moss. An arrow was printed on the balloon’s gently bulging skin, an arrow that was blood-scarlet.
It was pointing at the door leading out into the hall.
It doesn’t really matter who I am, the voice said soothingly, and Tom realized now that it wasn’t coming from either his own head or from beside his ear; it was coming from the balloon, from the center of that strange lovely white light. All that matters is that I am going to see that everything turns out to your satisfaction, Tom. I want to see her take a whuppin; I want to see them all take a whuppin. They’ve crossed my path once too often… and much too late in the day for them. So listen, Tom. Listen very carefully. All together now… follow the bouncing ball…
Tom listened. The voice from the balloon explained.
It explained everything.
When it was done, it popped in one final flash of light and Tom began to dress.
2
AUDRA
Audra also had nightmares.
She awoke with a start, sitting bolt-upright in bed, the sheet pulled around her waist, her small breasts moving with her quick, agitated breathing.
Like Tom’s, her dreaming had been a jumbled, distressful experience. Like Tom, she had had the sensation of being someone else-or rather, of having her own consciousness deposited (and partially submerged) in another body and another mind. She had been in a dark place with a number of others around her, and she had been aware of an oppressive sensation of danger-they were going into the danger deliberately and she wanted to scream at them to stop, to explain to her what was happening… but the person with whom she had merged seemed to know, and to believe it was necessary.
She was also aware that they were being chased, and that their pursuers were catching up, little by little.
Bill had been in the dream, but his story about how he had forgotten his childhood must have been on her mind, because in her dream Bill was only a boy, ten or twelve years old-he still had all his hair! She was holding his hand, and was dimly aware that she loved him very much, and that her willingness to go on was based on the rock-solid belief that Bill would protect her and all of them, that Bill, Big Bill, would somehow bring them through this and back into the daylight again.
Oh but she was so terrified.
They came to a branching of many tunnels and Bill stood there, looking from one to the next, and one of the others-a boy with his arm in a cast which glimmered a ghostly-white in the darkness- spoke up: That one, Bill. The bottom one.”
“Y-Y-You’re s-s-sure?”
“Yes.”
And so they had gone that way and then there had been a door, a wee wooden door no more than three feet high, the sort of door you might see in a fairytale book, and there had been a mark on the door. She could not remember what that mark had been, what strange rune or symbol. But it had brought all her terror to a focusing-point and she had yanked herself out of that other body, that girl’s body, whoever
(Beverly-Beverly)
she might have been. She awoke bolt-upright in a strange bed, sweaty, wide-eyed, gasping as if she had just run a race. Her hands flew to her legs, half-expecting to find them wet and cold with the water she had been walking through in her head. But she was dry.
Disorientation followed-this was not their home in Topanga Canyon or the rented house in Fleet. It was noplace-limbo furnished with a bed, a dresser, two chairs, and a TV.
“Oh God, come on, Audra-”
She scrubbed her hands viciously across her face and that sickening feeling of mental vertigo receded. She was in Derry. Derry, Maine, where her husband had grown through a childhood he claimed no longer to remember. Not a familiar place to her, or a particularly good place by its feel, but at least a known place. She was here because Bill was here, and she would see him tomorrow, at the Derry Town House. Whatever terrible thing was wrong here, whatever those new scars on his hands meant, they would face it together. She would call him, tell him she was here, then join him. After that… well…
Actually, she had no idea what came after that. The vertigo, that sense of being in a place that was really noplace, was threatening again. When she was nineteen she had done a whistle-stop tour with a scraggy little production company, forty not-so-wonderful performances of Arsenic and Old Lace in forty not-so-wonderful towns and small cities. All of this in forty-seven not-so-wonderful days. They began at the Peabody Dinner Theater in Massachusetts and ended at Play It Again Sam in Sausalito. And somewhere in between, in some Midwestern town like Ames Iowa or Grand Isle Nebraska or maybe Jubilee North Dakota, she had awakened like this in the middle of the night, panicked by disorientation, unsure what town she was in, what day it was, or why she was wherever she was. Even her name seemed unreal to her.
That feeling was back now. Her bad dreams had carried over into her waking and she felt a nightmarish free-floating terror. The town seemed to have wrapped itself around her like a python. She could sense it, and the feelings it produced were not good. She found herself wishing that she had heeded Freddie’s advice and stayed away.
Her mind fixed on Bill, grasping at the thought of him the way a drowning woman would grip at a spar, a life-preserver, anything that
(we all float down here, Audra)
floats.
A chill raced through her and she crisscrossed her arms across her naked breasts. She shivered and saw goosebumps ripple their way up her flesh. For a moment it seemed to her that a voice had spoken aloud, but inside her head. As if there was an alien presence in there.
Am I going crazy? God, is that it?
No, her mind responded. It’s just disorientation… jet-lag… worry over your man. Nobody’s talking inside your head. Nobody-
“We all float down here, Audra,” a voice said from the bathroom. It was a real voice, real as houses. And sly. Sly and duty and evil. “You’ll float, too.” The voice uttered a fruity little giggle that dropped in pitch until it sounded like a clogged drain bubbling thickly. Audra cried out… then pressed her hands against her mouth.
I didn’t hear that.
She said it out loud, daring the voice to contradict her. It didn’t. The room was silent. Somewhere, far away, a train whistled in the night.
Suddenly she needed Bill so badly that waiting until daylight seemed impossible. She was in a standardized motel room exactly like the other thirty-nine units in the place, but suddenly it was too much. Everything. When you started hearing voices, it was just too much. Too creepy. She seemed to be slipping back into the nightmare she’d so lately escaped. She felt scared and terribly alone. It’s worse than that, she thought. I feel dead. Her heart suddenly skipped two beats in her chest, making her gasp and utter a startled cough. She felt an instant of prison-panic, claustrophobia inside her own body, and wondered if all this terror didn’t have a stupidly ordinary physical root after all: maybe she was going to have a heart attack. Or was already having one.
Her heart settled, but uneasily.
Audra turned on the light by the bed-table and looked at her watch. Twelve past three. He would be sleeping, but that didn’t matter to her now-nothing mattered except hearing his voice. She wanted to finish the night with him. If Bill was beside her, her clockwork would fall in sync with his and settle down. The nightmares would stay away. He sold nightmares to others-that was his trade-but to her he had never given anything but peace. Outside that odd cold nut imbedded in his imagination, peace seemed to be all he was made for or meant for. She got the Yellow Pages, found the number for the Derry Town House, and dialed it.
“Derry Town House.”
“Would you please ring Mr Denbrough’s room? Mr William Denbrough?”
“Does that guy ever get any calls in the daytime?” the clerk said, and before she could think to ask what that was supposed to mean, he had plugged her call through. The phone burred once, twice, three times. She could imagine him, sleeping with everything under the covers except the top of his head; she could imagine one hand coming out, feeling for the phone. She had seen him do it before, and a fond little smile touched her lips. It faded as the phone rang a fourth time… and a fifth, and a sixth. Halfway through the seventh ring, the connection was broken.
“That room does not answer.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Audra said, more upset and frightened than ever. “Are you sure you rang the right room?”
“Ayup,” the clerk said. “Mr Denbrough had an inter-room call “not five minutes ago. I know he answered that one, because the light stayed on the switchboard a minute or two. He must have gone to the person’s room.”
“Well, which room was it?”
“I don’t remember. Sixth floor, I think. But-”
She dropped the phone back into its cradle. A queer disheartening certainty came to her. It was a woman. Some woman had called him… and he had gone to her. Well, what now, Audra? How do we handle this?
She felt tears threaten. They stung her eyes and her nose; she could feel the lump of a sob in the back of her throat. No anger, at least not yet… only a sick sense of loss and abandonment.
Audra, get hold of yourself. You’re jumping to conclusions. It’s the middle of the night and you had a bad dream and now you’ve got Bill with some other woman. But it ain’t necessarily so. What you’re going to do is sit up-you’ll never get back to sleep now anyway. Turn on some lights and finish the novel you brought to read on the plane. Remember what Bill says? Finest kind of dope. Book- Valium. No more heebie-jeebies. No more whim-whams and hearing voices. Dorothy Sayers and Lord Peter, that’s the ticket. The Nine Tailors. That’ll take you through to dawn. That’ll -
The bathroom light suddenly went on; she could see it under the door. Then the latch clicked and the door juddered open. She stared at this, eyes widening, arms instinctively crossing over her breasts again. Her heart began to slam against her ribcage and the sour taste of adrenaline flooded her mouth.
That voice, low and dragging, said: “We all float down here, Audra.” The last word became a long, low, fading scream-Audraaaaa-that ended once again in that sick, clogged, bubbly sound that was so much like laughter.
“Who’s there?” she cried, backing away. That wasn’t my imagination, no way, you’re not going to tell me that -
The TV clicked on. She whirled around and saw a clown in a silvery suit with big orange buttons capering around on the screen. There were black sockets where its eyes should have been, and when its madeup lips stretched even wider in a grin, she saw teeth like razors. It held up a dripping, severed head. Its eyes were turned up to the whites and the mouth sagged open, but she could see well enough that it was Freddie Firestone’s head. The clown laughed and danced. It swung the head around and drops of blood splashed against the inside of the TV screen. She could hear them sizzling in there.
Audra tried to scream and nothing came out but a little whine. She grabbed blindly for the dress lying over the back of the chair, and for her purse. She bolted into the hall and slammed the door behind her, gasping, her face paper-white. She dropped the purse between her feet and slipped the dress over her head.
“Float,” a low, chuckling voice said from behind her, and she felt a cold finger caress her bare heel.
She uttered another high out-of-breath scream and danced away from the door. White corpse-fingers were seeking back and forth under it, the nails peeled away to show purplish-white bloodless quicks. They made hoarse whispering noises on the rough nap of the hall carpet.
