Returning to the bed, Hazard said, ?I came in here on a hunch, without a warrant, and now I?ve got to clean up the situation to save my ass and to be sure we nail Laputa. You understand??
?Yes,? Dalton rasped.
?So what you?re gonna say happened is, he was so sure of your total disability, of your inability to even make a sound anyone could hear outside, that the bastard took that board off this evening just to torment you with the sight of freedom. Can you sell that??
On an arid whisper of breath, brittle words scraped and grated from Dalton?s throat. ?Laputa said he?ll kill me tonight.?
?All right. Okay. Then it makes a little sense that he might do this.?
From the nightstand, Hazard snatched up an aerosol can of pine-scented disinfectant. The container felt half full, heavy enough.
?Next,? he told Dalton, ?you have to tell them that you reached way down inside yourself, to your deepest reserves of strength, and somehow you found the will, the energy, the anger necessary to pull this can off the nightstand and to pitch it at that window.?
[554] ?Can do,? Dalton promised shakily, though he looked as if he could do nothing more than blink his eyes.
?The can smashed through the window and rolled down the porch roof as I was coming up the front walk. I heard you feebly calling for help, so I forced entry.?
The story sucked. The first officers on the scene would know that it was bogus, but in light of Dalton?s ordeal, this would be a flavor of bogus that they could swallow.
By the time Laputa found himself in a courtroom, Dalton would have largely recovered, and the jury would not know just how horribly weak he had been on the night of his rescue. Time could give this shabby story enough luster to make it look attractive.
Shifting his eyes from the open doorway to Hazard, Dalton said anxiously, ?Hurry,? as if he feared Laputa?s imminent return.
Hazard threw the can of disinfectant at the window. The glass shattered with a satisfying crash.
CHAPTER 90
HAVING FURTHER SEARED THE ROOTS OF THE potted palm with his mighty Manheim urine, which he could probably have bottled and sold to his father?s craziest fans, Fric shopped the library shelves for a book, mindful that Mr. Truman had said not to dawdle.
In case they didn?t make s?mores and sit on the floor telling scary stories, he took the trouble of finding a book that he might actually enjoy reading. He figured that he would be awake most of this long night, and not because he was excited about Christmas Eve coming in just two days. If he didn?t have a book to pass the time, he would go as crazy as Barbra Streisand?s two-headed cat.
He had just found a novel that looked good when he heard noise overhead: a shimmering, bright music much like the soft ringing of a hundred tiny wind chimes all agitated at once.
When he looked up at the stained-glass dome, he saw hundreds of pieces of glass break out of the leading and fall toward him.
No. Not glass. The stained-glass mosaic remained in place across the entire arc of the thirty-foot dome. Shards of color and shadow fell out of the glass without breaking it, fell through it from the night above or maybe from somewhere immeasurably stranger than the night.
[556] The shards fell slowly, not to the demand of gravity, and as they drifted down they changed color. As they changed color, they tumbled upon one another and fused together. As they fused together, they acquired greater dimension and a form.
The gathered shards became Mysterious Caller, whom Fric had most recently seen pictured in the Los Angeles Times in the rose room this afternoon, whom he had last encountered life-size in the memorabilia maze the previous night. As the guardian angel had on that occasion glided without benefit of wings from rafters to attic floor, so now he descended with soundless grace to the carpet only a few feet from Fric.
?You have this knack for entrances,? Fric said, but his shaky voice belied his cocky Hollywood-kid attitude.
?Moloch is here,? the guardian declared in a tone of voice so dire that it would have made Fric?s heart clench and then punch his ribs even if the message had been a fraction as terrifying as this. ?Run to your deep and special place, Fric. Run now.?
Pointing to the stained-glass dome, Fric said, ?Why don?t you just take me up there, out of here, where you came from, where I?ll be safe??
?I told you, boy, you must make your own choices, exercise your free will, and save yourself.?
?But I-?
?Besides, you can?t go to the places I go or travel by the means I do, not until you?re dead.? The guardian stepped closer, leaned forward, thrusting his pallid face within an inch of Fric?s. ?Do you want to die horribly just to be able to travel more conveniently??
Fric?s hammering heart knocked all the words out of his throat before he could speak them, and as he struggled to sputter through his silence, he was lifted off his feet and held high by his weird guardian.
?Moloch is in the house. Hide, boy, for God?s sake, hide.?
With that, Mysterious Caller threw Fric as though he were only a bundle of rags, but threw him with a magical knack that prevented [557] him from crashing hard into furniture. Instead, he tumbled in slow motion across the library, over the club chairs and tables, past the islands of bookshelves.
As he rotated on a curious axis, head over heels, Fric saw the photograph of the pretty lady, his make-believe mom, which had slipped out of his pocket and now drifted lazily beside him through the air, in his sphere of influence. Like an astronaut reaching for a floating tube of food in the gravity-free environment of a space shuttle high in orbit, he grasped for the picture but could not quite close his hand on it.
Abruptly he hit the floor on both feet, near the Christmas tree that was hung with angels, hit the floor running, whether he wanted to run or not, as if his legs were spellcast to churn him out of here.
Past the tree, at the open door to the library, he turned to look back.
The guardian had vanished.
The photograph was nowhere to be seen.
Moloch is in the house.
Fric fled the library, sprinting for the conservatory by the shortest route.