"Think it to me," Henry said. "Can you think it to me, Duds?"
For a moment there was nothing but Duddits's cold hand closed over his, Duddits's eyes locked on his. Then Duddits and the khaki interior of the Humvee, with its faded scent of surreptitiously smoked cigarettes, was gone. In its place Henry sees a pay telephone--the old-fashioned kind with different-sized holes on top, one for quarters, one for dimes, one for nickels. The rumble of men's voices and a clack-clacking sound, hauntingly familiar. After a moment he realizes it's the sound of checkers on a checkerboard. He's looking at the pay phone in Gosselin's, the one from which they called Duddits after the death of Richie Grenadeau. Jonesy made the actual call, because he was the only one with a phone he could bill it to. The others gathered around, all of them still with their jackets on because it was so cold in the store, even living in the big woods with trees all around him, Old Man Gosselin wouldn't throw an extra log in the stove, what a fuckin pisser. There are two signs over the phone. One reads PLEASE LIMIT ALL CALLS TO 5 MINS. The other one--
There was a crunching bang. Duddits was thrown against the back of Henry's seat and Henry was thrown into the dashboard. Their hands parted. Owen had skidded off the road and into the ditch. Ahead of them, the Subaru's tracks, fading now under fresh cover, ran off into the thickening snow.
"Henry! You all right?"
"Yeah. Duds? Okay?"
Duddits nodded, but the cheek he had struck was turning black with amazing speed. Your Leukemia at Work for You.
Owen dropped the Humvee's transmission into low range and began to creep up the ditch. The Humvee was canted at a severe angle--maybe thirty degrees--but it rolled pretty well once Owen got it moving.
"Fasten your seatbelt. First fasten his, though."
"He was trying to tell me s--"
"I don't give a damn what he was trying to tell you. This time we were all right, next time we could roll three-sixty. Fasten his belt, then your own."
Henry did as he was told, thinking about the other sign over the pay phone. What had it said? Something about Jonesy. Only Jonesy could stop Mr. Gray now, that was the Gospel According to Duddits.
What had that other sign said?
4
Owen was forced to drop his speed to twenty. It made him crazy to creep like this, but the wet snow was falling furiously now and visibility was back to nearly zero.
Just before the Subaru's tracks disappeared entirely they came to the car itself, nose-down in a water-carved ditch running across the road, passenger door open, rear wheels in the air.
Owen stepped on the emergency brake, drew his Glock, opened his door. "Stay here, Henry," he said, and got out. He ran to the Subaru, bent low.
Henry unlatched his seatbelt and turned to Duddits, who was now sprawled against the back seat, gasping for breath, held in a sitting position only by the seatbelt. One cheek was a waxy yellow; the other had been engulfed by spreading blood under the skin. His nose was bleeding again, the wads of cotton sticking out of the nostrils soaked and dripping.
"Duds, I'm so sorry," Henry said. "This is a fuckarow."
Duddits nodded, then raised his arms. He could only hold them up for a few seconds, but to Henry his meaning seemed obvious enough. Henry opened his door and got out just as Owen came running back, his Glock now stuffed in his belt. The air was so thick with snow, the individual flakes so huge, that breathing had become difficult.
"I thought I told you to stay where you were," Owen said.
"I only want to get in the back with him."
"Why?"
Henry spoke calmly enough, although his voice trembled slightly. "Because he's dying," he said. "He's dying, but I think he has one more thing to tell me first."
5
Owen looked in the rearview mirror, saw Henry with his arms around Duddits, saw they were both wearing their seatbelts, and fastened his own.
"Hold him good," he said. "There's going to be a hell of a jounce."
He reversed a hundred feet, put the Hummer in low, and drove forward, aiming for the spot between the abandoned Subaru and the righthand ditch. The crack in the road looked a little narrower on that side.
There was indeed a hell of a jounce. Owen's seatbelt locked and he saw Duddits's body leap in Henry's arms. Duddits's bald head bounced against Henry's chest. Then they were over the crack and once more rolling up East Street. Owen could just make out the last phantom shapes of shoeprints on the now-white ribbon of the road. Mr. Gray was on foot and they were still rolling. If they could catch up before the bastard cut into the woods--
But they didn't.
6
With a final tremendous effort, Duddits raised his head. Now, Henry saw with dismay and horror, Duddits's eyes were also filling with blood.
Clack. Clack-clack. The dry chuckles of old men as someone accomplishes the fabled triple jump. The phone began to swim into his field of vision again. And the signs over it.
"No, Duddits," Henry whispered. "Don't try. Save your strength."
But for what? For what if not for this?
The sign on the left: PLEASE LIMIT ALL CALLS TO 5 MINS. Smells of tobacco, smells of woodsmoke, the old brine of pickles. His friend's arms around him.
And the sign on the right: CALL JONESY NOW.
"Duddits . . ." His voice floating in the darkness. Darkness, his old friend. "Duddits, I don't know how."
Duddits's voice came to him a final time, very tired but calm: Quick, Henry--I can only hold on a little longer--you need to talk to him.
Henry picks the telephone's receiver out of its cradle. Thinks absurdly (but isn't the whole situation absurd?) that he doesn't have any change . . . not so much as a crying dime. Holds the phone to his ear.
Roberta Cavell's voice comes, impersonal and businesslike: "Massachusetts General Hospital, how may I direct your call?"
7
Mr. Gray flailed Jonesy's body along the path which ran up the east side of the Reservoir from the point where East Street ended, slipping, falling, grabbing branches, getting up again. Jonesy's knees were lacerated, the pants torn open and soaked with blood. His lungs were burning, his heart beating like a steam-hammer. Yet the only thing that concerned him was Jonesy's hip, the one he'd broken in the accident. It was a hot and throbbing ball, shooting pain all the way down the thigh to the knee, and up to the middle of his back along the road of his spine. The weight of the dog made things worse. It was still asleep, but the thing inside was wide awake, held in place only by Mr. Gray's will. Once, as he was rising to his feet, the hip locked up entirely and Mr. Gray had to beat it repeatedly with Jonesy's gloved fist to make it let go again. How much farther? How much farther through the cursed, stifling, blinding, neverending snow? And what was Jonesy up to? Anything? Mr. Gray didn't dare let go of the byrum's restless hunger--it had nothing even approaching a mind--long enough to go to the door of the locked room and listen.
A phantom shape appeared ahead in the snow. Mr. Gray paused, gasping and peering at it, and then fought his way forward again, holding the dog's limp paws and dragging Jonesy's right foot.
Here was a sign nailed to the trunk of a tree: ABSOLUTELY NO FISHING FROM SHAFT HOUSE. Fifty feet beyond it, stone steps rose up from the path. Six of them . . . no, eight. At the top was a stone building on a stone foundation that jutted out into the snowy gray nothing where the Reservoir lay--Jonesy's ears could hear water lapping against stone even over the rushing, labored beat of his heart.
He had come to the place.
Clutching the dog and using the last of Jonesy's depleted strength, Mr. Gray began to totter up the snow-covered steps.
8
As they passed between the stone posts marking the entrance to the Reservoir, Kurtz said: "Pull over, Freddy. Side of the road."
Freddy did as he was asked without question.
"You got your auto, laddie?"
Freddy lifted it. The good old M-16, tried and true. Kurtz nodded.
"Sidearm?"
".44
Magnum, boss."
And Kurtz with the nine, which he liked for close work. He wanted this to be close work. He wanted to see the color of Owen Underhill's brains.
"Freddy?"
"Yes, boss."
"I just wanted you to know that this is my final mission, and I couldn't have hoped for a finer companion." He reached out and gave Freddy's shoulder a squeeze. Beside Freddy, Perlmutter snored with his Ma Joad face tipped up toward the roof. Five minutes or so before reaching the stone pillars he had passed several long, spectacularly odoriferous farts. After that, Pearly's distended gut had gone down again. Probably for the last time, Kurtz thought.
Freddy's eyes, meanwhile, had grown gratifyingly bright. Kurtz was delighted. He had not entirely lost his touch even now, it seemed.
"All right, buck," Kurtz said. "Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. Right?"
"Right, sir."
Kurtz guessed sir was okay again now. They could pretty well put the protocols of the mission behind them. They were Quantrill's boys, now; two final jayhawkers riding the western Massachusetts range.
With an unmistakable little grimace of distaste, Freddy jerked a thumb at Perlmutter. "Want me to try waking him up, sir? He may be too far gone, but--"
"Why bother?" Kurtz asked. Still gripping Freddy's shoulder, he pointed ahead, where the access road disappeared into a wall of white: the snow. The goddam snow that had chased them all this way, a grim fucking reaper dressed in white instead of black. The tracks of the Subaru were now entirely gone, but those of the Humvee Owen had stolen were still visible. If they moved along briskly, praise God, following these tracks would be a walk in the park. "I don't think we need him anymore, which I personally find a great relief. Go, Freddy. Go."
The Humvee flirted her tail and then steadied. Kurtz drew his nine and held it against his leg. Coming for you, Owen. Coming for you, buck. And you better get your speech ready for God, because you're going to be making it just about an hour from now.
9
The office which he had furnished so beautifully--furnished out of his mind and his memories--was now falling apart.
Jonesy limped restlessly back and forth, looking around the room, lips pressed so tightly together they were white, forehead beaded with sweat even though it had gotten damned cold in here.
This was The Fall of the Office of Jonesy instead of the House of Usher. The furnace was howling and clanking beneath him, making the floor shake. White stuff--frost crystals, maybe--puffed in through the vent and left a powdery triangular shape on the wall. Where it touched it went to work on the wood paneling, simultaneously rotting it and warping it. The pictures fell one by one, tumbling to the floor like suicides. The Eames chair--the one he'd always wanted, the very one--split in two as if it had been hacked by an invisible axe. The mahogany panels on the walls began to split and peel free like dead skin. The drawers juddered out of their places in the desk and clattered one by one to the floor. The shutters Mr. Gray had installed to block his view of the outside world were vibrating and shaking, producing a steady metallic squalling that set Jonesy's teeth on edge.
Crying out to Mr. Gray, demanding to know what was going on, would be useless . . . and besides, Jonesy had all the information he needed. He had slowed Mr. Gray down, but Mr. Gray had first risen to the challenge and then above it. Viva Mr. Gray, who had either reached his goal or almost reached it. As the paneling fell off the walls, he could see the dirty Sheetrock beneath: the walls of the Tracker Brothers office as four boys had seen it in 1978, lined up with their foreheads to the glass, their new chum standing behind them as bidden, waiting for them to be done with whatever it was they were doing, waiting for them to take him home. Now another wood panel tore loose, coming off the wall with a sound like tearing paper, and beneath it was a bulletin board with a single photo, a Polaroid, tacked to it. Not a beauty queen, not Tina Jean Schlossinger, but just some woman with her skirt hiked to the bottom of her panties, pretty stupid. The nice rug on the floor suddenly shrivelled like skin, revealing dirty Tracker Brothers tile beneath, and those white tadpoles, scumbags left by couples who came in here to screw beneath the disinterested gaze of the Polaroid woman who was no one, really, just an artifact of a hollow past.
He paced, lurching on his bad hip, which hadn't hurt this badly since just after the accident, and he understood all of this, oh yes indeed, you had better believe it. His hip was full of splinters and ground glass; his shoulders and neck ached with a fierce tiredness. Mr. Gray was beating his body to death as he made his final charge and there was nothing Jonesy could do about it.
The dreamcatcher was still okay. Swaying back and forth in great looping arcs, but still okay. Jonesy fixed his eyes on it. He had thought himself ready to die, but he didn't want to go like this, not in this stinking office. Outside of it, they had once done something good, something almost noble. To die in here, beneath the dusty, indifferent gaze of the woman pinned to the bulletin board . . . that didn't seem fair. Never mind the rest of the world; he, Gary Jones of Brookline, Massachusetts, once of Derry, Maine, lately of the Jefferson Tract, deserved better.
"Please, I deserve better than this!" he cried to the swaying cobweb shape in the air, and on the disintegrating desk behind him, the telephone rang.
Jonesy wheeled around, groaning at the fiery, complicated pain in his hip. The phone on which he'd called Henry earlier had been his office phone, the blue Trimline. The one on the cracked surface of the desk now was black and clunky, with a dial instead of buttons and a sticker on it reading MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU. It was the phone he'd had in his childhood room, the one his parents had given him for his birthday. 949-7784, the number to which he had charged the call to Duddits all those years ago.
He sprang for it, ignoring his hip, praying the line wouldn't disintegrate and disconnect before he could answer.
"Hello? Hello!" Swaying back and forth on the shaking, vibrating floor. The whole office now going up and down like a ship on a heavy sea.
Of all the voices he might have expected, Roberta's was the last. "Yes, Doctor, hold on for your call."
There was a click so loud it hurt his head, then silence. Jonesy groaned and was about to put the phone down when there was another click.
"Jonesy?" It was Henry. Faint, but undoubtedly Henry.
"Where are you?" Jonesy shouted. "Christ, Henry, the place is falling apart! I'm falling apart!"
"I'm in Gosselin's," Henry said, "only I'm not. Wherever you are, you're not. We're in the hospital where they took you after you got hit . . ." A crackle on the line, a buzz, and then Henry came back, sounding closer and stronger. Sounding like a lifeline in all this disintegration. ". . . not there, either!"
"What?"
"We're in the dreamcatcher, Jonesy! We're in the dreamcatcher and we always were! Ever since '78! Duddits is the dreamcatcher, but he's dying! He's holding on, but I don't know how long . . ." Another click followed by another buzz, bitter and electric.
"Henry! Henry!"
". . . come out!" Faint again now. Henry sounded desperate. "You have to come out, Jonesy! Meet me! Run along the dreamcatcher and meet me! There's still time! We can take this son of a bitch! Do you hear me? We can--"
There was another click and the phone went dead. The body of his childhood phone cracked, split open, and vomited out a senseless tangle of wires. All of them were red-orange; all of them were contaminated with the byrus.
Jonesy dropped the phone and looked up at the swaying dreamcatcher, that ephemeral cobweb. He remembered a line they'd been fond of as kids, pulled out of some comedian's routine: Wherever you are, there you are. That had been right up there with Same shit, different day, had perhaps even taken over first place as they grew older and began to consider themselves sophisticated. Wherever you are, there you are. Only according to Henry's call just now, that wasn't true. Wherever they thought they were, they weren't.
They were in the dreamcatcher.
He noted that the one swaying in
the air above the ruins of his desk had four central spokes radiating out from the center. Many connecting threads were held together by those spokes, but what held the spokes together was the center--the core where they merged.
Run along the dreamcatcher and meet me! There's still time!
Jonesy turned and sprinted for the door.
10
Mr. Gray was also at a door--the one into the shaft house. It was locked. Considering what had happened with the Russian woman, this didn't surprise him much. Locking the barn door after the horse had been stolen was Jonesy's phrase for it. If he'd had one of the kim, this would have been easy. As it was, he wasn't too perturbed. One of the interesting side effects of having emotions, he had discovered, was that they caused you to think ahead, plan ahead, so that you wouldn't trigger an all-out emotional attack if things went wrong. It might be one reason these creatures had survived as long as they had.
Jonesy's suggestion that he give in to all this--go native had been his phrase for it, one that struck Mr. Gray as both mysterious and exotic--wouldn't quite leave his mind, but Mr. Gray pushed it aside. He would accomplish his mission here, satisfy the imperative. After that, who knew? Bacon sandwiches, perhaps. And what Jonesy's mind identified as a "cocktail." This was a cool and refreshing drink, slightly intoxicating.
A gust of wind rolled off the Reservoir, slapping wet snow into his face, momentarily blinding him. It was like the snap of a wet towel, returning him to the here and now, where he had a job to finish.
He sidled to the left on the rectangular granite stoop, slipped, then dropped to his knees, ignoring the howl from Jonesy's hip. He hadn't come all this way--black light-years and white miles--either to fall back down the steps and break his neck or to tumble into the Quabbin and die of hypothermia in that chilly water.
The stoop had been placed atop a mound of crushed stone. Leaning over the left side of the stoop, he brushed snow away and began feeling for a loose chunk. There were windows flanking the locked door, narrow but not too narrow.