NINETEEN

He would be King of the Dead

Pup Malamut let the sound of the phrase roll around his mind on velvet casters. King of the Dead. It was a nice thought, a substantial thought, the kind that once he might have dreamed only at night but now could take out in the cold sun and look at without shrinking. How fast things could change. One day an ineffectual little fat boy, taking orders from everyone, from his parents to his teachers to the two younger boys he hung out with, and the next day—King of the Dead.

Ash had said it in so many words and Pup believed him. He had studied Ash, had seen how insubstantial he was and how there was something the shadow man was holding back on. Ash acted tough when he was around people who were afraid of him, but there was something, some secret thing, that scared the boogeyman senseless. Pup had seen it in Ash's eyes when he'd taken care of that Civil War relic, Jeff Scott. A couple of Scott's comments had hit home. But what was it that frightened Ash so badly? Pup didn't know, but he was determined to find out. And when he did—well, then he'd deal with Ash.

The killing of Jack Gantry had not disturbed him as he had thought it would. All he had to do was to let the feelings he'd always kept deep down come out in the open. The rest was easy. Jack had been his friend, but he had also been his better, so he thought. Stupid Marine. So Pup just thought of it that way and let the juices flow. After Jack were others Ash had let him in on: his math teacher, Mrs. Groton; a guy named Fred Horter, who'd once called him "fat boy" in the schoolyard; a couple of others. It had actually been easy after a while. Ash had told him to just remember the hate; and when he did, everything came naturally. After all, he was just getting even. Anyone would do that, given the chance. In regular life he probably would never have had a chance to get back, and here it was on a silver platter, so why not?

His parents, though, had not been so easy. Ash's eyes had sparkled when he told Pup he wanted him to take care of his parents. And for the first time, Pup had hesitated.

"What's wrong?" Ash cooed. Pup felt his perfect admiration for Ash slipping into something else. A momentary burn of pure anger rose in him.

I'll take care of you later, he thought.

He answered, "Nothing's wrong," liking his own bravado.

"They're by the House of Mirrors," Ash said evenly. "Make it quick."

Pup put a smile on, but he couldn't help feeling as he walked out that Ash knew. He knows I'm chicken. Once again a flow of clean hatred coursed through him. He wanted more than anything in the world to hold Ash's thin neck between his hands, to crush the white face and pummel the smug grin away. Ash thought he knew it all. But if everything went as planned, he would soon be terrified of Pup Malamut. Ash could be handled. Just like his father handled all those assholes who came to him at the bank for business loans. There was always a way to handle things.

He made his way out onto the midway. Still he felt Ash's eyes on him. He glanced back, expecting to see nothing but the closed flap of the tent; he was shocked to see Ash standing there in the opening, calmly watching him. That slight grin was on his face; he blew a smoke ring and waved faintly at Pup with his lit cigarette.

Just wait, bastard; soon I'll shove that fucking thing down your throat till you choke on it.

He turned, marching resolutely toward the House of Mirrors.

His nerve failed again when he got there. Were they really inside? Maybe they weren't, and he wouldn't have to go through with it. How would Ash know? And even if he did, so what? He hesitated at the entrance, listening for sounds. Nothing. Maybe it was a trap? Ash wouldn't dare; he needed him, he had told him so. Anyway, he had promised.

"Pup, you'll be King of the Dead."

He entered the House of Mirrors.

He kept his eyes on the floor, following the twists and turns of the labyrinth. He'd learned this trick long ago at a local carnival with Reggie. Once inside, he looked up and immediately felt a sense of dislocation. Staring at him were six young men with uncombed hair and set mouths. He hadn't looked at himself in a long time and was startled. He seemed older and leaner. There was a tautness around his eyes and face that hadn't been there before. He liked what he saw.

King of the Dead.

He dropped his gaze and followed the sawdust-covered maze of mirrors.

His mind began to wander. He thought of what it would be like when he was the leader of everything. He would have all the food he wanted and no one to tell him what to eat or when. And there would be girls. Not like Lavinia Crawford; after Ash had presented him with the real Lavinia Crawford, he had quickly tired of her, and after the second time, he'd discovered that with her it was not all he had dreamed it would be. She was, it turned out, as stupid as a cow, and after hearing Ash talking with him about what he would have in the future, she had demanded that she be part of it too. He'd been almost relieved when he got rid of her, though he had felt a bit of revulsion about it. After all, she had been the first girl he'd ever done it with, and, well, it had felt as if she had taken a part of him with her.

After that he'd begun to think about other girls he'd known, and Ash had arranged for him to be with a couple of them. He'd decided then that it would be best to have many girls rather than just one. They each had something to offer, even the ones who fought. It would be best to have a lot to choose from. And if they didn't obey him—well, that's why they'd call him King of the Dead.

Up ahead there was the sound of a breaking mirror.

Seven years' bad luck, his mind said automatically. Then there came the sound of another breaking mirror, and a shout. His mother? He couldn't be sure. He quickened his steps, suddenly rounded a corner and stepped onto broken glass shards.

"Oh, Pup."

When his mother spoke his name, her voice had a tone of relief in it that had never been there before. She was disheveled. Her expensive gown was torn at the shoulder, her hair pushed out of place. It figured that she would have taken the time to put on her most elegant things before leaving for the amusement park. It was just like her to show up everybody else in town. There was a silk purse on the ground, covered with bits of broken mirror and powdery sawdust, its contents scattered. One of his mother's shoes was missing. Her eyeliner was smudged, making her look like a teary raccoon.

A hate for her greater than he had ever known welled up within him.

"Pup. I've been so alone in here, and I can't find my way out."

She limped toward him, whimpering.

"Where's Father'?" Pup asked.

She waved in the opposite direction. Her voice was affected and breathy. "He went on ahead. I told the foolish man to stay with me, but you know he never listens." She held out her hand to him, as if they were at a cocktail party. "Pup, get me out of here."

Pup brushed past her to listen at the next turn in the mirrored path.

"How long ago did he leave you?"

She bent down and began to retrieve her cosmetics, shoveling them back into her handbag. "Ten, fifteen minutes. We've been in here so long.”

Pup saw only a dark, reflective twisting ahead.

Behind him, his mother said, "Dreadful place. It just isn't what I thought it would be, and I doubt that it's good for Montvale. I came only because I thought I saw your grandmother, but of course it couldn't have really been her, and she led us into this mirror place and then abandoned us. I'll have to recommend that Mayor Poundridge close down this entire monstrosity." She stood up. In a few short moments she had managed to rearrange her hair and make herself presentable again. Even her eyeliner smears were gone. "Pup, take me out of here now," she said.

A deep hesitation clutched Pup. He hated this woman with a deeper hate than he ever had—but she was his mother.

"Pup, are you listening to me, hmm?"

An image was forming in the mirrors around Pup. Ash smiling knowingly at him, cigarette saluting limply in his hand as if to say, "I know you can't do it, boy. You don't have the stuff to be King of the Dead. "

"Pup, do as I say this instant."

There was her face, her huge face, staring down at him, telling him what to do, and his tiny two-year-old hands reached up to hit at her, to hit her away, and sudden fire came into her eyes, and her hand was momentarily on his neck before she slapped him for the first and last time—

His mother's throat was in Pup's hands before he knew what he was doing. He knew he had to do it quickly or not at all. His tie to her was too strong, and even hate, when too strong, could turn into something else and immobilize him. And then there were Ash's eyes. He knew they were still in that mirror, taunting him; he knew that if he looked anywhere, at the mirror or down at his mother's face, he would not be able to complete what he had started.

Trying not to feel the weakening pulse between his tight fingers, he looked up at the ceiling of the House of Mirrors. To his shock, there were mirrors up there too. The entire ceiling was silvered, throwing back reflections of the ground. He did not look at what was in his hands. He saw only himself, his own straining face. When he looked into his own eyes, he knew he would be all right. They were the eyes of someone he knew and trusted, the only person in the whole world he liked:

King of the Dead.

He left his mother in the sawdust, with the contents of her handbag once more scattered: the compact and lipsticks and eye shadows that had been her masks against him.

Up ahead someone stumbled in the corridor, cursing loudly. Pup knew that everything would be all right now.

His father appeared between two mirrors, the reflection in the twin silvered glasses turning him into triplets. He looked at Pup and then down at his wife, lying on the ground.

He used that same tight-eyed, weighing look he always used when measuring a situation. When he saw his wife, his eyes widened almost imperceptibly. But almost at once they regained their normal dull luster.

"Raymond," he said, using Pup's real first name. The word held many things at once: command, you'd better respect me—and, surprisingly, almost a hint of understanding.

Pup said nothing as his father stepped fully into the room, leaving his mirrored twins behind.

As disheveled as his mother had been, his father was still neat in appearance. He wore a tie with a small, sharp red knot at the top of his white collar; his late-summer sports jacket was properly unwrinkled. Somehow, as always, he looked recently shaved. His full but firm face was set in his most businesslike way. Even his shoes, with all of the walking and scuffling about he must have done, looked newly shined, the black leather hardly creased behind the toe. A businessman, always a businessman.

"Something mighty strange going on here," his father said. This pronouncement seemed at once to include everything he meant: strange amusement park, strange end for his wife, strange son standing before him. If he showed any surprise about any of it, he kept it well hidden.

"Quite strange," he said, moving closer to Pup and not taking his eyes off him now.

"Why don't you stop?" Pup asked. He tried to sound casual and was delighted to find that there was no nervous ring in his voice. It sounded very much like his father's voice.

"I want you to listen to me carefully, Raymond," his father said, taking another step forward.

"I said stop!"

His father stopped short. The very fact that he had done so seemed to both surprise and frighten him, and for the first time in his life, Pup saw his father unsure of himself. His father looked in the mirrors, at the multiple, diamond-like reflections of the scene around them.

"What do you want me to do?" his father asked.

"Don't move. Don't move a step."

He already knows who I am, Pup thought. He can sense it, taste it. He thinks he can make a deal with me.

"Can we talk, Pup?" his father asked coolly.

"You never wanted to talk before."

Red anger flushed around his father's starched collar, but he kept his control. The man is marvelous.

"I'm your father."

Pup was silent.

Pup could see the gears shift in his father's mind. How to handle this boy? he was thinking; what new tactic to try? What direction to come in from this time? It was like the electronic chess game Pup had. When it was the computer's move, a little red light stayed on until it had finished working through the possibilities. The longer the tiny red light stayed on, the better you knew your own move had been because it meant the machine was stumped and trying to find a good move in a losing game.

Pup thought, The machine is stumped.

The little red light in his father's eyes went out, and he said, "You'll need help." Pup smiled, and the red light went on again almost immediately; he was wishing he had the move back, wanting to think some more, because he knew he hadn't said the right thing.

His father drove ahead, seeing nothing better to do, trying to twist things around his way as he went along.

"You can't do it by yourself, Pup. You're too young." He closed his mouth for a moment, a red flush again crawling over his collar, and took a heavy breath. "I've been at this game a long time, I can teach you everything I know."

"I already know everything you know. I watched you."

"There's more, much more. It isn't all on the outside, you know. There are things you can't learn from watching—"

"The rest I taught myself, just like you did."

Before he could stop himself, his father said, "Do you hate me that much?" The very fact that he was saying something like this told him that he was losing the game. He nearly panicked. A new tint came over his features, not of self-anger or reproach or frustration, but of fear. He was losing.

"I can see where you would hate me," he went on. He tried to talk himself into some new advantage. He would talk forever, given the chance, Pup knew. Plenty of times Pup had seen him take a man he had just cheated out of a big sum of money and in the course of a few minutes, or maybe over lunch, make the man think he was in the presence of the best friend he had ever had. The money meant nothing: he would let Pup's father do it to him again for the pleasure of it, and often he did. Pup's father was a usurer of rare talents who enjoyed not so much the money he made as how he made it, the process of fucking-over his customers. "I don't see why that hate you have for me can't change, Pup."

A rage was building in Pup, and at the same time, he wanted to laugh.

"You killed your own mother," his father blurted out. He pointed with a shaking finger at the sprawled corpse on the ground. "How could you do such a thing?"

"You've been slowly killing her for years," Pup answered. "Not that she didn't deserve it. Do you think you were good to her?"

"No," his father said desperately. "I wasn't good to her because I didn't love her. But she made us stay together, she made me stay with her because of you."

The red light blinked on in his eyes again, instantly going off. He knew he had found a good move.

Something struck at Pup, something way down inside the layers and layers. For a reeling second of time he was not the King of the Dead. He was something else. A tiny voice down there called him an imposter, a liar, a cheat. The voice started to grow.

His father saw what was happening. He'd seen it many times before, and he dived into the tiny opening, threading the needle perfectly with his words. "However bad it was, she made a home for you, Pup. Even though she was rotten at them, she did all the things a mother is supposed to do because she believed that that was the way it was supposed to be. We even had an agreement that once you went away to college in a few years, we would get a divorce. But she wouldn't even talk about it until then. She loved you, Pup."

The little voice in Pup began to shout horrible things at him. He looked at a mirror on the wall, a distorted ceiling-to-floor mirror with a long crack down its middle. The crack tore right through his face and made it into two not quite halves. The halves didn't meet in the middle. That was the way his mind felt now, as though someone were breaking it into two jagged parts with a hammer.

You're not the King of the Dead. You're a murderer.

"Even if I didn't love you enough, Pup, she did."

The two pieces of his head were grinding against one another, trying to jam themselves back together. Pup screamed, clutching at his hair, digging his fingers deep into his scalp. He stumbled toward the broken mirror, hitting it with his shoulder. The mirror shattered into thin, sharp bits, raining them down like tinkling bells. Pup fell to the sawdust and began to sob into his hands.

"You killed her, Pup," his father dug in relentlessly, close by his ear.

"No!"

"Yes you did. You killed her with your own hands."

Pup looked through his tears and saw on the ground before him, reflected in a bright shard of mirror, his father standing above him with a knife-sharp sliver of glass in his hand, bringing it down at him.

Pup rolled over, rising to his knees. His father lunged at the spot where he had been. The makeshift blade shattered, and he backed away. There was an animal glow in his eyes, feral-bright points of instinct. You bastard, Pup thought, you used her dead like you used her alive.

His father turned and ran off into the maze of mirrors. He pushed himself away from a large glass that broke as he hit it, and ran on.

Pup stood up calmly. His eyes caught the fallen form of his mother, now covered with speckles of mirror. There was nothing in his heart for her. She had deserved it his father deserved it more. Even if what his father had said was true, it changed nothing. She was dead, it was too late to do anything for her, and his father was the real culprit.

A small grin crept over Pup's face as he stepped over his mother's still body and into the maze.

He heard his father's rough breathing up ahead and the occasional sound of breaking glass. Pup followed resolutely. He didn't need to follow the sawdust on the ground now; he could have walked this path with his eyes closed if he had had to. He knew the way to go. In a dimly lit glass ahead of him, Ash's face appeared, smokily indistinct. The mouth opened and closed, the blood slit saying something to him. Pup moved past, unminding, though he thought he heard Ash's laughter. I'm King of the Dead, he thought. Nothing would stop him now.

There was a shout and then a strong intake of breath from ahead, and he heard another crash of flesh against glass. Soon there appeared in the sawdust a few drops of blood and then one of his father's shoes. A pile of slivers came into view, revealing a broken three-sided cusp of mirrors. Blood was spattered everywhere. Close by he heard labored breath, and then, from around a corner, his father appeared. He was limping. One trouser leg was nearly torn off, held only by a few threads.

When he saw Pup, he turned and hobbled away, holding his leg with both hands.

"Stop," Pup commanded, and his father came to an abrupt halt. He fell in a heap, whimpering. "Please, son," he wheezed. "Please."

Pup calmly approached.

"Son?" he mocked. "Did you call me 'son'? You never called me that before. Do you really want to admit, after all this time, that I am your son—fat and slow and seemingly stupid as I am?"

"Yes! You're my son," his father wept. "You've always been my son." He held his trembling hands together. "I've always loved you."

"Call me King of the Dead."

His father stared at him. All at once the old animal look crawled onto his features. Then something, some buried relay switch, snapped on, and he changed his mind.

"You're my son!" he pleaded.

"Call me King of the Dead."

"Isn't it enough for you to be my son?"

You can do it, Ash's voice said to Pup from somewhere close by.

"My third birthday," Pup said.

It was his third birthday. It was the first birthday he remembered, and he was surrounded by presents. There was a rocking horse on springs, a huge expensive thing of plastic and real mane hair, and a pile of other toys: books, a tricycle, a stuffed monkey, windup soldiers. Thirty relatives and children from his pre-school class were there. The cake was as big as Pup himself. He sat at the head of the dining-room table, the place of honor, his father's place.

"Where's Daddy?" he asked when his mother leaned over him to cut the cake. His father was the only one in his universe not there. All afternoon he had wondered where his daddy was. Now he had been made to sit in his father's spot at the table, and he wanted to know where he was.

"He had to go to work today, Puppy," his mother said. Though her face kept its smile, something that was obvious to him then, even at that age, changed in her eyes. "But he sent you all these presents. He really wanted to be here, but he just had to work today."

"I want Daddy here!" Pup said petulantly, striking the edge of the table with his small fist.

"He'll be home soon," she said, beginning to grow nervous.

Pup knew she was lying, and he became even more hysterical. "I want Daddy!"

"Pup," his mother soothed, "I said he'll be home soon!"

"Daddy! Daddy!"

Pup struck at the table with both hands. His mother, embarrassed, tried to lift him from his chair. He resisted, throwing out his fingers at her face. She stumbled back from him. He pushed the birthday cake aside and sank his fists into it. His face was red and he was crying explosively. "Daddy!"

He threw the cake from the table. It landed with a collapsing thud on the floor. One of his aunts got out of her chair and moved toward him. He screamed in rage and kicked at the fallen cake, sending soft pieces flying around the room. He ran into the living room, where his presents were stacked neatly after the opening ceremony; he lifted them, one after another, over his head and hurled them as far as he could. Hands reached down at him then, and he looked up into his mother's horrified face and screamed at her: "Get away!" She pulled her hands back, and he threw himself at the horse his father had bought him, tearing at the mane with his hands, trying to pull it from its springs. He climbed onto it. The horse tilted ominously, but he didn't notice. He held on tight and kicked furiously, trying to break it. He pulled a great handful of hair from the mane. The hair's coming loose threw him off balance. He dug in with his shoes to the side of the horse, and his momentum threw the toy animal over sideways. He saw the ground looming up, heard the squeak of springs. The wooden floor rushed up at him, and then there was night. . . .

Silence. Pup's hands were clenched into tight balls. At first he saw only mirrors and his own red-faced reflection in them. Then he saw another reflection, a mound of something on the floor in front of him. It was a shapeless red and fabric thing. At first his eyes would not focus on it, but gradually the haze cleared from his vision and he saw what it was. Even a horse couldn't do that, he thought, and instantly knew that a crazed horse could. Portions of what had once been human were so beaten that a large horse's hoof mark was plainly visible, as if the animal had stepped into soft mud.

Pup turned. For a moment he felt sharp, sour bile climbing his throat, but he steadied himself. He took a few long breaths, stood straight and willed himself to look back, and when he did, a small crest of nausea passed over him, but then he felt fine. He had the stomach for it now. He took another long breath and didn't look away.

He wouldn't be squeamish again. For a moment he thought Ash was standing before him, but he saw only his own cold eyes staring back at him in a mirror. Suddenly, thinking of how Ash had taunted him, he wanted Ash to be there. A flash of pure anger went through him, and his eyes lingered on the mirror, waiting for Ash to appear.

You'll get yours.

Abruptly there came a strange light, and fear bolted through him as the House of Mirrors began to disintegrate. Fear turned to awe. Before his eyes one world was being torn down and another erected. The walls around him vanished, turning to insubstantial beads of mist, leaving another place behind, a red world. He found himself in an open area, with clouds high above in a black and crimson sky. There was a low wall of roughly blocked stones to his left; a circular stairway was cut into it, corkscrewing up and around. He walked to it and mounted the steps. Low thunderheads were crawling by above; thick, evil puffs of fog moved beneath them, challenging their slow progress. The world seemed all blacks and reds and deep yellow-browns.

Did I do this?

The thought coursed through him, but then he was filled with doubt. He hadn't willed anything like this to happen. Had Ash? No, he knew that Ash did not have that kind of power on his own. He was just a leech; he could only use hate and fear siphoned off from others. At least that's what Ash had told him. That's why he'd been drawn to Pup, he said—because Pup had enough hate to "do all kinds of things." And that was where the idea of the King of the Dead had come from. "Why not?" Ash had smiled. "Why can't you do anything you want?"

Pup had known that Ash was greasing him up, stringing him along, giving him one of his father's best loan-officer looks—level and cool. But the wheels in Pup's head had begun at that moment to turn smooth and tight. Let Ash jerk him around; then Pup would find out how he ticked and—

You'll get yours, Ash.

But if Pup hadn't willed this new setup into being, who had? Who had enough power, or hate, or fear, to make this happen?

Now real fury rose in Pup to think that there was someone out there who would steal Ash away from him. The idea was unbearable. This new adversary would have to be dealt with immediately, have to be overcome and torn to bits. There could be no negotiation, no drawn-out inquiry. Pup wanted what he wanted now.

He trudged to the top of the tower and surveyed the countryside surrounding him.

There was something about it—

He knew this world. A moan, half-gasp, half-cry of wrath, came out of him. He knew this world. Before him was laid out something so familiar and yet so alien that his mind could not at once comprehend it. A sweeping lowland stretched to the mist-shrouded horizon. To the north stood a dismal, black-watered bay with a foundering ship in its harbor. The same one I used for Jack. But that had been only a temporary hallucination, something he had pulled out of his memory as suitable. This world was much more detailed and complete. On land there were only scenes of death, a sprawling panorama of marching skeletons, and stumbling humans falling before their onslaught. Some of the bone men bore weapons: long blades or sickles or knives, thin and sharp. Some worked in gangs, closing in on one or two people, and then dragging them off to hang or behead or burn. The ground was stained red in spots.

Grinning skeletons were by far in the majority—possibly the ghoulish Montvale dead Ash had summoned to man Jeff Scott's amusement park.

As Pup watched, fascinated, a huge phalanx of skeletons swarmed like ants out of a cave and fell upon a group of Montvale citizens. A dim chorus of screams arose as the two groups met head on.

Pup was mesmerized. This was more than he had ever imagined. The sheer amount of killing filled him with exhilaration. This was the kind of thing he would have liked to have come up with. For the briefest moment he wondered again if he had, somehow, invented it all. But he knew this wasn't true. Someone else held the key to this carnage.

Off to one side, in the far distance, a lone figure appeared in a spot remarkably free of activity. At first Pup could not make out who it was. Mist drifted in, and the form vanished into a whirl of sickly red smoke. But then the mist cleared and Pup had his answer. And he knew what place this was. He thought of all the times he had stared at this same scene, now come to life before him, as a poster on a wall in a bedroom in a place called Montvale. That same figure stumbling toward him now had stood by that picture many times, pointing out the minute details and explaining what it all meant, how this or that symbolized something or other—making it all seem real, and scary, and fun. That same figure had even carried a copy of that poster in his wallet so he could study it anywhere.

So it's Reggie Carson.

A wolf's smile crept over Pup Malamut's face. Reggie, almost within hailing distance now, looked tired and worn and not at all indomitable. Maybe he didn't even know what he had done, what he was capable of doing. And then for some glorious reason,

Jeff Scott's taunting words to Ash, the ones that had so enraged him, slipped into Pup's mind, and his smile became even wider.

So this is who Ash is afraid of.

It all fit so neatly that he laughed out loud. Ash was afraid of Reggie Carson, and had been willing to give himself to Pup to have Reggie out of the way. You'll be King of the Dead, Pup. Sure, and then after Pup had gotten rid of Reggie for him, Ash would turn on him. But what Ash didn't know was that Pup had his, own plans and hadn't been fooled for a moment by that soothing voice, the limp, friendly grin. King of the Dead, Pup. Well, if Ash was afraid of Reggie and wanted someone to help do away with him, fine. And then, once that someone had found out the secret to Reggie's power over Ash and delivered him on a silver platter to the shadow man

You'll get yours, Ash.

Reggie was just below the tower. Pup stood up.

"Hey!" he shouted, waving his arms and putting as much feeling as he could into his voice. "Reggie, it's me!" He wanted to add, "It's me, King of the Dead," but that could wait. The genuine gladness that had spread over Reggie's face upon seeing Pup would do more than well enough for now.

You won't smile for long, Musketeer.

Pup nearly raced down the stone steps, trying to keep his heart from leaping with joy. He wanted to crush Reggie with happiness, lift him off the ground and kiss him. Reggie had made it all possible. The hate went off to the side for a moment; there was such genuine feeling on his features that Reggie would take it for granted that this was the reunion of two lost friends. Even as he flew down the remaining steps, Pup's mind was constructing appropriate ways to resolve things. How to handle Reggie? There were probably a hundred, a thousand, good ways. They vied in Pup's mind for attention, and he tried to give them all the loving care they required. Above all other thoughts, one only hung like a huge, joyful, black cloud; one thought alone minimized even the wonderful expectation he felt at the coming extermination of his final problem. It really would come true; he knew finally that his actions up to now had not been in vain, had not been merely the venting of some demented adolescent spleen on those closest to him.

I really will be King of the Dead.