Mystery Walk

by Robert R. McCammon

  “Yes,” Billy said. “I am.” And he saw a flicker of hesitation in the shape changer’s gaze. He wasn’t sure of the limits of the shape changer’s powers—if indeed, there were any—but it seemed to him that as he got stronger, the shape changer grew more uncertain, more threatened. Perhaps, he thought, the beast couldn’t physically hurt him in that demonic, elemental shape, but it could affect his mind, possibly make him hurt himself. If the shape changer ever devised a way to attack him physically, he feared he couldn’t survive against such a hideous force.

  The thing’s form shifted, like a reflection seen in a rippling pond of stagnant water, and suddenly it looked like Lee Sayre. “You’re a meddler,” it said, in Sayre’s voice. “Your family’s full of meddlers. Some of them couldn’t stand up to me, boy. Do you think you can?”

  Billy didn’t reply, but stood his ground.

  Lee Sayre’s face grinned. “Good! Then it’ll be you and me, boy, with a roomful of souls in the balance! Think fast, boy!”

  The floor creaked and pitched downward, dropping Billy to his knees in the water. It’s a trick! he thought, as the floor seemed to sway precariously. An illusion, conjured up by the beast!

  A blizzard of lighted matches swirled around Billy, burning him on the face and hands, sparking his hair and sweater. He cried out and tried to shield his face with his arms. A trick! Not really burning, not really…! If he was strong enough, he knew, he could overcome the shape changer’s tricks. He looked up into the matches that sizzled off his cheeks and forehead, and he tried to concentrate on seeing the shape changer not as Lee Sayre, but as it really looked. The blizzard of matches faded away, and the boar-thing stood before him.

  “Tricks,” Billy said, and looked up through the darkness at Melissa Pettus.

  A fireball suddenly came crashing through the ceiling upon him, burying him in flaming debris. He could smell himself burning—a May Night smell—and he screamed as he tried to fight free. He ran, his clothes on fire, his mind panicked.

  Before he reached the doorway, he stepped through a gaping hole in the floor that had been hidden by rubble.

  As he plunged through, he caught a jagged piece of twisted metal bed frame that cut into his hand. His body hung halfway through the hole, his legs dangling twenty feet over a pile of timbers studded with blackened nails. His clothes were still on fire, and he could hear his skin sizzling.

  “Let go, Billy,” Melissa whispered. “It hurts, doesn’t it? It hurts to burn.”

  “No!” he shouted. If he let go, he knew he’d fall to his death. The shape changer had wanted him to flee, had wanted him to step through this hole. Panic, terror, illusions, and insanity—those were the shape changer’s most lethal weapons.

  “Your mother’s dead,” Melissa’s pretty face said. “The cowboy came and cut her throat. Your little house is a heap of ashes. Billy, your hand’s bleeding—”

  “Somebody up there?” a voice shouted from below.

  “Let go, let go!” the shape changer, in Melissa’s skin, said urgently.

  Billy concentrated on the pain in his hand. His flesh had stopped sizzling. He turned his full attention to getting out of the hole. His clothes weren’t on fire, weren’t even scorched. He was strong, he told himself; he could resist the shape changer’s weapons. Melissa’s form began to fade away, and in its place was the boar. Billy climbed up and crouched on his knees in the water. What had the thing said about his mother? Lies, all lies! He had to hurry, he told himself, before the firemen found him in here.

  There were scorched bones lying around him. A rib cage lay nearby. In the corner was a hideous, blackened form still wearing the shreds of clothes, its black skull-like head lolling.

  Billy could feel them all around him, terrified and confused. They murmured and moaned, crowding around him to flee the dark power of the shape changer.

  “No fear,” Billy whispered. “Give up the pain, give up…”

  “Get out of the dark place!” Jimmy Jed Falconer bellowed, his eyes blazing with righteous anger.

  Something as soft as silk brushed Billy’s face. A formless, pale bluish white mass had begun seeping out of the wall, reaching tentatively toward him. A second revenant hung in a corner like a spider web, clinging fearfully to the wall.

  “You’re not strong enough!” Falconer shouted. “You can’t do it!”

  “Give up the pain,” Billy whispered, trying to mentally draw them closer. He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating. When he opened them, he saw a third revenant drifting nearer, taking on a vague human shape, arms reaching to grasp for him.

  “You have to leave this place,” Billy said. “You don’t belong here.” And suddenly he shivered, as a cold white shape drifted over him from behind; it was as soft as velvet, and was so cold it made his bones ache. Two appendages that might have been arms enfolded him.

  “No!” the shape changer thundered, reverting to the beast.

  The revenant began to sink into him. Billy gritted his teeth as its human memories filled him; first the panic as the fire spread and the ceiling crashed down, then the agony of burning flesh. Then in his mind he saw a splay of cards on a table, a hand reaching for a bottle of Red Dagger wine, golden wheatfields seen from a speeding boxcar, dreaded policemen swinging clubs. Memories and emotions swept through him like leaves blown from dying trees.

  Another form drifted closer, gripping Billy’s hand and crawling up his arm.

  Again, the agony of the blaze streaked through Billy’s mind. Then a needle sinking into flesh. A thin woman standing in a doorway, cradling a child.

  Billy shuddered and moaned from the intensity of the pain and emotions he was taking on. He saw dozens of white forms sifting through the room, rising from the heaps of bones and ashes. They were oozing out of the walls, some of them hurrying toward him, others still as frightened as little children and clinging to the corners.

  “Let go of the pain,” he whispered, as the forms clung to him. “No pain, no fear…” Images from other lives crackled through his mind: a knife fight in an alley, a bottle uptilted for the last precious drops.

  “LOOK AT ME, BOY!” the shape changer shouted, and rippled into Fitts, standing with a python curled around his neck. “Your mother’s dead, your mother’s dead! The cowboy came and sheared her head!”

  The revenants were all over Billy. Though they were weightless, the tonnage of the emotions they were shedding bore him to the floor, where he lay gasping on his side in ashes and water. He heard the shape changer roar, “Its not over! Its not over yet, you’ll see!” but he closed his mind to the thing’s taunts, mentally fixed on bringing the revenants into him.

  The shape changer vanished. But, behind Billy, the charred corpse in the corner stirred. Its dead, burned-out eye sockets began to show a gleam of red. The thing moved, slowly, slowly, and started to drag itself toward the boy. One skeletal hand closed around a piece of metal, and lifted it to strike Billy from behind.

  Burned bone cracked. The arm dangled uselessly, and as Billy turned to look over his shoulder, he recognized in the reanimated corpse’s face the shape changer’s red, hate-filled eyes. He lay immobile as the corpse crawled toward him, its mouth opening to emit a hoarse whisper through burned vocal cords; then the head lolled, ripping loose from the neck. The body shuddered and settled again into the ashes, as the shape changer gave it up.

  Someone shouted, “Jesus Christ!”

  And another voice, rising frantically, “Get the lights on!”

  A stunning beam of light flooded the room. Some of the wraiths scattered away from Billy, fleeing the harsh illumination. Others floated above the floor, transfixed.

  The fireman with his spotlight backed away, stumbling into the camera crew from WCHI, who were doing a documentary on firetrap hotels. The room was filled with strange white shapes, some of them vaguely in human form. “What the hell?…” the fireman whispered.

  “Barry!” a tall woman with red hair said. “Film it!” Her eyes were wide a
nd startled, and she was fighting the urge to run like hell from whatever those things were. The cameraman paused, stunned, and at once the woman switched on a power-pack strapped to his back. She lifted the video-tape camera from its mount on his shoulder, popped off the plastic lens cap, and started filming. Two intense lights attached atop the camera came on, illuminating every corner of the room. “Give me more cable! Now, damn it!” She stepped into the room, panning from corner to corner.

  “Nothing there,” the fireman was babbling. “Nothing there. Just smoke. Just—” And then he fled the room.

  The camerawoman stepped over the boy passed out on the floor, jerked at the cable to make sure it wasn’t snagged, and filmed a white shape with a head and arms as it fled into a wall.

  56

  WHEN CAMMY FALCONER SAW her son, she was amazed at how much older he looked. He was growing into a handsome man, but he was getting fat. He sat out at a table by the glass-enclosed swimming pool that was part of the Krepsin house, working on a plastic airplane model.

  “Wayne?” Niles said quietly. “Your visitors are here.”

  Wayne looked up incuriously, and Cammy saw that his eyes seemed dead. She managed a weak smile as she stepped forward. “Aren’t you going to say hello to your mother?”

  “You’ve been smoking,” Wayne replied. “I can smell it on your clothes.” He glanced up at the husky, curly-haired man who stood a few paces behind her, and frowned. One of her boyfriends, he thought. He’d heard she had a lot of boyfriends out in Houston, where she’d moved after the Falconer Foundation had bought her a condominium.

  “Wayne, this is Darryl Whitton,” she said uneasily. “He plays for the Oilers.”

  “I don’t like football.” He concerned himself with putting together the fuselage of a Concorde. “How’d you find me?”

  “Where you are isn’t a secret.” She glanced quickly at Niles, who seemed determined to stay around. “Can I be alone with my son, please?” Niles nodded in accordance, wished them a good visit, and returned to the house. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, Wayne.”

  “Did they send you?”

  “No,” she said, but she was lying. The Crusade people had called her and explained that they needed her help. Little Wayne was out in Palm Springs, they told her, and he didn’t want to come home. Henry Bragg was missing, and George Hodges had quit the Crusade only a few days ago. Cammy inwardly shuddered when Wayne looked at her; she feared he could see the lie through those scorched, haunted eyes.

  Whitton, an affable lout, picked up one of the plastic pieces and grinned. “Mighty good job you’re doin’ there, Wayne. Your momma tells me you like…” And then the grin froze when Wayne’s gaze fixed on him. Whitton cleared his throat, put the piece down, and ambled away along the edge of the large swimming pool.

  “What’s this all about?” Cammy asked. She was well tanned and obviously prosperous, and had broken out of the crystalline cocoon J.J. Falconer had spun around her. “Don’t you want to continue the Crusade anymore?”

  “They did send you, didn’t they?”

  “Wayne, you’re the head of a multimillion-dollar corporation! And here you are, putting together kids’ toys! Who is this Krepsin man, and why did he make it so hard for me to see you? I’ve called half a dozen times!”

  “Mr. Krepsin is my friend,” Wayne replied. “I’m resting. And you got in to see me, didn’t you?” He concentrated on getting the wings done just right.

  “Resting? For what?”

  “The future,” he said softly. “But you don’t care, not really. You stopped caring after my daddy died. But I’ll tell you about the future anyway. Mr. Krepsin is going to help me build a church, right out in the desert. It’s going to be the biggest church in the world, and it’s going to last forever. It’s going to be built in Mexico, and Mr. Krepsin is going to show me where…” His voice trailed away, and he sat staring into space for a moment. “We can build our own television network, Mr. Krepsin says. He wants to help me, every step of the way.”

  “In other words, this man’s got control over you.”

  He shot a dark glance at her. “You can’t see the future, can you? I don’t have any friends back in Fayette. They just want to use me. Back there I’m still Little Wayne Falconer, but here I’m Mr. Wayne Falconer. I can have anything I want here, and I don’t have to be afraid of anything. And know what? They let me fly a jet. Night or day, whenever I choose. I take those controls and I fly over the desert and I feel so…so free. Nobody demands anything from me here.”

  “And what do you do for money?”

  “Oh, I’ve had my bank accounts transferred from Fayette. I’ve got a new lawyer, too. Mr. Russo. We’re going to put all the foundation money in a Mexican bank, because the interest rates are higher. So you see? I’m still in control.”

  “My God!” Cammy said incredulously. “You’ve handed over the foundation to a stranger? If the press finds out about this, you’re through.”

  “I don’t see it that way.” He carefully squeezed plastic cement out of a tube, applying it to a tail fin. “Daddy doesn’t either.”

  Cammy went cold. “What?”

  “Daddy. He’s come back to me, now that the Hawthorne witch is dead. He says what I’m doing is right, and he says he can rest in Heaven when the demon boy is dead.”

  “No,” she whispered. “Wayne…where’s Henry? Is Henry here with you?”

  “Henry? Oh, he went on to Mexico.”

  Cammy realized her son was out of his mind. Her eyes stung with tears. “Please,” she said. “Wayne, listen to me. I’m begging you. Please go back to Fayette. They can talk to you, and—” She touched his arm.

  Instantly he jerked away, and the half-finished airplane scattered across the table and to the ground. “Don’t touch me!” he told her. “I never asked you to come here!” His face reddened as he realized the model he’d worked so hard on was ruined. “Look what you made me do! You…you’ve broken it!”

  “Wayne…please…”

  “Get out!” he said angrily. “I don’t want you near me!”

  “You’re destroying everything J.J. built. Don’t throw it all away! You need help, Wayne! Please go back to Fayette, where they can—”

  “GET OUT!” Wayne howled, rising to his feet. Whitton was hurrying over. “You Jezebel!” Wayne shouted, and tore away the necklace she was wearing. Pearls rolled across the ground. “You painted whore! You’re not my mother anymore, so GET OUT!”

  A glass partition separating the pool from the house slid open. Felix, the butler looked out and then went to summon Niles.

  Cammy stared at her son. He was too far gone now to be helped. She knew she’d never see him again. She touched a red welt across her neck where he’d scratched her. And it came out of her before she could stop it: “You’re right, Wayne,” she said in a quiet, firm voice, “I’m not your mother. I never was.”

  “Don’t, Cammy!” Whitton said.

  But Cammy’s anger and disgust at what her son had become was pouring out of her. “I was never your mother,” she said, and saw Wayne blink. “You spoiled little bastard! Jimmy Jed Falconer bought you, because he wanted a son to carry on the Crusade, and it had to be done quickly. Do you hear me, Wayne?”

  Wayne was motionless, his eyes narrowed into slits and his mouth half open.

  “He paid hard cash for you!” And then she shouted it for the world to hear: “Jimmy Jed Falconer was impotent! God only knows who your mother and father really were!”

  Niles, who’d just come up behind the woman, grabbed Cammy’s elbow. “I’ll have to ask you to—”

  “Get your hand off me!” She pulled away. “What kind of tricks are you people playing? Why don’t you let Wayne go?”

  “He can leave anytime he likes. Can’t you, Wayne?”

  The boy’s eyes had frozen into chunks of blue ice. “You’re a liar,” he whispered to the woman. “I’m J.J. Falconer’s son.”

  “Not by blood. There�
�s a man who buys and sells babies. It was done in secret, and I was expected to go along with it. Oh, he loved you like you were his blood, and I tried my best, but I can’t stand to see you throwing everything away like this!”

  “Liar,” Wayne whispered.

  “The visit is over,” Niles said. “Felix, will you show these people to the door, please?”

  “Go back to Fayette,” Cammy pleaded. “Don’t destroy J.J.’s lifework!” Tears filled her eyes. Whitton gently took her hand and they followed the Mexican butler. Cammy looked back only once, and saw the man named Niles put his hand firmly on Wayne’s shoulder. “That was kind of cruel, wasn’t it?” Whitton asked.

  She wiped her eyes. “Take me to a bar, Darryl. The nearest damned bar you can find.”

  Niles watched them leave through hooded eyes. “Are you all right, Wayne?”

  “I’m J.J. Falconer’s son,” the boy replied in a dazed voice.

  “Of course you are.” He recognized the shock settling into Wayne’s face, and he took a plastic bottle of small white pills from his inside coat pocket. He shook out a couple into his hand. “Your sedatives, Wayne. Chew these up.”

  “NO!” The boy struck out at Niles’s wrist, and the pills went flying into the swimming pool. Wayne’s face was mottled and stricken. “I’m J.J. Falconer’s son!” he shouted.

  “That’s right.” Niles tensed, ready for anything. If the boy went out of control, there was no telling what he might try. “Of course you’re his son,” he said soothingly. “Now why don’t you finish your model? They’re gone now; they won’t bother you again. I’ll have Felix bring you a nice glass of fresh orange juice.” The juice would be laced with Valium, enough to turn him into a zombie again.

  “My airplane.” Wayne stared down at the scattered plastic pieces. “Oh,” he whispered, and a tear dripped down his right cheek. “It’s broken…”

  “You can fix it. Come on, sit down.” Niles led him to his chair. “What would you like to go with that orange juice?”