Hot damn! I gotta call the wire services. Gimme that phone!
The phone rang. We both jumped. Dont answer, said Crumley.
I let it ring eight times and then ten. I couldnt stand it. I picked it up. At first there was only the sound of an electric surf somewhere off
across town, where unseen rains touched implacable tombstones. And then I heard heavy breathing. It was like a great dark yeast, miles away,
sucking air. Hello! I said. Silence.
At last this thick, fermenting voice, a voice lodged inside nightmare flesh, said: Why arent you here?
No one told me, I said, my voice trembling.
There was the heavy underwater breathing like someone drowning in his own terrible flesh.
Tonight, the voice faded. Seven oclock. You know where? I nodded. Stupid! I noddedl
Well drawled the lost deep voice, its been a long time, a long way around so The voice mourned. Before I quit forever, we must, oh we must talk
The voice sucked air and was gone. I sat gripping the phone, eyes tight.
What the hell was that? said Crumley, behind me.
I didnt call him, I felt my mouth move. He called me! Gimme that!
Crumley dialed.
About that sick leave he said.
The studio was shut stone-cold, stripped down dark and dead.
For the first time in thirty-five years, there was only one guard at the gate. There were no lights in any of the buildings. There were only a few lonely lights at the alley intersections leading toward Notre Dame, if it was still there, past Calvary, which was gone forever, and leading toward the graveyard wall.
Dear Jesus, I thought, my two cities. But now, both dark, both cold, no difference between. Side by side, twin cities, one ruled by grass and cold marble, the other, here, run by a man as dark, as ruthless, as scornful as Death himself. Holding dominion over mayors and sheriffs, police and their night dogs, and telephone networks to the banking East.
I would be the only warm and moving thing on my way, afraid, from one city of the dead to the other.
I touched the gate.
For Gods sake, said Crumley, behind me, dont!
Ive got to, I said. Now the Beast knows where everyone is. He could come smash your place, or Constances, or Henrys. Now, I dont think he will. Someones made the final trackdown for him. And theres no way to stop him, is there? No proof. No law to arrest. No court to listen. And no jail to accept. But I dont want to be trashed in the street, or hammered in my bed. God, Crumley, Id hate the waiting and waiting. And anyway, you should have heard his voice. I dont think hes going anywhere except dead. Something awful has caught up with him and he needs to talk.
Talk! Crumley shouted. Like: hold still while I bash you!? Talk, I said.
I stood inside the gate, staring at the long street ahead. The Stations of the Cross:
The wall I had run from on All Hallows Eve. Green Town, where Roy and I had truly lived.
Stage 13, where the Beast was modeled and destroyed.
The carpenters shop, where the coffin was hid to be burned. Maggie Botwins, where Arbuthnots shadows touched the wall.
The commissary, where the cinema apostles broke stale bread and drank J. C.s wine.
Calvary Hill, vanished, and the stars wheeling over, and Christ long since gone to a second tomb, and no possible miracle of fish.
To hell with that. Crumley moved behind me. Im coming with.
I shook my head. No. You want to wait around for weeks or months, trying to find the Beast? Hed hide from you. Hes open to me now, maybe to tell all about the people who have disappeared. You going to get permits to open a hundred graves across the wall? You think the city will hand you a spade to dig for J. C., Clarence, Groc, Doc Phillips?! Well never see them again unless the Beast shows us. So go wait by the front gate of the graveyard. Circle the block eight or ten times. One exit or another, Ill probably come screaming out, or just walking.
Crumleys voice was bleak. Okay. Get yourself killed! he sighed. Naw. Damn. Here.
A gun? I cried. Im afraid of guns!
Take it. Put the pistol in one pocket, bullets in the other. No!
Take it! Crumley shoved. I took.
Come back in one piece!
Yes, sir, I said.
I stepped inside. The studio took my weight. I felt it sink in the night. At any moment, all the last buildings, gunshot like elephants, would fall to their knees, carrion for dogs, and bones for night birds.
I went down the street, hoping Crumley would call me back. Silence. At the third alley, I stopped. I wanted to glance aside toward Green
Town, Illinois. I did not. If the steam shovels had demolished and the termites eaten its cupolas, bay windows, toy attics, and wine cellars, I refused to see.
At the administration building a single small outside light glowed. The door was unlocked.
I took a deep breath and entered. Fool. Idiot. Stupid. Jerk.
I muttered the litany as I climbed up.
I tried the doorknob. The door was locked. Thank God! I was about to run when
The tumblers clicked.
The office door drifted open.
The pistol, I thought. And felt for the weapon in one pocket, the bullets in the other.
I half stepped in.
The office was illuminated only by a light over a painting on the far west wall. I moved across the floor, quietly.
There were all the empty sofas, empty chairs, and the big empty desk with only a telephone on it.
And the big chair, which was not empty.
I could hear his breathing, long and slow and heavy, like that of some great animal in the dark.
Dimly I made out the massive shape of the man lodged in that chair. I stumbled over a chair. The shock almost stopped my heart.
I peered at the shape across the room and saw nothing. The head was down, the face obscured, the big arms and pawlike hands stretched out to lean against the desk. A sigh. In-breath, out-breath.
The head and the face of the Beast rose up into the light. The eyes glared at me.
He shifted like a great dark yeast settling back.
The massive chair groaned with the shapes turning. I reached toward the light switch.
The wound-that-was-a-mouth peeled wide. No! The vast shadow moved a long arm.
I heard the phone dial touched once, twice. A hum, click. I worked the switch. No light. The locks in the door sprang in place.
Silence. And then:
There was a great suction of breath, a great exhalation: You came for the job?
The what?! I thought.
The huge shadow leaned across the dark. I was stared at, but saw no eyes.
Youve come, gasped the voice, to run the studio?
Me! I thought. And the voice sounded syllable by syllable:
No one now is right for the job. A world to own. All in a few acres. Once there were orange trees, lemon trees, cattle. The cattle are still here. But no matter. Its yours. I give it to you
Madness.
Come see what youll own! His long arm gestured. He touched an unseen dial. The mirror behind the desk slid wide on a subterranean wind and a
tunnel leading down into the vaults. This way! whispered the voice.
The shape elongated, turning. The chair swiveled and squealed and suddenly there was no shadow in or behind the chair. The desk lay as empty as the decks of a great ship. The uneasy mirror drifted to shut. I jumped forward, afraid that when it slammed the dim lights would extinguish and I would be drowned by the dark air.
The mirror slid. My face, panicked, shone in its glass. I cant follow! I cried. Im afraid!
The mirror froze.
Last week, yes, you should have been, he whispered. Tonight? Pick a tomb. Its mine.
And his voice now seemed the voice of my father, melting in his sickbed, wishing the gift of death but taking months to die.
Step through, the voice said quietly.
My God, I thought, I know this from when I was six. The phantom beckoning from behind the glass. The singer, the woman, curious at his soft voice, daring to listen and touch the mirror, and his hand appearing to lead her down to dungeons and a funeral gondola on a black canal with Death at the steering pole. The mirror, the whisper, and the opera house empty and the singing at an end.
I cant move, I said. It was true. Im afraid. My mouth filled with dust. You died long ago
Behind the glass, his silhouette nodded. Not easy, being dead, but alive under the film vaults, off through the graves. Keeping the number of people who really knew small, paying them well, killing them when they failed. Death in the afternoon on Stage 13. Or Death on a sleepless night beyond the wall. Or in this office where I often slept in the big chair. Now
The mirror trembled; with his breath or with his hand, I could not say. Pulses jumped in my ears. My voice echoed off the glass, a boys voice: Cant we talk here?
Again the melancholy half-sighed laugh. No. The grand tour. You must know everything if youre going to take my place.
I dont want it! Whoever said?
I said. I say. Listen, Im good as dead.
A damp wind blew, smelling of nitrate from the ancient films and raw earth from the tombs.
The mirror slid open again. Footsteps moved off quietly.
I stared through into the tunnel half lit by mere firefly ceiling lights. The Beasts massive shadow drifted on the incline going down,
