Stephen King - Dreamcatcher

Freddy’s eyes, meanwhile, had grown gratifyingly bright. Kurtz was delighted. He had not entirely lost his touch even now, it seemed.

“All right, buck,” Kurtz said. “Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. Right?”

“Right, sir.” Kurtz guessed sir was okay again now. They could pretty well put the protocols of the mission behind them. They were Quantrill’s boys, now; two final jayhawkers riding the western Massachusetts range.

With an unmistakable little grimace of distaste, Freddy jerked a thumb at Perlmutter. “Want me to try waking him up, sir? He may be too far gone, but-”

“Why bother?” Kurtz asked. Still gripping Freddy’s shoulder, he pointed ahead, where the access road disappeared into a wall of white: the snow. The goddam snow that had chased them all his way, a grim fucking reaper dressed in white instead of black. The tracks of the Subaru were now entirely gone, but those of the Humvee Owen had stolen were still visible. If they moved along briskly, praise God, following these tracks would be a walk in the park. “I don’t think we need him anymore, which I personally find a great relief Go, Freddy. Go.”

The Humvee flirted her tail and then steadied. Kurtz drew his nine and held it against his leg. Coming for you, Owen. Coming for you, buck. And you better get your speech ready for God, because you’re going to be making it just about an hour from now.

The office which he had furnished so beautifully-furnished out of his mind and his memories-was now falling apart.

Jonesy limped restlessly back and forth, looking around the room, lips pressed so tightly together they were white, forehead beaded with sweat even though it had gotten damned cold in here,

This was The Fall of the Office of Jonesy instead of the House of Usher. The furnace was howling and clanking beneath him, making the floor shake. White stuff-frost crystals, maybe-puffed in through the vent and left a powdery triangular shape on the wall. Where it touched it went to work on the wood paneling, simultaneously rotting it and warping it. The pictures fell one by one, tumbling to the floor like suicides. The Eames chair-the one he’d always wanted, the very one-split in two as if it had been hacked by an invisible axe. The mahogany panels on the walls began to split and peel free like dead skin. The drawers juddered out of their places in the desk and clattered one by one to the floor. The shutters Mr Gray had installed to block his view of the outside world were vibrating and shaking, producing a steady metallic squalling that set Jonesy’s teeth on edge.

Crying out to Mr Gray, demanding to know what was going on, would be useless… and besides, Jonesy had all the information he needed. He had slowed Mr Gray down, but Mr Gray had first risen to the challenge and then above it. Viva Mr Gray, who had either reached his goal or almost reached it. As the paneling fell off the walls, he could see the dirty Sheetrock beneath: the walls of the Tracker Brothers office as four boys had seen it in 1978, lined up with their foreheads to the glass, their new chum standing behind them as bidden, waiting for them to be done with whatever it was they were doing, waiting for them to take him home. Now another wood panel tore loose, coming off the wall with a sound like tearing paper, and beneath it was a bulletin board with a single photo, a Polaroid, tacked to it. Not a beauty queen, not Tina Jean Schlossinger, but just some woman with her skirt hiked to the bottom of her panties, pretty stupid. The nice rug on the floor suddenly shrivelled like skin, revealing dirty Tracker Brothers tile beneath, and those white tadpoles, scumbags left by couples who came in here to screw beneath the disinterested gaze of the Polaroid woman who was no one, really, just an artifact of a hollow past.

He paced, lurching on his bad hip, which hadn’t hurt this badly since just after the accident, and he understood all of this, oh yes indeed, you had better believe it. His hip was full of splinters and ground glass; his shoulders and neck ached with a fierce tiredness. Mr Gray was beating his body to death as he made his final charge and there was nothing Jonesy could do about it.

The dreamcatcher was still okay. Swaying back and forth in great looping arcs, but still okay. Jonesy fixed his eyes on it. He had thought himself ready to die, but he didn’t want to go like this, not in this stinking office. Outside of it, they had once done something good, something almost noble. To die in here, beneath the dusty, indifferent gaze of the woman pinned to the bulletin board… that didn’t seem fair. Never mind the rest of the world; he, Gary Jones of Brookline, Massachusetts, once of Derry, Maine, lately of the Jefferson Tract, deserved better.

“ Please, I deserve better than this!” he cried to the swaying cobweb shape in the air, and on the disintegrating desk behind him, the telephone rang.

Jonesy wheeled around, groaning at the fiery, complicated pain in his hip. The phone on which he’d called Henry earlier had been his office phone, the blue Trimline. The one on the cracked surface of the desk now was black and clunky, with a dial instead of buttons and a sticker on it reading MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU. It was the phone he’d had in his childhood room, the one his parents had given him for his birthday. 949-7784, the number to which he had charged the call to Duddits all those years ago.

He sprang for it, ignoring his hip, praying the line wouldn’t disintegrate and disconnect before he could answer. “Hello? Hello!” Swaying back and forth on the shaking, vibrating floor. The whole office now going up and down like a ship on a heavy sea.Of all the voices he might have expected, Roberta’s was the last. “Yes, Doctor, hold on for your call.” There was a click so loud it hurt his head, then silence. Jonesy groaned and was about to put

the phone down when there was another click.

“Jonesy?” It was Henry. Faint, but undoubtedly Henry.

“Where are you?” Jonesy shouted. “Christ, Henry, the place is falling apart! I’m falling apart!”

“I’m in Gosselin’s,” Henry said, “only I’m not. Wherever you are, you’re not. We’re in the hospital where they took you after you got hit…” A crackle on the line, a buzz, and then Henry came back, sounding closer and stronger. Sounding like a lifeline in all this disintegration. not there, either!”

“ What?”

“We’re in the dreamcatcher, Jonesy! We’re in the dreamcatcher and we always were! Ever since ’78! Duddits is the dreamcatcher, but he’s dying! He’s holding on, but I don’t know how long… “Another click followed by another buzz, bitter and electric.

“Henry! Henry!”

“… come out!” Faint again now. Henry sounded desperate. “ You have to come out, Jonesy! Meet me! Run along the dreamcatcher and meet me! There’s still time! We can take this son of a bitch! Do you hear me? We can-”

There was another click and the phone went dead. The body of his childhood phone cracked, split open, and vomited out a senseless tangle of wires. All of them were red-orange; all of them were contaminated with the byrus.

Jonesy dropped the phone and looked up at the swaying dreamcatcher, that ephemeral cobweb. He remembered a line they’d been fond of as kids, pulled out of some comedian’s routine: Wherever you are, there you are. That had been right up there with Same shit, different day, had perhaps even taken over first place as they grew older and began to consider themselves sophisticated. Wherever you are, there you are. Only according to Henry’s call just now, that wasn’t true. Wherever they thought they were, they weren’t.