19

The patio lights limned two vague heaps out on the side lawn, and Tom let Rose guide him in that direction. The night had deepened while they had been in the house, and stars filled the sky, gleaming like smaller, colder reflections of the myriad lights blazing again in the forest on either side of the lake.

'Can you find it in the dark?' she asked.

'Got to,' he said. He tried to remember where he had been when he had dropped it. Had it been before he had gone toward Pease and the ladder, or had he carried the gun for a while? He saw himself dropping the gun, saw it fire into the grass, flipping over with the force of the recoil.

'Stop, Rose,' he said. 'I was about here. I stood up somewhere around here. I never got very far from the stones.' He saw it all rolling on before him, Del with his bloody face, the knot of men going seriously about their business, Snail with his delicate look of worry walking forward right into the bullet. He looked down and did not see the gun, and panic started up in him again. He whispered, 'I don't see it! I don't see it!'

'Let's go ahead a little bit,' Rose said.

They went five feet forward.

'No, this is too far,' Tom said, seeing Snail's body lying slantwise on the grass. Snail looked like an exhibit in a wax museum. The other body, Thorn's, was a surprising way off.

'Did Snail get that close to you?' Rose asked.

'I don't think… I don't know.' Again he saw Snail calmly coming for him, keeping his almost kindly eyes on Tom, that little wrinkle dividing his forehead.

Tom stepped backward, remembering how they had stood. He moved a foot sideways and when he looked down he saw the gun black against the near - black of the grass. He went to his knees and collected it up with both hands. The barrel was still warm. He stood up and displayed it like an offering. 'Two bullets left,' he said. 'I'm going to shoot his eyes out.'

When he looked at Rose he saw only a fuzzy aureole of hair outlined by the patio lights. 'Help me,' he said. 'He's a fiend, and I'm going to shoot his eyes out.'

He still cradled the pistol in his joined palms. He would be able to lift it in the proper way only once, and manipulate the trigger with his left index finger. Then he would shoot the magician's eyes out.

Rose helped him toward the patio, then across it. They came into the living room, which was daubed here and there with Tom's blood. No rush of ecstatic air greeted him, as on the morning after his welcome. Shadowland was waiting, he realized. Shadowland was neutral. He pulled the gun toward his chest. It smelled like explosions and oil-it smelled like a burned trombone. Holding it closer like that helped the ache in his forearms.

'We just go up?' Rose asked. 'We just go up. Very quietly.'

They left the living room and went softly to the big staircase. It rose from gray darkness into dim light. Outside Collins' bedroom, the recessed lights tinted the top of the walls and the swinging doors.

Rose went onto the first step, looked back at him. Hugging the gun into his chest, he nodded, and she went noiselessly up another step. He could do this by himself. Tom put his feet where she had, trying to walk exactly where she had walked - sometime while he had been trying to get his fingers under the gun, Rose had removed her shoes, which she now carried in her left hand. As he set his feet where her bare feet had been, what he still thought of as his new senses sent him the impression of… knives. Fire. He looked up, startled, almost feeling sharp points and flames working in his feet, and saw Rose slowly and silently and slowly going up one step after another. Tom moved his foot two inches to the side: mute ordinary carpet. When he moved his foot back again, the impression was still there - knives - but fading. He went farther away from the railing and crept up after her.

She stood on the landing, waiting for him to climb the last tread. Again he had that sense of kinship, as strong as love but different from it, of something in her that was like the magician in him, hidden away. He said I would never leave him. Did he say you would always walk on knives, Rose?

'Oh, Rose,' he whispered.

She shook her head, either telling him to be quiet or that she could not answer the question she knew he was going to ask. Rose looked anxiously at the swinging doors set off the landing; back at him. Keep your mind on the job, Tom. He adjusted the gun in his hand and got it so that the barrel pointed out from his chest, his right hand on the grip, his left supporting it.

Rose gently pushed one half of the swinging doors, and it noiselessly opened. Tom slipped through into darkness, and saw light outlining Collins' bedroom door. It was chinked open, and all he had to do was burst in.

One final adjustment of his hands: he took the whole weight in his right hand, and wedged his finger into the trigger guard.

Just go in and shoot, he told himself. Don't even stop to think. Just push back the trigger. Then it's over.

He gathered himself, consciously made himself still. He raised the gun so he could sight down the barrel when he was in the room. His heartbeat surged and pounded. When he was ready, he stepped forward and kicked open the door and ran into the bedroom.

What he saw stopped him cold. A gigantic blood-smeared skull grinned at him, its mouth the size of a shark's. 'Del!' he screamed, and the barrel of Collins' pistol went wavering blindly as his left index finger involuntarily jerked the trigger back.