'And when Susan Day comes to Derry next month, can you guarantee her safety?'
Ed smiled, and in his mind's eye Ralph saw him as he had been on that hot August afternoon less than a month ago - kneeling with one hand planted on either side of Ralph's shoulders and breathing They burn the fetuses over in Newport into his face. Ralph shivered.
'In a country where thousands of children are sucked from the wombs of their mothers by the medical equivalent of industrial vacuum cleaners, I don't believe anyone can guarantee anything,' Ed replied.
Anne Rivers looked at him uncertainly for a moment, as if deciding whether or not she wanted to ask another question (maybe for his telephone number), and then turned back to face the camera. 'This is Anne Rivers, at Derry Police Headquarters,' she said.
Lisette Benson reappeared, and something in the bemused cast of her mouth made Ralph think that perhaps he hadn't been the only one to sense the attraction between interviewer and interviewee. 'We'll be following this story all day,'she said. 'Be sure to tune in at six for further updates. In Augusta, Governor Greta Powers responded to charges that she may have--'
Lois got up and pushed the Off button on the TV. She simply stared at the darkening screen for a moment, then sighed heavily and sat down. 'I have blueberry compote,' she said, 'but after that, do either of you want any?'
Both men shook their heads. McGovern looked at Ralph and said, 'That was scary.'
Ralph nodded. He kept thinking of how Ed had gone striding back and forth through the spray thrown by the lawn-sprinkler, breaking the rainbows with his body, pounding his fist into his open palm.
'How could they let him out on bail and then interview him on the news as if he was a normal human being?' Lois asked indignantly. 'After what he did to poor Helen? My God, that Anne Rivers looked ready to invite him home to dinner!'
'Or to eat crackers in bed with her,' Ralph said dryly.
'The assault charge and this stuff today are entirely different matters,' McGovern said, 'and you can bet your boots the lawyer or lawyers these yo-yos have got on retainer will be sure to keep it that way.'
'And even the assault charge was only a misdemeanor,' Ralph reminded her.
'How can assault be a misdemeanor?' Lois asked. 'I'm sorry, but I never did understand that part.'
'It's a misdemeanor when you only do it to your wife,' McGovern said, hoisting his satiric eyebrow. 'It's the American way, Lo.'
She twisted her hands together restlessly, took Mr Chasse down from the television, looked at him for a moment, then put him back and resumed twisting her hands. 'Well, the law's one thing,' she said, 'and I'd be the first to admit that I don't understand it all. But somebody ought to tell them he's crazy. That he's a wife-beater and he's crazy.'
'You don't know how crazy,' Ralph said, and for the first time he told them the story of what had happened the previous summer, out by the airport. It took about ten minutes. When he finished, neither of them said anything - they only looked at him with wide eyes.
'What?' Ralph asked uneasily. 'You don't believe me? You think I imagined it?'
'Of course I believe it,' Lois said. 'I was just . . . well . . . stunned. And frightened.'
'Ralph, I think maybe you ought to pass that story on to John Leydecker,' McGovern said. 'I don't think he can do a goddam thing with it, but considering Ed's new playmates, I think it's information he should have.'
Ralph thought it over carefully, then nodded and pushed himself to his feet. 'No time like the present,' he said. 'Want to come, Lois?'
She thought it over, then shook her head. 'I'm tired out,' she said. 'And a little - what do the kids call it these days? - a little freaked. I think I'll put my feet up for a bit. Take a nap.'
'You do that,' Ralph said. 'You do look a little tuckered. And thanks for feeding us.' Impulsively, he bent over her and kissed the corner of her mouth. Lois looked up at him with startled gratitude.
6
Ralph turned off his own television a little over six hours later, as Lisette Benson finished the evening news and handed off to the sports guy. The demonstration at WomanCare had been bumped to the number two slot - the evening's big story was the continuing allegations that Governor Greta Powers had used cocaine as a grad student - and there was nothing new, except that Dan Dalton was now being identified as the head of the Friends of Life. Ralph thought figurehead was probably a better word. Was Ed actually in charge yet? If he wasn't, Ralph guessed he would be before long - Christmas at the latest. A potentially more interesting question was what Ed's employers thought about Ed's legal adventures up the road in Derry. Ralph had an idea they would be a lot less comfortable with what had gone on today than with last month's domestic abuse charge; he had read only recently that Hawking Labs would soon become the fifth such research center in the Northeast to be working with fetal tissue. They probably wouldn't applaud the information that one of their research chemists had been arrested for chucking dolls filled with fake blood at the side of a clinic that did abortions. And if they knew how crazy he really was--
Who's going to tell them, Ralph? You?
No. That was a step further than he was willing to go, at least for the time being. Unlike going down to the police station with McGovern to talk to John Leydecker about the incident last summer, it felt like persecution. Like writing KILL THIS CUNT beside a picture of a woman with whose views you didn't agree.
That's bullshit, and you know it.
'I don't know anything,' he said, getting up and going to the window. 'I'm too tired to know anything.' But as he stood there, looking across the street at two men coming out of the Red Apple with a six-pack apiece, he suddenly did know something, remembered something that drew a cold line up his back.
This morning, when he had come out of the Rite Aid and been overwhelmed by the auras - and a sense of having stepped up to some new level of awareness - he had reminded himself again and again to enjoy but not to believe; that if he failed to make that crucial distinction, he was apt to end up in the same boat as Ed Deepneau. That thought had almost opened the door on some associative memory, but the shifting auras in the parking lot had pulled him away from it before it had been able to kick all the way in. Now it came to him: Ed had said something about seeing auras, hadn't he?
No - he might have meant auras, but the word he actually used was colors. I'm almost positive of that. It was right after he talked about seeing the corpses of babies everyplace, even on the roofs. He said--
Ralph watched the two men get into a beat-up old van and thought that he would never be able to remember Ed's words exactly; he was just too tired. Then, as the van drove off trailing a cloud of exhaust that reminded him of the bright maroon stuff he'd seen coming from the tailpipe of the bakery truck that noon, another door opened and the memory did come.
'He said that sometimes the world is full of colors,' Ralph told his empty apartment, 'but that at some point they all started turning black. I think that was it.'
It was close, but was it everything? Ralph thought there had been at least a little more to Ed's spiel, but he couldn't remember what. And did it matter, anyway? His nerves suggested strongly that it did - the cold line up his back had both widened and deepened.
Behind him, the telephone rang. Ralph turned and saw it sitting in a bath of baleful red light, dark red, the color of nosebleeds and (cocks fighting cocks) rooster-combs.
No, part of his mind moaned. Oh no, Ralph, don't get going on this again--
Each time the phone rang, the envelope of light got brighter. During the intervals of silence, it darkened. It was like looking at a ghostly heart with a telephone inside it.
Ralph closed his eyes tightly, and when he opened them again, the red aura around the telephone was gone.
No, you just can't see it right now. I'm not sure, but I think you might have willed it away. Like something in a lucid dream.
As he crossed the room to the telephone, he told himself - and in no uncertain terms - that that id
ea was as crazy as seeing the auras in the first place. Except it wasn't, and he knew it wasn't. Because if it was crazy, how come it had taken only one look at that rooster-red halo of light to make him sure that it was Ed Deepneau calling?
That's crap, Ralph. You think it's Ed because Ed's on your mind . . . and because you're so tired your head's getting funny. Go on, pick it up, you'll see. It's not the tell-tale heart, not even the tell-tale phone. It's probably some guy wanting to sell you subscriptions or the lady at the blood-bank, wondering why you haven't been in lately.
Except he knew better.
Ralph picked up the phone and said hello.
7
No answer. But someone was there; Ralph could hear breathing.
'Hello?' he asked again.
There was still no immediate answer, and he was about to say I'm hanging up now when Ed Deepneau said, 'I called about your mouth, Ralph. It's trying to get you in trouble.'
The line of cold between his shoulderblades was no longer a line; now it was a thin plate of ice covering him from the nape of his neck to the small of his back.
'Hello, Ed. I saw you on the news today.' It was the only thing he could think of to say. His hand did not seem to be holding the phone so much as to be cramped around it.
'Never mind that, old boy. Just pay attention. I've had a visit from that wide detective who arrested me last month - Leydecker. He just left, in fact.'
Ralph's heart sank, but not as far as he might have feared. After all, Leydecker's going to see Ed wasn't that surprising, was it? He had been very interested in Ralph's story of the airport confrontation in the summer of '92. Very interested indeed.
'Did he?' Ralph asked evenly.
'Detective Leydecker has the idea that I think people - or possibly supernatural beings of some sort - are trucking fetuses out of town in flatbeds and pickup trucks. What a scream, huh?'
Ralph stood beside the sofa, pulling the telephone cord restlessly through his fingers and realizing that he could see dull red light creeping out of the wire like sweat. The light pulsed with the rhythms of Ed's speech.
'You've been telling tales out of school, old boy.'
Ralph was silent.
'Calling the police after I gave that bitch the lesson she so richly deserved didn't bother me,' Ed told him. 'I put it down to . . . well, grandfatherly concern. Or maybe you thought that if she was grateful enough, she might actually spare you a mercy-fuck. After all, you're old but not exactly ready for Jurassic Park yet. You might have thought she'd let you get a finger into her at the very least.'
Ralph said nothing.
'Right, old boy?'
Ralph said nothing.
'You think you're going to rattle me with the silent treatment? Forget it.' But Ed did sound rattled, thrown off his stride. It was as if he had made the call with a certain script in his head and Ralph was refusing to read his lines. 'You can't . . . you better not . . .'
'My calling the police after you beat Helen didn't upset you, but your conversation with Leydecker today obviously did. Why's that, Ed? Are you finally starting to have some questions about your behavior? And your thinking, maybe?'
It was Ed's turn to be silent. At last he whispered harshly, 'If you don't take this seriously, Ralph, it would be the worst mistake--'
'Oh, I take it seriously,' Ralph said. 'I saw what you did today, I saw what you did to your wife last month . . . and I saw what you did out by the airport a year ago. Now the police know. I listened to you, Ed, now you listen to me. You're ill. You've had some sort of mental breakdown, you're having delusions--'
'I don't have to listen to your crap!' Ed nearly screamed.
'No, you don't. You can hang up. It's your dime, after all. But until you do, I'm going to keep hammering away. Because I liked you, Ed, and I want to like you again. You're a bright guy, delusions or no delusions, and I think you can understand me: Leydecker knows, and Leydecker is going to be watching y--'
'Are you seeing the colors yet?' Ed asked. His voice had become calm again. At the same instant, the red glow around the telephone wire popped out of existence.
'What colors?' Ralph asked at last.
Ed ignored the question. 'You said you liked me. Well, I like you, too. I've always liked you. So I'm going to give you some very valuable advice. You're drifting into deep water, and there are things swimming around in the undertow you can't even conceive of. You think I'm crazy, but I want to tell you that you don't know what madness is. You don't have the slightest idea. You will, though, if you keep on meddling in things that don't concern you. Take my word for it.'
'What things?' Ralph asked. He tried to keep his voice light, but he was still squeezing the telephone receiver tight enough to make his fingers throb.
'Forces,' Ed replied. 'There are forces at work in Derry that you don't want to know about. There are . . . well, let's just say there are entities. They haven't really noticed you yet, but if you keep fooling with me, they will. And you don't want that. Believe me, you don't.'
Forces. Entities.
'You asked me how I found out about all this stuff. Who brought me into the picture. Do you remember that, Ralph?'
'Yes.' He did, too. Now. That had been the last thing Ed had said to him before turning on the big game-show grin and going over to greet the cops. I've seen the colors since he came and told me . . . we'll talk about it later.
'The doctor told me. The little bald doctor. I think it's him you'll have to answer to if you try to mind my business again. And then God help you.'
'The little bald doctor, uh-huh,' Ralph said. 'Yes, I see. First the Crimson King and the Centurions, now the little bald doctor. I suppose next it'll be--'
'Spare me your sarcasm, Ralph. Just stay away from me and my interests, do you hear? Stay away.'
There was a click and Ed was gone. Ralph looked at the telephone in his hand for a long time, then slowly hung it up.
Just stay away from me and my interests.
Yes, and why not? He had plenty of his own fish to fry.
Ralph walked slowly into the kitchen, stuck a TV dinner (filet of haddock, as a matter of fact) into the oven, and tried to put abortion protests, auras, Ed Deepneau, and the Crimson King out of his mind.
It was easier than he would have expected.
CHAPTER SIX
* * *
1
Summer slipped away as it does in Maine, almost unnoticed. Ralph's premature waking continued, and by the time the fall colors had begun to burn in the trees along Harris Avenue, he was opening his eyes around two-fifteen each morning. That was lousy, but he had his appointment with James Roy Hong to look forward to and there had been no repeat of the weird fireworks show he had been treated to after his first meeting with Joe Wyzer. There were occasional flickers around the edges of things, but Ralph found that if he squeezed his eyes shut and counted to five, the flickers were gone when he opened them again.
Well . . . usually gone.
Susan Day's speech was scheduled for Friday, the eighth of October, and as September drew toward its conclusion, the protests and the public abortion-on-demand debate sharpened and began to focus more and more on her appearance. Ralph saw Ed on the TV news many times, sometimes in the company of Dan Dalton but more and more frequently on his own, speaking swiftly, cogently, and often with that little gleam of humor not only in his eyes but in his voice.
People liked him, and The Friends of Life was apparently attracting the large membership to which Daily Bread, its political progenitor, had only been able to aspire. There were no more doll-throwing parties or other violent demonstrations, but there were plenty of marches and counter-marches, plenty of name-calling and fist-shaking and angry letters to the editor. Preachers promised damnation; teachers urged moderation and education; half a dozen young women calling themselves The Gay Lesbo Babes for Jesus were arrested for parading in front of The First Baptist Church of Derry with signs which read GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY BODY. A nameless policeman was qu
oted in the Derry News as saying that he hoped Susan Day would come down with the flu or something and have to cancel her appearance.
Ralph received no further communications from Ed, but on September twenty-first he received a postcard from Helen with fourteen jubilant words scrawled across the back: 'Hooray, a job! Derry Public Library! I start next month! See you soon - Helen.'
Feeling more cheered than he had since the night Helen had called him from the hospital, Ralph went downstairs to show the card to McGovern, but the door of the downstairs apartment was shut and locked.
Lois, then . . . except that Lois was also gone, probably off to one of her card-parties or maybe downtown shopping for yarn and plotting another afghan.
Mildly chagrined and musing on how the people you most wanted to share good news with were hardly ever around when you were all but bursting with it, Ralph wandered down to Strawford Park. And it was there that he found Bill McGovern, sitting on a bench near the softball field and crying.
2
Crying was perhaps too strong a word; leaking might have been better. McGovern sat with a handkerchief sticking out of one gnarled fist, watching a mother and her young son play roll-toss along the first-base line of the diamond where the last big softball event of the season - the Intramural City Tournament - had concluded just two days before.
Every now and then he would raise the fist with the handkerchief in it to his face and swipe at his eyes. Ralph, who had never seen McGovern weep - not even at Carolyn's funeral - loitered near the playground for a few moments, wondering if he should approach McGovern or just go back the way he had come.
At last he gathered up his courage and walked over to the park bench. ''Lo, Bill,' he said.
McGovern looked up with eyes that were red, watery, and a trifle embarrassed. He wiped them again and tried a smile. 'Hi, Ralph. You caught me snivelling. Sorry.'
'It's okay,' Ralph said, sitting down. 'I've done my share of it. What's wrong?'
McGovern shrugged, then dabbed at his eyes again. 'Nothing much. I'm suffering the effects of a paradox, that's all.'