Dreamcatcher (90 page)
Authors: Stephen King
“Duddits gave Mr. Gray his foothold. His
mind-hold.
”
“Yeah, but he also gave
you
a strongholdâa place where you could hide from Mr. Gray. Don't forget that.”
No, Jonesy thought, he would never forget that.
“All of it on our end started with Duddits,” Henry said. “We've been odd, Jonesy, ever since we knew him. You know it's true. The things with Richie Grenadeau were only the big things, the ones that stood out. If you look back over your life, you'll see other things. I'm sure of it.”
“Defuniak,” Jonesy murmured.
“Who's that?”
“The kid I caught cheating just before my accident. I caught him even though I wasn't there on the day the test was given.”
“You see? But in the end, it was Duddits who broke the little gray son of a bitch. I'll tell you something else: I think Duddits saved my life at the end of East Street. I think it's entirely possible that when Kurtz's sidekick looked into the back of the Humvee at usâthe first time, I'm talking aboutâhe had a little Duddits in his head saying âDon't worry, old hoss, go on about your business, they dead.'Â ”
But Jonesy had not left his earlier thought. “And are we supposed to believe that the byrum connecting with usâus, of all the people in the worldâwas just random coincidence? Because that's what Gerritsen believed. He never said it in so many words, but his take on it was clear enough.”
“Why not? There are scientists, brilliant men like Stephen Jay Gould, who believe that our own species
exists thanks to an even longer and more improbable chain of coincidences.”
“Is that what you believe?”
Henry lifted his hands. He hardly knew how to reply without invoking God, who had crept back into his life over these last few months. By the back door, as it were, and in the dead of many sleepless nights. But did one have to invoke that old
deus ex machina
to make sense of this?
“What I believe is that Duddits is
us,
Jonesy.
L'enfant c'est moi . . . toi . . . tout le monde.
Race, species, genus; game, set, and match. We are, in our sum, Duddits, and all our noblest aspirations come down to no more than keeping track of the yellow lunchbox and learning to put our shoes on the right wayâfit wha, fit neek. Our wickedest motions, in a cosmic sense, come down to no more than counting someone's crib, pegging it backward, then playing dumb about it.”
Jonesy was regarding him with fascination. “That's either inspiring or horrible. I can't tell which.”
“And it doesn't matter.”
Jonesy thought about this, then asked: “If we're Duddits, who sings to us? Who sings the lullaby, helps us go to sleep when we're sad and scared?”
“Oh, God still does that,” Henry said, and could have kicked himself. There it was, out in spite of all his intentions.
“And did God keep that last weasel out of Shaft 12? Because if that thing had gotten in the water, Henryâ”
Technically, the weasel that had incubated inside of Perlmutter had actually been the last, but it was a fine point, a hair that needed no splitting.
“It would have caused trouble, I don't dispute that; for a couple of years, whether or not to tear down Fenway Park would have been the least of Boston's concerns. But destroy us? I don't think so. We were a new thing to them. Mr. Gray knew it; those tapes of you under hypnosisâ”
“Don't talk about those.” Jonesy had listened to two of them, and believed doing so had been the biggest mistake he'd made during his time in Wyoming. Listening to himself speak as Mr. Grayâunder deep hypnosis to
become
Mr. Grayâhad been like listening to a malevolent ghost. There were times when he thought he might be the only man on earth who truly understood what it was to be raped. Some things were better forgotten.
“Sorry.”
Jonesy waved his hand to show it was okayânot a problemâbut he had paled considerably.
“All I'm saying is that, to a greater or lesser degree, we are a
species
living in the dreamcatcher. I hate the way that sounds, phony transcendentalism, rings on the ear like pure tin, but we don't have the right words for this part of it, either. We may have to invent some eventually, but in the meantime,
dreamcatcher
will have to do.”
Henry turned in his seat. Jonesy did the same, shifting Noel a little bit on his lap. A dreamcatcher hung over the door to the cabin. Henry had brought it as a
house present, and Jonesy had put it up at once, like a Catholic peasant nailing a crucifix to the door of his cottage during a time of vampires.
“Maybe they were just drawn to you,” Henry said. “To
us.
The way flowers turn to follow the sun, or the way iron filings line up when they feel the pull of a magnet. We can't tell for sure, because the byrum is so different from us.”
“Will they be back?”
“Oh yes,” Henry said. “Them or others.”
He looked up at the blue sky of this late-summer day. Somewhere in the distance, toward the Quabbin Reservoir, an eagle screamed. “I think you can take that to the bank. But not today.”
“Guys!” Carla shouted. “Lunch is ready!”
Henry took Noel from Jonesy. For a moment their hands touched, their eyes touched, and their minds touchedâfor a moment they saw the line. Henry smiled. Jonesy smiled back. Then they walked down the steps and across the lawn side by side, Jonesy limping, Henry with the sleeping child in his arms, and for that moment the only darkness was their shadows trailing behind them on the grass.
Lovell, Maine
May 29, 2000
UTHOR'S
N
OTE
I was never so grateful to be writing as during my time of work (November 16, 1999âMay 29, 2000) on
Dreamcatcher.
I was in a lot of physical discomfort during those six and a half months, and the book took me away. The reader will see that pieces of that physical discomfort followed me into the story, but what I remember most is the sublime release we find in vivid dreams.
A good many people helped me. One was my wife, Tabitha, who simply refused to call this novel by its original title, which was
Cancer.
She considered it both ugly and an invitation to bad luck and trouble. Eventually I came around to her way of thinking, and she no longer refers to it as “that book” or “the one about the shit-weasels.”
I'm also indebted to Bill Pula, who took me four-wheeling at the Quabbin Reservoir, and to his cohorts, Peter Baldracci, Terry Campbell, and Joe McGinn. Another group of people, who would perhaps prefer not to be named, took me out behind the Air National Guard base in a Humvee, and foolishly let me drive, assuring me I couldn't get the beast stuck. I didn't, but it was close. I came back mudsplattered
and happy. They would also want me to tell you that Hummers are better in mud than in snow; I have fictionalized their capabilities in that regard to suit the course of my fiction.
Thanks are also in order to Susan Moldow and Nan Graham at Scribner, to Chuck Verrill, who edited the book, and to Arthur Greene, who agented it. And I mustn't forget Ralph Vicinanza, my foreign rights agent, who found at least six ways to say “There is no infection here” in French.
One final note. This book was written with the world's finest word processor, a Waterman cartridge fountain pen. To write the first draft of such a long book by hand put me in touch with the language as I haven't been for years. I even wrote one night (during a power outage) by candlelight. One rarely finds such opportunities in the twenty-first century, and they are to be savored.
And to those of you who have come so far, thank you for reading my story.
Stephen King
Turn the page for a preview from Stephen King's new novel
MR. MERCEDES
Available from Scribner
June 2014
DET.-RET.
13
The waiter returns to ask if there will be anything else. Hodges starts to say no, then orders another cup of coffee. He just wants to sit here awhile, savoring double happiness: it wasn't Mr. Mercedes and it
was
Donnie Davis, the sanctimonious cocksucker who killed his wife and then had his lawyer set up a reward fund for information leading to her whereabouts. Because, oh Jesus, he loved her so much and all he wanted was for her to come home so they could start over.
He also wants to think about Olivia Trelawney, and Olivia Trelawney's stolen Mercedes. That it
was
stolen no one doubts. But in spite of all her protests to the contrary, no one doubts that she enabled the thief.
Hodges remembers a case that Isabelle Jaynes, then freshly arrived from San Diego, told them about after they brought her up to speed on Mrs. Trelawney's inadvertent part in the City Center Massacre. In Isabelle's story it
was
a gun. She said she and her partner had been called to a home where a nine-year-old boy had shot and killed his four-year-old sister. They had been playing with an automatic pistol their father had left on his bureau.
“The father wasn't charged, but he'll carry that for the rest of his life,” she said. “This will turn out to be the same kind of thing, wait and see.”
That was a month before the Trelawney woman swallowed the pills, maybe less, and nobody on the Mercedes Killer case had given much of a shit. To themâand himâMrs. T. had just been a self-pitying rich lady who refused to accept her part in what had happened.
The Mercedes SL was downtown when it was stolen, but Mrs. Trelawney, a widow who lost her wealthy husband to a heart attack, lived in Sugar Heights, a suburb as rich as its name where lots of gated drives led up to fourteen- and twenty-room McÂMansions. Hodges grew up in Atlanta, and whenever he drives through Sugar Heights he thinks of a ritzy Atlanta neighborhood called Buckhead.
Mrs. T.'s elderly mother, Elizabeth Wharton, lived in an apartmentâa very nice one, with rooms as big as a political candidate's promisesâin an upscale condo cluster on Lake Avenue. The crib had space enough for a live-in housekeeper, and a private nurse came three days a week. Mrs. Wharton had advanced scoliosis, and it was her Oxycontin that her daughter had filched from the apartment's medicine cabinet when she decided to step out.
Suicide proves guilt. He remembers Lieutenant Morrissey saying that, but Hodges himself has always had his doubts, and lately those doubts have been stronger than ever. What he knows now is that guilt isn't the only reason people commit suicide.
Sometimes you can just get bored with afternoon TV.
14
Two motor patrol cops found the Mercedes an hour after the killings. It was behind one of the warehouses that cluttered the lakeshore.
The huge paved yard was filled with rusty container boxes that stood around like Easter Island monoliths. The gray Mercedes was parked carelessly askew between two of them. By the time Hodges and Huntley arrived, five police cars were parked in the yard, two drawn up nose-to-nose behind the car's back bumper, as if the cops expected the big gray sedan to start up by itself, like that old Plymouth in the horror movie, and make a run for it. The fog had thickened into a light rain. The patrol car roofracks lit the droplets in conflicting pulses of blue light.
Hodges and Huntley approached the cluster of motor patrolmen. Pete Huntley spoke with the two who had discovered the car while Hodges did a walk-around. The front end of the SL500 was only slightly crumpledâthat famous German engineeringâbut the hood and the windshield were spattered with gore. A shirtsleeve, now stiffening with blood, was snagged in the grille. This would later be traced to August Odenkirk, one of the victims. There was something else, too. Something that gleamed even in that morning's pale light. Hodges dropped to one knee for a closer look. He was still in that position when Huntley joined him.
“What the hell is that?” Pete asked.
“I think a wedding ring,” Hodges said.
So it proved. The plain gold band belonged to Francine Reis, thirty-nine, of Squirrel Ridge Road, and was eventually returned to her family. She had to be buried with it on the third finger of her right hand, because the first three fingers of the left had been torn off. The ME guessed this was because she raised it in an instinctive warding-off gesture as the Mercedes came down on her. Two of those fingers were found at the scene of the crime shortly before noon on April tenth. The index finger was never found. Hodges thought that a seagullâone of the big boys that patrolled the lakeshoreâmight have seized it and carried it away. He preferred that idea to the grisly alternative: that an unhurt City Center survivor had taken it as a souvenir.
Hodges stood up and motioned one of the motor patrolmen over. “We've got to get a tarp over this before the rain washes away anyâ”
“Already on its way,” the cop said, and cocked a thumb at Pete. “First thing he told us.”
“Well aren't
you
special,” Hodges said in a not-too-bad Church Lady voice, but his partner's answering smile was as pale as the day. Pete was looking at the blunt, blood-spattered snout of the Mercedes, and at the ring caught in the chrome.
Another cop came over, notebook in hand, open to a page already curling with moisture. His name-tag ID'd him as F. SHAMMINGTON. “Car's registered to a Mrs. Olivia Ann Trelawney, 729 Lilac Drive. That's Sugar Heights.”
“Where most good Mercedeses go to sleep when their long day's work is done,” Hodges said. “Find out if she's at home, Officer Shammington. If she's not, see if you can track her down. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir, absolutely.”
“Just routine, right? A stolen-car inquiry.”
“You got it.”
Hodges turned to Pete. “Front of the cabin. Notice anything?”
“No airbag deployment. He disabled them. Speaks to premeditation.”
“Also speaks to him knowing how to do it. What do you make of the mask?”
Pete peered through the droplets of rain on the driver's side window, not touching the glass. Lying on the leather driver's seat was a rubber mask, the kind you pulled over your head. Tufts of orange Bozo-ish hair stuck up above the temples like horns. The nose was a red rubber bulb. Without a head to stretch it, the red-lipped smile had become a sneer.
“Creepy as hell. You ever see that TV movie about the clown in the sewer?”
Hodges shook his head. Laterâonly weeks before his retirementâhe bought a DVD copy of the film, and Pete was right. The mask-face was very close to the face of Pennywise, the clown in the movie.
The two of them walked around the car again, this time noting blood on the tires and rocker panels. A lot of it was going to wash off before the tarp and the techs arrived; it was still forty minutes shy of seven
A.M
.
“Officers!” Hodges called, and when they gathered: “Who's got a cell phone with a camera?”
They all did. Hodges directed them into a circle around what he was already thinking of as the deathcarâone word, deathcar, just like thatâand they began snapping pictures.
Officer Shammington was standing a little apart, talking on his cell phone. Pete beckoned him over. “Do you have an age on the Trelawney woman?”
Shammington consulted his notebook. “DOB on her driver's license is February third, 1957. Which makes her . . . uh . . .”
“Fifty-two,” Hodges said. He and Pete Huntley had been working together for a dozen years, and by now a lot of things didn't have to be spoken aloud. Olivia Trelawney was the right sex and age for the Park Rapist, but totally wrong for the role of spree killer. They knew there had been cases of people losing control of their vehicles and accidentally driving into groups of peopleâonly five years ago, in this very city, a man in his eighties, borderline senile, had plowed his Buick Electra into a sidewalk café, killing one and injuring half a dozen othersâbut Olivia Trelawney didn't fit that profile, either. Too young.
Plus, there was the mask.
But . . .
But
.