Lisey's Story(103)

" 'I won't back out,' I said.

"And he said, 'You won't need to, Scooter, because I'll be standing right at the foot of the stairs with my sweetmother deer-gun

20

Daddy stands at the foot of the stairs with his deer-gun, his .30-06, in his hands. Scott stands beside him, looking at the thing chained to the metal post and the printing-press table, trying not to tremble. In his righthand pocket is the slim instrument Daddy has given him, a hypodermic with a plastic cap on the needle-tip. Scott doesn't need his Daddy to tell him it's a fragile mechanism. If there's a struggle, it may break. Daddy offered to put it in a little white cardboard box that once held a fountain pen, but getting the hypo out of the box would take an extra couple of seconds - at least - and that might mean the difference between life and death if he succeeds in getting the thing chained to the post over to Boo'ya Moon. In Boo'ya Moon there will be no Daddy with a .30-06 deer-gun. In Boo'ya Moon there will just be him and the thing that slipped into Paul like a hand into a stolen glove. Just the two of them on top of Sweetheart Hill. The thing that used to be his brother lies sprawled with its back against the center-post and its legs splayed. It's naked except for Paul's undershirt. Its legs and feet are dirty. Its flanks are caked with shit. The pie-plate, licked clean even of grease, lies by one grimy hand. The extra-large hamburger that was on it disappeared down the Paul-thing's gullet in a matter of seconds, but Andrew Landon agonized over the patty's creation for almost half an hour, chucking his first effort out into the night after deciding he loaded too much of "the stuff" into it. "The stuff" is white pills that look almost exactly like the Tums and Rolaids Daddy sometimes takes. The one time Scott asked Daddy where they came from, Daddy said -  Why don't you shut your goddam mouth, Curious George, before I shut it for you and when Daddy says something like that you take the hint if you've got any sense. Daddy ground the pills up with the bottom of a waterglass. He talked as he worked, maybe to himself, maybe to Scott, while below them the thing chained to the printing-press roared monotonously for its supper. -  Easy enough to figure when you want to knock him out, Daddy said, looking from the pile of white powder to the ground meat. -  Be easier still if I wanted to kill the troublesome motherf*cker, ay? But no, I don't want to do that, I just want to give him a chance to kill the one that's still all right, more fool am I. Well smog it and smuck it, God hates a coward. He used the side of his pinky with surprising delicacy to separate a little line of white powder from the pile. He pinched some up, sprinkled it onto the meat like salt, kneaded it in, then pinched up a tiny bit more and kneaded that in, too. He didn't bother much with what he called hot coozine when it came to the thing downstairs, said it would be happy to eat its dinner raw - still warm and shaking on the bone, for that matter.

Now Scott stands beside his Daddy, hypo in pocket, watching the dangerous thing loll against its post, snoring with its upper lip pulled back. It's grizzling from the corners of its mouth. The eyes are half-open but there's no sign of its irises; Scott can see only the gleaming, glabrous whites... Only the whites aint white anymore, he thinks.

-  Go on, goddam you, Daddy says, giving him a thump on the shoulder. If you're gonna do it, then go on before I lose my nerve or drop with a sweetmother heart-attack... or do you think he's shammin? Only pretendin to be out?

Scott shakes his head. The thing's not trying to fool them, he would feel that - and then looks at his father wonderingly.

-  What? Daddy asks irritably. What's on your mind besides your smuckin hair?

- Are you really - ?

- Am I really scared? That what you want to know?

Scott nods, suddenly shy.

-  Yeah, to f**kin death. Did you think you 'us the only one? Now close your mouth and do it if you're gonna. Let's have an end to this.

He will never understand why his father's acknowledgment of fear makes him feel braver; all he knows is that it does. He walks toward the center-post. He touches the barrel of the hypo inside his pocket one more time as he goes. He reaches the outer arc of turds and steps over it. The next step takes him over the inner ring and into what you might call the thing's den. Here the smell is intense: not the odor of shit or even hair and skin but rather of fur and pelt. The thing has a penis that is bigger than Paul's was. Paul's peach-fuzzy groin has thatched in with the thing's coarse, dense pubic hair, and the feet at the end of Paul's legs (those legs are the only things that still look the same) have a queerly turned-in look, as if the bones in his ankles are warping. Boards left out in the rain, Scott thinks; it's not quite nonsense.

Then his eyes return to the thing's face - to its eyes. The lids are still mostly fallen, and there's still no sign of irises, only bloody whites. The breathing is likewise unchanged; the dirty hands continue to lie limp, the palms up as if in surrender. Yet Scott knows he has entered the red zone. It will not do to hesitate now. The thing will scent him and come awake at any second. This will happen in spite of "the stuff" Daddy put in the hamburger, and so if he can do it, if he can take the thing that has stolen his brother -

Scott continues forward, walking on legs he can now barely feel. Part of his mind is absolutely convinced that he's going to his death. He won't even be able to boom away, not once the Paul-thing takes hold of him. Nevertheless, he steps within range of its grasp, into the most intimate concentration of its wild stench, and puts his hands on its naked, clammy sides. He thinks ( Paul come with me now) and ( Bool Boo'ya Boo'ya Moon sweet water the pool) and for just one heartbreaking heartbroken moment it almost happens. There's the familiar sense of things starting to rush away; up comes the hum of insects and the delicious daytime perfume of the trees on Sweetheart Hill. Then the thing's long-nailed hands are around Scott's neck. It opens its mouth and roars the sounds and smells of Boo'ya Moon away on a draft of carrion breath. To Scott it feels like someone has just shot a flaming boulder onto the delicate forming grid of his...his what? It's not his mind that takes him to that other place, not precisely his mind...and there's no time to think about it further because the thing has got him, it's got him. Everything Daddy was afraid of has come to pass. Its mouth has come unhinged in some nightmarish fashion that confounds sanity, seeming to drop its lower jaw all the way to its ( beastbone) breastbone, contorting the dirty face into something from which every last vestige of Paul - and humanity itself - has disappeared. This is the bad-gunky with its mask off. Scott has time to think It's going to take my whole head in a single bite, like a lollipop. That monstrous mouth yawns, the red eyes sparkle in the naked glow of the hanging lightbulbs, and Scott is going nowhere except to his death. The thing's head draws back far enough to bang the post, then lashes forward.