The Regulators

by Stephen King

  Lost in his reverie, he walked straight into Jim Reed’s back. The boys had stopped on the edge of the path. Jim had raised the gun and was pointing it south, his face pale and grim.

  “What’s—” Johnny began, and Dave Reed clapped a hand over his mouth before he could say any more.

  5

  There was a gunshot, then a scream. As if the scream had been a signal, Marielle Soderson opened her eyes, arched her back, uttered a long, guttural sound that might have been words, and then began to shiver all over. Her feet rattled on the floor.

  “Doc!” Cynthia cried, running to Marielle. “Doc!”

  Gary came first. He stumbled in the kitchen doorway and would have knee-dropped onto his wife’s stomach if Cynthia hadn’t pushed him backward. The smell of cooking sherry hung around him in a sweet cloud.

  “Wass happen?” Gary asked. “Wass wrong my wi?”

  Marielle whipped her head from side to side. It thumped against the wall. The picture of Daisy, the Corgi who could count and add, fell off and landed on her chest. Mercifully, the glass in the frame didn’t break. Cynthia grabbed it and tossed it aside. As she did, she saw the gauze over the stump of the woman’s arm had turned red. The stitches—some of them, at least—had broken.

  “Doc!” she screamed.

  He came hurrying across from the door, where he had been standing and staring out, almost hypnotized by the changes which were still taking place. There were snarling sounds from the greenbelt out back, more screams, more gunshots. At least two. Gary looked in that direction, blinking owlishly. “Wass happen?” he asked again.

  Marielle stopped shivering. Her fingers moved, as if she was trying to snap them, and then that stopped, too. Her eyes stared up blankly at the ceiling. A single tear trickled from the corner of the left one. Doc took her wrist and felt for a pulse. He stared at Cynthia with a kind of desperate intensity as he did. “I guess if you want to go on working downstreet, you’ll have to turn in that cashier’s duster for a dancehall dress,” he said. “The E-Z Stop’s a saloon now. The Lady Day.”

  “Is she dead?” Cynthia asked.

  “Yuh,” Old Doc said, lowering Marielle’s hand. “For whatever it’s worth, I think she ran out of chances fifteen minutes ago. She needed a trauma unit, not an old veterinarian with shaky hands.”

  More screams. Shouts. Someone was crying out there, crying and shouting you should have stopped him, you should have stopped him. A sudden surety came to Cynthia: Steve, a guy she’d already come to like, was dead. The shooters were out there, and they’d killed him.

  “Wass happen?” Gary asked for the third time. Neither the old man nor the girl answered him. Although he had been right there, kneeling in the kitchen doorway beside her when Billingsley pronounced his wife dead, Gary didn’t seem to realize what had happened until Old Doc pulled the brown corduroy cover off his couch and spread it over her. Then, it got through to Gary, drunk or not. His face began to shiver. He groped under the couch cover, found his wife’s hand, brought it out, kissed it. Then he held it against his cheek and began to cry.

  6

  When Jim Reed saw rapidly approaching shapes coming up the path toward him, his excitement vanished. Terror filled the space where it had been. For the first time it occurred to him that coming out here might not have been a very intelligent idea.

  If you see strangers in the woods, come right back. That was what his mom had said. But he couldn’t even move. He was frozen. Then there was a horrible growling sound in the undergrowth, the sound of an animal, and he panicked. He did not see Collie Entragian and Steve Ames when they burst into view; he saw killers who had left their vans to infiltrate the woods. He didn’t hear Johnny’s muffled yell, or see Johnny struggling to free himself from Dave’s clutching hands.

  “Shoot, Jimmy!” Dave shrieked. His voice was a trembling, freaked-out falsetto. “Shoot, Jeezum Crow, it’s them!”

  Jim fired and the one on the left went down, clutching for the top of his head, which blew back in a red film of scalp and hair and bone. The rifle the man had been carrying tumbled to the side of the path. Blood poured through his fingers and sheeted down over his face.

  “Get the other one!” Dave cried. “Get him, Jimmy, get him before he gets us!”

  “No, don’t shoot!” the other guy said, holding out his hands. There was a rifle in one of them. “Please, man, don’t shoot me!”

  He was going to, though, going to shoot him dead. Jim pointed the gun at him, hardly aware that he was yelling at the guy, calling him names: cocksucker, bastard, fuckwad. All he wanted to do was kill the guy and get back to his mother. Him and Dave both. Coming out here had been a terrible mistake.

  7

  Johnny rammed both elbows back into Dave Reed’s stomach, which was trim and hard but unprepared. Dave let out a surprised Ooof! and Johnny tore out of his grasp. Before Jim could fire again, Johnny had seized his arm and twisted it savagely. The boy screamed in pain. His hand opened and David Carver’s pistol thumped to the path.

  “What are you doing?” Dave yelled. “He’ll kill us, are you crazy?”

  “Your brother just shot Collie Entragian from down the block, how’s that for crazy?” Johnny said. Yes, that was what the boy had done, but whose fault was it? He was the adult here. He should have taken the gun as soon as they were safely away from Cammie Reed’s fanatic eyes and dry orders. He could have done it; why hadn’t he?

  “No,” Jim whispered, turning to him, shaking his head. “No!” But his eyes already knew; they were huge, and filling with tears.

  “Why would he be out here?” Dave asked. “Why didn’t he warn us, for God’s—”

  The growl, which had never really stopped, reasserted itself in the hot red air, quickly rising to a snarl. The man who was still on his feet—the guy from the rental truck—turned toward it, instinctively raising his hands. The rifle in them was a very small one, and the guy might be right to use it that way, shielding his neck with it rather than pointing it.

  Then the creature which had chased them up the path sprang out of the woods. Johnny’s ability to think consciously and coherently ceased when he saw it—all he could do was see. That clear sight—more curse than blessing—had never failed him before, nor did it now.

  The thing was a nightmare with a tawny brown coat, crooked green eyes, and a mouthful of jagged orange teeth. Not a cat but a misbegotten feline freak. It leaped, splintering the upheld Mossberg rifle with its enormous claws and tearing it away from the clenched hands which had held it. Then, still snarling, it went for Steve’s throat.

  From Audrey Wyler’s journal:

  June 12, 1995

  It happened again—the daydream thing. If that’s what it is. 3rd or 4th time, but the first (I think) since I’ve been keeping this journal, & by far the most vivid. It always seems to happen when things around here aren’t going well, & oh God are things around here ever not going well!

  Herb got up with Seth this morning, ran through the shower with him (saves lots of times), and when they came down Seth was sulking & Herb had the start of a black eye. I didn’t have to ask him about it. Seth made him punch himself, of course, the same way he made him twist his lip when we got back from the ice cream parlor and Seth discovered his damned Power Wagon was gone. I looked at Herb & he gave me a little head-shake, telling me to keep quiet. Which I did. I’ve discovered you can always find something to be grateful for, in this case that making Herb punch himself was all Seth did (although it’s not really Seth who does the bad stuff but the other one, the Stalky Little Boy). Seth likes to stand by the bathroom sink and watch Herb shave in the mornings. The SLB could have popped out and made him cut his throat with his own Bic disposable, I suppose. Frightens me to write such a thing, but sometimes it’s better to have it out on the page. Like squeezing infected material out of a cut.

  The Stalky Little Boy started in before I even had breakfast on the table—I always know when it’s him instead of Seth because his eyes aren’t dark
brown but almost black. “Where my Dweem Fwoatah?” he asked.

  “We haven’t found Dream Floater yet,” I said, “but I’m sure we will.”

  “I want my Dweem Fwoatah!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, and Herb kind of winced. I didn’t. At least when he’s screaming he’s not throwing things. “I want my fucking DWEEM FWOATAH!”

  “Don’t you swear like that in front of your Aunt Audrey,” Herb said, and I was afraid at the look the SLB threw at him then, very afraid, but Herb’s look back never wavered. He is so brave. So simply, up-front no-bullshit brave. And it was the SLB who finally looked down.

  “I want my Dweem Fwoatah,” he muttered in the sulky voice I hate most of all. “I want my Dweem Fwoatah, you find it.”

  I made him French toast, usually his favorite, but he wouldn’t eat. Just walked off (sorry, stalked off) to the den. Pretty soon I heard the VCR, then one of his MotoKops tapes started. He’s got four or five, each with a dozen episodes on it. I have really gotten to hate those stupid cartoon voices, especially Cassie’s. Sometimes I wish No Face would kill her and dump her decapitated body in a ditch somewhere. God help me, I wish I was joking but I’m not.

  When the were cackling away in there (he always turns up the volume, which is sometimes good) I asked Herb how he was going to explain his black eye when he got to work. He put his voice up to the falsetto range & batted his eyes and said, “I’ll just tell the boys I ran into a door, honey.” Trying to make a joke of it. It didn’t work.

  The worst part of today hasn’t been Seth throwing things like he did when Herb suggested we could buy a replacement Dream Floater. He didn’t do that today. I almost wish he would. He simply goes from room to room, stalking, glaring, lower lip pooched out, still looking for the missing P.W. Sometimes he goes into the den to watch TV, but not even Bonanza held him long today. I tried to get him to talk but he wouldn’t. & the thing is . . . oh, I wish I could write better, express it so someone reading this (not that anyone ever will, I imagine) could understand. It’s like he—the SLB—generates a kind of poison electricity when he’s pissed. He seems to spin it right out of his body, like a spider spinning electric silk or thunderheads putting out lightning. It builds up and up until you feel like just running from room to room, screaming and beating your head against things. It’s real, not just a feeling but a physical thing. It makes you sweat (& it’s stinky sweat, like when you a high fever), & your muscles tremble, & your mouth gets dry. I’ll write something in here I’ve never told Herb. Sometimes, when it gets like that, I go in the bathroom, lock the door, & masturbate like mad. It’s the only thing that seems to take a little of the pressure off. The orgasms are so hard they’re frightening. Like bombs going off!

  I’ve felt all this before when the Stalky Little Boy inside Seth is pissed about something, but it’s never gone on so long or revved up so high. By mid-afternoon it was like the whole house was full of natural gas, just waiting for a match to set it off. I was in the kitchen, walking aimlessly around, my head aching so badly that I could feel my eyeballs throbbing, & I kept wanting to grin. I don’t know why, there’s nothing funny about any of it, but the more my head ached and the more my eyes throbbed and more I felt the atmosphere of the house pressing in on me, the more I wanted to grin. Christ!.

  I went to the sink & looked out the window into the back yard. Seth was sitting in the sandbox, playing with his other Power Wagons. Only if anyone but me had seen how he was playing, I’m sure he would have been in some sort of special installation by nightfall, some place where the government studies exceptional children.

  The P.W.’s have pop-out wings, but they don’t really fly, of course. Except sometimes Seth’s do. He was sitting in the sand with his hands in his lap, and around and around his head they went, Tracker Arrow and Rotty-Toot and the Meat-wagon and the rest, dipping and diving under each other, swooping and doing rolls, coming in for touch-and-go’s on a landing-strip Seth has made for them in the sandbox, sometimes doing formation flights down the yard to his swing, going under the seat like stunt pilots in a movie, then banking around and coming back. Kids’ toys, all bright colors, flying missions in the back yard. I know I must sound like a raving madwoman, but I swear in the name of God that it’s true. Sometimes he dive-bombs Hannibal, the neighbors’ dog, with them & H. runs away with his tail between his legs. Herb has seen this, too.

  Any other kid seeing the MotoKops’ Power Wagons doing tricks like that would be laughing & clapping & cheering, but not the Stalky Little Boy. He just sits there in the sand with his lip shoved out & glares.

  Seth watching the wagons and me watching him, feeling whatever is inside him coming out in waves, filling the air with a hum that’s mostly in a person’s head. I felt ready to come out of my skin, ready to flip out right there in front of the sink. & then, all at once, the daydream came. It is the most wonderful thing, and although I call it a daydream, that isn’t how it feels; it feels real. In it I am reliving a weekend afternoon I spent at Mohonk Mountain House with my friend Jan. Back in 1982, this was, before either of us were married. We sat and talked for I don’t know how long—her mostly about this goofy, greasy guy she was so crazy about back then, me about how I’d love to take three months off after graduation and see some of the country.

  It’s so beautiful there at Mohonk, so peaceful. We have a picnic lunch. The air is warm. Jan looks as gorgeous as I feel. I know it’s not real, & that I’ve got all this mess to come back to, but for the time I’m there, none of that matters. Jan & I talk, I feel the sun on my face, I smell the flowers. It’s wonderful. I don’t know what it is or why it happens, but as an antidote to the SLB’s rages, it beats rubbing off in the bathroom eight ways to Sunday. Does Seth have anything to do with it, I wonder?

  I wish Herbie had a place to go, but I don’t think he does. His silly jokes are as close as he can come, poor man. I wish I could tell him about my place, maybe even take him there, but it wouldn’t be wise. I think the SLB can find things out from Herb that he can’t from me. & Herb looks so tired. It’s unfair to both of us that this should be happening, but it’s horribly unfair to Herbie.

  “Dweem Fwoatah” is back. Just now. l don’t know whether to feel scared or relieved.

  I mean of course I’m relieved, anyone would be, this place his been like a concentration camp since Saturday, but what happens next? How will the SLB react? Thank God he was napping when the doorbell rang, & thank God Herb’s at work, because the SLB eavesdrops on Herb’s mind sometimes, I know he does. I don’t think he can do it to me unless l let him in, or unless I’m unprepared.

  Boy. I just read this over and it’s absolutely crazed. Let me take a deep breath and start from the beginning. I should have time. Seth hasn’t slept well since Friday night, and if I’m lucky he might nap until 4:30. That gives me at least an hour.

  Around 3:00, while I was vacuuming there was a knock on the kitchen door. I opened it & there stood Mr. Hobart from down the street, and his son, who is a pudgy redhaired boy with thick glasses and pasty skin. Sort of repulsive-looking, if you want to know the truth. The kid had a Dream floater van in his arms There was no question it was Seth’s. I didn’t have to see the broken taillight and the scratch up the driver’s side to know that, but as a matter of fact I could see both. You could have knocked me over with a broom-straw. I tried to say something & couldn’t, my throat was locked up. I don’t know what would have come out if I had been able to talk!

  It’s hot today, mid 80s, but Wm. Hobart was dressed like a church deacon (which I’m sure he is) in a black suit & shoes. His kid was wearing the junior version of the same getup, & was snivelling. Had a pretty good bruise on one cheek, too. I’d bet my bank account his old man put it there.

  It didn’t matter that I couldn’t talk, because Hobart had the whole thing scripted. “My son has something to say to you, Mrs. Wyler,” he said, then, looked down at the boy as if to say you’re on, don’t fuck it up. “Hugh?”

  Snivelling harder
than ever, Hugh said he’d given in to the Tempting voice of Satan (I guess that’s the TVS, just like the Stalky Little Boy is the SLB) & stolen Seth’s toy. He talked real fast, crying harder & harder as he went along. The kid finished by saying, “You can go to the police and I will make a full confession. Yon can spank me, or my Dad will spank me.” Listening to that part was like when you call the weather & the recording says, “For current conditions, press one. For the current forecast, press two. For road conditions, press three.” I guess it was a blessing I was so stunned. If I hadn’t been, I might’ve laughed, and there was nothing funny about the two of them, standing there so holy & ashamed. I was more scared of them—of the father, especially—than I am on most days of Seth.

  Scared FOR them, too.

  “I am very sorry,” the kid says, still rapping it out as if it was on cue-cards in front of him. “I have asked my Dad for forgiveness, I have asked Lord Jesus for forgiveness, and now I am asking you for forgiveness.”

  I got my act together enough then to take the wagon from him—I was so wrought-up I almost dropped it on my toes—and told him that no spankings would be required.

  “The boy also has to apologize to your son,” Mr. Hobart said. He looks like Moses with a clean-shaven face and a good haircut, if you can imagine Moses in a double-vented three-piece from Sears. After the things that have been going on around here for the last few months, I have no problem imagining anything. That’s part of my trouble. “If you’ll just lead us to him, Mrs. Wyler—”