"No. Not really. Uh, no." That was the best John could do for an answer. Terror had split his brain into a dozen fragments, each handling a different problem badly. One fragment was gauging the distance to the car and screaming RUNRUNRUNRUN! over and over again. Another was warning him that his bladder was dangerously full and telling him it would be best to dump it right now. Still another was frantically supplying rational explanations for the apparition before him.

That last was easy to ignore. He knew what-who-was in front of him, whether he wanted to fully come to grips with it or not.

"Too bad," the man said, disappointed. "Music is good for the soul. I gotta admit, I'm surprised. You look like a player."

"I don't-I mean, I sing," John said.

The man's grin widened, showing teeth unnaturally white in the moonlight. "Ah. There you go. Best instrument of all, the voice." He took on a conspiratorial tone. "How's that working out for you?"

John didn't answer.

"I might be able to help you out." The man's teeth parted slightly, and his tongue glistened. "But I don't get the feeling you're all that serious. I look at you and I see a skinny kid, kind of goofy-looking, a little awkward. I bet you haven't gotten laid in a long time. Be honest with me, Johnny-this has nothing to do with music. It's really about p.u.s.s.y, isn't it?"

John flinched. "No. Uh, no sir."

The man showed his teeth again. "Oh, Johnny. I have seen your dreams, Johnny. You can't lie to me."

How had the man gotten so close? He was only an arm's length away, close enough that John could have reached out and touched the collar of his shirt, if he'd wanted to do something so utterly insane as that.

"No," John whispered.

"I have seen your dreams, Johnny. I've seen the women you dream about, flesh sweat-slick and soaking wet, writhing in ecstasy beneath you, legs wrapped around your body, nails gouging furrows into your skin."

John was sweating now. As the man spoke, John saw images in his mind's eye-his own fantasies paraded before him, furtive, frantic fantasies that lasted only a few minutes and left him feeling guilty and dirty and spent afterward. He saw a woman's body laid bare, impossibly perfect, his mouth pressed to her breast. He saw her straddling him, his hands grasping her narrow waist, her back arched and mouth open, every muscle quivering. He saw her on all fours, kneeling on a bed covered in red satin, cords standing out on her forearms as she clutched the sheets in her fists and screamed. He screamed too as he bucked and thrust behind her. In the darkness around the bed, vague figures shifted and laughed and watched, and he did not care. He saw her turn, push him onto his back, and take him in her mouth. The images were too clear, more detailed than any dream or recollection he'd ever had. He could see the fine hairs along the back of her neck, sweat droplets on the side of her face. He could almost feel her-no, he could feel her! He could feel her hand wrapped around him, feel the skin of her fingertips. She climbed on top of him again, and he could feel the touch of naked flesh along his body, pliant yet firm. He could smell her now, too, as he could taste the sweat on his upper lip.

Standing on a back road in Texas, John trembled, but not in fear. He was distantly aware that he was so hard it hurt.

"You can't lie to me," the man said again. "I have seen your dreams." He paused, and this time he did laugh. "Isn't this what you want?"

John opened his mouth, but nothing came out. His mind was blank. He felt flushed, tense, unfulfilled. He wanted to answer the man and couldn't even think of what answer to give.

"Well?"

The vision dimmed, and the faint pressure, the feeling of skin against John's body eased. No, wait! Don't make it stop please don't stop oh G.o.d don't ever let it stop. He felt like he would have given anything for just a few more minutes.

Anything? a nasty, seductive voice in the back of his head asked. Really?

"No," he said. Somehow. His voice came out as a dry squeak, and he thought saying that word might have been the most difficult thing he'd ever done. "No." Insanely, he added, "Thanks anyway."

The man took one deliberate step closer, and the image-vision-evaporated. John's shoulders slumped, and exhaustion swept through his body. Sweat stung his eyes, cold in the breeze. He tried to back away but managed only a little shuffle.

"What have we here?" the man asked. He laughed again. "Maybe I misjudged you. Maybe you're more serious than I thought." The man took a few steps around to John's side. The moon caught him at a different angle, and for a second John could see the flesh of his neck, maggot-white and pulsing. Then the man turned, and his skin seemed normal once more. The stink hit John then, that same decaying-fish smell that clung to Douglas, only a hundred times worse, choking and foul. What, no brimstone? John thought crazily, even as his knees started to shake and the pain in his bladder doubled.

"What is it you want, Johnny? What else do you dream about?" The man leaned closer, almost whispering. John looked forward, not daring to turn his head, not daring to look into the eyes below the brim of the hat. If he saw them, he would go crazy. He would die, right here, right in the crossroads, and his spirit wouldn't be able to find its way home. They'd find him with his eyes wide and staring, his hair white.

Johnny wondered if he would actually be able to talk, or if the words themselves were locked in his frozen throat. His tongue was leaden, shot full of novocaine, a block of wood.

The man waited.

Johnny opened his mouth, and incredibly, his voice did emerge, thin and creaking. "You . . . You know what I want."

The man stepped forward, and that foul scent swirled around John, thicker than ever, worse than he could ever have imagined. His guts clenched.

"Immortality," the man said. "Of a sort. You wish to enthrall and captivate, to open the hearts of men-not to mention the legs of women-to enrich yourself and ensure your place in history with nothing . . . more . . . than the sound of your voice." The man had circled around him, taking a step on each word-nothing, more, than-and now he stood before John again. John stared at him, unable to look away, and yet unable to see the man as clearly as before. The air shimmered in front of him, and the man's image shifted and blurred. John saw nothing more than a man in a black shirt, decked out in silver rings-but he got an impression of something else, something with squirming maggot-white flesh and cold, implacable eyes.

This time, John's voice did desert him. This is it, the nagging voice whispered. Was it the voice of prudence or fear, rationality or cowardice? Was there a difference? Was there any way to tell? This is your last chance. You can stop this right now. You can stop something terrible, something unspeakable, from happening.

John looked at the man, stared into the blackness where the man's eyes should be, and he nodded.

"Say it," the man said, and traces of that grinding, metallic sound surfaced, sharp enough to draw blood. "Say yes."

"Yes," John said, and his voice was the voice of an old, old man, weak and wheezing.

"And will you pay the price?"

As though from a great distance, John heard himself speak again. "Yes."

The man held out his hand and waited.

John's guts roiled. Don't do this! he thought, but he knew it was way too late for that.

"Take my hand," the man said.

John reached out. His hand pa.s.sed through the weird shimmering area in front of the man, and the image wavered. John caught another glimpse of sickly pale, pulpy soft flesh before his eyes darted away. He tried to concentrate on the top of the man's hat, certain that he didn't want to see any more than he had already.

Shocking cold seized his hand as he pushed through some invisible barrier.

The man pushed toward him. In John's peripheral vision, the motion looked strange, like the man's elbow bent in the wrong place. John had a moment to wonder about that, and then he found the man's hand. It was cold, the touch of an earthworm or a corpse ripe with decay. The fish stink was gagging-thick, a horrid miasma that swirled around John's head until he was dizzy and sick with it.

Then the touch was gone.

John collapsed to his knees in the road, weeping and trembling, his limbs convulsing in wretched spasms.

When he finally had the strength to get up, the man was gone.

Chapter 5.

It was late the next day when Case dropped John off in front of his house. It had been a bad day of travel. John had met Danny at the party sometime around three in the morning and tried to smooth things over. Danny had been a little p.i.s.sed, but he'd get over it. Quentin gave him a dirty look and continued to drink. John had been too wired to sleep, so he walked most of the night, coming back to the party around dawn just in time to meet Case. She'd slept in her car after getting bored with the party, which meant she hadn't slept worth a d.a.m.n either. The two of them tracked Danny and Quentin down and declared they were leaving.

Just past a speck of a town called Henrietta, Case's car had started to overheat. It had taken them forever to find a mechanic that would work on it on Sunday. Once they finally did, it turned out to be a simple matter of replacing the serpentine belt.

That little adventure had eaten up most of the day. The sun was going down as John got out of the car.

Case didn't even comment on the place. She watched him shoulder his backpack.

"Practice Tuesday?" she asked.

"Yeah," John said, pleasantly surprised. He'd been worried the whole way home that she was going to wash her hands of Ragman after the strange way the weekend went down. "See you then."

She nodded and drove off.

John let himself in. Though the sun hadn't quite set yet, it was dark inside already. The dank scent of mildew hit him, which meant it must have rained while he'd been gone. The corner of the living room flooded when it rained a lot, and it always stank for a few days afterward. There was a smell under it this time that wasn't normally there, though, something fishy and rotten. Dread coiled in his belly.

He turned on the light. The small living room and kitchen area were empty, as always. Nothing looked out of place, but that smell was definitely not typical. He left the living-room light on as he walked through the little house. He flipped on the bathroom light and a c.o.c.kroach ran for cover. There was a tiny lizard, too, pink and translucent, in the bathtub. For a moment he entertained the idea that the lizard might be the source of the smell, but he reluctantly discarded it. Little lizards were forever getting in through cracks and gaps in the siding, and they never stank up the place like this. He ignored the lizard, left the bathroom light on, and took the three steps down the short hall into the bedroom.

The stink was worse here, and there was no kidding himself that it had come from something natural. There were no new discolored spots on the ceiling, no wet spots on the stained beige carpet. He walked over to the far wall, where the tendrils of plants had worked their way inside the house. A handful of them grew there, some creeping as much as a foot up the wall. He'd always felt reluctant to touch them, but he left them alone there nonetheless. It wouldn't have surprised him at all if there was a leak here, but the slab was high enough off the ground that it was above any pools outside. In any case, the carpet was dry.

A rustling sound caused him to jump, startled, before he recognized the sound of the high weeds out back sc.r.a.ping against the walls. He let out a nervous laugh.

John walked back through the house one more time. The back door in the combined living room and kitchen was locked and bolted. As far as he knew, that door was unopenable anyway-the structure had shifted over time, and the door was wedged tightly in the frame. The window next to it gave him the creeps, though. All the other windows in the house were shrouded with blinds, ugly but functional, and he rarely opened them. The small window above the sink had no blinds, no curtains. It was simply a blank eye looking out on the man-high weeds in back, the same miniature forest that scratched and scrabbled against his bedroom wall. Looking out on the back-or looking in on the living room.

John backed away from it, back into the hall. He felt stupid, but he had a sudden horror of looking out and seeing a face, maggot-white with unblinking eyes, looking back at him. He watched the window as he stepped backward, terrified that something would appear. The only thing that could be worse than that would be if he turned away . . . and something watched him from behind.

Nothing so much as glimmered in the window, and once it was gone behind the corner, he went back to the bedroom.

Still nothing here but that too-familiar stink. It swelled, as though riding a hidden air current, became thick and gagging. Then it was gone.

"Jesus," he said. He hoped that stench wouldn't follow him around, clinging to his skin the way it did to Douglas. What the h.e.l.l was it, anyway?

Whatever. It was gone now, and hopefully it would stay that way. Now that he was well away from that awful place in the Texas countryside, he was anxious to try singing and find out if he got what he'd bargained for.

He started to power up his iPod, then hesitated. It would be too easy to let the sound in the headphones give him a place to hide. He should do this a cappella.

Maybe I should wait, anyway. I'm tired-I probably won't sound any good, just because of that. And I'm not warmed up. And I'm still a little hoa.r.s.e from the show yesterday.

He shook his head. Excuses, all of them. He had to put it to the test eventually, didn't he? What was he afraid of? That his voice would be the same as always, and this whole adventure had been a waste or a delusion-or that it would really be different?

f.u.c.k it. Here I go.

Wait! What should I sing?

The answer came to him as though it had been ready and waiting. "Rust," a song he'd written when he was getting ready to quit school. He'd never played it with the band, because it still felt way too personal, but it was exactly right for tonight.

He took in a deep breath, filling his lungs-and then, just before he started to sing, he felt something in the back of his mind push forward. The sensation was so weird, so alien, that he stuttered and almost stopped, but the air was leaving his lungs already, rushing out, waiting to be shaped into sound.

He opened his mouth and let the song come.

"Down along the ditches

On a road headed out of town

I'm walking with my collar up

My neck bent, my head down

They say if I leave the world will kill me

But if I stay, I'll go to rust"

It sounded like the same old John-almost. He thought the pitch sounded steadier, the sound maybe just slightly clearer, though the difference was so small it could have been his imagination. Or maybe stark raving terror followed by a few hours of steady paranoia and exhaustion is good for the voice. He tried the second verse.

"The warnings come fast

Like lights and screaming sirens

They say it isn't time yet