Shadowland (81 page)

 
   
'No!'
Tom shouted, echoing the roars of the audience.

 
   'Yes.' Collins smiled down at him and released the bird. The song cascaded fully out, spearing Tom with what Del was bringing forth from his trapped soul, the liquid and overflowing song which was Del's only speech. Del ascended an inch above the magician's hand and

 
   
no no no no-please —

 
   froze, shooting out a spray of refracted colors, was silent, the miraculous song cut off in the middle of an ascending note; the ghost of the note sailed into the ceiling; and a glass bird fell back into the magician's hands.

 
   
Del.

 
   'You are in Shadowland, boy,' Collins said. 'You are part of the performance. You cannot leave.' He bent forward, and Tom stepped up to stand before him, afraid that he would drop what Del had become as Del had deliberately shattered the Ventnor owl. The audience ceased its roaring. Tom vaguely saw Rose coming toward him with an expression of total dismay —
We can't do it, Tom, I thought we could but I was wrong, we'll always be
here —and tremblingly took the glass sparrow from Collins' hands.

 
   'Now for your own conclusion,' Collins said. 'You know it's over, don't you? Look. Our audience has gone home.'

 
   Tom did not have to look. He knew the seats were empty now, waiting for the next repeat performance and the next after that.

 
   'Rose is already mine,' Collins said. 'And so are you, but you don't know it yet.'

 
   The lights snapped off. Collins' fingers brushed his own, and the glass sparrow was filled with glowing many-colored light.

 
29

 
Tom stepped backward in the punctured darkness, aware after a moment of blinding pain that the magician had healed his wounds. In the moment of pain, the glass sparrow had jumped out of his hand and landed safely on the carpet before the stage, where its inner light darkened and died.

 
   The handkerchieves fell from his hands.

 
   'Tom?'

 
   'Wait,' he said, and picked up the glass sparrow. No light was left in it.

 
   'Now it is your time, apprentice,' Collins whispered.

 
   'Why did you heal me?' Rose found his waist, her arm circled him, and they both backed in lockstep into the first row of seats.

 
   'I want you as you came,' Collins said. 'Aura. I don't want you to have the aura of a wounded fawn. I want the original Tom Flanagan, complete in every aspect — the shining boy.'

 
   Tom pushed Rose sideways, toward where he remembered the door was placed.

 
   'You can see me, can't you?' Collins whispered. 'Even in the dark, boy? I can see you perfectly well.'

 
   And he could see the magician, for he was wrapped in a dazzling, rippling band of color.

 
   'Del was not enough. The other messenger demands you.'

 
   'Or you,' Tom said. He held up his right hand. It was in darkness, but ribbons of light ran about it. Rose sucked in her breath, terrified.

 
   'You've frightened our dear little Rose. She's never seen you in full dress before. Never seen your choir robes. But then, you haven't either, have you?'

 
   'I'm as good as you are,' Tom said, knowing he was not.

 
   The magician ripped off the wig and sent it sailing toward the stage, where first it glimmered and then dimmed like a cheap lightbulb.

 
   'Speckle John thought so too.'

 
   
CRASH!
Another deafening, destroying wingbeat.

 
   'The owl wants to be fed.'

 
   Tom made sure of his grip on the glass sparrow with one hand; clamped Rose's wrist with the other and gave a signaling tug; and ran.

 
30

 
Behind him in the empty theater Collins started to laugh, and Rose went only a few steps before she said, 'I can't. I can't run. You go. I'm his anyway.'

 
   'You won't stay.' He yanked her along behind him and pulled her through the open door.

 
   'We can't get away.'

 
   He looked past Rose and saw a flickering outline coming calmly, inexorably toward the door.

 
   
My little girl is right.
Collins was feeling inside his mind as he had felt inside Skeleton's.
You cannot. Look at me.

 
   The outline blazed like a tightningbolt, so strongly that purple and red. radiance flashed through the door and made the wall opposite momentarily gleam like a neon sign.

 
   
You will be at home in Shadowland, Tom. I am your father and mother now.

 
   'Just come on,' he said, and dragged her down the hall. She had begun to cry: not from fear, he knew. From pain. 'Hurry,' he commanded.

 
   They had exactly one chance, Tom thought. An impossible chance, but their only one. If Collins could send a fishing line into his mind, he could send one back. Burn that ball back — Skeleton had said it, dredging up what must have been some miserable childhood memory. Okay, I'll burn that ball back. I'll take off his head with it.

 
   Rose sobbed with every step.

 
   'Only a little more. Only a few more feet.' He felt for the light switch on the wall outside the kitchen, and his fingers ran over ribbed plastic. 'There.' Yellow light fell on them. '

 
   The curled posters, the shattered glass. The carpet had been singed into black popcorn. Big oval blisters bulged from the walls, surrounded by meteor showers of smaller, round blisters.

 
   
No need for shadows now.

 
   Rose jerked in pain or surprise beside him, and he thought it was because of Collins. But she was looking in the wrong direction for that — behind him, in the direction of the living room and front door.

 
   'You're going to need a little help, Red,' came a velvety voice. In the same moment, Tom whirled around and the scarred receptacle from which he had pulled Skeleton Ridpath shuddered to its feet.

 
   
Climb in, boy? Or do I have to push you?

 
   'Just remember you got a great big battery,' Bud Copeland said. 'You found out a lot of things about yourself today, but you got to forget about that now. You have to think about the job, son.'

 
   The Collector dangled, in the hall, knocking itself against the blistered and discolored walls. Its empty head swiveled toward Tom; toward Rose; back to Tom.

 
   Bud moved up beside them, and there was the shock of seeing right through him again, to the blisters on the wall. They looked like stains on the fabric of his suit.

 
   '
I
'll
give you a big, big shove. You'll have a real good time. Way way way way down in the dump.'

 
   Tom's mind felt a sudden wrench, followed by an enormous flaring pain.

 
   'Remember what you heard, Red. Anybody can be collected at any time.'

 
   Collins went fishing in his mind again, and the hook snagged on the picture he had of himself and Skeletondown in there, trapped inside the Collector. He stepped back, more afraid of that picture than he'd been of anything at Shadowland; more afraid of that than death.

 
   'You don't want to run, do you, Red? You want to stay near where you got to stay.'

 
   Yes, he thought. Where I got to stay. He felt Collins jerking him like a fish, and he blasted,
Out!

 
   'I'm what you know, Red,' Bud told him. 'That's all I am now.
You
brought me here — so I could tell you. I'm just your shadow. That's your battery working, Red. Crank it up as high as it can get.'

 
   But I don't know how to crank it up, Tom thought despairingly: sometimes things just come.

 
   'Like you did on the wall with nails through your hands,' Bud's voice whispered. Or was that his own voice? 'It's not going to be any easier than that. But I helped him long enough — now I'm going to help you.' He vanished, and Tom felt suddenly abandoned.

 
   Collins appeared at the corner of the hallway, surrounded by a prismatic light.

 
   
If I made you come,
Tom said inside himself,
then come back. I need you. Now.

 
   'Now,' Collins echoed, and the force of his mind jerked Tom forward to him. 'Now, little bird.'

 
31

 
It was like being caught in a typhoon. Invisible wind pushed him, tore all but his helplessness from his thoughts — he forgot Bud and Rose as he struggled to stay on his feet. He fought to stay away from Collins and the Collector, but the typhoon swung him irresistibly forward. The wind whipped him sideways, and his head cracked against the wall. Smell of burning: the smell of Carson warping toward destruction. Strong hands were inside his head, a hook was in his brain, tugging and tugging.

 
   
Strong little bird, aren't you?

 
   The glass sparrow in his hand turned glowing red.
No!
his mind shouted, and the pull of the hands weakened. The typhoon dropped him.

 
   Collins' face hovered a foot from his own — the sneering mouth, the powerful nose. The Herbie Butter makeup was dripping down his cheeks, streaking away, as if being burned off from within.

 
   It's work for him too, Tom realized.