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studying it. Was it possible?
He couldn t think of ever having seen John Briggs smile. In fact, he didn t know if
he had ever seen Briggs mouth, buried, as it usually was, behind the painter s mask.
Briggs was all business. There to work. There to make sure others were working. Not a
grinning type of person. But he was smiling now. He was smiling because he was hanging
upside down.
Jack thought about the voice on the phone. It was entirely possible. The more he
studied him, the more he was certain John Briggs was Mr. Grin. That s why the voice had
sounded vaguely familiar. It was John Briggs but it was a smiling John Briggs, someone
Jack had never heard before.
Jack contemplated shooting him but he seemed... restrained. And unconscious.
Had Gina somehow managed to escape his clutches? Had Gina managed to do
this? Jack didn t think it was possible. Briggs had to be close to 300 pounds and he just
couldn t see Gina being able to string him up.
It was just too simple.
This couldn t be it. He couldn t just aim the gun and fire it at this hanging thing
and think he had caught Gina s captor.
The man you re looking for is not who you think he is. He smiles because he s out
of his skin.
That seemed simple to Jack. Mr. Grin was not in John Briggs. If he was looking
for Mr. Grin and he now thought it was John Briggs that meant it couldn t be John
Briggs. What he saw in front of him was a husk. The skin. Whatever was once inside that
skin was now out of it. Happily out of it. Smiling because he was out of his skin.
Suddenly, he found himself thinking about the dirt at The Tent. Where did that
dirt come from? Where did it go? Grisnos? He had been a stellar geography student and
didn t recall any country called Grisnos. Could The Tent have anything to do with this?
He wondered what he had been doing the past three years. Would Mr. Thick, the strange
flickering man at the front counter, know where Grisnos was? Jack thought maybe he
would.
He had a revelation. It came upon him in a rush and he didn t have the time to
question it. He didn t want to question it.
There was something in the dirt. Something... otherworldly. It came from one
world and went to another. Something in the dirt. Something that made some people sniff
it. Something that made some people forget. Something that, over time, rotted people s
insides. And it had rotted the insides of John Briggs. Rotted them so much they couldn t
stand to be in his body anymore. Maybe he was so rotten inside he didn t have any idea
what he was doing. But why Gina? Why Jack?
He put the gun in the back of his pants.
He thought maybe it was time for him to come out of his skin, too.
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the piece of paper with the stick
figure drawings on it.
Now that he had seen Briggs hanging in front of him, the meaning of those
drawings seemed obvious. It was an instruction sheet telling him how to suspend himself
like Briggs. He didn t know if it would help. He desperately wanted things to work out.
This was one sick mindfuck of a puzzle but he was beginning to understand it for the
puzzle it was.
Another rope hung from the metal bar. There was a loop at the end of it. All he
had to do was place both feet in the loop, grab the other end of the rope dangling above
him, and pull.
He didn t know how he was going to stay up there. He imagined the second he let
go of the rope he would just go plummeting head first onto the cement. Stepping into the
loop, he put the instruction sheet to use.
Once he was upside down, everything fell out of his pockets. All the keys
clattered to the floor. The gun hit the floor with a smack and he was thankful it didn t
discharge.
Hesitantly, he took his hands away from the rope.
He didn t go plummeting to the floor. He stayed just where he was. He felt his
muscles slacken. He felt his mouth open into a grin. He didn t like the feeling at all. Now
was not a time to be smiling.
He thought of Gina as he closed his eyes.
He thought of the dirt smudged picture of Gina he kept in his work area at The
Tent. Was it possible Briggs had seen that picture and thought he absolutely had to have
Gina? Was it possible everything had spiraled out of control from there? Was it even
possible that Gina may have at one time slept with Briggs? Maybe he was one of her
scorned lovers and this was his attempt to get back at her. And not just her but the most
important person in her life.
Or...
Or maybe it went beyond this world. Maybe it went all the way to that other world
that smacked into Earth when two worlds collided. Maybe Gina couldn t cross through
the freight car because she didn t want to go home. Maybe she had been born in another
world. Maybe she was adopted because someone helped her escape. Maybe someone
wanted to take her back. Maybe Briggs had something to do with that. Maybe whatever
had gotten inside Briggs had something to do with that. And if Briggs body was here but
his rotten insides were somewhere else then where was Gina s body? And which part of
her was being tortured? Her insides or her real body?
And then there were the brands. The brands were definitely supernatural. The
brands were definitely not normal. Something had inflicted those brands on all those
people. Something had tried to stop Jack from making it to the Hotel Eternity. But once
Jack made it, those brands had turned into keys. And the keys would take him where he
needed to go. Was that Jack s first victory? Were the keys his reward?
Maybe Jack was going crazy.
He wondered what time it was.
Then he went out.
Twenty-nine
The next thing he remembered, Jack was standing there in the Utility Shed
looking at his own upside down body, feeling that stupid, irremovable grin straining at his
lips and cheeks. He didn t like the look of his body under those harsh fluorescent lights,
next to Mr. Grin, next to John Briggs. He thought he looked unreal. Waxy. Dead.
He looked down at the ground.
The gun was there and, although all of the keys had fallen out of his pockets when
he suspended himself, there were now only the four unused keys. He scooped the keys
and the gun up. He opened the door of the Utility Shed to the outside, not bothering to
close it. What if he closed it and he wasn t able to get back in? He didn t know which
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