Why don’t you forget the boys for thetime being and concentrate on what’s right in front of you? What does it mean?

One thing seemed obvious: someone hadexpected her to come in here and find that note. Not Roland, not Joe. Her.What a bad girl, it said. Girl.

But who could have known? Who could havebeen sure? It wasn’t as if she made a habit of slapping her face (or her chest,or her knee) when she laughed; she couldn’t remember a single other instancewhen—

But she could. Once. At a DeanMartin–Jerry Lewis movie. Dopes at Sea, or something like that.She’d been caught up in the same fashion then, laughing simply because thelaughter had reached some point of critical mass and become self-feeding. Thewhole audience—at the Clark in Times Square, for all she knew—doingthe same, rocking and rolling, swinging and swaying, spraying popcorn frommouths that were no longer their own. Mouths that belonged, at least for a fewminutes, to Martin and Lewis, those dopes at sea. But it had only happened thatonce.

Comedy plus tragedy equals make-believe.But there’s no tragedy here, is there?

She didn’t expect an answer to this, butshe got one. It came in the cold voice of intuition.

Not yet, there isn’t.

For no reason whatsoever she found herselfthinking of Lippy. Grinning, gruesome Lippy. Did the folken laugh inhell? Susannah was somehow sure they did. They grinned like Lippy theWonder-Nag when Satan began his

(take my horse… please)

routine, and then they laughed. Helplessly.Hopelessly. For all of eternity, may it please ya not at all.

What in the hell’s wrong with you,woman?

In the other room, Roland laughed again. Oybarked, and that also sounded like laughter.

Odd’s Lane, Odd Lane… think about it.

What was there to think about? One was thename of the street, the other was the same thing, only without the—

“Whoa-back, wait a minute,” she said in alow voice. Little more than a whisper, really, and who did she think would hearher? Joe was talking—pretty much nonstop, it sounded like—andRoland was laughing. So who did she think might be listening? Thecellar-dweller, if there really was one?

“Whoa-on a minute, just wait.”

She closed her eyes and once more saw thetwo street-signs on their pole, signs that were actually a little below thepilgrims, because the newcomers had been standing on a snowbank nine feet high.TOWER ROAD, one of the signs had read—that one pointing to theplowed road that disappeared over the horizon. The other, the one indicatingthe short lane with the cottages on it, had said ODD’S LANE, only…

“Only it didn’t,” she murmured,clenching the hand that wasn’t holding the note into a fist. “It didn’t.”

She could see it clearly enough in hermind’s eye: ODD’S LANE, with the apostrophe and the S added, andwhy would somebody do that? Was the sign-changer maybe a compulsive neatnik whocouldn’t stand—

What? Couldn’t stand what?

Beyond the closed bathroom door, Rolandroared louder than ever. Something fell over and broke. He’s not used tolaughing like that, Susannah thought. You best look out, Roland, oryou’ll do yourself damage. Laugh yourself into a hernia, or something.

Think about it, her unknowncorrespondent had advised, and she was trying. Was there something about thewords odd and lane that someone didn’t want them to see? If so,that person had no need to worry, because she sure wasn’t seeing it. She wishedEddie was here. Eddie was the one who was good at the funky stuff: jokes andriddles and… an…

Her breath stopped. An expression ofwide-eyed comprehension started to dawn her face, and on the face of her twinin the mirror. She had no pencil and was terrible at the sort of mentalrearrangements that she now had to—

Balanced on the stool, Susannah leaned overthe waist-high washstand and blew on the mirror, fogging it. She printed ODDLANE. Looked at it with growing understanding and dismay. In the otherroom, Roland laughed harder than ever and now she recognized what she shouldhave seen thirty valuable seconds ago: that laughter wasn’t merry. It was jaggedand out of control, the laughter of a man struggling for breath. Roland waslaughing the way the folken laughed when comedy turned to tragedy. Theway folken laughed in hell.

Below ODD LANE she used the tip ofher finger to print DANDELO, the anagram Eddie might have seen rightaway, and surely once he realized the apostrophe-S on the sign had beenadded to distract them.

In the other room the laughter dropped andchanged, becoming a sound that was alarming instead of amusing. Oy was barkingcrazily, and Roland—

Roland was choking.

Chapter VI:

Patrick Danville

One

She wasn’t wearing her gun. Joe hadinsisted she take the La-Z-Boy recliner when they’d returned to the living roomafter dinner, and she’d put the revolver on the magazine-littered end-tablebeside it, after rolling the cylinder and drawing the shells. The shells werein her pocket.

Susannah tore open the bathroom door andscrambled back into the living room. Roland was lying on the floor between thecouch and the television, his face a terrible purple color. He was scratchingat his swollen throat and still laughing. Their host was standing over him, andthe first thing she saw was that his hair—that baby-fine, shoulder-lengthwhite hair—was now almost entirely black. The lines around his eyes andmouth had been erased. Instead of ten years younger, Joe Collins now lookedtwenty or even thirty years younger.

The son of a bitch.

The vampire son of a bitch.

Oy leaped at him and seized Joe’s left legjust above the knee. “Twenny-five, sissy-four, nineteen, hike!” Joecried merrily, and kicked out, now as agile as Fred Astaire. Oy flew throughthe air and hit the wall hard enough to knock a plaque reading GOD BLESS OURHOME to the floor. Joe turned back to Roland.

“What I think,” he said, “is that womenneed a reason to have sex.” Joe put one foot on Roland’s chest—like abig-game hunter with his trophy, Susannah thought. “Men, on the other hand,only need a place! Bing!” He popped his eyes. “The thing about sex isthat God gives men a brain and a dick, but only enough blood to operate one ata—”

He never heard her approach or lift herselfinto the La-Z-Boy in order to gain the necessary height; he was concentratingtoo completely on what he was doing. Susannah laced her hands together into asingle fist, raised them to the height of her right shoulder, then brought themdown and sideways with all the force she could manage. The fist struck the sideof Joe’s head hard enough to knock him away. She had connected with solid bone,however, and the pain in her hands was excruciating.

Joe staggered, waving his arms for balanceand looking around at her. His upper lip rose, exposing histeeth—perfectly ordinary teeth, and why not? He wasn’t the sort ofvampire who survived on blood. This was Empathica, after all. And the facearound those teeth was changing: darkening, contracting, turning into somethingthat was no longer human. It was the face of a psychotic clown.

“You,” he said, but before he couldsay anything else, Oy had raced forward again. There was no need for thebumbler to use his teeth this time because their host was still staggering. Oycrouched behind the thing’s ankle and Dandelo simply fell over him, his cursesceasing abruptly when he struck his head. The blow might have put him out if notfor the homey rag rug covering the hardwood. As it was he forced himself to asitting position almost at once, looking around groggily.