30

Behind him in the empty theater Collins started to laugh, and Rose went only a few steps before she said, 'I can't. I can't run. You go. I'm his anyway.'

'You won't stay.' He yanked her along behind him and pulled her through the open door.

'We can't get away.'

He looked past Rose and saw a flickering outline coming calmly, inexorably toward the door.

My little girl is right. Collins was feeling inside his mind as he had felt inside Skeleton's. You cannot. Look at me.

The outline blazed like a lightningbolt, so strongly that purple and red. radiance flashed through the door and made the wall opposite momentarily gleam like a neon sign.

You will be at home in Shadowland, Tom. I am your father and mother now.

'Just come on,' he said, and dragged her down the hall. She had begun to cry: not from fear, he knew. From pain. 'Hurry,' he commanded.

They had exactly one chance, Tom thought. An impossible chance, but their only one. If Collins could send a fishing line into his mind, he could send one back. Burn that ball back - Skeleton had said it, dredging up what must have been some miserable childhood memory. Okay, I'll burn that ball back. I'll take off his head with it.

Rose sobbed with every step.

'Only a little more. Only a few more feet.' He felt for the light switch on the wall outside the kitchen, and his fingers ran over ribbed plastic. 'There.' Yellow light fell on them. '

The curled posters, the shattered glass. The carpet had been singed into black popcorn. Big oval blisters bulged from the walls, surrounded by meteor showers of smaller, round blisters.

No need for shadows now.

Rose jerked in pain or surprise beside him, and he thought it was because of Collins. But she was looking in the wrong direction for that - behind him, in the direction of the living room and front door.

'You're going to need a little help, Red,' came a velvety voice. In the same moment, Tom whirled around and the scarred receptacle from which he had pulled Skeleton Ridpath shuddered to its feet.

Climb in, boy? Or do I have to push you?

'Just remember you got a great big battery,' Bud Copeland said. 'You found out a lot of things about yourself today, but you got to forget about that now. You have to think about the job, son.'

The Collector dangled, in the hall, knocking itself against the blistered and discolored walls. Its empty head swiveled toward Tom; toward Rose; back to Tom.

Bud moved up beside them, and there was the shock of seeing right through him again, to the blisters on the wall. They looked like stains on the fabric of his suit.

'I'll give you a big, big shove. You'll have a real good time. Way way way way down in the dump.'

Tom's mind felt a sudden wrench, followed by an enormous flaring pain.

'Remember what you heard, Red. Anybody can be collected at any time.'

Collins went fishing in his mind again, and the hook snagged on the picture he had of himself and Skeleton down in there, trapped inside the Collector. He stepped back, more afraid of that picture than he'd been of anything at Shadowland; more afraid of that than death.

'You don't want to run, do you, Red? You want to stay near where you got to stay.'

Yes, he thought. Where I got to stay. He felt Collins jerking him like a fish, and he blasted, Out!

'I'm what you know, Red,' Bud told him. 'That's all I am now. You brought me here - so I could tell you. I'm just your shadow. That's your battery working, Red. Crank it up as high as it can get.'

But I don't know how to crank it up, Tom thought despairingly: sometimes things just come.

'Like you did on the wall with nails through your hands,' Bud's voice whispered. Or was that his own voice? 'It's not going to be any easier than that. But I helped him long enough - now I'm going to help you.' He vanished, and Tom felt suddenly abandoned.

Collins appeared at the corner of the hallway, surrounded by a prismatic light.

If I made you come, Tom said inside himself, then come back. I need you. Now.

'Now,' Collins echoed, and the force of his mind jerked Tom forward to him. 'Now, little bird.'