Desperation

Joh

“We have to go up to the mine, okay, but not to leave town.” David’s voice sounded hoarse, as if he’d been crying. “We have to go down inside the pit.”

Joh

“No, that’s not why… Dad.” The boy reached out and took his father’s hand. It was an oddly adult gesture of comfort. “Morn’s dead.”

Ralph bowed his head. “Well, we don’t know that for sure, David, and we mustn’t give up hope, but I guess it’s likely.”

“I do know for sure. I’m not just guessing.” David’s face was haggard in the light of the crisscrossing flash-light beams. His eyes settled on Joh

“No, David. Not at all. We just didn’t want to risk moving you until we were sure you were okay.” Yet this felt like a lie to his heart. He found himself filling up with a vague, fluttery nervousness. It was the way he felt in the last few days before begi

But this was worse. By far. He felt an urge to hop the kid over the head with the butt of the Rossi shotgun knock him out and shut him up before he could say any thing else.

Don’t you fuek us up, kid, he thought. Not when we’re starting to see a tiny bit of light at the end of the tu

David looked back at his father. He was still holding Ralph’s hand. “She’s dead but not at rest. She can’t be as long as Tak inhabits her body.”

“Who’s Tak, David.” Cynthia asked.

“One of the Wintergreen Twins,” Joh

David gave him a long, level look, and Joh

“Tak is a god,” David said. “Or a demon. Or maybe nothing at all, just a name, a nonsense syllable-but a dangerous nothing, like a voice in the wind. It doesn matter.

What does is that my mom should be put to rest Then she can be with my sister in…

well, in wherever there is for us after we die.”

“Son, what matters is that we have to get out of here,” Joh

“My mom’s dead, but Mary’s not,” David said. “She s still alive. She’s in the pit.”

Cynthia gasped. “How did you know she was even gone.”

David smiled wanly. “Well, I don’t see her, for one thing. The rest 1 know the same way I know it was Audrey who choked me. I was told.”

“By who, David.” Ralph asked.

“I don’t know,” David said. ‘—1 don’t even know if it matters. What matters is that he told me stuff. True stuff. I know it was.”

“Story-hour’s over, pal,” Joh

The Jesus Scout slid out of his cell somehow, killed the coyote Entragian set as a guard, and saved your mis-erable life, Terry spoke up inside his head. Maybe you should listen to him, Joh

And that, he thought, was why he had divorced Terry in the first place. In a fucking nutshell. She had been a divine lay, but she had never known when to shut up and listen to her intellectual betters.

But the damage was done; it was now too late to derail this train of thought. He found himself thinking of what Billingsley had said about David’s escape from the jail cell. Not even Houdini, hadn’t that been it. Because of the head. And then there was the phone.

The way he’d sent the coyotes packing. And the matter of the sardines and crackers. The thought which had gone through his own head had been something about unobtrusive miracles, hadn’t it.

He had to quit thinking that way. Because what Jesus Scouts did was get people killed.

Look at John the Bap-tist, or those nuns in South America. or—Not even Houdini.

Because of the head.

Joh

He was also afraid of David Carver.

“It wasn’t really the cop who killed my mother and sister and Mary’s husband,” David said, and gave Joh

“Or people,” Cynthia said. “Sure, God’s a master of disguise.”

The last of Joh

“He’s gone,” David said in his quiet voice. He leaned forward and took another Jolt from the case.

“Who.” Joh

“The can tak. It doesn’t matter who it’s in-Entragian or my mother or the one it started with-it’s always the same. Always the can tak, the big god, the guardian. Gone. Can’t you feel it.”

1don’t feel anything.”

Don’t be a gonzo, Terry said in his mind.

“Don’t be a gonzo,” David said, looking intently up at him. The bottle of Jolt was clasped loosely in his hands. Joh

“What I’m doing is trying to get you to listen,” David said. “Everyone else will if you will! He doesn’t need to send his can tahs or can tak against us if we’re in dis-agreement with one another-if there’s a broken window, he’ll get in and tear us apart!”

“Come on,” Joh

“I’m not saying it is. Just listen, okay.” David sounded almost pleading. “You can do that, there’s time, because he’s gone. The trailers he put in the road are gone, too. Don’t you get it. He wants us to leave.”

“Great! Let’s give him what he wants!”

“Let’s listen to what David has to say,” Steve said.

Joh

“You told me to stop calling you boss. I’m holding you to that.”