And then he stopped dead in his tracks.
Aunt Selma stood in the doorway to the dining room. Her face was a death mask of exposed bone and empty eye sockets. Her clothes hung in stained tatters exposing wrinkled, bloodless skin. Some of her fingers were broken and bitten.
“Auntie?”
Selma raised her hands toward him and moaned. A deep, aching moan of blind and unbearable hunger. Homer stared at her, watching as she shuffled toward him. Even from ten feet away he could see the black goo leaking from between the exposed teeth, and inside the goo … the worms.
It was then, in a grand leap of understanding, that everything Volker had told him about Project Lucifer, the coupe poudre, and the parasites coalesced into a shared body of knowledge with the things the Black Eye had witnessed all of Homer’s life, and which the Red Mouth whispered incessantly in his ears. Homer looked at the ripped skin on Aunt Selma and touched his own mouth, making intuitive leaps. Making connections.
Over the years, in the service of the Red Mouth, Homer had used every kind of tool. Knives, saws, drills, pliers, hatchets, clubs, forks, and even dentist tools. Each of them had opened red mouths in the people whom he sacrificed to his inner gods. But now …
He ran his fingers over his teeth, feeling each one. Shape and size and sharpness. Ordinary teeth, but not really. Not anymore. He could feel the worms wriggling beneath the flesh of his gums and within the meat of his tongue and the walls of his mouth.
Yes, whispered the Red Mouth.
There was a soft thump from the cellar and a low moan, and Homer knew that the church lady was trying to climb the stairs. He knew that without having to look. It all made sense now. Everything was clear.
The state had captured him and chained him; Doctor Volker had tried to transform him into the living embodiment of suffering. But a higher, grander purpose was at work in Homer’s life; and now he understood the purpose of that power. Like a grub that turns into a wasp, it was all about transformation.
Just as Aunt Selma had transformed from living meat to a servant of the Red Mouth, Homer Gibbon understood that he was no longer Homer Gibbon.
He was the Red Mouth.
“God!” he said aloud, meaning himself.
He felt the hunger inside. In the same instant he felt all doubt and confusion decay and die.
He opened the door and let Aunt Selma stagger out into the rain.
Then he looked through the debris until he found the keys to the church lady’s car. With them in hand he stepped out onto the porch, smiling. Filled with purpose.
He remembered a snatch of an old poem that one of the older cons in Rockview used to repeat. Standing on the top step, he said it aloud.
“This is how the world ends,” he whispered to the rain.
“This is how the world ends,” he said to the wind.
“This is how the world ends,” he shouted to the storm.
Not with a bang.
But a bite.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
MAGIC MARTI IN THE MORNING
WNOW RADIO, MARYLAND
“This is Magic Marti at the mike and we’ve been informed that Pennsylvania Governor Harbison is going to make an announcement. Okay, we’re going live to the state capitol in Harrisburg.”
“My fellow citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” said the governor in a deep, somber voice, “as of seven p.m. tonight, I am declaring a state of emergency for Stebbins County and a state of high alert for the following counties: Beaver, Allegheny, Washington, Greene, Armstrong, Indiana, Westmoreland, Fayette, Somerset, and Cambria. We have been offered—and I have accepted—assistance from the federal government and FEMA. I have mobilized the National Guard to shore up flood-affected areas and to assist with evacuations and other rescue operations.”
A pause.
“However, the storm is not our only concern. With police, rescue, and fire departments taxed to their limits, we have been receiving a number of accounts of looting and violence. So far most of this has been concentrated in Stebbins County, which is also being hit hardest by the storm. For that reason I have authorized the National Guard to place Stebbins under temporary martial law. A curfew has been imposed and Guardsmen will work with local law enforcement to restore order.
“It is a sad thing when a corrupt few take advantage of the many, especially during a time of crisis. We saw similar acts of cowardly opportunism during Hurricane Katrina and in the wake of the earthquakes in Haiti.
“However I am convinced—and will remain convinced—that the overwhelming majority of the people of this glorious commonwealth are working shoulder to shoulder with their neighbors to save lives, protect property, and do what is necessary for everyone to survive. The many will not be tainted by the heinous acts of the few, and I can promise that order will be restored in a timely and efficient manner.
“If you are in one of the affected areas, please follow the instructions provided by the police, emergency agencies, and the news services. Stay at home, stay safe, and pray for those in peril. Together we will weather this crisis and see our way to the other end of this storm. Thank you and God bless the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
PART THREE
THE DEAD LAND
No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.
—Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
MASON STREET NEAR DOLL FACTORY ROAD
She was a huddled ball down in the footwell of the backseat, her entire body clutched as tightly as a fist. The state police cruiser was still and cold. Outside, the wind was a tireless howling monster.
Dez had no idea how long she lay there. Thirty minutes? More? Probably more. She knew that, despite everything, despite all need and logic, she had fallen asleep. There had been no other direction in which she could flee.
In her sleep she thought she heard the chatter of automatic gunfire, the screams of men and women, and the roar of truck engines. But now that she was awake she heard none of those sounds.
Every muscle ached from the tension of remaining perfectly still. Her head hurt horribly where she had struck it when they’d hit her with the Taser. Her chest hurt from the strain of keeping silent even while the sobs tore their way out of her.
And she was cold. God … so cold. The November wind blowing in through the open door cut her like knives. Frigid rainwater dripped from the wire cage and pooled under her. There was no escape from the cold. Rain soaked into the tight knot of her French braid and burned like drops of boiling water on her scalp, especially over the bruise she’d gotten when falling. It crept down the collar of her shirt and the waistband of her pants, soaking her underwear, pooling inside her clothes as she lay shivering.
He left me.
Those three words hung in her mind like an echo frozen in time. She knew that the thought was illogical, but what did logic have to do with her world anymore? Logic had been consumed back at Doc Hartnup’s. Logic was torn flesh and gnawed bones. Logic was dead.
He left me.
She’d warned him. Goddamn it if she hadn’t warned him. She told him not to get out of the car. He hadn’t listened. They never do. That was a lessen Dez had learned when she had begged her daddy—begged him on her knees as she clung to his legs—not to go when they wanted to send him to Kuwait. She’d soaked the knees of his pants with her tears, and Daddy had been forced to peel her off of him. He’d been so frustrated that he’d yelled at her. Told her to grow up.
Dez had known that it was wrong for him to go. There were monsters out there in the darkness. There always were, hiding in the shadows, right beyond the corner of your eye, waiting to take you.
Daddy had gone anyway.
On the last day—on that terrible morning at the airport—he’d tried to make it all right with her. He’d knelt down and stroked her blond hair and kissed her nose. He’d said, “Don’t worry, Pumpkin, you know I’ll come back for you.”
That’s what he’d said.
Not come back to you.
Come back for you.
Then he left. Six weeks later he was gone forever, his helicopter blown out of the Arabian skies by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by someone in his own platoon. Friendly fire, they called it.
Mommy was dying already when they got the news. She was leaving Dez one ragged breath at a time as cancer gnawed at her with relentless hunger. When the man from the army read the letter, Mommy had simply closed her eyes and looked away. A single, silver tear rolled down to the pillow. She never spoke a word after that. Not to the army man, not to anyone. In three weeks Mommy was gone. She went away from Dez, too. First into her own grief and then into the darkness and finally into the ground.
Dez was in the second grade. Too young to understand the mysteries of death, but too old not to grasp the concept that anyone could leave at any time. For any reason. Daddy had proved that. So had Mommy.
So had everyone.
Even this trooper. This young guy named Saunders.
Left her.
Alone.
In the cold rain.
With the monsters.
So, why not sleep?
Why not fall into the deepest, darkest hole that opened up in her mind? It was so much safer down there, because you’re all alone. No one can leave you when you’re all alone.
She lay there in the footwell and listened to the rattle of the rain on the roof. Fighting the shivers. Trying to ignore the cold. Trying to block out the pain in her cramped muscles.
Wondering, though, why she was alive. Why hadn’t the monsters taken her? She couldn’t run. She was cuffed, battered, helpless. Meat in a fridge for those fuckers.
Dez listened for the sound of moans threaded into the wind and the rain. Listened. Listened. She heard absolutely nothing except the storm.
Why?
She lay there, waiting—aching, needing—for JT to come. Not as a rescue. She did not see it that way, not even now. Dez did not need anyone to come and rescue her ass. Not even JT, who was the only man who had never let her down, the only man who didn’t have his head shoved all the way up his ass. Backup, though … that would be great. Cop to cop … and now would be a good time.