"Somebody up there?" a voice shouted from below.
"Let go, let go!" the shape changer, in Melissa's skin, said urgently.
Billy concentrated on the pain in his hand. His flesh had stopped sizzling. He turned his full attention to getting out of the hole. His clothes weren't on fire, weren't even scorched. He was strong, he told himself; he could resist the shape changer's weapons. Melissa's form began to fade away, and in its place was the boar. Billy climbed up and crouched on his knees in the water. What had the thing said about his mother? Lies, all lies! He had to hurry, he told himself, before the firemen found him in here.
There were scorched bones lying around him. A rib cage lay nearby. In the corner was a hideous, blackened form still wearing the shreds of clothes, its black skull-like head lolling.
Billy could feel them all around him, terrified and confused. They murmured and moaned, crowding around him to flee the dark power of the shape changer.
"No fear," Billy whispered. "Give up the pain, give up . . ."
"Get out of the dark place!" Jimmy Jed Falconer bellowed, his eyes blazing with righteous anger.
Something as soft as silk brushed Billy's face. A formless, pale bluish white mass had begun seeping out of the wall, reaching tentatively toward him. A second revenant hung in a corner like a spider web, clinging fearfully to the wall.
"You're not strong enough!" Falconer shouted. "You can't do it!"
"Give up the pain," Billy whispered, trying to mentally draw them closer. He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating. When he opened them, he saw a third revenant drifting nearer, taking on a vague human shape, arms reaching to grasp for him.
"You have to leave this place," Billy said. "You don't belong here." And suddenly he shivered, as a cold white shape drifted over him from behind; it was as soft as velvet, and was so cold it made his bones ache. Two appendages that might have been arms enfolded him.
"No!" the shape changer thundered, reverting to the beast.
The revenant began to sink into him. Billy gritted his teeth as its human memories filled him; first the panic as the fire spread and the ceiling crashed down, then the agony of burning flesh. Then in his mind he saw a splay of cards on a table, a hand reaching for a bottle of Red Dagger wine, golden wheatfields seen from a speeding boxcar, dreaded policemen swinging clubs. Memories and emotions swept through him like leaves blown from dying trees.
Another form drifted closer, gripping Billy's hand and crawling up his arm.
Again, the agony of the blaze streaked through Billy's mind. Then a needle sinking into flesh. A thin woman standing in a doorway, cradling a child.
Billy shuddered and moaned from the intensity of the pain and emotions he was taking on. He saw dozens of white forms sifting through the room, rising from the heaps of bones and ashes. They were oozing out of the walls, some of them hurrying toward him, others still as frightened as little children and clinging to the corners.
"Let go of the pain," he whispered, as the forms clung to him. "No pain, no fear . . ." Images from other lives crackled through his mind: a knife fight in an alley, a bottle uptilted for the last precious drops.
"LOOK AT ME, BOY!" the shape changer shouted, and rippled into Fitts, standing with a python curled around his neck. "Your mother's dead, your mother's dead! The cowboy came and sheared her head!"
The revenants were all over Billy. Though they were weightless, the tonnage of the emotions they were shedding bore him to the floor, where he lay gasping on his side in ashes and water He heard the shape changer roar, "It's not over! It's not over yet, you'll see!" but he closed his mind to the thing's taunts, mentally fixed on bringing the revenants into him.
The shape changer vanished. But, behind Billy, the charred corpse in the corner stirred. Its dead, burned-out eye sockets began to show a gleam of red. The thing moved, slowly, slowly, and started to drag itself toward the boy. One skeletal hand closed around a piece of metal, and lifted it to strike Billy from behind.
Burned bone cracked. The arm dangled uselessly, and as Billy turned to look over his shoulder, he recognized in the reanimated corpse's face the shape changer's red, hate-filled eyes. He lay immobile as the corpse crawled toward him, its mouth opening to emit a hoarse whisper through burned vocal cords; then the head lolled, ripping loose from the neck. The body shuddered and settled again into the ashes, as the shape changer gave it up.
Someone shouted, "Jesus Christ!"
And another voice, rising frantically, "Get the lights on!"
A stunning beam of light flooded the room. Some of the wraiths scattered away from Billy, fleeing the harsh illumination. Others floated above the floor, transfixed.
The fireman with his spotlight backed away, stumbling into the camera crew from WCHI, who were doing a documentary on firetrap hotels. The room was filled with strange white shapes, some of them vaguely in human form. "What the hell? . . ." the fireman whispered.
"Barry!" a tall woman with red hair said. "Film it!" Her eyes were wide and startled, and she was fighting the urge to run like hell from whatever those things were. The cameraman paused, stunned, and at once the woman switched on a power-pack strapped to his back. She lifted the video-tape camera from its mount on his shoulder, popped off the plastic lens cap, and started filming. Two intense lights attached atop the camera came on, illuminating every corner of the room. "Give me more cable! Now, damn it!" She stepped into the room, panning from corner to corner:
"Nothing there," the fireman was babbling. "Nothing there. Just smoke. Just—" And then he fled the room.
The camerawoman stepped over the boy passed out on the floor, jerked at the cable to make sure it wasn't snagged, and filmed a white shape with a head and arms as it fled into a wall.
56
When Cammy Falconer saw her son, she was amazed at how much older he looked. He was growing into a handsome man, but he was getting fat. He sat out at a table by the glass-enclosed swimming pool that was part of the Krepsin house, working on a plastic airplane model.
"Wayne?" Niles said quietly. "Your visitors are here."
Wayne looked up incuriously, and Cammy saw that his eyes seemed dead. She managed a weak smile as she stepped forward. "Aren't you going to say hello to your mother?"
"You've been smoking," Wayne replied. "I can smell it on your clothes." He glanced up at the husky, curly-haired man who stood a few paces behind her, and frowned. One of her boyfriends, he thought. He'd heard she had a lot of boyfriends out in Houston, where she'd moved after the Falconer Foundation had bought her a condominium.
"Wayne, this is Darryl Whitton," she said uneasily. "He plays for the Oilers."
"I don't like football." He concerned himself with putting together the fuselage of a Concorde. "How'd you find me?"
"Where you are isn't a secret." She glanced quickly at Niles, who seemed determined to stay around. "Can I be alone with my son, please?" Niles nodded in accordance, wished them a good visit, and returned to the house. "It's been a long time since I've seen you, Wayne."
"Did they send you?"
"No," she said, but she was lying. The Crusade people had called her and explained that they needed her help. Little Wayne was out in Palm Springs, they told her, and he didn't want to come home. Henry Bragg was missing, and George Hodges had quit the Crusade only a few days ago. Cammy inwardly shuddered when Wayne looked at her; she feared he could see the lie through those scorched, haunted eyes.
Whitton, an affable lout, picked up one of the plastic pieces and grinned. "Mighty good job you're doin' there, Wayne. Your momma tells me you like ..." And then the grin froze when Wayne's gaze fixed on him. Whitton cleared his throat, put the piece down, and ambled away along the edge of the large swimming pool.