Scenes from the Secret History (The Secret History of the World) by F. Paul Wilson

glow of starlight and streetlight he saw a wrinkled face and a silvery goatee. The gook babbled something in Vietnamese.
    God, it was Ho Chi Minh himself come to rob him.
    Too late. The money’s gone. All gone.
    No. Wasn’t Ho. Couldn’t be. Just an old papa-san in the usual black pajamas. They all looked the same, especially the old ones. The only thing different about this one was the big scar across his right eye. Looked as if the lids had been fused closed over the socket.
    The old man reached down to where Patsy guarded his intestines and pushed his hands away. Patsy tried to scream in protest but heard only a sigh, tried to put his hands back up on his belly but they’d weakened to limp rubber and wouldn’t move.
    The old man smiled as he singsonged in gooktalk and pressed his hands against the open wound in Patsy’s belly. Patsy screamed then, a hoarse, breathy sound torn from him by the searing pain that shot in all directions from where the old gook’s hands lay. The stars really swam around this time, fading as they moved, but they didn’t go out.
    By the time his vision cleared, the old gook was up and turned around and weaving back toward the street. The pain, too, was sidling away.
    Patsy tried again to lift his hands up to his belly, and this time they moved. They seemed stronger. He wiggled his fingers through the wetness of his blood, feeling for the edges of the wound, afraid of finding loops of bowel waiting for him.
    He missed the slit on the first pass. And missed it on the second. How could that happen? It had been at least a foot long and had gaped open a good three or four inches, right there to the left of his belly button. He tried again, carefully this time…
    …and found a thin little ridge of flesh.
    But no opening.
    He raised his head – he hadn’t been able to do that before – and looked down at his belly. His shirt and pants were a bloody mess, but he couldn’t see any guts sticking out. And he couldn’t see any wound, either. Just a dark wet mound of flesh.
    If he wasn’t so goddamn fat he could see down there! He rolled onto his side – God, he was stronger! – and pushed himself up to his knees to where he could slump his butt onto his heels, all the time keeping at least one hand tight over his belly. But nothing came out, or even pushed against his hand. He pulled his shirt open.
    The wound was closed, replaced by a thin, purplish vertical line.
    Patsy felt woozy again. What’s going on here?
    He was in a coma – that had to be it. He was dreaming this.
    But everything was so real – the rough ground beneath his knees, the congealing red wetness of the blood on his shirt, the sounds from the street, even the smell of the garbage around him. All so real…
    Bracing himself against the wall, he inched his way up to his feet. His knees were wobbly and for a moment he thought they’d give out on him. But they held and now he was stand ing.
    He was afraid to look down, afraid he’d see himself still on the ground. Finally, he took a quick glance. Nothing there but two clotted puddles of blood, one on each side of where he’d been lying.
    He tore off the rest of the ruined shirt and began walking – very carefully at first – toward the street. Any moment now he would wake up or die, and this craziness would stop. No doubt ’bout that. But until then he was going to play out this little fantasy to the end.
     
    “Dat-Tay-Vao” is available in the collection Soft & Others or in the 2009 reissue of The Touch
     

    1983
     
    JACK: SECR ET HISTORIES
     

     
    The child who would become Repairman Jack was conceived shortly after Rasalom’s reincarnation.  His genetic makeup leaves him uniquely suited to be the Heir.  Neither he nor his parents are aware that he has been designated.
     
    He makes his first appearance in the Secret History of the World with the first of his Teen Trilogy.  He spends much of his time in the fabled Jersey Pinelands, rich in Secret History