Song of Susannah - Stephen King [156]
Susannah dimly felt warmth gush down her legs—Mia’s legs—and saw her jeans darken at the crotch and thighs. Her water had finally broken.
“Let’s go-ooo-ooo …and have a BABY! ” Sayre proclaimed in game-show-host tones of excitement. There were too many teeth in that smile, a double row both top and bottom.
“After that, we’ll see. I promise you that your request will be taken under consideration. In the meantime…Hile, Mia! Hile, Mother!”
“Hile, Mia! Hile, Mother!” the rest cried, and Mia suddenly found herself borne toward the back of the room, the bulldog-faced low man gripping her left arm and the hawkman gripping her right. Hawkman made a faint and unpleasant buzzing sound in his throat each time he exhaled. Her feet barely touched the rug as she was carried toward the bird-thing with the yellow feathers; Canaryman, she thought him.
Sayre brought her to a stop with a single hand-gesture and spoke to Canaryman, pointing toward the Dixie Pig’s street door as he did. Mia heard Roland’s name, and also Jake’s. The Canaryman nodded. Sayre pointed emphatically at the door again and shook his head. Nothing gets in, that headshake said. Nothing!
The Canaryman nodded again and then spoke in buzzing chirps that made Mia feel like screaming. She looked away, and her gaze happened on the mural of the knights and their ladies. They were at a table she recognized—it was the one in the banqueting hall of Castle Discordia. Arthur Eld sat at the head with his crown on his brow and his lady-wife at his right hand. And his eyes were a blue she knew from her dreams.
Ka might have chosen that particular moment to puff some errant draft across the dining room of the Dixie Pig and twitch aside the tapestry. It was only for a second or two, but long enough for Mia to see there was another dining room—a private dining room—behind it.
Sitting at a long wooden table beneath a blazing crystal chandelier were perhaps a dozen men and women, their appledoll faces twisted and shrunken with age and evil. Their lips had burst back from great croggled bouquets of teeth; the days when any of these monstrosities could close their mouths were long gone. Their eyes were black and oozing some sort of noisome tarry stuff from the corners. Their skin was yellow, scaled with teeth, and covered with patches of diseased-looking fur.
What are they? Mia screamed. What in the name of the gods are they?
Mutants, Susannah said. Or perhaps the word is hybrids. And it doesn’t matter, Mia. You saw what matters, didn’t you?
She had, and Susannah knew it. Although the velvet swag had been twitched aside but briefly, it had been long enough for both of them to see the rotisserie which had been set in the middle of that table, and the headless corpse twirling upon it, skin browning and puckering and sizzling fragrant juices. No, the smell in the air hadn’t been pork. The thing turning on the spit, brown as a squab, was a human baby. The creatures around it dipped delicate china cups into the drippings beneath, toasted each other…and drank.
The draft died. The tapestry settled back into place. And before the laboring woman was once more taken by the arms and hustled away from the dining room and deeper into this building that straddled many worlds along the Beam, she saw the joke of that picture. It wasn’t a drumstick Arthur Eld was lifting to his lips, as a first, casual, glance might have suggested; it was a baby’s leg. The glass Queen Rowena had raised in toast was not filled with wine but with blood.
“Hile, Mia!” Sayre cried again. Oh, he was in the best of spirits, now that the homing pigeon had come back to the cote.
Hile, Mia! the others screamed back. It was like some sort of crazy football cheer. Those from behind the mural joined in, although their voices were reduced to little more than growls. And their mouths, of course, were stuffed with food.
“Hile, Mother!” This time Sayre offered her a mocking