Dreamcatcher (78 page)

On the lowest of the eight steps leading up to the door, they find the woman's jeans, neatly folded. On the top step is a pair of plain white cotton underpants. The door is open. The men look at each other, but no one speaks. They have a good idea of what they're going to find inside: one dead Russian lady, hold the clothes.

But they don't. The circular iron cover over the top of Shaft 12 has been moved just enough to create a crescent moon of darkness on the Reservoir side. Beyond it is the crowbar the woman used to shift the lid—it would have been leaning behind the door, where there are a few other tools. And beyond the
crowbar is the Russian woman's purse. On top of it is her billfold, open to show her identification card. On top of the billfold—the apex of the pyramid, so to speak—is her passport. Poking out of it is a slip of paper, covered with chicken-scratches that have to be Russian, or Cyrillic, or whatever they call it. The men believe it is a suicide note, but upon translation it proves to be nothing but the Russian woman's directions. At the very bottom she has written
When road ends, walk along shore.
And so she did, disrobing as she went, unmindful of the branches which poked and the bushes which scratched.

The men stand around the partially covered shaft-head, scratching their heads and listening to the babble of the water as it starts on its way to the taps and faucets and fountains and backyard hoses of Boston. The sound is hollow, somehow dank, and there's good reason for that: Shaft 12 is a hundred and twenty-five feet deep. The men cannot understand why she chose to do it the way she did, but they can see
what
she did all too clearly, can see her sitting on the stone floor with her feet dangling; she looks like a nakedy version of the girl on the White Rock labels. She takes a final look over her shoulder, perhaps, to make sure her billfold and her passport are still where she put them. She wants someone to know who passed this way, and there is something hideously, unassuageably sad about that. One look back, and then she slips into the eclipse between the partially dislodged cover and the side of the shaft. Perhaps she held her nose, like a kid cannonballing into the community swimming pool. Perhaps
not. Either way, she is gone in less than a second. Hello darkness my old friend.

11

Old Mr. Beckwith's final words on the subject before driving on down the road in his mail-truck had been these:
Way I heard it, the folks in Boston'll be drinking her in their morning coffee right around Valentine's Day.
Then he'd given Jonesy a grin.
I don't drink the water myself. I stick to beer.

In Massachusetts, as in Australia, you say that
beah.

12

Jonesy had paced around his office twelve or fourteen times now. He stopped for a moment behind his desk chair, absently rubbing his hip, then set off again, still counting, good old obsessive-compulsive Jonesy.

One . . . two . . . three . . .

The story of the Russian woman was certainly a fine one, a superior example of the Small Town Creepy Yarn (haunted houses where multiple murders had taken place and the sites of terrible roadside accidents were also good), and it certainly cast a clear light on Mr. Gray's plans for Lad, the unfortunate border collie, but what good did it do
him
to know where Mr. Gray was going? After all . . .

Back to the chair again,
forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty,
and
wait
a minute, just wait a goddam minute. The
first time he'd gone around the room, he'd done it in just thirty-four paces, hadn't he? So how could it be fifty this time? He wasn't shuffling, taking baby steps, anything like that, so how—

You've been making it bigger. Walking around it and making it bigger. Because you were restless. It's your room, after all. I bet you could make it as big as the Waldorf-Astoria ballroom, if you wanted to . . . and Mr. Gray couldn't stop you.

“Is that possible?” Jonesy whispered. He stood by his desk chair, one hand on the back, like a man posing for a portrait. He didn't need an answer to his question; eyesight was enough. The room
was
bigger.

Henry was coming. If he had Duddits with him, following Mr. Gray would be easy enough no matter how many times Mr. Gray changed vehicles, because Duddits saw the line. He had led them to Richie Grenadeau in a dream, later he had led them to Josie Rinkenhauer in reality, and he could direct Henry now as easily as a keen-nosed hound leads a hunter to the fox's earth. The problem was the
lead,
the goddam
lead
that Mr. Gray had. An hour at least. Maybe more. And once Mr. Gray had chucked the dog down Shaft 12, there went your ballgame. There'd be time to shut off Boston's water supply—theoretically—but could Henry convince anyone to take such an enormous, disruptive step? Jonesy doubted it. And what about all the people along the way who would drink the water almost immediately? Sixty-five hundred in Ware, eleven thousand in Athol, over a hundred and fifty thousand in Worcester. Those people would have
weeks instead of months. Only days in some cases.

Was there any way to slow the son of a bitch down? Give Henry a chance to catch up?

Jonesy looked up at the dreamcatcher, and as he did, something in the room changed—there was a sigh, almost, the sort of sound ghosts are reputed to make at séances. But this was no ghost, and Jonesy felt his arms prickle. At the same time his eyes filled with tears. A line from Thomas Wolfe occurred to him—
o lost, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door.
Thomas Wolfe, whose thesis had been that you can't go home again.

“Duddits?” he whispered. The hair on his neck had stiffened. “Duddie, is that you?”

No answer . . . but when he looked at the desk where the useless phone had stood, he saw that something new had been added. Not a stone or a leaf, not an unfound door, but a cribbage board and a deck of cards.

Someone wanted to play the game.

13

Hurt pretty much all the time now. Mumma know, he tell Mumma. Jesus know, he tell Jesus. He don't tell Henry, Henry hurts too, Henry tired and make sad. Beaver and Pete are in heaven where they sitteth at the right hand of God the Father all righty, maker of heaven and earth forever and ever, Jesus' sake, hey man. That makes him sad, they were good friends and played games but never made fun. Once they found
Josie and once they saw a tall guy, he a cowboy, and once they play the game.

This a game too, only Pete used to say
Duddits it doesn't matter if you win or booze it's how you play the game
only this time it
does
matter, it
does,
Jonesy say it does, Jonesy hard of hearing but pretty soon it'll be better, pretty soon. If only he don't hurt. Even his Perco don't help. His throat make sore and his body shakes and his belly make hurty kind of like when he has to go poopoo,
kind
of like that, but he doesn't
have
to go poopoo, and when he cough sometimes make blood. He would like to sleep but there is Henry and his new friend Owen that was there the day they found Josie and they say
If only we could slow him down
and
If only we could catch up
and he has to stay awake and help them but he has to close his eyes to hear Jonesy and they think he's asleep, Owen says
Shouldn't we wake him up, what if the son of a bitch turns off somewhere,
and Henry says
I tell you I know where he's going, but we'll wake him up at I-90 just to be sure. For now let him sleep, my God, he looks so tired.
And again, only this time thinking it:
If only we could slow the son of a bitch down.

Eyes closed. Arms crossed over his aching chest. Breathing slow, Mumma say breathe slow when you cough. Jonesy's not dead, not in heaven with Beaver and Pete, but Mr. Gray say Jonesy locked and Jonesy believes him. Jonesy's in the office, no phone and no facts, hard to talk to because Mr. Gray is mean and Mr. Gray is scared. Scared Jonesy will find out which one is really locked up.

When did they talk most?

When they played the game.

The game.

A shudder racks him. He has to make hard think and it hurts, he can feel it stealing away his strength, the last little bits of his strength, but this time it's more than just a game, this time it matters who wins and who boozes, so he gives his strength, he makes the board and he makes the cards, Jonesy is crying, Jonesy thinks
o lost,
but Duddits Cavell isn't lost, Duddits sees the line, the line goes to the office, and this time he will do more than peg the pegs.

Don't cry Jonesy,
he says, and the words are clear, in his mind they always are, it is only his stupid mouth that mushes them up.
Don't cry, I'm not lost.

Eyes closed. Arms crossed.

In Jonesy's office, beneath the dreamcatcher, Duddits plays the game.

14

“I've got the dog,” Henry said. He sounded exhausted. “The one Perlmutter's homed in on. I've got it. We're a little bit closer. Christ, if there was just a way to slow them down!”

It was raining now, and Owen could only hope they'd be south of the freeze-line if it went over to sleet. The wind was gusting hard enough to sway the Hummer on the road. It was noon, and they were between Saco and Biddeford. Owen glanced into the rearview mirror and saw Duddits in the back seat, eyes closed, head back, skinny arms crossed on his
chest. His complexion was an alarming yellow, but a thin line of bright blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

“Is there any way your friend can help?” Owen asked.

“I think he's trying.”

“I thought you said he was asleep.”

Henry turned, looked at Duddits, then looked at Owen. “I was wrong,” he said.

15

Jonesy dealt the cards, threw two into the crib from his hand, then picked up the other hand and added two more.

“Don't cry, Jonesy. Don't cry, I'm not lost.”

Jonesy glanced up at the dreamcatcher, quite sure the words had come from there. “I'm not crying, Duds. Fuckin allergies, that's all. Now I think you want to play—”

“Two,” said the voice from the dreamcatcher.

Jonesy played the deuce from Duddits's hand—not a bad lead, actually—then played a seven from his own. That made nine. Duddits had a six in his hand; the question was whether or not—

“Six for fifteen,” said the voice from the dreamcatcher. “Fifteen for two. Kiss my bender!”

Jonesy laughed in spite of himself. It was Duddits, all right, but for a moment he had sounded just like the Beav. “Go on and peg it, then.” And watched, fascinated, as one of the pegs on the board rose,
floated, and settled back down in the second hole on First Street.

Suddenly he understood something.

“You could play all along, couldn't you, Duds? You used to peg all crazy just because it made us laugh.” The idea brought fresh tears to his eyes. All those years they'd thought they were playing with Duddits, he had been playing with them. And on that day behind Tracker Brothers, who had found whom? Who had saved whom?

“Twenty-one,” he said.

“Thirty-one for two.” From the dreamcatcher. And once again the unseen hand lifted the peg and played it two holes farther on. “He's blocked to me, Jonesy.”

“I know.” Jonesy played a three. Duddits called thirteen, and Jonesy played it out of Duddits's hand.

“But you're not. You can talk to him.”

Jonesy played his own deuce and pegged two. Duddits played, pegged one for last card, and Jonesy thought:
Outpegged by a retard—what do you know.
Except this Duddits
wasn't
retarded. Exhausted and dying, but not retarded.

They pegged their hands, and Duddits was far ahead even though it had been Jonesy's crib. Jonesy swept the cards together and began to shuffle them.

“What does he want, Jonesy? What does he want besides water?”

Murder,
Jonesy thought.
He likes to kill people.
But no more of that. Please God, no more of that.

“Bacon,” he said. “He does like bacon.”

He began to shuffle the cards . . . then froze as
Duddits filled his mind. The real Duddits, young and strong and ready to fight.

16

Behind them, in the back seat, Duddits groaned loudly. Henry turned and saw fresh blood, red as byrus, running from his nostrils. His face was twisted in a terrible cramp of concentration. Beneath their closed lids, his eyeballs rolled rapidly back and forth.

“What's the matter with him?” Owen asked.

“I don't know.”

Duddits began to cough: deep and racking bronchial sounds. Blood flew from between his lips in a fine spray.

“Wake him up, Henry! For Christ's sake, wake him up!”

Henry gave Owen Underhill a frightened look. They were approaching Kennebunkport now, no more than twenty miles from the New Hampshire border, a hundred and ten from the Quabbin Reservoir. Jonesy had a picture of the Quabbin on the wall of his office; Henry had seen it. And a cottage nearby, in Ware.

Duddits cried out: a single word repeated three times between bursts of coughing. The sprays of blood weren't heavy, not yet, the stuff was coming from his mouth and throat, but if his lungs began to rupture—

“Wake him up! He says he's aching! Can't you hear him—”

“He's not saying aykin.”

“What, then? What?”

“He's saying
bacon.
”

17

The entity which now thought of itself as Mr. Gray—who thought of
himself
as Mr. Gray—had a serious problem, but at least it (
he
) knew it.

Forewarned is forearmed
was how Jonesy put it. There were hundreds of such sayings in Jonesy's storage cartons, perhaps thousands. Some of them Mr. Gray found utterly incomprehensible—
A nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse
was one such,
What goes around comes around
was another—but
forewarned is forearmed
was a good one.