The Great And Secret Show Part 49

"My gla.s.ses," he whispered. "They're in my s.h.i.+rt."

"I'll get them."

She moved away from him in search of the clothes he'd dropped. He squinted at the scene. The police barricades, and the cave beyond: the abyss where Buddy Vance was still lying. It had seemed so natural to make love here in the full light of day. Now it seemed perverse. There was a dead man lying down there somewhere, in the same darkness where their fathers had waited all those years.

"Here," she said.

Her voice startled him. "It's OK," she murmured. He dug his gla.s.ses from the pocket of his s.h.i.+rt and hooked them on. There were indeed lights in between the trees, but their source was undefined.

Jo-Beth not only had some luck with his s.h.i.+rt, but with the rest of their clothes. She started to put on her underwear. Even now, with his heart thumping hard for quite another reason, the sight of her aroused him. She caught his look, and kissed him.

"I don't see anyone," he said, still keeping his voice low.

"Maybe I was wrong," she said, "I just thought I heard somebody."

"Ghosts," he said, then regretted inviting the thought into his head. He began to pull on his shorts. As he did he caught a movement between the trees. "Oh s.h.i.+t," he murmured.

"I see," she said. He looked towards her. She was looking in the opposite direction. Following her gaze he saw motion there too, in the shadows of the canopy. And another movement. And another.

"They're on all sides," he said, pulling on his s.h.i.+rt and reaching for his jeans. "Whatever they are they've got us surrounded."

He stood up, pins and needles in his legs, his thoughts turning desperately to how he might arm himself. Could he trash one of the barricades perhaps, and find a weapon in the wreckage? He glanced at Jo-Beth, who'd almost finished dressing, then back at the trees.

From beneath the canopy a diminutive figure emerged, trailing a phantom light. Suddenly it all came clear. The figure was that of Benny Patterson, whom Howie had last seen in the street outside Lois Knapp's house, calling after him. There was no sunny smile on his face now. Indeed his face was somehow blurred, his features like a picture taken by a palsied photographer. The light he'd brought from his TV appearances came with him, however. That was the radiance that haunted the trees.

"Howie," he said.

His voice, like his face, had lost its individuality. He was holding on to being Benny, but only just.

"What do you want?" Howie asked.

"We've been looking for you."

"Don't go near him," Jo-Beth said. "It's one of the dreams."

"I know," Howie said. "They don't mean us any harm. Do you, Benny?"

"Of course not."

"So show yourselves," Howie said, addressing the whole ring of trees. "I want to see you."

They did as they were instructed, stepping from the corner of the trees on every side. All of them, like Benny, had undergone a change since he'd seen them at the Knapp house, their honed and polished personalities smudged, their dazzling smiles dimmed. They looked more like each other than not, smeared forms of light who held on to the remains of ident.i.ties only tenuously. The imaginations of the Grovers had conceived them, and shaped them, but once gone from their creator's company they slid towards a plainer condition: that of the light that had emanated from Fletcher's body as he'd died at the Mall. This was his army, his hallucigenia, and Howie didn't need to ask them what they'd come here searching for. Him. He was the rabbit from Fletcher's hat; the conjuror's purest creation. He'd fled before their demands the previous night, but they'd sought him out nevertheless, determined to have him as their leader.

"I know what you want from me," he said. "But I can't supply it. This isn't my war."

He surveyed the a.s.sembly as he spoke, distinguis.h.i.+ng faces he'd seen at the Knapp house, despite their decay into light. Cowboys, surgeons, soap-opera queens and game-show hosts. Besides these there were many he hadn't seen at Lois's party. One form of light that had been a werewolf; several that might have been comic-book heroes; several more, four in fact, who had been incarnations of Jesus, two bleeding light from brow, side, hands and feet; another dozen who looked as though they'd stepped from an X-rated movie, their bodies wet with come and sweat. There was a balloon man, colored scarlet; and Tarzan; and Krazy Kat. And mingled with these identifiable deities, others who'd been private imaginings, called, he guessed, from the wish-list of those Fletcher's light had touched. Lost spouses, whose pa.s.sing no other lover could replace; a face seen on a street whom their dreamers had never had the nerve to approach. All of them, real or unreal, bland or Technicolored, touchstones. The true stuff of wors.h.i.+p. There was something undeniably moving about their existence. But he and Jo-Beth had been pa.s.sionate in their desire to stay apart from this war; to preserve what was between them from taint or harm. That ambition hadn't changed.

Before he could reiterate the point one of the number he couldn't name, a woman in early middle age, stepped out of the ranks to speak.

"Your father's spirit's in all of us," she said. "If you turn your back on us, you turn your back on him."

"It's not as simple as that," he told her. "I've got other people to consider." He extended his hand to Jo-Beth, who rose to stand beside him. "You know who this is. Jo-Beth McGuire. Daughter of the Jaff. Fletcher's enemy, and therefore, if I understand you right, your enemy. But let me tell you...she's the first person I ever met in my life...I can really say I love. I put her before everything. You. Fletcher. This d.a.m.n war."

Now a third voice rose from the ranks.

"It was my error-"

Howie looked round to see the blue-eyed cowboy, Mel Knapp's creation, moving forward. "My error thinking you wanted her killed. I regret it. If you don't wish harm done to her-"

"Don't wish harm? My G.o.d, she's worth ten of Fletcher! Value her as I value her or you can all go to h.e.l.l."

There was a resounding silence.

"n.o.body's arguing," Benny said.

"I hear."

"So you'll lead us?"

"Oh Jesus."

"The Jaff's on the Hill," the woman said. "About to use the Art."

"How do you know?"

"We're Fletcher's spirit," the cowboy said. "We know the Jaff's purpose."

"And you know how to stop him?"

"No," the woman returned. "But we have to try. Quiddity must be preserved."

"And you think I can help? I'm no tactician."

"We're decaying," Benny said. Even in the brief time since he'd appeared his facial features had become more smudged. "Getting...dreamy. We need someone to keep us to our purpose."

"He's right," said the woman. "We're not here long. Many of us won't make it through to morning. We have to do what we can. Quickly."

Howie sighed. He'd let Jo-Beth's hand slip from his when she'd stood up. He took it again.

"What do I do?" he asked her. "Help me."

"You do what feels right."

"What feels right..."

"You said to me once, you wished you'd known Fletcher better. Maybe-"

"What? Say it."

"I don't like the idea of us going up against the Jaff with these...dreams as an army...but maybe doing as your father would have done is the only way to be true to him. And...be free from him."

He looked at her with fresh understanding. She had a grasp of his deepest confusions, and could see a way through the maze to a clear place, where Fletcher and the Jaff would have no hold on either of them. But payment had to be made first. She'd paid: losing her family for him. It was his turn now.

"All right," he said to the a.s.sembly. "We'll go up the Hill."

Jo-Beth squeezed his hand.

"Good," she said.

"You want to come?"

"I have to."

"I wanted so much for us to be out of this."

"We will be," she said. "And if we don't escape it...if something happens to one or both of us...we've had our time."

"Don't say that."

"It's more than your momma had, or mine," she reminded him. "More than most people here. Howie, I love you."

He put his arms around her, and hugged her to him, glad that Fletcher's Spirit, albeit in a hundred different shapes, was there to see.

I suppose I'm ready to die, he thought. Or as ready as I'll ever be.

X.

Eve had left the room at the top of the stairs breathless and terrified. She'd glimpsed Grillo getting up and crossing to the door and Lamar intercepting him. Then the door was slammed in her face. She waited long enough to hear the Jokemeister's death-cough, then she hurried down the flight to raise the alarm.

Though darkness had now descended upon the house there were more lights burning outside than in: colored floods illuminating the various exhibits she and Grillo had wandered among earlier. The wash of mingled colors, scarlet, green, yellow, blue and violet, lit her way to the landing where she and Lamar had encountered Sam Sagansky. He was still there, with his wife. They seemed not to have moved at all, except to cast their eyes towards the ceiling.

"Sam!" Eve said, hurrying to him. "Sam!" Panic, and the speed of her descent, had made her breathless. Her description of the horrors she'd seen in the room above came in a series of gasps and non sequiturs.

"...You have to stop him...you never saw anything...terrible things...Sam, look at me...Sam, look!..."

Sam didn't oblige. His whole posture was one of complete pa.s.sivity.

"For Christ's sake, Sam, what are you on?"

Giving up on him she turned and sought help elsewhere among the loiterers. There were perhaps twenty guests gathered around. None of them had moved since she'd appeared, either to help or hinder her. None, now she looked at them, was even looking in her direction. Like Sagansky and his wife they all had their eyes turned ceilingward, as if in expectation. Panic hadn't taken Eve's wits from her. She needed no more than a scanning of this crowd to realize that they'd be of no use to her. They knew perfectly well what was going on a floor above them: that was why they turned their eyes up like dogs awaiting judgment. The Jaff had them on a leash.

She started down to the ground floor, clinging to the banister, her pace slowing as breathlessness and stiff joints took their toll. The band had finished playing but somebody was still at the piano, which comforted her. Rather than waste energy shouting from the stairs she waited until she was at the bottom to b.u.t.tonhole somebody. The front door was open. Roch.e.l.le was standing on the step. A party of half a dozen, Merv Turner and his wife, Gilbert Kind and his girlfriend of the moment, plus two women she didn't recognize, were making their farewells. Turner saw her coming, and a look of distaste came over his fat face. He returned his gaze to Roch.e.l.le, speeding up his departure speech.

"...so sad," Eve caught him saying. "But very moving. Thank you so much for sharing this with us."

"Yes-" his wife began, but was cut off before she could offer plat.i.tudes of her own by Turner, who, glancing back at Eve, hurried away into the open air.

"Merv-" his wife said, clearly irritated.

"No time!" Turner replied. "It's been wonderful, Roch.e.l.le. Hurry up, Gil. The limos are waiting. We're going on ahead."

"No, wait," said the girlfriend. "Oh, s.h.i.+t, Gilbert, he's going without us."

"Please excuse us," Kind said to Roch.e.l.le.

"Wait!" Eve called after him. "Gilbert, wait/"

Her call was too loud to be ignored, though to judge by the look on Kind's face when he turned back to her he'd have preferred it that way. He put a less than radiant smile over his feelings and opened his arms, not in welcome but in a shrug.

"Isn't it always the way?" he called to her. "We didn't get to talk, Eve. So sorry. So sorry. Next time." He took hold of the girlfriend's arm. "We'll call you," he said. "Won't we, hon?" He blew her a kiss. "You look wonderful!" he said, and hurried after Turner.

The two women followed, not even concerning themselves to make their goodbyes to Roch.e.l.le. She didn't seem to care. If common sense hadn't already told Eve that Roch.e.l.le was in league with the monster on the upper floor, she saw evidence of it now. As soon as the guests had gone from the door she rolled her eyes up in an all too recognizable fas.h.i.+on, her muscles relaxing so that she lay against the door jamb as though barely able to stand upright. No help to be had there, Eve thought, and headed through to the lounge.

Again, the only illumination came from outside the house, the garish colors of the Carnivalia. The light was bright enough for Eve to see that in the half hour she'd been detained by Lamar the party had wound down almost to a dead stop. Fully half of the guests had gone, sensing perhaps the change that had come over the gathering as more and more people had been touched by the evil on the upper floor. Another group was in the act of departing as she got to the door, bustle and loud talk covering their anxiety. She knew none of them, but wasn't about to let that stop her. She took hold of a young man's arm.

"You've got to help me," she said.

She knew the face from the billboards on Sunset. The boy was Rick Lobo. His prettiness had made him a sudden star, though his love scenes looked like lesbianism.

"What's wrong?" he said.

"There's something upstairs," she said. "It's got a friend of mine-"

The face was only capable of a smile and a sultry pout; with those responses inappropriate, all it could do was look blankly back at her.

"Please come," she said.

"She's drunk," somebody in Lobo's party said, not caring to conceal the accusation.

Eve looked the way of the speaker. The whole pack of brats was young. None of them over twenty-five. And most, she guessed, well high. But untouched by the Jaff.

"I'm not drunk," Eve said. "Please listen-"

"Come on, Rick," a girl in the party said.

"Do you want to come with us?" Lobo asked.

"Rick!" the girl said.

"No. I want you to come upstairs-"

The girl laughed. "Bet you do," she said. "Come on, Rickv."

"I have to go. Sorry," Lobo said. "You should go too. This party's a b.u.mmer."

The boy's incomprehension was solid as a brick wall, but Eve wasn't about to let go.