Stephen King - Sleeping Beauties

“I don’t know.” Frank felt listless, done up. He missed his daughter. He even missed Elaine. He didn’t know what had happened to his anger. It was like his pocket had torn, and it had fallen out somewhere along the way. “What comes to mind when you think about men, smartass?”

“Guns,” she said. “Clint, there appear to be no doorhandles back here.”

“Don’t let that stop you,” he said.

She didn’t. One of the back doors opened, and Evie Black stepped out. Clint and Frank joined her, one on each side, and Clint was reminded of the Bible classes he’d been forced to attend at one foster home or another: Jesus on the cross, with the disbelieving bad guy on one side and the good thief on the other—the one who would, according to the dying messiah, shortly join him in paradise. Clint remembered thinking that the poor guy probably would have settled for parole and a chicken dinner.

“I don’t know what force sent me here,” she said. “I only know I was called, and—”

“You came,” Clint finished.

“Yes. And now I’ll go back.”

“What do we do?” asked Frank.

Evie turned to him, and she was no longer smiling. “You’ll do the job usually reserved for women. You’ll wait.” She drew in a deep breath. “Oh, the air smells so fresh after that prison.”

She walked past the clustered men as if they weren’t there, and took Angel by the shoulders. Angel looked up at her with shining eyes. “You did well,” Evie said, “and I thank you from my heart.”

Angel blurted, “I love you, Evie!”

“I love you, too,” said Evie, and kissed her lips.

Evie walked toward the ruins of the meth shed. Beyond it sat the fox, its brush curled around its paws, panting and looking at her with bright eyes. She followed it, and then the men followed her.

“Dad,” Jared said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “Do you see it? Tell me you see it.”

“Oh my God,” Deputy Treat said. “What is that ?”

They stared at the Tree with its many twisting trunks and its flocks of exotic birds. It rose so high that the top could not be seen. Clint could feel a force radiating out from it like a strong electric current. The peacock spread his tail for their admiration, and when the white tiger appeared from the other side, its belly swishing in the high grass, several guns were raised.

“ Lower those weapons! ” Frank shouted.

The tiger lay down, its remarkable eyes peering at them through the high grass. The guns were lowered. All but one.

“Wait here,” Evie said.

“If the women of Dooling come back, all the women of earth come back?” Clint asked. “That’s how it works?”

“Yes. The women of this town stand for all women, and it must be all of your women who come back. Through there.” She pointed at a split in the Tree. “If even one refuses…” She didn’t have to finish. Moths flew and fluttered around her head in a kind of diadem.

“Why would they want to stay?” Reed Barrows asked, sounding honestly bewildered.

Angel’s laugh was as harsh as a crow’s caw. “I got a better question—if they built up a good thing, like Evie says, why would they want to leave?”

Evie started toward the Tree, the long grass whickering against her red pants, but stopped when she heard the snap-clack of someone racking a shell into the chamber of a rifle. A Weatherby, as it happened. Drew T. Barry was the only man who hadn’t lowered his gun at Frank’s command, but he wasn’t pointing it at Evie. He was pointing it at Michaela.

“You go with her,” he said.

“Put it down, Drew,” said Frank.

“No.”

Michaela looked at Evie. “ Can I go with you to wherever it is? Without being in one of the cocoons?”

“Of course,” Evie said.

Michaela returned her attention to Barry. She no longer looked afraid; her brow was furrowed in puzzlement. “But why?”

“Call it insurance,” said Drew T. Barry. “If she’s telling the truth, maybe you can persuade your mother, and your mother can persuade the rest of them. I’m a strong believer in insurance.”

Clint saw Frank raising a pistol. Barry’s attention was fixed on the women, and it would have been an easy shot, but Clint shook his head. In a low voice he said, “There’s been enough killing.”

Besides, Clint thought, maybe Mr. Double Indemnity is right.

Evie and Michaela walked past the white tiger to the split in the Tree, where the fox sat waiting for them. Evie stepped in without hesitation, and was lost to sight. Michaela hesitated, and then followed.

The remaining men who had attacked the prison, and those remaining who had defended it, settled down to wait. At first they paced, but as time passed and nothing happened, most of them sat down in the high grass.

Not Angel. She strode back and forth, as if she couldn’t get enough of being beyond the confines of her cell, and the woodshop, and the Booth, and Broadway. The tiger was dozing. Once Angel approached it, and Clint held his breath. She was truly insane.

It raised its head when Angel dared to stroke its back, but then the great head dropped back to its paws, and those amazing eyes closed.

“It’s purrin !” she called to them, in what sounded like exultation.

The sun rose to the roof of the sky and seemed to pause there.

“I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Frank said. “And if it doesn’t, I’m going to spend the rest of my life wishing I’d killed her.”

Clint said, “I don’t think it’s been decided yet.”

“Yeah? How do you know?”

It was Jared who answered. He pointed at the Tree. “Because that’s still there. If it disappears or turns into an oak or a weeping willow, then you can give up.”

They waited.

In the Shopwell supermarket, where the Meetings were traditionally held, Evie spoke to a large gathering of those who now called Our Place home. It didn’t take long for her to speak her piece, which boiled down to one thing: it was their choice.

“If you stay here, every woman, from Dooling to Marrakesh, will appear in this world, in the place where they fell asleep. Free to begin again. Free to raise their children the way they want to. Free to make peace. It’s a good deal, or so it seems to me. But you can go. And if you do, every woman will awaken where they fell asleep in the world of men. But you all must go.”

“What are you?” Janice Coates, holding Michaela tight, spoke to Evie over her daughter’s shoulder. “Who gave you this power?”

Evie smiled. A green light hovered around her. “I’m just an old woman who looks young for the time being. And I don’t have any power. Like the fox, I’m only an emissary. It’s you, all of you, who have the power.”

“Well,” Blanche McIntyre said, “let’s talk it out. Like a jury. Because I guess that’s what we are.”

“Yes,” Lila said. “But not here.”

It took until the afternoon to gather the inhabitants of the new world. Messengers were sent to every corner of the town to call forth the women who hadn’t been at the supermarket.

They walked from Main Street in a quiet column and climbed up Ball’s Hill. Blanche McIntyre’s feet were bothering her, so Mary Pak drove her in one of the golf carts. Blanche held Andy Jones, the infant orphan, bundled in a blue blanket and told him a very short story: “Once upon a time, there was a little guy, who went here and there, and every lady in the place loved him.”

Tufts of green were sprouting. It was cold, but spring was on the verge. They had almost caught up to the time of year it had been in the old world when they had left. The realization surprised Blanche. It felt to her as though a far longer period had elapsed.