Ralph picked up the phone and said hello.
No answer. But someone was there; Ralph could hear breathing.
“Hello?” he asked again.
There was still no immediate answer, and he was about to say I’m hanging up now when Ed Deepneau said, “I called about your mouth, Ralph. It’s trying to get you in trouble.”
The line of cold between his shoulderblades was no longer a line; now it was a thin plate of ice covering him from the nape of his neck to the small of his back.
“Hello, Ed. I saw you on the news today.” It was the only thing he could think of to say. His hand did not seem to be holding the phone so much as to be cramped around it.
“Never mind that, old boy. just pay attention. I’ve had a visit from that wide detective who arrested me last month-Leydecker.
He just left, in fact.”
Ralph’s heart sank, but not as far as he might have feared. After all, Leydecker’s going to see Ed wasn’t that surprising, was it? He had been very interested in Ralph’s story of the airport confrontation in the summer of ’92. Very interested indeed.
“Did he?” Ralph asked evenly.
“Detective Leydecker has the idea that I think people-or possibly supernatural beings of some sort-are trucking fetuses out of town in flatbeds and pickup trucks. What a scream, huh?”
Ralph stood beside the sofa, pulling the telephone cord restlessly through his fingers and realizing that he could see dull red light creeping out of the wire like sweat. The light pulsed with the rhythms of Ed’s speech.
“You’ve been telling tales out of school, old boy.”
Ralph was silent.
“Calling the police after I gave that bitch the lesson she so richly deserved didn’t bother me,” Ed told him. “I put it down to…
. well, grandfatherly concern. Or maybe you thought that if she was grateful enough, she might actually spare you a mercy-fuck. After all, you’re old but not exactly ready for Jurassic Park yet. You might have thought she’d let you get a finger into her at the very least.”
Ralph said nothing.
“Right, old boy?”
Ralph said nothing.
“You think you’re going to rattle me with the silent treatment?
Forget it.” But Ed did sound rattled, thrown off his stride. It was as if he had made the call with a certain script in his head and Ralph was refusing to read his lines. “You can’t… you better not…
“My calling the police after you beat Helen didn’t upset you, but your conversation with Leydecker today obviously did, Why’s that, Ed?
Are you finally starting to have some questions about your behavior?
And your thinking, maybe?”
It was Ed’s turn to be silent. At last he whispered harshly, “If you don’t take this seriously, Ralph, it would be the worst mistake-”
“Oh, I take it seriously,” Ralph said. “I saw what you did today, I saw what you did to your wife last month… and I saw what you did out by the airport a year ago. Now the police know. I’ve listened to you, Ed, now you listen to me. You’re ill. You’ve had some sort of mental breakdown, you’re having delusions-”
“I don’t have to listen to your crap!” Ed nearly screamed.
“No, you don’t. You can hang up. It’s your dime, after all. But until you do, I’m going to keep hammering away. Because I liked you, Ed, and I want to like you again. You’re a bright guy, delusions or no delusions, and I think you can understand me: Leydecker knows, and Leydecker is going to be watching y-”
“Are you seeing the colors yet?”
Ed asked. His voice had become calm again. At the same instant, the red glow around the telephone wire popped out of existence.
“What colors?” Ralph asked at last.
Ed ignored the question. “You said you liked me. Well, I like you, too. I’ve always liked you. So I’m going to give you some very valuable advice. You’re drifting into deep water, and there are things swimming around in the undertow you can’t even conceive of. You think I’m crazy, but I want to tell you that you don’t know what madness is.
You don’t have the slightest idea. You will, though, if you keep on meddling in things that don’t concern you. Take my word for it.”
“What things?” Ralph asked. He tried to keep his voice light, but he was still squeezing the telephone receiver tight enough to make his fingers throb.
“Forces,” Ed replied. “There are forces at work in Derry that you don’t want to know about. There are… well, let’s just say there are entities. They haven’t really noticed you yet, but if you keep fooling with me, they will. And you don’t want that. Believe me, you don’t,”
Forces. Entities.
“You asked me how I found out about all this stuff. Who brought me into the picture. Do you remember that, Ralph?”
“Yes.” He did, too. Now. That had been the last thing Ed had said to him before turning on the big game-show grin and going over to greet the cops. I’ve seen the colors since he came and told me…
We’ll talk about it later.
“The doctor told me. The little bald doctor. I think it’s him you’ll have to answer to if you try to mind my business again. And then God help you.”
“The little bald doctor, uh-huh, Ralph said. “Yes, I see. First the Crimson King and the Centurions, now the little bald doctor. I suppose next it’ll be-”
“Spare me your sarcasm, Ralph. just stay away from me and my interests, do you hear? Stay away.”
There was a click and Ed was gone. Ralph looked at the telephone in his hand for a long time, then slowly hung it up. just stay away from me and my interests.
Yes, and why not? He had plenty of his own fish to fry.
Ralph walked slowly into the kitchen, stuck a TV dinner (filet of haddock, as a matter of fact) into the oven, and tried to put abortion protests, auras, Ed Deepneau, and the Crimson King out of his mind.
It was easier than he would have expected.
CHAPTER 6
Summer slipped away as it does in Maine, almost unnoticed.
Ralph’s premature waking continued, and by the time the fall colors had begun to burn in the trees along Harris Avenue, he was opening his eyes around two-fifteen each morning. That was lousy, but he had his appointment with James Roy Hong to look forward to and there had been no repeat of the weird fireworks show he had been treated to after his first meeting with Joe Wyzer. There were occasional flickers around the edges of things, but Ralph found that if he squeezed his eyes shilt and counted to five, the flickers were gone when he opened them again.
Well… usually gone.
Susan Day’s speech was scheduled for Friday, the eighth of October, and as September drew toward its conclusion, the protests and the public abortion- on-demand debate sharpened and began to focus more and more on her appearance. Ralph saw Ed on the TV news many times, sometimes in the company of Dan Dalton but more and more frequently on his own, speaking swiftly, cogently, and often with that little gleam of humor not only in his eyes but in his voice.
People liked him, and The Friends of Life was apparently attracting the large membership to which Daily Bread, its political progenitor, had only been able to aspire. There were no more doll-throwing parties or other violent demonstrations, but there were plenty of marches and counter-marches, plenty of name-calling and fistshaking and angry letters to the editor. Preachers promised damnation; teachers urged moderation and education; half a dozen young women calling themselves The Gay Lesbo Babes for Jesus were arrested for parading in front of The First Baptist Church of Derry with signs which read GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY BODY. A nameless policeman was quoted in the Derry News as saying that he hoped Susan Day would come down with the flu or something and have to cancel her appearance.
Ralph received no further communications from Ed, but on September twenty-first he received a postcard from Helen with fourteen jubilant words scrawled across the back: “Hooray, aj’oh.f Derry Public Library.”
I start next month! See you soon-Helen.”
Feeling more cheered than he had since the night Helen had called him from the hospital, Ralph went downstairs to show the card to McGovern, but the door of the downstairs apartment was shut and locked.
Lois, then… except that Lois was also gone, probably off to one of her card-parties or maybe downtown shopping for yarn and plotting another afghan.
Mildly chagrined and musing on how the people you most wanted to share good news with were hardly ever around when you were all but bursting with it, Ralph wandered down to Strawford Park.
And it was there that he found Bill McGovern, sitting on a bench near the softball field and crying.
Crying was perhaps too strong a word; leaking might have been better.
McGovern sat with a handkerchief sticking out of one gnarled fist, watching a mother and her young son play roll-toss along the first-base line of the diamond where the last big softball event of the season-the Intramural City Tournament-had concluded just two days before.
Every now and then he would raise the fist with the handkerchief in it to his face and swipe at his eyes. Ralph, who had never seen McGovern weep-not even at Carolyn’s funeral-loitered near the playground for a few moments, wondering if he should approach McGovern or just go back the way he had come.
At last he gathered up his courage and walked over to the park bench.”
“Lo, Bill,” he said.
McGovern looked up with eyes that were red, watery, and a trifle embarrassed. He wiped them again and tried a smile. “Hi, Ralph. You caught me snivelling. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Ralph said, sitting down. “I’ve done my share of it. What’s wrong?” McGovern shrugged, then dabbed at his eyes again. “Nothing much. I’m
