Dreamcatcher

The answer, Pete had discovered, was yes and no. He was curious-he supposed a man couldn’t help being curious-but at the same time he didn’t want to know. Not who she was, not who Rick was or what had happened to him, and not who “they” were. They’re back! the woman had screamed when she saw the lights in the sky, They’re back!

“Lady,” he said for the third time.

Nothing.

She’d said that Pick was the only one left, and then she’d said They’re back, presumably meaning the lights in the sky, and since then there had been nothing but those unpleasant burps and farts… the one yawn, exposing all those missing teeth… and the eye. The creepy jackalope eye. Henry had only been gone fifteen minutes he’d left at five past twelve and it was now twelve-twenty by Pete’s watch-and it felt like an hour and a half This was going to be one long fucking day, and if he was going to get through it without cracking up (he kept thinking of some story they’d had to read in the eighth grade, he couldn’t remember who wrote it, only that the guy in the story had killed this old man because he couldn’t stand the old man’s eye, and at the time Pete hadn’t understood that but now he did, yessir), he needed something.

“Lady, do you hear me?” Nada. Just the creepy jackalope eye. “I have to go back to the car because I kind of forgot something. But you’ll be all right. Won’t you?”

No answer-and then she let loose with another of those long buzz-saw farts, her face wrinkling up as she let go, as if it hurt her… and probably it did, something that sounded like that just about had to hurt. And even though Pete had been careful to get upwind, some of the smell came to him-hot and rank but somehow not human. Nor did it smell like cow-farts. He had worked for Lionel Sylvester as a kid, he’d milked more than his share of cows, and sometimes they blew gas at you while you were on the stool, sure-a heavy green smell, a marshy smell. This wasn’t like that, not a bit. This was like… well, like when you were a kid and got your first chemistry set, and after awhile you got tired of the faggy little experiments in the booklet and just went hogwild and mixed all that shit together, just to see if it would explode. And, he realized, that was part of what was troubling him, part of what was making him nervous. Except that was stupid. People didn’t just explode, did they? Still, he had to get him a little help here. Because she was giving him the Willies, bigtime.

He got two of the pieces of wood Henry had scrounged, added them to the fire, debated, and added a third. Sparks rose, whirling, and winked out against the sloping piece of corrugated tin. “I’ll be back before that all burns down, but if you want to add on another, be my guest. Okay?”

Nothing. He suddenly felt like shaking her, but he had a mile and a half to walk, up to the Scout and back here again, and he had to save his strength. Besides, she’d probably fart again. Or burp right in his face.

“Okay,” he said. “Silence gives consent, that’s what Mrs White always used to say back in the fourth grade.”

He got to his feet, bracing his knee as he did so, grimacing and slipping, almost falling, but finally getting up because he needed that beer, goddammit, needed it, and there was no one to get it except for him, Probably he was an alcoholic. In fact, there was no probably about it, and he supposed eventually he’d have to do something about it, but for now he was on his own, wasn’t he? Yes, because this bitch was gone, nothing left of her but some nasty gas and that creepy jackalope eye. If she needed to put some more wood on the fire she’d just have to do it, but she wouldn’t need to, he’d be back long before then. It was only a mile and a half. Surely his leg would hold him that long.

“I’ll be back,” he said. He leaned over and massaged his knee. Stiff, but not too bad. Really not too bad. He’d just put the beer in a bag-maybe a box of Hi Ho crackers for the bitch while he was at it-and be right back. “You sure you’re okay?”

Nothing. Just the eye.

“Silence gives consent,” he repeated, and began walking back up the Deep Cut Road, following the wide drag-mark of the tarpaulin and their almost-filled-in tracks. He walked in little hitches, pausing to rest every ten or twelve steps… and to massage his knee. He stopped once to look back at the fire. It already looked small and insubstantial in the gray early afternoon light. “This is fuckin crazy,” he said once, but he kept on going.

2

He got to the end of the straight stretch all right, and halfway up the hill all right. He was just starting to walk a little faster, to trust the knee a little when- ha-ha, asshole, fooled ya-it locked again, turning to something that felt like pig-iron, and he went down, yelling squeezed curses through his clenched teeth.

It was as he sat there cursing in the snow that he realized something very odd was going on out here. A large buck went walking past him on the left, with no more than a quick glance at the human from which it would have fled in great, springy bounds on any other day. Running along almost under its feet was a red squirrel.

Pete sat there in the lessening snow-huge flakes falling in a shifting wave that looked like lace-with his leg stuck out in front of him and his mouth open. There were more deer coming along the road, other animals, too, walking and hopping like refugees fleeing some disaster. There were even more of them in the woods, a wave moving east.

“Where you guys going?” he asked a snowshoe rabbit that went lolloping past him with its ears laid along its back. “Big coverall game at the rez? Casting call for a new Disney cartoon? Got a-”

He broke off, the spit in his mouth drying up to something that felt like an electric mist. A black bear, fat with its pre-hibernation stuffing, was ambling through the screen of thin second-growth trees to his left. It went with its head down and its rump switching from side to side, and although it never spared Pete so much as a look, Pete’s illusions about his place here in the big north woods were for the first time entirely stripped away. He was nothing but a heap of tasty white meat that happened to still be breathing. Without his rifle, he was more defenseless than the squirrel he’d seen scurrying around the buck’s feet-if noticed by a bear, the squirrel could at least run up the nearest tree, all the way to the thin top branches where no bear could possibly follow. The fact that this bear never so much as looked at him didn’t make Pete feel much better. Where there was one, there would be more, and the next one might not be so preoccupied.

Once he was sure the bear was gone, Pete struggled to his feet again, his heart hammering. He had left that foolish farting woman back there alone, but really, how much protection would he have been able to provide if a bear decided to attack? The thing was, he had to get his rifle. Henry’s too, if he could carry it. For the next five minutes-until he got to the top of the hill-Pete thought about firepower first and beer second. By the time he began his cautious descent on the other side, however, he was back to beer. Put it in a bag and hang the bag over his shoulder. And no stopping to drink one on the way back. He’d have one when he was sitting in front of the campfire again. It would be a reward beer, and there was nothing better than a reward beer.

You’re an alcoholic. You know that, don’t you? Fucking alcoholic.

Yes, and what did that mean? That you couldn’t fuck up.

Couldn’t get caught leaving a semi-comatose woman alone in the woods, let’s say, while you went off in search of the suds. And once he got back to the shelter, he had to remember to toss his empties deep into the woods. Although Henry might know anyway. The way they always seemed to know stuff about each other when they were together. And mental link or no mental link, you had to get up pretty goddam early in the morning to put one over on Henry Devlin.

Yet Pete thought Henry would probably let him alone about the beer. Unless, that was, Pete decided the time had come to talk about it. To maybe ask Henry for help. Which Pete might do, in time. Certainly he didn’t like the way he felt about himself right now; leaving that woman alone back there said something about Peter Moore that wasn’t so nice. But Henry… there was something wrong with Henry, too, this November. Pete didn’t know if Beaver felt it, but he was pretty sure Jonesy did. Henry was kind of tucked up. He was maybe even-

From behind him there came a wet grunt. Pete screamed and whirled around. His knee locked up again, locked up savagely, but in his fright he barely noticed. It was the bear, the bear had circled back behind him, that bear or another one-

It wasn’t a bear. It was a moose, and it walked past Pete with no more than a glance as he fell into the road again, cursing low in his throat and holding his leg, looking up into the lightly falling snow and cursing himself for a fool. An alcoholic fool.

He had a frightening few moments when it seemed that this time the knee wasn’t going to let go-he’d torn something in it and here he would lie in the exodus of animals until Henry finally returned on the snowmobile, and Henry would say What the fuck are you doing here? Why did you leave her alone? As if I didn’t know.

But at last he was able to get up again. The best he could do was a gimpy sidesaddle hobble, but it was better than lying in the snow a couple of yards from a fresh pile of steaming moose shit. He could now see the overturned Scout, its wheels and undercarriage covered with fresh snow. He told himself that if his latest fall had happened on the other side of the hill, he would have gone back to the woman and the fire, but that now, with the Scout actually in sight, it was better to go on. That the guns were his main objective, the bottles of Bud just an extra added attraction. And almost believed it. As far as getting back… well, he would make it somehow. He’d gotten this far, hadn’t he?

Fifty yards or so from the Scout, he heard a rapidly approaching whup-whup-whup-the unmistakable sound of a helicopter. He looked skyward eagerly, preparing himself to stand upright long enough to wave-God, if anyone needed a little help from the sky, it was him-but the helicopter never quite broke through the low ceiling. For a moment he saw a dark shape running through the dreck almost directly above him, the bleary flash of its lights, as well-and then the sound of the copter was moving off to the east, in the direction the animals were running. He was dismayed to feel a nasty sense of relief lurking just below his disappointment: if the helicopter had landed, he never would’ve gotten to the beer, and he had come all this way, all this damn way.

3

Five minutes later he was down on his knees and climbing carefully into the overturned Scout. He quickly learned that his bad knee wouldn’t support him for long (it was swelled against his jeans now like a big painful loaf of bread), and more or less swam into the snow-coated interior. He didn’t like it; all the smells seemed too strong, all the dimensions too close. It was almost like crawling into a grave, one that smelled of Henry’s cologne.

The groceries were sprayed all over the back, but Pete barely gave the bread and cans and mustard and the package of red hot dogs (red dogs were about all Old Man Gosselin carried for meat) a glance. It was the beer he was interested in, and it looked like only one bottle had broken when the Scout turned turtle. Drunk’s luck. The smell was strong-of course the one he’d been drinking from had spilled as well-but beer was a smell he liked. Henry’s cologne, on the other hand… phew, Jesus. In a way it was as bad as the smell of the crazy lady’s gas. And he didn’t know why the smell of cologne should make him think of coffins and graves and funeral flowers, but it did.

“Why would you want to wear cologne in the woods anyway, old sport?” he asked, the words coming out in little puffs of white vapor. And the answer of course was that Henry hadn’t been-the smell wasn’t really here at all, just the smell of beer. For the first time in a long time Pete found himself thinking about the pretty real estate lady who had lost her keys outside the Bridgton Pharmacy, and how he had known she wasn’t going to meet him for dinner, didn’t want to be within ten miles of him. Was smelling nonexistent cologne like that? He didn’t know, only that he didn’t like the way the smell seemed all mixed up in his mind with the idea of death.

Forget it, numbnuts. You’re spooking yourself, that’s all. There’s a big difference between really seeing the line and just spooking yourself. Forget about it and get what you came for.

“Good fuckin idea,” Pete said.

The store-bags were plastic, not paper, the kind with handles; Old Man Gosselin had marched at least that far into the future. Pete snagged one, and as he did, felt a rip of pain on the pad of his right hand. Only one goddam broken bottle and so naturally he’d cut himself on it, and pretty deep, from the feel. Maybe this was his punishment for leaving the woman alone back there. If so, he’d take it like a man and count himself let off easy.