Someone is shaking his foot.
Ty attempts to pull away, not wanting to lose this dream (this most excellent refuge from the horror that has befallen him), but the hand is relentless. It shakes. It shakes and shakes.
"Way-gup," a voice snarls, and the dream begins to darken.
George Rathbun turns to Ty, and the boy sees an amazing thing: the eyes that were such a shrewd, sharp blue only a few seconds ago have gone dull and milky. Cripe, he's blind, Ty thinks. George Rathbun really is a —
"Way-gup," the growling voice says. It's closer now. In a moment the dream will wink out entirely.
Before it does, George speaks to him. The voice is quiet, totally unlike the sportscaster's usual brash bellow. "Help's on the way," he says. "So be cool, you little cat. Be — "
"Way-GUP, you shit!"
The grip on his ankle is crushing, paralyzing. With a cry of protest, Ty opens his eyes. This is how he rejoins the world, and our tale.
He remembers where he is immediately. It's a cell with reddish-gray iron bars halfway along a stone corridor lit with cobwebby electric bulbs. There's a dish of some sort of stew in one corner. In the other is a bucket in which he is supposed to pee (or take a dump if he has to — so far he hasn't, thank goodness). The only other thing in the room is a raggedy old futon from which Burny has just dragged him.
"All right," Burny says. "Awake at last. That's good. Now get up. On your feet, asswipe. I don't have time to f**k with you."
Tyler gets up. A wave of dizziness rolls through him and he puts his hand to the top of his head. There is a spongy, crusted place there. Touching it sends a bolt of pain all the way down to his jaws, which clench. But it also drives the dizziness away. He looks at his hand. There are flakes of scab and dried blood on his palm. That's where he hit me with his damned rock. Any harder, and I would have been playing a harp.
But the old man has been hurt somehow, too. His shirt is covered with blood; his wrinkled ogre's face is waxy and pallid. Behind him, the cell door is open. Ty measures the distance to the hallway, hoping he's not being too obvious about it. But Burny has been in this game a long time. He has had more than one liddle one dry to esscabe on hiz bledding foodzies, oh ho.
He reaches into his bag and brings out a black gadget with a pistol grip and a stainless steel nozzle at the tip.
"Know what this is, Tyler?" Burny asks.
"Taser," Ty says. "Isn't it?"
Burny grins, revealing the stumps of his teeth. "Smart boy! A TV-watching boy, I'll be bound. It's a Taser, yes. But a special type — it'll drop a cow at thirty yards. Understand? You try to run, boy, I'll bring you down like a ton of bricks. Come out here."
Ty steps out of the cell. He has no idea where this horrible old man means to take him, but there's a certain relief just in being free of the cell. The futon was the worst. He knows, somehow, that he hasn't been the only kid to cry himself to sleep on it with an aching heart and an aching, lumpy head, nor the tenth.
Nor, probably, the fiftieth.
"Turn to your left."
Ty does. Now the old man is behind him. A moment later, he feels the bony fingers grip the right cheek of his bottom. It's not the first time the old man has done this (each time it happens he's reminded again of the witch in "Hansel and Gretel," asking the lost children to stick their arms out of their cage), but this time his touch is different. Weaker.
Die soon, Ty thinks, and the thought — its cold collectedness — is very, very Judy. Die soon, old man, so I don't have to.
"This one is mine," the old man says . . . but he sounds out of breath, no longer quite sure of himself. "I'll bake half, fry the rest. With bacon."
"I don't think you'll be able to eat much," Ty says, surprised at the calmness of his own voice. "Looks like somebody ventilated your stomach pretty g — "
There is a crackling, accompanied by a hideous, jittery burning sensation in his left shoulder. Ty screams and staggers against the wall across the corridor from his cell, trying to clutch the wounded place, trying not to cry, trying to hold on to just a little of his beautiful dream about being at the game with George Rathbun and the other KDCU Brewer Bash winners. He knows he actually did forget to enter this year, but in dreams such things don't matter. That's what's so beautiful about them.
Oh, but it hurts so bad. And despite all his efforts — all the Judy Marshall in him — the tears begin to flow.
"You want another un?" the old man gasps. He sounds both sick and hysterical, and even a kid Ty's age knows that's a dangerous combination. "You want another un, just for good luck?"
"No," Ty gasps. "Don't zap me again, please don't."