ripped the azka from her neck. She held it high overhead in her clenched fist, the fine silver chain whipping wildly, and she felt the surface of the charm crack like the shell of an egg inside her hand. “FUCK PRIDE!”
Pain instantly clawed its way into her hands like some small and hungry animal… but she knew even then that the pain was not as great as she had feared; nowhere near as great as she had feared.
She knew it as surely as she knew that Alan had never written to Child Welfare in San Francisco, asking about her.
“FUCK PRIDE! FUCK IT! FUCK IT! FUCK IT!” she screamed, and threw the azka across the room.
It hit the wall, bounced to the floor, and split open. Lightning flashed, and she saw two hairy legs poke out through the crack.
The crack widened, and what crawled out was a small spider. It scuttered toward the bathroom. Lightning flashed again, printing its elongated, ovate shadow on the floor like an electric tattoo.
Polly leaped from her bed and chased after it. She had to kill it, and quickly… because even as she watched, the spider was swelling. It had been feeding on the poison it had sucked out of her body, and now that it was free of its containment, there was no telling how big it might grow.
She slapped the bathroom light-switch, and the fluorescent over the sink flickered into life. She saw the spider scurrying toward the tub. When it went through the door, it had been no bigger than a beetle. Now it was the size of a mouse.
As she came in, it turned and scurried toward her-that horrid clittering sound of its legs beating against the tiles-and she had time to think, It was between my breasts, it was lying AGAINST me, it was lying against me ALL THE time-its body was a bristly blackish-brown.
Tiny hairs stood out on its legs. Eyes as dull as fake rubies stared at her… and she saw that two fangs stuck out of its mouth like curved vampire teeth.
They were dripping some clear liquid. Where the droplets struck the tiles, they left small, smoking craters.
Polly screamed and grabbed the bathroom plunger which stood beside the toilet. Her hands screamed back at her, but she closed them around the plunger’s wooden handle just the same and struck the spider with it. It retreated, one of its legs now broken and hanging uselessly askew. Polly chased after it as it ran for the tub.
Hurt or not, it was still growing. Now it was the size of a rat.
Its bulging belly had dragged against the tiles, but it went up the shower-curtain with weird agility. Its legs made a sound against the plastic like tiny spats of water. The rings jingled on the steel bar running overhead.
Polly swung the plunger like a baseball bat, the heavy rubber cup whooshing through the air, and struck the horrid thing again.
The rubber cup covered a lot of area but was not, unfortunately, very effective when it connected. The shower-curtain billowed inward and the spider dropped off into the tub with a meaty plop.
In that instant the light went out.
Polly stood in the dark, the plunger in her hand, and listened to the spider scurrying. Then the lightning flashed again and she could see its humped, bristly back protruding over the lip of the tub. The thing which had come out of the thimble-sized azka was as big as a cat now-the thing which had been nourishing itself on her heart’s blood even as it abstracted the pain from her hands.
The envelope I left out at the old Camber place-what was that?
With the azka no longer around her neck, with the pain awake and yelling in her hands, she could no longer tell herself it had nothing to do with Alan.
The spider’s fangs clicked on the porcelain edge of the tub. It sounded like someone clicking a penny deliberately on a hard surface for attention. Its listless doll’s eyes now regarded her over the lip of the tub.
It’s too late, those eyes seemed to say. Too late for Alan, too late for you. Too late for everyone.
Polly launched herself at it.
“What did you make me do?” she screamed. “What did you make me do? Oh you monster, WHAT DID YOU MAKE ME DO?”
And the spider rose up on its rear legs, pawing obscenely at the shower-curtain for balance with its front ones, to meet her attack.
Ace Merrill began to respect the old dude a little when Keeton produced a key which opened the locked shed with the red diamond-shaped HIGH EXPLOSIVES signs on the door. He began to respect him a little more when he felt the chilly air, heard the steady low whoosh of the air conditioner, and saw the stacked crates.
Commercial dynamite. Lots of commercial dynamite. It wasn’t quite the same thing as having an arsenal filled with Stinger missiles, but it was close enough for rock and roll. My, yes.
There had been a powerful eight-cell flashlight in the carrycompartment between the van’s front seats, along with a supply of other useful tools, and now-as Alan neared Castle Rock in his station wagon, as Norris Ridgewick sat in his kitchen, fashioning a hangman’s noose with a length of stout hemp rope, as Polly Chalmers’s dream of Aunt Evvie moved toward its conclusion-Ace ran the flashlight’s bright spotlight from one crate to the next. Overhead, the rain drummed on the shed’s roof. It was coming down so hard that Ace could almost believe he was back in the prison showers.
“Let’s get on with it,” Buster said in a low, hoarse voice.
“Just a minute, Dad,” Ace said. “It’s break-time.” He handed Buster the flashlight and took out the plastic hal), Mr. Gaunt had given him. He tipped a little pile of coke into the Enuff-hollow on his left hand, and snorted it quickly.
“What’s that?” Buster asked suspiciously.
“South American bingo-dust, and it’s ’ just as tasty a s taters.”
“Huh,” Keeton snorted. “Cocaine. They sell cocaine.”
Ace didn’t have to ask who They were. The old dude had talked about nothing else on the ride up here, and Ace suspected he would talk about nothing else all night.
“Not true, Dad,” Ace said. “They don’t sell it; They’re the ones who want it all to Themselves.” He tipped a little more into the snuff-hollow at the base of his thumb and held his hand out. “Try it and tell me I’m wrong.”
Keeton looked at him with a mixture of doubt, curiosity, and suspicion. “Why do you keep calling me Dad? I’m not old enough to be your dad.”
“Well, I doubt if you ever read the underground comics, but there is this guy named R. Crumb,” Ace said. The coke was at work in him now, sparking all his nerve-endings alight. “He does these comics about a guy named Zippy. And to me, you look just like Zippy’s Dad.”
“is that good?” Buster asked suspiciously.
“” Ace assured him. “But I’ll call you Mr. Keeton, Awesome, if you want.” He paused and then added deliberately, “Just like They do.”
“No,” Buster said at once, “that’s all right. As long as it’s not an insult.”
“Absolutely not,” Ace said. “Go on-try it. A little of this shit and you’ll be singing ’Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go’ until the break of dawn.”
Buster gave him another look of dark suspicion, then snorted the coke Ace had offered. He coughed, sneezed, then clapped a hand to his nose. His watering e*yes stared balefully at Ace. “It burns!”
“Only the first time,” Ace assured him happily.
Anyway, I don’t feel a thing. Let’s stop fooling around and get this dynamite into the van.”
“You bet, Dad.”
It took them less than ten minutes to load the crates of dynamite.
5
After they had put the last one in, Buster said: “Maybe that stuff of yours does do something, after all. Can I have a little more?”
“Sure, Dad.” Ace grinned. “I’ll join you.”
They tooted up and headed back to town. Buster drove, and now he began to look not like Zippy’s Dad but Mr. Toad in Walt Disney’s The Wind i’n the Willows. A new, frantic light had come into the Head Selectman’s eyes. It was amazing how fast the confusion had dropped out of his mind; he now felt he could understand everything They had been up to-every plan, every plot, every machination. He told Ace all about it as Ace sat in the back of the van with his legs crossed, hooking up Hotpoint timers to blasting caps.
For the time being at least, Buster had forgotten all about Alan Pangborn, who was Their ringleader. He was entranced by the idea of blowing Castle Rock- or as much of it as possible-to kingdom come.
Ace’s respect became solid admiration. The old fuck was crazy, and Ace liked crazy people-always had. He felt at home with them.
And, like most people on their first cocaine high, old Dad’s mind was touring the outer planets. He couldn’t shut up. All Ace had to do was keep saying, “Uh- huh,” and “That’s right, Dad,” and “FuckinA, Dad.
Several times he almost called Keeton Mr. Toad instead of Dad, but caught himself. Calling this guy Mr. Toad might be a very bad idea.
They crossed the Tin Bridge while Alan was still three miles from it and got out in the pouring rain. Ace found a blanket in one of the van’s bench compartments and draped it over a bundle of dynamite and one of the cap-equipped timers.
“Do you want help?” Buster asked nervously.
“You better let me handle it, Dad. You’d be apt to fall in the goddam stream, and I’d have to waste time fishing you out. just keep your eyes open, okay?”
“I will. Ace… why don’t we sniff a little more of that cocaine first?”
“Not right now,” Ace said indulgently, and patted one of Buster’s meaty arms. “This shit is almost pure. You want to explode?”
“Not me,” Buster said. “Everything else, but not me.” He began to laugh wildly. Ace joined him.
“Havin some fun tonight, huh, Dad?”
Buster was amazed to find this was true. His depression following Myrtle’s… Myrtle’s accident… now seemed years distant.
He felt that he and his excellent friend Ace Merrill finally had Them right where they wanted Them: in the palm of their collective hand.
“You bet,” he said, and watched Ace slide down the wet, grassy bank beside the bridge with the blanket-wrapped parcel of dynamite held against his belly.
It was relatively dry under the bridge; not that it mattered the dynamite and the blasting caps had been waterproofed.
