Tad Williams: The Dirty Streets of Heaven

I trusted him, but of course I also didn’t trust him, so as I leaned forward I kept the dart gun pointing in Sam’s general direction. It wasn’t like looking at an image. What I saw had depth, another entire world beyond the scuffed, rusted mirror. I saw oak and willow trees and a stream and, when I bent a little closer, a ramshackle Victorian house perched on a hill in the distance, at the end of a long dirt road. I fancied I could even see a couple of tiny figures standing on the porch, perhaps looking back at me. I wondered if one of them was Edward Lynes Walker. “Is that it?” I said, unexpectedly touched by the modesty of the rustic scene. “That’s your great alternative to Heaven and Hell? The Little House on the Prairie ?”

“That’s the beginning,” Sam said. “But it’ll get bigger. It will get more real. There’s only a few hundred souls there now but it will grow, even without me. Kephas recruited lots of other angels. We may even know some of them.”

I filed that thought away for later. “And you really think this is going to be better than what we’ve already got?”

“If we can make it that way, yes.” He sounded sincere-almost stupidly sincere. “You know…you could be there too, Bobby. I know you’ve thought about the same things I have. I know you get tired of all the secrets and the other nasty shit we’ve had to do.”

“Yeah, thanks.” I straightened up. “But I’m not quite ready to drink that Kool-Aid. Not yet.” I was bone-weary, and Clarence would be regaining consciousness soon. “Go on. Get out of here, Sam.”

He stared. “Wait-you mean…?”

“Yes, I mean. Get the hell out of here. Go join your crazy friends and build your little afterlife commune. Better you than me. I’ll tell them you got away.”

“They’ll never believe you.”

“That I screwed up again? They’ll fall over themselves in their hurry to believe that.” I winced a little at the thought of what General Karael was going to make of my newest dazzling failure. “Go on! I’m not going to beg you.”

But instead of stepping through the misty portal, he turned and came toward me. For a moment I was terrified he was going to hug me. I’m not afraid of being hugged, mind you-not too much-but the idea of Sam doing the hugging was like the idea of your parents making love: it might actually happen occasionally, but you didn’t want to be a witness. Luckily he stopped a little out of embracing range. “Hold on,” he said. “I have to give you something before you go. Now, don’t get your undies in a bunch, B, but I have to reach into your pocket.”

“ My pocket?” I began, but he had already slipped the glowing, God-Gloved hand into my jacket pocket: I could feel it against me like a hot stone. A moment later he straightened up again and transferred whatever he’d found to his other hand and held it out.

For several seconds I couldn’t do anything but stare. It was an astonishing thing, as amazing in its own way as anything else he had shown me. It was a golden feather- the feather, obviously-but it was just as clearly not of this world. It glowed and sparkled, not like a window display of jewelry, but with an inner light that made it seem more real, more present than anything else around, most definitely including me, Sam, and the Door Into Thirdwaysville.

“What…?” Okay, it wasn’t my sharpest moment. “How did that get there?”

“It’s been there all along-sort of.” He laughed. “You remember that night with the lady who drove into the bay? Clarence’s first night? When you got into a fight with Howlingfell?”

“Some fight,” I said. “I stomped him like a grape.”

“Well, when Grasswax was pulling Howlingfell off you, I saw him slip something into your pocket. I couldn’t imagine what a prosecutor would be planting on you, and I knew Howlingfell worked for Eligor, the other party in-” he indicated the rustic view, “- my little project. I thought it might be some kind of frame-up or something. I only realized when I touched it what it was, so I decided to hide it. With this.” He lifted the God Glove and displayed it like he was modeling a Lady Bulova on a shopping channel. “I made a little piece of Outside right there in your pocket while I was dusting you off, and I put the feather in it. It’s been there all along, but nobody could reach it because it also wasn’t there, if you know what I mean. Sorry if it got you into trouble, but it was a spur of the moment improvisation.”

Which must have been why my weird friend Foxy could smell something that wasn’t there. “So Grasswax was actually telling the truth,” I said. “At least as he knew it. That’s one for the books, huh?” I reached out and carefully took the smoldering golden thing from Sam. It lay in my palm with no weight at all, but it did not waver or move even as I swayed my hand from side to side. It was hard to look at anything else. “And do you know who this belongs to? Who made the deal with Eligor?”

“Kephas, as far as I know-whoever or whatever that is.” He gestured for me to take it. “You can do whatever you want with it. Give it to our bosses, if it will keep you out of trouble.”

“But if Eligor kept it to blackmail this Kephas, our bosses could probably trace it.”

Sam shrugged. “It doesn’t matter-our thing is too big now. It’s already rolling. Me, Kephas, we could lose dozens more and the idea would still go on.”

I thought about it. “Put it back in my pocket. With the God-Glove. I don’t want to have to hide it somewhere ordinary.”

“You sure?” He lifted it in his glowing hand. I felt the warmth through my coat as he put it back.

“Okay. Now go. Get out of here.”

He turned toward the funhouse mirror, then paused, looking at me over his shoulder. I couldn’t read his expression. “Stay in touch, Bobby.”

“How?” I’d almost said “ Why?” but although I still didn’t quite know how I felt about him and what he’d done, I knew I’d miss him.

“We’ll figure something out.” And then he stepped into the mirror. The hole closed behind him, so I didn’t get a chance to watch him go, but I’m guessing he walked up that long road like a man finally going home.

I started back toward the Kingsport Plunge. As I patted my pocket to make sure the feather was undetectable, I discovered something else nestled there already-Howlingfell’s phone. It had got very wet, as I had too, but like me it was still functioning, so I rang the last number Howlingfell had called. Someone picked up but didn’t speak. Still, I was pretty sure I knew who was listening on the other end.

“Guess what,” I said. “That whole ‘Mission Accomplished’ thing? A bit premature, as it turned out.” I looked up at the sky, which was beginning to cloud over, shrouding the moon. I was tired of being wet, so I walked a little faster. “But what I really wanted to tell you was that I do have the feather, and if you fuck with me or anyone I care about- anyone I care about, do you understand? — I’m going to use it as proof when I tell your Hell-buddies about the deals you’ve been making with Heaven. Is that clear? Oh, and tell the Countess that I’ll see her again. That’s a promise.”

I didn’t wait to see if Eligor would respond, I just threw the phone as far as I could, then listened until I heard it hit and shatter somewhere in the shadows. I knew that what I’d said was true: I was going to find Caz. I was going to find her even if I had to go to Hell and yank her out of Eligor’s arms to do it. I was going to free her so that someday she could stand in front of me and at least tell me honestly how much of what we’d had was real. I wasn’t going to rest until I knew the answer.