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Ang twisted from the chin up. I don’t mean he grimaced; his entire head twisted. It was like watching a cloth being wrung by invisible hands. His
eyes rose up until one was almost above the other, and they turned from blue to jet-black. His skin paled first to white, then to green. It rose as if
pushed by fists from beneath, and cracked into scales. His clothes dropped from his body, because his body was no longer that of a man. Nor was
it a bear, or a wolf, or a lion. Those things we might have been prepared for. We might even have been prepared for an ally-gator, such as the thing
that had assaulted the unfortunate Fortuna at Serenity. Although it was closer to an ally-gator than anything else.
In a space of three seconds, Ollie Ang turned into a man-high snake. A pooky.
Luka, still holding onto an arm that was shrinking toward that fat green body, gave out a yell that was muffled when the snake—still with a flopping
tonsure of human hair around its elongating head—jammed itself into the old man’s mouth. There was a wet popping sound as Luka’s lower jaw
was torn from the joints and tendons holding it to the upper. I saw his wattled neck swell and grow smooth as that thing—still changing, still standing
on the dwindling remnants of human legs—bored into his throat like a drill.
There were yells and screams of horror from the head of the aisle as the other salties stampeded. I paid them no notice. I saw Jamie wrap his
arms around the snake’s growing, swelling body in a fruitless attempt to pull it out of the dying Steg Luka’s throat, and I saw the enormous reptilian
head when it tore its way through the nape of Luka’s neck, its red tongue flicking, its scaly head painted with beads of blood and bits of flesh.
Wegg threw one of his brass-knuckle-decorated fists at it. The snake dodged easily, then struck forward, exposing enormous, still-growing fangs:
two on top, two on bottom, all dripping with clear liquid. It battened on Wegg’s arm and he shrieked.
“Burns! Dear gods, it BURNS!”
Luka, impaled at the head, seemed to dance as the snake dug its fangs into the struggling constable. Blood and gobbets of flesh spattered
everywhere.
Jamie looked at me wildly. His guns were drawn, but where to shoot? The pooky was writhing between two dying men. Its lower body, now
legless, flipped free of the heaped clothes, wound itself around Luka’s waist in fat coils, drew tight. The part behind the head was slithering out
through the widening hole at the nape of Luka’s neck.
I stepped forward, seized Wegg, and dragged him backward by the scruff of his vest. His bitten arm had already turned black and swelled to
twice its normal size. His eyes were bulging from their sockets as he stared at me, and white foam began to drizzle from his lips.
Somewhere, Billy Streeter was screaming.
The fangs tore free. “Burns,” Wegg said in a low voice, and then he could say no more. His throat swelled, and his tongue shot out of his mouth.
He collapsed, shuddering in his death-throes. The snake stared at me, its forked tongue licking in and out. They were black snake-eyes, but they
were filled with human understanding. I lifted the revolver holding the special load. I had only one silver shell and the head was weaving erratically
from side to side, but I never doubted I could make the shot; it’s what such as I was made for. It lunged, fangs flashing, and I pulled the trigger. The
shot was true, and the silver bullet went right into that yawning mouth. The head blew away in a splatter of red that had begun to turn white even
before it hit the bars and the floor of the corridor. I’d seen such mealy white flesh before. It was brains. Human brains.
Suddenly it was Ollie Ang’s ruined face peering at me from the ragged hole in the back of Luka’s neck—peering from atop a snake’s body.
Shaggy black fur sprang from between the scales on its body as whatever force dying inside lost all control of the shapes it made. In the moment
before it collapsed, the remaining blue eye turned yellow and became a wolf’s eye. Then it went down, bearing the unfortunate Steg Luka with it. In
the corridor, the dying body of the skin-man shimmered and burned, wavered and changed. I heard the pop of muscles and the grind of shifting
bones. A naked foot shot out, turned into a furry paw, then became a man’s foot again. The remains of Ollie Ang shuddered all over, then grew still.
The boy was still screaming.
“Go to yon pallet and lie down,” I said to him. My voice was not quite steady. “Close your eyes and tell yourself it’s over, for now it is.”
“I want you,” Billy sobbed as he went to the pallet. His cheeks were speckled with blood. I was drenched with it, but this he didn’t see. His eyes
were already closed. “I want you with me! Please, sai, please!”
“I’ll come to you as soon as I can,” I said. And I did.
* * *
Three of us spent the night on pushed-together pallets in the drunk-and-disorderly cell: Jamie on the left, me on the right, Young Bill Streeter in the
middle. The simoom had begun to die, and until late, we heard the sound of revels on the high street as Debaria celebrated the death of the skinman.
“What will happen to me, sai?” Billy asked just before he finally fell asleep.
“Good things,” I said, and hoped Everlynne of Serenity would not prove me wrong about that.
“Is it dead? Really dead, sai Deschain?”
“Really.”
But on that score I meant to take no chance. After midnight, when the wind was down to a bare breeze and Bill Streeter lay in an exhausted sleep
so deep even bad dreams couldn’t reach him, Jamie and I joined Sheriff Peavy on the waste ground behind the jail. There we doused the body of
Ollie Ang with coal oil. Before setting match to it, I asked if either of them wanted the wrist-clock as a souvenir. Somehow it hadn’t been broken in
the struggle, and the cunning little second hand still turned.
Jamie shook his head.
“Not I,” said Peavy, “for it might be haunted. Go on, Roland. If I may call ye so.”
“And welcome,” I said. I struck the sulphur and dropped it. We stood watching until the remains of Debaria’s skin-man were nothing but black
bones. The wrist-clock was a charred lump in the ash.
* * *
The following morning, Jamie and I rounded up a crew of men—more than willing, they were—to go out to the rail line. Once they were there, it was
a matter of two hours to put Sma’ Toot back on the double-steel. Travis, the enjie, directed the operation, and I made many friends by telling them
I’d arranged for everyone in the crew to eat free at Racey’s at top o’ day and drink free at the Busted Luck that afternoon.
There was to be a town celebration that night, at which Jamie and I would be guests of honor. It was the sort of thing I could happily do without—I
was anxious to get home, and as a rule, company doesn’t suit me—but such events are often part of the job. One good thing: there would be
women, some of them no doubt pretty. That part I wouldn’t mind, and suspected Jamie wouldn’t, either. He had much to learn about women, and
Debaria was as good a place to begin his studies as any.
He and I watched Sma’ Toot puff slowly up to the roundway and then make its way toward us again, pointed in the right direction: toward Gilead.
“Will we stop at Serenity on the way back to town?” Jamie asked. “To ask if they’ll take the boy in?”
“Aye. And the prioress said she had something for me.”
“Do you know what?”
I shook my head.