"Where to, buddy?"
"Norway Valley Road," Henry says. "It's a white house with blue trim, standing back from the road. You'll see it not long after you cross the creek."
Henry settles back in the seat and turns his troubled face toward the open window. French Landing feels strange to him today . . . fraught. Like something that has slipped and slipped until it is now on the verge of simply falling off the table and smashing to pieces on the floor.
Say that she has come back. Say that she has. If it's love she's come with, why does the smell of her perfume make me so uneasy? So almost revolted? And why was her touch (her imagined touch, he assures himself) so unpleasant?
Why was her touch so cold?
After the dazzle of the day, the living room of Beezer's crib is so dark that at first Jack can't make out anything. Then, when his eyes adjust a little, he sees why: blankets — a double thickness, from the look — have been hung over both of the living-room windows, and the door to the other downstairs room, almost certainly the kitchen, has been closed.
"He can't stand the light," Beezer says. He keeps his voice low so it won't carry across to the far side of the room, where the shape of a man lies on a couch. Another man is kneeling beside him.
"Maybe the dog that bit him was rabid," Jack says. He doesn't believe it.
Beezer shakes his head decisively. "It isn't a phobic reaction. Doc says it's physiological. Where light falls on him, his skin starts to melt. You ever hear of anything like that?"
"No." And Jack has never smelled anything like the stench in this room, either. There's the buzz of not one but two table fans, and he can feel the cross-draft, but that stink is too gluey to move. There's the reek of spoiled meat — of gangrene in torn flesh — but Jack has smelled that before. It's the other smell that's getting to him, something like blood and funeral flowers and feces all mixed up together. He makes a gagging noise, can't help it, and Beezer looks at him with a certain impatient sympathy.
"Bad, yeah, I know. But it's like the monkey house at the zoo, man — you get used to it after a while."
The swing door to the other room opens, and a trim little woman with shoulder-length blond hair comes through. She's carrying a bowl. When the light strikes the figure lying on the couch, Mouse screams. It's a horribly thick sound, as if the man's lungs have begun to liquefy. Something — maybe smoke, maybe steam — starts to rise up from the skin of his forehead.
"Hold on, Mouse," the kneeling man says. It's Doc. Before the kitchen door swings all the way shut again, Jack is able to read what's pasted to his battered black bag. Somewhere in America there may be another medical man sporting a STEPPENWOLF RULES bumper sticker on the side of his physician's bag, but probably not in Wisconsin.
The woman kneels beside Doc, who takes a cloth from the basin, wrings it out, and places it on Mouse's forehead. Mouse gives a shaky groan and begins to shiver all over. Water runs down his cheeks and into his beard. The beard seems to be coming out in mangy patches.
Jack steps forward, telling himself he will get used to the smell, sure he will. Maybe it's even true. In the meantime he wishes for a little of the Vicks VapoRub most LAPD homicide detectives carry in their glove compartments as a matter of course. A dab under each nostril would be very welcome right now.
There's a sound system (scruffy) and a pair of speakers in the corners of the room (huge), but no television. Stacked wooden crates filled with books line every wall without a door or a window in it, making the space seem even smaller than it is, almost cryptlike. Jack has a touch of claustrophobia in his makeup, and now this circuit warms up, increasing his discomfort. Most of the books seem to deal with religion and philosophy — he sees Descartes, C. S. Lewis, the Bhagavad-Gita, Steven Avery's Tenets of Existence — but there's also a lot of fiction, books on beer making, and (on top of one giant speaker) Albert Goldman's trash tome about Elvis Presley. On the other speaker is a photograph of a young girl with a splendid smile, freckles, and oceans of reddish-blond hair. Seeing the child who drew the hopscotch grid out front makes Jack Sawyer feel sick with anger and sorrow. Otherworldly beings and causes there may be, but there's also a sick old f**k prowling around who needs to be stopped. He'd do well to remember that.
Bear Girl makes a space for Jack in front of the couch, moving gracefully even though she's on her knees and still holding the bowl. Jack sees that in it are two more wet cloths and a heap of melting ice cubes. The sight of them makes him thirstier than ever. He takes one and pops it into his mouth. Then he turns his attention to Mouse.