by Стивен Кинг
Because Kyra was last. I climbed up the steps to the studio and sat on the littered floor to get my breath. Outside, the thunder boomed and the rain fell, but I thought the storm had passed its peak of fury. Or maybe I only hoped. I rested with my legs hanging down through the trapthere were no more ghosts here to touch my ankles, I don’t know how I knew that but I did-and stripped off the rubber bands holding the steno notebooks together. I opened the first one, paged through it, and saw it was almost filled with Jo’s handwriting and a number of folded typed sheets (Courier type, of course), single-spaced: the fruit of all those clandestine trips down to the TR during 1993 and 1994. Fragmentary notes, for the most part, and transcriptions of tapes which might still be down below me in the storage space somewhere. Tucked away with the VCR or the eight-track player, perhaps. But I didn’t need them. When the time came—if the time came—I was sure I’d find most of the story here. What had happened, who had done it, how it was covered up. Right now I didn’t care. Right now I only wanted to make sure that Kyra was safe and stayed safe. There was only one way to do that. Lye stille. I attempted to slip the rubber bands around the steno books again, and the one I hadn’t looked at slipped out of my wet hand and fell to the floor. A torn slip of green paper fell out. I picked it up and saw this:
For a moment I came out of that strange and heightened awareness I’d been living in; the world fell back into its accustomed dimensions. But the colors were all too strong, somehow, objects too emphatically present. I felt like a battlefield soldier suddenly illuminated by a ghastly white flare, one that shows everything. My father’s people had come from The Neck, I had been right about that much; my great-grandfather according to this was James Noonan, and he had never shit in the same pit as Jared Devore. Max Devore had either been lying when he said that to Mattie… or misinformed… or simply confused, the way folks often get confused when they reach their eighties. Even a fellow like Devore, who had stayed mostly sharp, wouldn’t have been exempt from the occasional nick in his edge. And he hadn’t been that far off at that. Because, according to this little scratch of a chart, my great-grandfather had had an older sister, Bridget. And Bridget had married—Benton Auster. My finger dropped down a line, to Harry Auster. Born of Benton and Bridget Noonan Auster in the year 1885. “Christ Jesus,” I whispered. “Kenny Auster’s grandfather was my granduncle. And he was one of them. Whatever they did, Harry Auster was one of them. That’s the connection.” I thought of Kyra with sudden sharp terror. She had been up at the house by herself for nearly an hour. How could I have been so stupid? Anyone could have come in while I was under the studio. Sara could have used anyone to-I realized that wasn’t true. The murderers and the child victims had all been linked by blood, and now that blood had thinned, that river had almost reached the sea. There was Bill Dean, but he was staying well away from Sara Laughs.
There was Kenny Auster, but Kenny had taken himself and his family off to Taxachusetts. And Ki’s closest blood relations—mother, father, grandfather—were all dead. Only I was left. Only I was blood. Only I could do it. Unless-I bolted back up to the house as fast as I could, slipping and sliding my way along the soaked path, desperate to make sure she was all right. I didn’t think Sara could hurt Kyra herself, no matter how much of that old-timer vibe she had to draw on… but what if I was wrong? What if I was wrong?
Ki lay fast asleep just as I had left her, on her side with the filthy little stuffed dog clutched under her jaw. It had put a smudge on her neck but I hadn’t the heart to take it away from her. Beyond her and to the left, through the open bathroom door, I could hear the steadyplink-plonk-plink of water falling from the faucet and into the tub. Cool air blew around me in a silky twist, caressing my cheeks, sending a not unpleasurable shiver up my back. In the living room Bunter’s bell gave a dim little shake. Water’s still warm, sugar, Sara whispered. Be her friend, be her daddy. Go on, now. Do what I want. Do what we both want. And I did want to, which had to be why Jo at first tried to keep me away from the TR and from Sara Laughs. Why she’d made a secret of her possible pregnancy, as well. It was as if I had discovered a vampire inside me, a creature with no interest in what it thought of as talk-show conscience and op-ed page morality. A part that wanted only to take Ki into the bathroom and dunk her into that tub of warm water and hold her under, watching the red-edged white ribbons shimmer the way Carla Dean’s white dress and red stockings had shimmered while the woods burned all around her and her father. A part of me would be more than glad to pay the last installment on that old bill. “Dear God,” I muttered, and wiped my face with a shaking hand. “She knows so many tricks. And she’s so fucking strong.” The bathroom door tried to swing shut against me before I could go through, but I pushed it open against hardly any resistance. The medicine-cabinet door banged back, and the glass shattered against the wall. The stuff inside flew out at me, but it wasn’t a very dangerous attack; this time most of the missiles consisted of toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, plastic bottles, and a few old Vick’s inhalers. Faint, very faint, I could hear her shouting in frustration as I yanked the plug at the bottom of the tub and let the water start gurgling out. There had been enough drowning on the TR for one century, by God. And yet, for a moment I felt an incredibly strong urge to put the plug back in while the water was still deep enough to do the job. Instead I tore it off its chain and threw it down the hall. The medicine-cabinet door clapped shut again and the rest of the glass fell out. “How many have you had?” I asked her. “How many besides Carla Dean and Kerry Auster and our Kia? Two? Three? Five? How many do you need before you can rest?” All of them! the answer shot back. It wasn’t just Sara’s voice, either; it was my own, as well. She’d gotten into me, had snuck in by way of the basement like a burglar… and already I was thinking that even if the tub was empty and the water-pump temporarily dead, there was always the lake. All of them! the voice cried again. All of them, sugar! Of course—only all of them would do. Until then there would be no rest for Sara Laughs. “I’ll help you to rest,” I said. “That I promise.” The last of the water swirled away… but there was always the lake, always the lake if I changed my mind. I left the bathroom and looked in on Ki again. She hadn’t moved, the sensation that Sara was in here with me had gone, Bunter’s bell was quiet… and yet I felt uneasy, unwilling to leave her alone. I had to, though, if I was to finish my work, and I would do well not to linger. County and State cops would be along eventually, storm or no storm, downed trees or no downed trees.
Yes, but… I stepped into the hall and looked uneasily around. Thunder boomed, but it was losing some of its urgency. So was the wind. What wasn’t fading was the sense of something watching me, something that was not-Sara. I stood where I was a moment or two longer, trying to tell myself it was just the sizzle of my overcooked nerves, then walked down the hall to the entry. I opened the door to the stoop… then looked around again sharply, as if expecting to see someone or something lurking behind the far end of the bookcase. A Shape, perhaps. Something that still wanted its dust-catcher. But I was the only Shape left, at least in this part of the world, and the only movement I saw was ripple-shadows thrown by the rain rolling down the windows. It was still coming down hard enough to redrench me as I crossed my stoop to the driveway, but I paid no attention. I had just been with a little girl when she drowned, had damned near drowned myself not so long ago, and the rain wasn’t going to stop me from doing what I had to do. I picked up the fallen branch which had dented the roof of my car, tossed it aside, and opened the Chevy’s rear door. The things I’d bought at Slips ’n Greens were still sitting on the back seat, still tucked into the cloth carry-handle bag Lila Proulx had given me. The trowel and the pruning knife were visible, but the third item was in a plastic sack. nt this one in a special bag? Lila had asked me. Always sa]b, never sorry.
And later, as I was leaving, she had spoken of Kenny’s dog Blueberry chasing seagulls and had given out with a big, hearty laugh. Her eyes hadn’t laughed, though. Maybe that’s ho
w you tell the Martians from the Earthlings—the Martians can never laugh with their eyes. I saw Rommie and George’s present lying on the front seat: the Stenomask I’d at first mistaken for Devore’s oxygen mask. The boys in the basement spoke up then—murmured, at least—and I leaned over the seat to grab the mask by its elastic strap without the slightest idea of why I was doing so. I dropped it into the carry-bag, slammed the car door, then started down the railroad-tie steps to the lake. On the way I paused to duck under the deck, where we had always kept a few tools.
There was no pick, but I grabbed a spade that looked up to a piece of gravedigging. Then, for what I thought would be the last time, I followed the course of my dream down to The Street. I didn’t need Jo to show me the spot; the Green Lady had been pointing to it all along. Even had she not been, and even if Sara Tidwell did not still stink to the heavens, I think I would have known. I think I would have been led there by my own haunted heart.
There was a man standing between me and the place where the gray forehead of rock guarded the path, and as I paused on the last railroad tie, he hailed me in a rasping voice that I knew all too well.
“Say there, whoremaster, where’s your whore?”
He stood on The Street in the pouring rain, but his cutters’
outfit—green flannel pants, checked wool shirt—and his faded blue Union Army cap were dry, because the rain was falling through him rather than on him. He looked solid but he was no more real than Sara herself.
I reminded myself of this as I stepped down onto the path to face him, but my heart continued to speed up, thudding in my chest like a padded hammer.
He was dressed in Jared Devore’s clothes, but this wasn’t Jared Devore.
This was Jared’s great-grandson Max, who had begun his career with an act of sled-theft and ended it in suicide… but not before arranging for the murder of his daughter-in-law, who’d had the temerity to refuse him what he had so dearly wanted.
I started toward him and he moved to the center of the path to block me.
I could feel the cold baking off him. I am saying exactly what I mean, expressing what I remember as clearly as I can: I could feel the cold baking off him. And yes, it was Max Devore all right, but got up like a logger at a costume party and looking the way he must have around the time his son Lance was born. Old but hale. The sort of man younger men might well look up to. And now, as if the thought had called them, I could see the rest shimmer into faint being behind him, standing in a line across the path. These were the ones who had been with Jared at the Fryeburg Fair, and now I knew who some of them were. Fred Dean, of course, only nineteen years old in ’01, the drowning of his daughter still over thirty years away. And the one who had reminded me of myself was Harry Auster, the firstborn of my great-grandfather’s sister. He would have been sixteen, barely old enough to raise a fuzz but old enough to work in the woods with Jared.
Old enough to shit in the same pit as Jared. To mistake Jared’s poison for wisdom. One of the others twisted his head and squinted at the same time—I’d seen that tic before. Where? Then it came to me: in the Lake-view General. This young man was the late Royce Merrill’s father.
The others I didn’t know. Nor did I care to.
“You ain’t a-passing by us,” Devore said. He held up both hands. “Don’t even think about trying. Am I right, boys?”
They murmured growling agreement—the sort you could hear coming from any present-day gang of headbangers or taggers, I imagine but their voices were distant; actually more sad than menacing. There was some substance to the man in Jared Devore’s clothes, perhaps because in life he had been a man of enormous vitality, perhaps because he was so recently dead, but the others were little more than projected images.
I started forward, moving into that baking cold, moving into the smell of him—the same invalid odors which had surrounded him when I’d met him here before.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he cried.
“For a constitutional,” I said. “And no law against it. The Street’s the place where good pups and vile dogs can walk side-by-side. You said so yourself.”
“You don’t understand,” Max-Jared said. “You never will. You’re not of that world. That was our world.”
I stopped, looking at him curiously. Time was short, I wanted to be done with this… but I had to know, and I thought Devore was ready to tell me.
“Make me understand,” I said. “Convince me that any world was your world.” I looked at him, then at the flickering, translucent figures behind him, gauze flesh heaped on shining bones. “Tell me what you did.”
“It was all different then,” Devore said. “When you come down here, Noonan, you might walk all three miles north to Halo Bay and see only a dozen people on The Street. After Labor Day you might not see any one at all. This side of the lake you have to walk through the bushes that are growing up wild and around the fallen trees—there’ll be even more of em after this storm—and even a deadfall or two because nowadays the townfolk don’t club together to keep it neat the way they used to. But in our time—! The woods were bigger then, Noonan, distances were farther to go, and neighboring meant something. Life itself, often enough. Back then this really was a street. Can you see?”
I could. If I looked through the phantom shapes of Fred Dean and Harry Auster and the others, I could. They weren’t just ghosts; they were shimmerglass windows on another age. I saw a summer afternoon in the year of… 1898? Perhaps 1902? 1907?
Doesn’t matter. This is a period when all time seems the same, as if time had stopped. This is a time the old-timers remember as a kind of golden age. It is the Land of Ago, the Kingdom of lyhen-I-Was-a-Boy. The sun washes everything with the fine gold light of endless late July; the lake is as blue as a dream, netted with a billion sparks of reflected light. And The Street! It is as smoothly grassed as a lawn and as broad as a boulevard. It is a boulevard, I see, a place where the community fully realizes itself. It is the main conduit of communication, the chief cable in a township criss-crossed with them. I’djblt the existence of these cables all along—even when Jo was alive I jlt them under the surface, and here is theirpoint of origin. Folks promenade on The Street, all up and down the east side of Dark Score Lake they promenade in little groups, laughing and conversing under a cloud-stacked summer sky, and this is where the cables all begin. I look and realize how wrong I have been to think of them as Martians, as cruel and calculating aliens. East of their sun nypromenade looms the darkness of the woods, glades and hollows where any miserable thing may await, from a hot lopped off in a logging accident to a birth gone wrong and a young mother dead bejre the doctor can arrive from Castle Rock in his buggy.
These are people with no electricity, no phones, no County Rescue Unit, no one to rely upon but each other and a God some of them have already begun to mistrust. They live in the woods and the shadows of the woods, but on fine summer asoernoons they come to the edge of the lake. They come to The Street and look in each other’s faces and laugh together and then they are truly on the TR—in what I have come to think of as the zone. They are not Martians,’ they are little lives dwelling on the edge of the dark, that’s all.
I see summerpeoplefrom Warrington’s, the men dressed in whiteflanneh, two women in long tennis dresses still carrying their rackets. A jllow riding a tricycle with an enormous ont wheel weaves shakily among them.
The party of summer j$1k has stopped to talk with a group of young men from town; the)llows from away want to know if they can play in the townies’ baseball game at IVAR-rington’s on Tuesday night. Ben Merrill, Royce’s father-to-be, says Ayuh, but we won’t go easy on ya just cause you’re from N’Yawk. The young men laugh; so do the tennis girls.
A little farther on, two boys areplaying catch with the sort of raw homemade baseball that is known as a horsey. Beyond them is a convention of young mothers, talking earnestly of their babies, all sajly prammed and gathered in their own group. Men in overalls discuss weather and
crops, politics and crops, taxes and crops. A teacher from the Consolidated High sits on the gray stone]$rehead I know so well, patiently tutoring a sullen boy who wants to be somewhere else and doing anything else. I think the boy will grow up to be Buddyjellison’s father. Horn broken—watch for finger, I think.
All along The Street jlks are fishing, and they are catching plenty; the lake fairly teems with bass and trout andpickerel. An artist-another summerjllow, judging from his smock and nancy berethas set up his easel and is painting the mountains while two ladies watch respectfully. A giggle of girls passes, whispering about boys and clothes and school.