by Stephen King
"You didn't recognize the handwriting?"
"No."
"Well, maybe you just better take that ... that note from beyond or whatever it is ... and go back to your room."
"You asked me to sit down!" Nadine flashed at her. "How was I supposed to know anything like ... like that would happen? I did it to be polite, for God's sake!"
Rachel had had the good grace to flush at that; she had even offered a little apology. But Nadine had never seen much of the girl after that, and Rachel Timms had been one of the few girls Nadine had ever felt really close to during her first three semesters at college.
From then until now she had never touched one of these triangular spiders made of pressed fiberboard.
But the time had ... well, it had slouched around at last, hadn't it?
Yes indeed.
Heart beating loudly, Nadine sat down on the picnic bench and pressed her fingers lightly to two of the planchette's three sides. She could feel it begin to move under the balls of her fingers almost immediately, and she thought of a car with its engine idling. But who was the driver? Who was he, really? Who would climb in, and slam the door, and put his sun-blackened hands on the wheel? Whose foot, brutal and heavy, shod in an old and dusty cowboy boot, would come down on the accelerator and take her ... where?
Driver, where you taking us?
Nadine, beyond help or hope of succor, sat upright on the bench at the crest of Flagstaff Mountain in the black trench of morning, her eyes wide, that feeling of being on the border stronger than ever. She stared east, but felt his presence coming from behind her, pressing heavy on her, dragging her down like weights tied to the feet of a dead woman: Flagg's dark presence, coming in steady, inexorable waves.
Somewhere the dark man was abroad in the night, and she spoke two words like an incantation to all the black spirits that had ever been-- incantation and invitation:
"Tell me."
And beneath her fingers, the planchette began to write.
CHAPTER 54
Excerpts from the Minutes of the
Permanent Free Zone Committee Meeting
August 19, 1990
This meeting was held at the apartment of Stu Redman and Fran Goldsmith. All members of the Free Zone Committee were present.
Stu Redman offered congratulations to all of us, including himself, on being elected to the Permanent Committee. He made a motion that a letter of thanks to Harold Lauder be drafted and signed by each member of the Committee. It passed unanimously.
Stu: "Once we get the old business taken care of, Glen Bateman has a couple of items. I don't know what they are any more than you do, but I suspect one of them has to do with the next public meeting. Right, Glen?"
Glen: "I'll wait my turn."
Stu: "That's baldy for you. The main difference between an old drunk and an old bald college professor is the professor waits his turn before he starts talkin the ears off your head."
Glen: "Thank you for those pearls of wisdom, East Texas."
Fran said she could see Stu and Glen were having a wonderful time but wanted to know if they could get down to business, as all her favorite TV shows started at nine. This comment was greeted with more laughter than it probably deserved.
The first real item of business was our scouts in the West. To recap, the committee has decided to ask Judge Farris, Tom Cullen, and Dayna Jurgens to go. Stu suggested that the people who nominated each of them be the ones to broach the subject to their own nominees--that is, Larry Underwood asks the Judge, Nick will have to talk to Tom--with Ralph Brentner's help--and Sue will talk to Dayna.
Nick said that working with Tom might take a few days, and Stu said that brought up the point of when to send them. Larry said they couldn't be sent together or they might all get caught together. He went on to say that both the Judge and Dayna would probably suspect that we had sent more than one spy, but as long as they didn't know the actual names, they couldn't tattle. Fran said that tattle was hardly the word, considering what the man in the West might do to them--if he is a man.
Glen: "I wouldn't be so gloomy, if I were you, Fran. If we give our Adversary credit for even a modicum of intelligence, he'll know we wouldn't give our--operatives, I guess one could call them--any information we considered vital to his interests. He'll know that torture could do him very little good."
Fran: "You mean he'll probably pat them on the head and tell them not to do it anymore? I have an idea he might torture them just because torture is one of the things he likes. What do you say to that?"
Glen: "I guess there's not much I can say."
Stu: "That decision's been made, Frannie. We've all agreed that we're sending our people into a dangerous situation, and we all know that making the decision sure wasn't any fun."
Glen suggested that we agree tentatively to this schedule: The Judge would go out on August twenty-sixth, Dayna on the twenty-seventh, and Tom on the twenty-eighth, none of them to know about the others and each to leave on a different road. That would allow the time necessary to work with Tom, he added.
Nick said that, with the exception of Tom Cullen, who will be told when to come back by means of a posthypnotic suggestion, the other two must be told to come back when their own discretion advises them to, but that the weather could become a factor--there can be heavy snow in the mountains by the first week of October. Nick suggested that each of them should be advised to spend no more than three weeks in the West.
Fran said they could swing around to the south if the snow came early in the mountains but Larry disagreed, pointing out that the Sangre de Cristo chain would be in the way, unless they swung all the way down to Mexico. And if they had to do that, we probably wouldn't see them again until spring.
Larry said if that was the case, perhaps we ought to give the Judge a headstart. He suggested August 21, day after tomorrow.
That closed the subject of the scouts ... or spies, if you prefer.
Glen was then recognized, and I am now quoting from the taped record:
Glen: "I want to move that we call another public meeting on August twenty-fifth, and I'm going to suggest a few things that we might cover at that meeting.
"I'd like to start by pointing out something that may surprise you. We've been assuming that we've got about six hundred people in the Zone, and Ralph has kept admirable, accurate records of the number of large groups that have come in, and we've based our population assumption on those figures. But there have also been people coming in by dribs and drabs, maybe as many as ten a day. So earlier today I went over to Chautauqua Park auditorium with Leo Rockway, and we counted the seats in the hall. There are six hundred and seven of them. Now does that tell you anything?"
Sue Stern said that couldn't be right, because people had been standing in the back and sitting in the aisles when they couldn't get seats. Then we all saw what Glen was getting at, and I guess it would be appropriate to say the committee was thunderstruck.
Glen: "We don't have any way of accurately estimating how many standees and sittees we had, but my memory of the gathering is fairly clear and I'd have to say that one hundred would be a terribly conservative estimate. So you see, we really have better than seven hundred people here in the Zone. As a result of Leo's and my findings, I motion that one of the items to go on the big meeting agenda is a Census Committee."
Ralph: "Well, I'll be a son of a bitch! That's one on me."
Glen: "No, it's not your fault. You've got about a dozen irons in the fire, Ralph, and I think we'd all agree you've kept them turning nicely--"
Larry: "Boy, I'll say."
Glen: "--but even if we've only been getting four loners a day, that still adds up to almost thirty a week. And my guess is we're getting more like twelve or fourteen. They don't just run up to one of us and announce themselves, you know, and with Mother Abagail gone, there's no one place where you can count on them going after they arrive."
Fran Goldsmith then seconded Glen's motion that the committee put a Cens
us Committee on the agenda for the meeting on August 25, said committee to be responsible for keeping a roll of every Free Zone member.
Larry: "I'm all for that if there's some good, practical reason for doing it. But ..."
Nick: "But what, Larry?"
Larry: "Well ... don't we have enough other things to worry about without hacking around with a bunch of diddly-shit bureaucracy?"
Fran: "I can see one valid reason right now, Larry."
Larry: "What's that?"
Fran: "Well, if Glen's right, it means we're going to need to hire a bigger hall for the next meeting. That's one thing. If there are going to be eight hundred people here by the twenty-fifth, we'll never cram them all into Chautauqua Auditorium."
Ralph: "Jesus, I never thought of that. I told you guys I wasn't cut out for this work."
Stu: "Relax, Ralph, you're doing fine."
Sue: "So where are we going to hold the goddam meeting?"
Glen: "Wait a minute, wait a minute. One thing at a time. There's a goddam motion on the goddam floor!"
It was voted 7-0 to put the Census Committee on the agenda of the next public meeting.
Stu then moved that we hold the meeting on August 25 in Munzinger Auditorium at C.U., which had a bigger capacity--probably over a thousand.
Glen then asked for and received the floor again.
Glen: "Before we move on, I'd like to point out that there's another good reason to have a Census Committee, one that's a little more serious than knowing how much dip and how many bags of chips to bring to the party. We should know who's coming in ... but we should also know who is leaving. I think people are, you know. Maybe it's just paranoia, but I could swear that there have been faces I've gotten used to seeing that just aren't around anymore. Anyhow, after we went out to the Chautauqua Auditorium, Leo and I went over to Charlie Impening's house. And guess what? The house is empty, Charlie's things are gone, and so is Charlie's BSA."
Some uproar from the committee, also profanity which, while colorful, does not have any place in this record.
Ralph then asked what good it would do for us to know who is leaving. He suggested that if people like Impening wanted to go over to the dark man, then we should look at it as a case of good riddance. Several of the committee applauded Ralph, who blushed like a schoolboy, if I may add that.
Sue: "No, I see Glen's point. It would be like a constant drain of information."
Ralph: "Well, what could we do? Put them in jail?"
Glen: "Ugly as it sounds, I think we have to consider that very strongly."
Fran: "No, sir. Sending spies ... I can stomach that. But locking up people who come here because they don't like the way we're doing things? Jesus, Glen! That's secret police stuff!"
Glen: "Yes, that's about what it comes down to. But our position here is extremely precarious. You're putting me in the position of having to advocate repression, and I think that's very unfair. I'm asking you if you want to allow a brain-drain to go on, in light of our Adversary."
Fran: "I still hate it. In the 1950s, Joe McCarthy had Communism. We've got our dark man. How wonderful for us."
Glen: "Fran, are you prepared to take the chance that someone may leave here with a key piece of information in his pocket? That Mother Abagail is gone, for instance?"
Fran: "Charlie Impening can tell him that. What other key pieces of information do we have, Glen? For the most part, aren't we just wandering around without a clue?"
Glen: "Do you want him to know our strength of numbers? How we're getting along on the technical side? That we don't even have a doctor yet?"
Fran said she'd rather have it that way than start locking people up because they didn't like the way we were running things. Stu then motioned that we table the whole idea of locking people up for contrary views. This motion was passed, with Glen voting against.
Glen: "You better get used to the idea that you're going to have to deal with this sooner or later, and probably sooner. Charlie Impening spilling his guts to Flagg is bad enough. You just have to ask yourself if you want to multiply what Impening knows by some theoretical x-factor. Well, never mind, you've voted to table. But here's another thing ... we're elected indefinitely, did any of you think of that? We don't know if we're serving six weeks, six months, or six years. My suggestion would be one year ... that ought to take us to the end of the beginning, in Harold's phrase. I'd like to see the one-year thing on the agenda for our next public meeting.
"One last item and I'm done. Government by town meeting--which is essentially what we have, with ourselves as town selectmen--is going to be fine for a while, until we've got about three thousand people or so, but when things get too big, most of the people who show up at the public meetings are going to be cliques and folks with axes to grind ... fluoridation makes you sterile, people who want one sort of flag, things like that. My suggestion would be that we all think very hard about how to turn Boulder into a Republic by late next winter or early spring."
There was some informal discussion of Glen's last proposal, but no action was taken at this meeting. Nick was recognized and gave Ralph something to read.
Nick: "I'm writing this on the morning of the nineteenth, in preparation for the meeting tonight, and will get Ralph to read it as the last order of business. Being mute is very difficult sometimes, but I have tried to think of all the possible ramifications of what I'm about to propose. I'd like to see this go on the agenda for our next public meeting: 'To see if the Free Zone will create a Department of Law and Order with Stu Redman at its head.' "
Stu: "That's a hell of a thing to spring on me, Nick."
Glen: "Interesting. Goes back to what we were just talking about, too. Let him finish, Stuart--you'll get your innings."
Nick: "The headquarters of this Department of Law and Order would be in the Boulder County Courthouse. Stu would have the power to deputize men on his own up to thirty, over thirty on a majority vote of the Free Zone Committee, and over seventy on a majority vote of the Free Zone in public session. That's the resolution I'd like to see on the next agenda. Of course we can approve until we're black in the face and it will do no good unless Stu goes along."
Stu: "Damn right!"
Nick: "We've gotten big enough to really need some law. Things are going to get flaky without it. There's the case of the Gehringer boy racing that fast car up and down Pearl Street. He finally crashed it and was lucky to walk away with nothing worse than a gash on his forehead. He could have killed himself or someone else. Now everybody who saw him doing that knew it was nothing but trouble, M-O-O-N, that spells trouble, as Tom would say. But nobody felt they could stop him, because they just didn't have the authority. That's one thing. Then there's Rich Moffat. Probably some of you know who Rich is, but for those of you who don't, he's probably the Zone's only practicing alcoholic. He's a half-decent guy when he's sober, but when he's drunk, he's just not accountable for what he does, and he spends a lot of time drunk. Three or four days ago he got a load on and decided he was going to break every plate-glass window on Arapahoe. Now I talked to him about that after he sobered off a little--in my way of talking, you know, by note--and he was pretty ashamed. He pointed back the way he come and said, 'Look at that. Look at what I done. Glass all over the sidewalk! What if some kid gets hurt in that? I'll be to blame.' "
Ralph: "I got no sympathy. None."
Fran: "Come on, Ralph. Everybody knows alcoholism's a disease."
Ralph: "Disease, my ass. It's getting sloppo, that's what it is."
Stu: "And you're both out of order. Come on, you two, pipe down."
Ralph: "Sorry, Stu. I'll stick to reading Nick's letter here."
Fran: "And I'll be quiet for at least two minutes, Mr. Chairman. I promise. "
Nick: "To make a long story short, I found Rich a broom and he swept up most of the mess he'd made. Did a pretty good job, too. But he was right to ask why someone didn't stop him. In the old days a guy like Rich couldn't get anywhere near all the hi
gh-tension booze he wanted; guys like Rich were just winos. But now there are incredible amounts of booze just waiting around to be lifted off the shelves. And furthermore, I really do believe that Rich never should have been allowed to get past his second window, but he broke every window on the south side of the street for three blocks. He finally stopped because he got tired. And here is one more example: We had a case where a man whose name I won't mention found out that his woman, who I also won't name, was spending her afternoon sack-time with a third party. I guess we all know who I'm talking about."
Sue: "Yeah, I guess we do. Big man with his fists."
Nick: "Anyway, the man in question beat up the third party and , then the woman in the case. Now I don't think it matters to any of us here who was right and who was wrong--"
Glen: "You are mistaken there, Nick."
Stu: "Let the man finish, Glen."
Glen: "I'm going to, but it's a point I want to come back to."
Stu: "Fine. Go ahead, Ralph."
Ralph: "Yep--getting toward the end now."
Nick: "--because what matters is that the man in question committed a felony crime, assault and battery, and he is walking around free. Of the three cases, this one worries ordinary citizens the most. We've got a melting-pot society, a real hodge-podge, and there are going to be all kinds of conflicts and abrasions. I don't think any of us want a frontier society here in Boulder. Think of the situation we'd have if the man in question had gotten a .45 out of a pawnshop and had shot them both dead instead of just beating them up. Then we'd have a murderer walking around free."
Sue: "My God, Nicky, what's that? The thought for the day?"
Larry: "Yeah, it's ugly, but he's right. There's an old saying, Navy, I think, that goes, 'Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.' "
Nick: "Stu's already our public and private moderator, which means people already see him as an authority figure. And personally, I think Stu is a good man."
Stu: "Thanks for the kind words, Nick. I guess you never noticed that I wear elevator shoes. Seriously, though--I'll accept the nomination, if that's what you want. I don't really want the goddam job--from what I've seen down in Texas, police work is mostly cleaning puke off your shirt when guys like Rich Moffat barf on you, or scraping dummies like that Gehringer boy off the roads. All I ask is that when we put it up to the public meeting, we set the same one-year time limit on it that we're setting on our committee jobs. And I intend to make it clear that I'm stepping down at the end of that year. If that's acceptable, okay."