the man pushed with the knife; the tip spread a thin red net all the way across the curve of his chest wall and up the nape of his neck. He uttered a low moan, and his right hand clamped tight on the gray jacket's right hand pocket, moulding the leather to the curved side of the object inside.
"Don't scream," the man with the zany hair said in that low, ecstatic whisper. "Oh jeepers jeezly crow, you don't want to do that." His brown eyes peered at Ralph's face, and the lenses of his glasses so magnified them that the tiny flakes of dandruff caught in his lashes looked almost as big as pebbles. Ralph could see the man's aura even in his eyes-it went sliding across his pupils like green smoke across black water. The snakelike twists running through the green light were thicker now, twining together, and Ralph understood that when the knife sank all the way in, the part of this man's personality which was
???? generating those black swirls would be what pushed it. The green was
???? confusion and paranoia; the black was something else. Something (from
???? outside) much worse.
???? "No," he gasped. "I won't. I won't scream."
????
"Good. I can feel your heart, you know. It's coming right up the blade of the knife and into the palm of my hand. It must be beating really hard." The man's mouth pulled up in a jerky, humorless smile.
Flecks of spittle clung to the corners of his lips. "Maybe you'll just keel over and die of a heart-attack, save me the trouble of killing you." Another gust of that sickening breath washed over Ralph's face. "You're awful old."
Blood was now running down his side in what felt like two streams, maybe even three. The pain of the knife-point gouging into him was maddening-like the stinger of a gigantic bee.
Or a pin, aIPb, thought, and discovered that this idea was funny in spite of the fix he was in... or perhaps because of it. This was the real pin-sticker man; James Roy Hong could be only a pale imitation.
And I never had a chance to cancel this appointment, Ralph thought. But then again, he had an idea that nuts like the guy in the Snoopy sweatshirt didn't take cancellations. Nuts like this had their own agenda and they stuck to it, come hell or high water.
Whatever else might happen, Ralph knew he couldn't stand that knife-tip boring into him much longer. He used his thumb to lift the flap of his coat pocket and slipped his hand inside. He knew what the object was the minute his fingertips touched it: the aerosol can Gretchen had taken out of her purse and put on his kitchen table. A little present from all your grateful friends at WomanCare, she had said.
Ralph had no idea how it had gotten from the top of the kitchen cabinet where he had put it into the pocket of his battered old fall jacket, and he didn't care. His hand closed around it, and he used his thumb again, this time to pop off the can's plastic top. He never took his eyes away from the twitching, frightened, exhilarated face of the man with the zany hair as he did this.
"I know something," Ralph said. "If you promise not to kill me, I'll tell you."
"What?" the man with the zany hair asked. ",Teepers, what could a scum like you know?"
What could a scum like me know? Ralph asked himself, and the answer came at once, popping into his mind like Jackpot bars in the windows of a slot machine. He forced himself to lean into the green aura swirling around the man, into the terrible cloud of stink coming from his disturbed guts. At the same time he eased the small can from his pocket, held it against his thigh, and settled his index finger on the button which triggered the spray.
"I know who the Crimson King is," he murmured.
The eyes widened behind the dirty hornrims-not just in surprise but in shock-and the man with the zany hair recoiled a little. For a moment the terrible pressure high on Ralph's left side eased. It was his chance, the only one he was apt to have, and he took it, throwing himself to the right, falling off his chair and tumbling to the floor.
The back of his head smacked the tiles, but the pain seemed distant and unimportant compared to the relief at the removal of the knife-point.