by Stephen King
“Who’s—”
“Cocoa! Cocoa, Judge Silver’s cat! That could have been my kid, Elaine! Our kid! Long story short, that Mercedes belongs to Garth Flickinger, right up the hill.”
“The doctor?” Elaine sounded engaged. At last.
“That’s him. And when I talked to him, guess what? He was high, Elaine. I’m almost positive. He could barely form sentences.”
“Instead of reporting him to the police, you went to his house? Like you went to Nana’s school that time and shouted at her teacher when all the kids—including your daughter—could hear you ranting like a crazy person?”
Go ahead, drag it up, Frank thought, clenching the can harder. You always do. That, or the famous wall punch, or the time I told your father he was full of shit. Drag it up, drag it out, Elaine Nutting Geary’s Greatest Hits. When I’m in my coffin you’ll be telling somebody about the time I hollered at Nana’s second grade teacher after she made fun of Nana’s science project and made my daughter cry in her room. And when that one gets tired, you can reminisce about the time I yelled at Mrs. Fenton for spraying her weed killer where my daughter had to breathe it in while she was riding her trike. Fine. Make me the bad guy if that’s what gets you through the day. But right now I will keep my voice calm and level. Because I can’t afford to let you push my buttons this time, Elaine. Somebody has to watch out for our daughter, and it’s pretty clear you’re not up to the job.
“It was my duty as a father.” Did that sound pompous? Frank didn’t care. “I have no interest in seeing him arrested on a misdemeanor charge of feline hit-and-run, but I do have an interest in making sure he doesn’t run down Nana. If scaring him a little accomplished that—”
“Tell me you didn’t go all Charles Bronson.”
“No, I was very reasonable with him.” That was at least close to true. It was the car he hadn’t been reasonable with. But he was sure a hot-shit doc like Flickinger had mucho insurance.
“Frank,” she said.
“What?”
“I hardly know where to start. Maybe with the question you didn’t ask when you saw Nana drawing in the driveway.”
“What? What question?”
“ ‘Why are you home from school, honey?’ That question.”
Not in school. Maybe that was what had been nagging at him.
“It was so sunny this morning, I just—seemed like summer, you know? I forgot it was May.”
“You have got your head so far the wrong way around, Frank. You’re so concerned about your daughter’s safety, and yet you can’t even remember that it’s the school year. Think about that. Haven’t you noticed the homework she does at your house? You know, those notebooks she writes in, and the textbooks she reads? With God and His only son Jesus as my witness—”
He was willing to take a lot—and he was willing to admit he maybe deserved some—but Frank drew the line with the Jesus-as-my-witness shit. God’s only son wasn’t the one who had gotten that raccoon out from under the Episcopalian church all those years ago and nailed the board over the hole, and He didn’t put clothes on Nana’s back or food in her stomach. Not to mention Elaine’s. Frank did those things and there had been no magic to it.
“Cut to the chase, Elaine.”
“You don’t know what’s going on with anyone but yourself. It’s all about what’s pissing Frank off today. It’s all about who doesn’t understand that only Frank knows how to do things right. Because those are your default positions.”
I can take it. I can take it I can take it I can take it but oh God Elaine what a high-riding bitch you can be when you set your mind to it.
“Was she sick?”
“Oh, now you’re all Red Alert.”
“Was she? Is she? Because she looked all right.”
“She’s fine. I kept her home because she got her period. Her first period.”
Frank was thunderstruck.
“She was upset and a little scared, even though I’d explained all about what was going to happen last year. And ashamed, too, because she got some blood on the sheets. For a first period, it was pretty heavy.”
“She can’t be . . .” For a moment the word stuck in his throat. He had to cough it out like a bite of food that had gone down wrong. “She can’t be menstruating! She’s twelve, for Christ’s sake!”
“Did you think she was going to stay your little princess in fairy wings and sparkly boots forever?”
“No, but . . . twelve?”
“I started when I was eleven. And that’s not the point, Frank. Here’s the point. Your daughter was crampy and confused and low-spirited. She was drawing in the driveway because that’s a thing that always cheers her up, and here comes her daddy, all riled up, bellowing—”
“I was not bellowing!” That was when the can of Miner’s Daughter finally gave way. Foam ran down his fisted hand and pattered to the floor.
“—bellowing and yanking her shirt, her favorite shirt—”
He was appalled to feel the prickle of tears. He had cried several times since the separation, but never while actually talking to Elaine. Deep down he was afraid she would seize any weakness he showed, turn it into a crowbar, pry him wide open, and eat his heart. His tender heart.
“I was scared for her. Don’t you understand that? Flickinger is a drunk or a doper or both, he’s got a big car, and he killed Judge Silver’s cat. I was afraid for her. I had to take action. I had to.”
“You behave like you’re the only person who ever feared for a child, but you’re not. I fear for her, and you’re the main thing that makes me afraid.”
He was silent. What she’d just said was almost too monstrous to comprehend.
“Keep this up and we’ll be back in court, re-evaluating your weekends and visiting privileges.”
Privileges, Frank thought. Privileges! He felt like howling. This was what he got for telling her how he actually felt.
“How is she now?”
“Okay, I guess. Ate most of her lunch, then said she was going to take a nap.”
Frank actually rocked back on his heels, and dropped the dented can of suds to the floor. That was what had been nagging him, not the question of what Nana was doing home from school. He knew what her response to being upset was: she slept it off. And he had upset her.
“Elaine . . . haven’t you been watching TV?”
“What?” Not understanding this sudden U-turn in the conversation. “I caught up on a couple of Daily Show episodes on TiVo—”
“The news, El, the news! It’s on all the channels!”
“What are you talking about? Have you gone cr—”
“Get her up!” Frank roared. “If she’s not asleep yet, get her up! Do it now!”
“You’re not making sen—”
Only he was making perfect sense. He wished he wasn’t.
“Don’t ask questions, just do it! Right now!”
Frank killed the call and ran for the door.
5
Jared was set up undercover when Eric, Curt, and Kent came tromping through the woods from the direction of the high school, making plenty of noise, laughing and bantering.
“It’s gotta be a hoax.” That was Kent, he thought, and there was less enthusiasm in his voice than earlier, when Jared had overheard him in the locker room.
Word had gotten around about Aurora. Girls had been crying in the hallways. A few guys, too. Jared had observed one of the math teachers, the burly one with the beard who wore the cowboy snap shirts and coached the debate team, telling a couple of weeping sophomores that they needed to compose themselves, and that everything was going to be okay. Mrs. Leighton who taught civics stalked up and stuck her finger into his shirt, right between two of the fancy snaps. “Easy for you to say!” she had yelled. “You don’t know anything about this! It’s not happening to men!”
It was weird. It was more than weird. It gave Jared the staticky feeling that accompanied a major storm, the sickly purple clouds piling up and flashing with
inner lightning. The world didn’t seem weird then; the world didn’t seem like the world at all, but like another place that you had been flipped into.
It was a relief to have something else to focus on. At least for a little while. He was on a solo mission. Call it Operation Expose These Pricks.
His father had told him that shock therapy—ECT was what they called it these days—was actually an effective treatment for some mentally ill people, that it could produce a palliative effect in the brain. If Mary asked Jared what he thought he was accomplishing by doing this, he would tell her it was like ECT. Once the whole school got a look and a listen at Eric and his stooges trashing poor Old Essie’s place and cracking wise about her boobs—which was, Jared was certain, exactly what they would do—it might “shock” them into being better people. Moreover, it might “shock” some other people into being a little more careful about who they went on dates with.
Meanwhile, the trolls had almost arrived at Ground Zero.
“If it’s a hoax, it’s the supreme hoax of all time. It’s on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere. Ladies are going to sleep and pulling some caterpillar shit. And you’re the one who said you saw it on the old bag.” This one was definitely Curt McLeod, swinging dick that he was.
Eric was the first to appear on the screen of Jared’s phone, hopping over a tumble of loose stones at the edge of Old Essie’s area. “Essie? Baby? Honey? You around? Kent wants to crawl inside your cocoon and warm you up.”
The spot that Jared had selected for his stakeout was a thicket of fern about thirty feet from the lean-to. It appeared dense from the outside, but was mostly bare earth in the middle. There were a few bits of orange-white fur on the ground where some animal had camped. Probably a fox. Jared had stretched out, iPhone at arms’ length. The camera was pointed through a gap in the leaves and centered on Old Essie lying in the opening of her lean-to. Just as Kent had said, there was a growth on her face—and if it had been like cobwebs earlier, it was solid now, a white mask, exactly like the ones that everyone had now seen on their phones, on news and social media sites.
That was the one part that made him uncomfortable: the homeless woman sprawled out there, defenseless, sick with the Aurora stuff. If Jared gave Lila his ECT explanation, he wondered what she would say about him just videoing it instead of putting a stop to it. That was where the structure of his logic began to creak. His mother had taught him to stand up for himself and for others, especially girls.
Eric squatted at the opening of the lean-to beside Old Essie’s white-wrapped face. He had a stick in his hand. “Kent?”
“What?” Kent had stopped a few steps away. He was scratching the neck of his tee-shirt and looking anxious.
Eric touched the stick against Essie’s mask then drew away. Strands of the whitish material trailed from the stick. “Kent!”
“I said what?” The other boy’s voice had lifted to a higher pitch. Almost a squeak.
Eric shook his head at his friend, as if he were surprised, surprised and disappointed. “This is a hell of a load you blew on her face.”
The roar of laughter that came from Curt made Jared twitch and the bush rattled a little around him. No one was paying attention, though.
“Fuck you, Eric!” Kent stormed over to Essie’s mannequin torso and kicked it tumbling into the deadfall.
This display of pique didn’t divert Eric. “But did you have to leave it to dry? That’s low-class, just leaving your splat on the face of a fine old babe like this.”
Curt strolled over beside Eric to take a closer look. He cocked his head this way and that, licking his lips in a thoughtless way as he appraised Essie, considering her as if he were deciding between a box of Junior Mints and a packet of Sour Patch Kids at a checkout counter.
A sick tremble found its way to Jared’s stomach. If they did something to hurt her, he was going to have to try to stop them. Except that there was no way he could stop them, because there were three of them and only one of him, and this wasn’t about doing what was right or social media ECT, or making people think, this was about Mary and about proving to her that he was better than Eric and really, given the circumstances, was that true? If he were so much better than these guys, he wouldn’t be in this fix. He’d already have done something to make them quit.
“I’d give you fifty bucks to bone her,” said Curt. He turned to Kent. “Either of you. Cash on the line.”
“Whatever,” said Kent. In his sulk he had followed the mannequin torso to where he had kicked it and now he was stomping on it, cracking up the chest cavity with little pop-pop-pops of shattering plastic.
“Not for a million.” Eric, still perched in a squat by the mouth of the lean-to, pointed the stick at his friend. “But, for a hundred, I’ll poke a hole right here—” He lowered the stick to tap Essie’s right ear. “—and I’ll piss into it.”
Jared could see Essie’s chest rise and fall.
“Seriously? A hundred?” It was clear that Curt was tempted, but a hundred dollars was a significant amount of bread.
“Nah. I’m just teasing.” Eric winked at his buddy. “I wouldn’t make you pay for that. I’ll do it for free.” He leaned over Essie, probing with the tip of the stick to dig through the webbing to her ear.
Jared needed to do something; he couldn’t just watch and record and let them do this to her. So why aren’t you moving? he asked himself, even as his iPhone, squeezed tight in his damp hand, popped up—whoops!—and landed with a crunch in the brush.
6
Even with the pedal to metal, the little animal control pickup would do no more than fifty. Not because of a governor on the engine; the pickup was just old, and on its second trip around the clock. Frank had petitioned the town council for a new one on several occasions, and the answer had always been the same: “We’ll take it under advisement.”
Driving hunched over the wheel, Frank imagined pounding several of those smalltown politicians to a pulp. And what would he say when they begged him to stop? “I’ll take it under advisement.”
He saw women everywhere. None of them were alone. They were clustered in groups of three and four, talking together, embracing, some of them crying. None of them looked at Frank Geary, even when he blew through stop signs and red lights. This is the way Flickinger must drive when he’s stoned, he thought. Watch out, Geary, or you’ll run over someone’s cat. Or someone’s kid.
But Nana! Nana!
His phone went. He pushed ANSWER without looking. It was Elaine, and she was sobbing.
“She’s asleep and won’t wake up and there’s goo all over her face! White goo like cobwebs!”
He passed three women hugging it out on a street corner. They looked like guests on some therapy show. “Is she breathing?”
“Yes . . . yes, I can see the stuff moving . . . fluttering out and then kind of sucking in . . . oh, Frank, I think it’s in her mouth and on her tongue! I’m going to get my nail scissors and cut it off!”
An image filled his mind, one so brilliant and ghastly-real that for a moment the street ahead of him was blotted out: Kinswoman Susannah Brightleaf, battening on her husband’s nose.
“No, El, don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
Watching The Daily Show instead of the news when the biggest thing in history was happening, how stupid could you get? But that was the former Elaine Nutting of Clarksburg, West Virginia. That was Elaine right down to the ground. High on judgmental pronouncements, low on information. “Because it wakes them up, and when they wake up, they’re crazy. No, not crazy. More like rabid.”
“You’re not telling me . . . Nana would never . . .”
If she’s even Nana anymore, Frank thought. Kinsman Brightleaf sure didn’t get the sweet and docile woman he was no doubt used to.
“Elaine . . . honey . . . turn on the television and you’ll see it for yourself.”
“What are we going to do?”
Now you ask me, he thought. Now that your ba
ck is to the wall, it’s Oh Frank, what are we going to do? He felt a sour, dismaying satisfaction.
His street. Finally. Thank God. The house was ahead. This was going to be all right. He would make it all right.
“We’re going to take her to the hospital,” he said. “By now they probably know what’s going on.”
They’d better. They’d just better. Because this was Nana. His little girl.
CHAPTER 7
1
While Ree Dempster was chewing her thumbnail bloody, deciding whether or not to drop a dime on Officer Don Peters, a Heathrow to JFK flight, a 767 three hours southwest of London at cruising speed over the Atlantic, radioed to air traffic control to report an outbreak of some sort and consult on the proper course of action.
“We’ve got three passengers, one’s a young girl, and they seem to have developed a—we’re not sure. Doctor onboard is saying that it’s possibly a fungus or a growth. They’re asleep, or at least, they seem to be asleep, and the doctor is telling us their vitals are normal, but there’s concern about their airways being—ah, blocked, so I guess he’s going to—”
The exact nature of the interruption that occurred next was unclear. There was a commotion, metallic clattering and screeching, shouts—“They can’t be in here! Get them out of here!”—and the roar of what sounded like an animal. The cacophony continued for almost four minutes, until the 767’s radar trail broke off, presumably at the moment it made impact with the water.
2
Dr. Clinton Norcross strode down Broadway toward his interview with Evie Black, notepad in his left hand and clicking his pen in his right. His body was in Dooling Correctional, but his mind was wandering around in the dark on Mountain Rest Road and worrying over what it was Lila was lying about. And—maybe—who she was lying about.