Dreamy of terror washed through Ralph, dropping his temperature and shrivelling his testicles until they felt like hard little peachpits. 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 fielen’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.
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 pointed 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 attention, please.” right out loud. He tiptoed forward-an 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 soapbubble. 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 ill 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 16
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 HyperReality 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.