Showdown Read Free Page A

his wet fingers under his nose and drew a long breath through his nostrils. “You have to love the sweet smell of truth. Care for a sniff?”
    He lowered his hand and ran it under Johnny’s nose. The boy jerked away, and the man swept his hand in front of Cecil’s face. Smelled musty, like dirty socks. Cecil pulled back.
    â€œWhat did I tell you?” the man said, grinning. “This stuff will make you see the world in a whole new way, guaranteed.”
    Eyes back on Johnny. “Who else?”
    Johnny stared at him.
    â€œI said who else ? Besides the father.”
    Johnny glanced at the bar, thirty yards to their right.“Maybe Steve?”
    â€œSteve. That’s the owner of the bar?” The man studied Smither’s Saloon.
    Cecil looked at the establishment’s flaking white frontage. It needed a few coats of paint, but then so did half the buildings in Paradise. A plaque hung at an odd angle behind the swinging screen door. Faded red letters spelled Open . A dead neon Budweiser sign hung in one of the saloon’s three windows.
    He looked back at the stranger, who still faced the bar.
    But the man’s eyes weren’t looking at the saloon; they were twisted down, fixed on Cecil. Crooked smile.
    He cocked his arm up to his shoulder as if it were spring-loaded and formed a prong with two fingers, like a cobra poised to strike. Slowly, he brought the hand toward Cecil and then stopped, a foot from his face.
    What on earth was the man doing? What did he think—
    The stranger moved his hand closer, closer. Cecil’s vision blurred and he instinctively clamped his eyes shut. Hot and cold flashes ripped up and down his spine like passing freight trains. He wanted to scream. He wanted to yell for help. Help me, boy! Can’t you see what he’s doing? Help me, for heaven’s sake!
    But he could do nothing more than open his mouth wide and suck in air, making little gasping sounds —hach, hach —like a plunger working in a toilet.
    A long second crawled by. Then two. Cecil stopped sucking air and jerked his eyes open.
    Pink filled his vision—the fuzzy pink of two fingers hovering like a wishbone an inch from his eyes. The fingers rushed at him. Cecil didn’t have the time to close his lids this time. The man’s pink pointers jabbed straight into his eye sockets.
    Red-hot fire exploded in his skull. He saw an image of a cowboy branding a calf ’s hide with a burning iron. Only this was no calf ’s hide. This was eyeballs. His eyeballs.
    Cecil’s mouth strained wide in a muted scream.
    The fingers dug right to the back of his sockets, wiggled deep.Waves of nausea washed through Cecil’s gut. He thought he was going to throw up.
    Then he could see he wasn’t throwing up, because he could see everything. From a vantage point ten feet above the bench he saw it all. He saw Johnny cowering in horror at the far end of the short bench. He saw the black cowboy hat almost hiding the stranger’s excited black eyes.
    The man planted his feet wide, grinning with glee, right arm extended toward Cecil’s face, fingers plugged into his eye sockets like an electric cord as if to say, Here, you old bat, let me juice you up a little.
    Cecil’s head tilted back with those two bloody prongs quivering above his nose. His whole body shook on the bench.
    Pain swept to the ends of his bones and then was gone, as if it had leaked right out his heels. Maybe that’s what happens when you die. Maybe that’s why I’m floating up here.
    The stranger’s arm jerked back, and Cecil saw his eyeballs tear free from their sockets, cupped in the stranger’s fingers. A loud, wet sucking sound filled the afternoon air. Little Johnny threw his arms over his head.
    With his left hand, the stranger reached for his own face. Jabbed at his eyes. Plucked out his own black eyeballs.
    Now he held a set of round, marblelike organs in each hand, a