She snapped on the TV and turned it up loud. Pat Sajak was being embraced by a woman with enormous jahoobies who had just finished solving the puzzle, which was NEVER REST ON YOUR LAURELS. Andi took a moment to admire the mammoth mammaries, then turned back to the Kozys.
"When the eleven o'clock news is over, you can turn off the TV and go to bed. When you wake up tomorrow, you won't remember I was here. Any questions?"
They had none. Andi left them and hurried back to the cluster of RVs. She was hungry, had been for weeks, and tonight there would be plenty for everybody. As for tomorrow . . . it was Rose's job to worry about that, and as far as Snakebite Andi was concerned, she was welcome to it.
4
It was full dark by eight o'clock. At nine, the True gathered in the Kozy Kampground's picnic area. Rose the Hat came last, carrying the canister. A small, greedy murmur went up at the sight of it. Rose knew how they felt. She was plenty hungry herself.
She mounted one of the initial-scarred picnic tables and looked at them one by one. "We are the True Knot."
"We are the True Knot," they responded. Their faces were solemn, their eyes avid and hungry. "What is tied may never be untied."
"We are the True Knot, and we endure."
"We endure."
"We are the chosen ones. We are the fortunate ones."
"We are chosen and fortunate."
"They are the makers; we are the takers."
"We take what they make."
"Take this and use it well."
"We will use it well."
Once, early in the last decade of the twentieth century, there had been a boy from Enid, Oklahoma, named Richard Gaylesworthy. I swear that child can read my mind, his mother sometimes said. People smiled at this, but she wasn't kidding. And maybe not just her mind. Richard got A's on tests he hadn't even studied for. He knew when his father was going to come home in a good mood and when he was going to come home fuming about something at the plumbing supply company he owned. Once the boy begged his mother to play the Pick Six lottery because he swore he knew the winning numbers. Mrs. Gaylesworthy refused--they were good Baptists--but later she was sorry. Not all six of the numbers Richard wrote down on the kitchen note-minder board came up, but five did. Her religious convictions had cost them seventy thousand dollars. She had begged the boy not to tell his father, and Richard had promised he wouldn't. He was a good boy, a lovely boy.
Two months or so after the lottery win that wasn't, Mrs. Gaylesworthy was shot to death in her kitchen and the good and lovely boy disappeared. His body had long since rotted away beneath the gone-to-seed back field of an abandoned farm, but when Rose the Hat opened the valve on the silver canister, his essence--his steam--escaped in a cloud of sparkling silver mist. It rose to a height of about three feet above the canister, and spread out in a plane. The True stood looking up at it with expectant faces. Most were trembling. Several were actually weeping.
"Take nourishment and endure," Rose said, and raised her hands until her spread fingers were just below the flat plane of mist. She beckoned. The mist immediately began to sink, taking on an umbrella shape as it descended toward those waiting below. When it enveloped their heads, they began to breathe deeply. This went on for five minutes, during which several of them hyperventilated and swooned to the ground.
Rose felt herself swelling physically and sharpening mentally. Every fragrant odor of this spring night declared itself. She knew that the faint lines around her eyes and mouth were disappearing. The white strands in her hair were turning dark again. Later tonight, Crow would come to her camper, and in her bed they would burn like torches.
They inhaled Richard Gaylesworthy until he was gone--really and truly gone. The white mist thinned and then disappeared. Those who had fainted sat up and looked around, smiling. Grampa Flick grabbed Petty the Chink, Barry's wife, and did a nimble little jig with her.
"Let go of me, you old donkey!" she snapped, but she was laughing.
Snakebite Andi and Silent Sarey were kissing deeply, Andi's hands plunged into Sarey's mouse-colored hair.
Rose leaped down from the picnic table and turned to Crow. He made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, grinning back at her.
Everything's cool, that grin said, and so it was. For now. But in spite of her euphoria, Rose thought of the canisters in her safe. Now there were thirty-eight empties instead of thirty-seven. Their backs were a step closer to the wall.
5
The True rolled out the next morning just after first light. They took Route 12 to I-64, the fourteen RVs in a nose-to-tail caravan. When they reached the interstate they would spread out so they weren't quite so obviously together, staying in touch by radio in case trouble arose.
Or if opportunity knocked.
Ernie and Maureen Salkowicz, fresh from a wonderful night's sleep, agreed those RV folks were just about the best they'd ever had. Not only did they pay cash and bus up their sites neat as a pin, someone left an apple bread pudding on the top step of their trailer, with a sweet thank-you note on top. With any luck, the Salkowiczes told each other as they ate their gift dessert for breakfast, they'd come back next year.
"Do you know what?" Maureen said. "I dreamed that lady on the insurance commercials--Flo--sold you a big insurance policy. Wasn't that a crazy dream?"
Ernie grunted and splooshed more whipped cream onto his bread pudding.
"Did you dream, honey?"
"Nope."
But his eyes slid away from hers as he said it.
6
The True Knot's luck turned for the better on a hot July day in Iowa. Rose was leading the caravan, as she always did, and just west of Adair, the sonar in her head gave a ping. Not a head-blaster by any means, but moderately loud. She hopped on the CB at once to Barry the Chink, who was about as Asian as Tom Cruise.
"Barry, did you feel that? Come back."
"Yuh." Barry was not the garrulous type.
"Who's Grampa Flick riding with today?"
Before Barry could answer, there was a double break on the CB and Apron Annie said, "He's with me and Long Paul, sweetie. Is it . . . is it a good one?" Annie sounded anxious, and Rose could understand that. Richard Gaylesworthy had been a very good one, but six weeks was a long time between meals, and he was beginning to wear off.
"Is the old feller compos, Annie?"
Before she could answer, a raspy voice came back, "I'm fine, woman." And for a guy who sometimes couldn't remember his own name, Grampa Flick did sound pretty much okay. Testy, sure, but testy was a lot better than befuddled.
A second ping hit her, this one not as strong. As if to underline a point that needed no underlining, Grampa said, "We're going the wrong fuckin way."
Rose didn't bother answering, just clicked another double break on her mike. "Crow? Come back, honeybunch."
"I'm here." Prompt as always. Just waiting to be called.
"Pull em in at the next rest area. Except for me, Barry, and Flick. We'll take the next exit and double back."
"Will you need a crew?"
"I won't know until we get closer, but . . . I don't think so."
"Okay." A pause, then he added: "Shit."
Rose racked the mike and looked out at the unending acres of corn on both sides of the fourlane. Crow was disappointed, of course. They all would be. Big steamheads presented problems because they were all but immune to suggestion. That meant taking them by force. Friends or family members often tried to interfere. They could sometimes be put to sleep, but not always; a kid with big steam could block even Snakebite Andi's best efforts in that regard. So sometimes people had to be killed. Not good, but the prize was always worth it: life and strength stored away in a steel canister. Stored for a rainy day. In many cases there was even a residual benefit. Steam was hereditary, and often everyone in the target's family had at least a little.
7
While most of the True Knot waited in a pleasantly shady rest area forty miles east of Council Bluffs, the RVs containi
ng the three finders turned around, left the turnpike at Adair, and headed north. Once away from I-80 and out in the toolies, they spread apart and begin working the grid of graveled, well-maintained farm roads that parceled this part of Iowa into big squares. Moving in on the ping from different directions. Triangulating.
It got stronger . . . a little stronger still . . . then leveled off. Good steam but not great steam. Ah, well. Beggars couldn't be choosers.
8
Bradley Trevor had been given the day off from his usual farm chores to practice with the local Little League All-Star team. If his pa had refused him this, the coach probably would have led the rest of the boys in a lynch party, because Brad was the team's best hitter. You wouldn't think it to look at him--he was skinny as a rake handle, and only eleven--but he was able to tag even the District's best pitchers for singles and doubles. The meatballers he almost always took deep. Some of it was plain farmboy strength, but by no means all of it. Brad just seemed to know what pitch was coming next. It wasn't a case of stealing signs (a possibility upon which some of the other District coaches had speculated darkly). He just knew. The way he knew the best location for a new stock well, or where the occasional lost cow had gotten off to, or where Ma's engagement ring was the time she'd lost it. Look under the floormat of the Suburban, he'd said, and there it was.
That day's practice was an especially good one, but Brad seemed lost in the ozone during the debriefing afterward, and declined to take a soda from the tub filled with ice when it was offered. He said he thought he better get home and help his ma take in the clothes.
"Is it gonna rain?" Micah Johnson, the coach, asked. They'd all come to trust him on such things.
"Dunno," Brad said listlessly.
"You feel okay, son? You look a little peaked."
In fact, Brad didn't feel well, had gotten up that morning headachey and a bit feverish. That wasn't why he wanted to go home now, though; he just had a strong sense that he no longer wanted to be at the baseball field. His mind didn't seem . . . quite his own. He wasn't sure if he was here or only dreaming he was--how crazy was that? He scratched absently at a red spot on his forearm. "Same time tomorrow, right?"
Coach Johnson said that was the plan, and Brad walked off with his glove trailing from one hand. Usually he jogged--they all did--but today he didn't feel like it. His head still ached, and now his legs did, too. He disappeared into the corn behind the bleachers, meaning to take a shortcut back to the farm, two miles away. When he emerged onto Town Road D, brushing silk from his hair with a slow and dreamy hand, a midsize WanderKing was idling on the gravel. Standing beside it, smiling, was Barry the Chink.
"Well, there you are," Barry said.
"Who are you?"
"A friend. Hop in. I'll take you home."
"Sure," Brad said. Feeling the way he did, a ride would be fine. He scratched at the red spot on his arm. "You're Barry Smith. You're a friend. I'll hop in and you'll take me home."
He stepped into the RV. The door closed. The WanderKing drove away.
By the next day the whole county would be mobilized in a hunt for the Adair All-Stars' centerfielder and best hitter. A State Police spokesman asked residents to report any strange cars or vans. There were many such reports, but they all came to nothing. And although the three RVs carrying the finders were much bigger than vans (and Rose the Hat's was truly huge), nobody reported them. They were the RV People, after all, and traveling together. Brad was just . . . gone.
Like thousands of other unfortunate children, he had been swallowed up, seemingly in a single bite.
9
They took him north to an abandoned ethanol-processing plant that was miles from the nearest farmhouse. Crow carried the boy out of Rose's EarthCruiser and laid him gently on the ground. Brad was bound with duct tape and weeping. As the True Knot gathered around him (like mourners over an open grave), he said, "Please take me home. I'll never tell."
Rose dropped to one knee beside him and sighed. "I would if I could, son, but I can't."
His eyes found Barry. "You said you were one of the good guys! I heard you! You said so!"
"Sorry, pal." Barry didn't look sorry. What he looked was hungry. "It's not personal."
Brad shifted his eyes back to Rose. "Are you going to hurt me? Please don't hurt me."
Of course they were going to hurt him. It was regrettable, but pain purified steam, and the True had to eat. Lobsters also felt pain when they were dropped into pots of boiling water, but that didn't stop the rubes from doing it. Food was food, and survival was survival.
Rose put her hands behind her back. Into one of these, Greedy G placed a knife. It was short but very sharp. Rose smiled down at the boy and said, "As little as possible."
The boy lasted a long time. He screamed until his vocal cords ruptured and his cries became husky barks. At one point, Rose paused and looked around. Her hands, long and strong, wore bloody red gloves.
"Something?" Crow asked.
"We'll talk later," Rose said, and went back to work. The light of a dozen flashlights had turned a piece of ground behind the ethanol plant into a makeshift operating theater.
Brad Trevor whispered, "Please kill me."
Rose the Hat gave him a comforting smile. "Soon."
But it wasn't.
Those husky barks recommenced, and eventually they turned to steam.
At dawn, they buried the boy's body. Then they moved on.
CHAPTER SIX
WEIRD RADIO
1
It hadn't happened in at least three years, but some things you don't forget. Like when your child begins screaming in the middle of the night. Lucy was on her own because David was attending a two-day conference in Boston, but she knew if he'd been there, he would have raced her down the hall to Abra's room. He hadn't forgotten, either.
Their daughter was sitting up in bed, her face pale, her hair standing out in a sleep-scruff all around her head, her eyes wide and staring blankly into space. The sheet--all she needed to sleep under during warm weather--had been pulled free and was balled up around her like a crazy cocoon.
Lucy sat beside her and put an arm around Abra's shoulders. It was like hugging stone. This was the worst part, before she came all the way out of it. Being ripped from sleep by your daughter's screams was terrifying, but the nonresponsiveness was worse. Between the ages of five and seven, these night terrors had been fairly common, and Lucy was always afraid that sooner or later the child's mind would break under the strain. She would continue to breathe, but her eyes would never unlock from whatever world it was that she saw and they couldn't.
It won't happen, David had assured her, and John Dalton had doubled down on that. Kids are resilient. If she's not showing any lingering after-effects--withdrawal, isolation, obsessional behavior, bedwetting--you're probably okay.
But it wasn't okay for children to wake themselves, shrieking, from nightmares. It wasn't okay that sometimes wild piano chords sounded from downstairs in the aftermath, or that the faucets in the bathroom at the end of the hall might turn themselves on, or that the light over Abra's bed sometimes blew out when she or David flipped the switch.
Then her invisible friend had come, and intervals between nightmares had grown longer. Eventually they stopped. Until tonight. Not that it was night anymore, exactly; Lucy could see the first faint glow on the eastern horizon, and thank God for that.
"Abs? It's Mommy. Talk to me."
There was still nothing for five or ten seconds. Then, at last, the statue Lucy had her arm around relaxed and became a little girl again. Abra took a long, shuddering breath.
"I had one of my bad dreams. Like in the old days."
"I kind of figured that, honey."
Abra could hardly ever remember more than a little, it seemed. Sometimes it was people yelling at each other or hitting with their fists. He knocked the table over chasing after her, she might say. Another time the dream had been of a one-eyed Raggedy Ann doll lying on a highwa
y. Once, when Abra was only four, she told them she had seen ghostie people riding The Helen Rivington, which was a popular tourist attraction in Frazier. It ran a loop from Teenytown out to Cloud Gap, and then back again. I could see them because of the moonlight, Abra told her parents that time. Lucy and David were sitting on either side of her, their arms around her. Lucy still remembered the dank feel of Abra's pajama top, which was soaked with sweat. I knew they were ghostie people because they had faces like old apples and the moon shone right through.
By the following afternoon Abra had been running and playing and laughing with her friends again, but Lucy had never forgotten the image: dead people riding that little train through the woods, their faces like transparent apples in the moonlight. She had asked Concetta if she had ever taken Abra on the train during one of their "girl days." Chetta said no. They had been to Teenytown, but the train had been under repairs that day so they rode the carousel instead.
Now Abra looked up at her mother and said, "When will Daddy be back?"
"Day after tomorrow. He said he'd be in time for lunch."
"That's not soon enough," Abra said. A tear spilled from her eye, rolled down her cheek, and plopped onto her pajama top.
"Soon enough for what? What do you remember, Abba-Doo?"
"They were hurting the boy."
Lucy didn't want to pursue this, but felt she had to. There had been too many correlations between Abra's earlier dreams and things that had actually happened. It was David who had spotted the picture of the one-eyed Raggedy Ann in the North Conway Sun, under the heading THREE KILLED IN OSSIPEE CRASH. It was Lucy who had hunted out police blotter items about domestic violence arrests in the days following two of Abra's people were yelling and hitting dreams. Even John Dalton agreed that Abra might be picking up transmissions on what he called "the weird radio in her head."
So now she said, "What boy? Does he live around here? Do you know?"
Abra shook her head. "Far away. I can't remember." Then she brightened. The speed at which she came out of these fugues was to Lucy almost as eerie as the fugues themselves. "But I think I told Tony. He might tell his daddy."