“What do you mean?” But David thought he knew.
“What I said. Collie was never a midget-stood about six-four, I’d judge, and probably weighed about two hundred and thirty. But now..
He glanced toward the doorway to the stairs again-toward the sound of approaching, clumping footsteps Two sets. Then he looked back at David.
“Now I’d say he’s at least three inches more’n that wouldn’t you? And maybe sixty pounds heavier.”
“That’s crazy!” Ellen cried. “Absolutely nuts!”
“Yessum,” the white-haired vet agreed. “But it’s true The door to the stairs flew all the way open and a man with a bloody face and shoulder-length gray hair-it was also streaked and clumped with blood-flew into the room. He didn’t cross it with Mary Jackson’s balletic grace but stumbled at the halfway point and fell to his knees, holding his hands out in front of him to keep from crashing into the desk. The man who followed him through the door was the man who had brought them all to this place, and yet he wasn’t-he was a kind of blood gorgon, a creature who appeared to be disintegrating before their very eyes.
He surveyed them from the melting ramparts of his face, and his mouth spread in a wide, lip-splitting grin
“Look at us,” he said in a thick, sentimental voice. “Look at us, would you? Gosh! Just one big happy family!”
PART II
DESPERATION:
IN THESE SILENCES SOMETHING MAY RISE
“Steve?”
“What?”
“Is that what I think it is?”
She was pointing out her window, pointing west.
“What do you think it is?”
“Sand,” she said. “Sand and wind.”
“Yep. I’d say that’s what it is.”
“Pull over a minute, would you?”
He looked at her, questioning.
“Just for a minute.”
Steve Ames pulled the Ryder van over to the side of the road which led south from Highway 50 to the town ofDesperation . They had found it with no trouble at all. Now he sat behind the wheel and looked at Cynthia Smith, who had tickled him even in his unease by calling him her nice new friend. She wasn’t looking at her nice new friend now; she was looking down at the bottom of her funky Peter Tosh shirt and plucking at it nervously.
“I’m a hard-headed babe,” she said without looking up. “A little psychic, but hard-headed just the same.
Do you believe that?”
“I guess.”
“And practical. Do you believe that?”
“Sure.”
“That’s why I made fun of your intuition, or whatever. But you thought we’d find something out there by the road, and we did.”
“Yes. We did.”
“So it was a good intuition.”
“Would you get to the point? My boss-”
“Right. Your boss, your boss, your boss. I know that’s what you’re thinking about and practically all you’re thinking about, and that’s what’s got me worried. Because I have a bad feeling about this, Steve.
A bad intuition.”
He looked at her. Slowly, reluctantly, she raised her head and looked back at him. What he saw in her eyes startled him badly-it was the flat shine of fear.
“What is it? What are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look, Cynthia. . . all we’re going to do is find a cop- lacking that, a phonebooth-and report Johnny missing. Also a bunch of people named Carver.”
“Just the same-”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. Promise.”
“Would you try 911 on your cellular again?” She asked this in a small, meek voice that was not much like her usual one.
He did, to please her, expecting nothing, and nothing was what he got. Not even a recording this time.
He didn’t know for sure, but he thought the oncoming windstorm, or dust storm, or whatever they called them out here, might be screwing things up even worse.
“Sony, no go,” he said. “Want to give it a try yourself? You might have better luck. The woman’s touch, and all that.”
She shook her head. “Do you feel anything? Anything at all?”
He sighed. Yes, he felt something. It reminded him of the way he had sometimes felt in early puberty,
back inTexas . The summer he turned thirteen had been the longest, sweetest, strangest summer of his life. Toward the end of August, evening thunderstorms had often moved through the area-brief but hellacious convulsions the old cowboys called “benders.” And in that year (a year when it seemed that every other pop song on the radio was by The Bee Gees), the hushed minutes before these storms-black sky, still air, sharpening thunder, lightning jabbing at the prairie like forks into tough meat-had somehow turned him on in a way he had never experienced since. His eyes felt like globes of electricity in chrome sockets, his stomach rolled, his penis filled with blood and stood up hard as a skillet-handle. A feeling of terrified ecstasy came in those hushes, a sense that the world was about to give up some great secret, to _ play it like a special card. In the end, of course, there had never been a revelation (unless his discovery of how to — masturbate a year or so later had been it), only rain. That was how he felt now, only there was no hardon, no tingling arm hairs, no ecstasy, and no sense of terror, not really.
What he had been feeling ever since she had uncovered the boss’s motorcycle helmet was a sense of low foreboding, a sense that things had gone wrong and would soon go wronger. Until she had spoken up just now, he’d pretty much written that feeling off. As a kid — he’d probably just been responding to changes in the air- pressure as the storm approached, or electricity in the air, or some other damned thing. And a storm was coming now, wasn’t it? Yes. So it was probably the same thing, déjà vu all over again, as they said, perfectly understandable. Yet- “Yeah, okay, I do feel something. But what in the hell can I do about it? You don’t want me to turn back, do you?”
“No. We can’t do that.. Just be careful. ‘Kay?” — A gust of wind shook the Ryder truck. A cloud of tawny sand blew across the road, turning it into a momentary mirage.
“Okay, but you’ve got to help.”
He got the truck moving again. The setting sun had touched the rising membrane of sand in the west now, and – its bottom arc had gone as red as blood.
“Oh yeah,” she said, grimacing as a fresh blast of wind hit the truck. “You can count on that.”
The bloodsoaked cop locked the newcomer into the cell next to David Carver and Tom Billingsley. That done, he turned slowly on his heels in a complete circle, his half-peeled, bleeding face solemn and contemplative. -~ Then he reached into his pocket and brought out the key ring again. He selected the same one as before, David noticed-square, with a black mag-strip on it-so it was probably a master.
“Eeenie-meenie-miney-moe,” he said. “Catch a tourist by the toe.” He walked toward the cell which held David’s mother and father. As he approached they drew back, arms around each other again.
“You leave them alone!” David cried, alarmed. Billingsley took his arm above the elbow, but David shook it off. “Do you hear me? Leave them alone!”
“In your dreams, brat,” Collie Entragian said. He poked the key into the cell’s lock and there was a little thump as the tumblers turned. He pulled the door open. “Good news. Ellie-your parole came through.
Pop on out here.”
Ellen shook her head. Shadows had begun to gather in the holding area now and her face swam in them, pale as paper. Ralph put his other arm around her waist and drew her back even farther. “Haven’t you done enough to our family?” he asked.
“In a word, no.” Entragian drew his cannon-sized gun, pointed it at Ralph, and cocked it.
“You come out of here right now, little lady, or I’ll shoot this no-chin pecker-checker spang between the eyes. You want his brains in his head or drying on the wall? It’s all the same to me either way.”
God, make him quit it, David prayed. Please make him quit it. If you could bring Brian back from wherever he was, you can do that. You can make him quit it. Dear God, please don’t let him take my mother.
Ellen was pushing Ralph’s hands down, pushing them off her.
“Ellie, no!”
“I have to. Don’t you see that?”
Ralph let his hands fall to his sides. Entragian dropped the hammer on his gun and slid it back into his holster. He held one hand out to Ellen, as if inviting her to take a spin on the dance floor. And she went to him. When she spoke, her voice was very low. David knew she was saying something she didn’t want him to hear, but his ears were good.