4
Some time later, rumpled and dazed but happy, Ralph and Lois sat together on the living-room couch, a piece of furniture so stringently hobbit-sized it was really not much more than a love-seat. Neither of them minded. Ralph's arm was around Lois's shoulders. She had let her hair down and he twined a lock of it in his fingers, musing upon how easy it was to forget the feel of a woman's hair, so marvellously different from the feel of a man's. She had told him about her card-game and Ralph had listened closely, amazed but not, he discovered, much surprised.
There were a dozen or so of them who played every week or so at the Ludlow Grange for small stakes. It was possible to go home a five-buck loser or a ten-buck winner, but the most likely result was finishing a dollar ahead or a handful of change behind. Although there were a couple of good players and a couple of shlumps (Lois counted herself among the former), it was mostly just a fun way to spend an afternoon - the Lady Old Crock version of chess tournaments and marathon gin-rummy games.
'Only this afternoon I just couldn't lose. I should have come home completely broke, what with all of them asking what kind of vitamins I was taking and where I'd gotten my last facial and all the rest of it. Who can concentrate on a silly game like Deuces and Jacks, Man with the Axe, Natural Sevens Take All when you have to keep telling new lies and trying not to trip over the ones you've already told?'
'Must have been hard,' Ralph said, trying not to grin.
'It was. Very hard! But instead of losing, I just kept raking it in. And do you know why, Ralph?'
He did, but shook his head so she would tell him. He liked listening to her.
'It was their auras. I didn't always know the exact cards they were holding, but a lot of times I did. Even when I didn't, I could get a pretty clear idea of how good their hands were. The auras weren't always there, you know how they come and go, but even when they were gone I played better than I ever have in my life. During the last hour, I began to lose on purpose just so they wouldn't all hate me. And do you know something? Even losing on purpose was hard.' She looked down at her hands, which had begun to twine together nervously in her lap. 'And on the way back, I did something I'm ashamed of.'
Ralph began to glimpse her aura again, a dim gray ghost in which unformed blobs of dark blue swirled. 'Before you tell me,' he said, 'listen to this and see if it sounds familiar.'
He related how Mrs Perrine had approached while he was sitting on the porch, eating and waiting for Lois to get back. As he told her what he had done to the old lady, he dropped his eyes and felt his ears heating up again.
'Yes,' she said when he was finished. 'It's the same thing I did . . . but I didn't mean to, Ralph . . . at least, I don't think I meant to. I was sitting in the back seat with Mina, and she was starting to go on and on again about how different I looked, how young I looked, and I thought - I'm embarrassed to say it right out loud, but I guess I better - I thought, I'll shut you up, you snoopy, envious old thing. Because it was envy, Ralph. I could see it in her aura. Big, jagged spikes the exact color of a cat's eyes. No wonder they call jealousy the green-eyed monster! Anyway, I pointed out the window and said "Oooh, Mina, isn't that the dearest little house?" And when she turned to look, I . . . I did what you did, Ralph. Only I didn't curl up my hand. I just kind of puckered my lips . . . like this . . .' She demonstrated, looking so kissable that Ralph felt moved (almost compelled, in fact) to take advantage of the expression. '. . . and I breathed in a big cloud of her stuff.'
'What happened?' Ralph asked, fascinated and afraid.
Lois laughed ruefully. 'To me or her?'
'Both of you.'
'Mina jumped and slapped the back of her neck. "There's a bug on me!" she said. "It bit me! Get it off, Lo! Please get it off!" Of course there was no bug on her - I was the bug - but I brushed at her neck just the same, then opened the window and told her it was gone, it flew away. She was lucky I didn't knock her brains out instead of just brushing her neck - that's how full of pep I was. I felt like I could have opened the car door and run all the way home.'
Ralph nodded.
'It was wonderful . . . too wonderful. It's like the stories about drugs you see on TV, how they take you to heaven at first and then lock you in hell. What if we start doing this and can't stop?'
'Yeah,' Ralph said. 'And what if it hurts people? I keep thinking about vampires.'
'Do you know what I keep thinking about?' Lois's voice had dropped to a whisper. 'Those things you said Ed Deepneau talked about. Those Centurions. What if they're us, Ralph? What if they're us?'
He hugged her and kissed the top of her head. Hearing his worst fear coming from her mouth made it less heavy on his own heart, and that made him think of what Lois had said about loneliness being the worst part of getting old.
'I know,' he said. 'And what I did to Mrs Perrine was totally spur-of-the-moment - I don't remember thinking about it at all, just doing it. Was it that way with you?'
'Yes. Just like that.' She laid her head against his shoulder.
'We can't do it anymore,' he said. 'Because it really might be addictive. Anything that feels that good just about has to be addictive, don't you think? We've got to try and build up some safeguards against doing it unconsciously, too. Because I think I have been. That could be why--'
A scream of brakes and sliding, wailing tires cut him off. They stared at each other, wide-eyed, as outside on the street that sound went on and on, grief seeming to search for a point of impact.
There was a muffled thud from the street as the scream of the brakes and tires silenced. It was followed by a brief cry uttered by either a woman or a child, Ralph could not tell which. Someone else shouted, 'What happened?' and then, 'Oh, cripe!' There was a rattle of running footsteps on pavement.
'Stay on the couch,' Ralph said, and hurried to the living room window. When he ran up the shade Lois was standing right beside him, and Ralph felt a flash of approval. It was what Carolyn would have done under similar circumstances.
They looked out on a night-time world that pulsed with strange color and fabulous motion. Ralph knew it was Bill they were going to see, knew it - Bill hit by a car and lying dead in the street, his Panama with the crescent bitten out of the brim lying near one outstretched hand. He slipped an arm around Lois and she gripped his hand.
But it wasn't McGovern in the fan of headlights thrown by the Ford which was slued around in the middle of Harris Avenue; it was Rosalie. Her early-morning shopping expeditions were at an end. She lay on her side in a spreading pool of blood, her back bunched and twisted in several places. As the driver of the car which had struck her knelt beside the old stray, the pitiless glare of the nearest streetlamp illuminated his face. It was Joe Wyzer, the Rite Aid druggist, his orange-yellow aura now swirling with confused eddies of red and blue. He stroked the old dog's side, and each time his hand slipped into the vile black aura which clung to Rosalie, it disappeared.
Dreams of terror washed through Ralph, dropping his temperature and shrivelling his testicles until they felt like hard little peach-pits. Suddenly it was July of 1992 again, Carolyn dying, the deathwatch ticking, and something weird had happened to Ed Deepneau. Ed had freaked out, and Ralph had found himself trying to keep Helen's normally good-natured husband from springing at the man in the West Side Gardeners cap and attempting to rip his throat out. Then - the cherry on the Charlotte russe, Carol would have said - Dorrance Marstellar had arrived. Old Dor. And what had he said?
I wouldn't touch him anymore . . . I can't see your hands.
I can't see your hands.
'Oh my God,' Ralph whispered.
5
He was brought back to the here and now by the feeling of Lois swaying against him, as if she were on the edge of a faint.
'Lois!' he said sharply, gripping her arm. 'Lois, are you okay?'
'I think so . . . but Ralph . . . do you see . . .'
'Yes, it's Rosalie. I guess she--'
'I don't mean her; I mean him!' She poin
ted to the right.
Doc #3 was leaning against the trunk of Joe Wyzer's Ford, McGovern's Panama tipped jauntily back on his bald skull. He looked toward Ralph and Lois, grinned insolently, then slowly raised his thumb to his nose and waggled his small fingers at them.
'You bastard!' Ralph bellowed, and slammed his fist against the wall beside the window in frustration.
Half a dozen people were running toward the scene of the accident, but there was nothing they could do; Rosalie would be dead before even the closest of them arrived at the place where she lay in the glare of the car's headlights. The black aura was solidifying, becoming something which looked almost like soot-darkened brick. It encased her like a form-fitting shroud, and Wyzer's hand disappeared up to the wrist every time it slipped through that terrible garment.
Now Doc #3 raised his hand with the forefinger sticking up and cocked his head - a teacherly pantomime so good that it almost said Pay attention, please! right out loud. He tiptoed forward - unnecessary, as he couldn't be seen by the people out there, but good theater - and reached toward Joe Wyzer's back pocket. He glanced around at Ralph and Lois, as if to ask them if they were still paying attention. Then he began to tiptoe forward again, reaching out with his left hand.
'Stop him, Ralph,' Lois moaned. 'Oh please stop him.'
Slowly, like a man who has been drugged, Ralph raised his hand and then chopped it down. A blue wedge of light flew from his fingertips, but it diffused as it passed through the windowglass. A pastel fog spread out a little distance from Lois's house and then disappeared. The bald doctor shook his finger in an infuriating pantomime - Oh, you naughty boy, it said.
Doc #3 reached out again, and plucked something from Wyzer's back pocket as he knelt in the street, mourning the dog. Ralph couldn't tell for sure what it was until the creature in the dirty smock swept McGovern's hat from his head and pretended to use it on his own nonexistent hair. He had taken a black pocket-comb, the kind you could buy in any convenience store for a buck twenty-nine. Then he leaped into the air, clicking his heels like a malignant elf.
Rosalie had raised her head at the bald doctor's approach. Now she lowered it back to the pavement and died. The aura surrounding her disappeared at once, not fading but simply winking out of existence like a soap-bubble. Wyzer got to his feet, turned to a man standing on the curb, and began to tell him what had happened, gesturing with his hands to indicate how the dog had run out in front of his car. Ralph found he could actually read a string of six words as they came off Wyzer's lips: seemed to come out of nowhere.
And when Ralph shifted his gaze back down to the side of Wyzer's car, he saw that was the place to which the little bald doctor had returned.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
* * *
1
Ralph was able to get his rustbucket Oldsmobile started, but it still took him twenty minutes to get them across town to Derry Home on the east side. Carolyn had understood his increasing worries about his driving and had tried to be sympathetic, but she'd had an impatient, hurry-up streak in her nature, and the years had not mellowed it much. On trips longer than half a mile or so, she was almost always unable to keep from lapsing into reproof. She would stew in silence for awhile, thinking, then begin her critique. If she was particularly exasperated with their progress - or lack of it - she might ask him if he thought an enema would help him get the lead out of his ass. She was a sweetheart, but there had always been an edge to her tongue.
Following such remarks, Ralph would always offer - and always without rancor - to pull over and let her drive. Such offers Carol had always declined. Her belief was that, on short hops, at least, it was the husband's job to drive and the wife's to offer constructive criticism.
He kept waiting for Lois to comment on either his speed or his sloppy driving habits (he didn't think he would be able to remember his blinkers with any consistency these days even if someone put a gun to his head), but she said nothing - only sat where Carolyn had sat on five thousand rides or more, holding her purse on her lap exactly as Carolyn had always held hers. Wedges of light - store neon, traffic signals, streetlights - ran like rainbows across Lois's cheeks and brows. Her dark eyes were distant and thoughtful. She had cried after Rosalie died, cried hard, and made Ralph pull down the shade again.
Ralph almost hadn't done that. His first impulse had been to bolt out into the street before Joe Wyzer could get away. To tell Joe he had to be very careful. To tell him that when he emptied his pants pockets tonight, he was going to be missing a cheap comb, no big deal, people were always losing combs, except this time it was a big deal, and next time it might be Rite Aid pharmacist Joe Wyzer lying at the end of the skid. Listen to me, Joe, and listen closely. You have to be very careful, because there's all sorts of news from the Hyper-Reality Zone, and in your case all of it comes inside black borders.
There were problems with that, however. The biggest was that Joe Wyzer, sympathetic as he had been on the day he had gotten Ralph an appointment with the acupuncturist, would think Ralph was crazy. Besides, how did one defend oneself against a creature one couldn't even see?
So he had pulled the shade . . . but before he did, he took one last hard look at the man who had told him he used to be Joe Wyze but was now older and Wyzer. The auras were still there, and he could see Wyzer's balloon-string, a bright orange-yellow, rising intact from the top of his head. So he was still all right.
For now, at least.
Ralph had led Lois into the kitchen and poured her another cup of coffee - black, with lots of sugar.
'He killed her, didn't he?' she asked as she raised the cup to her lips with both hands. 'The little beast killed her.'
'Yes. But I don't think he did it tonight. I think he really did it this morning.'
'Why? Why?'
'Because he could,' Ralph said grimly. 'I think that's the only reason he needs. Just because he could.'
Lois had given him a long, appraising look, and an expression of relief had slowly crept into her eyes. 'You've figured it out, haven't you? I should have known it the minute I saw you this evening. I would have known, if I hadn't had so many other things rolling around in what passes for my mind.'
'Figured it out? I'm miles from that, but I have had some ideas. Lois, do you feel up to a trip to Derry Home with me?'
'I suppose so. Do you want to see Bill?'
'I'm not sure exactly who I want to see. It might be Bill, but it might be Bill's friend, Bob Polhurst. Maybe even Jimmy Vandermeer - do you know him?'
'Jimmy V? Of course I know him! I knew his wife even better. In fact, she used to play poker with us until she died. It was a heart attack, and so sudden -' She broke off suddenly, looking at Ralph with her dark Spanish eyes. 'Jimmy's in the hospital? Oh God, it's the cancer, isn't it? The cancer came back.'
'Yes. He's in the room right next to Bill's friend.' Ralph told her about the conversation he'd had with Faye that morning and the note he'd found on the picnic table that afternoon. He pointed out the odd conjunction of rooms and residents - Polhurst, Jimmy V, Carolyn - and asked Lois if she thought it was just a coincidence.
'No. I'm sure it isn't.' She had glanced at the clock. 'Come on - regular visiting hours over there finish at nine-thirty, I think. If we're going to get there before then, we'd better wiggle.'
2
Now, as he turned onto Hospital Drive (Forgot your damned turnblinker again, sweetheart, Carolyn commented), he glanced at Lois - Lois sitting there with her hands clasped on her purse and her aura invisible for the time being - and asked if she was all right.
She nodded. 'Yes. Not great, but okay. Don't worry about me.'
But I do worry, Lois, Ralph thought. A lot. And by the way, did you see Doc #3 take the comb out of Joe Wyzer's pocket?
That was a stupid question. Of course she'd seen. The bald midget had wanted her to see. Had wanted both of them to see. The real question was how much significance she had attached to it.
How much do you really know, Loi
s? How many connections have you made? I have to wonder, because they're not really that hard to see. I wonder . . . but I'm afraid to ask.
There was a low brick building about a quarter of a mile farther down the feeder road - WomanCare. A number of spotlights (new additions, he was quite sure) threw fans of illumination across its lawn, and Ralph could see two men walking back and forth at the end of grotesquely elongated shadows . . . rent-a-cops, he supposed. Another new wrinkle; another straw flying in an evil wind.
He turned left (this time remembering the blinker, at least) and eased the Olds carefully up the chute which led into the multilevel hospital parking garage. At the top, an orange barrier-arm blocked the way. PLEASE STOP & TAKE TICKET, read the sign next to it. Ralph could recall a time when there used to be actual people in places like this, rendering them a little less eerie. Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end, he thought as he unrolled his window and took a ticket from the automated dispenser.
'Ralph?'
'Hmmm?' He was concentrating on avoiding the back bumpers of the cars slant-parked on both sides of the ascending aisles. He knew that the aisles were much too wide for the bumpers of those other cars to be an actual impediment to his progress - intellectually he knew it - but what his guts knew was something else. How Carolyn would bitch and moan about the way I'm driving, he thought with a certain distracted fondness.
'Do you know what we're doing here, or are we just winging it?'
'Just another minute - let me get this damned thing parked.'
He passed several slots big enough for the Olds on the first level, but none with enough buffer-zone to make him feel comfortable. On the third level he found three spaces side by side (together they were big enough to hold a Sherman tank comfortably) and babied the Olds into the one in the middle. He killed the motor and turned to face Lois. Other engines idled above and below them, their locations impossible to pinpoint because of the echo. Orange light - that persistent, penetrating tone-glow now common to all such facilities as this, it seemed - lay upon their skins like thin toxic paint. Lois looked back at him steadily. He could see traces of the tears she had cried for Rosalie in her puffy, swollen lids, but the eyes themselves were calm and sure. He was struck by how much she had changed just since that morning, when he had found her sitting slump-shouldered on a park bench and weeping. Lois, he thought, if your son and daughter-in-law could see you tonight, I think they might run away screaming at the top of their lungs. Not because you look scary, but because the woman they came to bulldoze into moving to Riverview Estates is gone.