The Stand

e to eat that comes in a bowl with meat and vegetables and gravy?"

Tom went stockstill. The animation died out of his face. His mouth dropped slackly open and he became the picture of idiocy.

Stu stirred uncomfortably and said, "Nick, don't you think we ought to--"

Nick shushed him with a finger at his lips, and at the same instant Tom came alive again.

"Stew!" he said, capering and laughing. "You're Stew!" He looked at Nick for confirmation, and Nick gave him a V-for-victory.

"M-O-O-N, that spells Stew, Tom Cullen knows that, everybody knows that!"

Nick pointed to the door of Tom's house.

"Want to come in? Laws, yes! All of us are going to come in. Tom's been decorating his house."

Ralph and Stu exchanged an amused glance as they followed Nick and Tom up the porch steps. Tom was always "decorating." He did not "furnish," because the house had of course been furnished when he moved in. Going inside was like entering a madly jumbled Mother Goose world.

A huge gilded birdcage with a green stuffed parrot carefully wired to the perch hung just inside the front door and Nick had to duck under it. The thing was, he thought, Tom's decorations were not just random rickrack. That would have made this house into something no more striking than a rummage sale barn. But there was something more here, something that seemed just beyond what the ordinary mind could grasp as a pattern. In a large square block over the mantel in the living room were a number of credit card signs, all of them centered and carefully mounted. YOUR VISA CARD WELCOME HERE. JUST SAY MASTERCARD. WE HONOR AMERICAN EXPRESS. DINER'S CLUB. Now the question occurred: How did Tom know that all those signs were part of a fixed set? He couldn't read, but somehow he had grasped the pattern.

Sitting on the coffee table was a large Styrofoam fire plug. On the windowsill, where it could catch the sunlight and reflect cool fans of blue light onto the wall, was a police car bubble.

Tom toured them through the entire house. The downstairs game room was filled with stuffed birds and animals that Tom had found in a taxidermy shop; he had strung the birds on nearly invisible piano wire and they seemed to cruise, owls and hawks and even a bald eagle with moth-eaten feathers and one yellow glass eye missing. A woodchuck stood on its hind legs in one corner, a gopher in another, a skunk in another, a weasel in the fourth. In the center of the room was a coyote, somehow seeming to be the focus for all the smaller animals.

The bannister leading up the stairs had been wrapped in red and white strips of Con-Tact paper so that it resembled a barber pole. The upper hallway was hung with fighter planes on more piano wire--Fokkers, Spads, Stukas, Spitfires, Zeros, Messerschmitts. The floor of the bathroom had been painted a bright electric blue and on it was Tom's extensive collection of toy boats, sailing an enamel sea around four white porcelain islands and one white porcelain continent: the legs of the tub, the base of the toilet.

At last Tom took them back downstairs and they sat below the credit card montage and facing a 3-D picture of John and Robert Kennedy against a background of gold-edged clouds. The legend beneath proclaimed BROTHERS TOGETHER IN HEAVEN.

"You like Tom's decorations? What do you think? Nice?"

"Very nice," Stu said. "Tell me. Those birds downstairs ... do they ever get on your nerves?"

"Laws, no!" Tom said, astounded. "They're full of sawdust!"

Nick handed a note to Ralph.

"Tom, Nick wants to know if you'd mind being hypnotized again. Like the time Stan did it. It's important this time, not just a game. Nick says he'll explain why afterward."

"Go ahead," Tom said. "Youuu... are getting ... verrrry sleepy ... right?"

"Yes, that's it," Ralph said.

"Do you want me to look at the watch again? I don't mind. You know, when you swing it back and forth? Verrrry...sleeeepy..." Tom looked at them doubtfully. "Except I don't feel very sleepy. Laws, no. I went to bed early last night. Tom Cullen always goes to bed early because there's no TV to watch."

Stu said softly: "Tom, would you like to see an elephant?"

Tom's eyes closed immediately. His head dropped forward loosely. His respiration deepened to long, slow strokes. Stu watched this with great surprise. Nick had given him the key phrase, but Stu hadn't known whether or not to believe it would work. And he had never expected that it could happen so fast.

"Just like putting a chicken's head under its wing," Ralph marveled.

Nick handed Stu his prepared "script" for this encounter. Stu looked at Nick for a long moment. Nick looked back, then nodded gravely that Stu should go ahead.

"Tom, can you hear me?" Stu asked.

"Yes, I can hear you," Tom said, and the quality of his voice made Stu look up sharply.

It was different from Tom's usual voice, but in a way Stu could not quite put his hand to. It reminded him of something which had happened when he was eighteen, and graduating from high school. They had been in the boys' locker room before the ceremony, all the guys he'd been going to school with since ... well, since the first day of the first grade in at least four cases, and almost as long in many others. And for just a moment he had seen how much their faces had changed between those old days, those first days, and that moment of insight, standing on the tile floor of the locker room with the black robe in his hands. That vision of change had made him shiver then, and it made him shiver now. The faces he had looked into had no longer been the faces of children ... but neither had they yet become the faces of men. They were faces in limbo, faces caught perfectly between two well-defined states of being. This voice, coming out of the shadowland of Tom Cullen's subconscious, seemed like those faces, only infinitely sadder. Stu thought it was the voice of the man forever denied.

But they were waiting for him to go on, and go on he must.

"I'm Stu Redman, Tom."

"Yes. Stu Redman."

"Nick is here."

"Yes, Nick is here."

"Ralph Brentner is here, too."

"Yes, Ralph is, too."

"We're your friends."

"I know."

"We'd like you to do something, Tom. For the Zone. It's dangerous."

"Dangerous ..."

Trouble crossed over Tom's face, like a cloud shadow slowly crossing a midsummer field of corn.

"Will I have to be afraid? Will I have to ..." He trailed off, sighing.

Stu looked at Nick, troubled.

Nick mouthed: Yes.

"It's him," Tom said, and sighed dreadfully. It was like the sound a bitter November wind makes in a stand of denuded oaks. Stu felt that shudder inside him again. Ralph had gone pale.

"Who, Tom?" Stu asked gently.

"Flagg. His name is Randy Flagg. The dark man. You want me to ..." That sick sigh again, bitter and long.

"How do you know him, Tom?" This wasn't in the script.

"Dreams ... I see his face in dreams."

I see his face in dreams. But none of them had seen his face. It was always hidden.

"You see him?"

"Yes ..."

"What does he look like, Tom?"

Tom didn't speak for a long time. Stu had decided he wasn't going to answer and he was preparing to go back to the "script" when Tom said: "He looks like anybody you see on the street. But when he grins, birds fall dead off telephone lines. When he looks at you a certain way, your prostate goes bad and your urine burns. The grass yellows up and dies where he spits. He's always outside. He came out of time. He doesn't know himself. He has the name of a thousand demons. Jesus knocked him into a herd of pigs once. His name is Legion. He's afraid of us. We're inside. He knows magic. He can call the wolves and live in the crows. He's the king of nowhere. But he's afraid of us. He's afraid of ... inside."

Tom fell silent.

The three of them stared at each other, pallid as gravestones. Ralph had seized his hat from his head and was kneading it convulsively in his hands. Nick had put one hand over his eyes. Stu's throat had turned to dry glass.

His name is Legion. He is the king of nowhere.

"Can you say anything else about him?" Stu asked in a low voice.

"Only that I'm afraid of him, too. But I'll do what you want. But Tom ... is so afraid." That dreadful sigh again.

"Tom," Ralph said suddenly. "Do you know if Mother Abagail ... if she's still alive?" Ralph's face was desperately set, the face of a man who has staked everything on one turn of the cards.

"She's alive." Ralph leaned against the back of his chair with a great gust of breath. "But she's not right with God yet," Tom added.

"Not right with God? Why not, Tommy?"

"She's in the wilderness, God has lifted her up in the wilderness, she does not fear the terror that flies at noon or the terror that creeps at midnight ... neither will the snake bite her nor the bee sting her ... but she's not right with God yet. It was not the hand of Moses that brought water from the rock. It was not the hand of Abagail that turned the weasels back with their bellies empty. She's to be pitied. She will see, but she will see too late. There will be death. His death. She will die on the wrong side of the river. She--"

"Stop him," Ralph groaned. "Can't you stop him?"

"Tom," Stu said.

"Yes."

"Are you the same Tom that Nick met in Oklahoma? Are you the same Tom we know when you're awake?"

"Yes, but I am more than that Tom."

"I don't understand."

He shifted a little, his sleeping face calm.

"I am God's Tom."

Completely unnerved now, Stu almost dropped Nick's notes.

"You say you'll do what we want."

"Yes."

"But do you see ... do you think you'll come back?"

"That's not for me to see or say. Where shall I go?"

"West, Tom."

Tom moaned. It was a sound that made the hair on the nape of Stu's neck stand on end. What are we sending him into? And maybe he knew. Maybe he had been there himself, only in Vermont, in mazes of corridors where the echo made it seem as if footsteps were following him. And gaining.

"West," Tom said. "West, yes."

"We're sending you to look, Tom. To look and see. Then to come back."

"Come back and tell."

"Can you do that?"

"Yes. Unless they catch and kill me."

Stu winced; they all winced.

"You go by yourself, Tom. Always west. Can you find west?"

"Where the sun goes down."

"Yes. And if anyone asks why you're there, this is what you'll say: They drove you out of the Free Zone--"

"Drove me out. Drove Tom out. Put him on the road."

"--because you were feebleminded."

"They drove Tom out because Tom is feebleminded."

"--and because you might have a woman and the woman might have idiot children."

"Idiot children like Tom."

Stu's stomach was rolling back and forth helplessly. His head felt like iron that had learned how to sweat. It was as if he was suffering from a terrible, debilitating hangover.

"Now repeat what you'll say if someone asks why you're in the west."

"They drove Tom out because he was feebleminded. Laws, yes. They were afraid I might have a woman the way you have them with your prick in bed. Make her pregnant with idiots."

"That's right, Tom. That's--"

"Drove me out," he said in a soft, grieving voice. "Drove Tom out of his nice house and put his feet on the road."

Stu passed a shaking hand over his eyes. He looked at Nick. Nick seemed to double, then treble, in his vision. "Nick, I don't know as I can finish," he said helplessly.

Nick looked at Ralph. Ralph, pale as cheese, could only shake his head.

"Finish," Tom said unexpectedly. "Don't leave me out here in the dark."

Forcing himself, Stu went on.

"Tom, do you know what the full moon looks like?"

"Yes ... big and round."

"Not the half-moon, or even most of the moon."

"No," Tom said.

"When you see that big round moon, you'll come back east. Back to us. Back to your house, Tom."

"Yes, when I see it, I'll come back," Tom agreed. "I'll come back home."

"And when you come back, you'll walk in the night and sleep in the day."

"Walk at night, sleep in the day."

"Right. And you won't let anybody see you if you can help it."

"No."

"But, Tom, someone might see you."

"Yes, someone might."

"If it's one person that sees you, Tom, kill him."

"Kill him," Tom said doubtfully.

"If it's more than one, run."

"Run," Tom said, with more certainty.

"But try not to be seen at all. Can you repeat all that back?"

"Yes. Come back when the moon is full. Not the half-moon, not the fingernail moon. Walk at night, sleep in the day. Don't let anybody see me. If one person sees me, kill him. If more than one person sees me, run away. But try not to let anyone see me."

"That's very good. I want you to wake up in a few seconds. Okay?"

"Okay."

"When I ask about the elephant, you'll wake up, okay?"

"Okay."

Stu sat back with a long, shuddery sigh. "Thank God that's over."

Nick agreed with his eyes.

"Did you know that might happen, Nick?"

Nick shook his head.

"How could he know those things?" Stu muttered.

Nick was motioning for his pad. Stu gave it to him, glad to be rid of it. His fingers had sweated the page with Nick's script written on it almost to transparency. Nick wrote and handed it to Ralph. Ralph read it, lips moving slowly, and then handed it to Stu.

"Some people through history have considered the insane and the retarded to be close to divine. I don't think he told us anything that can be of practical use to us, but I know he scared the hell out of me. Magic, he said. How do you fight magic?"

"It's over my head, that's all," Ralph muttered. "Those things he said about Mother Abagail, I don't even want to think about them. Wake him up, Stu, and let's get out of here as quick as we can." Ralph was close to tears.

Stu leaned forward again. "Tom?"

"Yes."

"Would you like to see an elephant?"

Tom's eyes opened at once and he looked around at them. "I told you it wouldn't work," he said. "Laws, no. Tom doesn't get sleepy in the middle of the day."

Nick handed a sheet to Stu, who glanced at it and then spoke to Tom. "Nick says you did just fine."

"I did? Did I stand on my head like before?"

With a twinge of bitter shame, Nick thought: No, Tom, you did a bunch of even better tricks this time.

"No," Stu said. "Tom, we came to ask if you could help us."

"Me? Help? Sure! I love to help!"

"This is dangerous, Tom. We want you to go west, and then come back and tell us what you saw."

"Okay, sure," Tom said without the slightest hesitation, but Stu thought he saw a momentary shadow cross Tom's face ... and linger behind his guileiess blue eyes. "When?"

Stu put a gentle hand on Tom's neck and wondered just what in the hell he was doing here. How were you supposed to figure these things out if you weren't Mother Abagail and didn't have a hot line to heaven? "Pretty soon now," he said gently. "Pretty soon."



When Stu got back to the apartment, Frannie was fixing supper.

"Harold was over," she said. "I asked him to stay to dinner, but he begged off."

"Oh."

She looked more closely at him. "Stuart Redman, what dog bit you?"

"A dog named Tom Cullen, I guess." And he told her everything.

They sat down to dinner. "What does it all mean?" Fran asked. Her face was pale, and she was not really eating, only pushing her food from one side of her plate to the other.

"Damned if I know," Stu said. "It's a kind of ... of seeing, I guess. I don't know why we should balk at the idea of Tom Cullen having visions while he's under hypnosis, not after the dreams we all had on our way here. If they weren't a kind of seeing, I don't know what they were."

"But they seem so long ago now ... or at least they do to me."

"Yeah, to me, too," Stu agreed, and realized he was pushing his own food around.

"Look, Stu--I know we agreed not to talk about committee business outside the committee's meetings if we could help it. You said we'd be wrangling all the time, and you were probably right. I haven't said word one about you turning into Marshal Dillon after the twenty-fifth, have I?"

He smiled briefly. "No, you haven't, Frannie."

"But I have to ask if you still think sending Tom Cullen west is a good idea. After what happened this afternoon."

"I don't know," Stu said. He pushed his plate away. Most of the food on it was untouched. He got up, went to the hall dresser, and found a pack of cigarettes. He had cut his consumption to three or four a day. He lit this one, drew harsh, stale tobacco smoke deep into his lungs, and blew it out. "On the positive side, his story is simple enough and believable enough. We drove him out because he's a halfwit. Nobody is going to be able to shake him from that. And if he gets back okay, we can hypnotize him--he goes under in the time it takes you to snap your fingers, for the Lord's sake--and he'll tell us everything he's seen, the important things and the unimportant things. It's possible that he'll turn out to be a better eyewitness than either of the others. I don't doubt that."

"If he gets back okay."

"Yeah, if. We gave him an instruction to travel east only at night and to hide up in the day. If he sees more than one person, to run. But if he was seen by one person only, to kill him."

"Stu, you didn't!"

"Of course we did!" he said angrily, wheeling on her. "We're not playing pat-a-cake here, Frannie! You must know what's going to happen to him ... or the Judge ... or Dayna ... if they get caught over there! Why else were you so set against the idea in the first place?"

"Okay," she said quietly. "Okay, Stu."

"No, it's not okay!" he said, and slammed the freshly lit cigarette down into a pottery ashtray, sending up a little cloud of sparks. Several of them landed on the back of his hand and he brushed them off with a quick, savage gesture. "It's not okay to send a feeble kid out to fight our battles, and it's not okay to push people around like pawns on a fuckin chessboard and it's not okay giving orders to kill like a Mafia boss. But I don't know what else we can do. I just don't know. If we don't find out what he's up to, there's a damn fine chance that someday next spring he may turn the whole Free Zone into one big mushroom cloud."

"Okay. He