You catch up on the latest details at backyard barbecues, maybe kick it around with a buddy from another department while youre watching your kids play Little League ball. Because you never know when youre going to put something together in a new way and hit the jackpot. But heres the really amazing part (and youre probably way ahead of me ... if youre not in the bathroom tossing your cookies, that is) for all those years all those cops knew they had a real live monstera ghoul, in factrunning around the western part of the state, and the story never surfaced in the press until Joubert was caught! In a way find that weird and a little spooky, but in a much larger way I find it wondertul. I guess the lawenforcement battle isnt going so well in a lot of the big cities, but out here in East Overshoe, whatever theyre doing still seems to work just fine. Of course you could argue that theres plenty of room for improvement when it takes seven years to catch a nut like Joubert, but Brandon clarified that for me in a hurry. He explained that the perp (they really do use that word) was operating exclusively in onehorse towns where budget shortfalls have forced the cops to deal only with the most serious and immediate problems ... which means crimes against the living rather than against the dead. The cops say there are at least two hotcar rings and four chopshops operating in the western half of the state, and those are only the ones they know about. Then there are the murderers, the wifebeaters, the robbers, the speeders, and the drunks. Above all, theres the old dopeola. It gets bought, it gets sold, it gets grown, and people keep hurting or killing each other over it. According to Brandon, the Police Chief over in Norway wont even use the word cocaine anymorehe calls it Powdered Shithead, and in his written reports he calls it Powdered Sd. I got the point he was trying to make. When youre a smalltown cop trying to ride herd on the whole freakshow in a fouryearold Plymouth cruiser that feels like its going to fall apart every time you push it over seventy, your job gets prioritized in a hurry, and a guy who likes to play with dead people is a long way from the top of the list. I listened to all this carefully, and I agreed, but not all the way. Some of it feels true, but some of it feels a little selfserving, I said. I mean, the stuff Joubert was doing . . . well, it went a little further than just playing with dead people, didnt it? Or am I wrong? Youre not wrong at all, he said. What neither of us wanted to come right out and say was that for seven years this aberrant soul had gone flitting from town to town getting blowjobs from the dead, and to me putting a stop to that seemed quite a bit more important than nabbing teenage girls whove been shoplifting cosmetics at the local drugstore or finding out whos been growing goofyweed in the woodlot behind the Baptist church. But the important thing is that no one forgot him, and everyone kept comparing notes. A perp like Rudolph makes cops uneasy for all kinds of reasons, but the major one is that a guy crazy enough to do things like that to dead people might be crazy enough to try doing them to ones that are still alive ... not that youd live very long after Rudolph decided to split your head open with his trusty axe. The police were also troubled by the missing limbswhat were those for? Brandon says an uncredited memo saying Maybe Rudolph the Lover is really Hannibal the Cannibal circulated briefly in the Oxford County Sheriffs Office. It was destroyed not because the idea was regarded as a sick joke it wasntbut because the Sheriff was afraid it might leak to the press. Whenever one of the local lawenforcement agencies could afford the men and the time, theyd stake out some boneyard or other. There are a lot of them in western Maine, and I guess it had almost become a kind of hobby to some of these guys by the time the case finally broke. The theory was just that if you keep shooting the dice long enough, youre bound to roll your point sooner or later. And that, essentially, is what finally happened. Early last weekactuaDy about ten days ago now Castle County Sheriff Norris Ridgewick and one of his deputies were parked in the doorway of an abandoned barn close to Homeland Cemetery. This is on a secondary road that runs by the back gate. It was two oclock in the morning and they were just getting ready to pack it in for the night when the deputy, John LaPointe, heard a motor. They never saw the van until it was actually pulling up to the gate because it was a snowy night and the guys headlights werent on. Deputy LaPointe wanted to take the guy as soon as they saw him get out of the van and go to work on the wroughtiron cemetery gate with a spreader, but the Sheriff restrained him. Ridgewicks a funnylooking duck, Brandon said, but he knows the value of a good bust. He never loses sight of the courtroom in the heat of the moment. He learned from Alan Pangborn, the guy who had the job before him, and that means he learned from the best. Ten minutes after the van went in through the gate, Ridgewick and LaPointe followed with their own headlights out and their unit just barely creeping along through the snow. They followed the vans tracks until they were pretty sure where the guy was goingthe town crypt set into the side of the hill. Both of them were thinking Rudolph, but neither one of them said so out loud. LaPointe said it would have been like jinxing a guy whos throwing a nohitter. Ridgewick told his deputy to stop the cruiser just around the side of the hill from the cryptsaid he wanted to give the guy all the rope he needed to hang himself. As it turned out, Rudolph ended up with enough to hang himself from the moon. When Ridgewick and LaPointe finally moved in with their guns drawn and their flashlights on, they caught Raymond Andrew Joubert half in and half out of an opened coffin. He had his axe in one hand, his cock in the other, and LaPointe said he looked ready to do business with either one. I guess Joubert scared the hell out of them both when they first saw him in their lights, and Im not a bit surprisedalthough I flatter myself that I can imagine better than most what it must have been like, coming on a creature like him in a cemetery crypt at two in the morning. All other circumstances aside, Joubert suffers from acromegaly, a progressive enlargement of the hands, feet, and face that happens when the pituitary gland goes into warpdrive. Its what caused his forehead to bulge the way it does, and his lips to pooch out. He also has abnormally long arms; they dangle all the way down to his knees. There was a big fire in Castle Rock about a year agoit burned most of the downtownand these days the Sheriff jugs most serious offenders in Chamberlain or Norway, but neither Sheriff Ridgewick nor Deputy LaPointe wanted to make the trip over snowy roads at three in the morning, so they took him back to the renovated shed theyre using as a copshop these days. They claimed it was the late hour and the snowy roads, Brandon said, but I have an idea there was a little more to it than that. I dont think Sheriff Ridgewick wanted to turn over the piata to anyone else until hed taken at least one good crack at it himself. Anyway, Joubert was no troublehe sat in the back of the cruiser, chipper as a chickadee, looking like something that had escaped from an episode of Tales from the Crypt andboth of them swear this is truesinging Happy Together, that old Turtles tune. Ridgewick radioed ahead for a couple of temp deputies to meet them. He made sure Joubert was locked up tight and the deputies were armed with shotguns and plenty of fresh coffee before he and LaPointe left again. They drove back to Homeland for the van. Ridgewick put on gloves, sat on one of those green plastic Hefty bags the cops like to call evidence blankets when they use them on a case, and ran the vehicle back to town. He drove with all the windows open and said the van still stank like a butchers shop after a sixday power failure. Ridgewick got his first good look into the back of the van when he got it under the arclights of the town garage. There were several rotting limbs in the storage compartments running along the sides. There was also a wicker box, much smaller than the one I saw, and a Craftsman toolcase full of burglars tools. When Ridgewick opened the wicker box, he found six penises strung on a length of jute twine. He said he knew it for what it was at once a necklace. Joubert later admitted that he often wore it when he went out on his graveyard expeditions, and stated his belief that if hed been wearing it on his last trip, he never would have been caught. It brung me a power of good luck, he said, and considering how long it took to catch him, Ruth, I think youd have to say he had a point. The worst thing, however, was the sandwich lying on the passenger seat. The thing poking out from between the two slices of Wonder Bread was pretty clearly a human tongue. It had been slathered with that bright yellow mustard kids like. Ridgewick managed to get out of the van before he threw up, Brandon said. Good thingthe State Police would have torn him a new asshole if hed puked on the evidence. On the other hand, Id have wanted him removed from his job for psychological reasons if he hadnt thrown up. They moved Joubert over to Chamberlain shortly after sunrise. While Ridgewick was turned around in the front seat of the cruiser, reading Joubert his rights through the mesh (it was the second or third time hed done itRidgewick is apparently nothing if not methodical), Joubert interrupted to say he might have done somefing bad to DaddyMummy, awful sorry. They had by that time established from documents in Jouberts wallet that he was living in Motton, a farming town just across the river from Chamberlain, and as soon as Joubert was safely locked up in his new quarters, Ridgewick informed officers from both Chamberlain and Motton what Joubert had told them. On the way back to Castle Rock, LaPointe asked Ridgewick what he thought the cops headed for Jouberts house might find. Ridgewick said, I dont know, but I hope they remembered to take their gas masks. A version of what they found and the conclusions they drew came out in the papers over the following days, growing as it did, of course, but the State Police and the Maine Attorney Generals Office had a pretty good picture of what had been going on in the farmhouse on Kingston Road by the time the sun went down on Jouberts first day behind bars. The couple Joubert called his DaddyMummyactuary his stepmother and her commonlaw husbandwere dead, all right. Theyd been dead for months, although Joubert continued to speak as if the somefing bad had happened only days or hours ago. He had scalped them both, and eaten most of Daddy. There were bodyparts strewn all over the house, some rotting and maggoty in spite of the cold weather, others carefully cured and preserved. Most of the cured parts were male sexorgans. On a shelf by the cellar stairs, the police found about fifty Ball jars containing eyes, lips, fingers, toes, and testicles. Joubert was quite the home canner. The house was also filledand I do mean fittedwith stolen goods, mostly from summer camps and cottages. Joubert calls them my thingsappliances, tools, gardening equipment, and enough lingerie to stock a Victorias Secret boutique. He apparently liked to wear it. The police are still trying to sort out the bodyparts that came from Jouberts graverobbing expeditions from those that came from his other activities. They believe he may have killed as many as a dozen people over the last five years, all hitchhiking drifters he picked up in his van. The total may go higher, Brandon says, but the forensic work is very slow. Joubert himself is no help, not because he wont talk but because he talks too much. According to Brandon, hes confessed to over three hundred crimes already, including the assassination of George Bush. He seems to believe Bush is actually Dana Carvey, the guy who plays The Church Lady on Saturday Night Live. Hes been in and out of various mental institutions since the age of fifteen, when he was arrested for engaging in unlawful sexual congress with his cousin. The cousin in question was two at the time. He was a victim of sex abuse himself, of coursehis father, his stepfather, and his stepmother all apparently had a go at him. What is it they used to say? The family that plays together stays together? He was sent to Gage Pointa sort of combination detox, halfway house, and mental institution for adolescents in Hancock Countyon a charge of gross sexual abuse, and released as cured four years later, at the age of nineteen. This was in 1973. He spent the second half of 1975 and most of 1976 at AMHI, in Augusta. This was as a result of Jouberts Fun with Animals Period. I know I probably shouldnt be joking about these things, Ruthyoull think Im horriblebut in truth, I dont know what else to do. I sometimes feel that if I dont joke, Ill start to cry, and that if I start to cry I wont be able to stop. He was sticking cats in trash barrels and then blowing them to pieces with the big firecrackers they call cancrushers, thats what he was doing ... and every now and then, presumably when he needed a break in the old routine, he would nail a small dog to a tree. In 79 he was sent away to Juniper Hill for raping and blinding a sixyearold boy. This time it was supposed to be for good, but when it comes to politics and staterun institutionsespeciatty staterun mental institutionsI think its fair to say that nothing is forever. He was released from Juniper Hill in 1984, once more adjudged cured. Brandon feelsand so do Ithat this second cure had more to do with cuts in the states mental health budget than with any miracle of modern science or psychiatry. At any rate, Joubert returned to Motton to live with his stepmother and her commonlaw, and the state forgot about him ... except to issue him a drivers license, that is. He took a roadtest and got a perfectly legal onein some ways I find this the most amazing fact of alland at some point in late 1984 or early 1985, he started using it to tour the local cemeteries. He was a busy boy. In the wintertime he had his crypts and mausoleums; in the fall and the spring he broke into seasonal camps and homes all over western Maine, taking anything that struck his fancymy things, you know. He apparently had a great fondness for framed photographs. They found four trunks of them in the attic of the house on Kingston Road. Brandon says they are still counting, but that the total number will probably be over seven hundred. Its impossible to say to what extent DaddyMummy participated in what was going on before Joubert did away with them. It must have been a lot, because Joubert hadnt made the slightest effort to hide what he was doing. As for the neighbors, their motto seems to be, They paid their bills and kept to themselves. Wasnt nothing to us. Its got a gruesome kind of perfection to it, wouldnt you say? New England Gothic, by way of The Journal of Aberrant Psychiatry. They found another, bigger, wicker box in the cellar. Brandon got Xeroxes of the police photos documenting this particular find, but he was hesitant about showing them to me at first. Well ... thats actually a little too mild. It was the one and only place where he gave into the temptation all men seem to feetyou know the one I mean, to play John Wayne. Come on, little lady, jest wait until we go by all them dead Injuns and keep lookin off into the desert. Ill tell you when were past. Im willing to accept that Joubert was probably in the house with you, he said. Id have to be a goddam ostrich with my head stuck in the sand not to at least entertain the idea; everything fits. But answer me this why are you going on with it, Jessie? What possible good can it do? I didnt know how to answer that, Ruth, but I did know one thing there was nothing I could do that would make things any worse than they already were. So I hung tough until Brandon realized the little lady wasnt going to get back into the stagecoach until she had gotten her look at the dead Injuns. So I saw the pictures. The one I looked at the longest had a little sign saying STATE POLICE EXHIBIT 217 propped up in the corner. Looking at it was like looking at a videotape someone has somehow made of your worst nightmare. The photo showed a square wicker basket standing open so the photographer could shoot the contents, which happened to be heaps of bones with a wild collection of jewelry mixed in some trumpery, some valuable, some stolen from summer homes and some doubtless stripped from the cold hands of corpses kept in smalltown coldstorage. I looked at that picture, so glaring and somehow bald, as police evidence photographs always are, and I was back in the lake house againit happened right away, with no lag whatsoever. Not remembering, do you understand? Im there, handcuffed and helpless, watching the shadows fly across his grinning face, hearing myself telling him that he is scaring me. And then he bends over to get the box, those feverish eyes never leaving my face, and I see himI see itreaching in with its twisted, misshapen hand, I see that hand starting to stir up the bones and jewels, and I hear the sounds they make, like dirty castanets. And do you know what haunts me most of all? I thought it was my father, that was my Daddy, come back from the dead to do what hed wanted to do before. Go ahead, I told him. Go ahead, but promise youll unlock me and let me out afterward. Just promise me that. I think I would have said the same if Id known who he really was, Ruth. Think? I know I would have said the same. Do you understand? I would have let him put his cockthe cock he stuck down the rotting throats of dead meninto me, if only he would have promised me I didnt have to die the dogs death of musclecramps and convulsions that was waiting for me. If only he would have promised to SET ME FREE. Jessie stopped for a moment, breathing so hard and fast she was almost panting. She looked at the words on the screenthe unbelievable, unspeakable admission on the screenand felt a sudden strong urge to delete them. Not because she was ashamed for Ruth to read them; she was, but that wasnt it. What she didnt want to do was deal with them, and she supposed that if she didnt delete them, she would have to do just that. Words had a way of creating their own imperatives. Not until theyre out of your hands, they dont, Jessie thought, and reached out with the blackclad index finger of her right hand. She touched the DELETE buttonstroked it, actuaryand then drew back. It was the truth, wasnt it? Yes, she said in the same muttery voice shed used so often during her hours of captivityonly at least now it wasnt Goody or the mindRuth she was talking to; she had gotten back to herself without having to go all the way around Robin Hoods barn to do it. That was maybe progress of a sort. Yes, its the truth, all right. And nothing but, so help her God. She wouldnt use the DELETE button on the truth, no matter how nasty some peopleincluding herself, as a matter of factmight find that truth to be. She would let it stand. She might decide not to send the letter after all (didnt know if it was even fair to send it, to burden a woman she hadnt seen in years with this ration of pain and madness), but she would not delete it. Which meant it would be best to finish now, in a rush, before the last of her courage deserted her and the last of her strength ran out. Jessie leaned forward and began typing again. Brandon said, Theres one thing youre going to have to remember and accept, Jessietheres no concrete proof. Yes, I know your rings are gone, but about them you could have been right the first timesome lightfingered cop could have taken them. What about Exhibit 217? I asked. The wicker box? He shrugged, and I had one of those sudden bursts of understanding the poets call epiphanies. He was holding onto the possibility that the wicker box had just been a coincidence. That wasnt easy, but it was easier than having to accept all the restmost of all the fact that a monster like Joubert could actually touch the life of someone he knew and liked. What I saw in Brandon Milherons face that day was perfectly simple he was going to ignore a whole stack of circumstantial evidence and concentrate on the lack of concrete evidence. He was going to hold onto the idea that the whole thing was simply my imagination, seizing on the Joubert case to explain a particularly vivid hallucination Id had while I was handcuffed to the bed. And that insight was followed by a second one, an even clearer one that I could do it, too. I could come to believe I had been wrong . . . but if I succeeded in doing that, my life would be ruined. The voices would start to come backnot just yours or Punkins or Nora Callighans, but my mothers and my sisters and my brothers and kids I chummed with in high school and people I met for ten minutes in doctors offices and God alone knows how many others. I think that most of them would be those scary UFO voices. I couldnt bear that, Ruth, because in the two months after my hard time in the house by the lake, I remembered a lot of things I had spent a lot of years repressing. I think the most important of those memories came to the surface between the first operation on my hand and the second, when I was on medication (this is the technical hospital term for stoned out of your gourd) almost all the time. The memory was this in the two years or so between the day of the eclipse and the day of my brother Wills birthday partythe one where he goosed me during the croquet gameI heard all those voices almost constantly. Maybe Wills goosing me acted as some kind of rough, accidental therapy. I suppose its possible; dont they say that our ancestors invented cooking after eating what forest fires left behind? Although if some serendipitous therapy took place that day, I have an idea that it didnt come with the goose but when I hauled off and pounded Will one in the mouth for doing it ... and at this point none of that matters. What matters is that, following that day on the deck, I spent two years sharing space in my head with a kind of whispering choir, dozens of voices that passed judgment on my every word and action. Some were kind and supportive, but most were the voices of people who were afraid, people who were confused, people who thought Jessie was a worthless little baggage who deserved every bad thing that happened to her and who would have to pay double for every good thing. For two years I heard those voices, Ruth, and when they stopped, I forgot them. Not a little at a time, but all at once. How could a thing like that happen? I dont know, and in a very real sense, I dont care. I might if the change had made things worse, I suppose, but it didntit made them immeasurably better. I spent the two years between the eclipse and the birthday party in a kind of fugue state, with my conscious mind shattered into a lot of squabbling fragments, and the real epiphany was this if I let nice, kind Brandon Milheron have his way, Id end up right back where startedheaded down Nuthouse Lane by way of Schizophrenia Boulevard. And this time theres no little brother around to administer crude shock therapy; this time I have to do it myself, just as I had to get out of Geralds goddam handcuffs myself. Brandon was watching me, trying to gauge the result of what hed said. He must not have been able to, because he said it again, this time in a slightly different way. You have to remember that, no matter how it looks, you could be wrong. And I think you have to resign yourself to the fact that youre never going to know, one way or the other, for sure. No, I dont. He raised his eyebrows. Theres still an excellent chance that I can find out for sure. And youre going to help me, Brandon. He was starting to smile that lessthanpleasant smile again, the one I bet he doesnt even know is in his repertoire, the one that says you cant live with em and you cant shoot em. Oh? And how am I going to do that? By taking me to see Joubert, I said. Oh, no, he said Thats the one thing I absolutely will notcan notdo, Jessie. Ill spare you the hour of roundandround which followed, a conversation that degenerated at one point to such intellectually profound statements as Youre crazy, Jess and Quit trying to run my life, Brandon. I thought of waving the cudgel of the press in front of himit was the one thing I was almost sure would make him cave inbut in the end, I didnt have to. All I had to do was cry. In a way it makes me feel unbelievably sleazy to write that, but in another way it does not; in another way I recognize it as just another symptom of whats wrong between the fellers and the girls in this particular squaredance. He didnt entirely believe I was serious until I started to cry, you see. To make a long story at least a little shorter, he got on the telephone, made four or five quick calls, and then came back with the news that Joubert was going to be arraigned the following day in Cumberland County District Court on a number of subsidiary chargesmostty theft. He said that if I was really seriousand if I had a hat with a veilhed take me. I agreed at once, and although Brandons face said he believed he was making one of the biggest mistakes of his life, he stuck by his word. Jessie paused again, and when she began to type once more she did so slowly, looking through the screen to yesterday, when last nights six inches of snow had still been just a smooth white threat in the sky. She saw blue flashers on the road ahead, felt Brandons blue Beamer slowing down. We got to the hearing late because there was an overturned trailer truck on 1295thats the city bypass. Brandon didnt say so, but I know he was hoping wed get there too late, that Joubert would already have been taken back to his cell at the end of the County Jails maximumsecurity wing, but the guard at the courthouse door said the hearing was still going on, although finishing up. As Brandon opened the door for me, he leaned close to my ear and murmured Put the veil down, Jessie, and keep it down. I lowered it and Brandon put a hand on my waist and led me inside. The courtroom . . . Jessie stopped, looking out the window into the darkening afternoon with eyes that were wide and gray and blank. Remembering. 38 The courtroom is illuminated by the sort of hanging glass globes Jessie associates with the fiveanddime stores of her youth, and it is as sleepy as a grammar school classroom at the end of a winter day. As she walks forward down the aisle, she is aware of two sensationsBrandons hand, still on the incurve of her waist, and the veil tickling against her cheeks like cobwebs. These two sensations combine to make her feel strangely bridal. Two lawyers stand before the judges bench. The judge is leaning forward, looking down into their upturned faces, the three of them lost in some murmuring, technical conversation. To Jessie they look like a reallife recreation of a Boz sketch from some Charles Dickens novel. The bailiff stands to the left, next to the American flag. Near him, the court stenographer is waiting for the current legal discussion, from which she has apparently been excluded, to be over. And, sitting at a long table on the far side of the rail which divides the room between the area set aside for the spectators and that which belongs to the combatants, is a skinny, impossibly tall figure clad in a brightorange jailhouse overall. Next to him is a man in a suit, surely another lawyer. The man in the orange jumpsuit is hunched over a yellow legal pad, apparently writing something. From a million miles away, Jessie feels Brandon Milherons hand press more insistently against her waist. This is close enough, he murmurs. She moves away from him. Hes wrong; its not close enough. Brandon doesnt have the slightest idea of what shes thinking or feeling, but thats okay; she knows. For the time being, all her voices have become one voice; she is basking in unexpected unanimity, and what she knows is this if she doesnt get closer to him now, if she doesnt get just as close as she can, he will never be far enough away. He will always be in the closet, or just outside the window, or hiding under the bed at midnight, grinning his pallid, wrinkled grinthe one that shows the glimmers of gold far back in his mouth. She steps quickly up the aisle toward the rail divider with the gauzy stuff of the veil touching her cheeks like tiny, concerned fingers. She can hear Brandon grumbling unhappily, but the sound is coming from at least ten lightyears away. Closer (but still on the next continent), one of the lawyers standing before the bench is muttering, . . . feel the State has been intransigent in this matter, your honor, and if youll just look at our citationsmost notably Castonguay vs. Hollis . . . Closer still, and now the bailiff glances up at her, suspicious for a moment, then relaxing as Jessie raises her veil and smiles at him. Still holding her eye with his own, the bailiff jerks his thumb toward Joubert and gives his head a minute shake, a gesture which she can, in her heightened emotional and perceptual state, read as easily as a tabloid headline Stay away from the tiger, maam. Dont get within reach of his claws. Then he relaxes even more as he sees Brandon catch up with her, a parfit gentle knight if ever there was one, but he clearly does not hear Brandons low growl Put the veil down, Jessie, or I will, goddammit! She not only refuses to do what he says, she refuses to even glance his way. She knows his threat is empty he will not cause a scene in these hallowed surroundings and will do almost anything to avoid being dragged into onebut it would not matter even if it werent. She likes Brandon, she honestly does, but her days of doing things simply because its a man doing the telling are over. She is only peripherally aware that Brandon is hissing at her, that the judge is still conferring with the defense lawyer and the County Prosecutor, that the bailiff has lapsed back into his semicoma, his face dreamy and distant. Jessies own face is frozen in the pleasant smile which disarmed the bailiff, but her heart is pounding furiously in her chest. She has now come within two steps of the railtwo short stepsand sees she was wrong about what Joubert is doing. He is not writing, after all. He is drawing. His picture shows a man with an erect penis roughly the size of a baseball bat. The man in the picture has his head down, and he is fellating himself. She can see the picture perfectly well, but she can still see only a small pale slice of the artists cheek and the dank clots of hair which dangle against it. Jessie, you cant Brandon begins, grabbing at her arm. She snatches it away without looking back; all her attention is now fixed on Joubert. Hey! she stagewhispers at him. Hey, you! Nothing, at least not yet. She is swept by a feeling of unreality. Can it be she, doing this? Can it really? And for that matter, is she doing it? No one seems to be noticing her, no one at all. Hey! Asshole! Louder now, angrystill a whisper, but only just barely. Pssst! Pssst! Hey, Im talking to you! Now the judge looks up, frowning, so she is getting through to somebody, it seems. Brandon makes a groaning, despairing sound and clamps a hand on her shoulder.


She would have yanked away from him if he had tried to pull her backward down the aisle, even if it meant ripping off the top half of her dress in the process, and perhaps Brandon knows this, because he only forces her to sit down on the empty bench just behind the defense table (all the benches are empty; this is technically a closed hearing), and at that moment, Raymond Andrew Joubert finally turns around. His grotesque asteroid of a face, with its swollen, poochy lips, its knifeblade of a nose, and its bulging bulb of a forehead, is totally vacant, totally incurious ... but it is the face, she knows it at once, and the powerful feeling which fills her is mostly not horror. Mostly it is relief. Then, all at once, Jouberts face lights up. Color stains his narrow cheeks like a rash, and the redrimmed eyes take on a hideous sparkle she has seen before. They stare at her now as they stared at her in the house on Kashwakamak Lake, with the exalted raptness of the irredeemable lunatic, and she is held, hypnotized, by the awful rise of recognition she sees in his eyes. Mr. Milheron? the judge is asking sharply from some other universe. Mr. Milheron, can you tell me what youre doing here and who this woman is? Raymond Andrew Joubert is gone; this is the space cowboy, the specter of love. Its oversized lips wrinkle back once more, revealing its teeththe stained, unlovely, and completely serviceable teeth of a wild animal. She sees the glimmer of gold like feral eyes far back in a cave. And slowly, oh so slowly, the nightmare comes to life and begins to move; slowly the nightmare begins to raise its freakishly long orange arms. Mr. Milheron, I would like you and your uninvited guest to approach the bench, and immediately! The bailiff, alerted by the whiplash in that tone, snaps out of his daze. The stenographer looks around. Jessie thinks Brandon takes her arm, meaning to make her comply with the judges order, but she cannot say for sure, and it doesnt matter in any case, because she cannot move; she might as well be planted waistdeep in a plug of cement. It is the eclipse again, of course; the total, final eclipse. After all these years, the stars are once again shining in the daytime. They are shining inside her head. She sits there and watches as the grinning creature in the orange overall raises its misshapen arms, still holding her with its muddy, redrimmed gaze. It raises its arms until its long, narrow hands hang in the air about a foot from each of its pale ears. The mimicry is horribly effective she can almost see the bedposts as the thing in the orange jumpsuit first revolves those splayed, longfingered hands ... and then shakes them back and forth, as if they are being held by restraints which only he and the woman in the turnedback veil can see. The voice that comes out of its grinning mouth is a bizarre contrast to the gross overdevelopment of the face from which it drifts; it is a reedy, whining voice, the voice of an insane child. I dont think youre anyone! Raymond Andrew Joubert pipes up in that childish, wavering voice. It cuts through the stale, overheated air of the courtroom like a bright blade. Youre only made of moonlight! And then it begins to laugh. It shakes its hideous hands back and forth within manacles only the two of them can see, and it laughs ... laughs ... laughs. 39 Jessie reached for her cigarettes, but succeeded only in knocking them all over the floor. She turned to the keyboard and the VDT again, without making any attempt to pick them up. I felt myself going insane, Ruthand I mean I really felt it happening. Then I heard some voice inside me. Punkin, I think; Punkin who showed me how to get out of the handcuffs in the first place and got me moving when Goody tried to interfereGoody with her wistful, counterfeit logic. Punkin, God bless her. Dont you give it the satisfaction, Jessie! she said. And dont you let Brandon pull you away until you do what you have to do! He was trying, too. He had both hands on my shoulders and was pulling on me as if I were a tugofwar rope, and the judge was hammering away with his gavel and the bailiff was running over and I knew I only had that one last second to do something that would matter, that would make a difference, that would show me that no eclipse lasts forever, so I ... So she had leaned forward and spit into his face. 40 And now she leaned back suddenly in her desk chair, put her hands over her eyes, and began to weep. She wept for almost ten minutesgreat noisy shaking sobs in the deserted houseand then she began to type again. She stopped frequently to swipe her arm across her streaming eyes, trying to clear her blurred vision. After awhile she began to get ahead of the tears. ... so I leaned forward and spit in his face, only it wasnt just spit; I hit him with a really fine gobber. I dont think he even noticed, but thats all right. It wasnt him I did it for, was it? I will have to pay a fine for the privilege and Brandon says it will probably be a hefty one, but Brandon himself got out from under with only a reprimand, and thats a hell of a lot more important to me than any fine I might have to pay, since I more or less twisted his arm up behind his back and then lockstepped him to the hearing. And I guess thats it. Finally it. I think Im really going to mail this, Ruth, and then Im going to spend the next couple of weeks sweating out your reply. I treated you shabbily all those years ago, and while it wasnt strictly my fautttve only come to realize lately how often and how much we are moved by others, even when we are priding ourselves on our control and selfretianceI still want to say Im sorry. And I want to tell you something else, something Im really starting to believe Im going to be okay. Not today, not tomorrow, and not next week, but eventually. As okay as we mortals are privileged to get, anyway. Its good to know thatgood to know that survival is still an option, and that sometimes it even feels good. That sometimes it actually feels like victory. I love you, dear Ruth. You and your tough talk were a big part of saving my life last October, even though you didnt know it. I love you so much. Your old friend, Jessie P.S. Please write me. Better yet, call ... please? J Ten minutes later she laid her letter, printed and sealed within a manila envelope (it had proven too bulky for an ordinary businesslength envelope), on the table in the front hall. She had gotten Ruths address from Carol Rittenhousean address, anywayand had written it on the envelope in the careful, straggly letters which were all she could make with her left hand. Beside it, she put a note carefully written in the same straggly letters. Meggie Please mail this. If I should call downstairs and ask you not to, please agree ... and then mail it anyway. She went to the window in the parlor and stood there for awhile before going upstairs, looking out over the Bay. It was starting to get dark. For the first time in a long time, this simple realization didnt fill her with terror. Oh, what the fuck, she told the empty house. Bring on the night. Then she turned and slowly climbed the stairs to the second floor. When Megan Landis came back from running her errands an hour later and saw the letter on the table in the front hall, Jessie was deeply asleep beneath two down comforters in the upstairs guest room ... which she now called her room. For the first time in months her dreams were not unpleasant, and a tiny cats smile curled the corners of her mouth. When a cold February wind blew beneath the eaves and moaned in the chimney, she burrowed deeper beneath the comforters ... but that small, wise smile did not fade. November 16, 1991 Bangor, Maine SIGNET Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi  110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Viking edition. First Signet Printing, July 1993 Copyright  Stephen King, 1992 Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works Can I Get a Witness, by Eddie Holland, Brian Holland, and Lamont Dozier. Published by Stone Agate Music, copyright  1963. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Space Cowboy, lyrics and music by Steve Miller and Ben Sidran, copyright  Sailor Music, 1969. All rights reserved. Used by permission. The Talkin Blues, words and music by Woody Guthrie. TRO, copyright  Ludlow Music, Inc., New York, New York, 1988. Used by permission. Come now, my child, from But Even So, by Kenneth Patchen, copyright  Kenneth Patchen, 1968. REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. eISBN  9781101138151 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or thirdparty Web sites or their content. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated httpus.penguingroup.com This book is dedicated, with love and admiration, to six good women  Margaret Spruce Morehouse Catherine Spruce Graves Stephanie Spruce Leonard Anne Spruce Labree Tabitba Spruce King Marcella Spruce A Different Kind of Bedtime Story ... GERALDS GAME On a warm weekday in October, in the lovely summer home of Gerald and Jessie Burlingame, a game is about to begin. Its a game to be played between husband and wife, and a game that has Jessie being innocently handcuffed to the bedposts. Then, in one horrible, violent act, Gerald is dead and Jessiewell, shes alone and still chained to the bed. But Jessies about to have company that goes beyond all of her worst nightmares. Stunning ... hairy ... I was scared to death ... but I read on avidly.... I had to know what would happen. Cosmopolitan STEPHEN KING FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT Chilling. Milwaukee Journal GERALDS GAME Terrific. USA Today IT Mesmerizing. Washington Post Book World MISERY Wonderful. Houston Chronicle NEEDFUL THINGS Demonic Kirkus Reviews NIGHT SHIFT Macabre. Dallas TimesHerald PET SEMATARY Unrelenting. Pittsburgh Press SALEMS LOT Tremendous. Kirkus Reviews THE SHINING Spellbinding. Pittsburgh Press SKELETON CREW Diabolical. Associated Press THE STAND Great New York Times Book Review THINNER Extraordinary. Booklist THE TOMMYKNOCKERS Marvelous. Boston Globe WORKS BY STEPHEN KING NOVELS Carrie Salems Lot The Shining The Stand The Dead Zone Firestarter Cujo THE DARK TOWER I The Gunslinger Christine Pet Sematary Cycle of the Werewolf The Talisman (with Peter Straub) It The Eyes of the Dragon Misery The Tommyknockers THE DARK TOWER II The Drawing of the Three THE DARK TOWER III The Waste Lands The Dark Half Needful Things Geralds Game Dolores Claiborne Insomnia Rose Madder Desperation The Green Mile THE DARK TOWER IV Wizard and Glass Bag of Bones Hearts in Atlantis The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon Dreamcatcher Black House (with Peter Straub) From a Buick 8 AS RICHARD RACHMAN The Long Walk Roadwork The Running Man Thinner The Regulators COLLECTIONS Night Shift Different Seasons Skeleton Crew Four Past Midnight Nightmares and Dreamscapes Everythings Eventual NONFICTION Danse Macabre On Writing SCREENPLAYS Creepshow Cats Eye Silver Bullet Maximum Overdrive Pet Sematary Golden Years Sleepwalkers The Stand The Shining Rose Red Storm of the Century [Sadie] gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer. You men! You filthy dirty pigs! Youre all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs! W. Somerset Maugham, Rain TOTAL ECLIPSE of the sun SATURDAY July 20, 1963 Contents Title Page Dedication  Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Copyright Page


THE TALISMAN Stephen King Peter Straub BALLANTINE BOOKS  NEW YORK CONTENTS Title Page Dedication Quotes PART I JACK LIGHTS OUT 1 The Alhambra Inn and Gardens 2 The Funnel Opens 3 Speedy Parker 4 Jack Goes Over 5 Jack and Lily INTERLUDE Sloat in This World (I) PART II THE ROAD OF TRIALS 6 The Queens Pavillion 7 Farren 8 The Oatley Tunnel 9 Jack in the Pitcher Plant 10 Elroy 11 The Death of Jerry Bledsoe 12 Jack Goes to the Market 13 The Men in the Sky 14 Buddy Parkins 15 Snowball Sings 16 Wolf INTERLUDE Sloat in This World (II) 17 Wolf and the Herd 18 Wolf Goes to the Movies 19 Jack in the Box PART III A COLLISION OF WORLDS 20 Taken by the Law 21 The Sunlight Home 22 The Sermon 23 Ferd Janklow 24 Jack Names the Planets 25 Jack and Wolf Go to Hell 26 Wolf in the Box 27 Jack Lights Out Again 28 Jacks Dream 29 Richard at Thayer 30 Thayer Gets Weird 31 Thayer Goes to Hell 32 Send Out Your Passenger! 33 Richard in the Dark INTERLUDE Sloat in This World Orris in the Territories (III) PART IV THE TALISMAN 34 Anders INTERLUDE Sloat in This World (IV) 35 The Blasted Lands 36 Jack and Richard Go to War 37 Richard Remembers 38 The End of the Road 39 Point Venuti 40 Speedy on the Beach INTERLUDE Sloat in This World (V) 41 The Black Hotel 42 Jack and the Talisman 43 News From Everywhere 44 The Earthquake 45 In Which Many Things are Resolved on the Beach 46 Another Journey 47 Journeys End Epilogue Conclusion Copyright Page Acknowledgments Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint copyrighted material Bourne Co. Music Publishers Portions of lyrics from Whos Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, by Frank E. Churchill and Ann Ronell. Copyright 1933 by Bourne Co. Copyright renewed. Bourne Co. Music Publishers and Callicoon Music Portions of lyrics from When the Red, Red Robin Goes BobBobBobbing Along, music and lyrics by Harry Woods. Copyright  1926 by Bourne Co. and Callicoon Music. Copyright renewed. CBS Songs, A Division of CBS, Inc. Portions of lyrics from Reuben James, by Barry Etris and Alex Harvey. Copyright  1969 by UNART MUSIC CORPORATION. Rights assigned to CBS CATALOGUE PARTNERSHIP. All rights controlled and administered by CBS UNART CATALOG INC. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. An excerpt from The Wizard of Oz, lyric by E. Y. Harburg, music by Harold Arlen. Copyright  1938, renewed 1966, MetroGoldwynMayer Inc. Copyright 1939, renewed 1967 by Leo Feist, Inc. Rights assigned to CBS CATALOGUE PARTNERSHIP. All rights controlled and administered by CBS FEIST CATALOG INC. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Hudson Bay Music, Inc. Portions of lyrics from Long Line Rider (Bobby Darin). Copyright  1968 by Alley Music Corporation and Trio Music Company, Inc. All rights administered by Hudson Bay Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Jondora Music Portions of lyrics from Run Through the Jungle, by John Fogarty. Copyright  1973 by Jondora Music, courtesy Fantasy, Inc., Berkeley, California. Sanga Music Inc. Portions of lyrics from Gotta Travel On, by Paul Clayton, David Lazar, Larry Ehrlich, and Tom Six. Copyright  1958, 1960 by Sanga Music Inc. All rights reserved. This book is for RUTH KING ELVENA STRAUB Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop, we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, may be; and stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. MARK TWAIN, Huckleberry Finn My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was dogtired. MARK TWAIN, Huckleberry Finn ONE JACK LIGHTS OUT 1 The Alhambra Inn and Gardens 1 On September 15th, 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stood where the water and land come together, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking out at the steady Atlantic. He was twelve years old and tall for his age. The seabreeze swept back his brown hair, probably too long, from a fine, clear brow. He stood there, filled with the confused and painful emotions he had lived with for the last three monthssince the time when his mother had closed their house on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles and, in a flurry of furniture, checks, and realestate agents, rented an apartment on Central Park West. From that apartment they had fled to this quiet resort on New Hampshires tiny seacoast. Order and regularity had disappeared from Jacks world. His life seemed as shifting, as uncontrolled, as the heaving water before him. His mother was moving him through the world, twitching him from place to place; but what moved his mother? His mother was running, running. Jack turned around, looking up the empty beach first to the left, then to the right. To the left was Arcadia Funworld, an amusement park that ran all racket and roar from Memorial Day to Labor Day. It stood empty and still now, a heart between beats. The roller coaster was a scaffold against that featureless, overcast sky, the uprights and angled supports like strokes done in charcoal. Down there was his new friend, Speedy Parker, but the boy could not think about Speedy Parker now. To the right was the Alhambra Inn and Gardens, and that was where the boys thoughts relentlessly took him. On the day of their arrival Jack had momentarily thought hed seen a rainbow over its dormered and gambreled roof. A sign of sorts, a promise of better things. But there had been no rainbow. A weathervane spun rightleft, leftright, caught in a crosswind. He had got out of their rented car, ignoring his mothers unspoken desire for him to do something about the luggage, and looked up. Above the spinning brass cock of the weathervane hung only a blank sky. Open the trunk and get the bags, sonny boy, his mother had called to him. This brokendown old actress wants to check in and hunt down a drink. An elementary martini, Jack had said.  Youre not so old, you were supposed to say. She was pushing herself effortfully off the carseat. Youre not so old. She gleamed at hima glimpse of the old, gotohell Lily Cavanaugh (Sawyer), queen of two decades worth of B movies. She straightened her back. Its going to be okay here, Jacky, she had said. Everythings going to be okay here. This is a good place. A seagull drifted over the roof of the hotel, and for a second Jack had the disquieting sensation that the weathervane had taken flight. Well get away from the phone calls for a while, right? Sure, Jack had said. She wanted to hide from Uncle Morgan, she wanted no more wrangles with her dead husbands business partner, she wanted to crawl into bed with an elementary martini and hoist the covers over her head. . . . Mom, whats wrong with you? There was too much death, the world was halfmade of death. The gull cried out overhead. Andelay, kid, andelay, his mother had said. Lets get into the Great Good Place. Then, Jack had thought At least theres always Uncle Tommy to help out in case things get really hairy. But Uncle Tommy was already dead; it was just that the news was still on the other end of a lot of telephone wires. 2 The Alhambra hung out over the water, a great Victorian pile on gigantic granite blocks which seemed to merge almost seamlessly with the low headlanda jutting collarbone of granite here on the few scant miles of New Hampshire seacoast. The formal gardens on its landward side were barely visible from Jacks beachfront anglea dark green flip of hedge, that was all. The brass cock stood against the sky, quartering west by northwest. A plaque in the lobby announced that it was here, in 1838, that the Northern Methodist Conference had held the first of the great New England abolition rallies. Daniel Webster had spoken at fiery, inspired length. According to the plaque, Webster had said From this day forward, know that slavery as an American institution has begun to sicken and must soon die in all our states and territorial lands. 3 So they had arrived, on that day last week which had ended the turmoil of their months in New York. In Arcadia Beach there were no lawyers employed by Morgan Sloat popping out of cars and waving papers which had to be signed, had to be filed, Mrs. Sawyer. In Arcadia Beach the telephones did not ring out from noon until three in the morning (Uncle Morgan appeared to forget that residents of Central Park West were not on California time). In fact the telephones in Arcadia Beach rang not at all. On the way into the little resort town, his mother driving with squintyeyed concentration, Jack had seen only one person on the streetsa mad old man desultorily pushing an empty shopping cart along a sidewalk. Above them was that blank gray sky, an uncomfortable sky. In total contrast to New York, here there was only the steady sound of the wind, hooting up deserted streets that looked much too wide with no traffic to fill them. Here were empty shops with signs in the windows saying OPEN WEEKENDS ONLY or, even worse, SEE YOU IN JUNE! There were a hundred empty parking places on the street before the Alhambra, empty tables in the Arcadia Tea and Jam Shoppe next door. And shabbycrazy old men pushed shopping carts along deserted streets. I spent the happiest three weeks of my life in this funny little place, Lily told him, driving past the old man (who turned, Jack saw, to look after them with frightened suspicionhe was mouthing something but Jack could not tell what it was) and then swinging the car up the curved drive through the front gardens of the hotel. For that was why they had bundled everything they could not live without into suitcases and satchels and plastic shopping bags, turned the key in the lock on the apartment door (ignoring the shrill ringing of the telephone, which seemed to penetrate that same keyhole and pursue them down the hall); that was why they had filled the trunk and back seat of the rented car with all their overflowing boxes and bags and spent hours crawling north along the Henry Hudson Parkway, then many more hours pounding up I95because Lily Cavanaugh Sawyer had once been happy here. In 1968, the year before Jacks birth, Lily had been nominated for an Academy Award for her role in a picture called Blaze. Blaze was a better movie than most of Lilys, and in it she had been able to demonstrate a much richer talent than her usual badgirl roles had revealed. Nobody expected Lily to win, least of all Lily; but for Lily the customary clich about the real honor being in the nomination was honest truthshe did feel honored, deeply and genuinely, and to celebrate this one moment of real professional recognition, Phil Sawyer had wisely taken her for three weeks to the Alhambra Inn and Gardens, on the other side of the continent, where they had watched the Oscars while drinking champagne in bed. (If Jack had been older, and had he had an occasion to care, he might have done the necessary subtraction and discovered that the Alhambra had been the place of his essential beginning.) When the Supporting Actress nominations were read, according to family legend, Lily had growled to Phil, If I win this thing and Im not there, Ill do the Monkey on your chest in my stiletto heels. But when Ruth Gordon had won, Lily had said, Sure, she deserves it, shes a great kid. And had immediately poked her husband in the middle of the chest and said, Youd better get me another part like that, you bigshot agent you. There had been no more parts like that. Lilys last role, two years after Phils death, had been that of a cynical exprostitute in a film called Motorcycle Maniacs. It was that period Lily was commemorating now, Jack knew as he hauled the baggage out of the trunk and the back seat. A D Agostino bag had torn right down through the big DAG, and a jumble of rolledup socks, loose photographs, chessmen and the board, and comic books had dribbled over all else in the trunk. Jack managed to get most of this stuff into other bags. Lily was moving slowly up the hotel steps, pulling herself along on the railing like an old lady. Ill find the bellhop, she said without turning around. Jack straightened up from the bulging bags and looked again at the sky where he was sure he had seen a rainbow. There was no rainbow, only that uncomfortable, shifting sky. Then Come to me, someone said behind him in a small and perfectly audible voice. What? he asked, turning around. The empty gardens and drive stretched out before him. Yes? his mother said. She looked cricklebacked, leaning over the knob of the great wooden door. Mistake, he said. There had been no voice, no rainbow. He forgot both and looked up at his mother, who was struggling with the vast door. Hold on, Ill help, he called, and trotted up the steps, awkwardly carrying a big suitcase and a straining paper bag filled with sweaters. 4 Until he met Speedy Parker, Jack had moved through the days at the hotel as unconscious of the passage of time as a sleeping dog. His entire life seemed almost dreamlike to him during these days, full of shadows and inexplicable transitions. Even the terrible news about Uncle Tommy which had come down the telephone wires the night before had not entirely awakened him, as shocking as it had been. If Jack had been a mystic, he might have thought that other forces had taken him over and were manipulating his mothers life and his own. Jack Sawyer at twelve was a being who required things to do, and the noiseless passivity of these days, after the hubbub of Manhattan, had confused and undone him in some basic way. Jack had found himself standing on the beach with no recollection of having gone there, no idea of what he was doing there at all. He supposed he was mourning Uncle Tommy, but it was as though his mind had gone to sleep, leaving his body to fend for itself. He could not concentrate long enough to grasp the plots of the sitcoms he and Lily watched at night, much less keep the nuances of fiction in his head. Youre tired from all this moving around, his mother said, dragging deeply on a cigarette and squinting at him through the smoke. All you have to do, JackO, is relax for a little while. This is a good place. Lets enjoy it as long as we can. Bob Newhart, before them in a slightly tooreddish color on the set, bemusedly regarded a shoe he held in his right hand. Thats what Im doing, Jacky. She smiled at him. Relaxing and enjoying it. He peeked at his watch. Two hours had passed while they sat in front of the television, and he could not remember anything that had preceded this program. Jack was getting up to go to bed when the phone rang. Good old Uncle Morgan Sloat had found them. Uncle Morgans news was never very great, but this was apparently a blockbuster even by Uncle Morgans standards. Jack stood in the middle of the room, watching as his mothers face grew paler, palest. Her hand crept to her throat, where new lines had appeared over the last few months, and pressed lightly. She said barely a word until the end, when she whispered, Thank you, Morgan, and hung up. She had turned to Jack then, looking older and sicker than ever. Got to be tough now, Jacky, all right? He hadnt felt tough. She took his hand then and told him. Uncle Tommy was killed in a hitandrun accident this afternoon, Jack. He gasped, feeling as if the wind had been torn out of him. He was crossing La Cienega Boulevard and a van hit him. There was a witness who said it was black, and that the words WILD CHILD were written on the side, but that was . . . was all. Lily began to cry. A moment later, almost surprised, Jack began to cry as well. All of that had happened three days ago, and to Jack it seemed forever. 5 On September 15th, 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stood looking out at the steady water as he stood on an unmarked beach before a hotel that looked like a castle in a Sir Walter Scott novel. He wanted to cry but was unable to release his tears. He was surrounded by death, death made up half the world, there were no rainbows. The WILD CHILD van had subtracted Uncle Tommy from the world. Uncle Tommy, dead in L.A., too far from the east coast, where even a kid like Jack knew he really belonged. A man who felt he had to put on a tie before going out to get a roast beef sandwich at Arbys had no business on the west coast at all. His father was dead, Uncle Tommy was dead, his mother might be dying. He felt death here, too, at Arcadia Beach, where it spoke through telephones in Uncle Morgans voice. It was nothing as cheap or obvious as the melancholy feel of a resort in the offseason, where one kept stumbling over the Ghosts of Summers Past; it seemed to be in the texture of things, a smell on the ocean breeze. He was scared . . . and he had been scared for a long time. Being here, where it was so quiet, had only helped him to realize ithad helped him to realize that maybe Death had driven all the way up I95 from New York, squinting out through cigarette smoke and asking him to find some bop on the car radio. He could remembervaguelyhis father telling him that he was born with an old head, but his head didnt feel old now. Right now, his head felt very young. Scared, he thought. Im pretty damn scared. This is where the world ends, right? Seagulls coursed the gray air overhead. The silence was as gray as the airas deadly as the growing circles under her eyes. 6 When he had wandered into Funworld and met Lester Speedy Parker after he did not quite know how many days of numbly drifting through time, that passive feeling of being on hold had somehow left him. Lester Parker was a black man with crinkly gray hair and heavy lines cutting through his cheeks. He was utterly unremarkable now despite whatever he had accomplished in his earlier life as a travelling blues musician. Nor had he said anything particularly remarkable. Yet as soon as Jack had walked aimlessly into Funworlds game arcade and met Speedys pale eyes he felt all the fuzziness leave him. He had become himself again. It was as if a magical current had passed directly from the old man into Jack. Speedy had smiled at him and said, Well, it looks like I got me some company. Little travellin man just walked in. It was true, he was not on hold anymore just an instant before, he had seemed to be wrapped in wet wool and cotton candy, and now he was set free. A silvery nimbus seemed to play about the old man for an instant, a little aureole of light which disappeared as soon as Jack blinked. For the first time Jack saw that the man was holding the handle of a wide heavy pushbroom. You okay, son? The handyman put one hand in the small of his back, and stretched backward. The world just get worse, or did she get better? Uh, better, Jack said. Then you come to the right place, Id say. What do they call you? Little travellin man, Speedy had said that first day, ole Travellin Jack. He had leaned his tall angular body against the SkeeBall machine and wrapped his arms around the broomhandle as though it were a girl at a dance. The man you see here is Lester Speedy Parker, formerly a travellin man hisself, son, hee heeoh yeah, Speedy knew the road, he knew all the roads, way back in the old days. Had me a band, Travellin Jack, played the blues. Gittar blues. Made me a few records, too, but I wont shame you by asking if you ever heard em. Every syllable had its own rhythmic lilt, every phrase its rimshot and backbeat; Speedy Parker carried a broom instead of a guitar, but he was still a musician. Within the first five seconds of talking to Speedy, Jack had known that his jazzloving father would have relished this mans company. He had tagged along behind Speedy for the better part of three or four days, watching him work and helping out when he could. Speedy let him bang in nails, sand down a picket or two that needed paint; these simple tasks done under Speedys instructions were the only schooling he was getting, but they made him feel better. Jack now saw his first days in Arcadia Beach as a period of unrelieved wretchedness from which his new friend had rescued him. For Speedy Parker was a friend, that was certainso certain, in fact, that in it was a quantity of mystery. In the few days since Jack had shaken off his daze (or since Speedy had shaken it off for him by dispelling it with one glance of his lightcolored eyes), Speedy Parker had become closer to him than any other friend, with the possible exception of Richard Sloat, whom Jack had known approximately since the cradle. And now, counteracting his terror at losing Uncle Tommy and his fear that his mother was actually dying, he felt the tug of Speedys warm wise presence from just down the street. Again, and uncomfortably, Jack had his old sense of being directed, of being manipulated as if a long invisible wire had pulled himself and his mother up to this abandoned place by the sea. They wanted him here, whoever they were. Or was that just crazy? In his inner vision he saw a bent old man, clearly out of his mind, muttering to himself as he pushed an empty shopping cart down the sidewalk. A gull screamed in the air, and Jack promised himself that he would make himself talk about some of his feelings with Speedy Parker. Even if Speedy thought he was nuts; even if he laughed at Jack. He would not laugh, Jack secretly knew. They were old friends because one of the things Jack understood about the old custodian was that he could say almost anything to him. But he was not ready for all that yet. It was all too crazy, and he did not understand it yet himself. Almost reluctantly Jack turned his back on Funworld and trudged across the sand toward the hotel. 2 The Funnel Opens 1 It was a day later, but Jack Sawyer was no wiser. He had, however, had one of the greatest nightmares of all time last night. In it, some terrible creature had been coming for his mothera dwarfish monstrosity with misplaced eyes and rotting, cheesy skin. Your mothers almost dead, Jack, can you say hallelujah? this monstrosity had croaked, and Jack knewthe way you knew things in dreamsthat it was radioactive, and that if it touched him, he would die, too. He had awakened with his body drenched in sweat, on the edge of a bitter scream. It took the steady pounding of the surf to reacquaint him with where he was, and it was hours before he could go back to sleep. He had meant to tell his mother about the dream this morning, but Lily had been sour and uncommunicative, hiding in a cloud of cigarette smoke. It was only as he started out of the hotel coffee shop on some trumpedup errand that she smiled at him a little. Think about what you want to eat tonight. Yeah? Yeah. Anything but fast food. I did not come all the way from L.A. to New Hampshire in order to poison myself with hotdogs. Lets try one of those seafood places in Hampton Beach, Jack said. Fine. Go on and play. Go on and play, Jack thought with a bitterness utterly unlike him. Oh yeah, Mom, way to go. Too cool. Go on and play. With who? Mom, why are you here? Why are we here? How sick are you? How come you wont talk to me about Uncle Tommy? Whats Uncle Morgan up to? What Questions, questions. And not one of them worth a darned thing, because there was no one to answer them. Unless Speedy But that was ridiculous; how could one old black man hed just met solve any of his problems? Still, the thought of Speedy Parker danced at the edge of his mind as Jack ambled across the boardwalk and down to the depressingly empty beach. 2 This is where the world ends, right? Jack thought again. Seagulls coursed the gray air overhead. The calendar said it was still summer, but summer ended here at Arcadia Beach on Labor Day. The silence was gray as the air. He looked down at his sneakers and saw that there was some sort of tarry goo on them. Beach crud, he thought. Some kind of pollution. He had no idea where he had picked it up and he stepped back from the edge of the water, uneasy. The gulls in the air, swooping and crying. One of them screamed overhead and he heard a flat cracking that was almost metallic. He turned in time to see it come in for a fluttering, awkward landing on a hump of rock. The gull turned its head in rapid, almost robotic movements, as if to verify it was alone, and then it hopped down to where the clam it had dropped lay on the smooth, hardpacked sand. The clam had cracked open like an egg and Jack saw raw meat inside, still twitching . . . or perhaps that was his imagination. Dont want to see this. But before he could turn away, the gulls yellow, hooked beak was pulling at the meat, stretching it like a rubber band, and he felt his stomach knot into a slick fist. In his mind he could hear that stretched tissue screamingnothing coherent, only stupid flesh crying out in pain. He tried to look away from the seagull again and he couldnt. The gulls beak opened, giving him a brief glimpse of dirty pink gullet. The clam snapped back into its cracked shell and for a moment the gull was looking at him, its eyes a deadly black, confirming every horrible truth fathers die, mothers die, uncles die even if they went to Yale and look as solid as bank walls in their threepiece Savile Row suits. Kids die too, maybe . . . and at the end all there may be is the stupid, unthinking scream of living tissue. Hey, Jack said aloud, not aware he was doing anything but thinking inside his own head. Hey, give me a break. The gull sat over its catch, regarding him with its beady black eyes. Then it began to dig at the meat again. Want some, Jack? Its still twitching! By God, its so fresh it hardly knows its dead! The strong yellow beak hooked into the meat again and pulled. Strettttchhhhhh It snapped. The gulls head went up toward the gray September sky and its throat worked. And again it seemed to be looking at him, the way the eyes in some pictures seemed always to look at you no matter where you went in the room. And the eyes . . . he knew those eyes. Suddenly he wanted his motherher dark blue eyes. He could not remember wanting her with such desperation since he had been very, very small. Lala, he heard her sing inside his head, and her voice was the winds voice, here for now, somewhere else all too soon. Lala, sleep now, Jacky, babybunting, daddys gone ahunting. And all that jazz. Memories of being rocked, his mother smoking one Herbert Tareyton after another, maybe looking at a scriptblue pages, she called them, he remembered that blue pages. Lala, Jacky, all is cool. I love you, Jacky. Shhh . . . sleep. Lala. The gull was looking at him. With sudden horror that engorged his throat like hot salt water he saw it really was looking at him. Those black eyes (whose?) were seeing him. And he knew that look. A raw strand of flesh still dangled from the gulls beak. As he looked, the gull sucked it in. Its beak opened in a weird but unmistakable grin. He turned then and ran, head down, eyes shut against the hot salt tears, sneakers digging against the sand, and if there was a way to go up, go up and up, up to some gullseye view, one would have seen only him, only his tracks, in all that gray day; Jack Sawyer, twelve and alone, running back toward the inn, Speedy Parker forgotten, his voice nearly lost in tears and wind, crying the negative over and over again no and no and no. 3 He paused at the top of the beach, out of breath. A hot stitch ran up his left side from the middle of his ribs to the deepest part of his armpit. He sat down on one of the benches the town put out for old people and pushed his hair out of his eyes. Got to get control of yourself. If Sergeant Fury goes Section Eight, whos gonna lead the Howling Commandos? He smiled and actually did feel a little better. From up here, fifty feet from the water, things looked a little better. Maybe it was the change in barometric pressure, or something. What had happened to Uncle Tommy was horrible, but he supposed he would get over it, learn to accept. That was what his mother said, anyway. Uncle Morgan had been unusually pesty just lately, but then, Uncle Morgan had always been sort of a pest. As for his mother . . . well, that was the big one, wasnt it? Actually, he thought, sitting on the bench and digging at the verge of the sand beyond the boardwalk with one toe, actually his mother might still be all right. She could be all right; it was certainly possible. After all, no one had come right out and said it was the big C, had they? No. If she had cancer, she wouldnt have brought him here, would she? More likely theyd be in Switzerland, with his mother taking cold mineral baths and scoffing goatglands, or something. And she would do it, too. So maybe A low, dry whispering sound intruded on his consciousness. He looked down and his eyes widened. The sand had begun to move by the instep of his left sneaker. The fine white grains were sliding around in a small circle perhaps a fingers length in diameter. The sand in the middle of this circle suddenly collapsed, so that now there was a dimple in the sand. It was maybe two inches deep. The sides of this dimple were also in motion around and around, moving in rapid counterclockwise circuits. Not real, he told himself immediately, but his heart began to speed up again. His breathing also began to come faster. Not real, its one of the Daydreams, thats all, or maybe its a crab or something . . . But it wasnt a crab and it wasnt one of the Daydreamsthis was not the other place, the one he dreamed about when things were boring or maybe a little scary, and it sure as hell wasnt any crab. The sand spun faster, the sound arid and dry, making him think of static electricity, of an experiment they had done in science last year with a Leyden jar. But more than either of these, the minute sound was like a long lunatic gasp, the final breath of a dying man. More sand collapsed inward and began to spin. Now it was not a dimple; it was a funnel in the sand, a kind of reverse dustdevil. The bright yellow of a gum wrapper was revealed, covered, revealed, covered, revealed againeach time it showed up again. Jack could read more of it as the funnel grew JU, then JUI, then JUICY F. The funnel grew and the sand was jerked away from the gum wrapper again. It was as quick and rude as an unfriendly hand jerking down the covers on a made bed. JUICY FRUIT, he read, and then the wrapper flapped upward. The sand turned faster and faster, in a hissing fury. Hhhhhhaaaaahhhhhhhh was the sound the sand made. Jack stared at it, fascinated at first, and then horrified. The sand was opening like a large dark eye it was the eye of the gull that had dropped the clam on the rock and then pulled the living meat out of it like a rubber band. Hhhhhhaaaahhhhh, the sandspout mocked in its dead, dry voice. That was not a mindvoice. No matter how much Jack wished it were only in his head, that voice was real. His false teeth flew, Jack, when the old WILD CHILD hit him, out they went, rattledybang! Yale or no Yale, when the old WILD CHILD van comes and knocks your false teeth out, Jacky, you got to go. And your mother Then he was running again, blindly, not looking back, his hair blown off his forehead, his eyes wide and terrified. 4 Jack walked as quickly as he could through the dim lobby of the hotel. All the atmosphere of the place forbade running it was as quiet as a library, and the gray light which fell through the tall mullioned windows softened and blurred the already faded carpets. Jack broke into a trot as he passed the desk, and the stooped ashenskinned dayclerk chose that second to emerge through an arched wooden passage. The clerk said nothing, but his permanent scowl dragged the corners of his mouth another centimeter downward. It was like being caught running in church. Jack wiped his sleeve across his forehead, made himself walk the rest of the way to the elevators. He punched the button, feeling the desk clerks frown burning between his shoulder blades. The only time this week that Jack had seen the desk clerk smile had been when the man had recognized his mother.