Thinner(40)

Or his soul. Away. It goes away. Away, away, away. Is there maybe a way to drive it away?

Rossington - that was the first thing. Rossington, out there at the Mayo Clinic, clinging desperately to the idea that he had skin cancer, because the alternative was so much worse. When Rossington died, would he change back to ... ?

He became aware that Houston had fallen silent. And there was a noise in the background, unpleasant but familiar ... Sobbing? Was that Heidi, sobbing?

'Why's she crying?' Billy rasped.

'Billy -'

'Put her on!'

'Billy, if you could hear yourself

'Goddammit, put her on!'

'No. I won't. Not while you're like this.'

'Why, you cheap coke-sniffing little

'Billy, quit it!'

Houston's roar was loud enough to make Billy hold the phone away from his ear for a moment. When he put it back, the sobbing had stopped.

'Now, listen,' Houston said. 'There are no such things as werewolves and Gypsy curses. I feel foolish even telling you that.'

'Man, don't you see that's part of the problem?' Billy asked softly. 'Don't you understand that's how these guys have been able to get away with this stuff for the last twenty centuries or so?'

'Billy, if there's a curse on you, it's been laid by your own subconscious mind. Old Gypsies can't lay curses. But your own mind, masquerading as an old Gypsy, can.'

'Me, Hopley, and Rossington,' Halleck said dully, 'all at the same time. You're the one who's blind, Mike. Add it up. '

'It adds up to coincidence, and nothing more. How many times do we have to go around the mulberry bush, Billy? Go back to the Glassman. Let them help you. Stop driving your wife crazy.'

For a moment he was tempted to just give in and believe Houston - the sanity and rationality in his voice, no matter how exasperated, were comforting.

Then he thought of Hopley turning the Tensor lamp so that it shone savagely up onto his face. He thought of Hopley saying I'd kill him very slowly - I will spare you the details.

'No,' he said. 'They can't help me at the Glassman, Mike.'

Houston sighed heavily. 'Then who can? The old Gypsy?'

'If he can be found, maybe,' Halleck said. 'Just maybe. And there's another guy I know who might be of some help. A pragmatist, like you.'

Ginelli. The name had surfaced in his mind as he was speaking.

'But mostly, I think I've got to help myself.'

'That's what I've been telling you!'

'Oh - I was under the impression you'd just advised me to check back into the Glassman Clinic.'

Houston sighed. 'I think your brains must be losing weight, too. Have you thought about what you're doing to your wife and daughter? Have you thought about that at all?'

Did Heidi tell you what she was doing to me when the accident happened? Billy almost blurted out. Did she tell you that yet, Mikey? No? Oh, you ought to ask her ... My, yes.

'Billy?'

'Heidi and I will talk about it,' Billy said quietly.

'But don't you -'

'I think you were right about at least one thing, Mike.'

'Oh? Good for me. And what was that?'

'We've gone around the mulberry bush enough,' Billy said, and hung up the telephone.

But they didn't talk about it.

Billy tried a couple of times, but Heidi only shook her head, her face white and set, her eyes accusing him. She only responded once.

It was three days after the telephone conversation with Houston, the one in which Heidi had been sobbing accompaniment in the background. They were just finishing dinner. Halleck had put away his usual lumberjack's meal -three hamburgers (with buns and fixin's), four ears of corn (with butter), half a pint of french fries, and two helpings of peach cobbler with hard sauce. He still had little or no appetite, but he had discovered an alarming. fact - if he didn't eat, he lost more weight. Heidi had arrived back home following Billy's conversation - argument - with Houston pale and silent, her face puffed from the tears she had cried in Houston's office. Upset and miserable himself, he had skipped lunch and dinner ... and when he weighed himself the next morning he saw that he had plummeted five pounds to 167.

He stared at the figure, feeling a coldly fluttering swirl of moths in his gut. Five pounds, he thought. Five pounds in one single day! Christ!

He had skipped no more meals since then.

Now he indicated his empty plate - the clean corn cobs, the remains of the burgers, salad, french fries, dessert.

'Does that look like anorexia nervosa to you, Heidi?' he asked. 'Does it?'

'No,' she said unwillingly. 'No, but

'I've been eating like this for the last month,' Halleck said, 'and in the last month I've lost just about sixty pounds. Now, would you like to explain how my subconscious managed that trick? Losing two pounds a day on an intake of roughly six thousand calories per twenty-four hours?'

'I ... I don't know ... but Mike ... Mike says-'

'You don't know and I don't know,' Billy said, tossing his napkin into his plate angrily - his stomach was groaning and rolling under the weight of food he had dumped into it. 'And Michael Houston doesn't know either.'

'Well, if it's a curse, why isn't anything happening to me?' she shrieked at him suddenly, and although her eyes blazed with anger, he could see the tears that were starting up in them.