made up her mind to this when Patrick Danville put his hands to his stomach and held it. He twisted his face into a cramp that she realized was supposed to indicate laughter.
"He make you laugh?"
Patrick, crouched in his corner, nodded. His face twisted even more. Now his hands became fists that rose to his face. He rubbed his cheeks with them, then screwed them into his eyes, then looked at her. Susannah noticed there was a little scar on the bridge of his nose.
"He make you cry, too."
Patrick nodded. He did the laughing mime again, holding the stomach and going ho-ho-ho; he did the crying mime, wiping tears from his fuzzy cheeks; this time he added a third bit of mummery, scooping his hands toward his mouth and making smack-smack sounds with his lips.
From above and slightly behind her, Roland said: "He made you laugh, he made you cry, he made you eat."
Patrick shook his head so violently it struck the stone walls that were the boundaries of his corner.
"He ate," Detta said. "Dass whut you trine t'say, ain't it?
Dandeloate."
Patrick nodded eagerly.
"He made you laugh, he made you cry, and den he ate whut came out. Cause dass what he do!"
Patrick nodded again, bursting into tears. He made inarticulate wailing sounds. Susannah worked her way slowly into the cell, pushing herself along on her palms, ready to retreat if the head-banging started again. It didn't. When she reached die boy in the corner, he put his face against her bosom and wept.
Susannah turned, looked at Roland, and told him with her eyes i that he could come in now.
When Patrick looked up at her, it was with dumb, doglike adoration.
"Don't you worry," Susannah said-Detta was gone again, probably worn out from all that nice. "He's not going to get you,
Patrick, he's dead as a doornail, dead as a stone in the river. Now I want you to do something for me. I want you to open your mouth."
Patrick shook his head at once. There was fear in his eyes again, but something else she hated to see even more. It was shame.
"Yes, Patrick, yes. Open your mouth."
He shook his head violently, his greasy long hair whipping from side to side like the head of a mop.
Roland said, "What-"
"Hush," she told him. "Open your mouth, Patrick, and show us. Then we'll take you out of here and you'll never have to be down here again. Never have to be Dandelo's dinner again."
Patrick looked at her, pleading, but Susannah only looked back at him. At last he closed his eyes and slowly opened his mouth. His teeth were there, but his tongue was not. At some point, Dandelo must have tired of his prisoner's voice-or the words it articulated, anyway-and had pulled it out.
SEVEN
Twenty minutes later, the two of them stood in the kitchen doorway, watching Patrick Danville eat a bowl of soup. At least half of it was going down the boy's gray shirt, but Susannah reckoned that was all right; there was plenty of soup, and there were more shirts in the hut's only bedroom. Not to mention Joe Collins's heavy parka hung on the hook in the entry, which she expected Patrick would wear hence from here. As for the remains of Dandelo-Joe Collins that was-they had wrapped them in three blankets and tossed them unceremoniously out into the snow.
She said, "Dandelo was a vampire that fed on emotions instead of blood. Patrick, there... Patrick was his cow. There's two ways you can take nourishment from a cow: meat or milk.
The trouble with meat is that once you eat the prime cuts, the not-so-prime cuts, and then the stew, it's gone. If youjust take the milk, though, you can go on forever... always assuming you give the cow something to eat every now and then."
"How long do you suppose he had him penned up down there?" Roland asked.
"I don't know." But she remembered the dust on the acetylene tank, remembered it all too well. "A fairly long time, anyway.
What must have seemed like forever to him."
"And it hurt."
"Plenty. Much as it must have hurt when Dandelo pulled the poor kid's tongue out, I bet the emotional bloodsucking hurt more. You see how he is."
Roland saw, all right. He saw something else, as well. "We can't take him out in this storm. Even if we dressed him up in three layers of clothes, I'm sure it would kill him."
Susannah nodded. She was sure, too. Of that, and something else: