Stephen King - Dreamcatcher

Maybe we deserve to be erased, Jonesy thought as Mr Gray walked back through the shower-room (looking for blood-splatters with Jonesy’s eyes and bouncing the Trooper’s keys in one of Jonesy’s palms as he went). Maybe we deserve to be turned into nothing but a bunch of red spores blowing in the wind. That might be the best thing, God help us.

The tired-looking woman working the cash-register asked him if he’d seen the Trooper.

“Sure did,” Jonesy said. “Showed him my driver’s license and registration, as a matter of fact.”

“Been a bunch of mounties in ever since late afternoon,” the cashier said. “Storm or no storm. They’re all nervous as hell. So’s everyone else. If I wanted to see folks from some other planet, I’d rent me a video. You heard anything new?”

“On the radio they’re saying it’s all a false alarm, he replied, zipping his jacket. He looked at the windows between the restaurant and the parking lot, verifying what he had already seen: with the combination of frost on the glass and the snow outside, the view was nil. No one in here was going to see what he drove away in.

“Yeah? Really?” Relief made her look less tired. Younger.

“Yeah. Don’t be looking for your friend too soon, darlin. He said he had to lay a serious loaf.”

A frown creased the skin between her eyebrows. “He said that?”

“Good night. Happy Thanksgiving. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.”

Some of that, Jonesy hoped, was him. Trying to get through. To be noticed.

Before he could see if it was noticed, the view before his office window revolved as Mr Gray turned him away from the cash-register. Five minutes later he was heading south on the turnpike again, the chains on the Trooper’s cruiser thrupping and zinging, allowing him to maintain a steady forty miles an hour.

Jonesy felt Mr Gray reaching out, reaching back. Mr Gray could touch Henry’s mind but not get inside it-like Jonesy, Henry was to some degree different. No matter; there was the man with Henry, Overhill or Underhill. From him, Mr Gray was able to get a good fix. They were seventy miles behind, maybe more… and pulling off the turnpike? Yes, pulling off in Derry.

Mr Gray cast back farther yet, and discovered more pursuers. Three of them… but Jonesy felt this group’s main focus was not Mr Gray, but Overhill/Underhill. He found that both incredible and inexplicable, but it seemed to be true. And Mr Gray liked that just fine. He didn’t even bother to look for the reason why Overhill/Underhill and Henry might be stopping.

Mr Gray’s main concern was switching to another vehicle, a snowplow, if Jonesy’s driving skills would allow him to operate it. It would mean another murder, but that was all right with the increasingly human Mr Gray.

Mr Gray was just getting warmed up.

Owen Underhill is standing on the slope very near to the pipe which juts out of the foliage, and he sees them help the muddy, wild-eyed girl-Josie-out of the pipe. He sees Duddits (a large young man with shoulders like a football player’s and the improbable blonde hair of a movie idol) sweep her into a hug, kissing her dirty face in big smacks. He hears her first words: “I want to see my Mommy.”

It’s good enough for the boys; there’s no call to the police, no call for an ambulance. They simply help her up the slope, through the break in the board fence, across Strawford Park (the girls in yellow have been replaced by girls in green; neither they nor their coach pay any attention to the boys or their filthy, draggle-haired prize), and then down Kansas Street to Maple Lane. They know where Josie’s Mommy is. Her Daddy, too.

Not just the Rinkenhauers, either. When the boys get back, there are cars parked the length of the block on both sides of the Cavell house. Roberta was the one who proposed calling the parents of Josie’s friends and classmates. They will search on their own, and they will paper the town with the MISSING, posters, she says. Not in shadowy, out-of-the-way places (which is where missing children posters in Derry tend to wind up) either, but where people must see them. Roberta’s enthusiasm is enough to light some faint hope in the eyes of Ellen and Hector Rinkenhauer.

The other parents respond, too-it is as if they have just been waiting to be asked. The calls started shortly after Duddits and his friends trooped out the door (to play, Roberta assumed, and someplace close by, because Henry’s old jalopy is still parked in the driveway), and by the time the boys return, there are almost two dozen people crammed into the Cavells” living room, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. The man currently addressing them is a guy Henry has seen before, a lawyer named Dave Bocklin. His son, Kendall, sometimes plays with Duddits.

Ken Bocklin also has Down’s, and he’s a good enough guy, but he’s not like Duds. Get serious, though-who is?

The boys stand at the entrance to the living room, Josie among them. She is once more carrying her great big purse, with BarbieKen tucked away inside. Even her face is almost clean, because Beaver, seeing all the cars, has done a little work on it with his handkerchief out in the driveway. (“Tell you what, it made me feel funny,” the Beav confides later, after all the hoopdedoo and fuckaree has died down. “Here I’m cleanin up this girl, she’s got the bod of a Playboy Bunny and the brain, roughly speaking, of a lawn-sprinkler.”) At first no one sees them but Mr Bocklin, and Mr Bocklin doesn’t seem to realize what he’s looking at, because he goes right on talking.

“So what we need to do, folks, is divide up into a number of teams, let’s say three couples to each… each team… and we’ll… we… we Mr Bocklin slows like one of those toys you need to wind up and then just stands there in front of the Cavells” TV, staring. There’s a nervous rustle among the hastily assembled parents, who don’t understand what can be wrong with him-he was going along so confidently.

“Joise,” he says in a flat, uninflected voice utterly unlike his usual confident courthouse boom.

“Yes,” says Hector Rinkenhauer, “that’s her name. What’s up, Dave? Are you all r-”

“Josie,” Dave says again, and raises a trembling hand. To Henry (and hence to Owen, who is seeing this through Henry’s eyes) he looks like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come pointing at Ebenezer Scrooge’s grave.

One face turns… two… four… Alfie Cavell’s eyes, huge and unbelieving behind his specs… and finally, Mrs Rinkenhauer’s. “Hi, Mom,” Josie says nonchalantly. She holds up her purse. “Duddie found my BarbieKen. I was stuck in a-” The rest is blotted out by the woman’s shriek of joy. Henry has never heard such a cry in his life, and although it is wonderful, it is also somehow terrible. “Fuck me Freddy,” Beaver says… low, under his breath. Jonesy is holding Duddits, who has been frightened by the scream.

Pete looks at Henry and gives a little nod: We did okay.

And Henry nods back. Yeah, we did.

It may not have been their finest hour, but surely it is a close second. And as Mrs Rinkenhauer sweeps her daughter into her arms, now sobbing, Henry taps Duddits on the arm. When Duddits turns to look at him, Henry kisses him softly on the cheek. Good old Duddits, Henry thinks. Good old -

“This is it, Owen,” Henry said quietly. “Exit 27.”

Owen’s vision of the Cavell living room popped like a soap bubble and he looked at the looming sign: KEEP RIGHT FOR EXIT 27-KANSAS STREET. He could still hear the woman’s happy, unbelieving cries echoing in his ears.

“You okay?” Henry asked.