Authors: Peter Straub
An old man in a Harry Truman shirt and a baseball cap was at the far end of the lot, walking toward him and the green car.
'Mister!'
Tom shouted, and the old man peered up at him in fright. 'Hey . . . I need . . . '
The old man was waving his fists at him, and the revulsion and disgust and fear on the old man's face made Tom step backward. The old man screamed something at him, and Tom turned around and ran.
When he reached the end of the lot and was just about to pound along the sidewalk, he felt like he had fallen over a cliff: his legs went out from under him, the city whisked away, and he rolled over onto wet leaves. It was night again, and the air smelled different. He was back in the woods. When he picked himself up he saw that he was on the other side of the marshy clearing. He had to go on.
Not
Marcus —
that was not lazy, cheerful Marcus slumped in the green car. That man was too fat, too old. He shook his head, not believing it but knowing that the man had been Marcus. A moment later he turned away from the empty clearing.
A worn little path ted toward the fourth light; roots stubbed his feet, black arms reached toward him. The woods now were filled with gibbering and leering faces. Abranch rustled, and an eye winked at him — Then fireflies, a series of little eyes, danced up and whirled around. Between these flickerings, darting observations, he saw the next light.
Four.
Only two more to go.
Tom approached the light nearly on tiptoe. He remembered: The torch was hung over a wide fiat shelf of rock, the most stagelike of all the little arenas in the woods. Here it was where Rose had enacted the fable about the beginning of all stories on their first night in Shadowland.
Here too something waited for him.
He crept toward the rock shelf. Yes, someone waited for him — he caught a glimpse through the branches of a cannonball head. Snail; or Thorn, with his Halloween face. Tom edged sideways, trying to see the face. A red ear came into sight, pink flesh under a stubbly haircut. At last he saw the rest of the ponderous, studying face.
Oh, God.
He stepped on a stick, and it snapped as loudly as a bone. Dave Brick lifted his head and uncrossed his legs. He was sitting on a metal school chair. 'Tommy?' he said; his voice was plaintive and lost. 'Please, Tommy.'
Tom stepped out onto the rock. Brick sat facing him twelve feet away, wearing the old tweed jacket Tom had lent him. 'You left me, Tommy,' Dave Brick complained. 'You chose flight. You should go back and find me.'
'I wish,' Tom said. 'But it's too late now.'
'I'm still there, Tommy. I'm waiting. But you chose wings. Go back and find me. You saved a bass fiddle and some magic tricks. Now it's my turn.' Brick sounded forlorn and slightly peevish.
'It's too late,' Tom said. He thought he might be losing his mind; thought of his mind giving up and walking away.
'You can do magic. Save me. I want to be
saved,
Tommy. Something fell on me . . . and somebody hit me . . . and Mr. Broome told me not to move . . . ' Brick looked ready to cry; then he was crying.
'Oh, don't,' Tom said, 'I can't take it. I can't handle it. It's too much.'
'Del
took the owl,' Brick said through his tears. 'Isaw. He made everything happen. Ask him. After you go back and save me, Tommy. It's all his fault, Tommy. Because you're supposed to get the owl chair. Ask him.'
'You're not Dave Brick,' Tom said. There were wrinkles in the face; the hands were huge and powerful. He ran across the edge of the slab, and the thing in the chair began to howl.
'You can be saved, Tommy! He can save you! Like you can save me!'
Tom ran from the voice deep into the forest. He was crying himself now, whether from shock or outrage or horror he did not know. Was Coleman Collins telling Rose about this right now, chortling? Or had she known it was going to happen when she blew him a kiss? No — that could not be true. Running, he grazed a tree, staggered and stopped. Where was he? Dave Brick's look-alike howled far off to his left.
Tom struck out blindly through the moonlit forest, going in the direction where the trees were least dense. He still saw faces in the patterns of the branches, but now they looked at him in horror. Leaving Dave Brick behind, he had become a monster.
Five.
There it was, just as he had known it would be. A flaring torch, not an electric light; not the same fifth light, but the one he was supposed to find. He felt like crying again. Then he had a premonition. He would see Rose standing on the dark grass, petting a wolf . . . Rose with her teeth sharpened . . .
All those nightmares, back at school, all those dreadful visions: they had come from him. Beginning in him, born in him, they had spread out to infect everyone he knew. Even back then, when he had thought magic was a few deft card tricks, he had been on his way here. The torch flared, visible between giant black growths. Tom shuddered and stepped forward.
First he saw the dead wolf. The sword wound in its belly gaped. Tom suddenly smelled mustard flowers, smelled Rose's faint perfume lacing delicately through. The wound in the wolfs belly gaped because the wolf had been nailed to the tree by its paws, and gravity was trying to haul it earthward. It hung just below the torch. 'Rose . . . ' he said. 'Please . . . '
A man in black stepped out of the woods. Black cape, black hat shielding his face. He carried a bloodied swordand pointed it across twenty feet of open space at Tom's chest.
Have you worlds within you?
'No.' He did not want these worlds.
Do you want dominion?
'No.'
He saw the treasure within you, child.
'And he hated it.'
Honor the Book.
'I don't even know it.'
You belong to the Order.
'I don't belong to anything.' Tom feared that the man with the invisible face would run him through, but instead he said,
You know what you are, child.
The sword burst into flame. The man swung it to one side and pointed the way he must go. The way led straight to the sixth light, now extinguished.
7
In the dark glade Del lay curled on the ground in his sleeping bag. His hands pillowed his head. When his own sleeping bag was unrolled and he had slipped in, Tom lay on the ground, feeling every hump and depression fail to fit his body. He heard a cricket's
chirp-chirp,
a sound of mechanical and idiot joy. Tom rolled on his back, adjusting his body to avoid the most prominent bumps, and looked up at a full moon. It looked damaged, a battered old hull.
You know what you are.
He turned his head, and his eyes found a tree split in half by lightning.
Del stirred and groaned.
Help me, Rose. Get me out of this.
8
An animal was breathing on him, bathing his face in warm foul air. He shuddered into wakefulness; the animal retreated. Tom could smell its fear of him. Now it was hours later: the moon was gone. He could see only thewhite oval of Del's face, ten feet away. But though he could see nothing, he felt around him the presence of a hundred alien lives — animal lives. In the invisible trees was a drumfire of wingbeats.
'No,'
he whispered. He closed his eyes.
'Go away.'
Something rustled toward him. No fear came from it, only a cold self-possession. In the invisible trees, the hundreds of birds moved.
You know what you are, boy.
Tom shook his head, clamped his eyes shut.
There are treasures within you.
He tried to stop his ears.
What is the first law of magic?
The snake waited patiently for him to answer. He would not.
We have no doubts about you, boy.
Tom shook his head so hard his neck hurt.
You will learn everything you need to know.
Then something else approached, some animal he could not identify. The snake-furled rapidly away, and Tom clamped his eyes shut even more firmly. He did not at all want to see it — the same searching, grasping feeling came from it as from the little figure down on Mesa Lane, back at the start of everything. This animal had about it an air of irredeemable wickedness; not cool and insinuating and impersonal like the snake, it was deeply evil. But it spoke in a thin and graceful voice which hid a hint of a chuckle. It was a mad voice, and the animal was no animal, but whatever the man with the sword had been pretending to be.
You will betray Del.
'No.'
You will stay here forever, and drive Del away.
'No.'
You are welcomed, boy.
At once all the birds left the trees. The noise was huge and rushing, almost oceanic. Tom covered his face: he thought of them falling on him, picking him to ribbons of flesh. Del sobbed in his sleep. Then the birds were gone.
Tom rocked himself down into his bag.
9
When he woke up, it was with a realization. If Rose had been right about the date, his mother must have had his letter for at least a few days. Very soon it would be time to run. He rolled over and saw Del sitting on the grass at the far side of the glade, leaning against a tree. 'Good morning,' Tom said.