"Tim," she whispered. "Is that what you thought?”
“Yes." A moment passed. "But why?"
"I . . . did wrong," Alice answered, her eyes still on the ceiling. "I haven't been able to forget what I did.”
“You were young."
"I shouldn't have."
"It wouldn't have made any difference."
"Yes, it would. He wouldn't have died alone."
"He didn't. He had his parents."
"He didn't want them. He wanted me. And I ran.”
“Nobody blamed you."
"I don't believe that. Besides, it doesn't matter what anybody else thought, or who they blamed, or didn't blame. They weren't in New York. I was. I knew who to blame. I didn't need them to tell me."
Kay didn't know what to say. From the moment she'd seen Alice step out of the police car, she knew why she'd come back, and it amazed her and dismayed her at the same time. It should not have stayed with Alice for so long. Twelve years had passed since Tim Reardon, or what was left of him, had returned from Vietnam. Alice and Tim had dated steadily ever since their sophomore year in high school, and the Army had gotten him as soon as he graduated. Nine months later he came back without legs, with only one arm, and with plastic tubes doing what his own inner organs were no longer able to accomplish. Kay recalled that Alice had gone to see him in his parents' home and had not gone back again. When she asked her what had happened, Alice told her it was not Tim, but someone else. She would not talk further about it, did not return to the Reardons', and a month later left for New York City. Kay stayed in touch through Alice's parents, who seemed confused but supportive of their daughter's decision to plunge into theater, and Alice, in a tremendous brush of luck, got a role in an industrial her first month. That led to an agent audition, and the agent took Alice on, finding her freshness a highly marketable commodity. The agent, a fiftyish gay, guided Alice to the right teachers and the right auditions, her parents footing the bills and paying for her room and board at an Upper East Side hotel for young women.
Six months later Tim Reardon died (of natural causes, the Messenger reported), and Kay sent the clipping in a letter to Alice. Alice responded as always, though she made no mention of Tim's death, and neither of them had spoken of it in all the years since.
"So what are you going to do?" Kay asked.
"Go to his house. See him. Talk to him."
"He won't hear you."
"Maybe he will."
"Why, Alice?"
"I've got to make up for it."
Kay turned to face her friend. "There's nothing to make up for. And even if there were, it's too late. Alice, it was a long time ago. I'm surprised that it's still . . . bothering you enough for you to come all this way."
"I had to."
Kay grimaced. "This isn't a play, Alice."
"I know that.” Alice seemed confused, so that the tragic mask dropped for a moment.
"I don't think you do."
"You think I've been in a play that I wrote myself for the last twelve years?"
Kay looked away. "I'm sorry. I don't know what you've gone through."
Alice grabbed Kay's hand. "Kay, I know it must seem crazy. And maybe it is. But it's something that's been bottled up inside me for too long. Maybe seeing . . . Tim won't matter, won't change anything. But maybe it will. Maybe I'll be free of it then. I just felt that . . . when I heard it on television last night . . . I thought I had another chance." She laughed self-consciously. "That sounds stupid, doesn't it? All this just to give me a chance to get loose."
"It doesn't sound stupid."
"Self-centered, then. But I wonder how many other people think the same thing. One more chance to see a mother again, or a husband or wife, to tell them what you never told them in life, either because you were too shy, or because you didn't know what you know now. Some of those people who got off the train today looked as anxious as . . . as pilgrims heading for Lourdes." She picked up her cup, found it empty, and set it back down.
"That reminds me," Kay said. "Do you want to go to church with us tomorrow morning? Our pastor called this afternoon. He's after everybody to show."
"I don't know, I—"
"Why don't you, Alice? You'll see a lot of people you haven't seen for a long time."
"I'm pretty tired."
"The service isn't until ten-thirty."
"Maybe. I'll see how I feel in the morning."
~*~
That night Alice and Kay went to bed at 11:30. Jim Callendar went to bed at 11:45, but didn't sleep for a long time. Clyde Thornton watched himself on the 11:00 news, and was so buoyed by the experience that he kept taking hits from his bottle of scotch until 12:30, when he fell asleep on his solid motel room bed. Brad Meyers joined a sleeping Christine at 1:30, after Nightowl Theater was over, and Robert Craven entered his bed at 2:00 in the morning, still not quite sure of what he would say the following day.
~*~
The church was full. Though there was no need to put up extra chairs, the pews, both on the main level and in the balcony, were packed shoulder to shoulder. The congregation whispered and murmured in unease when they saw the red curtain erected around the right-hand pulpit, but for the most part they felt comfortable there with their fellows. The hymns were sung, the offering taken up, and then it was time for the sermon.
Pastor Craven stepped up to the pulpit on the left, and as he looked out over the people, it seemed to them that he had changed in some way. The lines of his face were no longer softened with piety and quiet devotion, but instead seemed edged with determination, even with anger. He grasped the front of the pulpit with white-knuckled fingers, as though trying to break it, and spoke more loudly than he ever had before.
" 'Since we are justified by faith,' " he boomed out, " 'we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.' So said Paul to the Romans.
"Suffering. Tribulation. All suffering is not of the body. The suffering and tribulation that every one of God's men, women, and children in this town is feeling is not of the body, but of the mind. Even the soul. What we have seen in the past few days has been hard. We've seen the people we loved returning in their bodily forms as they were at the moment of death. Terrible? Frightening? Awesome? Of course. And as yet, no one has been able to tell us why, to give us a logical, physical reason for it. And that terrifies us. What we cannot understand, we fear.
"There are those who would give us explanations. But up to this point it has been mostly our nation's religious leaders. You've heard them interviewed on television, read what they have to say in last night's or this morning's paper. One television minister said that it heralds the end of the world. Others said it gives definite proof of life after death. Still others are more cautious, saying that it could be a scientific phenomenon, but that since it's occurred, it might be taken as proof of some sort of further survival after death.
"They're wrong. It proves nothing. Because God doesn't give us proof. God gives us only faith and love. What's the condition? How does suffering make us rejoice? 'Since we are justified by faith,' says Paul.
"Oh, I know what you're thinking. Take it on faith, take it on faith, we always have to take it on faith. Yes you do. Because what else have you got? God isn't a lawyer, or a scientist. He doesn't give us evidence, he doesn't offer data. Because if he did, then faith would not be necessary. And without faith, we have nothing.
"So what am I saying, then? Just this, and in as simple terms as I know how: This is a tribulation. This is a testing. For some reason that we do not and cannot know, God has caused this to be. So accept it and trust Him to do His will.
"Right here, right now in this church is an example of this thing that God has done. You've all seen the draperies, all talked about them, now look behind them."
Craven
crossed the space between the two pulpits and tugged at the curtains, pulling them back until the form of Pastor Dunson was revealed. A loud gasp came from the congregation, and Craven had to raise his voice to be heard over their continuous, shocked remarks.
"Many of you recognize this man. This was Pastor Dunson, pastor here before I came. He was among the best and finest men I ever knew. But this is not him. At the least this is not his soul. His soul is with God. This is only some empty shell that God has chosen to put here.
"But why? Why? Why? I don't have an answer. I can only guess. But my guess is that he is here to teach us something, perhaps the relative brevity of our lives, perhaps that life is only the preparation for death, and the time of our being with God. Perhaps there are as many lessons as there are people on the earth.
"Merridale is not cursed. On the contrary, it has been touched by God's hand. This town and what has happened here is a manifestation of his purpose. Remember that. Remember it. And if you doubt or fear or worry, call me, come see me, and talk to me. We are one in Christ.
" 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depths, nor anything else in all creation, 'will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.' "
He raised his hand in blessing. " 'May the Lord watch between me and thee, while we are absent, one from the other.' "
Pastor Craven turned from the pulpit and sat in the high-backed chair with the cross carved in its center. Forgive me, he thought, his eyes locked on the deep redness of the carpet at his feet.
Forgive me, God. Forgive me.
Advent
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
—Robert Frost, "Once by the Pacific"
CHAPTER 14
For a time, the events in Merridale were all that were talked about in the western hemisphere, Europe, and much of Asia. The Soviet bloc countries paid little attention to the phenomenon publicly, but privately sent a team of four scientists to study it. The American government, finding their own people could not quickly solve the riddle, graciously allowed the Russians in. They learned, as did the other chemists, physicists, and biologists who had arrived that first weekend, that there was nothing to study but optics, and the findings in that discipline were useless. The wavelengths of the blue light were all between 4,000 and 7,000 angstroms. The president was uncommonly taciturn on the subject as the weeks passed, saying only that he hoped a solution to the mystery would soon be found.
Both European and American antinuclear groups were quick to take advantage of the near proximity of Merridale to the Thorn Hill Nuclear Station, and portrayed on placards and celebrated in chants what they felt to be the newest horror of rampant radiation. Both power and chemical executives (who were also catching flak from environmentalists) sent their own representatives to Merridale in an effort to discover the true cause and clear themselves, or, if the fault were theirs, find some way to reverse the phenomenon and/or cover up their involvement in it.
The media, entranced at first, slowly began to retreat from Merridale coverage as the weeks passed. In those first few weeks, however, it got its money's worth out of the situation. Every network ran a special the first week, ABC and CBS had fifteen-minute updates at 11:00 every evening, and even 60 Minutes did a surprisingly tame and inconclusive segment investigating the Thom Hill tie-in. Merridale and its residents made the covers of Newsweek, People, and TIME, the last in a surrealistic painting that drew an angry letter from Mayor Markley, carping about insensitivity of the media. He received no apology.
But the problem with the media's coverage of the Ghost Town was that nothing happened. There were no hostages to be freed as in the Iranian crisis, no blame to be placed as there was at Three Mile Island, no threats to health as in Centralia or Love Canal. There were only scientists unsure of what they were searching for, apparitions whose purposes were unknown and unguessed, and residents, to whom the apparitions and scientists alike were becoming more commonplace every day.
There had been a fair amount of drama at first—the small number of heart attacks and strokes and cases of hysteria brought on by the first sight of the manifestations, the promises that the finding of an answer was momentary (this from Clyde Thornton, who quickly learned that the longer he stayed in Merridale the better), and the interviews with those who fled and those who remained. Hundreds of people in the town were interviewed, and even Eddie Karl was to be the subject of a five minute feature, after a reporter from NBC heard more than one person mention his purported foreknowledge of the spectres. But the reporter found him "so weird, creepy, and unable to say two sentences without saying shit," as she told her superiors, that the segment was scratched even before it was edited.
Still, all these events made for flashy journalism and highly entertaining television. But after a while nothing happened. The town, now set up as a fortified camp, strictly barring those who had no business there, held only the grim reality of the corpses, now guardedly accepted. The president's visit was over; so too were the visits of the senators, the congressmen, Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, the PBS documentary crew. Only the scientists from eight different countries remained, with less to say each day.
Finally ABC brought its people out, and relieved NBC and CBS brass soon followed suit. They would report any changes or related stories, but an unanswered riddle of mortality was considered too grim for the audience to handle every night. The news was already grim enough.
~*~
Bradley Meyers sitting on the floor, hearing the whirring sound inside again, battering his muscles with short, downward jerks of his neck, trying to pull his head into his shell, and Old Black Joe watching the wall behind him.
Bradley Meyers, face to face with Old Black Joe, eyes inches from rheumy blue-yellow eyes, you found me, you found me, over and over again.
Bradley Meyers, sunk crotch-deep in a thick beer-dream of remembrance, white eyes, dark skin gleaming in fire glow, and redness dripping from a half-seen chin, eat it, eat it, it's the only way yes, eat the dink's heart.
Bradley Meyers, taking the knife and tossing it, flying away like a metal whirlwind into the vines, black and red and black soaring away, chopper blades of God flying out, leaving him alone, all alone.
Bradley Meyers together with them, one of them one of them now I have tasted the flesh I have drunk the blood and it is life and life is all is everything Home Don't think about Home Don't think Stop Taste the Life.
Old Joe Old Joe that's why you're here, so I wouldn't forget couldn't forgive But I had to had to, had to live, had to come Home, no don't think of Home, no Home now, don't deserve Home, but you give and you give and you want Home, and you'll do anything for Home, even that, even all that you will do to come Home, even taste the flesh, drink the blood.
For Home.
Brad Meyers's eyes opened. He was lying on the couch, the TV screen just so much white fuzz. Joe stood in his usual place, his blue light dim in contrast to the strings of bulbs that hugged the Christmas tree in the corner.
Brad looked at his watch. It was 1:30. Standing up, he walked toward the bedroom, shaking his head to toss away the images that still remained. At least he didn't have to go to work in the morning, even though it was Friday. Thank God, he thought, for Christmas vacation.
"Chris?" he said softly as he entered the bedroom. "Christine?"
There was no answer. The bed was empty. What had she said? "I'm going out with some of the girls."
"Who?"
"Oh, Barb and Pat, maybe Ronnie."
"Where?"
"Oh, they talked about going out drinking, but we'll probably just stay at Barb's."
“Wh
en you coming back?"
"I won't be late. Don't wait up for me if you're tired, though."
Sure. "Don't wait up." This was the third time this month she'd told him that. And each time she had come home at three or so in the morning. He hadn't pushed her, hadn't asked why she'd stayed out so late. He really didn't care that much. But tonight was different. He felt strange tonight. Mean. He wanted to catch her in a lie.
He got Barb Kelso's number from Christine's phone directory and dialed it. After nine rings there was an answer, a woman's voice, thick with sleep. Brad hung up without speaking. Then he opened the door to Wally's room. "Hey," he called until the boy stirred and finally answered.
"Your mommy's a whore."
"What, Uncle Brad?"
"Your mommy's a whore. You can ask her what it means in the morning. Just make sure you remember. Whore. Now go back to sleep."
Then he went back into the living room, pulled the plug on the tree lights, changed the channel to an old William Gargan movie, and waited for Chris to come home.
~*~
At that moment, coming home was the farthest thing from Christine Grimes's mind. She was trying with all her might to bring forth a sexual climax from the partly flaccid organ that was doing its best to penetrate her. The heavyset trucker on top of her was one drink away from drunkenness and two away from unconsciousness.
She had not been happy with the match-up, but she felt as if she would do anything to sleep again in a town unhaunted by specters. So, since a twenty-dollar motel bill would be noticed by Brad's penurious budgeting system, she had driven ten miles to Needham Springs, gone into a roadhouse across from a motel, and had succeeded in picking up the man who now gave a sharp yap, as if his puny orgasm had hurt him, and collapsed loosely on top of her.
"How was't?" he asked, nuzzling her neck with his whiskery mouth.
"Fine, just fine," she lied, putting her arms around him, feeling her own orgasm drift away untouched into the night, thinking that at least she could sleep now. Perhaps he hadn't been so bad at that. He cared enough to ask, after all, which was more than her first partner had done, although she had come with him. The second she preferred to forget, a cruel man, tall and thin, who had wanted some of the more disgusting things that Brad sometimes made her do. But she had done them, had thought she'd have done anything, just to have a night away from Merridale.
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