by Stephen King
I can’t hold it back muck longer, Seth said.
June 27, 1995
Spent most of the day at Mohonk with Jan Goodlin. I know I shouldn’t—it’s as much a retreat as drugs or alcohol would be—but it’s hard to resist. We talked about our folks, and embarrassing things that happened to us in high school, all the usual. Trivial and wonderful. Until the very end. I saw the little phone was gone, which means it’s time to go back, & Jan said to me: “You know where he’s getting the energy to work on the Hobarts, don’t you, Aud?”
Sure I do: from Herb. He’s stealing it like a vampire steals blood. And I think that Herb knows it, too.
June 28,1995
Late this morning I was sitting at the kitchen table, making up a shopping list, when I heard the whoop-whoop-whoop of an ambulance siren. I went out front in time to see it pull up in front of the Hobarts’ with its lights flashing. The EMTs got out & hurried inside. I went inside my own house—ran, actually—and looked out into the back yard from the kitchen. Seth was gone.
Power Wagons lined up in the sandbox, slant-parked the way he always puts them when he’s done for awhile, the Ponderosa all neat with the plastic horses in their corral, the HQ Crisis Center down near the swing . . . but no Seth. If I told you I was surprised, I’d be lying.
By the time I got back to the front, people were standing out on their sidewalks all up and down the street, looking at the Hobart place. Dave and Jim Reed were in their driveway, and I asked them if they had seen Seth.
“There he is, Mrs. Wyler,” Dave says, and points down to the store. Seth was standing by the bike rack, looking across the street, just like the rest of us. “He must have gone for a candybar.”
“Yes,” I reply, knowing that a.) Seth has no money; b.) Seth can hardly talk to Herb and me, let alone to store-clerks he doesn’t know; c.) Seth never leaves the back yard.
Seth doesn’t, but sometimes the Stalky Little Boy does, it seems. To get into operating range, I think.
About five minutes later, the EMTs helped Irene Hobart out the door. Hugh, the son, was holding her hand & crying. I hated that kid, absolutely did, but I don’t anymore. Now I only pity him & fear for him. There was blood all down the front of her dress. She was holding a compress on her nose, & one of the EMTs was pressing the top of her neck in the back. They got her into the ambulance—Hugh got in right behind her—& drove away.
She was back less than two hours later (by then Seth was safely tucked away in the den, watching old Westerns on cable). Kim Geller dropped by for coffee & told me she went down to see if she could do anything for Irene. She’s the only one on the block who is what you could call friendly with the Hobarts. She said everything is under control, but that Irene had a scare. She has bad hypertension. Takes medication for it, but it’s still barely controlled. She’s had nosebleeds before, but never one as bad as this. She told Kim it went all at once, blood just spraying out of her nostrils, and it wouldn’t stop even when she cold-packed it. Hugh got scared & called 911. The EMTs insisted on taking her to the hospital to see if she needed to have the inside of her nose cauterized, even tho the bleeding had mostly stopped by the time the ambulance got to the house.
I got Seth inside and started shaking him. Told him he had to stop. He only looked at me, his mouth trembling. I was the one who stopped, angry & ashamed of myself. I was shaking the wrong one.
I could see the other one, though. I swear I could. Hiding behind Seth’s eyes and laughing at me. I think the most terrible thing of all is how the SLB knows to leave Hugh Hobart alone. To let him just watch.
June 29, 1995
Woke up this morning around 3 a.m. and the other half of the bed was empty. The bathroom, too. I went downstairs, scared, No one in the living room, den, or kitchen, I went out to the garage & found Herb sitting at his workbench, wearing nothing but the Jockeys he sleeps in, & crying. He put in hi-intensity lighting out there two years ago—metal-hooded lamps that look like the kinds you see in pool-parlors—& in their glow I could see how much weight he’s lost. He looks horrible. Like he has anorexia nervosa. I took him in my arms & he wept like a baby. Kept saying he was tired, so tired all the time. I said something about taking him to see Dr. Evers first thing in the morning. He just laughed, said I knew what was wrong with him.
I do, of course.
July, 1, 1995
Another ambulance at the Hobart house late this afternoon. As soon as I saw it I raced upstairs to check on Seth, who was supposedly napping. No Seth. Window open—second-floor window—& no Seth. When I went outside, I saw him across the street, holding old Tom Billingsley’s hand. I ran across & grabbed him.
“No fear, he’s all right, Aud,” Tom said. “Just went wanderin’ a little, didn’t you, Sethie-boy?”
“Don’t you ever cross the street on your own!” I told him. “Don’t you ever!” Shook him again in spite of myself. Stupid; might as well shake a lump of wax.
This time when the EMTs came out, they were using their stretcher. Wm. Hobart was on it. “Seems like just lately if it wasn’t for bad luck, those Hobarts wouldn’t have any luck at all,” Tom said.
This is supposed to be Mr. Hobart’s vacation week, but he will be spending at least some of it in County General. He fell downstairs, broke his leg & hip. Kim told me later that he drinks, church deacon at Zion’s Covenant or not. Maybe he does drink, but I don’t think that’s why he fell downstairs.
July 3, 1995
There’s no Stalky Little Boy. Never was. There’s a thing inside of Seth—not an id, not another manifestation of his personality, not a hitchhiker, but something like a tapeworm. It can think. And talk. It talked to me today—it calls itself Tak.
July 6, 1995
Someone shot the Hobarts’ pet Angora cat last night. Apparently nothing left but blood & fur. Kim says Irene H. is hysterical, thinks everyone on the street is out to get them because they know the Hobarts are going to heaven & the rest of us are going to hell. “So they are making this hell on earth for us” is what she told Kim. She begged Kim to tell her who did it, said Hugh was devastated, wouldn’t come out of his room, just lay there on his bed, crying & saying it was all his fault cause he was a sinner. When Kim said she didn’t know and didn’t think anyone on Poplar Street would shoot the Hobarts’ cat, Mrs. Hobart said Kim was just like the rest & told her they weren’t friends anymore. Kim very upset, but not as upset as I am.
What in God’s name should I do? It hasn’t hurt anyone too badly yet, but—
July 8, 1995
Oh God, thank you. A Mayflower van turned onto the street at just past nine this morning & stopped in front of the Hobarts’. They are moving out.
July 16, 1995
Oh you fucking little bastard you shit. Oh how could you. Oh you bastard if I could get at you. If you let Seth go & I could get at you. Oh God God God.
My fault? Yes. HOW MUCH my fault is the question. Dear Jesus how can I live without him. How go on with this. I didn’t know there could be this much pain in the whole wide world & how much my fault HOW MUCH? You bastard Tak you bastard. I’m done writing in this book. What good did I ever think it could do anyway.
Oh Herb I’m so sorry, I love you, I’m sorry.
October 19, 1995
Got an answer to my letter today, ages after I’d given up expecting one. My respondent was a mining engineer named Allen Symes. He works at a place called the China Pit, in the town of Desperation, Nevada. Says he saw Bill and his family, but nothing happened, he just showed them the mine and they went on, nothing happened.
He’s lying. I’ll probably never know why, or what happened out there, but I know that much. He’s lying.
God help me.
CHAPTER 10
1
It all happened fast, but Johnny’s half-wonderful, half-terrible ability to see and sequence kept up.
Entragian, dying but too badly hurt to know it, was crawling toward one of the primitive cacti at the left side of the path, his head hang
ing so low it left a swath of blood on the ground-growth. His skull gleamed between hanging flaps of hair like a bleary pearl. He looked scalped.
In the middle of the path, a bizarre waltz was going on. The creature from the ravine—a sinister Picasso mountain lion with jutting orange teeth—was up on its hind legs, paws on Steve Ames’s shoulders. If Steve had dropped his arms when the cat clawed the puny .22 away from him, he would have been dead already. He had crossed them over his chest instead, however, and now his elbows and forearms were against the cat’s chest.
“Shoot it!” he screamed. “For Christ’s sake, shoot it!”
Neither twin made a move for the dropped pistol. They were not identical twins, but their faces now wore identical expressions of anguish.
The mountain lion (it hurt Johnny’s eyes just to look at it) uttered a womanish shrieking cry and darted its triangular head forward. Steve snapped his own head back and tried to throw the creature off to one side. It held on with its claws and the two of them tangoed drunkenly, the cat’s claws digging deeper into Steve’s shoulders, and now Johnny could see blood-blossoms spreading on his shirt where the claws—as wildly exaggerated as its teeth, only black instead of orange—were dug in. Its tail lashed madly back and forth.
They did another half-turn, and Steve’s feet tangled in each other. For a moment he tottered on the edge of balance, still holding off the lunging mountain lion with his crossed arms. Beyond them, Entragian had reached the cactus. He butted the top of his bleeding and horribly distended head into its spines, then collapsed and rolled over on his side. To Johnny he looked like a machine that has finally run down. Coyotes wailed, still out of sight but closer now; the air was tangy with smoke from the burning house.
“Shoot this fucking thing!” Steve yelled. He had managed to catch his balance, but before long would be all out of backing-up room; he was at the edge of the path. One step into the thorny underbrush, two at most, and he would go over. Then the nightmare would rip his throat out. “Shoot it, please, it’s tearin me apart!”
Johnny had never been so terrified in his life, but he nonetheless discovered that only the first step was actually hard; once the lock on his body was broken, the terror didn’t seem to matter much. After all, the worst thing the creature could do to him was kill him, and dying would at least stop the feeling that an earthquake was going on inside his mind.
He scooped up Entragian’s rifle—considerably larger than the one the cat had ripped out of the longhair’s hands—saw the safety was on, and flicked it the other way with his thumb. Then he socked the .30–.06’s muzzle against the side of the mountain lion’s bulging head.
“Push!” he bellowed, and Steve pushed. The cat’s head rocked up and away from his throat. Its bristle of teeth shone like poison coral. The sunset light was in its green eyes, making them look as if they were on fire. Johnny had time to wonder if Entragian had chambered a round—he was probably never going to write another Pat the Kitty-Cat book if Entragian hadn’t—then turned his head slightly away and pulled the trigger. There was a satisfying whipcrack sound, a lick of fire from the barrel, and then Johnny could smell frying hair as well as burning house. The mountain lion fell sideways, its head mostly gone, the fur on the back of its neck smouldering. What was inside its lifted skull was not blood, bone, and tissue but fibrous pink stuff that reminded Johnny of the blown-in insulation he’d gotten for the second floor and attic of his new house the year after he’d moved in.
Steve tottered, waving his arms for balance. Marinville reached out a hand, but he was dazed and it was only a token effort. Steve went sprawling in the bushes at the side of the path, beside the mountain lion’s twitching rear paws. Johnny bent down, grabbed his wrist, and hauled. Black spots flocked in front of his eyes, and for one awful second he thought he was going to pass out. Then Steve was on his feet and Johnny’s vision was clearing again.
Wh-wh-whoooooo . . .
Johnny looked around nervously. He could still see nothing, but the sons of bitches sounded closer than ever.
2
Dave Reed kept thinking that pretty soon he would wake up. Never mind that he could smell the cop’s blood and sweat as he knelt beside him, never mind the tortured sound of the cop’s breathing (and his own), the cop’s one dying eye, or the sight of his brain—his gray and wrinkled brain—pushing through a shattered window in his skull. It had to be a dream. Surely his brother could not have shot the guy from across the street, a crooked cop, yes, but also the guy who had once told Cary Ripton to try throwing a baseball with his fingers across the seams instead of lying along them . . . and who had then demonstrated by throwing a brain-busting rainbow change.
Smells like he shit his pants, Dave thought, and suddenly felt like vomiting. He controlled it. He didn’t want to vomit again, even in a dream.
The cop reached up and hooked his fingers into Dave’s shirt.
“Hurt,” he whispered hoarsely. “Hurt.”
“Don’t”—Dave swallowed, cleared his throat—”try to talk.”
Behind him, incredibly, he could hear Johnny Marinville and the hippie guy talking about whether or not they should go on. They were insane, had to be. And Marinville . . . where had Marinville been? How could he have let this happen? He was a fucking adult!
With a shudder of effort, Collie Entragian got up on one elbow. His remaining eye stared at the boy with ferocious concentration. “Never,” he whispered. “Never—”
“Sir . . . Mr. Entragian . . . you’d better just . . .”
Wh-wh-whoooooooo!
Close enough this time to make Dave Reed’s skin feel as if it were freezing. He felt like ripping Johnny Marinville’s face off for not stopping this before it had become irrevocable. Yet the cop’s eye held him like a bug on a pin, and one of the cop’s blood-streaked hands had knotted a handful of Dave’s shirt into a loose fist. He could tear away from him, maybe, but . . .
But that was a lie. He felt like a bug on a pin.
“Never took drugs . . . sold them . . . any of it,” Collie whispered. “Never took a dime. Framed. IA shooflies on the take . . . I found out.”
“You—” Dave began.
“I found out! You understand . . . what I’m saying?” He held up the hand that wasn’t knotted in Dave’s shirt, opened it, appeared to examine it. “Hands . . . clean.”
“Yeah, okay,” Dave said. “But you better not try to talk. You got . . . well, a little crease, and—”
“Jim, no!” Marinville screamed from behind him. “Don’t!”
Dave suddenly discovered he could pull away from the dying man quite easily.
3
“What do we do?” Johnny asked the longhair as, on the other side of the path, the dark-haired twin knelt by the man his brother had shot. Johnny could hear the faint sound of Entragian murmuring, as if he wanted to make a good confession before he died. Johnny had relearned a gruesome fact this afternoon: people died hard, by and large, and when they went out, they left without much dignity . . . and probably without realizing they were leaving at all.
“Do?” Steve asked. He stared at Johnny, almost comically amazed, and ran a hand through his hair, smearing red in with the gray. More blood was spreading on the shoulders of his shirt where the cat’s claws had sunk in. “What do you mean, do?”
“Do we go on or do we go back?” Johnny asked. His voice was rough, urgent. “What’s up ahead? What did you see?”
“Nothing,” Steve said. “No, I take that back. It’s worse than nothing. It—” His eyes shifted past Johnny and widened.
Johnny turned, thinking the hippie must have seen the coyotes, they had finally arrived, but it wasn’t coyotes. “Jim, no!” he screamed. “Don’t!” Knowing it was already too late, seeing it on young Jim Reed’s pale face, where everything had been cancelled.
4
The boy stood there with the pistol pressed against the side of his head just long enough for Steve Ames to hope that maybe he wasn’t going to do it, th
at he’d had a change of heart at the penultimate moment, that last little vestibule of maybe not before the endless hallway of too late, and then Jim pulled the trigger. His face contorted as if he had been struck with a gas-pain of moderate intensity. His skin seemed to pop sideways on his skull, the left cheek puffing out. Then his head blew apart, his ambitions to write great essays (not to mention those of getting into Susi Geller’s pants) so much vapor in the strange sunset air, red goo that splattered across one of the insane cacti like spit. He staggered forward a step on buckling knees, the gun tumbling from his hand, then went down. Steve turned his thunderstruck face to Johnny’s, thinking: I didn’t see what I just saw. Rewind the tape, play it again, and you’ll see, too. I didn’t see what I just saw. Neither of us did. No, man. No.
Except he had. The kid, overcome with remorse and horror at what he had done to the guy from down the street, had just committed impulse suicide in front of him.
“You should have stopped him!” Dave Reed screamed, hurling himself at Johnny. “You should have stopped him, why didn’t you? Why didn’t you stop him?”
Steve tried to grab the kid on his way by, but the pain in his shoulders was excruciating. He could only watch helplessly as Dave Reed grabbed Johnny and bore him to the ground. They rolled over twice, from one side of the path to the other. Johnny wound up on top, at least for a moment. “David, listen to me—”
“No! No! You should have stopped him! You should have stopped him!”
The kid slapped Johnny first with his right hand, then his left. He was sobbing, tears streaming down his pale cheeks. Steve tried again to help and succeeded only in distracting Johnny, who had been trying to pin the boy’s arms with his knees. Dave rocked up hard on one hip, throwing Johnny off the path to the left. Johnny put out a hand to break his fall and got a palmful of cactus spines instead. He roared in pain and surprise.