The Regulators

by Stephen King

  When the other one, the not-Seth, gets really mad, his eyes seem to go from brown to black. He turned that look on me then, and all at once my hand came up and I slapped myself across the face. So hard my eye watered on that side.

  “Make him stop, Seth,” I said. “It’s not fair. Whatever is wrong, we’re not responsible for it. We don’t even know what it is.”

  Nothing at first. Just more of the black look. My hand went up again, and then the hateful way he was looking at me changed a little. Not much, but enough. My hand went down and Seth turned and looked up into the open cabinet over the sink where we keep the glasses. My mother’s are on the top shelf, nice Waterford crystal that I only take down for the holidays. They were up there, anyway. They burst when Seth looked at them, one after the other, like ducks in a shooting gallery. When they were gone, the eleven of them that were left, he looked at me with that mean, gloating smile he gets sometimes when you cross him and he hurts you for it. His eyes so black and somehow old in his child’s face.

  I started to cry. Couldn’t help it. Called him a bad boy & told him to go away. The smile slipped at that. He doesn’t like to be told anything, but that least of all. I thought he might make me hurt myself again, but then Herb stepped in front of me and told him the same thing, to go away and calm down and then come back and maybe we could help him fix whatever was wrong.

  Seth went off, and I could tell even before he got across the living room to the stairs that the other one was either gone or going. He wasn’t walking in that horrible stiff way anymore. (Herb calls it “Seth’s Rooty the Robot walk.”) Then, later, we could hear him crying in his room.

  Herb helped me clean up the glasses, me bawling like a fool the whole time. He didn’t try to comfort me or jolly me out of it with any of his jokes, either. Sometimes he can be very wise. When it was done (neither of us got a single cut, sort of a miracle), he said the obvious, that Seth had lost something. I said no shit Sherlock, what was your first clue. Then felt bad and hugged him and said I was sorry, I didn’t mean to be a bitch. Herb said he knew that, then turned over the stupid Baptist tract and wrote on the back of it “What are we going to do?”

  I shook my head. Lots of times we don’t even dare say stuff out loud for fear he’s listening—the not-Seth, I mean. Herbie crumpled the tract & threw it in the trash, but that wasn’t good enough for me. I took it out & tore it to shreds. But first I found myself looking at the sweaty, tortured face on the front of it. WELCOME TO HELL.

  Is that Herb? Is it me? I want to say no, but sometimes it feels like hell. A lot of times, actually. Why else am I keeping this diary?

  June 11, 1995

  Seth sleeping. Exhausted, maybe. Herbie outside in the back yard, looking everywhere. Although I think Seth has already been looking. We know what’s missing now, at least: his Dream Floater Power Wagon. He’s got all the MotoKops shit—action figures, HQ Crisis Center, Cassie’s Party Pad, Power Wagon Corral, two stun pistols, even “floatpad sheets” for his bed. But more than anything he loves the Power Wagons. They’re battery-powered vans, quite large, VERY futuristic. Most have wings he can pop out by pushing a lever on the bottom, plus radar dishes that really turn on the roofs (the one on Cassie Styles’s Dream Floater is shaped like a valentine, this after about thirty years’ worth of taking about equal rights & female role-models for girls; I could just about puke), flashing lights, siren noises, space-blaster noises, etc., etc.

  Anyway, Seth came back from California with all six that are currently on the market: the red one (Tracker Arrow), the yellow one (Justice Wagon), the blue one (Freedom), the black one (Meatwagon, belongs to the bad guy), the silver one (Rooty-Toot, & just think, someone gets paid to think this shit up), and the stupid pink one, driven by Cassie Styles, the love of our young nephew’s life. His crush is actually sorta funny & sweet, but there’s nothing funny about what’s currently going on around here: Seth’s “Dweem Fwoatah” is gone, and all this is a kind of tantrum.

  Herbie shook me awake at six this morning, pulled me out of bed. His hand was cold as ice. I asked him what it was, what was wrong, and he wouldn’t say. Just pulled me over to the window & asked me if I saw anything out there. I could tell what he meant was did I see what he was seeing.

  I saw it, all right. It was Dream Floater, which looks sorta art deco, like something from the old Batman comic books. But it wasn’t Seth’s Dream Floater, not the toy. That’s about two feet long & maybe a foot high. The one we were seeing was full-sized, probably twelve feet long and maybe seven feet high. The roof-hatch was part way up, & the heart-shaped radar dish was turning, just as it does on the show.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Where did that come from?” All I could think was that it must have flown in on its stubby little retractable wings. It was like getting out of bed with one eye open and discovering a flying saucer has landed in your back yard. I couldn’t get my breath. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach!

  At first when he told me it wasn’t there I didn’t understand what he meant, and then the sun came up a little more and I realized I could see the aspens behind our fence right through it. It really wasn’t there. But at the same time it was.

  “He’s showing us what he couldn’t tell us,” Herb said.

  I asked if Seth was awake & Herb said no, he’d been down the hall to check and Seth was fast asleep. That gave me a chill I can’t describe. Because it meant we were standing there at our bedroom window in our pj’s & looking out at our nephew’s dream. It was there in the back yard like a big pink soap-bubble.

  We stood there for about twenty minutes, watching it. I don’t know if we expected Cassie Styles to come out or what, but nothing like that happened. The pink van just sat there with its roof-hatch partway up and its radar dish turning, and then it started to fade until it was just a shimmer. By the end you couldn’t have told what it was, if you hadn’t seen it when it was brighter. Then we heard Seth getting up and going down the hall. By the time the toilet flushed, it was gone.

  At breakfast, Herb pulled his chair over next to Seth’s the way he does when he really wants to talk to him. In some ways I think Herb is braver than I ever could be. Especially since it’s Herb that—

  No, I won’t put that down.

  Anyway, Herbie puts his face close to Seth’s—so that Seth has to look at him—& then talks in a low, kind voice. He tells Seth we know what’s wrong, why he’s so upset, but not to worry because Cassie’s Power Wagon is sure to be in the house or in the back yard somewhere. We’ll find it, he says. All during this Seth was fine. He kept eating his cereal & his face didn’t change, but sometimes you just know it’s him and that he’s listening and understanding at least a little. Then Herb said, “And if we absolutely can’t find it, we’ll get you a new one,” & everything went to hell.

  Seth’s cereal bowl went flipping across the room, spilling milk and cereal all over the kitchen floor. It his the wall & broke. The drawer under the stove came open, and all the things I keep under there—frying pans, cookie-sheets, muffin-tins—came flying out. The sink faucets turned on. The dishwasher supposedly can’t start with the door open, but it did & water went all over the floor. The vase I keep on the window-shelf over the sink flew all the way across the room & broke against the wall. Scariest of all was the toaster. It was on, I was making a couple of slices to have with my o.j., & all at once it glowed bright red inside the slots, as if it was a furnace instead of a little counter-gadget. The handle went up & the toast flew all the way up to the ceiling. It was black and smoking. Looked nuclear. It landed in the sink.

  Seth got up and walked out of the room. His stalky walk. Herb and I just looked at each other for a second or two, & then he said, “That toast would probably taste okay with a little peanut butter on it.” I just gaped at him at first but then I started laughing. That got him started. We laughed & laughed, with our heads down on the kitchen table. Trying to keep him from hearing, I guess, except that’s stupid—Seth doesn’t alwa
ys have to hear to know. I’m not sure it’s mind-reading he does, exactly, but it’s something.

  When I finally got control of myself enough to look up, Herb was getting the mop for under the dishwasher. He was still kind of chuckling and wiping at his eyes. Thank God for him. I went to get the dustpan and brush for the broken vase.

  “I guess he’s sort of committed to the old Dream Floater” is all Herb said. And why say any more? That pretty well covers it.

  Now it’s three in the afternoon and we have “been all over the geedee house,” as my old school-friend Jan would say. Seth has tried to help, in his own peculiar way. It kinda broke my heart to see him turning up the sofa cushions, as if his missing van could’ve slipped under there like a quarter or a crust of pizza. Herbs started out hopeful, saying it was too big & bright to miss, & I thought he was right. As a matter of fact I still think he’s right, so how come we can’t find it? From where I’m writing at the kitchen table I can see Herb down on his knees by the hedge at the back of the yard, poking along with the handle of a rake. I’d like to tell him to stop—it’s the third time he’s been along there—but I don’t have the heart.

  Noises upstairs. Seth’s getting up from his nap, so I need to finish this. Put it out of sight. Try to put it out of mind, too. That should be okay, thought. I think Seth has more success picking up what Herb is thinking than he does with me. No real reason, but the feeling is strong. And I’ve been careful not to tell Herb that I’m keeping a journal.

  I know what anyone reading the journal would say: we’re nuts. Nuts to keep him. Something is wrong with him, Badly wrong, and we don’t know what it is. We know it’s dangerous, though. So why do it? Why go on? I don’t know exactly. Because we love him? Because he’s controlling us? No. sometimes there are things like that (Herb twisting his lip or me slapping myself), things like a powerful hypnosis, but not often. He’s mostly just Seth, a child in the prison of his own mind. He’s also the last little bit of my brother. But sure, beyond all that (and over it, and under it, and around it) is just loving. And every night when Herb and I lie down, I see in my husband’s eyes what he must see in mine—that we made it thru another one, & if we made it thru today, we can make it thru tomorrow. At night it’s easy to tell yourself that it’s just another aspect of Seth’s autism, really no big deal.

  Footsteps overhead. He’s going to the bathroom. When he finishes, he’ll come downstairs, hoping we’ve found his missing toy. But which one will hear the bad news? Seth, who’ll only look disappointed (and maybe cry a little)? Or the other one? The stalky one who throw things when he can’t have what he wants?

  I have thought about taking him back to the doctor, sure, of course, I’m sure Herb has, too . . . but not seriously. Not after the last time. We were both there & we both saw the way the other one, the not-Seth, hides. How Seth makes it possible for it to hide: autism is one hell of a big shield. But the real problem here is not autism, it doesn’t matter what all the doctors in the world see or don’t see. When I open my mind & set aside all I hope & all I wish, I know that. And when we tried to talk to the doctor, tried to tell him why we were really there, we couldn’t. If anyone ever reads this, I wonder if you’ll be able to understand how horrible that is, to have something that feels like a hand laid over the back of your mouth, a guard between your vocal cords and your tongue. WE COULDN’T FUCKING TALK.

  I’m so afraid.

  Afraid of the stalky one, yes, but afraid of other things, as well. Some I can’t even express, and some I can express all too well. But for now, the thing I’m most afraid of is what might happen to us if we can’t find Dream Floater. That stupid goddam pink van. Where can the damned thing be? If only we could find it—

  CHAPTER 8

  1

  At the moment of Kirsten Carver’s death, Johnny was thinking of his literary agent, Bill Harris, and Bill’s reaction to Poplar Street: pure, unadulterated horror. Good agent that he was, he had managed to maintain a neutral, if slightly glazed, smile on the ride from the airport, but the smile began to slip when they entered the suburb of Wentworth (which a sign proclaimed to be OHIO’S “GOOD CHEER” COMMUNITY!), and it gave way entirely when his client, who had once been spoken of in the same breath with John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, and (after Delight) Vladimir Nabokov, pulled into the driveway of the small and perfectly anonymous suburban house on the corner of Poplar and Bear. Bill had stared with a kind of dazed incomprehension at the lawn sprinkler, the aluminum screen door with the scrolled M in the center of it, and that avatar of suburban life, a grass-stained power-mower, standing in the driveway like a gasoline god waiting to be worshipped. From there Bill had turned his gaze upon a kid roller-blading down the far sidewalk with Walkman earphones on his head, a melting ice-cream cone from Milly’s in his hand, and a happy brainless grin on his pimply face. Six years ago this had been, in the summer of 1990, and when Bill Harris, power agent, had looked back at Johnny again, the smile had been gone.

  You can’t be serious, Bill had said in a flat, disbelieving voice. Oh, Bill, but I think I am, Johnny had responded, and something in his tone seemed to get through to Bill, enough at least so that when he spoke again he’d sounded plaintive rather than disbelieving. But why? he asked. Dear Jesus, why here? I can sense my IQ dropping and I just fucking got here. I feel an almost irresistible urge to subscribe to Reader’s Digest and listen to talk radio. So you tell me why. I think you owe me that. First the goddam puddy-tat detective, and now a neighborhood where fruit cocktail is probably considered a delicacy. Tell me what the deal is, okay? And Johnny had said okay, the deal is, it’s all over.

  No, of course not. Belinda had said that. Not Bill Harris but Belinda Josephson. Just now.

  Johnny cleared his mind with an effort and looked around. He was sitting on the living-room floor, holding one of Kirsten’s hands in both of his. The hand was cold and still. Belinda was leaning over Kirstie with a dishtowel in her hand and a square of white linen—it looked to Johnny like a for-best table napkin—folded over her shoulder like a waiter’s towel. Belinda’s eyes were tearless, but there was nevertheless an expression of love and sorrow on her face that moved Johnny’s heart. She was wiping Kirsten’s blood-masked face with the dishtowel, uncovering what remained of her features.

  “Did you say—” Johnny began.

  “You heard me.” Belinda held the stained dishtowel out without looking, and Brad took it. She took the napkin off her shoulder, unfolded it, and spread it over Kirsten’s face. “God have mercy on her soul.”

  “I second that,” Johnny said. There was something hypnotic about the small red poppies blooming on the white linen napkin, three on one side of the draped shape that was Kirsten’s nose, two on the other, maybe half a dozen above her brow. Johnny put his hand to his own brow and wiped away a palmful of sweat. “Jesus, I’m so sorry.”

  Belinda looked at him, then at her husband. “We’re all sorry, I guess. The question is, what’s next?”

  Before either man could answer, Cammie Reed came into the room from the kitchen. Her face was pale but composed. “Mr. Marinville?”

  He turned to her. “Johnny,” he said.

  She had to mull it over—another classic case of shock-slowed thinking—before understanding that he wanted her to call him by his first name. Then she got it and nodded. “Johnny, okay, sure. Did you find the pistol? And are there bullets to go with it?”

  “Yes to both.”

  “Can I have them? My boys want to go for help. I’ve thought it over and have decided to give them my permission. If you’ll let them take David’s gun, that is.”

  “I don’t have any objection to giving up the gun,” Johnny said, not knowing if he was telling the complete truth about that or not, “but leaving shelter could be extremely dangerous, don’t you think?”

  She gave him a level look, no sign of impatience in her eyes or voice, but she fingered a spot of blood on her blouse as she spoke. A souvenir of Ellen Carver’s nosebleed. “I’m
aware of the danger, and if it were a question of using the street, I’d say no. But the boys know a path which runs through the greenbelt behind the houses on this side. They can use it to go over to Anderson Avenue. There’s a deserted building over there that used to be a moving company’s warehouse—”

  “Veedon Brothers,” Brad said, nodding.

  “—and a waterpipe that runs from the lot behind it all the way over to Columbus Broad, where it empties into a stream. If nothing else, they can get to a working phone and report what’s going on here.”

  “Cam, do either of your boys know how to use a gun?” Brad asked.

  Again the level stare, one which did not quite come out and ask Why do you insult my intelligence? “They both took a safety course with their dad two years ago. The primary focus was on rifles and hunting safety, but handguns were covered, yes.”

  “If Jim and Dave know about this path, the shooters who are doing this may, too,” Johnny said. “Have you thought about that?”

  “Yes.” The impatience finally showing, but only a little. Johnny admired her control. “But these . . . lunatics . . . are strangers. They have to be. Have you ever seen any of those vans before today?”

  I may have, at that, Johnny thought. I’m not sure where yet, but if I can just get a little time to think . . .

  “No, but I believe—” Brad began.

  “We moved here in 1982, when the boys were three,” Cammie said. “They say there’s a path that hardly anyone knows about or uses except for kids, and they say there’s a pipe. I believe them.”

  Sure you do, Johnny thought, but that’s secondary. So’s the hope of their bringing back help. You just want them out of here, don’t you? Of course you do, and I don’t blame you.

  “Johnny,” she said, perhaps assuming his silence meant he was against the idea, “there were boys not much older than my sons fighting in Vietnam not so long ago.”

  “Some even younger,” he said. “I was there. I saw them.” He got up, pulled the pistol from the waistband of his slacks with one hand, pulled the box of cartridges out of his shirt pocket with the other. “I’ll be glad to turn this over to your boys . . . but I’d like to go along with them.”