The Dead Zone

by Stephen King

  “You’ll be able to answer these questions because they’re not about the book.”

  Chuck glanced up. “Not about the book? Then why ask em? I thought ...”

  “Just humor me, okay?”

  Johnny’s heart was pounding hard, and he was not totally surprised to find that he was scared. He had been planning this for a long time, waiting for just the right confluence of circumstances. This was as close as he was ever going to get. Mrs. Chatsworth was not hovering around anxiously, making Chuck that much more nervous. None of his buddies were splashing around in the pool, making him feel self-conscious about reading aloud like a backward fourth grader. And most important, his father, the man Chuck wanted to please above all others in the world, was not here. He was in Boston at a New England Environmental Commission meeting on water pollution.

  From Edward Stanney’s An Overview of Learning Disabilities:

  “The subject, Rupert J., was sitting in the third row of a movie theater. He was closest to the screen by more than six rows, and was the only one in a position to observe that a small fire had started in the accumulated litter on the floor. Rupert J. stood up and cried, ‘F-F-F-F-F—’while the people behind him shouted for him to sit down and be quiet

  “ ‘How did that make you feel?’ I asked Rupert J.

  “ ‘I could never explain in a thousand years how it made me feel,’ he answered ‘I was scared, but even more than being scared, I was frustrated. I felt inadequate, not fit to be a member of the human race. The stuttering always made me feel that way, but now I felt impotent, too.’

  “ ‘Was there anything else?’

  “ ‘Yes, I felt jealousy, because someone else would see the fire and—youknow—’

  “ ‘Get the glory of reporting it?’

  “ ‘Yes, that’s right. I saw the fire starting, I was the only one. And all I could say was F-F-F-F like a stupid broken record. Not fit to be a member of the human race describes it best.’

  “ ‘And how did you break the block?’

  “ ‘The day before had been my mother’s birthday. I got her half a dozen roses at the florist’s. And I stood there with all of them yelling at me and I thought: I am going to open my mouth and scream ROSES! just as loud as I can. I got that word all ready.’

  “ ‘Then what did you do?’

  “ ‘I opened my mouth and screamed FIRE! at the top of my lungs.’ ”

  It had been eight years since Johnny had read that case history in the introduction to Stanney’s text, but he had never forgotten it. He had always thought that the key word in Rupert J.’s recollection of what had happened was impotent. If you feel that sexual intercourse is the most important thing on earth at this point in time, your risk of coming up with a limp penis increases ten or a hundredfold. And if you feel that reading is the most important thing on earth ...

  “What’s your middle name, Chuck?” he asked casually.

  “Murphy,” Chuck said with a little grin. “How’s that for bad? My mother’s maiden name. You tell Jack or Al that, and I’ll be forced to do gross damage to your skinny body.”

  “No fear,” Johnny said. “When’s your birthday?”

  “September 8.”

  Johnny began to throw the questions faster, not giving Chuck a chance to think—but they weren’t questions you had to think about.

  “What’s your girl’s name?”

  “Beth. You know Beth, Johnny . . .”

  “What’s her middle name?”

  Chuck grinned. “Alma. Pretty horrible, right?”

  “What’s your paternal grandfather’s name?”

  “Richard.”

  “Who do you like in the American League East this year?”

  “Yankees. In a walk.”

  “Who do you like for president?”

  “I’d like to see Jerry Brown get it.”

  “You planning to trade that Vette?”

  “Not this year. Maybe next.”

  “Your mom’s idea?”

  “You bet. She says it outraces her peace of mind.”

  “How did Red Hawk get past the guards and kill Danny Juniper?”

  “Sherburne didn’t pay enough attention to that trapdoor leading into the jail attic,” Chuck said promptly, without thinking, and Johnny felt a sudden burst of triumph that hit him like a knock of straight bourbon. It had worked. He had gotten Chuck talking about roses, and he had responded with a good, healthy yell of fire!

  Chuck was looking at him in almost total surprise.

  “Red Hawk got into the attic through the skylight. Kicked open the trapdoor. Shot Danny Juniper. Shot Tom Kenyon, too.”

  “That’s right, Chuck.”

  “I remembered,” he muttered, and then looked up at Johnny, eyes widening, a grin starting at the corners of his mouth. “You tricked me into remembering!”

  “I just took you by the hand and led you around the side of whatever has been in your way all this time,” Johnny said. “But whatever it is, it’s still there, Chuck. Don’t kid yourself. Who was the girl Sherburne fell for?”

  “It was ...” His eyes clouded a little, and he shook his head reluctantly. “I don’t remember.” He struck his thigh with sudden viciousness. I can’t remember anything!I’m so fucking stupid!”

  “Can you remember ever having been told how your dad and mom met?”

  Chuck looked up at him and smiled a little. There was an angry red place on his thigh where he had struck himself. “Sure. She was working for Avis down in Charleston, South Carolina. She rented my dad a car with a flat tire.” Chuck laughed. “She still claims she only married him because number two tries harder.”

  “And who was that girl Sherburne got interested in?”

  “Jenny Langhorne. Big-time trouble for him. She’s Gresham’s girl. A redhead. Like Beth. She ...” He broke off, staring at Johnny as if he had just produced a rabbit from the breast pocket of his shirt. “You did it again!”

  “No. You did it. It’s a simple trick of misdirection. Why do you say Jenny Langhorne is big-time trouble for John Sherburne?”

  “Well, because Gresham’s the big wheel there in that town . . .”

  “What town?”

  Chuck opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Suddenly he cut his eyes away from Johnny’s face and looked at the pool. Then he smiled and looked back. “Amity. The same as in the flick Jaws.”

  “Good! How did you come up with the name?”

  Chuck grinned. “This makes no sense at all, but I started thinking about trying out for the swimming team, and there it was. What a trick. What a great trick.”

  “Okay. That’s enough for today, I think.” Johnny felt tired, sweaty, and very, very good. “You just made a breakthrough, in case you didn’t notice. Let’s swim. Last one in’s a green banana.”

  “Johnny?”

  “What?”

  “Will that always work?”

  “If you make a habit of it, it will,” Johnny said. “And every time you go around that block instead of trying to bust through the middle of it, you’re going to make it a little smaller. I think you’ll begin to see an improvement in your word-to-word reading before long, also. I know a couple of other little tricks.” He fell silent. What he had just given Chuck was less the truth than a kind of hypnotic suggestion.

  “Thanks,” Chuck said. The mask of long-suffering good humor was gone, replaced by naked gratitude. “If you get me over this, I’ll ... well, I guess I’d get down and kiss your feet if you wanted me to. Sometimes I get so scared, I feel like I’m letting my dad down ...”

  “Chuck, don’t you know that’s part of the problem?”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah. You’re ... you’re overswinging. Overthrowing. Overeverything. And it may not be just a psychological block, you know. There are people who believe that some reading problems, Jackson’s Syndrome, reading phobias, all of that, may be some kind of ... mental birthmark. A fouled circuit, a faulty relay, a d . . .” He shut his mouth with
a snap.

  “A what?” Chuck asked.

  “A dead zone,” Johnny said slowly. “Whatever. Names don’t matter. Results do. The misdirection trick really isn’t a trick at all. It’s educating a fallow part of your brain to do the work of that small faulty section. For you, that means getting into an oral-based train of thought every time you hit a snag. You’re actually changing the location in your brain from which your thought is coming. It’s learning to switch-hit.”

  “But can I do it? You think I can do it?”

  “I know you can,” Johnny said.

  “All right. Then I will.” Chuck dived low and flat into the pool and came up, shaking water out of his long hair in a fine spray of droplets. “Come on in! It’s fine!”

  “I will,” Johnny said, but for the moment he was content just to stand on the pool’s tile facing and watch Chuck swim powerfully toward the pool’s deep end and to savor this success. There had been no good feeling like this when he had suddenly known Eileen Magown’s kitchen curtains were taking fire, no good feeling like this when he had uncovered the name of Frank Dodd. If God had given him a talent, it was teaching, not knowing things he had no business knowing. This was the sort of thing he had been made for, and when he had been teaching at Cleaves Mills back in 1970, he had known it. More important, the kids had known it and responded to it, as Chuck had done just now.

  “You gonna stand there like a dummy?” Chuck asked. Johnny dived into the pool.

  Chapter 18

  Warren Richardson came out of his small office building at quarter to five as he always did. He walked around to the parking lot and hoisted his two-hundred-pound bulk behind the wheel of his Chevy Caprice and started the engine. All according to routine. What was not according to routine was the face that appeared suddenly in the rear-view mirror—an olive-skinned, stubbled face framed by long hair and set off by eyes every bit as green as those of Sarah Hazlett or Chuck Chatsworth. Warren Richardson had not been so badly scared since he was a kid, and his heart took a great, unsteady leap in his chest.

  “Howdy,” said Sonny Elliman, leaning over the seat.

  “Who ...” was all Richardson managed, uttering the word in a terrified hiss of breath. His heart was pounding so hard that dark specks danced and pulsed before his eyes in rhythm with its beat. He was afraid he might have a heart attack.

  “Easy,” the man who had been hiding in his back seat said. “Go easy, man. Lighten up.”

  And Warren Richardson felt an absurd emotion. It was gratitude. The man who had scared him wasn’t going to scare him anymore. He must be a nice man, he must be—

  “Who are you?” he managed this time.

  “A friend,” Sonny said.

  Richardson started to turn and fingers as hard as pincers bit into the sides of his flabby neck. The pain was excruciating. Richardson drew breath in a convulsive, heaving whine.

  “You don’t need to turn around, man. You can see me as well as you need to see me in your rear-view. Can you dig that?”

  “Yes,” Richardson gasped. “Yes yes yes just let go!”

  The pincers began to ease up, and again he felt that irrational sense of gratitude. But he no longer doubted that the man in the back seat was dangerous, or that he was in this car on purpose although he couldn’t think why anyone would—

  And then he could think why someone would, at least why someone might, it wasn’t the sort of thing you’d expect any ordinary candidate for office to do, but Greg Stillson wasn’t ordinary, Greg Stillson was a crazy man, and—

  Very softly, Warren Richardson began to blubber.

  “Got to talk to you, man,” Sonny said. His voice was kind and regretful, but in the rear-view mirror his eyes glittered green amusement. “Got to talk to you like a Dutch uncle.”

  “It’s Stillson, isn’t it? It’s ...”

  The pincers were suddenly back, the man’s fingers were buried in his neck, and Richardson uttered a high-pitched shriek.

  “No names,” the terrible man in the back seat told him in that same kind-yet-regretful voice. “You draw your own conclusions, Mr. Richardson, but keep the names to yourself. I’ve got one thumb just over your carotid artery and my fingers are over by your jugular, and I can turn you into a human turnip, if I want to.”

  “What do you want?” Richardson asked. He did not exactly moan, but it was a near thing; he had never felt more like moaning in his life. He could not believe that this was happening in the parking lot behind his real estate office in Capital City, New Hampshire, on a bright summer’s day. He could see the clock set into the red brick of the town hall tower. It said ten minutes to five. At home, Norma would be putting the pork chops, nicely coated with Shake ’n Bake, into the oven to broil. Sean would be watching Sesame Street on TV. And there was a man behind him threatening to cut off the flow of blood to his brain and turn him into an idiot. No, it wasn’t real; it was like a nightmare. The sort of nightmare that makes you moan in your sleep.

  “I don’t want anything.” Sonny Elliman said. “It’s all a matter of what you want.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” But he was terribly afraid that he did.

  “That story in the New Hampshire Journal about funny real estate deals,” Sonny said. “You surely did have a lot to say, Mr. Richardson, didn’t you? Especially about ... certain people.”

  “I . . .”

  “That stuff about the Capital Mall, for instance. Hinting around about kickbacks and payoffs and one hand washing the other. All that horseshit.” The fingers tightened on Richardson’s neck again, and this time he did moan. But he hadn’t been identified in the story, he had just been “an informed source.” How had they known? How had Greg Stillson known?

  The man behind him began to speak rapidly into Warren Richardson’s ear now, his breath warm and ticklish.

  “You could get certain people into trouble talking horseshit like that, Mr. Richardson, you know it? People running for public office, let’s say. Running for office, it’s like playing bridge, you dig it? You’re vulnerable. People can sling mud and it sticks, especially these days. Now, there’s no trouble yet. I’m happy to tell you that, because if there was trouble, you might be sitting here picking your teeth out of your nose instead of having a nice little talk with me.”

  In spite of his pounding heart, in spite of his fear, Richardson said: “This ... this person ... young man, you’re crazy if you think you can protect him. He’s played it as fast and loose as a snake-oil salesman in a southern town. Sooner or later ...”

  A thumb slammed into his ear, grinding. The pain was immense, unbelievable. Richardson’s head slammed into his window and he cried out. Blindly, he groped for the horn ring.

  “You blow that horn, I’ll kill you,” the voice whispered.

  Richardson let his hands drop. The thumb eased up.

  “You ought to use Q-tips in there, man,” the voice said. “I got wax all over my thumb. Pretty gross.”

  Warren Richardson began to cry weakly. He was powerless to stop himself. Tears coursed down his fat cheeks. “Please don’t hurt me anymore,” he said. “Please don’t. Please.”

  “It’s like I said,” Sonny told him. “It’s all a matter of what you want. Your job isn’t to worry what someone else might say about these ... these certain people. Your job is to watch what comes out of your own mouth. Your job is to think before you talk the next time that guy from the Journal comes around. You might think about how easy it is to find out who ‘an informed source’ is. Or you might think about what a bummer it would be if your house burned down. Or you might think about how you’d pay for plastic surgery if someone threw some battery acid in your wife’s face.”

  The man behind Richardson was panting now. He sounded like an animal in a jungle.

  “Or you might think, you know, dig it, how easy it would be for someone to come along and pick up your son on his way home from kindergarten.”

  “Don’t you say that!” Richardso
n cried hoarsely. “Don’t you say that, you slimy bastard!”

  “All I’m saying is that you want to think about what you want,” Sonny said. “An election, it’s an all-American thing, you know? Especially in a Bicentennial year. Everyone should have a good time. No one has a good time if dumb fucks like you start telling a lot of lies. Numb jealous fucks like you.”

  The hand went away altogether. The rear door opened. Oh thank God, thank God.

  “You just want to think,” Sonny Elliman repeated. “Now do we have an understanding?”

  “Yes,” Richardson whispered. “But if you think Gr ... a certain person can be elected using these tactics, you’re badly mistaken.”

  “No,” Sonny said. “You’re the one who’s mistaken. Because everyone’s having a good time. Make sure that you’re not left out.”

  Richardson didn’t answer. He sat rigid behind the steering wheel, his neck throbbing, staring at the clock on the Town Office Building as if it were the only sane thing left in his life. It was now almost five of five. The pork chops would be in by now.

  The man in the back seat said one more thing and then he was gone, striding away rapidly, his long hair swinging against the collar of his shirt, not looking back. He went around the comer of the building and out of sight.

  The last thing he had said to Warren Richardson was: “Q-Tips.”

  Richardson began to shake all over and it was a long time before he could drive. His first clear feeling was anger—terri— ble anger. The impulse that came with it was to drive directly to the Capital City police department (housed in the building below the clock) and report what had happened—the threats on his wife and son, the physical abuse—and on whose behalf it had been done.

  You might think about how you’d pay for plastic surgery ... or how easy it would be for someone to come along and pick up your son ...

  But why? Why take the chance? What he had said to that thug was just the plain, unvarnished truth. Everyone in southern New Hampshire real estate knew that Stillson had been running a shell game, reaping short-term profits that would land him in jail, not sooner or later, but sooner or even sooner. His campaign was an exercise in idiocy. And now strong-arm tactics! No one could get away with that for long in America—and especially not in New England.