by Стивен Кинг
Why would it? I’d gotten out of it and had myself a little sleepwalk. An extraordinarily vivid dream of the Fryeburg Fair. Except that was bullshit, and not just because I had the blue silk ribbon from Ki’s hat.
None of it had the quality of dreams on waking, where what seemed plausible becomes immediately ridiculous and all the colors—both those bright and those ominous—fade at once. I raised my hands to my face, cupped them over my nose, and breathed deeply. Pine. When I looked, I even saw a little smear of sap on one pinky finger. I sat on the bed, thought about dictating what I’d just experienced into the Memo-Scriber, then flopped back on the pillows instead. I was too tired. Thunder rumbled. I closed my eyes, began to drift away, and then a scream ripped through the house. It was as sharp as the neck of a broken bottle. I sat up with a yell, clutching at my chest.
It was Jo. I had never heard her scream like that in our life together, but I knew who it was, just the same. “Stop hurting her!” I shouted into the darkness. “Whoever you are, stop hurting her!”
She screamed again, as if something with a knife, clamp, or hot poker took a malicious delight in disobeying me. It seemed to come from a distance this time, and her third scream, while just as agonized as the first two, was farther away still. They were diminishing as the little boy’s sobbing had diminished.
A fourth scream floated out of the dark, then Sara was silent.
Breathless, the house breathed around me. Alive in the heat, aware in the faint sound of dawn thunder.
II C PI;P T E-: R I was finally able to get into the zone, but couldn’t do anything once I got there. I keep a steno pad handy for notes—character lists, page references, date chronologies—and I doodled in there a little bit, but the sheet of paper in the IBM remained blank. There was no thundering heartbeat, no throbbing eyes or difficulty breathing—no panic attack, in other words—but there was no story, either. Andy Drake, John Shackleford, Ray Garraty, the beautiful Regina Whiting… they stood with their backs turned, refusing to speak or move. The manuscript was sitting in its accustomed place on the left side of the typewriter, the pages held down with a pretty chunk of quartz I’d found on the lane, but nothing was happening. Zilch.
I recognized an irony here, perhaps even a moral. For years I had fled the problems of the real world, escaping into various Narnias of my imagination. Now the real world had filled up with bewildering thickets, there were things with teeth in some of them, and the wardrobe was locked against me.
Kyra, I had printed, putting her name inside a scalloped shape that was supposed to be a cabbage rose. Below it I had drawn a piece of bread with a beret tipped rakishly on the top crust. Noonan’s conception of French toast. The letters L.B. surrounded with curlicues. A shirt with a rudimentary duck on it. Beside this I had printed QUACK QUACK. Below QUACK QUACK I had written Ought toffy away “Bon 14yage.”
At another spot on the sheet I had written Dean, Auster, and Devore.
They were the ones who had seemed the most there, the most dangerous.
Because they had descendants? But surely all seven of those jacks must, mustn’t they? In those days most families were whoppers. And where had I been? I had asked, but Devore hadn’t wanted to say.
It didn’t feel any more like a dream at nine-thirty on a sullenly hot Sunday morning. Which left exactly what? Visions? Time-travel? And if there was a purpose to such travel, what was it? What was the message, and who was trying to send it? I remembered clearly what I’d said just before passing from the dream in which I had sleepwalked out to Jo’s studio and brought back my typewriter: I don’t believe these lies. Nor would I now. Until I could see at least some of the truth, it might be safer to believe nothing at all.
At the top of the sheet upon which I was doodling, in heavily stroked letters, I printed the word Danoevd, then circled it. From the circle I drew an arrow to Kyra’s name. From her name I drew an arrow to Ought toffy away “Bon [4yage” and added MATTI.
Below the bread wearing the beret I drew a little telephone. Above it I put a cartoon balloon with R-R-RINGGG! in it. As I finished this, the cordless phone rang. It was sitting on the deck rail. I circled: rsrle and picked up the phone.
“Mike?” She sounded excited. Happy. Relieved.
“Yeah,” I said. “How are you?”
“Great!” she said, and I circled L.B. on my pad.
“Lindy Briggs called ten minutes ago—I just got off the phone with her.
Mike, she’s giving me my job back! Isn’t that wonderful?”
Sure. And wonderful how it would keep her in town. I crossed out Ought to fly away “Bon [4yage,” knowing that Mattie wouldn’t go. Not now. And how could I ask her to? I thought again If only I knew a little more…
“Mike? Are you—”
“It’s very wonderful,” I said. In my mind’s eye I could see her standing in the kitchen, drawing the kinked telephone cord through her fingers, her legs long and coltish below her denim shorts. I could see the shirt she was wearing, a white tee with a yellow duck paddling across the front. “I hope Lindy had the good grace to sound ashamed of herself.” I circled the tee-shirt I’d drawn.
“She did. And she was frank enough to kind of… well, disarm me. She said the Whitmore woman talked to her early last week. Was very frank and to the point, Lindy said. I was to be let go immediately. If that happened, the money, computer equipment, and software Devore funnelled into the library would keep coming. If it didn’t, the flow of goods and money would stop immediately. She said she had to balance the good of the community against what she knew was wrong… she said it was one of the toughest decisions she ever had to make…”
“Uh-huh.” On the pad my hand moved of its own volition like a planchette gliding over a Ouija board, printing the words PLEASE CAN’T I PLEASE.
“There’s probably some truth in it, but Mattie… how much do you suppose Lindy makes?”
“I don’t know.”
“I bet it’s more than any three other small-town librarians in the state of Maine combined.”
In the background I heard Ki: “Can I talk, Mattie? Can I talk to Mike?
Please can’t I please?”
“In a minute, hon.” Then, to me: “Maybe. All I know is that I have my job back, and I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.”
On the page, I drew a book. Then I drew a series of interlocked circles between it and the duck tee-shirt.
“Ki wants to talk to you,” Mattie said, laughing. “She says the two of you went to the Fryeburg Fair last night.”
“Whoa, you mean I had a date with a pretty girl and slept through it?”
“Seems that way. Are you ready for her?”
“Ready.”
“Okay, here comes the chatterbox.”
There was a rustling as the phone changed hands, then Ki was there. “I taggled you at the Fair, Mike! I taggled my own quartermack!”
“Did you?” I asked “That was quite a dream, wasn’t it, Ki?” There was a long silence at the other end. I could imagine Mattie wondering what had happened to her telephone chatterbox. At last Ki said in a hesitating voice: “You there too.” Tiu. “We saw the snake-dance ladies… the pole with the bell on top… we went in the spookyhouse… you fell down in the barrel! It wasn’t a dream… was it?” I could have convinced her that it was, but all at once that seemed like a bad idea, one that was dangerous in its own way. I said: “You had on a pretty hat and a pretty dress.”
“I3ah!” Ki sounded enormously relieved. “And you had on—”
“Kyra, stop. Listen to me.” She stopped at once. “It’s better if you don’t talk about that dream too much, I think. To your mom or to anyone except me.”
“Except you.”
“Yes. And the same with the refrigerator people. Okay?”
“Okay. Mike, there was a lady in Mattie’s clothes.”
“I know,” I said. It was all right for her to talk, I was sure of it, but I asked anyway: “Where’s Mattie now?”
&nb
sp; “Waterin the flowers. We got lots of flowers, a billion at least. I have to clean up the table. It’s a chore.
I don’t mind, though. I like chores. We had French toast. We always do on Sundays. It’s yummy, ’specially with strawberry syrup.”
“I know,” I said, drawing an arrow to the piece of bread wearing the beret. “French toast is great. Ki, did you tell your mom about the lady in her dress?”
“No. I thought it might scare her.” She dropped her voice. “Here she comes I”
“That’s all right… but we’ve got a secret, right?”
“Yes.”
“Now can I talk to Mattie again?”
“Okay.” Her voice moved off a little.
“Mommy-bommy, Mike wants to talk to you.” Then she came back. “Will you bizzit us today? We could go on another picnic.”
“I can’t today, Ki. I have to work.”
“Mattie never works on Sunday.”
“Well, when I’m writing a book, I write every day. I have to, or else I’ll forget the story. Maybe we’ll have a picnic on Tuesday, though. A barbecue picnic at your house.”
“Is it long ’til Tuesday?”
“Not too long. Day after tomorrow.” “Is it long to write a book?”
“Medium-long.” I could hear Mattie telling Ki to give her the phone. “I will, just one more second. Mike?”
“I’m here, Ki.”
“I love you.” I was both touched and terrified. For a moment I was sure my throat was going to lock up the way my chest used to when I tried to write. Then it cleared and I said, “Love you, too, Ki.”
“Here’s Mattie.”
Again there was the rustly sound of the telephone changing hands, then Mattie said: “Did that refresh your recollection of your date with my daughter, sir?”
“Well,” I said, “it certainly refreshed hers.” There was a link between Mattie and me, but it didn’t extend to this—I was sure of it. She was laughing. I loved the way she sounded this morning and I didn’t want to bring her down… but I didn’t want her mistaking the white line in the middle of the road for the crossmock, either. “Mattie, you still need to be careful, okay? Just because Lindy Briggs offered you your old job back doesn’t mean everyone in town is suddenly your friend.”
“I understand that,” she said. I thought again about asking if she’d consider taking Ki up to Derry for awhile—they could live in my house, stay for the duration of the summer if that was what it took for things to return to normal down here. Except she wouldn’t do it. When it came to accepting my offer of high-priced New York legal talent, she’d had no choice. About this she did. Or thought she did, and how could I change her mind? I had no logic, no connected facts; all I had was a vague dark shape, like something lying beneath nine inches of snowblind ice.
“I want you to be careful of two men in particular,” I said. “One is Bill Dean. The other is Kenny Auster. He’s the one—”
“—with the big dog who wears the neckerchief. He—”
“That’s Booberry!” Ki called from the middle distance. “Booberry licked my facie!”
“Go out and play, hon,” Mattie said. “I’m clearun the table.”
“You can finish later. Go on outside now.” There was a pause as she watched Ki go out the door, taking Strickland with her. Although the kid had left the trailer, Mattie still spoke in the lowered tone of someone who doesn’t want to be overheard. “Are you trying to scare me?”
“No,” I said, drawing repeated circles around the word DANGER. “But I want you to be careful. Bill and Kenny may have been on Devore’s team, like Footman and Osgood. Don’t ask me why I think that might be, because I have no satisfactory answer.
It’s only a feeling, but since I got back on the TR, my feelings are different.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you wearing a tee-shirt with a duck on it?”
“How do you know that? Did Ki tell you?”
“Did she take the little stuffed dog from her Happy Meal out with her just now?” A long pause. At last she said “My God” in a voice so Low I could hardly hear it. Then again: “How—”
“I don’t know how. I don’t know if you’re still in a… a bad situation, either, or why you might be, but I feel that you are. That you both are.” I could have said more, but I was afraid she’d think I’d gone entirely off the rails. “He’s dead!” she burst out.
“That old man is dead! Why can’t he leave us alone?”
“Maybe he has.
Maybe I’m wrong about all this. But there’s no harm in being careful, is there?”
“No,” she said. “Usually that’s true.”
“Usually?”
“Why don’t you come and see me, Mike? Maybe we could go to the Fair together.”
D-k3 %.31IDK31NE “Maybe this fall we will. All three of us.”
“I’d like that.”
“In the meantime, I’m thinking about the key."
“Thinking is half your problem, Mike,” she said, and laughed again. Ruefully, I thought. And I saw what she meant. What she didn’t seem to understand was that feeling was the other half. It’s a sling, and in the end I think it rocks most of us to death.
I worked for a while,’ then carried the IBM back into the house and left the manuscript on top. I was done with it, at least for the time being.
No more looking for the way back through the wardrobe; no more Andy Drake and John Shackleford until this was over. And, as I dressed in long pants and a button-up shirt for the first time in what felt like weeks, it occurred to me that perhaps something—some force—had been trying to sedate me with the story I was telling. With the ability to work again. It made sense; work had always been my drug of choice, even better than booze or the Mellaril I still kept in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Or maybe work was only the delivery system, the hypo with all the dreamy dreams inside it. Maybe the real drug was the zone. Being in the zone. Feeling it, you sometimes hear the basketball players say. I was in the zone and I was really feeling it. I grabbed the keys to the Chevrolet off the counter and looked at the fridge as I did. The magnets were circled again. In the middle was a message I’d seen before, one that was now instantly understandable, thanks to the extra Magnabet letters: help her “I’m doing my best,” I said, and went out.
Three miles north on Route 68—by then you’re on the part of it which used to be known as Castle Rock Road-there’s a greenhouse with a shop in front of it. Slips ’n Greens, it’s called, and Jo used to spend a fair amount of time there, buying gardening supplies or just noodling with the two women who ran the place. One of them was Helen Auster, Kenny’s wife.
I pulled in there at around ten o’clock that Sunday morning (it was open, of course; during tourist season almost every Maine shopkeeper turns heathen) and parked next to a Beamer with New York plates. I paused long enough to hear the weather forecast on the radio—contin-ued hot and humid for another forty-eight hours at least—and then got out. A woman wearing a bathing suit, a skort, and a giant yellow sunhat emerged from the shop with a bag of peat moss cradled in her arms. She gave me a little smile. I returned it with eighteen per cent interest. She was from New York, and that meant she wasn’t a Martian. The shop was even hotter and’ damper than the white morning outside. Lila Proulx, the co-owner, was on the phone. There was a little fan beside the cash register and she was standing directly in front of it, flapping the front of her sleeveless blouse. She saw me and twiddled her fingers in a wave. I twiddled mine back, feeling like someone else. Work or no work, I was still zoning. Still feeling it. I walked around the shop, picking up a few things almost at random, watching Lila out of the corner of my eye and waiting for her to get off the phone so I could talk to her… and all the time my own private hyperdrive was humming softly away. At last she hung up and I came to the counter. “Michael Noonan, what a sight for sore eyes you are!” she said, and began ringing up my purchases. “I was awfully sorry to hear about Johanna. Got to g
et that right up front. Jo was a pet.”
“Thanks, Lila.”
“Welcome. Don’t need to say any more about it, but with a thing like that it’s best to put it right up front. I’ve always believed it, always will believe it. Right up front. Going to do a little gardening, are you?” Gointer do a little ga’adnin, aaa you? “If it ever cools off.”
“Ayuh! Isn’t it wicked?” She flapped the top of her blouse again to show me how wicked it was, then pointed at one of my purchases. “Want this one in a special bag? Always safe, never sorry, that’s my motto.” I nodded, then looked at the little blackboard tilted against the counter.
FRESH BLUEBERRYS, the chalked message read. THE CROP IS IN!
“I’ll have a pint of berries, too,” I said. “As long as they’re not Friday’s. I can do better than Friday.” She nodded vigorously, as if to say she knew damned well I could. “These were on the bush yest’y. That fresh enough for you?”
“Good as gold,” I said. “Blueberry’s the name of Kenny’s dog, isn’t it?”
“Ain’t he a funny one? God, I love a big dog, if he’s behaved.” She turned, got a pint of berries from her little fridge, and put them in another bag for me. “Where’s Helen?” I asked. “Day off?.”
“Not her,” Lila said. “If she’s in town, you can’t get her out of this place ’less you beat her with a stick. She and Kenny and the kids went down Taxachusetts. Them and her brother’s family club together and get a seaside cottage two weeks every summer. They all went. Old Blueberry, he’ll chase seagulls until he drops.” She laughed—it was a loud and hearty one. It made me think of Sara Tidwell. Or maybe it was the way Lila looked at me as she did it. There was no laughter in her eyes. They were small and considering, coldly curious. Would youj3r Christ’s sake quit it? I told myself. They can’t all be in on it together, Mike/ Couldn’t they, though? There is such a thing as town consciousness—anyone who doubts it has never been to a New England town meeting. Where there’s a consciousness, is there not likely to be a subconscious? And if Kyra and I were doing the old mind-meld thing, could not other people in TR-90 also be doing it, perhaps without even knowing it? We all shared the same air and land; we shared the lake and the aquifer which lay below everything, buried water tasting of rock and minerals. We shared The Street as well, that place where good pups and vile dogs could walk side-by-side. As I started out with my purchases in a cloth carry-handle bag, Lila said: “What a shame about Royce Merrill.