21
   THE GIRL WAS THE gum-chewing cutie from the ticket-booth. The older of the two boys—who looked almost old enough to be called a man— had her newspaper in his hands. She grabbed for it. The newspaper-grabber—he was wearing denims and a black T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up—held it over his head and grinned.
   "Jump for it, Maryanne! Jump, girl, jump!"
   She stared at him with angry eyes, her cheeks flushed. "Give it to me!" she said. "Quit fooling around and give it back! Bastard!"
   "Oooo wisten to dat, Eddie!" the old kid said. "Bad wang-gwidge! Naughty, naughty!" He waved the newspaper just out of the blonde tick­et-seller's grasp, grinning, and Jake suddenly understood. These two were walking home from school together—although they probably didn't go to the same one, if he was right about the difference in their ages—and the bigger boy had gone over to the box office, pretending he had something interesting to tell the blonde. Then he had reached through the slot at the bottom and snatched her paper.
   The big boy's face was one that Jake had seen before; it was the face of a kid who would think it the height of hilarity to douse a cat's tail with lighter fluid or feed a bread-ball with a fishhook planted in the middle to a hungry dog. The sort of lad who sat in the back of the room and snapped bra-straps and then said "Who me?" with a big, dumb look of surprise on his face when someone finally complained. There weren't many lads like him at Piper, but there were a few. Jake supposed there were a few in every school. They dressed better at Piper, but the face was the same. He guessed that in the old days, people would have said it was the face of a boy who was born to be hung.
   Maryanne jumped for her newspaper, which the old boy in the black pants had rolled into a tube. He pulled it out of her reach just before she could grab it, then whacked her on the head with it, the way you might whack a dog for piddling on the carpet. She was beginning to cry now—mostly from humiliation, Jake guessed. Her face was now so red it was almost glowing. "Keep it, then!" she yelled at him. "I know you can't read, but you can look at the pictures, at least!"
   She began to turn away.
   "Give it back, why don't you?" the younger boy—Jake's boy—said softly.
   The old boy held out the newspaper tube. The girl snatched it from him, and even from his place thirty feet farther down the street, Jake heard it rip. "You're a turd, Henry Dean!" she cried. "A real turd!"
   "Hey, what's the big deal?" Henry sounded genuinely injured. "It was just a joke. Besides, it only ripped in one place—you can still read it, for Chrissake. Lighten up a little, why don'tcha?"
   And that was right, too, Jake thought. Guys like this Henry always pushed even the most unfunny joke two steps too far … then looked wounded and misunderstood when someone yelled at them. And it was always Wassa matter? and it was Can'tcha take a joke? and it was Why don'tcha lighten up a little?
   What are you doing with him, kid? Jake wondered. If you're on my side, what are you doing with a jerk like that?
   But as the younger lad turned around and they started to walk down the street again, Jake knew. The old boy's features were heavier, and his complexion was badly pitted with acne, but otherwise the resemblance was striking. The two boys were brothers.

22
   JAKE TURNED AWAY AND began to idle up the sidewalk ahead of the two boys. He reached into his breast pocket with a shaky hand, pulled out his father's sunglasses, and managed to fumble them onto his face.
   Voices swelled behind him, as if someone was gradually turning up the volume on a radio.
   "You shouldn't have ranked on her that bad, Henry. It was mean."
   "She loves it, Eddie." Henry's voice was complacent, worldly-wise. "When you get a little older, you'll understand."
   "She was cryin."
   "Prob'ly got the rag on," Henry said in a philosophical tone.
   They were very close now. Jake shrank against the side of the build­ing. His head was down, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his jeans. He didn't know why it seemed so vitally important that he not be noticed, but it did. Henry didn't matter, one way or the other, but—
   The younger one, isn't supposed to remember me, he thought. I don't know why, exactly, but he's not.
   They passed him without so much as a glance, the one Henry had called Eddie walking on the outside, dribbling the basketball along the gutter.
   "You gotta admit she looked funny," Henry was saying. "Ole Be-Bop Maryanne, jumpin for her newspaper. Woof! Woof!"
   Eddie looked up at his brother with an expression that wanted to be reproachful... and then he gave up and dissolved into laughter. Jake saw the unconditional love in that upturned face and guessed that Eddie would forgive a lot in his big brother before giving it up as a bad job.
   "So are we going?" Eddie asked now. "You said we could. After school."
   "I said maybe. I dunno if I wanna walk all the way over there. Mom'll be home, by now, too. Maybe we just oughtta forget it. Go upstairs and watch some tube."
   They were now ten feet ahead of Jake and pulling away.
   "Ah, come on! You said!"
   Beyond the building the two boys were currently passing was a chainlink fence with an open gate in it. Beyond it, Jake saw, was the playground of which he had dreamed last night … a version of it, any­way. It wasn't surrounded by trees, and there was no odd subway kiosk with diagonal slashes of yellow and black across the front, but the cracked concrete was the same. So were the faded yellow foul lines.
   "Well... maybe. I dunno." Jake realized Henry was teasing again. Eddie didn't, though; he was too anxious about wherever it was he wanted to go. "Let's shoot some hoops while I think it over."
   He stole the ball from his younger brother, dribbled clumsily onto the playground, and went for a lay-up that hit high on the backboard and bounced back without even touching the rim of the hoop. Henry was good at stealing newspapers from teenage girls, Jake thought, but on the basketball court he sucked the big one.
   Eddie walked in through the gate, unbuttoned his corduroy pants, and slipped them down. Beneath them were the faded madras shorts he had been wearing in Jake's dream.
   "Oh, is he wearing his shortie panties?" Henry said. "Ain't they cuuute?" He waited until his brother balanced himself on one leg to pull off his cords, then flung the basketball at him. Eddie managed to bat it away, probably saving himself a bloody nose, but he lost his balance and fell clumsily to the concrete. He didn't cut himself, but he could have done so, Jake saw; a great deal of broken glass glittered in the sun along the chainlink.
   "Come on, Henry, quit it," he said, but with no real reproach. Jake guessed I Henry had been pulling shit like this on him so long that Eddie only noticed it when Henry pulled it on someone else—someone like the blonde ticket-seller.
   "Turn on, Henwy, twit it."
   Eddie got to his feet and trotted out onto the court. The ball had struck the chainlink fence and bounced back to Henry. Henry now tried to dribble past his younger brother. Eddie's hand went out, lightning-quick but oddly delicate, and stole the ball. He easily ducked under Henry's outstretched, flailing arm and went for the basket. Henry dogged him, frowning thunderously, but he might as well have been taking a nap. Eddie went up, knees bent, feet neatly cocked, and laid the ball in. Henry grabbed it and dribbled out to the stripe.
   Shouldn't have done that, Eddie, Jake thought. He was standing just beyond the place where the fence ended, watching the two boys. This seemed safe enough, at least for the moment. He was wearing his dad's sunglasses, and the two boys were so involved in what they were doing that they wouldn't have noticed if President Carter had strolled up to watch. Jake doubted if Henry knew who President Carter was, anyway.
   He expected Henry to foul his brother, perhaps heavily, as a payback for the steal, but he had underestimated Eddie's guile. Henry offered a head-fake that wouldn't have fooled Jake's mother, but Eddie appeared to fall for it. Henry broke past him and drove for the basket, gaily travel­ling the ball most of the way. Jake was quite sure Eddie could have caught him easily and stolen the ball again, but instead of doing so, the lad hung back. Henry laid it up—clumsily—and the ball bounced off the rim again. Eddie grabbed it … and then let it squirt through his fingers. Henry snatched it, turned, and put it through the netless hoop.
   "One-up," Henry panted. "Play to twelve?"
   "Sure."
   Jake had seen enough. It would be close, but in the end Henry would win. Eddie would see to it. It would do more than save him from getting lumped up; it would put Henry in a good mood, making him more agreeable to whatever it was Eddie wanted to do.
   Hey Moose—I think your little brother has been playing you like a violin for a long time now, and you don't have the slightest idea, do you?
   He drew back until the apartment building which stood at the north end of the court cut off his view of the Dean brothers, and their view of him. He leaned against the wall and listened to the thump of the ball on the court. Soon Henry was puffing like Charlie the Choo-Choo going up a steep hill. He would be a smoker, of course; guys like Henry were always smokers.
   The game took almost ten minutes, and by the time Henry claimed victory, the street was filled up with other home-going kids. A few gave Jake curious glances as they passed by.
   "Good game, Henry," Eddie said.
   "Not bad," Henry panted. "You're still falling for the old head-fake."
   Sure he is, Jake thought. I think he'll go on falling for it until he's gained about eighty pounds. Then you might get a surprise.
   "I guess I am. Hey, Henry, can't we please go look at the place?"
   "Yeah, why not? Let's do it."
   "All right\" Eddie yelled. There was the smacking sound of flesh on flesh; probably Eddie giving his brother a high-five. "Boss!"
   "You go on up to the apartment. Tell Mom we'll be in by four-thirty, quarter of five. But don't say anything about The Mansion. She'd have a shit-fit. She thinks it's haunted, too."
   "You want me to tell her we're going over Dewey's?"
   Silence as Henry considered this. "Naw. She might call Mrs. Bunkowski. Tell her... tell her we're goin down to Dahlie's to get Hoodsie Rockets. She'll believe that. Ask her for a coupla bucks, too."
   "She won't give me any money. Not two days before payday."
   "Bullshit. You can get it out of her. Go on, now."
   "Okay." But Jake didn't hear Eddie moving. "Henry?"
   "What?" Impatiently.
   "Is The Mansion haunted, do you think?"
   Jake sidled a little closer to the playground. He didn't want to be noticed, but he strongly felt that he needed to hear this.
   "Naw. There ain't no real haunted houses—just in the fuckin movies."
   "Oh." There was unmistakable relief in Eddie's voice.
   "But if there ever was one," Henry resumed (perhaps he didn't want his little brother feeling too relieved, Jake thought), "it'd be The Mansion. I heard that a couple of years ago, two kids from Norwood Street went in there to bump uglies and the cops found em with their throats cut and all the blood drained out of their bodies. But there wasn't any blood on em or around em. Get it? The blood was all gone."
   "You shittin me?" Eddie breathed.
   "Nope. But that wasn't the worst thing."
   "What was?"
   "Their hair was dead white," Henry said. The voice that drifted to Jake was solemn. He had an idea that Henry wasn't teasing this time, that this time he believed every word he was saying. (He also doubted that Henry had brains enough to make such a story up.) "Both of em. And their eyes were wide open and staring, like they saw the most gross-awful thing in the world."
   "Aw, gimme a break," Eddie said, but his voice was soft, awed.
   "You still wanna go?"
   "Sure. As long as we don't... you know, hafta get too close."
   "Then go see Mom. And try to get a couple of bucks out of her. I need cigarettes. Take the fuckin ball up, too."
   Jake drifted backward and stepped into the nearest apartment build­ing entryway just as Eddie came out through the playground gate.
   To his horror, the boy in the yellow T-shirt turned in Jake's direc­tion. Holy crow! he thought, dismayed. What if this is his building?
   It was. Jake just had time to turn around and began to scan the names beside the rank of buzzers before Eddie Dean brushed past him, so close that Jake could smell the sweat he had worked up on the basket­ball court. He half-sensed, half-saw the curious glance the boy tossed in his direction. Then Eddie was in the lobby and headed for the elevators with his school-pants bundled under one arm and the scuffed basketball under the other.
   Jake's heart was thudding heavily in his chest. Shadowing people was a lot harder in real life than it was in the detective novels he some­times read. He crossed the street and stood between two apartment buildings half a block up. From here he could see both the entrance to the Dean brothers' building and the playground. The playground was filling up now, mostly with little kids. Henry leaned against the chainlink, smoking a cigarette and trying to look full of teenage angst. Every now and then he would stick out a foot as one of the little kids bolted toward him at an all-out run, and before Eddie returned, he had succeeded in tripping three of them. The last of these went sprawling full-length, smacking his face on the concrete, and ran wailing up the street with a bloody forehead. Henry flicked his cigarette butt after him and laughed cheerfully.
   Just an all-around fun guy, Jake thought.
   After that, the little lads wised up and began giving him a wide berth. Henry strolled out of the playground and down the street to the apartment building Eddie had entered five minutes before. As he reached it, the door opened and Eddie came out. He had changed into a pair of jeans and a fresh T-shirt; he had also tied a green bandanna, the same one he had been wearing in Jake's dream, around his forehead. He was waving a couple of dollar bills triumphantly. Henry snatched them, then asked Eddie something. Eddie nodded, and the two boys set off.
   Keeping half a block between himself and them, Jake followed.

23
   THEY STOOD IN THE high grass at the edge of the Great Road, looking at the speaking ring.
   Stonehenge, Susannah thought, and shuddered. That's what it looks like. Stonehenge .
   Although the thick grass which covered the plain grew around the bases of the tall gray monoliths, the circle they enclosed was bare earth, littered here and there with white things.
   "What are those?" she asked in a low voice. "Chips of stone?"
   "Look again," Roland said.
   She did, and saw that they were bones. The bones of small animals, maybe. She hoped.
   Eddie switched the sharpened stick to his left hand, dried the palm of his right against his shirt, and then switched it back again. He opened his mouth, but no sound came from his dry throat. He cleared it and tried again. "I think I'm supposed to go in and draw something in the dirt."
   Roland nodded. "Now?"
   "Soon." He looked into Roland's face. "There's something here, isn't there? Something we can't see."
   "It's not here right now," Roland said. "At least, I don't think it is. But it will come. Our khef—our life-force—will draw it. And, of course, it will be jealous of its place. Give me my gun back, Eddie."
   Eddie unbuckled the belt and handed it over. Then he turned back to the circle of twenty-foot-high stones. Something lived in there, all right. He could smell it, a stench that made him think of damp plaster and moldering sofas and ancient mattresses rotting beneath half-liquid coats of mildew. It was familiar, that smell.
   The Mansion—I smelled it there. The day I talked Henry into taking me over to see The Mansion on Rhinehold Street, in Dutch Hill.
   Roland buckled his gunbelt, then bent to knot the tiedown. He looked up at Susannah as he did it. "We may need Detta Walker," he said. "Is she around?"
   "That bitch always around." Susannah wrinkled her nose.
   "Good. One of us is going to have to protect Eddie while he does what he's supposed to do. The other is going to be so much useless baggage. This is a demon's place. Demons are not human, but they are male and female, just the same. Sex is both their weapon and their weakness. No matter what the sex of the demon may be, it will go for Eddie. To protect its place. To keep its place from being used by an outsider. Do you understand?"
   Susannah nodded. Eddie appeared not to be listening. He had tucked the square of hide containing the key into his shirt and now he was staring into the speaking ring as if hypnotized.
   "There's no time to say this in a gentle or refined way," Roland told her. "One of us will—"
   "One of us gonna have to fuck it to keep it off Eddie," Susannah interrupted. "This the sort of thing can't ever turn down a free fuck. That's what you're gettin at, isn't it?"
   Roland nodded.
   Her eyes gleamed. They were the eyes of Detta Walker now, both wise and unkind, shining with hard amusement, and her voice slid steadily deeper into the bogus Southern plantation drawl which was Delta's trade­mark. "If it's a girl demon, you git it. But if it's a boy demon, it's mine. That about it?"
   Roland nodded.
   "What about if it swings both ways? What about that, big boy?"
   Roland's lips twitched in the barest suggestion of a smile. "Then we'll take it together. Just remember—"
   Beside them, in a fainting, distant voice, Eddie murmured: "Not all is silent in the halls of the dead. Behold, the sleeper wakes." He turned his haunted, terrified eyes on Roland. "There's a monster."
   "The demon—"
   "No. A monster. Something between the doors—between the worlds. Something that waits. And it's opening its eyes."
   Susannah cast a frightened glance at Roland.
   "Stand, Eddie," Roland said. "Be true."
   Eddie drew a deep breath. "I'll stand until it knocks me down," he said. "I have to go in now. It's starting to happen."
   "We all goin in," Susannah said. She arched her back and slipped out of her wheelchair. "Any demon want to fuck wit' me he goan find out he's fuckin wit' the finest. I th'ow him a fuck he ain't never goan fgit."
   As they passed between two of the tall stones and into the speaking circle, it began to rain.

24
   As SOON AS JAKE saw the place, he understood two things: first, that he had seen it before, in dreams so terrible his conscious mind would not let him remember them; second, that it was a place of death and murder and madness. He was standing on the far corner of Rhinehold Street and Brooklyn Avenue, seventy yards from Henry and Eddie Dean, but even from where he was he could feel The Mansion ignoring them and reaching for him with its eager invisible hands, lie thought there were talons at the ends of those hands. Sharp ones.
   It wants me, and I can't run away. It's death to go in … but it's madness not to. Because somewhere inside that place is a locked door. I have the key that will open it, and the only salvation I can hope for is on the other side.
   He stared at The Mansion, a house that almost screamed abnormal­ity, with a sinking heart. It stood in the center of its weedy, rioting yard like a tumor.
   The Dean brothers had walked across nine blocks of Brooklyn, mov­ing slowly under the hot afternoon sun, and had finally entered a section of town which had to be Dutch Hill, given the names on the shops and stores. Now they stood halfway down the block, in front of The Mansion. It looked as if it had been deserted for years, yet it had suffered remark­ably little vandalism. And once, Jake thought, it really had been a man­sion—the home, perhaps, of a wealthy merchant and his large family. In those long-gone days it must have been white, but now it was a dirty gray no-color. The windows had been knocked out and the peeling picket fence which surrounded it had been spray-painted, but the house itself was still intact.
   It slumped in the hot light, a ramshackle slate-roofed revenant grow­ing out of a hummocky trash-littered yard, somehow making Jake think of a dangerous dog which pretended to be asleep. Its steep roof overhung the front porch like a beetling brow. The boards of the porch were splintery and warped. Shutters which might once have been green leaned askew beside the glassless windows; ancient curtains still hung in some of these, dangling like strips of dead skin. To the left, an elderly trellis leaned away from die building, now held up not by nails but only by die nameless and somehow filthy clusters of vine which crawled over it. There was a sign on the lawn and another on die door. From where Jake stood, he could read neither of them.
   The house was alive. He knew this, could feel its awareness reaching out from the boards and the slumping roof, could feel it pouring in rivers from the black sockets of its windows. The idea of approaching that terrible place filled him with dismay; the idea of actually going inside filled him with inarticulate horror. Yet he would have to. He could hear a low, slumbrous buzzing in his ears—the sound of a beehive on a hot summer day—and for a moment he was afraid he might faint. He closed his eyes... and his voice filled his head.
   You must come, Jake. This is the path of the Beam, the way of the Tower, and the time of your Drawing. Be true; stand; come to me.
   The fear didn't pass, but that terrible sense of impending panic did. He opened his eyes again and saw that he was not the only one who had sensed the power and awakening sentience of the place. Eddie was trying to pull away from the fence. He turned toward Jake, who could see Eddie's eyes, wide and uneasy beneath his green head-band. His big brother grabbed him and pushed him toward the rusty gate, but the gesture was too half-hearted to be much of a tease; however thick-headed he might be, Henry liked The Mansion no better than Eddie did.
   They drew away a little and stood looking at the place for a while. Jake could not make out what they were saying to each other, but the tone of their voices was awed and uneasy. Jake suddenly remembered Eddie speaking in his dream: Remember there's danger, though. Be care­ful... and be quick.
   Suddenly the real Eddie, the one across the street, raised his voice enough so that Jake could make out the words. "Can we go home now, Henry? Please? I don't like it." His tone was pleading.
   "Fuckin little sissy," Henry said, but Jake thought he heard relief as well as indulgence in Henry's voice. "Come on."
   They turned away from the ruined house crouching high-shouldered behind its sagging fence and approached the street. Jake backed up, then turned and looked into the window of the dispirited little hole-in-the-wall shop called Dutch Hill Used Appliances. He watched Henry and Eddie, dim and ghostly reflections superimposed on an ancient Hoover vacuum cleaner, cross Rhinehold Street .
   "Are you sure it's not really haunted?" Eddie asked as they stepped onto the sidewalk on Jake's side.
   "Well, I tell you what," Henry said. "Now that I been out here again, I'm really not so sure."
   They passed directly behind Jake without looking at him. "Would you go in there?" Eddie asked.
   "Not for a million dollars," Henry replied promptly.
   They rounded the corner. Jake stepped away from the window and peeped after them. They were headed back the way they had come, close together on the sidewalk, Henry hulking along in his steel-toed shit-kickers, his shoulders already slumped like those of a much older man, Eddie walking beside him with neat, unconscious grace. Their shadows, long and trailing out into the street now, mingled amicably together.
   They're going home, Jake thought, and felt a wave of loneliness so strong that he felt it would crush him. Going to eat supper and do homework and argue over which TV shows to watch and then go to bed. Henry may be a bullying shit, but they've got a life, those two, one that makes sense... and they're going back to it. I wonder if they have any idea of how lucky they are. Eddie might, I suppose.
   Jake turned, adjusted the straps of his pack, and crossed Rhinehold Street .

25
   SUSANNAH SENSED MOVEMENT IN the empty grassland beyond the circle of standing stones: a sighing, whispering rush.
   "Something comin," she said tautly. "Comin fast."
   "Be careful," Eddie said, "but keep it off me. You understand? Keep it off me."
   "I hear you, Eddie. You just do your own thing."
   Eddie nodded. He knelt in the center of the ring, holding the sharp­ened stick out in front of him as if assessing its point. Then he lowered it and drew a dark straight line in the dirt. "Roland, watch out for her. . ."
   "I will if I can, Eddie."
   ". . . but keep it off me. Jake's coming. Crazy little mother's really coming."
   Susannah could now see the grasses due north of the speaking ring parting in a long dark line, creating a furrow that lanced straight at the circle of stones.
   "Get ready," Roland said. "It'll go for Eddie. One of us will have to ambush it."
   Susannah reared up on her haunches like a snake coming out of a Hindu fakir's basket. Her hands, rolled into hard brown fists, were held at the sides of her face. Her eyes blazed. "I'm ready," she said and then shouted: "Come on, big boy! You come on right now! Run like it's yo birfday!"
   The rain began to fall harder as the demon which lived here re-entered its circle in a booming rush. Susannah had just time to sense thick and merciless masculinity—it came to her as an eyewatering smell of gin and juniper—and then it shot toward the center of the circle. She closed her eyes and reached for it, not with her arms or her mind but with all the female force which lived at the core of her: Hey, big boy! Where you goan? D'pussy be ovah heah!
   It whirled. She felt its surprise... and then its raw hunger, as full and urgent as a pulsing artery. It leaped upon her like a rapist springing from the mouth of an alley.
   Susannah howled and rocked backward, cords standing out on her neck. The dress she wore first flattened against her breasts and belly, and then began to tear itself to shreds. She could hear a pointless, direc­tionless panting, as if the air itself had decided to rut with her.
   "Suze!" Eddie shouted, and began to get to his feet.
   "No!" she screamed back. "Do it! I got this sumbitch right where... right where I want him! Go on, Eddie! Bring the kid! Bring—" Coldness battered at the tender flesh between her legs. She grunted, fell backward . . then supported herself with one hand and thrust defiantly forward and upward. "Bring him through!"
   Eddie looked uncertainly at Roland, who nodded. Eddie glanced at Susannah again, his eyes full of dark pain and darker fear, and then deliberately turned his back on both of them and fell to his knees again. He reached forward with the sharpened stick which had become a make­shift pencil, ignoring the cold rain falling on his arms and the back of his neck. The stick began to move, making lines and angles, creating a shape Roland knew at once.
   It was a door.

26
   JAKE REACHED OUT, PUT his hands on the splintery gate, and pushed. It swung slowly open on screaming, rust-clotted hinges. Ahead of him was an uneven brick path. Beyond the path was the porch. Beyond the porch was the door. It had been boarded shut.
   He walked slowly toward the house, heart telegraphing fast dots and dashes in his throat. Weeds had grown up between the buckled bricks. He could hear them rustling against his bluejeans. All his senses seemed to have been turned up two notches. You're not really going in there, are you? a panic-stricken voice in his head asked.
   And the answer that occurred to him seemed both totally nuts and perfectly reasonable: All things serve the Beam.
   The sign on the lawn read
   ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING UNDER PENALTY OF LAW!
   The yellowing, rust-stained square of paper nailed to one of the boards crisscrossing the front door was more succinct:
   BY ORDER OF NYC HOUSING AUTHORITY THIS PROPERTY CONDEMNED
   Jake paused at the foot of the steps, looking up at the door. He had heard voices in the vacant lot and now he could hear them again... but this was a choir of the damned, a babble of insane threats and equally insane promises. Yet he thought it was all one voice. The voice of the house; the voice of some monstrous doorkeeper, roused from its long unpeaceful sleep.
   He thought briefly of his father's Ruger, even considered pulling it out of his pack, but what good would it do? Behind him, traffic passed back and forth on Rhinehold Street and a woman was yelling for her daughter to stop holding hands with that boy and bring in the wash, but here was another world, one ruled by some bleak being over whom guns could have no power.
   Be true, Jake—stand.
   "Okay," he said in a low, shaky voice. "Okay, I'll try. But you better not drop me again."
   Slowly, he began to mount the porch steps.

 27
   THE BOARDS WHICH BARRED the door were old and rotten, the nails rusty. Jake grabbed hold of the top set at the point where they crossed each other and yanked. They came free with a squall that was the gate all over again. He tossed them over the porch rail and into an ancient flowerbed where only witchgrass and dogweed grew. He bent, grasped the lower crossing... and paused for a moment.
   A hollow sound came through the door; the sound of some animal slobbering hungrily from deep inside a concrete pipe. Jake felt a sick sheen of sweat begin to break out on his cheeks and forehead. He was so frightened that he no longer felt precisely real; he seemed to have become a character in someone else's bad dream.
   The evil choir, the evil presence, was behind this door. The sound of it seeped out like syrup.
   He yanked at die lower boards. They came free easily.
   Of course. It wants me to come in. It's hungry, and I'm supposed to be the main course.
   A snatch of poetry occurred to him suddenly, something Ms. Avery had read to them. It was supposed to be about the plight of modern man, who was cut off from all his roots and traditions, but to Jake it suddenly seemed that the man who had written that poem must have seen this house: / will show you something different from either/Your shadow in the morning striding behind you/Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;/I will show you...
   "I'll show you fear in a handful of dust," Jake muttered, and put his hand on the doorknob. And as he did, that clear sense of relief and surety flooded him again, the feeling that this was it, this time the door would open on that other world, he would see a sky untouched by smog and industrial smoke, and, on the far horizon, not the mountains but the hazy blue spires of some gorgeous unknown city.
   He closed his fingers around the silver key in his pocket, hoping the door was locked so he could use it. It wasn't. The hinges screamed and flakes of rust sifted down from their slowly revolving cylinders as the door opened. The smell of decay struck Jake like a physical blow: wet wood, spongy plaster, rotting laths, ancient stuffing. Below these smells was another—the smell of some beast's lair. Ahead was a dank, shadowy hallway. To the left, a staircase pitched and yawed its crazy way into the upper shadows. Its collapsed banister lay splintered on the hallway floor, but Jake was not foolish enough to think it was just splinters he was looking at. There were bones in that litter, as well—the bones of small animals. Some did not look precisely like animal bones, and these Jake would not look at overlong; he knew he would never summon the courage to go further if he did. He paused on the threshold, screwing himself up to take the first step. He heard a faint, muffled sound, very hard and very rapid, and realized it was his own teeth chattering in his head.
   Why doesn't someone stop me? he thought wildly. Why doesn't some­body passing on the sidewalk shout "Hey, you! You're not supposed to be in there—can’tcha read?"
   But he knew why. Pedestrians stuck mostly to the other side of this street, and those who came near this house did not linger.
   Even if someone did happen to look, they wouldn't see me, because I'm not really here. For better or worse, I've already left my world behind. I've started to cross over. His world is somewhere ahead. This …
   This was the hell between.
   Jake stepped into the corridor, and although he screamed when the door swung shut behind him with the sound of a mausoleum door being slammed, he wasn't surprised.
   Down deep, he wasn't surprised at all.

28
   ONCE UPON A TIME there had been a young woman named Detta Walker who liked to frequent the honky-tonks and roadhouses along Ridgeline Road outside of Nutley and on Route 88 down by the power-lines, out­side of Amhigh. She had had legs in those days, and, as the song says, she knew how to use them. She would wear some tight cheap dress that looked like silk but wasn't and dance with the white boys while the band played all those ofay party tunes like "Double Shot of My Baby's Love" and "The Hippy-Hippy Shake." Eventually she would cut one of the honkeys out of the pack and let him lead her back to his car in the parking lot. There she would make out with him (one of the world's great soul-kissers was Detta Walker, and no slouch with the old fingernails, either) until he was just about insane... and then she'd shut him down. What happened next? Well, that was the question, wasn't it? That was the game. Some of them wept and begged—^all right, but not great. Some of them raved and roared, which was better.
   And although she had been slapped upside the head, punched in the eye, spat upon, and once kicked in the ass so hard she had gone sprawling in the gravel parking lot of The Red Windmill, she had never been raped. They had all gone home with the blue balls, every damned ofay one of them. Which meant, in Detta Walker's book, that she was the reigning champion, the undefeated queen. Of what? Of them. Of all those crewcut, button-down, tightass honkey motherfuckers.
   Until now.
   There was no way to withstand the demon who lived in the speaking ring. No doorhandles to grab, no car to tumble out of, no building to run back into, no cheek to slap, no face to claw, no balls to kick if the ofay sumbitch was slow getting the message.
   The demon was on her... and then, in a flash, it—he—was in her.
   She could feel it—him—pressing her backward, even though she could not see it—him. She could not see its—his—hands, but she could see their work as her dress tore violently open in several places. Then, suddenly, pain. It felt as though she were being ripped open down there, and in her agony and surprise she screamed. Eddie looked around, his eyes narrowing.
   "I'm all right!" she yelled. "Go on, Eddie, forget about me! I'm all right!"
   But she wasn't. For the first time since Detta had strode onto the sexual battlefield at the age of thirteen, she was losing. A horrid, engorged coldness plunged into her; it was like being fucked with an icicle.
   Dimly, she saw Eddie turn away and begin drawing in the dirt again, his expression of warm concern fading back into the terrible, concen­trated coldness she sometimes felt in him and saw on his face. Well, that was all right, wasn't it? She had told him to go on, to forget her, to do what he needed to do in order to bring the boy over. This was her part of Jake's drawing and she had no right to hate either of the men, who had not twisted her arm—or anything else—to make her do it, but as the coldness froze her and Eddie turned away from her, she hated them both; could, in fact, have torn their honkey balls off.
   Then Roland was with her, his strong hands were on her shoulders and although he didn't speak, she heard him: Don't fight. You can't win if you fight—you can only die. Sex is its weapon, Susannah, but it's also its weakness.
   Yes. It was always their weakness. The only difference was that this time she was going to have to give a little more—but maybe that was all right. Maybe in the end, she would be able to make this invisible honkey demon pay a little more.
   She forced herself to relax her thighs. Immediately they spread apart, pushing long, curved fans in the dirt. She threw her head back into the rain which was now pelting down and sensed its face lolling just over hers, eager eyes drinking in every contorted grimace which passed over her face.
   She reached up with one hand, as if to slap... and instead, slid it around the nape of her demon rapist's neck. It was like cupping a palmful of solid smoke. And did she feel it twitch backward, surprised at her caress? She tilted her pelvis upward, using her grip on the invisible neck to create the leverage. At the same time she spread her legs even wider, splitting what remained of her dress up the side-seams. God, it was huge!
   "Come on," she panted. "You ain't gonna rape me. You ain't. You want t'fuck me? I fuck you. I give you a fuckin like you ain't nevah had! Fuck you to death!"
   She felt the engorgement within her tremble; felt the demon try, at least momentarily, to draw back and regroup.
   "Unh-unh, honey," she croaked. She squeezed her thighs inward, pinning it. "De fun jus' startin’." She began to flex her butt, humping at the invisible presence. She reached up with her free hand, interlaced all ten fingers, and allowed herself to fall backward with her hips cocked, her straining arms seeming to hold nothing. She tossed her sweat-damp hair out of her eyes; her lips split in a sharklike grin.
   Let me go! a voice cried out in her mind. But at the same time she could feel the owner of the voice responding in spite of itself.
   "No way, sugar. You wanted it … now you goan get it." She thrust upward, holding on, concentrating fiercely on the freezing cold inside her. "I'm goan melt that icicle, sugar, and when it's gone, what you goan do then?" Her lips rose and fell, rose and fell. She squeezed her thighs mercilessly together, closed her eyes, clawed more deeply into the unseen neck, and prayed that Eddie would be quick.
   She didn't know how long she could do this.

29
   THE PROBLEM, JAKE THOUGHT, was simple: somewhere in this dank, terrible place was a locked door. The right door. All he had to do was find it. But it was hard, because he could feel the presence in the house gathering. The sound of those dissonant, gabbling voices was beginning to merge into one sound—a low, grating whisper.
   And it was approaching.
   A door stood open to the right. Beside it, thumbtacked to the wall, was a faded daguerreotype which showed a hanged man dangling like a piece of rotten fruit from a dead tree. Beyond it was a room that had once been a kitchen. The stove was gone, but an ancient icebox—the land with the circular refrigeration drum on top—stood on the far side of the hilly, faded linoleum. Its door gaped open. Black, smelly stuff was caked inside and had trickled down to form a long-congealed puddle on the floor. The kitchen cabinets stood open. In one he saw what was probably the world's oldest can of Snow's Clam Fry-Ettes. Poking out of another was the head of a dead rat. Its eyes were white and seemingly in motion, and after a moment Jake realized that the empty sockets were filled with squirming maggots.
   Something fell into his hair with a flabby thump. Jake screamed in surprise, reached for it, and grasped something that felt like a soft, bris­tle-covered rubber ball. He pulled it free and saw it was a spider, its bloated body the color of a fresh bruise. Its eyes regarded him with stupid malevolence. Jake threw it against the wall. It broke open and splattered there, legs twitching feebly.
   Another one dropped onto his neck. Jake felt a sudden painful bite just below the place where his hair stopped. He ran backward into the hall, tripped over the fallen banister, fell heavily, and felt the spider pop. Its innards—wet, feverish, and slippery—slid between his shoulder-blades like warm egg-yoke. Now he could see other spiders in the kitchen doorway. Some hung on almost invisible silken threads like obscene plumb-bobs; others simply dropped on the floor in a series of muddy plops and scuttered eagerly over to greet him.
   Jake flailed to his feet, still screaming. He felt something in his mind, something that felt like a frayed rope, starting to give way. He supposed it was his sanity, and at that realization, Jake's considerable courage finally broke. He could bear this no longer, no matter what the stake. He bolted, meaning to flee if he still could, and realized too late that he had turned the wrong way and was running deeper into The Mansion instead of back toward the porch.
   He lunged into a space too big to be a parlor or living room; it seemed to be a ballroom. Elves with strange, sly smiles on their faces capered on the wallpaper, peering at Jake from beneath peaked green caps. A mouldy couch was pushed against one wall. In the center of the warped wooden floor was a splintered chandelier, its rusty chain lying in snarls among the spilled glass beads and dusty teardrop pendants. Jake skirted the wreck, snatching one terrified glance back over his shoulder. He saw no spiders; if not for the nastiness still trickling down his back, he might have believed he had imagined them.
   He looked forward again and came to a sudden, skidding halt. Ahead, a pair of French doors stood half-open on their recessed tracks. Another hallway stretched beyond. At the end of this second corridor stood a closed door with a golden knob. Written across the door—or perhaps carved into it—were two words:
   THE BOY
   Below the doorknob was a filigreed silver plate and a keyhole.
   I found it! Jake thought fiercely. I finally found it! That's it! That's the door!
   From behind him a low groaning noise began, as if the house was beginning to tear itself apart. Jake turned and looked back across the ballroom. The wall on the far side of the room had begun to swell outward, pushing the ancient couch ahead of it. The old wallpaper shud­dered; the elves began to ripple and dance. In places the paper simply snapped upward in long curls, like windowshades which have been released too suddenly. The plaster bulged forward in a pregnant curve. From beneath it, Jake could hear dry snapping sounds as the lathing broke, rearranging itself into some new, as-yet-hidden shape. And still the sound increased. Only it was no longer precisely a groan; now it sounded like a snarl.
   He stared, hypnotized, unable to pull his eyes away.
   The plaster didn't crack and then vomit outward in chunks; it seemed to have become plastic, and as the wall continued to bulge, making an irregular white bubble-shape from which scraps and draggles of wallpaper still hung, the surface began to mold itself into hills and curves and valleys. Suddenly Jake realized he was looking at a huge plastic face that was pushing itself out of the wall. It was like looking at someone who has walked headfirst into a wet sheet.
   There was a loud snap as a chunk of broken lath tore free of the rippling wall. It became the jagged pupil of one eye. Below it, the wall writhed into a snarling mouth filled with jagged teeth. Jake could see fragments of wallpaper clinging to its lips and gums.
   One plaster hand tore free of the wall, trailing an unravelling brace­let of rotted electrical wire. It grasped the sofa and threw it aside, leaving ghostly white fingermarks on its dark surface. More lathing burst free as the plaster fingers flexed. They created sharp, splintery claws. Now the face was all the way out of the wall and staring at Jake with its one wooden eye. Above it, in the center of its forehead, one wallpaper elf still danced. It looked like a weird tattoo. There was a wrenching sound as the thing began to slide forward. The hall doorway tore out and became a hunched shoulder. The thing's one free hand clawed across the floor, spraying glass droplets from the fallen chandelier.
   Jake's paralysis broke. He turned, lunged through the French doors, and pelted down the second length of hallway with his pack bouncing and his right hand groping for the key in his pocket. His heart was a runaway factory machine in his chest. Behind him, the thing which was crawling out of The Mansion's woodwork bellowed at him, and although there were no words, Jake knew what it was saying; it was telling him to stand still, telling him that it was useless to run, telling him there was no escape. The whole house now seemed alive; the air resounded with splintering wood and squalling beams. The humming, insane voice of the doorkeeper was everywhere.
   Jake's hand closed on the key. As he brought it out, one of the notches caught in the pocket. His fingers, wet with sweat, slipped. The key fell to the floor, bounced, dropped through a crack between two warped boards, and disappeared.

30
   "HE'S IN TROUBLE!" SUSANNAH heard Eddie shout, but the sound of his voice was distant. She had plenty of trouble herself... but she thought she might be doing okay, just the same.
   I'm goan melt that icicle, sugar, she had told the demon. I'm goan melt it, and when it's gone, what you goan do then?
   She hadn't melted it, exactly, but she had changed it. The thing inside her was certainly giving her no pleasure, but at least the terrible pain had subsided and it was no longer cold. It was trapped, unable to disengage. Nor was she holding it in with her body, exactly. Roland had said sex was its weakness as well as its weapon, and he had been right, as usual. It had taken her, but she had also taken it, and now it was as if each of them had a finger stuck in one of those fiendish Chinese tubes, where yanking only sticks you tighter.
   She hung onto one idea for dear life; had to, because all other conscious thought had vanished. She had to hold this sobbing, frightened, vicious thing in the snare of its own helpless lust. It wriggled and thrust and convulsed within her, screaming to be let go at the same time it used her body with greedy, helpless intensity, but she would not let it go free.
   And what's gonna happen when I finally do let go? she wondered desperately. What's it gonna do to pay me back?
   She didn't know.