32

The whole purple body, damaged by the earlier flames, flowed past Tom, howling wordless sounds of disbelieving shock, and was pulled through the door. It grasped the frame with its fingers. The melted eyes found Tom, and the boy saw what he had not wanted to see: Collins far down inside, scrambling for release, still enough himself to think he could escape and trying to fight his way out of that awful room with its pressing horrors, the very grease of human misery. You made it, Tom thought. It's yours. The fingers weakened, and the Collector flowed out of sight.

Tom stepped into the bathroom. He turned on the light. The mirror showed a roiling, smoky confusion. He switched the light off and tottered out.

'You did it,' Rose breathed. 'I was hardly… I didn't think that anybody… '

'Yeah,' Tom said. He sat down. Bud was gone; but Bud had never been there. 'Fine. Got one more thing to do.'

Rose hovered in the dim light. 'One more…?'

'Ladies and gentlemen,' he pronounced, almost enjoying the sight of Rose's tremulous uncertainty. 'Come over this way, Rose. I don't want you to get hurt. Ladies and gentlemen… the amazing Wall of Fire.'

He had strength enough to reach down inside himself and find the key that had to be there. Fire, he thought, and a feeble little row of flames sprang up along the carpet directly before him. Rose stepped nearer to him. 'Not much of a wall,' he said, and giggled with exhaustion. 'More of a picket fence. Let's improve it.'

And through his headache thought it into being. The row of flames mounted the wall and began to lick at the ceiling. Tom sat slumped in the hall and watched the fire grow. It ate the frame of the bathroom door, and looked as beautiful as a rose garden to him. He heard it spreading down the hall, feeding on the carpet, going toward the living room. It would love the staircase. Get it all, he thought, swallow every inch of it, and did not have to reach for more of his strength because the fire would swallow everything anyhow.

He dully watched it spring up along the frames of the posters. Through the opening between the burning carpet and the fire spreading across the ceiling, he saw the flames speed into the living room.

He giggled again. 'Forgot to think about a way out, Rose. Sit down and enjoy the pretty fire.' He picked up the glass sparrow and cradled it on his lap. 'Did you hear him singing, Rose? Did you hear that? That was the most beautiful thing… it sounded like he was so happy. It sounded better than that.' The fire moved toward his shoes. 'I'm sorry there isn't a way to get out, Rose.'

'Of course there's a way to get out,' she said.

'As a barbecue. Sit down and let's be barbecued together. I don't know what you are, but I love you anyhow.'

She reached for him, and he raised his hand. The heat was starting to cook him now, and he imagined that there might be a minute or two of pain, only a little worse than the pain he had already suffered. But instead of sitting beside him and holding his hand, she pulled. 'I can't,' he said, and she pulled again, and he staggered up.

'The tunnels, you dummy,' she said. 'We can go back under the lake.'

She pulled up the trapdoor, and he looked around for a last time at the forbidden room. 'You know,' he said, 'he really was a great magician. Del was right about that. And at the beginning, it's hard to believe now, but at the beginning it was even fun in a way. I kept trying to figure out what it was all about.'

Rose looked at him with cautious but almost maternal curiosity.

'There's something in this room,' he remembered. 'Rose, I can't leave until I find it.'

'There's nothing here,' she said. And that seemed true.

'Something he said he was going to leave here for me - when he thought I might stay with him. I have to find it.'

'We don't have any time.'

'I don't think it'll take any time.'

He woozily looked over the silvery gray walls. There had been a moment, the day after his 'welcome,' when he had paused at the door and sensed the presence in here of some invisible scene: Shadowland had wanted him to read the Book.

'Hurry!' Rose said. The noises of the fire were advancing down the hall.

'It's here,' he said dreamily. He turned about, still amazed that he could stand. He was looking at the wall opposite the door. Tom walked past the entrance to the tunnels and ran his hands over the wall. It was already warm. He gently moved his hand over the silvery paint.

A panel swung open onto a little recess. The Book lay on a wooden stand, opened in the middle and surrounded by plush. If he had perverted the Book, Collins had at least kept it reverentially. Tom reached in and took the leather-bound volume off the stand. He reached behind his back and slid it under his belt where he had kept the old pistol. 'All right,' he said. 'I'm ready now.'

Rose led the way down into the tunnel.