STEPHEN KING
thing, but the tears went running down my cheeks. The swords on his tie doubled, then tripled—three for one, such a deal.
“If you’re worried that I’m a cop, you can quit. And I gave you money—that screws up any sort of prosecution that might come out of this. But even if that wasn’t the case, no one would believe what really happened to young Mr. Brannigan, anyway. Not even if you confessed on nationwide TV. Would they?”
“No,” I whispered. Then, louder: “I put up with a lot. Finally I couldn’t put up with any more. He made me, he brought it on himself.”
“Tell me what happened,” Mr. Sharpton said.
“I wrote him a letter,” I said. “A special letter.”
“Yes, very special indeed. And what did you put in it so it could only work on him?”
I knew what he meant, but there was more to it than that. When you personalized the letters, you increased their power. You made them lethal, not just dangerous.
“His sister’s name,” I said. I think that was when I gave up completely. “His sister, Debbie.”
IX
I’ve always had something, some kind of deal, and I sort of knew it, but not how to use it or what its name was or what it meant. And I sort of knew I had to keep quiet about it, because other people didn’t have it. I thought they might put me in the circus if they found out.
Or in jail.
I remember once—vaguely, I might have been three or four, it’s one of my first memories—standing by this dirty window and looking out at the yard. There was a wood-chopping block and a mailbox with a red flag, so it must have been while we were at Aunt Mabel’s, out in the country. That was where we lived after my father ran off. Ma got a job in the Harkerville Fancy Bakery and we moved back to town later on, when I was five or so. We were living in town when I started 230
EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL
school, I know that. Because of Mrs. Bukowski’s dog, having to walk past that fucking canine cannibal five days a week. I’ll never forget that dog. It was a boxer with a white ear. Talk about Memory Lane.
Anyway, I was looking out and there were these flies buzzing around at the top of the window, you know how they do. I didn’t like the sound, but I couldn’t reach high enough, even with a rolled-up magazine, to swat them or make them go away. So instead of that, I made these two triangles on the windowpane, drawing in the dirt with the tip of my finger, and I made this other shape, a special circle-shape, to hold the triangles together. And as soon as I did that, as soon as I closed the circle, the flies—there were four or five of them—dropped dead on the windowsill. Big as jellybeans, they were—the black jellybeans that taste like licorice. I picked one up and looked at it, but it wasn’t very interesting, so I dropped it on the floor and went on looking out the window.
Stuff like that would happen from time to time, but never on purpose, never because I made it happen. The first time I remember doing something absolutely on purpose—before Skipper, I mean—
was when I used my whatever-it-was on Mrs. Bukowski’s dog. Mrs.
Bukowski lived on the corner of our street, when we rented on Dugway Avenue. Her dog was mean and dangerous, every kid on the West Side was afraid of that white-eared fuck. She kept it tied in her side yard—hell, staked out in her side yard is more like it—and it barked at everyone who went by. Not harmless yapping, like some dogs do, but the kind that says If I could get you in here with me or get out there with you, I’d tear your balls off, Brewster. Once the dog did get loose, and it bit the paperboy. Anyone else’s dog probably would have sniffed gas for that, but Mrs. Bukowski’s son was the police chief, and he fixed it up, somehow.