Black House

by Stephen King

  You have an emergency. Not me. You.

  “Not me, you,” Henry says. The mimicry is so good it’s weird. “A little bit of sauerkraut in your salad, mein friend, ja?”

  Your worst nightmare … worst nightmare.

  Abbalah.

  I’m the Fisherman.

  Henry listening, intent. He lets the tape run awhile, then listens to the same phrase four times over: Kiss my scrote, you monkey … kiss my scrote, you monkey … you monkey … monkey …

  No, not monkey. The voice is actually saying munggey. MUNG-ghee.

  “I don’t know where you are now, but you grew up in Chicago,” Henry murmurs. “South Side. And …”

  Warmth on his face. Suddenly he remembers warmth on his face. Why is that, friends and neighbors? Why is that, O great wise ones?

  You’re no better’n a monkey on a stick.

  Monkey on a stick.

  Monkey—

  “Monkey,” Henry says. He’s rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers now. “Monkey on a stick. MUNG-ghee on a stigg. Who said that?”

  He plays the 911: Kiss my scrote, you monkey.

  He plays his memory: You’re no better’n a monkey on a stick.

  Warmth on his face.

  Heat? Light?

  Both?

  Henry pops out the 911 tape and sticks in the one Jack brought today.

  Hello, Judy. Are you Judy today, or are you Sophie? The abbalah sends his best, and Gorg says “Caw-caw-caw!” [Husky, phlegmy laughter.] Ty says hello, too. Your little boy is very lonely …

  When Tyler Marshall’s weeping, terrified voice booms through the speakers, Henry winces and fast-forwards.

  Derr vill be morrr mur-derts.

  The accent much thicker now, a burlesque, a joke, Katzenjammer Kids Meet the Wolfman, but somehow even more revealing because of that.

  Der liddul chull-drun … havv-uz-ted like wheed. Like wheed. Havv-uz-ted like …

  “Harvested like a monkey on a stick,” Henry says. “MUNG-ghee. HAVV-us-ted. Who are you, you son of a bitch?”

  Back to the 911 tape.

  There are whips in hell and chains in Sheol. But it’s almost vips in hell, almost chenz in Shayol.

  Vips. Chenz. MUNG-ghee on a stick. A stigg.

  “You’re no better’n—” Henry begins, and then, all at once, another line comes to him.

  “Lady Magowan’s Nightmare.” That one’s good.

  A bad nightmare of what? Vips in hell? Chenz in Shayol? Mung-ghees on sticks?

  “My God,” Henry says softly. “Oh … my … God. The dance. He was at the dance.”

  Now it all begins to fall into place. How stupid they have been! How criminally stupid! The boy’s bike … it had been right there. Right there, for Christ’s sake! They were all blind men, make them all umps.

  “But he was so old,” Henry whispers. “And senile! How were we supposed to guess such a man could be the Fisherman?”

  Other questions follow this one. If the Fisherman is a resident at Maxton Elder Care, for instance, where in God’s name could he have stashed Ty Marshall? And how is the bastard getting around French Landing? Does he have a car somewhere?

  “Doesn’t matter,” Henry murmurs. “Not now, anyway. Who is he and where is he? Those are the things that matter.”

  The warmth on his face—his mind’s first effort to locate the Fisherman’s voice in time and place—had been the spotlight, of course, Symphonic Stan’s spotlight, the pink of ripening berries. And some woman, some nice old woman—

  Mr. Stan, yoo-hoo, Mr. Stan?

  —had asked him if he took requests. Only, before Stan could reply, a voice as flat and hard as two stones grinding together—

  I was here first, old woman.

  —had interrupted. Flat … and hard … and with that faint Germanic harshness that said South Side Chicago, probably second or even third generation. Not vass here first, not old vumman, but those telltale v’s had been lurking, hadn’t they? Ah yes.

  “Mung-ghee,” Henry says, looking straight ahead. Looking straight at Charles Burnside, had he only known it. “Stigg. Havv-us-ted. Hasta la vista … baby.”

  Was that what it came down to, in the end? A dotty old maniac who sounded a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Who was the woman? If he can remember her name, he can call Jack … or Dale, if Jack’s still not answering his phone … and put an end to French Landing’s bad dream.

  Lady Magowan’s Nightmare. That one’s good.

  “Nightmare,” Henry says, then adjusting his voice: “Nahht-mare.” Once again the mimicry is good. Certainly too good for the old codger standing outside the studio door. He is now scowling bitterly and gnashing the hedge clippers in front of the glass. How can the blindman in there sound so much like him? It’s not right; it’s completely improper. The old monster longs to cut the vocal cords right out of Henry Leyden’s throat. Soon, he promises himself, he will do that.

  And eat them.

  Sitting in the swivel chair, drumming his fingers nervously on the gleaming oak in front of him, Henry recalls the brief encounter at the bandstand. Not long into the Strawberry Fest dance, this had been.

  Tell me your name and what you’d like to hear.

  I am Alice Weathers, and—. “Moonglow,” please. By Benny Goodman.

  “Alice Weathers,” Henry says. “That was her name, and if she doesn’t know your name, my homicidal friend, then I’m a monkey on a stick.”

  He starts to get up, and that is when someone—something—begins to knock, very softly, on the glass upper half of the door.

  Bear Girl has drawn close, almost against her will, and now she, Jack, Doc, and the Beez are gathered around the sofa. Mouse has sunk halfway into it. He looks like a person dying badly in quicksand.

  Well, Jack thinks, there’s no quicksand, but he’s dying badly, all right. Guess there’s no question about that.

  “Listen up,” Mouse tells them. The black goo is forming at the corners of his eyes again. Worse, it’s trickling from the corners of his mouth. The stench of decay is stronger than ever as Mouse’s inner workings give up the struggle. Jack is frankly amazed that they’ve lasted as long as they have.

  “You talk,” Beezer says. “We’ll listen.”

  Mouse looks at Doc. “When I finish, give me the fireworks. The Cadillac dope. Understand?”

  “You want to get out ahead of whatever it is you’ve got.”

  Mouse nods.

  “I’m down with that,” Doc agrees. “You’ll go out with a smile on your face.”

  “Doubt that, bro, but I’ll give it a try.”

  Mouse shifts his reddening gaze to Beezer. “When it’s done, wrap me up in one of the nylon tents that’re in the garage. Stick me in the tub. I’m betting that by midnight, you’ll be able to wash me down the drain like … like so much beer foam. I’d be careful, though. Don’t … touch what’s left.”

  Bear Girl bursts into tears.

  “Don’t cry, darlin’,” Mouse says. “I’m gonna get out ahead. Doc promised. Beez?”

  “Right here, buddy.”

  “You have a little service for me. Okay? Read a poem … the one by Auden … the one that always used to frost your balls …”

  “ ‘Thou shalt not read the Bible for its prose,’ ” Beezer says. He’s crying. “You got it, Mousie.”

  “Play some Dead … ‘Ripple,’ maybe … and make sure you’re full enough of Kingsland to christen me good and proper into the next life. Guess there won’t … be any grave for you to piss on, but … do the best you can.”

  Jack laughs at that. He can’t help it. And this time it’s his turn to catch the full force of Mouse’s crimson eyes.

  “Promise me you’ll wait until tomorrow to go out there, cop.”

  “Mouse, I’m not sure I can do that.”

  “You gotta. Go out there tonight, you won’t have to worry about the devil dog … the other things in the woods around that house … the other things …�
� The red eyes roll horribly. Black stuff trickles into Mouse’s beard like tar. Then he somehow forces himself to go on. “The other things in those woods will eat you like candy.”

  “I think that’s a chance I’ll have to take,” Jack says, frowning. “There’s a little boy somewhere—”

  “Safe,” Mouse whispers.

  Jack raises his eyebrows, unsure if he’s heard Mouse right. And even if he has, can he trust what he’s heard? Mouse has some powerful, evil poison working in him. So far he’s been able to withstand it, to communicate in spite of it, but—

  “Safe for a little while,” Mouse says. “Not from everything … there’s things that might still get him, I suppose … but for the time being he’s safe from Mr. Munching. Is that his name? Munching?”

  “Munshun, I think. How do you know it?”

  Mouse favors Jack with a smile of surpassing eeriness. It is the smile of a dying sibyl. Once more he manages to touch his forehead, and Jack notes with horror that the man’s fingers are now melting into one another and turning black from the nails down. “Got it up here, man. Got it alll up here. Told you that. And listen: it’s better the kid should get eaten by some giant bug or rock crab over there … where he is … than that you should die trying to rescue him. If you do that, the abbalah will wind up with the kid for sure. That’s what your … your friend says.”

  “What friend?” Doc asks suspiciously.

  “Never mind,” Mouse says. “Hollywood knows. Don’tcha, Hollywood?”

  Jack nods reluctantly. It’s Speedy, of course. Or Parkus, if you prefer.

  “Wait until tomorrow,” Mouse says. “High noon, when the sun’s strongest in both worlds. Promise.”

  At first Jack can say nothing. He’s torn, in something close to agony.

  “It’d be almost full dark before you could get back out Highway 35 anyway,” Bear Girl says quietly.

  “And there’s bad shit in those woods, all right,” Doc says. “Makes the stuff in that Blair Witch Project look fuckin’ tame. I don’t think you want to try it in the dark. Not unless you got a death wish, that is.”

  “When you’re done …” Mouse whispers. “When you’re done … if any of you are left … burn the place to the ground. That hole. That tomb. Burn it to the ground, do you hear me? Close the door.”

  “Yeah,” Beezer says. “Heard and understood, buddy.”

  “Last thing,” Mouse says. He’s speaking directly to Jack now. “You may be able to find it … but I think I got something else you need. It’s a word. It’s powerful to you because of something you … you touched. Once a long time ago. I don’t understand that part, but …”

  “It’s all right,” Jack tells him. “I do. What’s the word, Mouse?”

  For a moment he doesn’t think Mouse will, in the end, be able to tell him. Something is clearly struggling to keep him from saying the word, but in this struggle, Mouse comes out on top. It is, Jack thinks, very likely his life’s last W.

  “D’yamba,” Mouse says. “Now you, Hollywood. You say it.”

  “D’yamba,” Jack says, and a row of weighty paperbacks slides from one of the makeshift shelves at the foot of the couch. They hang there in the dimming air … hang … hang … and then drop to the floor with a crash.

  Bear Girl voices a little scream.

  “Don’t forget it,” Mouse says. “You’re gonna need it.”

  “How? How am I going to need it?”

  Mouse shakes his head wearily. “Don’t … know.”

  Beezer reaches over Jack’s shoulder and takes the pitiful little scribble of map. “You’re going to meet us tomorrow morning at the Sand Bar,” he tells Jack. “Get there by eleven-thirty, and we should be turning into that goddamned lane right around noon. In the meantime, maybe I’ll just hold on to this. A little insurance policy to make sure you do things Mouse’s way.”

  “Okay,” Jack says. He doesn’t need the map to find Chummy Burnside’s Black House, but Mouse is almost certainly right: it’s probably not the sort of place you want to tackle after dark. He hates to leave Ty Marshall in the furance-lands—it feels wrong in a way that’s almost sinful—but he has to remember that there’s more at stake here than one little boy lost.

  “Beezer, are you sure you want to go back there?”

  “Hell no, I don’t want to go back,” Beezer says, almost indignantly. “But something killed my daughter—my daughter!—and it got here from there! You want to tell me you don’t know that’s true?”

  Jack makes no reply. Of course it’s true. And of course he wants Doc and the Beez with him when he turns up the lane to Black House. If they can bear to come, that is.

  D’yamba, he thinks. D’yamba. Don’t forget.

  He turns back to the couch. “Mouse, do you—”

  “No,” Doc says. “Guess he won’t need the Cadillac dope, after all.”

  “Huh?” Jack peers at the big brewer-biker stupidly. He feels stupid. Stupid and exhausted.

  “Nothin’ tickin’ but his watch,” Doc says, and then he begins to sing. After a moment Beezer joins in, then Bear Girl. Jack steps away from the couch with a thought queerly similar to Henry’s: How did it get late so early? Just how in hell did that happen?

  “In heaven, there is no beer … that’s why we drink it here … and when … we’re gone … from here …”

  Jack tiptoes across the room. On the far side, there’s a lighted Kingsland Premium Golden Pale Ale bar clock. Our old friend—who is finally looking every year of his age and not quite so lucky—peers at the time with disbelief, not accepting it until he has compared it to his own watch. Almost eight. He has been here for hours.

  Almost dark, and the Fisherman still out there someplace. Not to mention his otherworldly playmates.

  D’yamba, he thinks again as he opens the door. And, as he steps out onto the splintery porch and closes the door behind him, he speaks aloud with great sincerity into the darkening day: “Speedy, I’d like to wring your neck.”

  24

  D’YAMBA IS A BRIGHT and powerful spell; powerful connections form a web that extends, ramifying, throughout infinity. When Jack Sawyer peels the living poison from Mouse’s eyes, d’yamba first shines within the dying man’s mind, and that mind momentarily expands into knowledge; down the filaments of the web flows some measure of its shining strength, and soon a touch of d’yamba reaches Henry Leyden. Along the way, the d’yamba brushes Tansy Freneau, who, seated in a windowed alcove of the Sand Bar, observes a wry, beautiful young woman take smiling shape in the pool of light at the far end of the parking lot and realizes, a moment before the young woman vanishes, that she has been given a glimpse of the person her Irma would have become; and it touches Dale Gilbertson, who while driving home from the station experiences a profound, sudden yearning for the presence of Jack Sawyer, a yearning like an ache in his heart, and vows to pursue the Fisherman case to the end with him, no matter what the obstacles; the d’yamba quivers flashing down a filament to Judy Marshall and opens a window into Faraway, where Ty sleeps in an iron-colored cell, awaiting rescue and still alive; within Charles Burnside, it touches the true Fisherman, Mr. Munshun, once known as the Monday Man, just as Burny’s knuckles rap the glass. Mr. Munshun feels a subtle drift of cold air infiltrate his chest like a warning, and freezes with rage and hatred at this violation; Charles Burnside, who knows nothing of d’yamba and cannot hate it, picks up his master’s emotion and remembers the time when a boy supposed dead in Chicago crept out of a canvas sack and soaked the back seat of his car in incriminating blood. Damnably incriminating blood, a substance that continued to mock him long after he had washed away its visible traces. But Henry Leyden, with whom we began this chain, is visited not by grace or rage; what touches Henry is a kind of informed clarity.

  Rhoda’s visits, he realizes, were one and all produced by his loneliness. The only thing he heard climbing the steps was his unending need for his wife. And the being on the other side of his studio door is the horrible old m
an from Maxton’s, who intends to do to Henry the same thing he has done to three children. Who else would appear at this hour and knock on the studio window? Not Dale, not Jack, and certainly not Elvena Morton. Everyone else would stay outside and ring the doorbell.

  It takes Henry no more than a couple of seconds to consider his options and work out a rudimentary plan. He supposes himself both quicker and stronger than the Fisherman, who sounded like a man in his mid-to late eighties; and the Fisherman does not know that his would-be victim is aware of his identity. To take advantage of this situation, Henry has to appear puzzled but amiable, as if he is merely curious about his visitor. And once he opens the studio door, which unfortunately he has left unlocked, he will have to act with speed and decisiveness.

  Are we up to this? Henry asks himself, and thinks, We’d better be.

  Are the lights on? No; because he expected to be alone, he never bothered with the charade of switching them on. The question then becomes: How dark is it outside? Maybe not quite dark enough, Henry imagines—an hour later, he would be able to move through the house entirely unseen and escape through the back door. Now his odds are probably no better than fifty-fifty, but the sun is sinking at the back of his house, and every second he can delay buys him another fraction of darkness in the living room and kitchen.

  Perhaps two seconds have passed since the lurking figure rapped on the window, and Henry, who has maintained the perfect composure of one who failed to hear the sound made by his visitor, can stall no longer. Pretending to be lost in thought, with one hand he grips the base of a heavy Excellence in Broadcasting award accepted in absentia by George Rathbun some years before and with the other scoops from a shallow tray before him a switchblade an admirer once left at the university radio station as a tribute to the Wisconsin Rat. Henry uses the knife to unwrap CD jewel boxes, and not long ago, in search of something to do with his hands, he taught himself how to sharpen it. With its blade retracted, the knife resembles an odd, flat fountain pen. Two weapons are twice as good as one, he thinks, especially if your adversary imagines the second weapon to be harmless.