THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING Brian took one of these and walked up the lawn until he was less than ten feet from the jerzycks' big living-room window-what had been called a "picture window" back in the early sixties, when this house had been built. He wound up, hesitated for only a moment, and then let fly like Sandy Koufax facing the lead-off batter in the seventh game of the World Series. There was a huge and unmusical crash, followed by a thud as the rock hit the living-room carpet and rolled across the floor.
The sound had an odd effect on Brian. His fear left him, and his distaste for this further task-which could by no stretch of the imagination be dismissed as something so inconsequential as a Prank-also evaporated. The sound of breaking glass excited him... made him feel, in fact, the way he felt when he had his daydreams about Miss Ratcliffe. Those had been foolish, and he knew that now, but there was nothing foolish about this. This was fear Besides, he found that he now wanted the Sandy Koufax card more than ever. He had discovered another large fact about possessions and the Peculiar Psychological state they induce: the more one has to go through because of something one owns, the more one wants to keep that thing.
Brian took two more rocks and walked over to the broken Picture window. He looked inside and saw the rock he had thrown.
It was lying in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen.
It looked very improbable there-like seeing a rubber boot on a church altar or a rose lying on the engine block of a tractor. One of the rubber bands holding the note to the rock had snapped, but the other was still okay. Brian's gaze shifted to the left and he found himself regarding the Jerzycks' Sony TV.
Brian wound up and threw. The rock hit the Sony dead-on.
There was a hollow bang, a flash of light, and glass showered the carpet. The TV tottered on its stand but did not quite fall over.
"Stee-rike two!" Brian muttered, then gave voice to a strange, strangled laugh.
He threw the other rock at a bunch of ceramic knickknacks standing on a table by the sofa, but missed. It hit the wall with a thump and gouged out a chunk of plaster.
Brian laid hold of the Playmate's handle and lugged it around to the side of the house. He broke two bedroom windows. In back, he pegged a loaf-sized rock through the window in the top half of the kitchen door, then threw several more through the hole. One of these shattered the Cuisinart standing on the counter. Another blasted through the glass front of the RadarRange and landed right inside the microwave. "Stee-rike three! Siddown, bush!" Brian cried, and then laughed so hard he almost wet his pants.
When the throe had passed, he finished his circuit of the house.
The Playmate was lighter now; he found he could carry it with one hand. He used his last three rocks to break the basement windows which showed among Wilma's fall flowers, then ripped up a few handfuls of the blooms for good measure. With that done, he closed the cooler, returned to his bicycle, put the Playmate into the basket, and mounted up for the ride home.
The Mislaburskis lived next door to the jerzycks. As Brian pedaled out of the jerzyck driveway, Mrs. Mislaburski opened her front door and came out on the stoop. She was dressed in a bright green wrapper. Her hair was bound up in a red doo-rag. She looked like an advertisement for Christmas in hell.
"What's going on over there, boy?" she asked sharply.
"I don't know, exactly. I think Mr. and Mrs. jerzyck must be having an argument," Brian said, not stopping. "I just came over to ask if they needed anyone to shovel their driveway this winter, but I decided to come back another time."
Mrs. Mislaburski directed a brief, baleful glance at the Jerzyck house. Because of the hedges, only the second story was visible from where she stood. "If I were you, I wouldn't come back at all," she said. "That woman reminds me of those little fish they have down in South America. The ones that eat the cows whole."
"Piranha-fish," Brian said.
"That's right. Those."
Brian kept on pedaling. He was now drawing away from the woman in the green wrapper and red doo-rag. His heart was hustling right along, but it wasn't hammering or racing or anything like that.
Part of him felt quite sure he was still dreaming. He didn't feel like himself at all-not like the Brian Rusk who got all A's and B's, the Brian Rusk who was a member of the Student Council and the Middle School Good Citizens' League, the Brian Rusk who got nothing but I's in deportment.
"She'll kill somebody one of these days!" Mrs. Mislaburski called indignantly after Brian. "You just mark my words!"
Under his breath Brian whispered: "I wouldn't be a bit surprised."
He did indeed spend the rest of the day in bed. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have concerned Cora, perhaps enough to take Brian over to the Doc in the Box in Norway. Today, however, she hardly noticed that her son wasn't feeling well. This was because of the wonderful sunglasses Mr. Gaunt had sold her-she was absolutely entranced with them.
Brian got up around six o'clock, about fifteen minutes before his Pa came in from a day spent fishing on the lake with two friends.
He got himself a Pepsi from the fridge and stood by the stove, drinking it. He felt quite a bit better.
He felt as if he might have finally fulfilled his part of the deal he had made with Mr. Gaunt.
He had also decided that Mr. Gaunt did indeed know best.