He has no more than identified this song when his hip suddenly goes nuclear. Jonesy utters a surprised scream and falls to the black-and-red ICU tiles, clutching at himself. This is how it was just after he was hit: an explosion of red agony. He rolls over and over, looking up at the glowing light-panels, at the circular speakers from which the music ("Anastasia screamed in vain") is coming, music from another world, when the pain is this bad everything is in another world, pain makes a shadow of substance and a mockery even of love, that is something he learned in March and must learn again now. He rolls and he rolls, hands clutching at his swollen hip, eyes bulging, mouth pulled back in a vast rictus, and he knows what has happened, all right: Mr. Gray. That son of a bitch Mr. Gray has re-broken his hip.
Then, from far away in that other world, he hears a voice he knows, a kid's voice.
Jonesy!
Echoing, distorted . . . but not that far away. Not this corridor, but one of the adjacent ones. Whose voice? One of his own kids? John, maybe? No--
Jonesy, you have to hurry! He's coming to kill you! Owen is coming to kill you!
He doesn't know who Owen is, but he knows who that voice belongs to: Henry Devlin. But not as it is now, or as it was when he last saw Henry, going off to Gosselin's Market with Pete; this is the voice of the Henry he grew up with, the one who told Richie Grenadeau that they'd tell on him if he didn't stop, that Richie and his friends would never catch Pete because Pete ran like the fucking wind.
I can't! he calls back, still rolling on the floor. He is aware that something has changed, is still changing, but not what. I can't, he broke my hip again, the son of a bitch broke--
And then he realizes what is happening to him: the pain is running backward. It's like watching a videotape as it rewinds--the milk flows up from the glass to the carton, the flower which should be blooming through the miracle of time-lapse photography closes up, instead.
The reason is obvious when he looks down at himself and sees the bright orange jacket he's wearing. It's the one his mother bought him in Sears for his first hunting trip to Hole in the Wall, the trip when Henry got his deer and they all killed Richie Grenadeau and his friends--killed them with a dream, maybe not meaning to but doing it just the same.
He has become a child again, a kid of fourteen, and there is no pain. Why would there be? His hip will not be broken for another twenty-three years. And then it all comes together with a crash in his mind: there was never any Mr. Gray, not really; Mr. Gray lives in the dreamcatcher and nowhere else. He is no more real than the pain in his hip. I was immune, he thinks, getting up. I never got so much as a speck of the byrus. What's in my head isn't quite a memory, not that, but a true ghost in the machine. He's me. Dear God, Mr. Gray is me.
Jonesy scrambles to his feet and begins to run, almost losing his feet as he swerves around a corner. He stays up, though; he is agile and quick as only a fourteen-year-old can be, and there is no pain, no pain.
The next corridor is one he knows. There is a parked gurney with a bedpan on it. Walking past it, moving delicately on tiny feet, is the deer he saw that day in Cambridge just before he was struck. There is a collar around its velvety neck and swinging from it like an oversized amulet is his Magic 8-Ball. Jonesy sprints past the deer, which looks at him with mild, surprised eyes.
Jonesy!
Close now. Very close.
Jonesy, hurry!
Jonesy redoubles his speed, feet flying, young lungs breathing easily, there is no byrus because he is immune, there is no Mr. Gray, not in him, at least, Mr. Gray is in the hospital and always was, Mr. Gray is the phantom limb you still feel, the one you could swear is still there, Mr. Gray is the ghost in the machine, the ghost on life support, and the life support is him.
He turns another corner. Here are three doors which are standing open. Beyond them, by the fourth door, the only one that is closed, Henry is standing. Henry is fourteen, as Jonesy is; Henry is wearing an orange coat, as Jonesy is. His glasses have slid down on his nose just as they always did, and he is beckoning urgently.
Hurry up! Hurry up, Jonesy! Duddits can't hold on much longer! If he dies before we kill Mr. Gray--
Jonesy joins Henry at the door. He wants to throw his arms around him, embrace him, but there's no time.
This is all my fault, he tells Henry, and his voice is higher in pitch than it has been in years.
Not true, Henry says. He's looking at Jonesy with the old impatience that awed Jonesy and Pete and Beaver as children--Henry always seemed farther ahead, always on the verge of sprinting into the future and leaving the rest of them behind. They always seemed to be holding him back.
But--
You might as well say that Duddits murdered Richie Grenadeau and that we were his accomplices. He was what he was, Jonesy, and he made us what we are . . . but not on purpose. It was all he could do to tie his shoes on purpose, don't you know that?
And Jonesy thinks: Fit wha? Fit neek?
Henry . . . is Duddits--
He's holding on for us, Jonesy, I told you. Holding us together.
In the dreamcatcher.
That's right. So are we going to stand out here arguing in the hall while the world goes down the chute, or are we going to--
We're going to kill the son of a bitch, Jonesy says, and reaches for the doorknob. Above it is a sign reading THERE IS NO INFECTION HERE, IL N'Y A PAS D'INFECTION ICI, and suddenly he sees both of that sign's bitter edges. It's like one of those Escher optical illusions. Look at it from one angle and it's true. Look at it from another and it's the most monstrous lie in the universe.
Dreamcatcher, Jonesy thinks, and turns the knob.
The room beyond the door is a byrus madhouse, a nightmare jungle overgrown with creepers and vines and lianas twisted together in blood-colored plaits. The air reeks of sulfur and chilly ethyl alcohol, the smell of starter fluid sprayed into a balky carb on a subzero January morning. At least they don't have the shit-weasel to worry about, not in here; that's on another strand of the dreamcatcher, in another place and time. The byrum is Lad's problem now; he's a border collie with a very dim future.
The television is on, and although the screen is overgrown with byrus, a ghostly black-and-white image comes straining through. A man is dragging the corpse of a dog across a concrete floor. Dusty and strewn with dead autumn leaves, it's like a tomb in one of the fifties horror flicks Jonesy still likes to watch on his VCR. But this isn't a tomb; it is filled with the hollow sound of rushing water.
In the center of the floor there is a rusty circular cover with MWRA stamped on it: Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. Even through the reddish scrum on the TV screen, these letters stand out. Of course they do. To Mr. Gray--who died as a physical being all the way back at Hole in the Wall--they mean everything.
They mean, quite literally, the world.
The shaft-lid has been partly pushed aside, revealing a crescent shape of absolute darkness. The man dragging the dog is himself, Jonesy realizes, and the dog isn't quite dead. It is leaving a trail of frothy pink blood behind on the concrete, and its back legs are twitching. Almost paddling.
Never mind the movie, Henry almost snarls, and Jonesy turns his attention to the figure in the bed, the gray thing with the byrus-speckled sheet pulled up to its chest, which is a plain gray expanse of poreless, hairless, nippleless flesh. Although he can't see now because of the sheet, Jonesy knows there is no navel, either, because this thing was never born. It is a child's rendering of an alien, trolled directly from the subconscious minds of those who first came in contact with the byrum. They never existed as actual creatures, aliens, ETs. The grays as physical beings were always created out of the human imagination, out of the dreamcatcher, and knowing this affords Jonesy a measure of relief. He wasn't the only one who got fooled. At least there is that.
Something else pleases him: the look in those horrid black eyes. It's fear.
16
"I'm locked and loaded," Freddy said quietly, drawing to
a stop behind the Humvee they had chased all these miles.
"Outstanding," Kurtz said. "Recon that HMW. I'll cover you."
"Right." Freddy looked at Perlmutter, whose belly was swelling again, then at Owen's Hummer. The reason for the rifle-fire they'd heard earlier was clear now: the Hummer had been shot up pretty good. The only question left to be answered was who had been on the giving end and who on the receiving. Tracks led away from the Hummer, growing indistinct under the rapid snowfall, but for now clear enough to read. A single set. Boots. Probably Owen.
"Go on now, Freddy!"
Freddy got out into the snow. Kurtz slid out behind him and Freddy heard him rack the slide of his personal. Depending on the nine-millimeter. Well, maybe that was all right; he was good with it, no question of that.
Freddy felt a momentary coldness down his spine, as if Kurtz had the nine leveled there. Right there. But that was ridiculous, wasn't it? Owen, yes, but Owen was different. Owen had crossed the line.
Freddy hurried to the Hummer, bent low, carbine held at chest level. He didn't like having Kurtz behind him, that was undeniable. No, he didn't like that at all.
17
As the two boys advance on the overgrown bed, Mr. Gray begins to push the CALL button repeatedly, but nothing happens. I think the works must be choked with byrus, Jonesy thinks. Too bad, Mr. Gray--too bad for you. He glances up at the TV and sees that his film self has gotten the dog to the edge of the shaft. Maybe they're too late after all; maybe not. There's no way to tell. The wheel is still spinning.
Hello, Mr. Gray, I've so much wanted to meet you, Henry says. As he speaks, he removes the byrussplotched pillow from beneath Mr. Gray's narrow, earless head. Mr. Gray tries to wriggle toward the other side of the bed, but Jonesy holds him in place, grasping the alien's child-thin arms. The skin in his hands is neither hot nor cold. It doesn't feel like skin at all, not really. It feels like--
Like nothing, he thinks. Like a dream.
Mr. Gray? Henry asks. This is how we say welcome to Planet Earth. And he puts the pillow over Mr. Gray's face.
Beneath Jonesy's hands, Mr. Gray begins to struggle and thrash. Somewhere a monitor begins to beep frantically, as if this creature actually has a heart, and that it has now stopped beating.
Jonesy looks down at the dying monster and wishes only for this to be over.
18
Mr. Gray got the dog to the side of the shaft he had partially uncovered. Coming up through the narrow black semicircle was the steady hollow rush of running water and a waft of dank, cold air.
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly--that from a box marked SHAKESPEARE. The dog's rear legs were bicycling rapidly, and Mr. Gray could hear the wet sound of tearing flesh as the byrum thrust with one end and chewed with the other, forcing itself out. Beneath the dog's tail, the chittering had started, a sound like an angry monkey. He had to get it into the shaft before it could emerge; it did not absolutely have to be born in the water, but its odds of survival would be much higher if it was.
Mr. Gray tried to shove the dog's head into the gap between the cover and the concrete and couldn't get it through. The neck bent and the dog's senselessly grinning snout twisted upward. Although still sleeping (or perhaps it was now unconscious) it began to utter a series of low, choked barks.
And it wouldn't go through the gap.
"Fuck me Freddy!" Mr. Gray screamed. He was barely aware of the snarling ache in Jonesy's hip now, certainly not aware that Jonesy's face was strained and pale, the hazel eyes wet with tears of effort and frustration. He was aware--terribly aware--that something was going on. Going on behind my back, Jonesy would have said. And who else could it be? Who else but Jonesy, his reluctant host?
"Fuck YOU!" he screamed at the damned, hateful, stubborn, just-a-little-too-big dog. "You're going down, do you hear me? DO YOU--"
The words stopped in his throat. All at once he couldn't yell anymore, although he dearly wanted to; how he loved to yell, and pound his fists on things (even a dying pregnant dog)! All at once he couldn't breathe, let alone yell. What was Jonesy doing to him?
He expected no answer, but one came--a stranger's voice, full of cold rage: This is how we say welcome to Planet Earth.
19
The flailing, three-fingered hands of the gray thing in the hospital bed come up and actually push the pillow aside for a moment. The black eyes starting from the otherwise featureless face are frantic with fear and rage. It gasps for breath. Considering that it doesn't really exist at all--not even in Jonesy's brain, at least as a physical artifact--it is fighting furiously for its life. Henry cannot sympathize, but he understands. It wants what Jonesy wants, what Duddits wants . . . what even Henry himself wants, for in spite of all his black thoughts, has his heart not gone on beating? Has his liver not gone on washing his blood? Has his body not gone on fighting its unseen wars against everything from the common cold to cancer to the byrus itself? The body is either stupid or infinitely wise, but in either case it is spared the terrible witchery of thought; it only knows how to stand its ground and fight until it can fight no more. If Mr. Gray was ever any different, he is different no longer. He wants to live.
But I don't think you will, Henry says in a voice that is calm, almost soothing. I don't think so, my friend. And once more puts the pillow over Mr. Gray's face.
20
Mr. Gray's airway opened. He got one breath of the cold shaft-house air . . . two . . . and then the airway closed up again. They were smothering him, stifling him, killing him.
No!! Kiss my bender! Kiss my fucking bender! YOU CAN'T DO THIS!
He yanked the dog back and turned it sideways; it was almost like watching a man already late for his plane trying to make one last bulky article fit into his suitcase.
It'll go through this way, he thought.
Yes. It would. Even if he had to collapse the dog's bulging middle with Jonesy's hands and allow the byrum to squirt free. One way or another, the damned thing would go through.
Face swelling, eyes bulging, breath stopped, a single fat vein swelling in the middle of Jonesy's forehead, Mr. Gray shoved Lad deeper into the crack and then began to thump the dog's chest with Jonesy's fists.
Go through, damn you, go through.
GO THROUGH!
21
Freddy Johnson pointed his carbine inside the abandoned Hummer while Kurtz, stationed shrewdly behind him (in that way it was like the attack on the grayboy ship all over again), waited to see what would develop.
"Two guys, boss. Looks like Owen decided to put out the trash before moving on."
"Dead?"
"They look pretty dead to me. Got to be Devlin and the other one, the one they stopped for."
Kurtz joined Freddy, took a brief glance in through the shattered window, and nodded. They looked pretty dead to him, too, a pair of white moles lying entwined in the back seat, covered with blood and shattered glass. He raised his nine-millimeter to make sure of them--one each in the head couldn't hurt--then lowered it again. Owen might not have heard their engine. The snow was amazingly heavy and wet, an acoustical blanket, and that was very possible. But he would hear gunshots. He turned toward the path instead.
"Lead the way, buck, and mind the footing--looks slippery. And we may still have the element of surprise. I think we should bear that in mind, don't you?"
Freddy nodded.
Kurtz smiled. It turned his face into a skull's face. "With any luck, buck, Owen Underhill will be in hell before he even knows he's dead."
22
The TV remote, a rectangle of black plastic covered with byrus, is lying on Mr. Gray's bedtable. Jonesy grabs it. In a voice that sounds eerily like Beaver's, he says "Fuck this shit" and slams it down as hard as he can on the table's edge, like a man cracking the shell of a hard-boiled egg. The controller shatters, spilling its batteries and leaving a jagged plastic wand in Jonesy's hand. He reaches below the pillow Henry is holding over the thrashing thing's face
. He hesitates for just a moment, remembering his first meeting with Mr. Gray--his only meeting. The bathroom knob coming free in his hand as the rod snapped. The sense of darkness which was the creature's shadow falling over him. It had been real enough then, real as roses, real as raindrops. Jonesy had turned and seen him . . . it . . . whatever Mr. Gray had been before he was Mr. Gray . . . standing there in the big central room. The stuff of a hundred movies and "unexplained mysteries" documentaries, only old. Old and sick. Ready even then for this hospital bed in the Intensive Care Unit. Marcy, it had said, plucking the word straight out of Jonesy's brain. Pulling it like a cork. Making the hole through which it could enter. Then it had exploded like a noisemaker on New Year's Eve, spraying byrus instead of confetti, and . . .
. . . and I imagined the rest. That was it, wasn't it? Just another case of intergalactic schizophrenia. Basically, that was it.
Jonesy! Henry shouts. If you're gonna do it, then do it!
Here it comes, Mr. Gray, Jonesy thinks. Get ready for it. Because payback's--
23
Mr. Gray had gotten Lad's body halfway into the gap when Jonesy's voice filled his head.
Here it comes, Mr. Gray. Get ready for it. Because payback's a bitch.
There was a ripping pain across the middle of Jonesy's throat. Mr. Gray raised Jonesy's hands, making a series of gagging grunts that would not quite attain the status of screams. He didn't feel the beard-stubbled, unbroken skin of Jonesy's throat but his own ragged flesh. What he felt most strongly was shocked disbelief: it was the last of Jonesy's emotions upon which he drew. This could not be happening. They always came in the ships of the old ones, those artifacts; they always raised their hands in surrender; they always won. This could not be happening.
And yet somehow it was.
The byrum's consciousness did not so much fade as disintegrate. Dying, the entity once known as Mr. Gray reverted to its former state. As he became it (and just before it could become nothing), Mr. Gray gave the dog's body a final vicious shove. It sank into the gap . . . yet still not quite far enough to go through.