The Tommyknockers Page 34

  Always during the becoming came a time which might have been called "the dance of untruth." For Haven, this time commenced with the disappearance of David Brown and unfolded itself during the subsequent search.

  Ruth was just sitting down to the local news when the phone rang. Marie Brown was hysterical, barely coherent.

  "Calm down, Marie," Ruth said, and thought it was good she had eaten an early supper. She might not get another chance to eat for quite a while. At first the only clear fact she seemed able to get from Marie was that her boy David was in some kind of trouble, trouble that had started at a back yard magic show, and Hilly had gotten hysterical--

  "Put Bryant on," Ruth said.

  "But you'll come, won't you?" Marie wept. "Please, Ruth, before dark. We can still find him, I know we can."

  "Of course I'll come," Ruth said. "Now put Bryant on."

  Bryant was dazed but able to give a clearer picture of what had happened. It still sounded crazy, but then, what else was new in Haven these days? After the magic show, the audience had wandered away, leaving Hilly and David to clean up. Now David was gone. Hilly had fainted, and now had no memory of what had happened that afternoon at all. All he knew for sure was that when he saw David, he had to give him all the G.I. Joes. But he didn't remember why.

  "You better come over quick as you can," Bryant said.

  Going out, she paused for a moment on her way to her Dart and looked at Haven Village's Main Street with real hate. What have you done now? she thought. Goddam you, what have you done now?

  2

  With only two hours of good daylight left, Ruth wasted no time. She gathered Bryant, Ev Hillman, John Golden from just down the road, and Henry Applegate, Barney's father, in the Browns' back yard. Marie wanted to join the search party, but Ruth insisted she stay with Hilly. In her current frame of mind, Marie would be more hindrance than help. They had already searched, of course, but they had gone at it in a distracted, half-assed way. Eventually, as the boy's parents became convinced that David must have wandered across the road and into the woods, they had really ceased to search at all, although they had continued to move aimlessly around.

  Ruth got some from what they said; some from the oddly distracted, oddly frightened way they looked; most from their minds.

  Their two minds: the human one and the alien one. Always there came a point where the becoming might degenerate into madness--the madness of schizophrenia as the target minds tried to fight the alien group mind slowly welding them together ... and then eclipsing them. This was the time of necessary acceptance. Thus, it was the time of the dance of untruth.

  Mabel Noyes might have set it going, but she was not loved enough to make people dance. The Hillmans and the Browns were. They went far back in Haven's history, were well-loved and well-respected.

  And, of course, David Brown was only a little boy.

  The human net-mind, its "Ruth-mind," one might say, thought: He could have wandered into the high grass of the Browns' back field and fallen asleep. More likely than Marie's idea that he went into the woods--he'd have to cross the road to do that, and he was well-behaved. Marie and Bryant both say so. More important, so do the others. He'd been told again and again and again that he was never to cross the road without a grown-up, so the woods don't seem likely.

  "We're going to cover the lawn and back field section by section," Ruth said. "And we're not just going to walk around; we're going to look."

  "But if we don't find him?" Bryant's eyes were scared and pleading. "If we don't find him, Ruth?"

  She didn't really have to tell him; she only had to think it at him. If they didn't find David quickly, she would begin making calls. There would be a much larger search party--men with lights and bullhorns moving through the woods. If David wasn't found by morning, she would call Orval Davidson up in Unity and have him bring his bloodhounds. This was a familiar enough procedure to most of them. They knew about search parties, and most had been on them before; they were common enough during hunting season, when the woods filled up with out-of-staters carrying their heavy-caliber weapons and wearing their new orange flannel duds from L. L. Bean's. Usually these lost were found alive, suffering from nothing but mild exposure and severe embarrassment.

  But sometimes they found them dead.

  And sometimes they never found them at all.

  They would not find David Brown, and they knew it long before the search began. Their minds had netted together as soon as Ruth arrived. This was an act of instinct as involuntary as a blink. They linked minds and searched for David's. Their mental voices united in a chorus so strong that if David had been in a radius of seventy miles, he would have clapped his hands to his head and screamed in pain. He would have heard and known they were looking for him at five times that distance.

  No, David Brown was not lost. He was just ... not-there.

  The search they were preparing to make was totally useless.

  But because it was the Tommyknocker-mind which knew this, and because they still thought of themselves as "human beings," they would begin the dance of untruth.

  The becoming would demand many lies.

  This one, the one they told themselves, the one that insisted they were really the same as ever, was the most important lie of all.

  They all knew that, too. Even Ruth McCausland.

  3

  By eight-thirty, with dusk growing too thick to be much different from night, the five searchers had grown to a dozen. The news traveled quickly--a little too quickly to be normal. They covered all the yards and fields on the Browns' side, beginning at Hilly's stage (Ruth herself had crawled under there with a powerful flashlight, thinking that if David Brown was anywhere close by it should be here, fast asleep--but there was only flattened grass and a queer electrical smell that made her wrinkle her nose) and expanding the hunt outward in a beam shape from there.

  "You think he's in the woods, Ruth?" Casey Tremain asked.

  "He must be," she answered tiredly. Her head ached again. David was

  (not-there)

  no more in the woods than the President of the United States was. All the same ...

  In the back of her mind, tongue-twisters chased each other as restlessly as squirrels running on wire exercise wheels.

  The dusk was not so thick she couldn't see Bryant Brown put a hand to his face and turn away from the others. There was a moment of awkward silence which Ruth finally broke.

  "We need more men."

  "State cops, Ruth?" Casey asked.

  She saw them all looking at her, their faces still and sober.

  (no Ruth no)

  (outsiders no outsiders we'll take care)

  (take care of this business we don't need outsiders while)

  (while we shed our old skins put on our new skins while)

  (we "become")

  (if he's in the woods we'll hear him he'll call)

  (call with his mind)

  (no outsiders Ruth shhhh shhhh for your life Ruth we)

  (we all love you but no outsiders)

  These voices, rising in her mind, rising in the still, humid dark: she looked and saw only dark shapes and white faces, shapes and faces that for a moment barely seemed human. How many of you still have your teeth? Ruth McCausland thought hysterically.

  She opened her mouth, thinking she might scream, but her voice sounded--at least to her own ears--normal and natural. In her mind, the tongue-twisters

  (pretty Patsy picked some Betty Bitter bought some)

  turned faster than ever.

  "I don't think we need them just now, Casey, do you?"

  Casey looked at her, a little puzzled.

  "Well, I guess that'd be up to you, Ruth."

  "Fine," she said. "Henry ... John ... you others. Make some calls. I want fifty woods-wise men and women here before we go in. Everyone who shows up at the Browns' has got to have a flashlight with him or he's not going near those woods. We've got a little boy lost; we don't need to add any grown
men or women."

  As she spoke, authority grew in her voice; the shaky fear lessened. They looked at her respectfully.

  "I'll call Adley McKeen and Dick Allison. Bryant, go back and tell Marie to put on lots of coffee. It's going to be a long night."

  They moved off in different directions; the men who had calls to make headed in the direction of Henry Applegate's house. The Browns' was nearer, but the situation had become worse and none of them wanted to go there just now. Not while Bryant was telling his wife that Ruth McCausland had decided their four-year-old son was probably lost in the

  (not-there)

  big woods after all.

  Ruth was overwhelmed with weariness. She wished she could believe she was just going mad; if she could believe that, everything would be easier.

  "Ruth?"

  She looked up. Ev Hillman was standing there, his thin white hair flying around his skull. He looked troubled and afraid.

  "Hilly's doped off again. His eyes are open, but--" He shrugged.

  "I'm very sorry," Ruth said.

  "I'm takin him to Derry. Bryant n Marie want to stay here, o course."

  "Why not Doc Warwick to start with?"

  "Derry seems a better idea, that's all." Ev looked at Ruth unwinkingly. His eyes were old man's eyes, red-rimmed, rheumy, their blue faded to something which was almost no color at all. Faded but not stupid. And Ruth suddenly realized, with a wallop of excitement that nearly rocked her head back on her neck, that she could barely read him at all! Whatever was happening here in Haven, Ev, like Bobbi's friend, was exempt. It was going on around him, and he knew about it--some--but he was not a part of it.

  She felt an excitement which was followed by bitter envy.

  "I think he'll be better off out of town. Don't you, Ruthie?"

  "Yes," she said slowly, thinking of those rising voices, thinking for the last time of how David was not-there and then pushing the lunatic idea away forever. Of course he was. Were they not human? They were. Were. But ...

  "Yes, I suppose he will."

  "You could come with us, Ruthie."

  She looked at him for a long time. "Did Hilly do something, Ev? I see his name in your head. I can't see anything else--just that. Winking on and off like a neon sign."

  He looked at her, seemingly unsurprised by her tacit admission that she--sensible Ruth McCausland--was either reading his mind or believed she was.

  "Maybe. He acts like he did. This ... this half-swoon he's in ... if that's what it is ... could be he did something he's sorry for now. If so, it wasn't his fault, Ruthie. Whatever's going on here in Haven ... that was what really did it."

  A screen door banged. She looked over toward the Applegates' and saw several of the men on their way back.

  Ev glanced around and then looked back at Ruth.

  "Come with us, Ruth."

  "And leave my town? Ev, I can't."

  "All right. If Hilly should remember..."

  "Get in touch with me," she said.

  "If I can," Ev muttered. "They can make it tough, Ruthie."

  "Yes," Ruth said. "I know they can."

  "They're coming, Ruth," Henry Applegate said, and fixed Ev Hillman with a cold, appraising look. "Lots of good folks."

  "Fine," Ruth said.

  Ev looked unwinkingly back at Applegate for a moment and then moved away. An hour or so later, while Ruth was organizing the searchers and getting them ready for their first sweep, she saw Ev's old Valiant back down the Browns' driveway and turn toward Bangor. A small, dark shape--Hilly--was propped up in the passenger seat like a department-store mannequin.

  Good luck, you two, Ruth thought. She wished--achingly!--that she was also on her way out of this feverish nightmare.

  When the old man's car disappeared over the first hill, Ruth looked around and saw some twenty-five men and half a dozen women, some on this side of the road, some on the other. They were all standing motionless, simply watching (loving)

  her. Again she thought their shapes were changing, twisting, becoming inhuman; they were "becoming," all right, they were becoming something she didn't even dare think of ... and so was she.

  "What are you gawking at?" she called out, too shrilly. "Come on! Let's try to find David Brown!"

  4

  They didn't find him that night, nor on Monday, which was a hot white beating silence. Bobbi Anderson and her friend were part of the search; the roar of the digging machinery behind the old Garrick farm had stopped for a while. The friend, Gardener, looked pale, ill, and hung-over. Ruth doubted if he'd make it through the day when she first saw him. If he showed signs of dropping out of his place in the sweep, leaving a hole which could conceivably cause them to overlook the lost boy, Ruth would send him back to Bobbi's right away ... but he kept up, hung-over or not.

  By then, Ruth herself had already suffered a minor collapse, laboring under the double strain of trying to find David and resist the creeping changes in her own mind.

  She had snatched two hours of uneasy sleep before dawn on Monday morning, then went back out, drinking cup after cup of coffee and bumming more and more cigarettes. There was no question in her mind of bringing in outside help. If she did, the outsiders would become aware very quickly--within hours, she thought--that Haven had changed its name to Weirdsville. The Haven lifestyle --so to speak--rather than the missing boy, would rapidly become the source of their attention. And then David would be lost for good.

  The heat continued long after sundown. There was distant thunder but no breeze, no rain. Heat lightning flickered. In the thickets and blowdowns and choked second growth, mosquitoes hummed and buzzed. Branches crackled. Men cursed as they stumbled through wet places or clambered over deadfalls. Flashlight beams zigzagged aimlessly. There was a sense of urgency but not of cooperation; there were, in fact, several fistfights before Sunday midnight. Mental communication had not fostered a sense of peace and harmony in Haven; in fact, it seemed to have done exactly the opposite. Ruth kept them moving as best she could.

  Then, shortly after midnight--early Monday morning, that would have been--the world simply swam away from her. It went fast, like a big fish that looks lazy until it gives a sudden powerful flick of its tail and disappears. She saw the flashlight tumble out of her fingers. It was like watching something happen in a movie. She felt the hot sweat on her cheeks and forehead suddenly turn chilly. The increasingly vicious headache that had racked her all day broke with a sudden painless pop. She heard this, as if, in the center of her brain, someone had pulled the string on a noisemaker. For a moment she could actually see brightly colored crepe streamers drifting down through the twisted gray channels of her cerebellum. Then her knees buckled. Ruth fell forward into a tangle of shrubs. She could see thorns in the slanted glow of her flashlight, long and cruel-looking, but the bushes felt as comfy as goosedown pillows.

  She tried to call out and could not.

  They heard anyway.

  Feet approaching. Beams crissing and crossing. Someone

  (Jud Tarkington)

  bumped into someone else

  (Hank Buck)

  and a momentary hateful exchange flared between them

  (you stay out of my way, strawfoot)

  (I'll thump you with this light Buck swear to God I will)

  then the thoughts focused on her with real and undeniable

  (we all love you Ruth)

  sweetness--but oh, it was a grasping sweetness, and it frightened her. Hands touched her, turned her over, and

  (we all love you and we'll help you "become")

  lifted her gently.

  (And I love you too ... now please, find him. Concentrate on that, concentrate on David Brown. Don't fight, don't argue.)

  (we all love you Ruth ...)

  She saw that some of them were weeping, just as she saw (although she didn't want to) that others were snarling, lifting and dropping their lips, then lifting them again, like dogs about to fight.

  5

  Ad McKeen to
ok her home and Hazel McCready put her to bed. She drifted off into wild, confused dreams. The only one she could remember when she woke up Tuesday morning was an image of David Brown gasping out the last of his life in an almost airless void--he was lying on black earth beneath a black sky filled with glaring stars, earth that was hard and parched and cracked. She saw blood burst from the membranes of his mouth and nose, saw his eyes burst, and that was when she came awake, sitting up in bed, gasping.

  She called the town hall. Hazel answered. Just about every other able-bodied man and woman in town was out in the woods, Hazel said, searching. But if they didn't find him by tomorrow ... Hazel didn't finish.

  Ruth rejoined the search, which had now moved ten miles into the woods, at ten o'clock on Tuesday morning.

  Newt Berringer took a look at her and said, "You got

  (no business being out, Ruth)

  "and you know it," he finished aloud.

  "It is my business, Newt," she said with uncharacteristic curtness. "Now leave me alone to get about it."

  She stayed with it all that long, sweltering afternoon, calling until she was too hoarse to speak. When twilight began to come down again, she allowed Beach Jernigan to ferry her back to town. There was something under a tarp in the back of Beach's truck. She had no idea what it was, and didn't want to know. She wanted desperately to stay in the woods, but her strength was failing and she was afraid that if she collapsed again, they wouldn't let her come back. She would force herself to eat, then sleep six hours or so.

  She made herself a ham sandwich and passed up the coffee she really wanted for a glass of milk. She went up to the schoolroom, sat down, and put her small meal on her desk. She sat looking at her dolls. They looked back at her with their glassy eyes.

  No more laughing, no more fun, she thought. Quaker meeting has begun. If you show your teeth or tongue ...

  The thought drifted away.

  She blinked--not awake, precisely, but back to reality--some time later and looked at her watch. Her eyes widened. She had brought her small meal up here at eight-thirty. There they still were, near at hand, but it was now a quarter past eleven.

  And--

  --and some of the dolls had been moved around.

  The German boy in his alpine shorts--Lederhosen--was leaning against the Effanbee lady-doll instead of sitting between the Japanese doll in her kimono and the Indian doll in her sari. Ruth got up, her heart beating too fast and too hard. The Hopi kachina doll was sitting on the lap of a burlap Haitian vudun doll with white crosses for eyes. And the Russian moss-man was lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, his head wrenched to one side like the head of a gallows-corpse.