Totentanz (32 page)

"Do you want to see the exact moment when Pup
Malamut becomes mine? Would that make you happy?" His laughter
stopped, and he said harshly, "You think you went through this when
that milk truck hit your bicycle, but you didn't. You saw only the
very beginning, and I'll make sure your departure is longer and
harder than this foolish boy's ever could be. You're a special case
for me, and I'm going to enjoy you." He moved closer to Reggie,
grabbing him by the hair and dragging him over to Pup's body.
Holding him by the back of the neck, he thrust his face down toward
Pup.

"Look closely, boy," he hissed, his sickle
mouth close, as wet as a snake's, to Reggie's ear. "More than this
will be yours."

Pup Malamut, the skin all but shorn from his
face, bare patches of smooth white skull showing beneath his flesh,
thrust himself up horribly on his elbows and tried to reach out at
Reggie. "I . . . don't want . . . to . . . die," he gasped. His
eyes were huge in their white sockets, his raw hands, as the body
fell back, reaching convulsively for Reggie. "Don't . . . let . . .
me . . . die . . . please."

Reggie tried to turn away, but Ash's grip
held him firmly. He closed his eyes, and then Pup's hands, finding
hidden, desperate strength, were upon him, pulling him down.

"Please. . .

Reggie opened his eyes to see Pup's ruined
and torn visage mere inches from his own face: it pulsated with
escaping warmth, and Pup clasped Reggie tight about the neck.

"God, please!"
Pup said, and then his tongue lashed out of his
mouth and his teeth bared and he tried to bite Reggie.

Reggie threw himself away from Ash's reaching
grasp and fell off to one side. Pup began to scream again.

Laughing, Ash said, "Don't let anyone tell
you I don't have compassion," and then Reggie heard a horrified,
screeching wail, and when he looked at Pup, there was only a mass
of white and red bits.

"There," Ash said, his face flushed dark, the
word coming out of him like a tiny gasp. He stood regarding the
remains of what had been Pup Malamut, staring at them as if
remembering warmly what had just occurred, and then he finally
spoke to Reggie.

"I hope you enjoyed what you saw."

Reggie looked at him in simple awe, as though
he had just discovered Ash's secret. "You own only one moment," he
said.

Ash regarded him mildly. His skin had resumed
its normal pasty color. His pitted eyes gave away the interest with
which he was following Reggie's words.

"That's all you are," Reggie went on. "You're
only that one brief second when life leaves the body, nothing
more." His words were a revelation to himself. "That's the only
power you have.”

Still maintaining his
placid demeanor, Ash's voice betrayed the anger he held. "Is that
what you think?" He took time to draw one of his cigarettes out and
light it. "Have you thought about what it would be like without
Reggie Carson? What will happen when you are no more?" His voice
was rising in angry degrees. "Have you thought about what it will
be like for Reggie Carson when he falls over that ledge, when
that
one tiny moment
comes?
"

Darkness assaulted Reggie. And coldness. He
was in his own body, and he saw the world begin to fall away. He
saw the tunnel, up there above him, but he had fallen away from
that too. He must have fallen into a hole. It was cold and damp.
And then he felt moist earth around him, smelled putrefaction, felt
tiny things crawling over him and into him, and when he moved his
hands over his body, he felt his body give way, cold parts of his
flesh sliding loose from his bones and dropping into his hands, the
bones themselves softening, rotting. He was Reggie Carson, and he
was decomposing, being eaten away

He was
Reggie Carson
, and he was rotting
away!

His mind was in turmoil.
Once again he was before Ash, and he wanted to lie in the dust
where he was, to curl up like a baby and not move. Ash was right.
There was nothing in him that told him Ash was lying.
Reggie Carson would be no more!
No matter what the warming eyes had said to him,
no matter how they had filled him with courage and the will to do
what he had to do, he knew now that this was the truth—he, Reggie,
would be dead.

Ash was laughing. Whatever
caution and doubt he had possessed about Reggie was gone. "I knew
there was nothing special here," he taunted. "I don't know why I
ever thought there was. Do you know," he continued, his tone
growing malicious and proud, "that you
bothered
me? I've been among the
slime on this earth long before your conception was even a dream.
I've been here since the first stupid, crawling, filth-ridden human
crawled on all fours to hit his brother with a rock from behind.
When the first cells divided after being struck by lightning, I was
there, watching while one of them broke and died, turning back into
dead water. And I laughed. I've always been here, waiting to drink
and feed from this empty, senseless thing you call life. I've
enjoyed every minute of it." He spoke with disgust. "And to think
that you bothered me."

He turned away, and then Reggie heard his
name called, but not by Ash. He looked up sleepily from the dust,
pushed himself onto his hands and knees.

He saw Ash grinning at him. Then from behind
Ash he heard the voice, a pleading "Reggie . . ." that was weak and
hopeful and full of despair. He stood up shakily, brushing the dust
from his body. Rips in the tent canvas showed the bright world
outside.

Ash stepped aside. Crazy Frances was standing
there, and behind her there was another person whom Reggie could
not make out. He felt very tired. He heard his name called again,
and then Crazy Frances stepped to one side, revealing that the
other figure was his mother.

She was kneeling, and Crazy Frances rested
her hand on her shoulder. His mother looked confused and tired. She
stared at Reggie as if she didn't believe he was really there.

"Reggie?"

"I'm all right, Mom."

She tried to rise but could not; either
Frances' hand was holding her down or she didn't have the strength
to get up. Ash again lit one of his black cigarettes.

"As you can see, that nasty business with the
horses on the carousel hasn't happened," he commented.

"Don't hurt her," Reggie said.

"Can I do otherwise? Do I want to do
otherwise?" Ash took a long pull on his cigarette and then quickly
tossed it aside; it smoked lazily, giving off black puffs from the
floor.

"Frances," he said softly, cajolingly.
Frances stepped forward, taking her hand from Reggie's mother's
shoulder.

"Frances," Ash said, "kill the woman."

Frances turned to Reggie's mother, and Ash
began to laugh, low and building.

Frances
, a voice called from above, and Frances looked up. Reggie
saw that the eyes were there, as huge as dishes, as if they
contained the whole world.

Frances
, the eyes said gently,
He who sent
me is the resurrection and the life: if you believe in Him, though
you were dead yet shall you live. And whosoever believeth in Him
shall never die.

"He who saves," Frances sobbed, though no
tears formed in her eyes. "The North Star. Ash lied to me." She was
telling this to herself, and a great cry broke from her.

He who saves was your veil, the voice said,
and He is with you now. Ash owns you no longer. Go, and mix your
dust with the sands of the earth.

Frances' cry of despair changed to another
kind of cry, and a great weight was drawn from her mind, a leaded
veil lifted. She held her hands out, and then her body turned
instantly to dust that was borne away on soft, scattering
winds.

I told you I was with
you,
the eyes said to Reggie.

A door opened in Reggie's mind, flooding him
with light, and he saw what he must do. He knew now that there
could never have been any other way. The fear that had possessed
him vanished; he wondered why it had ever existed. When he looked
up, the eyes were gone because they were within him now, and he
heard Ash's scream of rage and saw Ash's face looming over him.

"Kiss me," Reggie said, and he put his mouth
on Ash's mouth.

Ash's eyes widened in surprise, and the word
"No" tried to make its way to his voice. Reggie held tight. He
reached into the shadow man's coat to grasp his body to him, but
his hands went into nothingness. There was a terrible black, cold
weight upon him, but Reggie would not let go. Then Ash's mouth
began to grow. Reggie felt it moving away from his own mouth on all
sides, the thin, burning lips stretching outward. Ash was hissing
with rage, and when Reggie opened his eyes, he saw that Ash's face
filled his whole vision. The head had pulled back, away from him.
It was indistinct, and now, behind it, Reggie could barely make out
the sides of the tent and sky beyond. The tent was falling to
pieces, and the sky was not red now—it was blue.

Ash opened his mouth to shout something, but
only a low, pain-filled hiss escaped. When he grabbed for Reggie,
his hands would not reach. They had become the hands they always
had been beneath the skin—long, brittle, skeletal bones—and Ash's
head was now the hollow, clacking skull bone that had been hidden
just beyond sight. The mouth was wide, the eye holes burning with
black emptiness. Ash hissed again, a long, sibilant sound, and then
everything behind Ash was lost to view and Ash himself was gone in
a burn of screaming, sharp light.

A dark, silent envelope enclosed Reggie like
a womb; he floated fetus-like in it until it pulled out ahead and
behind him, and he was in the tunnel. For a moment he was in
darkness, and then suddenly before him, as if the lamp of creation
itself had gone on, a bright light arose, and the two eyes were
there before him, bathing him in their radiance.

They were his own eyes.

Hello.

The eyes were surrounded by the dim outlines
of a body. At a close distance it resembled an animal, a hare or a
lamb, but then Reggie saw that it was not an animal at all, but
something that looked like a human. Something that looked like
himself.

Reggie drew closer, and he saw that the
figure's tiny, almost formless arms were spread wide, as if to
embrace him.

"I died the day that truck hit me," Reggie
said.

Yes, the figure, himself, said. But you were
sent back. Every man is really three men: the man during life, the
man at the moment of death, and the man after death. Ash owned man
at the moment of death. But even that, which he was able to take
advantage of in the weak, was only an illusion because there is
only one spirit. You. Me. Look.

Reggie looked and saw that a part of himself
was not with him anymore. There was a slight, sweet tug, and he saw
the body that had been Reggie Carson falling down and away from
him, to rest in some other place. He no longer felt that he was of
that body, and at the same time, he felt as if he had lost nothing
of himself.

That is what he owned; that was his domain.
Though it will mean nothing to you now, I will tell you that your
town of Montvale has been restored and that your mother is safe.
The others, Jeff Scott among them, now rest. A tone close to
amusement came into the soft voice. They will put our both, the man
who we were, in the tomb you always visited, the Tomb of the
Unknown Man.

"Who sent me back?" Reggie asked.

His own altered self
smiled.
That is what you will
see.

The form held out its arms and drew Reggie to
itself. He folded gently into it; the form's arms held him like a
mother might hold a baby. Reggie closed his eyes and found that he
did not want to open them. There was no reason to. He had new eyes
now.

He gently wrapped his arms around himself,
and rocked himself. And then he slept until it was time for him to
open his eyes once more.