Part 15 (2/2)

Revealing that his nerves were trigger wires, Tewkes turned with snap-quick torque that belied the apparent ponderousness of his beer-barrel body, fisting his hands as if to defend, in cla.s.sic barroom style, against any looming threat.

At first Molly didn't see what had inspired the warning.

Then Tewkes declared, ”That's not going to be me. Like h.e.l.l it is.”

A mirror ran the length of the long bar. Tewkes stared at his reflection, in which the right side of his face was crushed.

In spite of his declaration, half convinced by the testimony of the mirror, Tewkes raised one hand to his face to rea.s.sure himself that a catastrophe had not already befallen him. In the reflection, his hand looked twisted, mangled.

Gasps of recognition and thin cries of horror arose from others in the tavern as they realized that Tewkes was not the only one among them whose reflection purported to be a preview of his mortal fate. In the mirror, they saw their friends, saw their neighbors, sought themselves-and in every instance were presented with a cadaver, each the victim of extreme violence.

The lower jaw had been torn from Tucker Madison's face. The deputy's upper teeth bit air.

In reflection, Vince Hoyt's Roman-emperor head lacked the top of its skull, and the phantom Vince pointed out of the mirror, at the real Vince, with an arm that terminated in bristling bone below the elbow.

Here stood a gnarled burnt ma.s.s that had once been a man, still smoking, grinning not with humor or menace, but because his teeth had been revealed in dental-chart explicitness when his lips had been seared away.

Molly knew that she shouldn't look for herself in this gruesome mural. If it was a glimpse of unavoidable destiny, it would foster despondency. If it was a lie, the image of her death-corrupted face and body would nevertheless fester in memory, diminis.h.i.+ng her will to action, compromising her survival instinct.

Morbid curiosity may be integral to the human genome: In spite of her better judgment, she looked anyway.

In the premonitory mirror, in that other other tavern of the standing dead, Molly Sloan did not exist. Where she should have been, there was only vacancy. Behind that vacancy stood the ripped and grisly reflection of the man stationed at her back on tavern of the standing dead, Molly Sloan did not exist. Where she should have been, there was only vacancy. Behind that vacancy stood the ripped and grisly reflection of the man stationed at her back on this this side of the looking gla.s.s. side of the looking gla.s.s.

Earlier in the night, in her bedroom vanity mirror, where she had glimpsed a future version of that chamber jungled with vines and mold and fungus, she had seen her reflection; she had not appeared therein as a corpse or in any way distorted, but entirely as she looked in reality.

Now, with dread, she sought Neil's reflection. When she found that he also had no place in that back-bar panorama of animated cadavers, she didn't know whether she should be relieved by their lack of representation or should a.s.sume that it meant their fate involved something worse than the decapitation, amputation, and mutilation visited upon the others.

She glanced at him beside her, in the flesh. Their eyes met, and she knew that he had recognized the absence of their reflections and, like her, was confused about the meaning of it.

The lights failed. Absolute darkness flourished.

This time, no doubt, the loss of power would be permanent.

Prepared for this eventuality, eight, then ten, then perhaps twenty of the gathered citizens switched on flashlights. Sabers of light slashed the darkness.

Many of the beams found the mirror, perhaps evidence of a collective fear that the grotesque Others on the far side of the silvered gla.s.s had in the blackness stepped through to this world. The dazzle made it impossible to see the current reflection.

Someone threw a beer bottle. The long mirror shattered, and the fragments rang to the floor in a cascade of ominous notes.

Although the mirror was his property, and though it broke around his feet in a surf of dangerous shards, Russell Tewkes didn't object.

In the sweep and clash of flashlight beams, in the flares from falling silvered fragments, Molly noticed something that strummed yet another arpeggio of terror from her taut nerves.

The eyeless, tongueless doll had a moment ago been rec.u.mbent on the bar. In the brief but total blackness, it had disappeared.

28.

IN ANTIc.i.p.aTION OF THE LOSS OF POWER, groups of candles had been placed on all the tables as well as at various points along the bar. Matches flared, wicks caught flame, and flashlights were extinguished as warm golden light s.h.i.+mmered across faces pale and dark, leafed the mahogany walls, and throbbed in nimbuses across the ceiling.

With the welcome return of light, a memory flared, and for a moment Molly stood transfixed in consideration of it.

Neil said something to her, but she was more in the recent past than in the present, crouching in the janitorial closet, watching the self-repairing fungus knit shut its surface membrane. And listening to Derek Sawtelle...

She surveyed the nervous crowd for the professor.

When Neil put a hand on her shoulder and gently shook her to get her attention, she said, ”What the h.e.l.l's going on? What's the truth here, or is there any truth at all?”

She saw Derek across the room, he was staring at her-and smiling as though he knew what she must be thinking. Then he turned from her and spoke to one of his companions.

”Come on,” she said to Neil, and led him toward Derek.

With only a few exceptions, the occupants of the tavern were on their feet, milling around, sharing reactions and rea.s.surances, too shaken to sit down.

More of the dogs were afoot, as well, following their noses on circuitous paths. Perhaps they were still enchanted by the layers of old food and drink stains on the floor, but Molly wondered if they might not be searching for the vanished doll.

When she reached Derek, he was pouring gin from a bottle into a gla.s.s of half-melted ice and slices of lime. He turned to her as though he had been monitoring her with a third eye in the back of his head.

”Molly, Neil, dear friends, I a.s.sume that bit of Grand Guignol theater has convinced you that Bacchus and Dionysus are the only G.o.ds worth wors.h.i.+ping. Let's pray that Russell's stockroom is filled with enough cases to keep us well oiled through the final scene of the final act.”

”Cut the bulls.h.i.+t, Derek,” she said. ”You're not as drunk as you pretend to be. Or if you are, you still have enough of your wits about you to play your role in this.”

”My role?” He looked around, feigning bewilderment. ”Are there cameras turning?”

”You know what I mean.”

”No, I'm afraid I don't. And I doubt very much that you yourself know what you mean.”

He had scored a direct hit. She didn't know what was happening here; however, she was confident that it was more complex than she had thought, and she smelled deception.

She said, ”In the janitorial closet, when we were watching that d.a.m.n thing repair its wound...I didn't tumble to it at the time, but you quoted Eliot to me.”

A shadow pa.s.sed through his eyes, a shadow and a glimmer, like the rutilant scales of something swimming just below the surface of murky water. This glimpse, whatever it was, whatever it meant, was not something you would see in the eyes of a friend.

”Eliot who?” he asked.

”Don't play games. T. S. Eliot.”

”Never cared much for old T. S. I prefer novelists, as you know, particularly the macho type. T. S. is too much of a gentleman for me, not a line of bullying in his whole body of work.”

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