Ralph nodded.

“On the other hand, we’ve seen guys like him before, and they have a way of self-destructing. That process has already started with Deepneau. He’s lost his wife, he’s lost his job… did you know that?”

“Uh-huh. Helen told me.”

“Now he’s losing his more moderate followers. They’re peeling off like jet fighters heading back to base because they’re running out of fuel.

Not Ed, though-he’s going on come hell or high water. I imagine he’ll keep at least some of them with him until the Susan Day speech, but after that I think it’s gonna be a case of the cheese stands alone.”

???? 'Has it occurred to you that he might try something Friday? That he

???? might try to hurt Susan Day?”

???? 'Oh yes,” Leydecker said. 'It’s occurred to us, all right. It

???? certainly has.”

????

Ralph was extremely happy to find the perch door locked this time.

He unlocked it just long enough to let himself in, then trudged up the front stairs, which seemed longer and gloomier than ever this afternoon.

The apartment seemed too silent in spite of the steady beat of the rain on the roof, and the air seemed to smell of too many sleepless nights. Ralph took one of the chairs from the kitchen table over to the counter, stood on it, and looked at the top of the cabinet closest to the sink. It was as if he expected to find another can of Bodyguard-the original can, the one he’d put up here after seeing Helen and her friend Gretchen off-on top of that cabinet, and part of him actually did expect that. There was nothing up there, however, but a toothpick, an old Buss fuse, and a lot of dust.

He got carefully down off the chair, saw he had left muddy footprints on the seat, and used a swatch of paper towels to wipe them away. Then he replaced the chair at the table and went into the living room. He stood there, letting his eyes run from the couch with its dingy floral coverlet to the wing-chair to the old television sitting on its oak table between the two windows looking out on Harris Avenue.

From the TV his gaze moved into the far corner. When he had come into the apartment yesterday, still a little on edge from finding the porch door unlatched, Ralph had briefly mistaken his jacket hanging on the coat-tree in that corner for an intruder. Well, 2 33 no need to be coy; he had thought for a moment that Ed had decided to pay him a visit.

I never hang my coat up, though. It was one of the things about me-one of the few, I think-that used to genuinely irritate Carolyn.

And if I never managed to get in the habit of hanging it up when she was alive, I sure as shit haven’t since she died. No, I’m not the one who hung thisjacket up.

Ralph crossed the r(Rom, rummaging in the pockets of the gray leather jacket and putting the stuff he found on top of the television.

Nothing in the left but an old roll of Life Savers with lint clinging to the top one, but the right hand pocket was a treasure-trove even with the aerosol can gone. There was a lemon Tootsie Pop, still in its wrapper; a crumpled advertising circular from the Derry House of Pizza; a double-a battery; a small empty carton that had once contained an apple pie from McDonald’s; his discount card from Dave’s Video Stop, just four punches away from a free rental (the card had been MIA for ever two weeks and Ralph had been sure it was lost); a book of matches; various scraps of tinfoil… and a folded piece of lined blue paper.

Ralph unfolded it and read a single sentence, written in a scrawling, slightly unsteady old man’s script: Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else.

That was all there was, but it was enough to confirm for his brain what his heart already knew: Dorrance Marstellar had been on the porch steps when Ralph had returned from Back Pages with his paperbacks, but he’d had other stuff to do before sitting down to wait. He had gone up to Ralph’s apartment, taken the aerosol can from the top of the kitchen shelf, and put it in the right hand pocket of Ralph’s old gray jacket.

He had even left his calling-card: a bit of poetry scrawled on a piece of paper probably torn from the battered notebook in which he sometimes recorded arrivals and departures along Runway 3. Then, instead of returning the jacket to wherever Ralph had left it, Old Dor had hung it neatly on the coat-tree. With that accomplished (done-bun-can’the- undone) he had returned to the porch to wait.

Last night Ralph had given McGovern a scolding for leaving the front door unlocked again, and McGovern had borne it as patiently as Ralph himself had borne Carolyn’s scoldings about tossing his jacket onto the nearest chair when he came in instead of hanging it up, but now Ralph found himself wondering if he hadn’t accused Bill unjustly.

Perhaps Old Dor had picked the lock… or witched it. Under the circumstances, witchery seemed the more likely choice. Because…

“Because look,” Ralph said in a low voice, mechanically scooping his pocket-litter up from the top of the TV and dumping it back into his pockets. “It isn’t just like he knew I’d need the Stuff; he knew where to find it, and he knew where to put it.”

A chill zigzagged up his back at that, and his mind tried to gavel the whole idea down-to label it mad, illogical, just the sort of thing a man with a grade-a case of insomnia would think up. Maybe so.

But that didn’t explain the scrap of paper, did it?

He looked at the scrawled words on the blue-lined sheet again-Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else. That wasn’t his handwriting any more than Cemetery Nights was his book.

“Except it is now; Dor gave it to me,” Ralph said, and the chill raced up his back again, jagged as a crack in a windshield.

And what other explanation comes to mind? That can didn’t just fly into your pocket. The sheet of notepaper, either.

That sense of being pushed by invisible hands toward the maw of some dark tunnel had returned. Feeling like a man in a dream, Ralph walked back toward the kitchen. On the way he slipped out of the gray jacket and tossed it over the arm of the couch without even thinking about it.

He stood in the doorway for some time, looking fixedly at the calendar with its picture of two laughing boys carving a jack-o’-lantern. Looking at tomorrow’s date, which was circled.

Cancel the appointment with the pin-sticker man, Dorrance had said; that was the message, and today the knife-sticker man had more or less underlined it. Hell, lit it in neon.

Ralph hunted out a number in the Yellow Pages and dialed it.

“You have reached the office of Dr. James Roy Hong,” a pleasant female voice informed him. “There is no one available to take your call right now, so please leave a message at the sound of the tone.

We will get back to you just as soon as possible.”

The answering machine beeped. In a voice which surprised him with its steadiness, Ralph said: “This is Ralph Roberts. I’m scheduled to come in tomorrow at ten o’clock. I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to make it. Something has come up. Thank you.” He paused, then added: “I’ll pay for the appointment, of course.”

He shut his eyes and groped the phone back into the cradle. Then he leaned his forehead against the wall.

What are you doing, Ralph? What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?

“It’s a long walk back to Eden, sweetheart.”

You can’t seriously think whatever you’re thinking… can you?

“… a long walk, so don’t sweat the small stuff What exactly are you thinking, Ralph?

He didn’t know; he didn’t have the slightest idea. Something about fate, he supposed, and appointments in Samarra. He only knew for sure that rings of pain were spreading out from the little hole in his left side, the hole the knife-sticker man had made. The E.M.T had given him half a dozen pain-pills and he supposed he should take one, but just now he felt too tired to go to the sink and draw a glass of water… and if he was too tired to cross one shitty little room, how the hell would he ever make the long walk back to Eden?

Ralph didn’t know, and for the time being he didn’t care. He only wanted to stand where he was, with his forehead against the wall and his eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to look at anything.

CHAPTER 8

The beach was a long white edging, like a flirt Of silk slip at the hem of the bright blue sea, and it was totally empty except for a round object about seventy yards away. This round object was about the size of a basketball, and it filled Ralph with a fear that was both deep and-for the moment, at least-groundless.

Don’t go near it, he told himself. There’s something bad about it.

Something really bad. It’s a black dog barking at a blue moon, blood in the sink, a raven perched on a bust of Pallasiust inside my chamber door. You don’t want to go near it, Ralph, and you don’t need to go near it, because this is one of Joe Wyzer’s lucid dreams. You ca light turn and cruise away, if you want.

Except his feet began to carry him forward anyway, so maybe this wasn’t a lucid dream. Not pleasant, either, not at all. Because the closer he got to that object on the beach, the less it looked like a basketball.

It was by far the most realistic dream Ralph had ever experienced, and the fact that he knew he was dreaming actually seemed to heighten that sense of realism. Of lucidity. He could feel the fine, loose sand under his bare feet, warm but not hot; he could hear the grinding, rock-throated roar of the incoming waves as they lost their balance and sprawled their way up the lower beach, where the sand glistened like wet tanned skin; could smell salt and drying seaweed, a strong and tearful smell that reminded him of summer vacations spent at Old Orchard Beach when he was a child.

Hey, old buddy, if you can’t change this dream, I think maybe you ought to hit the ejection switch and bail out of it-wake yourself up, in other words, and right away.

He had closed half the distance to the object on the beach and there was no longer any question about what it was-not a basketball but a head. Someone had buried a human being up to the chin in the sand.

… and, Ralph suddenly realized, the tide was coming in.

He didn’t bail out; he began to run. As he did, the frothy edge of a wave touched the head. It opened its mouth and began to scream.

Even raised in a shriek, Ralph knew that voice at once. It was Carolyn’s voice.

The froth of another wave ran up the beach and backwashed the hair which had been clinging to the head’s wet cheeks. Ralph began to run faster, knowing he was almost certainly going to be too late.

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