There was still no answer.
He stood a moment longer, nerving himself (but not really sure he had the nerve), and then twisted the knob. He hit the door with his shoulder and barrelled in, screaming, waving the poker And the room was empty.
But Shooter had been here, all right. Yes. The VDT unit of Mort’s word cruncher lay on the floor, its screen a shattered staring eye. Shooter had killed it. On the desk where the VDT had stood was an old Royal typewriter. The steel surfaces of this dinosaur were dull and dusty. Propped on the keyboard was a manuscript. Shooter’s manuscript, the one he had left under a rock on the porch a million years ago.
It was ‘Secret Window, Secret Garden.’
Mort dropped the poker on the floor. He walked toward the typewriter as if mesmerized and picked up the manuscript. He shuffled slowly through its pages, and came to understand why Mrs Gavin had been so sure it was his … sure enough to rescue it from the trash. Maybe she hadn’t known consciously, but her eye had recognized the irregular typeface. And why not? She had seen manuscripts which looked like ‘Secret Window, Secret Garden’ for years. The Wang word processor and the System Five laser printer were relative newcomers. For most of his writing career he had used this old Royal.
The years had almost worn it out, and it was a sad case now – when you typed on it, it produced letters as crooked as an old man’s teeth.
But it had been here all the time, of course – tucked away at the back of the study closet behind piles of old galleys and manuscripts … what editors called ‘foul matter.’ Shooter must have stolen it, typed his manuscript on it, and then sneaked it back when Mort was out at the post office. Sure. That made sense, didn’t it?
No, Mort. That doesn’t make sense. Would you like to do something that does make sense? Call the police, then. That makes sense. Call the police and tell them to come down here and lock you up. Tell them to do it fast, before you can do any more damage. Tell them to do it before you kill anyone else.
Mort dropped the pages with a great wild cry and they seesawed lazily down around him as all of the truth rushed in on him at once like a jagged bolt of silver lightning.
46
There was no John Shooter.
There never had been.
‘No,’ Mort said. He was striding back and forth through the big living room again. His headache came and went in waves of pain. ‘No, I do not accept that. I do not accept that at all.’
But his acceptance or rejection didn’t make much difference. All the pieces of the puzzle were there, and when he saw the old Royal typewriter, they began to fly together. Now, fifteen minutes later, they were still flying together, and he seemed to have no power to will them apart.
The picture which kept coming back to him was of the gas jockey in Mechanic Falls, using a squeegee to wash his windshield. A sight he had never expected to witness again in his lifetime. Later, he had assumed that the kid had given him a little extra service because he had recognized Mort and liked Mort’s books.
Maybe that was so, but the windshield had needed washing. Summer was gone, but plenty of stuff still splatted on your windshield if you drove far enough and fast enough on the back roads. And he must have used the back roads. He must have sped up to Derry and back again in record time, only stopping long enough to burn down his house. He hadn’t even stopped long enough to get gas on the way back. After all, he’d had places to go and cats to kill, hadn’t he? Busy, busy, busy.
He stopped in the middle of the floor and whirled to stare at the window wall. ‘If I did all that, why can’t I remember?’ he asked the silvery crack in the glass. ‘Why can’t I remember even now?’
He didn’t know … but he did know where the name had come from, didn’t he? One half from the Southern man whose story he had stolen in college; one half from the man who had stolen his wife. It was like some bizarre literary in-joke.
She says she loves him, Mort. She says she loves him now.
‘Fuck that. A man who sleeps with another man’s wife is a thief. And the woman is his accomplice.’
He looked defiantly at the crack.
The crack said nothing.
Three years ago, Mort had published a novel called The Delacourt Family. The return address on Shooter’s story had been Dellacourt, Mississippi. It –
He suddenly ran for the encyclopedias in the study, slipping and almost falling in the mess of pages strewn on the floor in his hurry. He pulled out the M volume and at last found the entry for Mississippi. He ran a trembling finger down the list of towns – it took up one entire page – hoping against hope.
It was no good.
There was no Dellacourt or Delacourt, Mississippi.
He thought of looking for Perkinsburg, the town where Shooter had told him he’d picked up a paperback copy of Everybody Drops the Dime before getting on the Greyhound bus, and then simply closed the encyclopedia. Why bother? There might be a Perkinsburg in Mississippi, but it would mean nothing if there was.
The name of the novelist who’d taught the class in which Mort had met John Kintner had been Richard Perkins, Jr. That was where the name had come from.
Yes, but I don’t remember any of this, so how -?
Oh, Mort, the small voice mourned. You’re very sick. You’re a very sick man.
‘I don’t accept that,’ he said again, horrified by the wavery weakness of his voice, but what other choice was there? Hadn’t he even thought once that it was almost as if he were doing things, taking irrevocable steps, in his sleep?
You killed two men, the little voice whispered. You killed Tom because he knew you were alone that day, and you killed Greg so he wouldn’t find out for sure. If you had just killed Tom, Greg would have called the police. And you didn’t want that, COULDN’T have that. Not until this horrible story you’ve been telling is all finished. You were so sore when you got up yesterday. So stiff and sore. But it wasn’t just from breaking in the bathroom door and trashing the shower stall, was it? You were a lot busier than that. You had Tom and Greg to take care of. And you were right about how the vehicles got moved around … but You were the one who jogged all the way back to Tom’s to get the Buick, and You were the one who called up Sonny Trotts and pretended to be Tom. A man who just got into town from Mississippi wouldn’t know Sonny was a little deaf, but You would. You killed them, Mort, you KILLED those men!
‘I do not accept that I did!’ he shrieked. ‘This is all just Part of his plan! This I do not
is just part of his little game! His little mind-game! And I do not accept…’
Stop, the little voice whispered inside his head, and Mort stopped.
For a moment there was utter silence in both worlds: the one inside his head, and the one outside of it.
And, after an interval the little voice asked quietly: Why did You do It, Mort? This whole elaborate and homicidal episode? Shooter kept saying he wanted a story, but there is no Shooter. What do You want, Mort? What did you create John Shooter FOR?
Then, from outside, came the sound of a car rolling down the driveway. Mort looked at his watch and saw that the hands were standing straight up at noon. A blaze of triumph and relief roared through him like flames shooting up the neck of a chimney. That he had the magazine but still no proof did not matter. That Shooter might kill him did not matter. He could die happily, just knowing that there was a John Shooter and that he himself was not responsible for the horrors he had been considering.
‘He’s here!’ he screamed joyfully, and ran out of the study. He waved his hands wildly above his head, and actually cut a little caper as he rounded the corner and came into the hall.
He stopped, looking out at the driveway past the sloping roof of the garbage cabinet where Bump’s body had been nailed up. His hands dropped slowly to his sides. Dark horror stole over his brain. No, not over it; it came down, as if some merciless hand were pulling a shade. The last piece fell into place. It had occurred to him moments before in the study that he might have created a fantasy assassin because he lacked the courage to commit suicide. Now he realized that Shooter had told the truth when he said he would never kill Mort.