Part 32 (2/2)

”Wh --” Mouse starts to say, her voice rising to a squeak as she sees what has become of her pa.s.senger.

He's changed again. He seems bigger, somehow, and the spirit that animates him has transformed from the flighty, manic individual Mouse bantered with at the bus stop into someone far more sinister.

Mouse recognizes the dark soul she got a glimpse of on her first day at the Reality Factory: the one who called Julie Sivik a meddling c.u.n.t.

He tells her: ”That's not the way to Michigan. . . Mouse.”

Mouse disappears in a cascade of fright. Maledicta comes out, teeth bared. . . but she's scared too. This f.u.c.ker in the pa.s.senger's seat has the same gleam in his eye that Mouse's mother used to get, just before she really went off. So Maledicta is scared, but she doesn't show that she's scared: ”Get your motherf.u.c.king hand off my steering wheel,” she snarls.

”Pardon me,” he says, smirking, and lets go of the wheel. Good thing for him: Malefica is up next, and she's not scared, she's p.i.s.sed. But Andrew -- whoever the f.u.c.k he is right now -- isn't interested in pus.h.i.+ng his luck. Quicker than Malefica can make a fist, he opens his door and steps out. ”Thanks for the lift,” he says, ”but I'll make my own way from here.” With mock courtesy, he eases the door shut, waves good-bye, and trots off into the night.

”Yeah,” says Maledicta, resurfacing. ”You'd better f.u.c.king run.”

-- and Mouse is staring at the empty pa.s.senger's seat, while a car horn blares beside her. She puts out a hand to confirm that Andrew is really gone; she checks the back seat, too. Only then does she look outside to see who's honking.

Her car is still in the middle of the intersection, stalled out. The late-night Bridge Street traffic has been detouring around her, but now a mini-van wants to get by on the cross street. Mouse restarts the Centurion and backs it up; with a last blast of the horn, the minivan rolls by.

Mouse parks the Centurion at the corner. She sits for a moment, gathering her wits, then checks the rearview mirror and sees that, half a block behind her, the bus shelter is empty now. She gets out of the car and takes a longer look up and down Bridge Street, and up and down the cross street as well; she doesn't see Andrew anywhere. She feels relief, and d.a.m.ns herself for it; Andrew has gone out of his way to help her, and now, in return, she's failed him. She gets back in the car.

What to do? She didn't black out for long -- a couple minutes at most, she thinks -- so Andrew, if he is still on foot, can't have gone far. With a bit of luck, Mouse could probably find him again. But then what?

Another option, probably the best one, would be to go back to the house and let Mrs. Winslow and Dr. Eddington know what just happened. But that would mean telling them how she actually had Andrew in her car, only to let him get away a second time. Besides, last week, when the shoe was on the other foot and it was Mouse who was on the run, Andrew didn't waste time getting help, he came after her himself; if he hadn't, she might still be stumbling around in the woods behind the Factory.

Maybe she can strike a compromise: she will look for Andrew on her own for the next ten or fifteen minutes. If she doesn't find him, she will go and tell the doctor and Mrs. Winslow what happened.

If she does find him, she won't try to confront him, she'll just track him, follow him until he stops somewhere; then she will find a phone and call Dr. Eddington.

It's a plan. But before she can put it into practice, there's a piece of information she needs, and to get it she will have to pa.s.s a test of courage.

Mouse rests her hands lightly on the rim of the steering wheel, takes a breath, and looks up into the rearview mirror. Into it, not just at it. Catching her own eye in the gla.s.s, she imagines the mirror is large enough to show her whole face, her entire body; imagines that it reflects, behind her, not the back seat of the Buick, but the mouth of a darkened cave.

”All right,” Mouse addresses the figures who gather there, the Society members responding to her summons, ”you tell me, whoever saw it. . . which way did he go?”

II.

CHAOS.

SEVENTH BOOK:.

TO THE BADLANDS.

19.

I was rocking back and forth in the dark.

I had fallen into the lake; I knew that. It had happened in a blur, I'd only been semiconscious, but it seemed like only moments ago so I knew that it had happened, and that I must still be down there, down in the black waters at the bottom of the lake, my soul curled in a fetal position, rocked by the dark currents.

The water was freezing. It flowed around me like a cold wind, caressing my skin, ruffling my hair.

It tugged at my whole soul, trying to sweep it away, but my hands had caught in the weeds that grow from the lake bed, each hand grasping a ropy strand, and a third strand of lakeweed had wrapped itself around my left forearm, cinching tight. The weeds stretched but didn't break, and with the ebb and flow of the currents pulling at me I was rocked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

I opened my eyes.

I wasn't at the bottom of the lake. I was outside, in the body, in the open air, in daylight. I was sitting in some sort of swing or sling, and a dinosaur was smiling at me.

I blinked.

A dinosaur was smiling at me: a green and purple brontosaurus. A ladder was fixed to its side, and a slide ran down the length of its back and tail.

I looked left and right, and saw more dinosaurs: a bright red pteranodon whose wings formed a seesaw; a trio of baby triceratops, yellow, orange, and blue, each one set on a thick, coiled spring, their backs saddled, handholds jutting out from behind the armored ruffs of their collars.

And standing right beside me, arcing over me: a tyrannosaurus. A goofy, smiling, kid-friendly tyrannosaurus, its arms outstretched, its fists holding the ends of the chains that suspended the swing I was sitting in. To keep little fingers from getting pinched in the links, the chains had been sheathed in plastic tubing, flexible and slick to the touch.

I lowered my legs to stop the swing. I slid my hands up the plastic-covered chains and pulled myself to my feet, feeling a sharp pain in my left forearm as I did so. I looked past the brontosaur, past the chain-link fence that surrounded the playground (I was in a playground; I was outside, in the body, in a playground -- but where? ), and saw a rough gra.s.sy plain extending towards a line of jagged hills. The hills were barren, almost lunar, their stark weathered faces striped in dull horizontal bands of gray and brown.

Strata, I told myself: Those bands are called strata. The word, till now no more than a dictionary definition to me, took on new meaning, and I was frightened. This was an alien landscape I was looking at: I didn't know where it was, but I knew it wasn't anywhere in Autumn Creek, or anywhere near Autumn Creek, either.

Something small and white came fluttering down out of the sky, danced for a moment on the air currents in front of my face, lit briefly on my nose, and blew away again.

A snowflake, I thought. A snowflake? It was -- it had been -- the first week in May. It doesn 't snow in May. . . no, wait, that wasn't true, it can snow in May, it's just not that common, not in Autumn Creek anyway. So OK, I wasn't in Autumn Creek, that much was already established. Maybe I was somewhere farther north, or at a higher elevation; maybe it was a freak spring cold front; maybe the ”snowflake” was just a piece of windblown lint.

Maybe. Or maybe it wasn't May anymore. I knew I'd lost time, but what if I'd lost lots of time?

What if it was November now? What if I'd lost six months. . . or worse, worse still, what if I'd lost years? How old was the body now?

My legs got rubbery, and I had to grab the swing chains to steady myself. I felt the pain in my arm again; this time, seeking a distraction, I looked to see what was causing it. My arm had been bandaged; almost the whole length of my forearm had been wrapped in gauze. It looked like whoever had done it had used an entire roll of the stuff: the gauze was so thickly layered that my s.h.i.+rt sleeve had had to be left rolled up above my elbow.

My s.h.i.+rt sleeve!

”Oh thank G.o.d,” I exclaimed, collapsing into the swing seat.

My s.h.i.+rt sleeve: it was the same s.h.i.+rt I'd been wearing when I blacked out!

Wait. Wait. Was it the same s.h.i.+rt? I remembered falling down drunk in the middle of the street, remembered the tick of a b.u.t.ton bouncing away. I checked. . . yes! The s.h.i.+rt was missing a b.u.t.ton. I bent my head, sniffed the fabric. . . yes! It stank of scotch. And my pants, socks, and shoes were all the same ones I'd been wearing that night, too.

OK. OK. So it hadn't been years or months. A few days maybe, probably, but no more than that. I hadn't blacked out a huge chunk of my lifetime.

I rocked in the swing, laughing with relief.

Of course, this didn't mean that everything was fine. I was still a long way from home, in s.p.a.ce if not in time. I still didn't know where I was. I also didn't know what the body had been doing, what acts I'd have to take responsibility for; though I did know that before blacking out completely, I'd willfully broken the house rules, and embarra.s.sed myself in front of both Mrs. Winslow and Julie.

Julie. . . oh my G.o.d.

No. Don't think about her now. Get oriented first.

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