"Because it's too late," she said. "Why did I have to wait until now to know what I was supposed to do?"
"You didn't need to know. You were doing it."
"No I wasn't," she said, distressed now. "I never got to tell a story I gave a damn about."
"Oh but you did," he said. He was almost gone from sight now.
"What story was that?" she begged him, determined to get an answer before he disappeared. "What?"
"Your own," he told her, slipping from sight. "Your own."
Then he was gone.
She stared down into the bubbling water, and saw that the creatures he'd called the 'shu-which resembled cuttlefish as far as she could see, and were congregated below her in their many millions-were describing a vast spiral around the sinking man, as though drawing him down into their midst. The vortex made no claim on her spirit stuff, however. She felt a pang of loss, watching him disappear into the bfiglit depths. He had seemed wise, and she had wanted to speak to him longer. As it was, she had something to take back with her: the observation that the story she'd told was her own. It meant little to her fight now, but perhaps if she succeeded in carrying it into the waking world it would comfort her, And now, as the spiral of 'shu faded into the depths, there was news from that world. A telephone ringing, and then the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
"Tesla?"
She opened her eyes. Harry had his head around the door. "It's Gfillo," he said. "He needs to talk to you. He's called once already." She vaguely remembered hearing a telephone ring as she'd wandered the snowy shore. "Sounds like he's in bad shape."
She got up and went downstairs. There was a stub of pencil beside the telephone. Before she spoke to Grillo she wrote I told my own story on the telephone directory, in case the conversation drove the dream from her head. Then she picked up the receiver.
Just as Harry had said, Grillo sounded to be in bad shape; terrible shape, in fact. Like her, like D'Amour, like the water-walker in her dream. It was as though everybody around her was winding down.
"I'm at a place called the Sturgis Motel," he explained, with Howie, Jo-Beth, and their kid Amy."
"Where?"
"A few miles outside Everville."
"What the hell are you doing there?" "We had no choice. We had to move quickly, and I knew we were going to need serious help."
"to do what?" "Tommy-Ray's coming after Jo-Beth."
" Tommy-Ray?
Grillo began to relate to her the events of the last few days. She gave all but five percent of her attention to the account, the remaining portion dedicated to holding onto the dream from which she'd awaken. But the images of terror and night that spilled from Grillo steadily supplanted her memories of the becalmed sea, and of the man who had known Fletcher.
"I need your help, Tes-" Grillo was saying. She clung (o the memory of the water-walker's face for a few desperate moments. "Tes, are you there?" Then she had no choice but to let it go.
"Yeah, I'm here-"
"I said I need some help."
"You don't sound so good, Nathan. Did you get hurt?"
"It's a long story. Look, give me your address. We'll drive into town." She flashed on the swathe Tommy-Ray the DeathBoy-along with his army of phantoms-had cut through Palomo Grove. Hadn't he brought down his own house in his enthusiasm for destruction, with his mother inside it? If he was unleashed in Everville, especially at a time of mass exodus (which couldn't be far off) the death toll would be appalling.
"Stay where you are," she said. "I'll come to you.
Grillo didn't argue. He was clearly too desperate to have her with him as soon as possible. He gave her the motel's whereabouts and urged her to be quick. That was that.
Harry was in the kitchen, burning toast. She told him all that Grillo had said. He listened without comment, until she got to the part about her leaving.
"So Everville's my baby now?" he said. "It looks that way."
She wanted to tell him that she'd dreamed her final dream, and that he should not expect her to return, but that sounded hopelessly melodramatic. What she needed was something pithier; a throwaway line that would seem blasd and wise when she was gone. But nothing came to mind. As it was, Harry had a farewell of his own to offer.
"I'm thinking I might go back up the mountain after dark," he said. "If the lad's coming through I may as well get a ringside view. Which means
... we probably won't be seeing each other again."
"No. I suppose not."
"We've had quite a time of it, haven't we? I mean, our lives, they've been-"
"Weird."
"Extraordinary," Harry said. She shrugged. It was true, of course.
"I'm sure we've both wished it could have been different. But I guess somewhere deep down we must have wanted it this way."
"I guess."
The exchange faltered there. Tesia looked up and saw that Harry was staring straight at her, his lips pinched together as though to keep from weeping.
"Enjoy the sights," she said. "I will," he replied.
"You take care."
She broke the look between them, went to pick up her jacket, and headed outside. As she reached the front door she almost turned round and went back to embrace him, but she resisted. to do so would only extend the agony. Better be gone, now, and off on the open road.
The parade-watching crowds had long since vacated Main Street, but there were still plenty of people out and about, shopping for souvenirs, or looking for somewhere to eat. The evening was balmy, the sky still cloudless; the party atmo sphere a little subdued by the fiasco of the afternoon but not vanquished altogether.
An earlier Tesla might have brought her Harley to a screeching halt in the middle of Main Street and yelled herself hoarse trying to get people to leave before the lad came. But she knew better than to waste her breath. They'd shrug, laugh, and turn their backs on her, and in truth she could scarcely blame them. She'd caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror just before she'd left Phoebe's house. The lean woman she'd admired a few days before-the woman marked by he' journey, the woman proud of her scars-was now a bag of bones and despair.
Besides, what use would such warnings be, even if they were attended to? If the lad was indeed all it had been promised to be, then there was no escape from it. Perhaps these people, celebrating in the shadow of death and snuffed out before they even knew what force had snuffed them, would he thought the lucky ones in time. Gone too quickly to fear or hope. Worst of all, hope.
Though it was a detour to return to the crossroads, she did so, just to see what clues, if any, remained to the mysteries of the afternoon. Though the streets had been given back to traffic, there were very few cars passing in either direction. There was foot traffic however, and plenty of it. People lingering outside the diner, and in front of the crossroads. A few even had their cameras out to immortalize the spot. Of the people Tesia had last seen on their knees here, praying to the visions they were witnessing, there was now no sign. They'd gone home, or been taken.
As she was putting her helmet back on, she heard a shout from the opposite side of the street, and turned to see her nemesis from Kitty's Diner, Bosley the Righteous, striding towards her.
"What did you do?" he yelled, his face blotchy with rage.
"About what?" she said.
"You had a hand in this abomination," he said. "I saw you, right in the middle of it." He halted a couple of yards from her, as though fearful she might infect him with her godlessness. "I know what you're up to."
"You want to explain it to me?" she snapped. "And don't give me some shit about the Devil's work, Bosley, because you don't believe that any more than I do. Not really."