by Stephen King
Steve points through the torn lower half of the screen. “In that house. Must be. See his glasses on the path?”
Cynthia squints, then nods.
“Who lives there?” Steve asks her.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been here anywhere near long enough to-”
“Mrs Wyler and her nephew,” Collie says from behind them. They turn and see him squatting on his hunkers, looking out between them. “The boy’s autistic or dyslexic or catatonic… one of those damned icks, I can never keep them straight. Her husband died last year, so it’s just the two of them. Jackson… must… must have… “He doesn’t break off but runs down, the words getting smaller and smaller, finally diminishing into silence. When he speaks again, his voice is still low… and very thoughtful. “What the hell?”
“What?” Cynthia asks uneasily. “What?”
“Are you kidding me? You don’t see?”
“See what? I see the woman, and I see her husband’s gla-” Now it’s her turn to run down.
Steve starts to ask what the deal is, then understands-sort of. He supposes he would have seen it earlier, even though he’s a stranger to the street, if his attention hadn’t been diverted by the body, the dropped spectacles, and his concern for Mrs Soderson. He knows what he must do about that, and more than anything else he has been nerving himself up to do it.
Now, though, he simply looks across the street, letting his eyes move slowly from the E-Z Stop to the next building up, from that one to the one where the kids were playing Frisbee when he turned on to the street, and then on to the one directly opposite them, the one where Jackson must have gone to ground when the shooting got too hot.
There has been a change over there since the coming of the shooters in the vans.
Just how much he cannot tell, mostly because he is a stranger here, he doesn’t know the street, partly because the smoke from the burning house and the mist still rising off the wet street give the houses over there a look which is almost spectral, like houses seen in a mirage… but there has been a change.
Siding has been replaced with logs on the Wyler house, and where there was a picture window there are now three more conventional-old-fashioned, one might almost say-multi-pane windows. The door has wooden supports hammered across its vertical boards in a Z-shape. The house next to it on the left…
“Tell me something,” Collie says, looking at the same one. “Since when did the Reeds live in a log-fucking-cabin?”
“Since when did the Gellers live in an adobe hacienda!” Cynthia responds, looking one farther down.
“You guys’re kidding,” Steve says. Then, weakly: “Aren’t you?”
Neither of them replies. They look almost hypnotized.
“I’m not sure I’m really seeing it,” Collie says at last. His voice is uncharacteristically hesitant. “It’s…”
“Shimmery,” the girl says.
He turns to her. “Yeah. Like when you look at something over the top of an incinerator, or-”
“Somebody help my wife!” Gary calls to them from the shadows of the living room. He has found a bottle of something-Steve can’t see what-and is standing by the photo of Hester, a pigeon who liked to fingerpaint. Not, Steve thinks, that pigeons exactly have fingers. Gary isn’t steady on his feet and his words sound slurry. “Somebody help Mar'elle! Losser damn arm!”
“We need to get help for her,” Collie says, nodding. “And-”
“-for the rest of us,” Steve finishes. He’s relieved, actually, to know that someone else realizes this, that maybe he won’t have to go on his own. The boy next door has stopped crying, but Steve can still hear the girl, sobbing in big, watery hitches. Margrit the Maggot, he thinks. That’s what her brother called her. Margrit the Maggot loves Ethan Hawke, he said.
Steve has a sudden urge, as strong as it is unaccustomed, to go next door and find that little girl. To kneel in front of her and take her in his arms and hug her and tell her she can love anyone she pleases. Ethan Hawke or Newt Gingrich or just anybody. He looks down the street instead. The E-Z Stop, so far as he can tell, hasn’t changed; its style is still Late-century Convenience Store, sometimes known as Pastel Cinderblock, sometimes known as Still Life with Dumpster. Not beautiful, far from it, but a known quantity, and under the circumstances, that’s a relief. The Ryder truck is still parked in front, the blue phone-sign is still hanging down from its hook, the Marlboro Man is still on the door, and…
… and the bike rack is gone.
Well, not gone, exactly; replaced.
By something that looks suspiciously like a hitching-rail in a Western movie.
With an effort, he drags first his eyes and then his mind back to the cop, who is saying Steve is right, they all need help. At the Carvers” as well as at Old Doc’s, by the sound.
“There’s a greenbelt behind the houses on this side of the street,” Collie says. “There’s a path that runs through it. Kids use it, mostly, but I’m partial to it myself. It forks behind the Jacksons” house. One arm runs down to Hyacinth. Comes out by the bus shelter halfway down the block. The other one goes east, over to Anderson Avenue. If Anderson’s, pardon my French, fucked up-”
“Why should it be?” Cynthia asks. “There hasn’t been any shooting from that direction.”
He gives her a strange, patient look. “There hasn’t been any help from that direction, either.
And our street is fucked up in ways the shooting had nothing to do with, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh,” she says in a small voice.
“Anyway, if Anderson Avenue’s as crazy as Poplar-I hope it isn’t, but if it is-there’s a viaduct that runs at least under the street, maybe farther. It could go all the way to Columbus Broad. There’s got to be people there.” He doesn’t look as if he really believes it, though.
“I’ll go with you,” Steve says.
The cop looks surprised at the offer, then considering. “You sure that’s a good idea?”
“Actually, yes. I think the bad guys’re gone, at least for the time being.”
“What makes you think that?”
Steve, who has absolutely no intention of bringing up his brief career as a boardwalk fortune-teller, says it’s just a hunch. He sees Collie Entragian thinking it over, and knows the cop is going to agree even before he opens his mouth. Nothing psychic about it, either. Three people have been killed on Poplar Street this afternoon (not to mention Hannibal the Frisbee-stealing dog), more have been wounded, a house is burning flat without a single goddam fire-engine to attend it, there are crazy people running in the streets-homicidal maniacs-and the guy would have to be insane to want to go creeping alone through the woods between here and the next block.
“What about him?” Cynthia asks, jerking a thumb at Gary.
Collie grimaces. “Shape he’s in, I wouldn’t go to the movies with him, let alone into the woods with shit like this going down. But if you’re serious, Mr… Ames, is it?”
“Make it Steve. And I’m serious.”
“Okay. Let’s see if Old Doc’s got a gun or two kicking around his basement. I bet he does.”
They start back across the living room, bent low. Cynthia turns to follow them, then movement catches her eye. She turns back and her mouth drops open. Revulsion follows surprise, and she has to put a hand to her mouth to stifle the cry that wants to come out. She thinks of calling the men back, then doesn’t. What would it change?
A buzzard-it might be a buzzard, although it looks like nothing she’s ever seen in a book or a movie-has come cruising out of the billowing smoke from the Hobart house and landed in the street next to Mary Jackson. It’s a huge unnatural awkwardness with an ugly, peeled head. It walks around the corpse, looking for all the world like a diner reconnoitering the buffet before actually grabbing a plate, and then it darts its head forward and pulls off most of the woman’s nose.
Cynthia closes her eyes and tries to tell herself this is a dream, just a dream. It would be nice if she
could believe it.
From Audrey Wyler’s journal: June 10, 1995
Scared tonight. So scared. It’s been quiet lately-with Seth, I mean-but now all that’s changed.
At first neither of us knew what was wrong-Herb as mystified as I was. We went out for ice cream at Milly’s on The Square, part of our regular Saturday ritual if Seth is being “good” (which means if Seth is being Seth), and he was fine. Then, when we turned into the driveway, he started the sniffing thing he does sometimes-kind of raises his nose in the air and sniffs like a dog. I hate seeing him do that and so does Herb. The way farmers hate to hear tornado warnings on the radio, I suppose. I’ve read that the parents of epileptics learn to look for similar signs before seizures… obsessive head-scratching, swearing, even nose-picking. With Seth it’s that sniffing thing. But it’s not epileptic seizures. I only wish it was.
Herb asked him what was wrong as soon as he saw him doing it and got zilch, not even the usual vocalizing stuff he does. Same when I tried. No words; no gabble, even. Just more sniffing. And once he was in the house, that stalking thing-walking from place to place as if his legs won’t bend. He went out back to the sandbox, he went upstairs to his room, he went downcellar, all in that ominous silence. Herb followed him for a while, asking what was wrong, then gave up. While I was emptying the dishwasher, Herb came in waving a religious tract he found sticking out of the milkbox around at the side door amp; yelling “Hallelujah! Tes, Jesus!” He is a dear man, always trying to cheer me up, although I know he isn’t doing all that well himself. His skin has gotten very pale, and I’m scared by all the weight he’s lost, mostly since January or so. It must be at least 20 lbs and might be as much as 30, but whenever I ask him about it, he just laughs it off.
Anyway, the tract was typical Baptist bullshit. Had a picture on the front of a man in agony, with his tongue sticking out and sweat running down his face and his eyes rolled up. IMAGINE A MILLION YEARS WITHOUT ONE DRINK OF WATER! it says over the face. And under it, WELCOME TO HELL! I checked on the back and sure enough, Zion’s Covenant Baptist Church. That bunch from Elder. “Look,” Herb says, “it’s my dad before he combs his hair in the morning.”
I wanted to laugh-I know it makes him happy when he can make me laugh-but I just couldn’t. I could feel Seth all around us, almost crackling on our skin. The way you can sometimes feel a storm building up, you know.
Just then he walked in-stalked in-with that horrible frown he gets on his face when something happens that doesn’t fit into his general plan of life. Except it isn’t him, it isn’t. Seth is the sweetest, kindest, most accepting child I can imagine. But he has this other personality that we see more and more. The stiff-legged one. The one that sniffs the air like a dog.
Herb asked him what was wrong, what was on his mind, and then all at once he-Herb, I mean-reached up and grabbed his own lower lip. Pulled it out like a windowshade and started twisting it. Until it bled. And all the time his poor eyes were watering with pain and bugging out with fear and Seth was staring at him with that hateful frown he gets, the one that says: “I’ll do anything I please, you can’t stop me.” And maybe we can’t, but I think that-sometimes, at least-Seth can.
“Stop making him do that!” I shouted at him. “You just stop it right now!”
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 smi le 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 amp; 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 on 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 amp; threw it in the trash, but that wasn’t good enough for me. I took it out amp; 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 talking about equal rights amp; 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, amp;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 amp; 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 amp; 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 amp; 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 partway up, amp; the heart-shaped radar dish was turning, just as it does on the show.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Where did that c
ome 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 amp; Herb said no, he’d been down the hall to check and he 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 amp; 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- amp; 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.