"That's it!" Wade exclaimed. "That's the gun he had!"

"I found it on the shoulder. And look what else I found." She raised a necklace with a black amulet on it.

"Tom was wearing that thing around his neck," Wade said. "I asked him what it was but he wouldn't say."

Lydia looked at it. "Yeah? Well, Besser and Winnifred were wearing these things too."

-SOON WE WILL BE ON OUR WAY TO GLORY ETERNAL. TOGETHER, AS ONE. BUT MY BIDDINGS MUST NOT FAIL. I HAVE NEVER FAILED.

"I know, my lord."

-MY POWERS ARE YOURS. DO WHAT YOU MUST AND SPARE NOTHING.

"It will be done, my lord. We have authorities here who are contrary to us. But through your grace we can avoid them."

-OUR TIME PERIOD IS VITAL. IT MUST NOT BE VIOLATED.

"I swear on my life."

-DO NOT COME BACK TO ME UNTIL YOU HAVE SUCCEEDED.

The Supremate's face blended away. Besser and Winnifred retreated from the shrine and extromitted to the servicepa.s.s.

"He's p.i.s.sed," Winnie said.

"Thanks to you, yes," Besser acknowledged. "I can't believe you m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed in front of a police officer."

"I couldn't help it! You know what the psilight does to me. Anyway, I told you she was onto us. I was trying to distract her."

You called me fat, was all Besser could think. "Don't worry, White won't believe her, and even if he does, the sisters can repulse any amount of adversity."

"I hope you're right, Dudley. I want to be a G.o.d too."

Don't count on it, Besser thought. There was only room for one G.o.d between them. He'd already discussed the matter with the Supremate, and it was settled. But not yet, he thought.

The gorgeous image of murdering her hardened his p.e.n.i.s at once. Nevertheless, he lied: "We will be G.o.ds, my love. In some bright and future eon, we will rule this world together."

Winnifred kissed his fat face, extruded her plump b.r.e.a.s.t.s from her dress, and rubbed them against his mammoth chest. "Oh, Dudley, I love you! I can't wait to be a G.o.d!" Several sisters watched and giggled. "Not here, darling," he whispered, though he was truly tempted in the furious psilight. It would be sweet, wouldn't it, to just drag that dress off her skinny body and f.u.c.k her to death right there on the floorwall? So he was fat, was he? He would smother her with his fat. He would plug his c.o.c.k into every orifice, and perhaps form some of his own. Yes, he would f.u.c.k her to death and crush every bone in her skinny body as he came. The sisters would love it.

"Not now," he repeated in a whispered pant. "We need a new productionva.s.sal, and we better get that tow truck back to the garage."

CHAPTER 22.

"I love you," Wilhelm said. "Mein Liebchen."

"Oh, w.i.l.l.y!" Sarah squealed. "I love you too! Forever!"

In the telescope's eye, they embraced and kissed.

Jervis watched it all-again. He watched them do everything, like last time, right there on the couch. Their pa.s.sion glowed in their eyes, on their skin, shimmered through every gesture in radiant waves.

Jervis could've puked.

He pushed away the telescope, dropped Czanek's bug receiver. In the middle of the day, even. They must do it round the clock. He finished another Kirin, smoked more cigarettes, and stared at the wall.

Jervis cried in silence for a long time.

The rap on the door sounded like a dream. Lost now, and insane, he answered it. Professor Besser and Winnifred Saltenstall faced him in the doorway, smiling as brightly as messiahs.

"Jervis," Besser's dark voice fluttered.

"Jervis!" Winnifred greeted.

"We've come for you," Besser whispered.

Jervis faltered back as they entered. "What do you want?"

Besser: "We want you, Jervis."

Winnie: "We love you, Jervis!"

"n.o.body loves me," Jervis replied, thinking of Sarah.

"That's not true," Besser a.s.sured him. "There's so much love waiting for you. But to have it, you must accept our gift."

"What gift?"

Besser's bulbous smile deepened. "Destiny," he answered.

Jervis stepped back. Winnifred kissed him, licked the tears off his cheeks. "Trust us!" she whispered. "Come with us!"

"I want to be free!" Jervis cried.

"Then bow your head," Besser said.

Jervis bowed his head.

Winnifred positioned the transceptionrod.

Besser raised the hammer.

Nightfall.

"Tom said Besser wanted me for something," Wade told her. They'd been driving for hours, off town through twisting backwoods roads. "He said something about bringing me in."

"The agro site, you mean," Lydia said.

"I guess so. Whatever's going on, it seems to point there. Actually he said behind the agro site. In the woods."

"The smart thing to do, then, is check it out."

Wade nearly coughed up his c.o.ke. "No, Lydia, that's the dumb thing to do. The smart thing to do is tell the state cops."

Lydia frowned. "You do the driving, Wade. I'll do the thinking."

"Fine. You want to get us both killed-fine."

Lydia held up her polished Colt Trooper Mark III. "We won't get killed as long as my good friend Colonel Colt is with us. He specializes in a.s.s kicking."

That's all I need, Wade thought. Dirty Harry with b.o.o.bs.

The old road behind the agro site proceeded as a humped gully. Wade couldn't believe he was driving a limited edition Corvette over this root routed excuse for a road. The deeper they traveled, the thicker the forest grew, but eventually a clearing appeared, choked with weeds and refuse. Garbage lay in piles, rusted car parts, and dozens of tires flaked with dry rot. "Looks like we found the local trash dump," Wade commented.

"Somebody's been dumping more than trash. Look."

Near the tree line, several mounds showed in the Vette's headlights. A shovel leaned against a tree.

Graveyard, Wade remembered. I can show you our little graveyard back there, Tom had said. "Probably just piles of dirt," Wade tried to convince himself. Yellow moonlight streamed into the grove. Lydia got out with her fully charged state of the art SL 35 flashlight. Wade got out with his cheap piece of s.h.i.t dying Peoples Drug Store flashlight.

"This place stinks!" Lydia whispered.

That it did. Wade gasped in the open, stagnant air. A stench hung, like raw meat in the sun. "What is it?" he asked.

"Death," she said.

They approached the mounds, pointing their lights down. Fresh earth, newly turned. Empty Spaten bottles lay about the shovel.

They both scouted around. Wade was disgusted by the stench; it was everywhere. He kicked over a pile of tires and almost shouted: a fat hognose snake lay there with a dead field rat in its maw. But the snake was dead too. Had it died halfway into its meal? Under more tires, he found more dead snakes.

"Look at this," Lydia said, waving him over with her SL.

Just past the mounds was a deep hole. Not a grave, though-it looked like a grease sump. At the bottom lay a thick puddle of some congealed whitish effluence.

Wade stuck a branch in it. "It's wet," he observed.

"Looks like plaster, or lard. I wonder what it is?"

"I don't particularly care, Lydia. I can't take too much more of this stink. Let's get out of here."

"In a minute. I want to look around a little more." She handed him her spare gun, an old Colt O.P. "Go check out the other side of the clearing."

"Where's the safety on this thing?"

"It's a revolver, stooge. Revolvers don't have safeties."

"Can I help it if I'm not Gun Digest? Jesus."

"Just point it and squeeze the trigger. You've got six shots."

She really p.i.s.ses me off, he thought. Too bad I'm in love with her. But what a place to even think such a thing: a makeshift graveyard full of garbage and dead snakes. He moved off to the other side of the grove. The stench clung to him. Then his foot sank in something crunchy and soft. He nearly retched when he saw what he'd stepped in: a big dead maggot plump possum.

A footpath opened against the tree line. Wade took two steps in, walked on another dead possum, and stopped, aghast. Dead animals clogged the path, their heads all pointing in a straight line away from him. What the h.e.l.l is all this? Possums, c.o.o.ns, skunks, foxes-multiple dozens-all lay dead in the flashlight beam. But what had killed them? It looked as though they'd been drawn into the trail. But drawn by what?

Follow the yellow brick road, he thought. He stepped between the carca.s.ses, proceeding into the path. Frequently he misstepped and another carca.s.s would collapse under foot. Each wet crunch sent a shiver through his guts.

The trail of carca.s.ses led to another, higher clearing. The low moon afforded him every detail of what lay beyond.

Wade stood agape, as if rooted in place.

The grove was a nightmare chasm. He could not be seeing what he saw: a sliver of his world turned perverted, natural orders upheaved by compounded impossibilities, as though he'd stepped from his world into some obscene, mocking other. An eldritch knowledge had crept into this place and molested it. Wade was standing at the foot of the untenable.

Mother of G.o.d, he thought.

The moon swept grove stood like an alien lake. Greenish fog lay flat, motionless, and beneath its surface lay hundreds more swollen carca.s.ses. Trees in the wood line had grown fat and twisted, limbs tipped heavy by weird brush. From the woods came an incessant dripping, unearthly foliage sweating mucoid moisture. Lobes of leaves exuded slowly depending cords of fluids; flower stamens glistened, pistils disgorging further lines on slime.

The grove had mutated, had changed into something it couldn't be. Wade stepped forward. The pale fog, a foot deep, dissipated along his course. Things were growing from the carca.s.ses. Buds sprouted, boring roots into putrifying meat. Things worse than maggots burrowed through dead animal flesh-white grublike things with ringed mouths, pulsing. Wade backstepped against a tree; its warm bark felt like an old person's skin. Clinging bagworms showed faceless from hairy sheaths, some as large as loaves of bread. All this teeming life could not possibly be of Wade's world. Scarlet slugs chewed bark from shuddering trunks. Gilled snakes coursed about beneath the fog. Even more unnerving were the shining snotlike threads webbed between low branches-spiderwebs. Some of the spiders were as big as apples, but covered with moist hair and squashed, twitching faces.

What have I walked into? he thought.

-Wade! You're here with us!

Wade's heart could've exploded in his chest. Betwixt a pair of oozing trees, a young girl stood. Her bright white face grinned from within a drooping hood. Her mouth looked wet. She wore sungla.s.ses and was dressed completely in black.

Wade found he could make no sound at all.

-We want to eat, please! the young girl exclaimed.

Where the h.e.l.l did he go? Lydia thought. It was time to leave. She'd seen too many things which defied explanation. All these dead animals, their heads all pointing south. She remembered her first trip to the agro site. The animals' heads all faced the same direction, even the few cows in the field.

But the mounds were what interested her most. Should she dig them up now? And what the h.e.l.l was that sump?

But she had to find Wade. This expedition was over. When the keepers of this place returned, Lydia did not want to be around.