That’s right, Ralph-it’s Just a little more rummage-sale action, probably brought on by the stress of being stabbed and helped along by that frigging pal-n-pill.
He sensed nothing frightening about the two figures on May Locher’s stoop other than the long, sharp-looking thing one of them was holding.
Ralph supposed that not even your dreaming mind could do much with a couple of short bald guys wearing white tunics which looked left over from Central Casting. Also, there was nothing frightening about their behavior-nothing furtive, nothing menacing. They stood on the stoop as if they had every right to be there in the darkest, stillest hour of the morning. They were facing each other, the attitudes of their bodies and large bald heads suggesting two old friends having a sober, civilized conversation. They looked thoughtful and intelligent-the kind of space-travellers who would be more apt to say “We come in peace” than kidnap you, stick a probe up your ass, and then take notes on your reaction.
All right, so maybe this new dream’s not an out-and-out nightmare.
After the last one, are you complaining?
No, of course he wasn’t. Winding up on the floor once a night was plenty, thanks. Yet there was something very disquieting about this dream, just the same; it felt real in a way that his dream of Carolyn had not. This was his own living room, after all, not some weird, deserted beach he had never seen before. He was sitting in the same wing-back chair where he sat every morning, holding a cup of tea which was now almost cold in his left hand, and when he raised the fingers of his right hand to his nose, as he was doing now, he could still smell a faint whiff of soap beneath the nails… the Irish Spring he liked to use in the shower…
Ralph suddenly reached beneath his left armpit and pressed his fingers to the bandage there. The pain was immediate and intense… but the two small bald men in the white tunics stayed right where they were, on May Locher’s doorstep.
It doesn’t matter what you think you feel, Ralph. It can’t matter, because"Fuck you!” Ralph said in a hoarse, low voice. He rose from the wing-chair, putting his cup down on the little table beside it as he did. Sleepy time slopped onto the TV Guide there. “Fuck you, this Is no dream!”
He hurried across the living room to the kitchen, pajamas flapping, old worn slippers scuffing and thumping, the place where Charlie Pickering had stuck him sending O)ut he)t little bursts of pain. He grabbed a chair and took it into the apartment’s small foyer.
There was a closet here. Ralph opened its door, snapped on the light just inside, positioned the chair so he would be able to reach the closet’s top shelf, and then stared an it.
The shelf was a clutter of lost or forgotten items, most of which had belonged to Carolyn. These were small things, little more than scraps, but looking at them drove away the last lingering conviction that this had to be a dream. There was an ancient bag of M amp;M’s-her secret snack-food, her comfort-food. There was a lace heart, a single discarded white satin pump with a broken heel, a photo album. These things hurt a lot more than the knife-prick under his arm, but he had no time to hurt just now.
Ralph leaned forward, placing his left hand on the high, dusty shelf to balance his weight, then began to shuffle through the junk with his right hand, all the while praying that the kitchen chair wouldn’t take a notion to scoot out from under him. The wound below his armpit was now throbbing outrageously, and he knew he.was going to get it bleeding again if he didn’t stop the athletics soon, but…
I’m sure they’re up here somewhere… well… almost sure…
He pushed aside his old fly-box and his wicker creel. There was a stack of magazines behind the creel. The one on top was an issue of Ligok with Andy Williams on the cover. Ralph shoved them aside with the heel of his hand, sending up a flurry of dust. The old bag of M amp;M’s fell to the floor and split open, spraying brightly colored bits of candy in every direction. Ralph leaned even farther forward, now almost on his toes. He supposed it was his imagination, but he thought he could sense the kitchen chair he was on getting ready to be evil.
The thought had no more than crossed his mind when the chair squawked and began to slide slowly backward on the hardwood floor.
Ralph ignored that, ignored his throbbing side, and ignored the voice telling him he ought to stop this, he really ought to, because he was dreaming awake, just as the Hall book said many insomniacs eventually did, and although those little fellows across the street didn’t really exist, he could really be standing here on this slowly sliding chair, and he, could really break his hip when it went out from under him, and just how the hell was he going to explain what had happened when some smartass doctor in the Emergency Room of Derry Home asked him?
Grunting, he reached all the way back, pushed aside a carton from which half a Christmas tree star protruded like a strange spiky periscope (knocking the heelless evening pump to the floor in the process), and saw what he wanted in the far left hand corner of the shelf: the case which contained his old Zeiss-ikon binoculars.
Ralph stepped off the chair just before it could slide all the way out from under him, moved it closer in, then got up on it again. He couldn’t reach all the way into the corner where the binocular case stood, so he grabbed the trout-net which had been lying up here next to his creel and fly-box for lo these many years and succeeded in bagging the case on his second try. then dragged it forward until he could grab the strap, stepped off the chair, and came down on the fallen evening pump. His ankle twisted painfully. Ralph staggered, flailed his arms for balance, and managed to avoid going facefirst into the wall. As -he started back into the living room, however, he felt liquid warmth beneath the bandage on his side. He had managed to open the knife-wound again after all. Wonderful. just a wonderful night cher Roberts… and how long had he been away from the window? ’ He, didn’t know, but it felt like a long time, and he was sure the little bald doctors would be gone when he got back there. The street would be empty, and-he stopped dead, the binocular case dangling at the end of its strap and tracking a long slow trapezoidal shadow back and forth across the floor where the orange glow of the streetlights lay like an ugly coat of paint.
Little bald doctors? Was that how he had just thought of them?
Yes, of course, because that was what they called them-the folks who claimed to have been abducted by them… examined by them… operated on by them in some cases. They were physicians from space, proctologists from the great beyond. But that wasn’t the big deal.
The big deal wasEd used the phrase, Ralph thought. He used it the night he called me and warned me to stay away from him and his interests. He said it was the doctor who told him about the Crimson King and the Centurions and all the rest.
“Yes,” Ralph whispered. His back was prickling madly with gooseflesh. “Yes, that’s what he said. ’The doctor told me. The little bald doctor.”
“When he reached the window, he saw that the strangers were still out there, although they had moved from May Locher’s stoop to the sidewalk while he had been fishing for the binoculars. They were standing directly beneath one of those damned orange streetlights, in fact. Ralph’s feeling that Harris Avenue looked like a deserted stage set after the evening performance returned with weird, declamatory force… but with a different significance.
For one thing, the set was no longer deserted, was it? Some ominous, long-pastmidnight play had commenced in what the two odd creatures below no doubt assumed was a totally empty theater.