Totentanz (22 page)

"Look at me," Ash commanded, and Jeff Scott
looked into his face. The white, pasty mask melted away into a
silver disk, a pool of water or a liquid mirror, and Jeff Scott saw
his own face as it was now, half-living and half-dead. He felt fire
course down his body and saw the flesh and blood stripped away from
one side. "Stop!" he screamed, but the pain would not cease. He was
half-bone and half-flesh.

"This is what you are," Ash
spat, pointing contemptuously at the skeletal half. "This is what
you have been for a hundred and twenty years, since that gallows
rope choked your breath way. A
dead
man." Ash stretched a talon-like hand toward the
sky. "All of this is gone for you: all of this is dead to you. You
can't touch or feel it. You might as well be maggots and soil for
all the difference it makes to you. You're a worm, a pile of
filth." He pushed at Jeff Scott, pushed at the bones on the left
side of his body, and Jeff Scott felt the hand there, cold against
cold bone. He collapsed, and Ash's face hovered over him. "Your
hate sealed you long ago," Ash said quietly. "Do you still think I
fear you?"

Jeff Scott looked into that non-face, into
the eyes that were puddles of blue emptiness, at that red mouth,
and said, "You're afraid of something."

A crack appeared deep in the mask. There was
fear in that blank emptiness, in those ice-blank eyes, and for a
hushed tick of time, Jeff Scott saw Ash's face for the mask it
really was—the hard, vicious play-face held over something
fathomless and cruelly sure, yet deathly frightened.

Ash's bladelike lips parted, and he screamed
into Jeff Scott's face. The cry climbed to an impossible pitch of
rage. Jeff saw the face above the mouth contort, the outstretched,
arching hand ready to fall upon him. . . .

A moment of infinity passed.

"No," Ash said finally. "That's what you
want.” He rose, leaving Jeff Scott on the ground before him. "I
won't give you that. But I will give you this."

Ash turned to the gallows and made a curt
motion to the man at the top. Poundridge, who had been watching the
scene below with fascination, almost forgetting that he was a
player in the drama—thinking, with an insubstantial spark of hope,
that possibly this was a form of entertainment after all, some part
of the amusement park designed to give the customer a real thrill,
something to remember for a long time—was abruptly pulled back to
his situation. The rope was still around his neck. He still stood
on the gallows; the pleading in his defense that had gone on below
had not worked to his favor. The fist in his stomach gripped
harder. He knew that the moment was upon him, the reprieve past. He
saw his chubby ancestor's trembling but ineluctable hands tighten
on the lever to the trap door, and he cried out for pardon, to be
let free. Like James Cagney, he thought insanely, at the end of
that picture where they drag him to the electric chair screaming
and pleading. Panic seized him even more fiercely, and he began to
wail.

"Please don't do this! I
haven't done anything! Please! Oh, God,
please
!"

The fat ancestor's hands trembled like leaves
in the wind.

Jeff Scott tried to raise himself, but
failed. As he fell back against the cold ground, Poundridge became
hysterical. He felt his bowels empty, and at that moment the trap
door pulled open.

"The sins of the fathers," Ash said, his eyes
growing bright.

Jonathan Poundridge cried out as the earth
was pulled away from him. He fell a long way, past row on row of
his own face, each growing thinner, each silently turned toward
him. He watched the dissipation of a race of men. And then he
heard rather than felt a loud snap, and everything in his body was
on fire, including his shrieking voice, which he heard no more.

"I don't want to go in," Jack said. There was
a quality in his voice that promised it would take a lot of
convincing to change his mind.

Big black clouds rammed across the sky
overhead, and the wind hissed like snakes through the trees. It
felt more like October than July. Though the low white churchyard
gates were swung open, they formed as much of a barrier in Jack's
mind as if there had been solid rock before him.

"We've got to," Reggie said. "This is where
it wanted me to go." As he took a tentative step forward, an
animal-like light came into his eyes. And when he said, "Come on,
Jack," Jack knew he meant it.

Jack had heard Reggie talk that way before,
in that suddenly serious, non-kid voice that implied, "Don't be a
jerk, just do it." Now there was an urgency in the tone that Jack
had never heard before. It wasn't fear in Reggie's voice, but a
thing much worse, a thing that made Jack even more frightened than
he already was: eagerness.

"Now I'll finally know," Reggie said. "No
more dreams; I'll finally know." He turned. "Don't worry,
Jack."

Jack offered a weak smile.
Reggie entered the cemetery, passing the short line of trees that
led to the upslope of green grass and gravestones. A neat black
road wound like an
Alice in
Wonderland
street, curving in an S up and
away from them, around the perfectly sculpted hills.

"Wow," Reggie said, and Jack, his hands
thrust into his pockets against the chill, whipping wind, couldn't
help muttering the same word.

In front of each headstone, each plaque, each
featureless slab, they saw a neatly dug hole, six feet by three
feet, with a clod of turned earth next to it. It was as if all the
grave diggers in the world had convened at once to leave their
mark.

"I don't believe this," Jack said, putting
his hands deeper into his pockets.

Reggie was silent. There was a slightly
crooked smile on his lips, as if he had grown older in that moment.
"Now I'm sure," he said. "I didn't want to believe it, but now I
do. Ever since that amusement park arrived, that shadow man, the
eyes. . . ." As he talked, he began to walk up the hill, past the
first of the open graves. Jack followed.

"Can you smell it?" Reggie asked, stopping in
front of a deep, dark hole and sniffing at the air. "Can you?"

"No," Jack started to say, but then there it
was, a sickly sweet odor like over-baked bread.

"Can you taste it?" Reggie asked.

A taste was there: sharp and bitter on the
front of the tongue, hard and stale at the back of the mouth. Cold,
like a bad, chill wind that made the teeth ache.

Jack yelped with fright as Reggie leaped down
into the nearest hole and stood there regarding him.

"It's stronger down here.
Can't you feel it?" Reggie asked, and now Jack
could
feel it, a dull, sodden
feeling that mixed with the taste and the smell. "Part of them is
here and part of them isn't."

"I don't like this, Reggie," Jack said, not
trying to hide the shakiness in his voice.

Reggie climbed out of the hole and stood
beside him.

"This is why the eyes wanted me to come
here," he said. His face was lit with purpose and inner fire.
"Don't you see? I'm finally going to know what's over that ledge.
I'm finally going to know what I have to do! Stay with me," he
said, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder.

"I can't," Jack said. His skin was crawling
with damp, dark feelings; he wanted to run to a place where it
wasn't gray and chilly, where the sun didn't look so lifeless,
where the clouds were clouds and not looming dark shapes ready to
pounce, where there were no dark holes, no white gates to swing
shut and keep you in. From off in the distance, the calliope music
came drifting to him, and now it soothed him. His skin was alive
with feelings, as if things were crawling and sliding all over it,
gray, wet, damp things that wanted to force him to the ground and
drag him into the nearest yawning cavity.

"Let's go to the amusement park," he said,
his voice husky and breathless.

"Not yet," Reggie said.

"There's light there, everyone else is
there." He looked with a vague longing at the soft, glowing lights
beyond the trees. "My mother and sister are there."

Reggie grabbed him by the shoulders. "Fight
it, Jack! It's the calliope music. Fight it like you did before!
You were the only one in the whole town to find a way to beat that
calliope, the only one brave enough to fight it—so keep on doing
it!"

"My mother, my sister—"

"Your mother and sister are dead! They were
in holes in this cemetery two days ago! Stay with me, Jack!"

Reggie held Jack's arm and walked on.

They passed through a universe of open
graves, up through time, through the great historic mass of
Montvale's dead, and still the feelings, the crawling, slippery
feelings over Jack's body and brain, became stronger.

"No more!" Jack cried, trying to break free
from Reggie's grasp.

Reggie held firm, pointing to the mausoleum,
the Tomb of the Unknown Man, a dark-gray box at the top of the
"That's where the eyes want me to go," he said. "That's where I
have to go."

"Oh, God. I'm scared!" Jack cried.

There were trees close by, as manicured as
the lawns and roadway were. The entire world was gray. Close
together, the two boys climbed the knoll. Even before they reached
the mausoleum, Reggie knew the door would be wide open. It made a
dark outline against the grayer sky.

"We've got to go in there," Reggie said,
drawing his flashlight from his pack. After a moment, shaking,
Jack followed suit. The twin beams laced through each other, then
settled on the gaping black cavity of the vault's door.

"Remember all those nights
we sat out here, you and Pup and me, alone in the dark, telling
stories?" Reggie asked. "Remember how hard we tried to scare
ourselves? It was all phony, and I knew it. We were playing games.
All the time we were pretending to be scared, we were laughing
because we weren't scared at all. But this is real, Jack." His
voice changed, became lower, filled with awe. "Can't you feel it,
Jack? Can't you feel what's coming out of that room? It's something
you could catch in a box and listen to. It's
real
. Not lights out with rubber
spiders in the dark. That's the real thing in there, what I've been
looking for." He stared at his friend, his eyes wide with wonder.
"Can't you feel it, Jack? That's
it
."

Jack felt it, and he froze like a rabbit in a
headlight. It would come out and get him; it would hit him on the
head and splash his brains all over the pavement in front of this
crypt; it would—

"I'm going," he said.

"Jack. . . ."

"I have to go."

"Jack, we have to go in there, we have to
know—"

"I don't want to know!"

Reggie's grip tightened on Jack's arm, trying
to pull him through the door into the vault. With each forced step,
Jack's terror grew. Suddenly he lashed out in panic, striking
Reggie in the face with the flat of his hand. Reggie held on.

Shouting with rage, Jack hit Reggie with his
fist. The two boys went down, rolling like wrestlers on the perfect
lawn in front of the crypt. Reggie was losing, and then he
abruptly rolled on top of his friend and pinned him down by sitting
on his chest, his knees pinning down Jack's arms and flailing
hands.

"Let me go!" Jack screamed, his voice filled
with panic.

"Jack! Listen to me!"

"Oh, God, let me go!" He bucked upward,
trying to throw Reggie off.

"Listen to me!" Reggie shouted into Jack's
face.

"No!" Jack screamed back. "Let me go! Let me
go”

Jack lurched upward, throwing Reggie to one
side. He grabbed at Reggie's arms and pulled them away, hurling
Reggie to the ground as he got to his feet. His face was wild; his
pack had come undone, spilling its contents halfway out onto the
ground. He stood over Reggie for a moment, trying to decide whether
or not to jump on him and pummel him. He was crying. He took a few
steps backward, his flashlight showing a long, monstrous shadow
behind him.

"I . . . told . . . you." Jack gasped, "to
leave me . . . alone.”

Reggie made no move but asked desperately,
"Please listen—"

"No!" Jack was breathing in long, sobbing
gasps, looking wildly around as though he expected something to
jump out of the shadows. "You've been there, Reggie! You know what
it's like. I don't. I'm scared!" He looked at the soft light of the
amusement park over the trees. "I want my mother and sister!"

Reggie got to his feet, but Jack was already
a good twenty yards away, looking behind him as he stumbled
backward. It seemed as though at any moment he might break into a
run.

"Don't," Reggie pleaded, but Jack said. "Too
late," and then he lurched around and began to run down the
winding, perfect pavement toward the front gates.

"Jack!" Reggie shouted, running after him,
but it was no use. With long strides, Jack widened the distance
between them. At the bottom of the hill, Reggie slowed to a panting
halt.

"Momma! Amy . . ." Jack's plaintive voice
reached him, and a chill went up Reggie's back.

Something close by shifted, a shadow or the
branch of a tree. He spun around to see a looming shape towering
above him before it resolved itself into the trunk of a leafless
maple. For a moment he thought he saw the two immense eyes that had
left him at the gate of the cemetery; they seemed to fly up and
pause over the mausoleum before fading into nothingness—but it was
only two faint stars pushing their way through the bright sky of
the amusement park. I am with you, the eyes had promised, but now
they were gone.

A shiver passed over him, and, feeling very
alone, he walked back up the hill to stand once more before the
cavernous door of the vault.