The Tommyknockers (60 page)

“Holy Christ, that's Wheeling!” Dugan cried. “How—”

Ev snapped off the radio. “Now I want you to listen to my head.”

Dugan stared at him for a moment, utterly flummoxed. Not even
Alice in Wonderland
had been
this
mad.

“What in the name of God are you talking about?”

“Don't argue with me, just do it.” Ev turned his face away from Dugan, presenting him with the back of his head. “I got two pieces of steel plate in my head. War souvenir. Bigger one's back there. See the place where the hair don't grow?”

“Yes, but—”

“Time is short! Put your ear up close to that scar and
listen!”

He
did
 . . . and felt unreality wash over him. The back of the old man's head was playing music. It was tinny and distant but perfectly identifiable. It was Frank Sinatra singing “New York, New York.”

Butch Dugan began to giggle. Soon he was laughing. Then he was roaring, arms wrapped around his stomach. He was out here in the back of the beyond with an old man whose head had just turned into a music-box. By God, this was better than Ripley's
Believe It or Not.

Butch laughed and gasped and wept and roared and—

The old man's callused palm slammed across his face. The shock of being slapped like a small child surprised Butch out of his hysteria as much as the pain had done. He blinked at Ev, one hand going to his cheek.

“It started a week and a half before I left town,” Ev
said grimly. “Blasts of music in my head. They were stronger when I got out this way, and I should have thought about that before now, but I didn't. They're stronger now.
Everything
is. So I got no time for you to get the screaming yaw-haws. Are you going to be all right?”

The flush spreading over Dugan's face mostly hid the red mark Ev's hand had made.
The screaming yaw-haws.
That pretty well described it. First he had puked, and then he had had a fit of hysterics like a teenage girl. This old man wasn't just showing him up; he was pulling past him in second gear.

“I'll be fine,” he said.

“You believe now that something's going on here? That something in Haven has changed?”

“Yes. I . . .” He swallowed. “Yes,” he repeated.

“Good.” Ev stepped on the gas and roared back onto the road. “This . . . thing . . . it's changing everyone in town, Trooper Dugan. Everyone but me. I get music in my head, but that's all. I don't read minds . . . and I don't get ideas.”

“What do you mean, ‘ideas'? What kind of ideas?”

“All kinds.” The Cherokee's speedometer touched sixty, then began to edge past it. “Thing is, I have no
proof
of what's going on. None at all. You thought I was right off'n my head, didn't you?”

Dugan nodded. He was holding on tight to the dashboard in front of him. He felt sick to his stomach again. The sun was too bright, dazzling on the windshield and the chrome.

“The reporter and the nurses did too. But there's something in the woods, and I'm going to find it, and I'm going to take some pitchers of it, and I'm going to take you out, and we're going to do some loud talking, and maybe we'll find a way to get my grandson David back and maybe we won't, but either way we ought to be able to shut down whatever's going on here before it's too late.
Ought
to? We
got
to.”

Now the speedometer needle hung just below seventy.

“How far?” Dugan managed through closed teeth. He was going to puke again, and soon; he just hoped he could hold on until they got to wherever they were going.

“The old Garrick farm,” Ev said. “Less than a mile.”

Thank God,
Dugan thought.

“It's not Gard,” Bobbi said. “Gard's passed out on the porch of the house.”

“How do you know?” Adley McKeen asked. “You can't read him.”

“I can, though,” Bobbi said. “A little more every day. He's still on the porch, I tell you. He's dreaming about skiing.”

They looked at Bobbi silently for a moment—about a dozen men standing across the street from the Methodist church, in front of the Haven Lunch.

“Who is it, then?” Joe Summerfield asked at last.

“I don't know,” Bobbi said. “Only that it's not Gard.” Bobbi was swaying mildly on her feet. Her face was that of a woman who was fifty, not thirty-seven. There were brown circles of exhaustion under her eyes. The men seemed not to notice.

From the church, voices were raised in “Holy, Holy, We Adore Thee.”

“I know who it is,” Dick Allison said suddenly. His eyes had gone strange and dull with hate. “Only one other person it
could
be. Only one other person I know of in town with metal in his head.”

“Ev Hillman!” Newt cried. “Christ!”

“We've got to get moving,” Jud Tarkington said. “The bastards are getting close. Adley, get some guns from the hardware store.”

“Okay.”

“Get 'em, but don't use 'em,” Bobbi said. Her eyes swept the men. “Not on Hillman, if it's him, and not on the cop.
Particularly
not on the cop. We can't afford another mess in Haven. Not before

(the “becoming”)

it's all finished.”

“I'll get my tube,” Beach said. His face was vacant with eagerness.

Bobbi grabbed his shoulder. “No, you won't,” she said. “No more messes includes no more cops disappearing.”

She looked at them all again, then at Dick Allison, who nodded.

“
Hillman's
got to disappear,” he said. “No way around it. But that's
maybe all right. Ev's crazy. A crazy old man might decide to do just about anything. A crazy old man might just decide to haul stakes and drive off to Zion, Utah, or Grand Forks, Idaho, to wait for the end of the world. The cop's going to make a mess, but he's going to make it in Derry, and it's going to be a mess everyone understands. No one else is going to shit in our nest. Go on, Jud. Get the guns. Bobbi, you pull in back of the Lunch with your pickup truck. Newt, Adley, Joe, you ride with me. You go with Bobbi, Jud. Rest of you go in Kyle's Caddy. Come on, hoss y'freight!”

They got moving.

Sushhhhh . . .

Same old dream, a few new wrinkles. Damned strange ones. The snow had gone pink. It was soaked with blood. Was it coming from
him?
Holy hell!
Who would have believed how much blood the old tosspot had in him?

They are skiing the intermediate slope. He knows that he should have stayed on the beginners' slopes for at least one more session, this is too fast for him, and furthermore, all this bloody snow is very distracting, particularly when it's all your blood.

Now he looks up, sending a rip of pain through his head—and his eyes widen. There's a Jeep on the goddam slope!

Annmarie screams: “Stem Bobbi, Gard!
STEM BOBBI!”

But he doesn't need to stem Bobbi because this is just a dream, it's become an old friend in the last few weeks, like the erratic bursts of music in his head; this is a dream and that isn't a Jeep and this isn't the Straight Arrow slope, it's—

—turning into Bobbi's driveway.

Is this a dream? Or is it real?

No, he realized; that was the wrong question. A better question would have been
How
much
of this is real?

The chrome winked blinding arrows of light into Gardener's eyes. He winced and groped for

(ski poles? no, not a dream, it's summer you're in Haven)

the porch railing. He could remember almost everything. It was hazy, but he could remember. No blackouts since he had come back to Bobbi's. Music in his head but no blackouts. Bobbi had gone to a funeral. Later on, she'd come back and they would start digging again. He remembered it all, just as he remembered the town-hall clock tower lifting off into the afternoon sky like a big-ass bird. All present and accounted for, sir. Except this.

He stood with his hands on the railing, bleary, bloodshot eyes watching the Jeep in spite of the glare. He was aware that he must look like a refugee from the Bowery.
Thank God there's still some truth in advertising
—
that's what I feel like.

Then the man in the passenger seat turned his head and saw Gard. The man was so huge that he looked like a creature from a fairy-tale. He was wearing sunglasses, so Gardener couldn't tell for sure if their eyes actually met or not. He thought they did; it felt that way. Either way, it didn't matter. He knew the look. As a veteran of half a hundred picket lines, he knew it well. He also knew it as a drunk who had awakened in the tank on more than one occasion.

The Dallas Police have arrived at last,
he thought. The thought carried feelings of anger and regret . . . but what he felt mostly was relief. At least, for the moment.

He's a cop . . . but what's he doing in a Jeep? God, the size of his face . . . he's as big as a fucking house! Must be a dream.
Must
be.

The Jeep didn't stop; it rolled up the driveway and out of sight. Now Gardener could only hear its roaring motor.

Headed out back. Going up there in the woods. They knew, all right. Oh Christ, if the government gets it—

All of his earlier dismay rose in him like bile; his dazed relief blew away like smoke. He saw Ted the Power Man throwing his jacket over the littered remains of the levitation machine and saying,
What gadget?

Dismay was replaced by the old, sick fury.

HEY BOBBI GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE!
he shrieked in his mind as loudly and clearly as he could.

Fresh blood burst from his nose and he staggered weakly back, grimacing in disgust and groping for his handkerchief.
What does it matter, anyway? Let them have it. It's the devil on either hand, and you know it. So what if the Dallas Police get it? It's turning Bobbi and everyone in
town into the Dallas Police. Particularly her company. The ones she brings out late at night, when she thinks I'm asleep. The ones she takes into the shed.

This had happened twice, both times around three in the morning. Bobbi thought Gardener was sleeping heavily—a combination of hard work, too much booze, and Valium. The level of pills in the Valium bottle was going steadily down, that was true, but not because Gardener was swallowing them. Each night's pill was actually going down the toilet.

Why this stealth? He didn't know, any more than he knew why he had lied to Bobbi about what he had seen on Sunday afternoon. Flushing a Valium tablet every night wasn't really
lying,
because Bobbi hadn't asked him outright if he was taking them; she had simply looked at the decreasing level of the tablets and drawn an erroneous conclusion Gardener hadn't bothered to correct.

Just as he had not bothered to correct her idea that he was sleeping heavily. In fact, he had been plagued by insomnia. No amount of drink seemed to put him under for long. The result was a kind of constant, muddled consciousness across which thin gray veils of sleep were sometimes drawn, like unwashed stockings.

The first time he had seen lights splash across the wall of the guestroom in the early hours of the morning, he had looked out to see a large Cadillac pulling into the driveway. He had looked at his watch and thought:
Must be the Mafia . . . who else would show up at a farm way out in the woods in a Caddy at three in the morning?

But when the porch light went on, he had seen the vanity plate, KYLE-1, and doubted if even the Mafia went for vanity plates.

Bobbi had joined the four men and one woman who had gotten out. Bobbi was dressed but barefoot. Gardener knew two of the men—Dick Allison, head of the local volunteer fire department, and Kyle Archinbourg, a local realtor who drove a fat-ass Cadillac. The two others were vaguely familiar. The woman was Hazel McCready.

After a few moments Bobbi had led them to her back shed. The one with the big Kreig lock on the door.

Gardener thought:
Maybe I ought to go out there. See what's going on.
Instead, he'd lain down again. He didn't want to go
near
the shed. He was afraid of it. Of what might be in there.

He had dozed off again.

The next morning there had been no Caddy, no sign of Bobbi's company. Bobbi had in fact seemed more cheerful, more her old self on that morning than at any time since Gardener had returned. He had convinced himself it was a dream, or perhaps something—not the DTs, exactly, but close—that had crawled out of a bottle. Then, not four nights ago, KYLE-1 had arrived again. Those same people had gotten out, met with Bobbi, and gone around to the shed.

Gard collapsed into Bobbi's rocking chair and felt for the bottle of Scotch he had brought out here this morning. The bottle was there. Gardener raised it slowly, drank, and felt liquid fire hit his belly and spread. The sound of the Jeep was fading now, like something in a dream. Perhaps that was all it had been. Everything seemed that way now. What was that line in the Paul Simon song?
Michigan seems like a dream to me now.
Yes, sir. Michigan, weird ships buried in the ground, Jeep Cherokees, and Cadillacs in the middle of the night. Drink enough and it all faded into a dream.

Except it's no dream. They're the take-charge people, those people who come in the Cadillac with the KYLE-1 plates. Just like the Dallas Police. Just like good old Ted, with his reactors. What kind of shot are you giving them, Bobbi? How are you souping them up even more than the rest of the resident geniuses? The old Bobbi wouldn't have pulled that kind of shit but the New Improved Bobbi does, and what's the answer to all of this? Is there one?