The Tommyknockers Page 29

  Ahhh, Hilly thought, and balm flowed over his soul. Success!

  Both the audience's interest and Hilly's triumph were short-lived. Tricks involving people are always more interesting than tricks involving things or animals (pulling a rabbit from a hat is all perfectly well, but no magician worth his salt ever decided on that basis that an audience would rather watch a horse be sawed in half than a pretty girl with a generous figure packed into a small costume) ... but it was still, after all, the same trick. The applause was louder this time (and Barney Applegate let out a hearty "Yayyyyy, Hilly!"), but it died quickly. Hilly saw that his mother was whispering with Mrs. Crenshaw again. His father got up.

  "Gonna take a shower, Hilly," he mumbled. "Damn good show."

  "But--"

  A horn honked from the driveway.

  "That's my mom," Barney said, jumping up so fast he almost knocked Mrs. Crenshaw over. "Seeya, Hilly! Good trick!"

  "But--" Now Hilly felt tears sting his own eyes.

  Barney dropped to his knees and waved, as if underneath the platform. "Bye, Davey! Good job!"

  "He's not under there, dammit!" Hilly yelled.

  But Barney was already scampering away. Hilly's mother and Mrs. Crenshaw were walking toward the back door, examining an Avon catalogue. It was all happening so fast. "Don't swear, Hilly," his mom called without looking back. "And make David wash his hands when you come into the house. It's dirty under there."

  Only David's grandfather, Ev Hillman, was left. Ev was looking at Hilly with that same worried expression.

  "Why don't you go away, too?" Hilly asked with a bitter fierceness that was spoiled only by the blurnness of his voice.

  "Hilly, if your brother isn't under there," Ev said in a slow voice that was totally unlike his usual one, "then just where is he?"

  I don't know, Hilly thought, and that was when the teeter-totter began to shift. Anger went down. Way down. And fear went way, way up. With fear came guilt. A snapshot of David's weeping, terrified face. A snapshot of his own (courtesy of a good imagination), looking angry and almost vicious--bullying for sure. Smile, dammit. David trying to smile through his tears.

  "Oh, he's under there, all right," Hilly said. He burst into loud sobs and sat down on his stage, pulling his knees up and leaning his hot face against them. "He's under there, yeah, everybody guessed my tricks and nobody liked them, I hate magic, I wish you'd never given me that stupid magic set in the first place--"

  "Hilly--" Ev came forward, looking distressed as well as worried now. Something was wrong here ... here and all over Haven. He felt it. "What's wrong?"

  "Get out of here!" Hilly sobbed. "I hate you! I HATE you!"

  Grandfathers are every bit as subject to hurt, shame, and confusion as anyone else. Ev Hillman felt all three now. It hurt to hear Hilly say he hated him--it hurt even though the boy was obviously emotionally exhausted. Ev felt shamed that it was his gift that had provoked Hilly's tears ... and never mind the fact that his son-in-law had picked out the magic set. Ev had accepted it as his gift when it had pleased Hilly; he supposed he must also accept it now that it was making Hilly weep with his face against his dirty knees. He felt confused because something else was going on here ... but what? He did not know. He did know that he had just begun to get used to the idea that he was becoming senile--oh, the effects were still quite small, but the condition seemed to accelerate a little every year--when this summer came along. And this summer everybody seemed to be getting senile ... but what exactly did he mean by that? A look in the eyes? Odd lapses, gropings for names that should have come quickly and easily? Those things, yes. But there was more. He just couldn't put his finger on what that more might be.

  This confusion, so unlike the vacuity which had afflicted the others who had attended the SECOND GALA MAGIC SHOW, caused Ev Hillman, who had been the only person there whose mentis was really compos (he was, in fact, the only person in Haven these days whose mentis was really compos--Jim Gardener was also relatively unaffected by the ship in the earth, but by the seventeenth, Gardener had begun drinking heavily again), to do something he regretted bitterly later. Instead of getting down on his arthritis-creaky knees and peering under Hilly's makeshift stage to see if David Brown really was under there, he retreated. He retreated as much from the idea that his birthday gift had caused Hilly's present grief as from anything else. He left Hilly alone, thinking he would come back "when the boy got hold of himself."

  10

  As he watched his grampy shuffle away, Hilly's guilt and misery doubled ... then trebled. He waited until Ev was gone, then scrambled to his feet and walked back to the platform. He put his foot on the concealed sewing-machine pedal and stepped on it.

  Hummmmmmmmm.

  He waited for the sheet to plump up in David's shape. He would whip the sheet off him and say, There, ya baby, see? That wasn't NOTHING, was it? He might even swat David a good one for scaring him and making him feel so lousy. Or maybe he'd just--

  Nothing was happening.

  Fear began to swell in Hilly's throat. Began ... or had it really been there all the time? All the time, he thought. Only now it was ... swelling, yeah, that was just the right word! Swelling in there, as if someone had stuck a balloon down his throat and was now inflating it. This new fear made misery look good and guilt absolutely peachy in comparison. He tried to swallow and couldn't get any spit past that swelling.

  "David?" he whispered, and pushed the pedal again.

  Hummmmmmm.

  He decided he wouldn't swat David. He would hug David. When David got back, Hilly would fall down on his knees and hug David and tell David he could have all the G.I. Joe guys (except maybe for Snake-Eyes and Crystal Ball) for a whole week.

  Nothing was still happening.

  The sheet that had covered David lay crumpled on the one which covered the crate over his machine. It didn't plump up in a David-shape at all. Hilly stood all by himself in his back yard with the hot July sun beating down on him, his heart racing faster and faster in his chest, that balloon swelling in his throat. When it finally gets big enough to pop, he thought, I'll probably scream.

  Quit it! He'll come back! Sure he will! The tomato came back, and the radio, and the lawn chair. Also, all the things I experimented on in my room came back. He ... he...

  "You and David come in and wash up, Hilly!" his mother called.

  "Yeah, Mom!" Hilly called back in a wavering, insanely cheerful voice. "Pretty soon!"

  And thought: Please God let him come back, I'm sorry God, I'll do anything, he can have all the G.I. Joe guys forever, I swear he can, he can have the MOBAT and even the Terrordome, only God dear God, PLEASE LET IT WORK THIS TIME LET HIM COME BACK!

  He pressed on the pedal again.

  Hummmmmm ...

  He looked at the crumpled sheet through tear-blurred eyes. For a moment he thought something was happening, but it was only a puff of wind stirring the crumpled sheet.

  Panic as bright as metal shavings began to twist through Hilly's mind. Shortly he would begin to scream, drawing his mother from the kitchen and his dripping father, naked except for a towel around his waist and shampoo running down his cheeks, both of them wondering what Hilly had done this time. The panic would be merciful in one way: when it came, it would obliterate thought.

  But things had not gone that far yet, unfortunately. Two thoughts occurred to Hilly's bright mind in rapid succession.

  The first: I never disappeared anything that was alive. Even the tomato was picked, and Daddy said once you pick something it's not really alive anymore.

  The second thought: What if David can't breathe wherever he is? What if he can't BREATHE?

  He had wondered very little about what happened to the things he "disappeared" until this moment. But now ...

  His last coherent thought before the panic descended like a pall--or a mourning veil--was actually a mental image. He saw David lying in the middle of some weird, inimical landscape. It looked like the surface of a harsh, dead
world. The gray earth was dry and cold; cracks gaped like dead reptilian mouths. They went zigzagging away in every direction. Overhead was a sky blacker than jewelers' velvet, and a billion stars screamed down--they were brighter than the stars anyone on the surface of the earth had ever seen, because the place Hilly was looking at with the wide, horrified eye of his imagination was almost or totally airless.

  And in the middle of this alien desolation lay his chubby four-year-old brother in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt reading THEY CALL ME DR. LOVE. David was clutching at his throat, trying to breathe the no-air of a world that was maybe a trillion light-years from home. David was gagging, turning purple. Frost was tracing death-patterns across his lips and fingernails. He--

  Ah, but then the merciful panic finally took over.

  He raked back the sheet he had used to cover David and overturned the crate that had concealed the machine. He stomped the sewing-machine pedal again and again, and began to scream. It was not until his mother reached him that she realized he was not just screaming; there were actually words in all that noise.

  "All the G.I. Joes!" Hilly shrieked. "All the G.I. Joes! All the G.I. Joes! Forever and ever! All the G.I. Joes!"

  And then, infinitely more chilling:

  "Come back, David! Come back, David! Come back!"

  "Dear God, what does he mean?" Marie cried.

  Bryant took his son by the shoulders and turned him around so they were face-to-face.

  "Where's David? Where did he go?"

  But Hilly had fainted, and he never really came to. Not long after, over a hundred men and women, Bobbi and Gard among them, were in the woods across the road, beating the bushes for Hilly's brother David.

  If he could have been asked, Hilly would have told them that, in his opinion, they were looking too close to home.

  Far too close.

  4.

  BENT AND JINGLES

  1

  On the evening of July 24th, a week after the disappearance of David Brown, Trooper Benton Rhodes was driving a state police cruiser out of Haven around eight o'clock. Peter Gabbons, known to his fellow officers as Jingles, was riding shotgun. Twilight lay in ashes. These were metaphorical ashes, of course, as opposed to the ones on the hands and faces of the two state cops. Those ashes were real. Rhodes's mind kept returning to the severed hand and arm, and to the fact that he had known instantly to whom they had once belonged. Jesus!

  Stop thinking about it! he ordered his mind.

  Okay, his mind agreed, and went right on thinking about it. "Try the radio again," he said. "I bet we're getting interference from that damn microwave dish they put up in Troy."

  "All right." Jingles grabbed the mike. "This is Unit 16 to Base. Do you copy, Tug? Over."

  He let go of the button and they both listened. What they heard was a peculiar screaming static, with ghostly voices buried deep inside it.

  "Want me to try again?" Jingles asked.

  "No. We'll be clear soon enough."

  Bent was running with the flashers on, doing seventy along Route 3 toward Derry. Where the hell were the backup units? There hadn't been a communications problem to and from Haven Village; radio transmissions so clear they were almost eerie. Nor had the radio been the only eerie thing about Haven tonight.

  Right! his mind agreed. And by the way, you recognized the ring right away, didn't you? No mistaking a trooper's ring, even on a woman's hand, is there? And did you see the way her tendons were hanging down in flaps? Looked like a cut of meat in a butcher shop, didn't it? Leg of lamb, or something. Tore her arm right off! It--

  Stop it, I said! Goddammit, JUST QUIT!

  Okay, yeah, right. Forgot for a sec that you didn't want to think about it. Or like a rolled roast, huh? And all that blood!

  Stop it, please stop it, he moaned.

  Right, okay, I know I'll drive me crazy if I keep thinking about it but I think I'll just keep thinking about it anyway because I just can't seem to stop. Her hand, her arm, they were bad, worse than any traffic accident I ever saw, but what about all those other pieces? The severed heads? The eyes? The feet? Yessir, that must have been a wowser of a furnace explosion, all right!

  "Where's our backup?" Jingles asked restlessly.

  "I don't know."

  But when he saw them, he could really stump them, couldn't he?

  Got a riddle for you, he could say. You'll never get it. How can you have mangled bodies all over the place after an explosion, but only one dead? And just by the way, how come the only real damage a furnace explosion did was to tear off the steeple of the town hall? For that matter, how come the head selectman, that guy Berringer, wasn't able to ID the body, when even I knew who it was? Give up, guys?

  He had covered the arm with a blanket. There was nothing to be done about all the other body parts, and he supposed it didn't matter anyway. But he had covered Ruth's arm.

  On the sidewalk in Haven Village's town square he had done that. He had done it while that idiot volunteer fire chief, Allison, stood grinning as if it was a bean supper instead of an explosion that had killed a fine woman. It was all crazy. Crazy to the max.

  Peter Gabbons was nicknamed Jingles because of his gravelly Andy Devine voice--Jingles was a character Devine had played in an old TV western series. When Gabbons came up from Georgia, Tug Ellender, the dispatcher, had started calling him that and it had stuck. Now, speaking in a high, strangled voice completely unlike his usual Jingles voice, Gabbons said: "Pull over, Bent. I'm sick."

  Rhodes pulled over in a hurry, on the very edge of a skid that almost dumped the cruiser in the ditch. At least Gabbons had been the first to call it; that was something.

  Jingles dove from the cruiser on the right. Bent Rhodes dove out on the left. In the blue strobe of the state police cruiser's lights, they both threw up everything available. Bent staggered back against the side of the car, pawing his mouth with one hand, hearing the retching noises still coming from the weeds beyond the edge of the road. He rolled his head skyward, dimly grateful for the breeze.

  "That's better," Jingles said at last. "Thanks, Bent."

  Benton turned toward his partner. Jingles' eyes were dark, shocked holes in his face. It was the look of a man who is processing all his information and reaching no sane conclusions at all.

  "What happened back there?" Bent asked.

  "You blind, hoss? Town-hall steeple took off like a rocket."

  "So how did a furnace explosion blow off the steeple?"

  "Dunno."

  "Spit on that." Bent tried to spit. He couldn't. "You believe it? A July furnace explosion that blows the steeple off the town hall?"

  "No. It stinks."

  "Right, pard. It stinks to high heaven." Bent paused.

  "Jingles, what did you feel? Did you feel anything weird back there?"

  Jingles said cautiously: "Maybe. Maybe I did feel something."

  "What?"

  "I don't know," Jingles said. His voice had begun to climb, to take on the uneven, warbling inflections of a small child near tears. Above them, a galaxy of stars shone down. Crickets sang in fragrant summer silence. "I'm just so damn glad to be out of there--"

  Then Jingles, who knew he would be going back to Haven the next day to assist in the cleanup and investigation, did begin to cry.

  2

  After a while they drove on. Any remaining trace of daylight had by then left the sky. Bent was glad. He didn't really want to look at Jingles ... and didn't really want Jingles looking at him.

  By the way, Bent, his mind now spoke up, it was pretty goddam startling, wasn't it? Pretty goddam weird. The severed heads and the legs with the little shoes still on most of the little feet? And the torsos! Did you see the torsos? The eye! That one blue eye? Did you see that? Must have! You kicked it into the gutter when you bent over to pick up Ruth McCausland's arm. All those severed arms and legs and heads and torsos, but Ruth was the only person who died. It's a riddle for a champeen riddle contest, all right.

  The
body parts had been bad. The shredded remains of the bats--an almighty lot of them--had also been bad. But neither had been as bad as Ruth's arm with her husband's ring on the third finger of the right hand, because Ruth's hand and arm had been real.

  The severed heads and legs and torsos had given him a hell of a shock at first--for a numb instant he had wondered, summer vacation or not, if a class had been touring the town hall when it blew. Then his numbed mind realized that not even kindergarten kids possessed limbs so small, and that no children possessed arms and legs which did not bleed when they were ripped from their bodies.

  He had looked around and seen Jingles holding a small, smoking head in one hand and a partially melted leg in the other.

  "Dolls," Jingles had said. "Fucking dolls. Where did all the fucking dolls come from, Bent?"

  He had been about to answer, to say he didn't know (although even then something about those dolls had tugged at him; it would come to him in time), when he noticed that there were people still eating in the Haven Lunch. People still shopping in the market. A deep chill had touched his heart like a finger made of ice. This was a woman most of them had known all their lives--known, respected, and in many cases loved--but they were going on about their business.

  Going on about their business as if nothing at all had happened.

  That was when Bent Rhodes started wanting--seriously wanting--to be out of Haven.

  Now, turning down the radio that was still grinding out nothing but meaningless static, Bent remembered what had tugged at his mind earlier. "She had dolls. Mrs. McCausland." Ruth, Bent thought. I wish I'd known her well enough to call her Ruth, like Monster does. Did. Everyone liked her, s'far as I know. Which is why it seemed so wrong to see them just going about their business--

  "I guess I heard that," Jingles said. "Hobby of hers, right? I guess I might've heard that at the Haven Lunch. Or maybe at Cooder's, having a pop with the oldtimers."

  A beer with the oldtimers, more like it, Rhodes thought, but he only nodded. "Yeah. And that's what they were, I reckon. Her dolls. I was talking about Mrs. McCausland one day last spring, I guess it was, with Monster, and--"