherson's confession. For pettiness, for triviality; for all the little things that had vexed him. Digging through hi,; fridge for something that smelled bad; finding a stain on hi,, favorite tie; standing in front of the mirror wishing he hat] more hair and less belly. Perhaps it had been a bland life. puttering on without purpose or direction, but he'd liked its banality, now that he was denied it. Better that than the crosses, and the door, and the whatever was coming through it.
"Do you see?" said Coker, once Erwin had caught up with him.
He saw. How could he not? The door, stretching up through the mist as if eager to pierce the stars. The shore on the far side of it, every rock and pebble upon it rising in a solid wave. And worst of all, the swarming wall of energies approaching across that shore "Is that it?" he said to Coker. He'd expected a more pal-, pable manifestation of the hann it brought. A devourer's tools, a torturer's smm, a lunatic's frenzy: something to advertise its evil. But instead, here was a thing he could have discovered by closing his eyes. The busy darkness behind his lids.
Coker yelled something over his shoulder by way of reply, but it was lost in the tumult. The shore beyond the threshold was convulsing, as though it were a body in the throes of a grand mal, each spasm throwing boulders the size of houses up into the air; and up, and up again, the scale of the seizure increasing exponentially as Erwin watched. Coker, meanwhile, strode on, the ground around him growing increasingly insolid, stones, dirt and plant life melted into filthy stew. It had mounted up to his waist now, and it seemed even his phantom body was subject to its currents, because he was twice thrown off his feet and washed back in Erwin's direction.
He wasn't daring the tide simply to get a better view of the quaking shore. There were two other figures in the grip of this liquid earth-an old woman hanging on to the back of a man who looked to be in the last moments of life-and Coker was struggling to reach them. Blood ran from a grievous wound on the side of the man's head, where something-perhaps a rock-had sheared off his car and opened his scalp to his skull. Why Coker was so interested to study these unfortunates was beyond Erwin, but he strode into the melted dirt himself to find out.
This time he heard what Coker was hollering.
"Oh Mary, mother of God, look at her. Look!"
"What is it?" Erwin yelled back.
"That's Maeve, Toothaker! That's my wife!"
The escalating turmoil had not dissuaded Bartho from his task. The more the ground swayed and shook the more attentive to his duties he became, as though his redemption lay in finishing the business of crucifying D'Amour.
He was bending to the task of untethering Harry to bring him to the cross when one of Blessedm'n Zury's acolytes-a creature with a round, piebald face, and the bow-legged gait of a midget-rolled into view and picked up Bartho's hammer. The crucifer instructed him to put it down, but instead the acolyte rushed at him and struck him in the face, the blow so fast and fierce the bigger man was felled. Before he could get up again the acolyte struck him a second and third time. Pale fluid sprayed from Bartho's cracked skull, and he let out a rhythmical whoop.
If it was a call for help, it went unanswered, or perhaps unheard, given the din that was shaking earth and air. With his whoop failing him Bartho started to rise, but the hammer was there to meet him, and this time cracked his face from chin to brow. He sank down, the blood gushing from him, and lay twitching under the empty cross.
Harry had meanwhile been working at his knotted wrists with his teeth, but before he could free himself the acolyte tossed the bloodied hammer away, pulled a knife from Bartho's belt and waddled over to free the prisoner.