Lisey's Story(17)

Before she can finish he's up like Jack from his box, yelling "Move it back! Let this girl through! Move it back and let this girl through! Let him breathe, folks, what do you say?" The crowd shuffles back...very reluctantly, it seems to Lisey. They don't want to miss any of the blood, it seems to her.

The heat bakes up from the pavement. She has half-expected to get used to it, the way you get used to a hot shower, but that isn't happening. She listens for the howl of the approaching ambulance and hears nothing. Then she does. She hears Scott, saying her name. Croaking her name. At the same time he twitches at the side of the sweat-soaked shell top she's wearing (her bra now stands out against the silk as stark as a swollen tattoo). She looks down and sees something she doesn't like at all. Scott is smiling. The blood has coated his lips a rich candy red, top to bottom, side to side, and the smile actually looks more like the grin of a clown. No one loves a clown at midnight, she thinks, and wonders where that came from. It will only be at some point during the long and mostly sleepless night ahead of her, listening to what will seem like every dog in Nashville bark at the hot August moon, that she'll remember it was the epigram of Scott's third novel, the only one both she and the critics hated, the one that made them rich. Empty Devils.

Scott continues to twitch at her blue silk top, his eyes still so brilliant and fevery in their blackening sockets. He has something to say, and - reluctantly - she leans down to hear it. He pulls air in a little at a time, in half-gasps. It is a noisy, frightening process. The smell of blood is even stronger up close. Nasty. A mineral smell.

It's death. It's the smell of death.

As if to ratify this, Scott says: "It's very close, honey. I can't see it, but I..." Another long, screaming intake of breath. "I hear it taking its meal. And grunting." Smiling that bloody clown-smile as he says it.

"Scott, I don't know what you're talk - "

The hand that has been tugging at her top has some strength left in it, after all. It pinches her side, and cruelly - when she takes the top off much later, in the motel room, she'll see a bruise, a true lover's knot.

"You..." Screamy breath. "Know..." Another screamy breath, deeper. And still grinning, as if they share some horrible secret. A purple secret, the color of bruises. The color of certain flowers that grow on certain (hush Lisey oh hush)

yes, on certain hillsides. "You...know...so don't...insult my...intelligence." Another whistling, screaming breath. "Or your own."

And she supposes she does know some of it. The long boy, he calls it. Or the thing with the endless piebald side. Once she meant to look up piebald in the dictionary, but she forgot - forgetting is a skill she has had reason to polish during the years she and Scott have been together. But she knows what he's talking about, yes.

He lets go, or maybe just loses the strength to hold on. Lisey pulls back a little - not far. His eyes regard her from their deep and blackening sockets. They are as brilliant as ever, but she sees they are also full of terror and (this is what frightens her most) some wretched, inexplicable amusement. Still speaking low - perhaps so only she can hear, maybe because it's the best he can manage - Scott says, "Listen, little Lisey. I'll make how it sounds when it looks around."

"Scott, no - you have to stop."

He pays no attention. He draws in another of those screaming breaths, purses his wet red lips in a tight O, and makes a low, incredibly nasty chuffing noise. It drives a fine spray of blood up his clenched throat and into the sweltering air. A girl sees it and screams. This time the crowd doesn't need the campus cop to ask them to move back; they do it on their own, leaving Lisey, Scott, and Captain Heffernan a perimeter of at least four feet all the way around.

The sound - dear God, it really is a kind of grunting - is mercifully short. Scott coughs, his chest heaving, the wound spilling more blood in rhythmic pulses, then beckons her back down with one finger. She comes, leaning on her simmering hands. His socketed eyes compel her; so does his mortal grin.

He turns his head to the side, spits a wad of half-congealed blood onto the hot tar, then turns back to her. "I could...call it that way," he whispers. "It would come. You'd be...rid of my...everlasting...quack."

She understands that he means it, and for a moment (surely it is the power of his eyes) she believes it's true. He will make the sound again, only a little louder, and in some other world the long boy, that lord of sleepless nights, will turn its unspeakable hungry head. A moment later in this world, Scott Landon will simply shiver on the pavement and die. The death certificate will say something sane, but she'll know: his dark thing finally saw him and came for him and ate him alive.

So now come the things they will never speak of later, not to others or between themselves. Too awful. Each marriage has two hearts, one light and one dark. This is the dark heart of theirs, the one mad true secret. She leans close to him on the baking pavement, sure he is dying, nevertheless determined to hold onto him if she can. If it means fighting the long boy for him - with nothing but her fingernails, if it comes to that - she will.

Chapter 3

"Well...Lisey?" Smiling that repulsive, knowing, terrible smile.

"What...do...you...say?"

Leaning even closer. Into the shivering sweat-and-blood stink of him. Leaning in until she can smell the last palest ghost of the Prell he shampooed with that morning and the Foamy he shaved with. Leaning in until her lips touch his ear. She whispers, "Be quiet, Scott. For once in your life, just be quiet."