by Stephen King
Stu was with Fran when the fluorescents buzzed into life in the ceiling of her hospital room. He watched them flicker, flicker, flicker, and finally catch with the old familiar light. He was unable to look away until they had been glowing solidly for nearly three minutes. When he looked at Frannie again, her eyes were shiny with tears.
“Fran? What’s wrong? Is it the pain?”
“It’s Nick,” she said. “It’s so wrong that Nick isn’t alive to see this. Hold me, Stu. I want to pray for him if I can. I want to try.”
He held her, but didn’t know if she prayed or not. He suddenly found himself missing Nick very much, and hating Harold Lauder more than he ever had before. Fran was right. Harold had not just killed Nick and Sue; he had stolen their light.
“Shh,” he said. “Frannie, shh.”
But she cried for a long time. When the tears were finally gone, he used the button to raise her bed and turned on the night-table lamp so she could see to read.
Stu was being shaken awake, and it took him a long time to come to. His mind ran over a slow and seemingly endless list of people who might be trying to rob his sleep. It was his mother, telling him it was time to get up and light the stoves and get ready for school. It was Manuel, the bouncer in that sleazy little Nuevo Laredo whorehouse, telling him his twenty dollars was used up and it would be another twenty if he wanted to stay all night. It was a nurse in a white all-over suit who wanted to take his blood pressure and a throat culture. It was Frannie. It was Randall Flagg, the dark man.
That last thought brought him up like a dash of cold water in the face. It was none of those people. It was Glen Bateman, with Kojak at his knee.
“You’re a hard man to wake up, East Texas,” Glen said. “Like a stone post.” He was only a vague shape in nearly total darkness.
“Well, you could have turned on the damn light to start with.”
“You know, I clean forgot all about that.”
Stu switched on the lamp and peered owlishly at the wind-up alarm clock. It was quarter to three in the morning, September 6. “What are you doing here, Glen? I was sleepin, in case you didn’t happen to notice.”
He got his first good look at Glen as he put the clock down. He looked pale and scared . . . and old. The lines were drawn deeply into his face and he looked haggard.
“What is it?”
“Mother Abagail,” Glen said quietly.
“Dead?”
“God help me, I almost wish she were. She’s awake. She wants us.”
“The two of us?”
“The five of us. She—” His voice roughened, went hoarse. “She knew Nick and Susan were dead, and she knew Fran was in the hospital. I don’t know how, but she did.”
“And she wants the committee?”
“What’s left of it. She’s dying and she says she has to tell us something. And I don’t know if I want to hear it.”
Outside the night was cold—not just chilly but cold. Stu plunged his hands into his jacket pockets and wondered where Tom was tonight, and the Judge, and Dayna Jurgens.
“I got Ralph up first,” Glen said. “Told him to go over to the hospital and get Fran.”
“If the doctor wanted her up and around, he would have sent her home,” Stu said angrily.
“This is a special case, Stu.”
“For someone who doesn’t want to hear what that old woman has to say, you seem to be in an all-fired hurry to get to her.”
“I’m afraid not to,” Glen said.
Larry Underwood’s house was blazing with light—not gaslamps now, but good electric lights. Every second streetlamp was on too, not just here but all over town, and Stu had stared at them all the way over in Glen’s Jeep, fascinated. The last of the summer bugs, sluggish with the cold, were beating lackadaisically against the sodium globes.
They got out of the Jeep just as headlights swung around the comer. It was Ralph’s clattering old truck, and it pulled up nose to nose with the Jeep. Ralph got out, and Stu went quickly around to the passenger side, where Frannie sat with her back resting against a plaid sofa cushion.
“Hey, babe,” he said softly.
She took his hand. Her face was a pale disk in the darkness.
“Bad pain?” Stu asked.
“Not so bad. I took some aspirin. Just don’t ask me to do the hustle.”
He helped her out of the truck and Ralph took her other arm. They both saw her wince as she stepped away from the cab.
“Want me to carry you?”
“I’ll be fine. Just keep your arm around me, huh?”
“Sure will.”
“And walk slow. Us grammies can’t go very fast.”
They crossed behind Ralph’s truck, and then Stu saw Ralph, Glen, and Larry standing in the doorway, watching them.
“What is it, do you think?” Frannie murmured.
Stu shook his head. “I don’t know.”
They got up the walk, Frannie very obviously in pain now, and Ralph helped Stu get her in. Larry, like Glen, looked pale and worried. He was wearing faded jeans, a shirt that was untucked and buttoned wrong at the bottom, and expensive mocs on bare feet.
“I’m sorry like hell to have to get you out,” he said. “I was in with her, dozing off and on. We’ve been keeping watch.”
“Yes,” Frannie said. For some reason the phrase keeping watch made her think of her mother’s parlor.
“Lucy had gone to bed, and I was with her alone. I snapped out of my doze and she was looking at me. She can’t talk above a whisper, but she’s perfectly understandable.” Larry swallowed. All five of them were now standing in the hallway. “She told me the Lord was going to take her home at the sunrise. But that she had to talk to those of us God hadn’t taken first. I asked her what she meant and she said God had taken Nick and Susan. She knew.” He let out a ragged breath and ran his hands through his long hair.
Lucy appeared at the end of the hall. “I made coffee. It’s here when you want it.”
“Thank you, love,” Larry said.
Lucy looked uncertain. “Should I come in with you folks? Or is it private, like the committee?”
Larry looked at Stu, who said quietly, “Come on along.”
They went up the hall to the bedroom, moving slowly to accommodate Fran.
“She’ll tell us,” Ralph said suddenly. “Mother will tell us. No sense fretting.”
They went in together, and Mother Abagail’s bright, dying gaze fell upon them.
Fran knew about the old woman’s physical condition, but it was still a nasty shock. There was nothing left of her but a pemmican-tough membrane of skin and tendon binding her bones. There was not even a smell of putrescence and oncoming death in the room; instead there was a dry attic smell . . . no, a parlor smell. Half the length of the IV needle hung out of her flesh, simply because there was nowhere for it to go.
Yet the eyes had not changed. They were warm and kind and human. That was a relief, but she still felt a kind of fear . . . not strictly fear, but perhaps something more sanctified—awe. Was it awe? And an impending feeling. Not doom, but as though some dreadful responsibility was poised above their heads like a stone.
“Little girl, sit down,” Mother Abagail whispered. “You’re in pain.”
Larry led her to an armchair and she sat down with a thin, whistling sigh of relief. Even sitting would pain her after a while.
Mother Abagail was still watching her with those bright eyes.
“You’re quick with child,” she whispered.
“Yes ... how . . ”
“Shhhhh . .
Silence fell in the room. Fascinated, hypnotized, Fran looked into the old woman’s eyes.
“Look out the window, little girl.”
Fran turned her face to the window, where Larry had stood and looked out at the gathered people two days before. She saw not pressing darkness but a quiet light. It was not a reflection of the room; it was morning light. She was looking at the faint, slightly distorted reflection
of a bright nursery with ruffled check curtains. There was a crib—but it was empty. There was a playpen—empty. A mobile of bright plastic butterflies—moved only by the wind. Dread clapped its cold hands around her heart. The others saw it on her face but did not understand it; they saw nothing through the window but a section of lawn lit by a streetlight.
“Where’s the baby?” Fran asked hoarsely.
“Stuart is not the baby’s father, little girl. But his life is in Stuart’s hands, and in God’s. This chap will have four fathers. If God lets him draw breath at all.”
“If he draws—”
“God has hidden that from my eyes,” she whispered.
The empty nursery was gone. Fran saw only darkness. And now dread closed its hands into fists, her heart beating between them.
Mother Abagail whispered: “The black Imp has called his bride, to put her with child. Will he let yours live?”
“Stop it,” Frannie moaned.
Silence, deep silence like snow in the room. Glen Bateman’s face was an old dull searchlight. Lucy’s right hand worked slowly up and down the neck of her bathrobe. Ralph had his hat in his hands, picking absently at the feather in the band. Stu looked at Frannie, but could not go to her. Not now.
“Mother, father, wife, husband,” Mother Abagail whispered. “Set against them, the Prince of High Places. I sinned in pride. So have you all, all sinned in pride. Ain’t you heard it said, put not your faith in the Princes of this world?
“Electric lights ain’t the answer, Stu Redman. CB radio ain’t it, either, Ralph Brentner. Sociology won’t end it, Glen Bateman. And you doin penance for a life that’s long since a closed book won’t stop it from coming, Larry Underwood. And your boy-child won’t stop it either, Fran Goldsmith. You propose nothing in the sight of God.”
She looked at each of them in turn. “God will dispose as He sees fit. You are not the potter but the potter’s clay. Mayhap the man in the west is the wheel on which you will be broken. I am not allowed to know.”
A tear, amazing in that dying desert, stole from her left eye and rolled down her cheek.
“Mother, what should we do?” Ralph asked.
“My time is short. Draw near, all of you. My time is short. I’m going home to glory, and there’s never been no human more ready than I am now. Get close to me.”
Ralph sat on the edge of the bed. Larry and Glen stood at the foot of it. Fran got up with a grimace, and Stu dragged her chair up beside Ralph. She sat down again and took his hand with her own cold fingers.
“God didn’t bring you folks together to make a committee or a community,” she said. “He brought you here only to send you further, on a quest.” She sighed. “I thought it was Nick to lead you, but He’s taken Nick—although not all of Nick is gone yet, it seems to me. No, not all. But you must lead, Stuart. And if it’s His will to take Stu, then you must lead, Larry. And if He takes you, it falls to Ralph.”
“Looks like I’m riding drag,” Glen began. “What—”
“Lead?” Fran asked coldly. "Lead? Lead where?”
“Why, west, little girl,” Mother Abagail said. “West. You’re not to go. Only these four.”
“No!” She was on her feet in spite of the pain. “What are you saying? That the four of them are just supposed to deliver themselves into his hands? The heart and soul and guts of the Free Zone?” Her eyes blazed. “So he can hang them on crosses and just walk in here next summer and kill everyone? I won’t see my man sacrificed to your killer God. Fuck Him.”
"Frannie!” Stu gasped.
“Killer God!” she spat. “Millions—maybe billions—dead in the plague. Millions more afterward. We don’t even know if the children will live. Isn’t He done yet? Does it just go on and on? He’s no God, He’s a demon, and you’re His witch!”
“Stop it, Frannie.” “I’ll stop. I want to leave. Take me home, Stu. Not to the hospital but back home.”
“We’ll listen to what she has to say.”
“You listen. I’m leaving.”
“Little girl.”
"Don’t call me that!”
Her hand shot out and closed around Frannie’s wrist. Fran went rigid. Her eyes closed. Her head snapped back.
“Don’t D-D-Don’t . . . OH MY GOD—STU—”
“Here! Here!” Stu roared. “What are you doing to her?”"
Mother Abagail didn’t answer. The moment spun out, seemed to stretch into a pocket of eternity, and then the old woman let go.
Slowly, dazedly, Fran began to massage the wrist Mother Abagail had taken, although there was no red ring or dent in the flesh to show that pressure had been applied. Frannie’s eyes suddenly widened.
“Hon?” Stu asked anxiously.
Ralph was looking at her in a kind of religious terror.
“Gone,” Fran muttered.
“What?”
“The pain ... the whiplash. The pain in my back. It’s gone.” She looked at Stu, dazed. “It’s all gone ”
“What . . . what’s she talking about?” Stu asked the others. Glen only shook his head. His face was white and strained.
“Look,” Fran said. She bent and touched her toes lightly: once, then twice. Then she bent a third time and placed her palms flat on the floor without unlocking her knees.
She stood up again and met Mother Abagail’s eyes. “Is this a bribe from your God? Because if it is, He can take His cure back. I’d rather have the pain if Stu comes with it.”
“God doesn’t bribe, child. He just makes a sign and lets people take it as they will.”
“Stu isn’t going west,” Fran said, but now she seemed bewildered as well as frightened.
“Sit down,” Stu said. “We’ll listen to what she has to say.”
Fran sat down, shocked, unbelieving, lost at sea. Her hands kept stealing around to the small of her back.
“You are to go west,” Mother Abagail whispered. “You are to take no food, no water. You are to go this very day, and in the clothes you stand up in. You are to go on foot. I am in the way of knowing that one of you will not reach your destination, but I don’t know which will be the one to fall. I am in the way of knowing that the rest will be taken before this man Flagg, who is not a man at all but a supernatural being. I don’t know if it’s God’s will for you to defeat him. I don’t know if it’s God’s will for you to ever see Boulder again. Those things are not for me to see. But he is in Las Vegas, and you must go there, and it is there that you will make your stand. You will go, and you will not falter, because you will have the Everlasting Arm of the Lord God of Hosts to lean on. Yes. With God’s help you will stand.”
She nodded.
“That’s all. I’ve said m’piece.”
“No,” Fran whispered. “It can’t be.”
“Mother,” Glen said in a kind of croak. He cleared his throat. “Mother, we’re not ‘in the way of understanding,’ if you see what I mean. We’re . . . we’re not blessed with your closeness to whatever is controlling this. It just isn’t our way. Fran’s right. If we go over there, we’ll be slaughtered, probably by the first pickets we come to.”
“Have you no eyes to see? You’ve just seen Fran healed of her affliction by God, through me. Do you think His plan for you is to let you be shot and killed by the Dark Prince’s least minion?”
“But, Mother—”
“Mother Abagail calls him the devil’s pawn,” she said, suddenly and unexpectedly. “Maybe he’s just the last magician of rational thought, gathering the tools of technology against us. Maybe he’s something more, something darker. I only know that he is. And I no longer think that sociology or psychology or any other ology will put a stop to him. I think only white magic will do that.”
Glen’s mouth hung open.
“Is that a true thing, or are those the words of a liar?” Mother Abagail said.
“They’re mine,” Glen said shakily.
“Trust. All of you, trust. Larry . . . Ralph . . . Stu . . . Glen . . . Frannie. You mos
t patic’ly, Frannie. Trust . . . and obey the word of God.”
“Do we have a choice?” Larry asked bitterly.
She turned to look at him, surprised. “A choice? There’s always a choice. That’s God’s way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There’s no set of legirons on you. But . . . this is what God wants of you.”
That silence again, like deep snow. At last, Ralph broke it. “Says in the Bible that David did the job on Goliath,” he said. “I’ll be going along if you say it’s right, Mother.”
She took his hand.
“Me,” Larry said. “Me too. Okay.” He sighed and put his hands on his forehead as if it ached. Glen opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, there was a heavy, tired sigh from the corner and a thud.
It was Lucy, whom they had all forgotten. She had fainted.
Dawn touched the edge of the world.
They sat around Larry’s kitchen table, drinking coffee. It was ten to five when Fran came up the hall and stood in the doorway. Her face was puffy from crying, but there was no limp as she walked. She was, indeed, cured. “She’s going, I think,” Fran said.
They went in, Larry with his arm around Lucy.
Mother Abagail’s breathing had taken on a heavy, hollow rattle that was horribly reminiscent of the superflu. They gathered around the bed without speaking, deep in awe and afraid. Ralph was sure that something would happen at the end that would cause the wonder of God to stand before all of them, naked and revealed. She would be gone in a flash of light, taken. Or they would see her spirit, transfigured in radiance, leaving by the window and going up into the sky.
But in the end, she simply died.
There was a single final breath, the last of millions. It was drawn in, held, and finally let out. Her chest just didn’t rise again.
“She’s done,” Stu muttered.
“God have mercy on her soul,” Ralph said, no longer afraid. He crossed her hands on her thin bosom, and his tears fell on them.
“I’ll go,” Glen said suddenly. “She was right. White magic. That’s all that’s left.”