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 Dr 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.!”
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 and ill and hungover. 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 have caused them to overlook the lost boy, Ruth would send him back to Bobbi's right away… but he kept up, hungover 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 Monday 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 Tuesday 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)
