F. Paul Wilson - Infernal

She didn't look up from working on a mussel that hadn't completely opened.

"Uh-huh?"

"I have to go away for a while."

Now she looked up. "Where?"

"Far away."

"Yeah, but where?"

"It's a place called Shangri-La."

It was the best he could come up with. He knew she'd never seen Lost Horizon , and if and when she did she'd think it was a real place.

"Is that like Tralla-La?"

That threw Jack. "Tralla—?"

"You know—in that Uncle Scrooge comic book."

Didn't she forget anything? He'd given her that over a year ago.

"Something like that."

"Where's this Shalla-La at?"

Jack had to smile. Sounded like a Van Morrison song.

"Shangri-La. It's on the other side of the world. Near China."

"Wow. How come you're going there?"

"I have to visit some people."

She went to work on another mussel.

"When are you leaving?"

Now the hard part: "Tomorrow morning."

Her face tilted up, frowning. "But that's… tomorrow's Christmas Eve. Are you going to miss Christmas?"

He nodded. "I'm afraid so."

Her frown deepened. "Can't you go after?"

"I wish I could." He shook his head. "You don't know how much I wish I could."

"But… how long you gonna be gone, Jack?"

"I'm not sure."

"A long time?"

He nodded. "Maybe."

Gia sniffed and Vicky looked at her. No way she could miss her mother's red, teary eyes. She turned back to Jack with a narrowed gaze.

"Is there another woman?"

Jack let out a guffaw. He couldn't help it. He glanced at Gia and even she was smiling.

"That's why I love you, Vicks. You never fail to surprise me."

"Well, is there?"

"No. There'll never be another woman. Your mommy is it for me. Forever and ever."

She looked at Gia. "Then why're you crying, Mom?"

"Because I'm sad to see Jack go. I don't want him to, but… he has to."

Vicky trapped Jack with her blue gaze. Her lower lip began to tremble.

"You're coming back, aren't you, Jack? You're coming back, right?"

Time to lie.

"Of course I'm coming back."

"When?"

"The absolute soonest I can. I swear on a stack of Bibles."

She must have sensed something because she dropped her fork and began to cry.

"Please don't leave!"

"Now listen, Vicks—"

"You're not coming back! I just know it!"

Jack froze his expression to hide his surprise.

Out of the mouths of babes…

14

-11:08

Tom couldn't sit still.

Twenty seconds after he'd settled himself on the couch he'd be up and pacing until he perched on the edge of a chair, only to be up and moving about half a minute later. He tried watching television—no good.

Wherever he went, Gia's voice followed him.

Do you have any idea what you've done to our lives? Not just Jack's but to Vicky's and mine?

He remembered the light in her eyes, the look on her face on the way home from the opera when she'd talked about Jack being a rock in her life. And Tom wondered… had anyone ever looked like that when they'd spoken of him? Had he ever been a rock in anyone's life?

Who was he kidding? No need to wonder. The answer was no.

He needed something to settle his nerves.

Jack didn't seem to drink anything but beer, and that wouldn't do it. So he hunted through the kitchen cabinets until he came upon a bottle of amber liquid.

Hey. Old Pulteney eighteen-year-old single malt. He'd have preferred vodka—ideally Grey Goose or Level—but this was all right. More than all right. When it came to scotch, Jack stocked the good stuff.

Tom poured a couple of fingers' worth into a tumbler and tossed it down. After savoring the burn, he poured himself a second dose. This he drank slowly, sipping and thinking about his life and the mess he'd made of it. He ranged over possible ways to turn things around and extricate himself, but came up empty.

By the time he'd finished his second glass he knew scotch wasn't going to do the trick. Not even close.

He needed something more potent. A lot more potent.

He dug out his wallet and found Kamal's phone number. Time for another run uptown.

Before leaving he took a peek into Jack's room.

"Oh, shit."

The Lilitongue was gone.

15

-8:16

"Is she asleep?" Jack said.

Gia disengaged herself from him and leaned over Vicky, curled under a blanket at the far side of the couch.

"Uh-huh. She's out."

"Okay, I'll carry her up—"

Gia laid a hand on his arm. "Let her stay with us."

Jack nodded in the semidarkness. "I'd like that."

He'd brought along a selection of movies to have something to do other than sit and count the minutes. Classics. Films they could all watch. And, for obvious reasons, no horror.

They'd let Vicky pick the first. No surprise, she chose King Kong because it was the colorized version.

Like most kids her age, she'd had almost no exposure to black-and-whites and didn't like them. Except for King Kong . She'd cried at the end of her first viewing and for days afterward went around the house repeating in a perfect imitation of Robert Armstrong's delivery, "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes… it was beauty killed the beast."

That had inspired Jack to hunt down a copy of Turner's colorized version. He considered himself something of a purist when it came to movies, especially ones he liked, so the idea of tinting and tinkering with a classic offended him. But mildly. The world offered a wide array of far more important issues to get crazy about.

Yet when he watched it with Vicky he'd had to admit that it was kind of nice to see a blue ocean and a green jungle. And Vicky had loved it. What could be more important than that?

"What should we watch next?"

Gia clung to him. "Why don't we just sit here."

"We can do that. But I'd rather not feel like a condemned man waiting for the executioner to knock on the door."

"It's not going to happen," Gia said. "That's the only way I can get through tonight. Just keep telling myself it's not going to happen… it's not going to happen… and maybe if I repeat it enough times, it won't."

Jack searched for something to do, something to say to ease her pain.

"Got as good a chance as anything else."

Crummy, but the best he could come up with. She snaked her arms around him and squeezed.

"Maybe if I hold on real tight it won't be able to take you."

"Now there's a thought."

"How do you stay so calm?"

Calm? He wanted to scream, he wanted to break things.

"Who says I'm calm?"

"Look at you. Our lives are about to be torn apart, you're about to be taken God knows where, maybe to your death. Yet you sit here watching movies. The more disordered and crazy and desperate things get, the calmer you are. Tell me how you do that, because I want some."

I do it for you, he thought.

To help Gia keep it together. He sensed she was just barely holding on, hanging by the slimmest of threads. If he kept thinking about the two ends of the Stain snailing closer and closer together, he might fall apart. And then what would happen to Gia?

"I think that somewhere down in the deepest recess of my psyche I'm convinced I'll come through this. Don't ask me why. It's not logical. And because it's not logical, my conscious mind doesn't buy it. So the films help distract me. They make it easier for me. But if they don't make it easier for you—"

"No-no. They distract me too. What else do you have?"

"Well, I brought Citizen Kane ."

"We must have watched that four times in the last year. I'm tired of it."

Jack never tired of it—every time he watched it he found something new—but let it slide. He looked through the short stack of tapes.