The Great And Secret Show Part 18

"It's gone from the house," she said. "But stay here a while."

"What about Tommy?" Jo-Beth said. "We have to go and find him."

Momma shook her head. "I was bound to lose him," she said. "No use now."

"We've got to try," Jo-Beth said.

She opened the door. Across the landing, leaning against the banister, was what could only be Tommy-Ray's handiwork. When they were children he'd made dolls for Jo-Beth by the dozen, makeshift toys that nevertheless bore the imprint of his disposition. Always, they had smiles. Now he had created a new doll; a father for the family, made from food. A head of hamburger, with thumb-press eyes; legs and arms of vegetables; a torso of a milk carton, the contents of which spilled out between its legs, pooling around the chili pepper and garlic bulbs placed there. Jo-Beth stared at its crudity: the meat-face stared back at her. No smile this time. No mouth even. Just two holes in the hamburger. At its groin the milk of manhood spread, and stained the carpet. Momma was right. They'd lost Tommy-Ray.

"You knew that b.a.s.t.a.r.d was coming back," she said.

"I guessed it would come, given time. Not for me. It didn't come for me. I was just a convenient womb, like all of us-"

"The League of Virgins," Jo-Beth said.

"Where did you hear that?"

"Oh, Momma...people have been talking since I was a kid..."

"I was so ashamed," Momma said. She put her hand to her face; the other, still holding the knife, hung at her side. "So very ashamed. I wanted to kill myself. But the Pastor kept me from it. Said I had to live. For the Lord. And for you and Tommy-Ray."

"You must have been very strong," Jo-Beth said, turning away from the doll to face her. "I love you, Momma. I know I said I was afraid but I know you wouldn't have hurt me."

Momma looked up at her, the tears running steadily from her eyes and dripping from her jaw.

Without thinking she said: "I would have killed you stone dead."

III.

"My enemy is still here," said the Jaff.

Tommy-Ray had led him along a path unknown to any but the children of the Grove, which took them round the back of the Hill to a giddy vantage point. It was too rocky for a trysting place and too unstable to be built upon, but it gave those who troubled to climb so high an unsurpa.s.sed view over Laureltree and Windbluff.

There they stood, Tommy-Ray and his father, taking in the sights. There were no stars overhead; and barely any lights burning in the houses below. Clouds dulled the sky; sleep, the town. Untroubled by witnesses, father and son stood and talked.

"Who is your enemy?" Tommy-Ray said. "Tell me and I'll tear his throat out for you."

"I doubt he'd allow that."

"Don't be sarcastic," Tommy-Ray said. "I'm not dumb, you know. I know when you're treating me like a kid. I'm not a kid."

"You'll have to prove that to me."

"I will. I'm not afraid of anything."

"We'll see about that."

"Are you trying to frighten me?"

"No. Merely prepare you."

"For what? Your enemy? Just tell me what he's like."

"His name is Fletcher. He and I were partners, before you were born. But he cheated me. Or at least he tried to."

"What was your business?"

"Ah!" The Jaff laughed, a sound Tommy-Ray had heard many times now, and liked more each time he heard it. The man had a sense of humor, even if Tommy-Ray-as now- didn't quite get the gag. "Our business?" said the Jaff. "It was, in essence, the getting of power. More specifically, one particular power. It's called the Art, and with it I will be able to step into the dreams of America."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Not all the dreams. Just the important ones. You see, Tommy-Ray, I'm an explorer."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Only what's left to explore outside in the world? Not much. A few pockets of desert; a rain-forest-"

"s.p.a.ce," Tommy-Ray suggested, glancing up.

"More desert, and a lot of nothing between," the Jaff said. "No, the real mystery-the only mystery-is inside our heads. And I'm going to get to it."

"You don't mean like a shrink, do you? You mean being there, somehow."

"That's right."

"And the Art is the way in?"

"Right again."

"But you said it's just dreams. We all dream. You can get in there any time you like, just by falling asleep."

"Most dreams are just juggling acts. Folks picking up their memories and trying to put them in some kind of order. But there's another kind of dream, Tommy-Ray. It's a dream of what it means to be born, and fall in love, and die. A dream that explains what being is for. I know this is confusing..."

"Go on. I like to hear anyhow."

"There's a sea of mind. It's called Quiddity," the Jaff said. "And floating in that sea is an island which appears in the dreams of every one of us at least twice in our lives: at the beginning and at the end. It was first discovered by the Greeks. Plato wrote of it in a code. He called it Atlantis..." He faltered, distracted from the telling by the substance of his tale.

"You want this place very much, don't you?" Tommy-Ray said.

"Very much," said the Jaff. "I want to swim in that sea when I choose, and go to the sh.o.r.e where the great stories are told."

"Rad."

"Huh?"

"It sounds awesome."

The Jaff laughed. "You're rea.s.suringly cra.s.s, son. We're going to get on fine, I can tell. You can be my agent in the field, right?"

"Sure," said Tommy-Ray with a grin. Then: "What's that?"

"I can't show my face to just anybody," the Jaff said. "Nor do I much like the daylight. It's very...unmysterious. But you can get out and about for me."

"You're staying then? I thought maybe we'd go off someplace."

"We will, later. But first, my enemy must be killed. He's weak. He won't try to leave the Grove until he has some protection. He'll look for his own child, I'd guess."

"Katz?"

"That's right."

"So I should kill Katz."

"That sounds like a useful thing to do, if the opportunity presents itself."

"I'll make sure it does."

"Though you should thank him."

"Why?"

"Were it not for him I'd still be underground. Still be waiting for you or Jo-Beth to put the pieces together and come and find me. What she and Katz did-"

"What did they do? Did they f.u.c.k?"

"That matters to you?"

"Sure it does."

"To me too. The thought of Fletcher's child touching your sister sickens me. For what it's worth, it sickened Fletcher too. For once, we agreed on something. The question was, which one of us would make it to the surface first, and which would be strongest when we got here?"

"You."

"Yes, me. I have an advantage Fletcher lacks. My army, my terata, are best drawn out of dying men. I drew one from Buddy Vance."

"Where is it?"

"When we were coming up here you thought somebody was following us, remember? I told you it was a dog. I lied."

"Show me."

"You may not be so eager when you see it."

"Show me, Poppa. Please!"

The Jaff whistled. At the sound, the trees a little way behind him began to move, identifying the face that had thrashed the thicket to fragments in the yard. This time, however, that face came into view. It was like something the tide had washed up: a deep-sea monster that had died and floated to the surface, been baked by the sun and pecked at by gulls, so that by the time it reached the human world it had fifty eye-holes and a dozen mouths, and its skin was half flayed from it.

"Gross," Tommy-Ray said softly. "You got that from a comedian? Don't look too funny to me."

"It came from a man on the brink of death," the Jaff said. "Frightened and alone. They always produce fine specimens. I'll tell you sometime the places I've gone looking for lost souls to produce terata from. The things I've seen. The sc.u.m I've met..." He looked out over the town. "But here?" he said. "Where will I find such subjects here?"

"You mean people dying?"

"I mean people vulnerable. People without mythologies to protect them. Frightened people. Lost people. Mad people."

"You could begin with Momma."

"She's not mad. She may wish she were; she may wish she could dismiss all she's seen and suffered as hallucinations, but she knows better. And she's protected herself. She has a faith, however idiot it is. No...I need naked people, Tommy-Ray. Folks without deities. Lost folk."

"I know a few."

Tommy-Ray could have taken his father to literally hundreds of households, had he been able to read the minds behind the faces that he pa.s.sed every day of his life. People shopping in the Mall, loading their carts up with fresh fruit and wholesome cereals, people with good complexions, like his own, and clear eyes, like his own, who seemed in every regard self-possessed and happy. Maybe they'd see an a.n.a.lyst once in a while, just to keep themselves on an even keel; maybe they'd raise their voices to the children, or cry to themselves when another birthday marked another year, but they considered themselves to all intents and purposes souls at peace. They had more than enough money in the bank; the sun was warm most days, and when it wasn't they lit fires and thought themselves robust to survive the chill. If asked, they would have called themselves believers in something. But n.o.body asked. Not here; not now. It was too late in the century to talk about faith without a twinge of embarra.s.sment, and embarra.s.sment was a trauma they labored to keep from spoiling their lives. Safer not to speak of faith, then, or the divinities who inspired it, except at weddings, baptisms and funerals, and only then by rote.

So. Behind their eyes the hope in them was sickening, and in many, dead. They lived from event to event with a subtle terror of the gap between, filling up their lives with distractions to avoid the emptiness where curiosity should have been, and breathing a sigh of relief when the children pa.s.sed the point of asking questions about what life was for.

Not everyone hid their fears so well, however.

At the age of thirteen Ted Elizando's cla.s.s was told by a forward-thinking teacher that the superpowers held enough missiles between them to destroy civilization many hundreds of times over. The thought had bothered him far more than it seemed to bother his cla.s.smates, so he'd kept his nightmares of Armageddon to himself for fear of being laughed at. The deception worked; on Ted as much as the cla.s.smates. Through his teens he'd virtually forgotten the fears. At twenty-one, with a good job in Thousand Oaks, he married Loretta. They were parents the following year. One night, a few months after the birth of baby Dawn, the nightmare of the final fire came back. Sweaty and shaking, Ted got up and went to check on his daughter. She was asleep in her cot, sprawled on her stomach, the way she liked to sleep. He watched her slumbers for an hour or more, then went back to bed. The sequence of events repeated itself almost every night thereafter, until it had the predictability of ritual. Sometimes the baby would turn over in her sleep and her long-lashed eyes would flicker open. Seeing her daddy there by her cot she would smile. The vigil took its toll on Ted, however. Night after night of broken sleep drained him of strength; he found it steadily more difficult to prevent the horrors that came by the hours of darkness invading those of light. Sitting at his desk in the middle of the working day the terrors would visit him. The spring sun, shining on the papers before him, became the blinding brightness mushrooming in front of him. Every breeze, however balmy, carried distant cries to his ears.

And then, one night, standing guard at Dawn's cot, he heard the missiles coming. Terrified, he picked Dawn up, trying to hush her as she wept. Her complaints woke Loretta, who came after her husband. She found him in the dining room, unable to speak for the terror he felt, staring at his daughter, whom he'd let fall when he'd seen her body carbonized in his arms, her skin blackening, her limbs becoming smoking sticks.

He was hospitalized for a month, then returned to the Grove, the medical consensus being that his best hopes for a return to full health lay in the bosom of his family. A year later, Loretta filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. It was granted, as was the custody of the child.

Very few people visited Ted these days. In the four years since his breakdown he'd worked in the pet store in the Mall, a job which had made mercifully few demands upon him. He was happy among the animals, who were, like him, bad dissemblers. There was about him the air of a man who knew no home now but a razor's edge. Tommy-Ray, forbidden pets by Momma, had been indulged by Ted: allowed free access to the store (even minding it on one or two occasions, when Ted had to run errands), playing with the dogs and the snakes. He'd got to know Ted and his story well, though they'd never been friends. He'd never visited Ted at home, for instance, as he did tonight.

"I brought someone to see you, Teddy. Someone I want you to meet."

"It's late."

"This can't wait. See, it's really good news and I had no one to share it with but you."

"Good news?"

"My dad. He came home."

"He did? Well, I'm really happy for you, Tommy-Ray."

"Don't you want to meet him?"

"Well, I-"

"Of course he does," said the Jaff stepping out of the shadow, and extending his hand to Ted. "Any friend of my son's is a friend of mine."

Seeing the power Tommy-Ray had introduced as his father, Teddy took a frightened step back into his house. This was another species of nightmare altogether. Even in the bad old times they'd never come calling. They'd crept up, stealthily. This one talked and smiled and invited itself in.