Insomnia

  'What are you going to do?'

  'Call Larry Perrault,' McGovern said. 'May's younger brother. He still lives out in Cardville. She'll be buried in Cardville, I imagine.' McGovern gave Ralph a strange, speculative look. 'What did you think I was going to do?'

  'I don't know,' Ralph said uneasily. 'For a second there I thought you were going to run away like the Gingerbread Man.'

  'Nope.' McGovern reached out and patted him on the shoulder, but to Ralph the gesture felt cold and comfortless. Perfunctory.

  'What does Mrs Locher's brother have to do with any of this?'

  'Johnny said they sent May's body down to Augusta for a more comprehensive autopsy, right?'

  'Well, I think the word he actually used was postmortem--'

  McGovern waved this away. 'Same difference, believe me. If anything odd does crop up - anything suggesting that she was murdered - Larry would have to be informed. He's her only close living relative.'

  'Yes, but won't he wonder what your interest is?'

  'Oh, I don't think we have to worry about that,' McGovern said, speaking in a soothing tone Ralph didn't care for at all. 'I'll say the police have sealed off the house and that the old Harris Avenue rumor mill is turning briskly. He knows May and I were school chums, and that I visited her regularly over the last couple of years. Larry and I aren't crazy about each other, but we get along reasonably well. He'll tell me what I want to know if for no other reason than that we're both Cardville survivors. Get it?'

  'I guess so, but--'

  'I hope so,' McGovern said, and suddenly he looked like a very old and very ugly reptile - a gila monster, or perhaps a basilisk lizard. He pointed a finger at Ralph. 'I'm not a stupid man, and I do know how to respect a confidence. Your face just now said you weren't sure about that, and I resent it. I resent the hell out of it.'

  'I'm sorry,' Ralph said. He was stunned by McGovern's outburst.

  McGovern looked at him a moment longer with his leathery lips pulled back against his too-large dentures, then nodded. 'Yeah, okay, apology accepted. You've been sleeping like shit, I have to factor that into the equation, and as for me, I can't seem to get Bob Polhurst off my mind.' He heaved one of his weightiest poor-old-Bill sighs. 'Listen - if you'd prefer me not to try calling May's brother--'

  'No, no,' Ralph said, thinking that what he'd like to do was roll the clock back ten minutes or so and cancel this entire conversation. And then a sentiment he was sure Bill McGovern would appreciate floated into his mind, fully constructed and ready for use. 'I'm sorry if I impugned your discretion.'

  McGovern smiled, reluctantly at first and then with his whole face. 'Now I know what keeps you awake - thinking up crap like that. Sit still, Ralph, and think good thoughts about a hippopotamus, as my mother used to say. I'll be right back. Probably won't even catch him in, you know; funeral arrangements and all that. Want to look at the paper while you wait?'

  'Sure. Thanks.'

  McGovern handed him the paper, which still retained the tube shape into which it had been rolled, then went inside. Ralph glanced at the front page. The headline read PRO-CHOICE, PRO-LIFE ADVOCATES READY FOR ACTIVIST'S ARRIVAL. The story was flanked by two news photographs. One showed half a dozen young women making signs which said things like OUR BODIES, OUR CHOICE and IT'S A BRAND-NEW DAY IN DERRY! The other showed picketers marching in front of WomanCare. They carried no signs and needed none; the hooded black robes they wore and the scythes they carried said it all.

  Ralph heaved a sigh of his own, dropped the paper onto the seat of the rocking chair beside him, and watched Tuesday morning unfold along Harris Avenue. It occurred to him that McGovern might well be on the phone with John Leydecker rather than Larry Perrault, and that the two of them might at this very moment be having a little student-teacher conference about that nutty old insomniac Ralph Roberts.

  Just thought you'd like to know who really made that 911 call, Johnny.

  Thanks, Prof. We were pretty sure, anyway, but it's good to get confirmation. I imagine he's harmless. I actually sort of like him.

  Ralph pushed away his speculations about who Bill might or might not be calling. It was easier just to sit here and not think at all, not even good thoughts about a hippopotamus. Easier to watch the Budweiser truck lumber into the Red Apple parking lot, pausing to give courtesy to the Magazines Incorporated van which had dropped off this week's ration of tabloids, magazines, and paperbacks and was now leaving. Easier to watch old Harriet Bennigan, who made Mrs Perrine look like a spring chicken, bent over her walker in her bright red fall coat, out for her morning lurch. Easier to watch the young girl, who was wearing jeans, an oversized white tee-shirt, and a man's hat about four sizes too big for her, jumping rope in the weedy vacant lot between Frank's Bakery and Vicky Moon's Tanning Saloon (Body Wraps Our Specialty). Easier to watch the girl's small hands penduluming up and down. Easier to listen as she chanted her endless, shuttling rhyme.

  Three-six-nine, the goose drank wine . . .

  Some distant part of Ralph's mind realized, with great astonishment, that he was on the verge of going to sleep as he sat here on the porch steps. At the same time this was happening, the auras were creeping into the world again, filling it with fabulous colors and motions. It was wonderful, but . . .

  . . . but something was wrong with it. Something. What?

  The girl jumping rope in the vacant lot. She was wrong. Her denim-clad legs pumped up and down like the bobbin of a sewing machine. Her shadow jumped next to her on the jumbled pavement of an ancient alley overgrown with weeds and sunflowers. The rope whirled up and down . . . all around . . . up and down and all around . . .

  Not an oversized tee-shirt, though, he'd been wrong about that. The figure was wearing a smock. A white smock, like the kind worn by actors in the old TV doc-operas.

  Three-six-nine, hon, the goose drank wine, The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line . . .

  A cloud blocked the sun and a grim green light sailed across the day, driving it underwater. Ralph's skin first chilled, then broke out in goosebumps. The girl's pumping shadow disappeared. She looked up at Ralph and he saw she wasn't a little girl at all. The creature looking at him was a man about four feet tall. Ralph had first taken the hat-shadowed face for that of a child because it was utterly smooth, unmarked by so much as a single line. And yet despite that, it conveyed a clear feeling to Ralph - a sense of evil, of malignity beyond the comprehension of a sane mind.

  That's it, Ralph thought numbly, staring at the skipping creature. That's exactly it. Whatever the thing over there is, it's insane. Totally gone.

  The creature might have read Ralph's thought, for at that moment its lips skinned back in a grin that was both coy and nasty, as if the two of them shared some unpleasant secret. And he was sure - yes, quite sure, almost positive - that it was somehow chanting through its grin, doing it without moving its lips in the slightest: [The line BROKE! The monkey got CHOKED! And they all died together in a little row-BOAT!]

  It was neither of the two little bald doctors Ralph had seen coming out of Mrs Locher's, he was almost positive of that. Related to them, maybe, but not the same. It was--

  The creature threw its jump-rope away. The rope turned first yellow and then red, seeming to give off sparks as it flew through the air. The small figure - Doc #3 - stared at Ralph, grinning, and Ralph suddenly realized something else, something which filled him with horror. He finally recognized the hat the creature was wearing.

  It was Bill McGovern's missing Panama.

  4

  Again it was as if the creature had read his mind. It dragged the hat from its head, revealing the round, hairless skull beneath, and waved McGovern's Panama in the air as if it were a cowpoke astride a bucking bronco. It continued to grin its unspeakable grin as it waved the hat.

  Suddenly it pointed at Ralph, as if marking him. Then it clapped the hat back on its head and darted into the narrow, weed-choked opening between the tanning salon and the bakery. The sun sailed f
ree of the cloud which had covered it, and the shifting brightness of the auras began to fade once more. A moment or two after the creature had disappeared it was just Harris Avenue in front of him again - boring old Harris Avenue, the same as always.

  Ralph pulled a shuddering breath, remembering the madness in that small, grinning face. Remembering the way it had pointed (the monkey got CHOKED) at him, as if

  (they all died together in a little row-BOAT! ) marking him.

  'Tell me I fell asleep,' he whispered hoarsely. 'Tell me I fell asleep and dreamed that little bugger.'

  The door opened behind him. 'Oh my, talking to yourself,' McGovern said. 'Must have money in the bank, Ralphie.'

  'Yeah, about enough to cover my burial expenses,' Ralph said. To himself he sounded like a man who has just suffered a terrible shock and is still trying to cope with the residual fright; he half expected Bill to dart forward, face filling with concern (or maybe just suspicion), to ask what was wrong.

  McGovern did nothing of the sort. He plumped into the rocking chair, crossed his arms over his narrow chest in a brooding X, and looked out at Harris Avenue, the stage upon which he and Ralph and Lois and Dorrance Marstellar and so many other old folks - we golden-agers, in McGovern-ese - were destined to play out their often boring and sometimes painful last acts.

  Suppose I told him about his hat? Ralph thought. Suppose I just opened the conversation by saying, 'Bill, I also know what happened to your Panama. Some badass relation to the guys I saw last night has got it. He wears it when he jumps rope between the bakery and the tanning salon.'

  If Bill had any lingering doubts about his sanity, that little newsflash would certainly set them to rest. Yep.

  Ralph kept his mouth shut.

  'Sorry I was gone so long,' McGovern said. 'Larry claimed I just caught him going out the door to the funeral parlor, but before I could ask my questions and get away he'd rehashed half of May's life and damned near all of his own. Talked nonstop for forty-five minutes.'

  Positive this was an exaggeration - McGovern had surely been gone five minutes, tops - Ralph glanced at his watch and was astounded to see it was eleven-fifteen. He looked up the street and saw that Mrs Bennigan had disappeared. So had the Budweiser truck. Had he been asleep? It seemed that he must have been . . . but he could not for the life of him find the break in his conscious perceptions.

  Oh, come on, don't be dense. You were sleeping when you saw the little bald guy. Dreamed the little bald guy.

  That made perfect sense. Even the fact that it had been wearing Bill's Panama made sense. The same hat had shown up in his nightmare about Carolyn. It had been between Rosalie's paws in that one.

  Except this time he hadn't been dreaming. He was sure of it.

  Well . . . almost sure.

  'Aren't you going to ask me what May's brother said?' McGovern sounded slightly piqued.

  'Sorry,' Ralph said. 'I was woolgathering, I guess.'

  'Forgiven, my son . . . provided you listen closely from here on out, that is. The detective in charge of the case, Funderburke--'

  'I'm pretty sure it's Utterback. Steve Utterback.'

  McGovern waved his hand airily, his most common response to being corrected on some point. 'Whatever. Anyway, he called Larry and said the autopsy showed nothing but natural causes. The thing they were most concerned about, in light of your call, was that May had been scared into a heart attack - literally frightened to death - by housebreakers. The doors being locked from the inside and the lack of missing valuables militated against that, of course, but they took your call seriously enough to investigate the possibility.'

  His half-reproachful tone - as if Ralph had wantonly poured glue into the gears of some usually smooth-running machine - made Ralph feel impatient. 'Of course they took it seriously. I saw two guys leaving her house and reported it to the authorities. When they got there, they found the lady dead. How could they not take it seriously?'

  'Why didn't you give your name when you made the call?'

  'I don't know. What difference does it make? And how in God's name can they be sure she wasn't scared into a heart attack?'

  'I don't know if they can be a hundred per cent sure,' McGovern said, now sounding a bit testy himself, 'but I guess it must be close to that if they're turning May's body over to her brother for burial. It's probably a blood-test of some kind. All I know is that this guy Funderburke--'

  'Utterback--'

  '--told Larry that May probably died in her sleep.'

  McGovern crossed his legs, fiddled with the creases in his blue slacks, then gave Ralph a clear and piercing look.

  'I'm going to give you some advice, so listen up. Go to the doctor. Now. Today. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to Litchfield. This is getting heavy.'

  The ones I saw coming out of Mrs Locher's didn't see me, but this one did, Ralph thought. It saw me and it pointed at me. For all I know, it might actually have been looking for me.

  Now there was a nice paranoid thought.

  'Ralph? Did you hear what I said?'

  'Yes. I take it you don't believe I actually saw anyone coming out of Mrs Locher's house.'

  'You take it right. I saw the look on your face just now when I told you I'd been gone forty-five minutes, and I also saw the way you looked at your watch. You didn't believe so much time had passed, did you? And the reason you didn't believe it is because you dozed off without even being aware of it. Had yourself a little pocket nap. That's probably what happened to you the other night, Ralph. Only the other night you dreamed up those two guys, and the dream was so real you called 911 when you woke up. Doesn't that make sense?'

  Three-six-nine, Ralph thought. The goose drank wine.

  'What about the binoculars?' he asked. 'They're still sitting on the table beside my chair in the living room. Don't they prove I was awake?'

  'I don't see how. Maybe you were sleepwalking, have you thought of that? You say you saw these intruders, but you can't really describe them.'

  'Those orange hi-intensity lights--'

  'All the doors locked from the inside--'

  'Just the same I--'

  'And these auras you talked about. The insomnia is causing them - I'm almost sure of it. Still, it could be more serious than that.'

  Ralph got up, walked down the porch steps, and stood at the head of the walk with his back to McGovern. There was a throbbing at his temples and his heart was beating hard. Too hard.

  He didn't just point. I was right the first time, the little sonofabitch marked me. And he was no dream. Neither were the ones I saw coming out of Mrs Locher's. I'm sure of it.

  Of course you are, Ralph, another voice replied. Crazy people are always sure of the crazy things they see and hear. That's what makes them crazy, not the hallucinations themselves. If you really saw what you saw, what happened to Mrs Bennigan? What happened to the Budweiser truck? How did you lose the forty-five minutes McGovern spent on the phone with Larry Perrault?

  'You're experiencing very serious symptoms,' McGovern said from behind him, and Ralph thought he heard something terrible in the man's voice. Satisfaction? Could it possibly be satisfaction?

  'One of them had a pair of scissors,' Ralph said without turning around. 'I saw them.'

  'Oh, come on, Ralph! Think! Use that brain of yours and think! On Sunday afternoon, less than twenty-four hours before you're due to have acupuncture treatment, a lunatic nearly sticks a knife into you. Is it any wonder that your mind serves up a nightmare featuring a sharp object that night? Hong's pins and Pickering's hunting knife become scissors, that's all. Don't you see that this hypothesis covers all the bases while what you claim to have seen covers none of them?'

  'And I was sleepwalking when I got the binoculars? That's what you think?'

  'It's possible. Even likely.'

  'Same thing with the spray-can in my jacket pocket, right? Old Dor didn't have a thing to do with it.'

  'I don't care about the spray-can o
r Old Dor!' McGovern cried. 'I care about you! You've been suffering from insomnia since April or May, you've been depressed and disturbed ever since Carolyn died--'

  'I have not been depressed!' Ralph shouted. Across the street, the mailman paused and looked in their direction before going on down the block toward the park.

  'Have it your own way,' McGovern said. 'You haven't been depressed. You also haven't been sleeping, you're seeing auras, guys creeping out of locked houses in the middle of the night . . .' And then, in a deceptively light voice, McGovern said the thing Ralph had been dreading all along: 'You want to watch out, old son. You're starting to sound too much like Ed Deepneau for comfort.'

  Ralph turned around. Dull hot blood pounded behind his face. 'Why are you being this way? Why are you taking after me this way?'

  'I'm not taking after you, Ralph, I'm trying to help you. To be your friend.'

  'That's not how it feels.'

  'Well, sometimes the truth hurts a little,' McGovern said calmly. 'You need to at least consider the idea that your mind and body are trying to tell you something. Let me ask you a question - is this the only disturbing dream you've had lately?'

  Ralph thought fleetingly of Carol, buried up to her neck in the sand and screaming about white-man tracks. Thought of the bugs which had flooded out of her head. 'I haven't had any bad dreams lately,' he said stiffly. 'I suppose you don't believe that because it doesn't fit into the little scenario you've created.'

  'Ralph--'

  'Let me ask you something. Do you really believe that my seeing those two men and May Locher turning up dead was just a coincidence?'

  'Maybe not. Maybe your physical and emotional upset created conditions favorable to a brief but perfectly genuine psychic event.'

  Ralph was silenced.

  'I believe such things do happen from time to time,' McGovern said, standing up. 'Probably sounds funny, coming from a rational old bird like me, but I do. I'm not out-and-out saying that is what happened here, but it could have been. What I am sure of is that the two men you think you saw did not in fact exist in the real world.'