'Of course, it is an academic question,' the shadow said. 'Because you will always live here with me and be my queen. The darling boy will be found at the bottom of the cliff, along with my nephew, and next summer perhaps there will be another adorable boy. Next summer or in five summers — a boy with strange stirrings in him, a boy who does not know who he is. A few more voices in the tunnels? I shall be in better control next year, I promise you.'
'I hate the tunnels,' Rose said.
'Better control next year,' the shadow promised, fading away. 'And more control over you, dear one. . . . '
16
'Hang on to him, Mr. Peet,' the magician said. 'Hold him tightly, and very soon we will know if we will need him to play his part. Need I say that your men did not play theirs very well?'
'If we're up here by ourselves, except for him' — Mr. Peet yanked savagely at Del's hair with his free hand — 'except for this little shit, that is, do you have to call me by that name?' Mr. Peet was actually a glasshouse marine named Floyd Inbush, who had earned a dishonorable discharge from Korea for removing the ears of a Korean: a South Korean. In his civilian life, Inbush had spent five years in Joliet state prison for assault with a deadly weapon. This 'Mr. Peet' business was getting on his nerves, like his employer's references to the failure of the men he had recruited.
'While you are in this house or on these grounds, you are Mr. Peet,' the magician said. 'You understood our terms when I hired you.'
'I understood, did I?' Inbush growled. 'I didn't understand a lot about this lousy job, and you know I didn't. Take a look at this kid. Is that what we're supposed to be guarding you against?' He jerked Del back and forth by the hair, and Del's limbs moved like a marionette's. His eyes were wide and glazed, his face a sickly gray color under the natural olive cast. Inbush had seen a dozen men go that toadstool color when they had realized that their lives were going to be taken.
'His friend acquitted himself very well against six adult men,' Collins said.
'He was armed,' Inbush shouted. 'Arm a baby, he's as good as a combat soldier. Goddammit, if he's armed he is a combat soldier.'
'I must conclude you are inadequate for the job I hired you to do.'.
'You calling me inadequate, you old juicer?' Inbush took a step toward Collins, who was sitting in the owl chair and regarding him in a detached but regretful manner.
'I must also conclude that you would be happier leaving my employ.'
'Damn right I would. Three of my men are dead — two of 'em ran off, the chickenhearted scum — and you want me to guard you against this little zombie?' Another savage shake for Del. 'I'm ready to go right now.'
'And so you will, Mr. Peet. You have definitely outlived your usefulness.'
'Hold on. You looked pretty good when we dug for that badger, I'll say that for you, you're in good shape for your age, but I can take you. I can take you good. I'm walking out of here.'
'You are an offense, Mr. Peet.' Collins sat up straight in the owl chair. 'You are going to leave my way. Watch this, nephew.'
Del whimpered as Inbush cast him away and began to move toward Collins.
'Watch carefully,' Collins said, and closed his eyes. A shadow line of black appeared around him, outlining him for a second. Inbush stopped moving. A line of red joined the black, and both lines became a single thick line of vibrant blue.
Inbush screamed.
Collins' aura blazed for a moment. Inbush's scream went up an octave in pitch, and the man's hands flew to his scalp. A smell like gunpowder invaded the room, and Floyd Inbush blew up as if there had been a bomb in his guts.
Both the old man and the boy were splashed with red. A wad of something that looked like pink dog food struck Del's chest with the force of a line drive and adhered wetly to his shirt. Del slowly looked down at it, and his mouth fell open and his eyes shuttered and his ears sealed. Del was safe: he stood in the bloody room and he heard nothing and he saw nothing.
17
Tom is looking into Skeleton's blank shining eyes. In part because of the mad babble coming from Skeleton's molten mind, in part because he can see Skeleton's history as clearly as if it were a movie playing in those dead eyes, he knows Skeleton thoroughly — knows him too well. He sees Chester Ridpath walloping young Skeleton, sees spittle flying from the coach's mouth, hears his curses. He sees Skeleton's hands as if they were his own, opening the lid of the Carson piano as the glass owl rattles itself against the wood; sees the pictures going up, one by one, onto the walls and ceiling.
Skeleton's thumbs are pushing into his windpipe; Skeleton is drooling and humming to himself.
I was in your room, Tom thinks, and the pressure of the thumbs miraculously eases a bit.
Skeleton, I was in your room: I saw the owl at the window: and he does see it, he hears it battering the glass, whapping its great wings. Then another picture takes hold of his mind, and he says to Skeleton: I rode those wings and heard the voice.
Do you hear me in there, Skeleton?
Beneath the lunatic flood of gibberish, there is a small voice which says: Yes. The Collector's hands hang loosely on Tom's neck now; the Collector's torched — down elemental face is frozen like paint on & wall.
I stole the owl, Tom thinks into Skeleton's rushing brain. I set fire to the field house. I was the one you wanted, Skeleton. Not him. Not Del. Tom Flanagan.
'Flanagini fire,' the Collector whispered.
Flanagini fire — you tied into my battery, Skeleton, before I even knew I had it. Tom hates these thoughts, they violate everything he once had known about himself, everything he had wished to be. My fire, my room, Skeleton: I wasn't just in your room, I was your room.
I was your room. This is the worst thought of all, worse even than the certainty that he alone had seen Skeleton hanging like a spider from the auditorium ceiling because at that moment Skeleton was a broken-away and unwanted piece of himself: that Skeleton's cave of horrors, lovingly clipped from magazines, was a depiction of some boarded-off area of his mind, the area to which Coleman Collins had thrown open the gates in his own soul in the early 1920's.
I am your room, he sends into Skeleton's mind, talcing responsibility for it all. His mind and Skeleton's are nearly one — your room is me — and Tom knows with true and certain finality that in saying this he has finally become a magician: not just a low-grade psychic, but a magician, the black figure with a sword. He has welcomed himself.
After that, after he has sickened himself, he knows how to free Skeleton Ridpath from the Collector. He looks into the grotesque parody of magic before him and sees a high-school boy way down there, with wax Dracula teeth in his mouth and a frightwig on his close-cut hair; a high-school boy who had wanted in the most pathetic way to be scary; and he reaches for him. Come on out, Skeleton, he says. You can come out now. Get out of the Jar. There is a little tug at his mind, a tug like a headache: it will work.
Tom reaches inside, extending a long probe, and this time Skeleton twines around it. OUT! Tom pulls back, and it is like trying to pull a swordfish out of the ocean; gravity tries to drag him down in there with Skeleton, he feels he is bench-pressing twice his own weight. OUT!! He nearly blacks out with the effort of pulling.