ERRY

1

It's hot in Gosselin's - it's so hot! The sweat pops out on Jonesy's face almost immediately, and by the time the four of them get to the pay phone (which is near the woodstove, wouldn't you know it), it's rolling down his cheeks, and his armpits feel like jungle growth after a heavy rain . . . not that he has all that much growth there yet, not at fourteen. Don't you wish, as Pete likes to say.

So it's hot, and he's still partly in the grip of the dream, which hasn't faded the way bad dreams usually do (he can still smell gasoline and burning rubber, can still see Henry holding that moccasin . . . and the head, he can still see Richie Grenadeau's awful severed head), and then the operator makes things worse by being a bitch. When Jonesy gives her the Cavells' number, which they call frequently to ask if they can come over (Roberta and Alfie always say yes, but it is only polite to ask permission, they have all been taught that at home), the operator asks: 'Do your parents know you're calling long-distance?' The words come out not in a Yankee drawl but in the slightly Frenchified tones of someone who grew up in this part of the world, where Letourneau and Bissonette are more common than Smith or Jones. The tightwad French, Pete's Dad calls them. And now he's got one on the telephone, God help him.

'They let me make toll calls if I pay the charges,' Jonesy says. And boy, he should have known that he would end up being the one to actually make it. He rakes down the zipper of his jacket. God, but it's boiling in here! How those old geezers can sit around the stove like they're doing is more than Jonesy can understand. His own friends are pressing in close around him, which is probably understandable - they want to know how things go - but still, Jonesy wishes they would step back a little. Having them so close makes him feel even hotter.

'And if I were to call them, mon fils, your m��re et p��re, d'ey say the same?'

'Sure,' Jonesy says. Sweat runs into one of his eyes, stinging, and he wipes it away like a tear. 'My father's at work, but my Mom should be home. Nine-four-nine, six-six-five-eight. Only I wish you'd make it quick, because - '

'I'll jus' ring on your party,' she says, sounding disappointed. Jonesy slips out of his coat, switching the phone from one ear to the other in order to accomplish this, and lets it puddle around his feet. The others are still wearing theirs; Beav, in fact, hasn't even unzipped his Fonzie Jacket. How they can stand it is beyond Jonesy. Even the smells are getting to him: Musterole and beans and floor - oil and coffee and brine from the pickle - barrel. Usually he likes the smells in Gosselin's, but today they make Jonesy feel like blowing chunks.

Connections click in his ear. So slow. His friends pushing in too close to the pay phone on the back wall, crowding him. Two or three aisles over, Lamar is looking fixedly at the cereal shelf and rubbing his forehead like a man with a severe headache. Considering how much beer he put away last night, Jonesy thinks, a headache would be natural. He's coming down with a headache himself, one that beer has nothing to do with, it's just so gosh-damn hot in h -

He straightens up a little. 'Ringing,' he says to his friends, and immediately wishes he'd kept his mouth shut, because they lean in closer than ever. Pete's breath is fuckin awful, and Jonesy thinks, What do you do, Petesky? Brush em once a year, whether they need it or not?

The phone is picked up on the third ring. 'Yes, hello?' It's Roberta, but sounding distracted and upset rather than cheery, as she usually does. Not that it's very hard to figure out why; in the background he can hear Duddits bawling. Jonesy knows that Alfie and Roberta don't feel that crying the way Jonesy and his friends do - they are grownups. But they are also his parents, they feel some of it, and he doubts if this has exactly been Mrs Cavell's favorite morning.

Christ, how can it be so hot in here', What did they load that fuckin woodstove up with this morning, anyway? Plutonium?

'Come on, who is it?' Impatient, which is also completely unlike Mrs Cavell. If being the mother of a special person like Duddits teaches you anything, she has told the boys on many occasions, it's patience. Not this morning, though. This morning she sounds almost pissed off, which is unthinkable. 'If you're selling something, I can't talk to you. I'm busy right now, and . . .'

Duddits in the background, trumpeting and walling. You're busy, all right, Jonesy thinks. He's been going on like that since dawn, and by now you must be just about out of your sneaker.

Henry throws an elbow into Jonesy's side and flicks a hand at him - Go on! Hurry up! - and although it hurts, the elbow is still a good thing. If she hangs up on him, Jonesy will have to deal with that bitch of an operator again.

'Miz Cavell - Roberta? It's me, Jonesy.'

'Jonesy?' He senses her deep relief, she has wanted so badly for Duddie's friends to call that she half-believes she is imagining this. 'Is it really you?'

'Yeah,' he says. 'Me and the other guys.' He holds out the telephone.

'Hi, Mrs Cavell,' Henry says.

'Hey, what's up?' is Pete's contribution.

'Hi, beautiful,' Beaver says with a goony grin. He has been more or less in love with Roberta from the day they met her.

Lamar Clarendon looks over at the sound of his son's voice, winces, then goes back to his contemplation of the Cheerios and Shredded Wheat. Go right ahead, Lamar told the Beav when Beaver said they wanted to call Duddits. Dunno why you'd want to talk to that meringue-head, but it's your buffalo nickel.

When Jonesy puts the phone back to his ear, Roberta Cavell is saying: - get back to Derry? I thought you were hunting up in Kineo or someplace.'

'We're still up here,' Jonesy says. He looks around at his friends and is astounded to see they are hardly sweating at all - a slight sheen on Henry's forehead, a few beads on Pete's upper lip, and that's all. Totally Weirdsville. 'We just thought . . . um . . . that we better call.'

'You knew.' Her voice was flat - not unfriendly but unques?tioning.

'Um . . .' He pulls at his flannel shirt, fanning it against his chest. 'Yeah.'

There are a thousand questions most people would ask at this point, probably starting with How did you know? or What in God's name is wrong with him? but Roberta isn't most people, and she has already had the best part of a month to see how they are with her son. What she says is, 'Hold on, Jonesy. I'll get him.'

Jonesy waits. Far off he can still hear Duddits wailing and Roberta, softer. Talking to him. Cajoling him to the phone. Using what are now magic words in the Cavell household: Jonesy, Beaver,Pete, Henry. The blatting moves closer, and even over the phone Jonesy can feel it working its way into his head, a blunt knife that digs and gouges instead of cutting. Yowch. Duddits's crying makes Henry's elbow seem like a love-tap. Meanwhile, the old jungle-juice is rolling down his neck in rivers. His eyes fix on the two signs above the phone. PLEASE LIMIT ALL CALLS TO 5 MINS, reads one. PROFAINITY NOT TOLERIDED, reads the other. Beneath this someone has gouged Who the fuck says so. Then Duddits is on, those awful bellowing cries right there in his ear. Jonesy winces against them, but in spite of the pain it is impossible to be mad at Duds. Up here they are four, all together. Down there he is one, all alone, and what a strange one he is. God has hurt him and blessed him at the same time, it makes Jonesy giddy just to think of it.

'Duddits,' he says. 'Duddits, it's us. Jonesy . . .'

He hands the phone to Henry. 'Hi, Duddits, it's Henry . . .'

Henry hands the phone to Pete. 'Hi, Duds, it's Pete, stop crying now, it's all right . . .'

Pete hands the phone to Beaver, who looks around, then stretches the phone as far toward the corner as the cord will allow. Cupping his hand over the mouthpiece so the old men by the stove (not to mention his own old man, of course) won't hear him, he sings the first two lines of the lullaby. Then he falls quiet, listening. After a moment he flashes the rest of them a thumb-and-forefinger circle. Then he hands the phone back to Henry.

'Duds? Henry again. It was just a dream, Duddits. It wasn't real. Okay? It wasn't real and it's over. Just . . .' Henry listens. Jonesy takes the opportunity to strip off his flannel shirt. The tee-shirt beneath is soaked right through.

There are a billion things in the world Jonesy doesn't know ? - what kind of link he and his friends share with Duddits, for one - but he knows he can't stay in here in Gosselin's much longer. He feels like he's in the goddam stove, not just looking at it. Those old farts around the checkerboard must have ice in their bones.

Henry is nodding. 'That's right, like a scary movie.' He listens, frowning. 'No, you didn't. None of us did. We didn't hurt him. We didn't hurt any of them.'

And just like that - bingo - Jonesy knows they did. They didn't mean to, exactly, but they did. They were scared Richie would make good on his threat to get them . . . and so they got him first.

Pete is holding out his hand and Henry says, 'Pete wants to talk to you, Dud.'

He hands the phone to Pete and Pete is telling Duddits to just forget it, be chilly, Willy, they'll be home soon and they'll all play the game, they'll have fun, they'll have a fuckin roll, but in the meantime -

Jonesy raises his eyes and sees one of the signs over the phone has changed. The one on the left still says PLEASE LIMIT ALL CALLS TO 5 MINS, but the one on the right now says WHY NOT GO OUTSIDE IT'S COOLER. And that's a good idea, such a good idea. No reason not to, either - the Duddits situation is clearly under control.

But before he can make his move, Pete is holding the phone out to him and saying, 'He wants to talk to you, Jonesy.'

For a moment he almost bolts anyway, thinking to hell with Duddits, to hell with all of them. But these are his friends, together they all caught the same terrible dream, did something they didn't mean to do

(liar fuckin liar you meant it you did)

and their eyes hold him where he is in spite of the heat, which is now clamped around his chest like a suffocating pad. Their eyes insist that he's a part of this and mustn't leave while Duddits is still on the phone. It's not how you play the game.

It's our dream and it's not over yet, their eyes insist - Henry's most of all. It's been going on since the day we found him there behind Tracker Brothers, down on his knees and all but naked. He sees the line and now we see it, too. And although we may perceive it in different ways, part of us will always see the line. We'll see it until the day we die.

There's something else in their eyes, too, something that will haunt them, all unacknowledged, until the day they die, and cast its shadow over even their happiest days. The fear of what they did. What they did in the unremembered part of their shared dream.

That's what keeps him where he is and makes him take the telephone even though he is sweltering, roasting, fucking melting.

'Duddits,' he says, and even his voice sounds hot. 'It's really okay. I'm gonna let you talk to Henry again, it's super-hot in here and I have to get a breath of fresh - '

Duddits interrupts him, his voice strong and urgent. 'Oh-oh-ow! Ohee, oh-oh-ow! Ay! Ay! Isser AY!'

They have always understood his gabble from the very first, and Jonesy understands it now: Don't go out! Jonesy, don't go out! Gray! Gray! Mister GRAY!

Jonesy's mouth drops open. He looks past the heat-shimmering stove, down the aisle where Beaver's hungover father is now making a listless examination of the canned beans, past Mrs Gosselin at the old scrolled cash register, and out the front window. That window is dirty, and it's filled with signs advertising everything from Winston cigarettes and Moosehead Ale to church suppers and Fourth of July picnics that happened back when the peanut-farmer was still President . . . but there's still enough glass for him to look through and see the thing that's waiting for him outside. It's the thing that came up behind him while he was trying to hold the bathroom door closed, the thing that has snatched his body. A naked gray figure standing beside the Citgo pump on its toeless feet, staring at him with its black eyes. And Jonesy thinks: It's not how they really are, it's just the way we see them.

As if to emphasize this, Mr Gray raises one of his hands and brings it down. From the tips of his three fingers, little specks of reddish-gold float upward like thistle.

Byrus, Jonesy thinks.

As if it were a magic word in a fairy-tale, everything freezes. Gosselin's Market becomes a still-life. Then the color drains out of it and it becomes a sepia-toned photograph. His friends are growing transparent and fading before his eyes. Only two things still seem real: the heavy black receiver of the pay phone, and the heat. The stifling heat.

'Ay UH!' Duddits cries into his ear. Jonesy hears a long, choking intake of breath which he remembers so well; it is Duddits readying himself to speak as clearly as he possibly can. 'Ownzy! Ownzy, ake UH! Ake UH! Ake

2

up! Wake up! Jonesy, ake up!

Jonesy raised his head and for a moment could see nothing. His hair, heavy and sweat-clotted, hung in his eyes. He brushed it away, hoping for his own bedroom - either the one at Hole in the Wall, or, even better, the one back home in Brookline - but no such luck. He was still in the office at Tracker Brothers. He'd fallen asleep at the desk and had dreamed of how they'd called Duddits all those years ago. That had been real enough, but not the stuporous heat. If anything, Old Man Gosselin had always kept his place cold; he was chintzy that way. The heat had crept into his dream because it was hot in here, Christ, it had to be a hundred degrees, maybe a hundred and ten.

Furnace has gone nuts, he thought, and got up. Or maybe the place is on fire. Either way, I have to get out. Before I roast.

Jonesy went around the desk, barely registering the fact that the desk had changed, barely registering the feel of something brushing the top of his head as he burned toward the door. He was reaching for the knob with one hand and the lock with the other when he remembered Duddits in the dream, telling him not to go out, Mr Gray was out there waiting.

And he was. Right outside this door. Waiting in the storehouse of memories, to which he now had total access.

Jonesy spread his sweaty fingers on the wood of the door. His hair fell down over his eyes again, but he barely noticed. 'Mr Gray,' he whispered. 'Are you out there? You are, aren't you?'

No response, but Mr Gray was, all right. He was standing with his hairless rudiment of a head cocked and his glass-black eyes fixed on the doorknob, waiting for it to turn. Waiting for Jonesy to come bursting out. And then - ?

Goodbye annoying human thoughts. Goodbye distracting and disturbing human emotions.

Goodbye Jonesy.

'Mr Gray, are you trying to smoke me out?'

Still no answer. Jonesy didn't need one. Mr Gray had access to all the controls, didn't he? Including the ones that controlled his temperature. How high had he pushed it? Jonesy didn't know, but he knew it was still going up. The band around his chest was hotter and heavier than ever, and he could hardly breathe. His temples were pounding.

The window. What about the window?

Feeling a burst of hope, Jonesy turned in that direction, putting his back to the door. The window was dark now - so much for the eternal afternoon in October of 1978 - and the driveway which ran up the side of Tracker Brothers was buried under shifting drifts of snow. Never, even as a child, had snow looked so inviting to Jonesy. He saw himself bursting through the window like Errol Flynn in some old pirate movie, saw himself charging into the snow and then throwing himself into it, bathing his burning face in its blessed white chill -

Yes, and then the feel of Mr Gray's hands closing around his neck. Those hands had only three digits each, but they would be strong; they would choke the life out of him in no time. If he even cracked the window, tried to let in some of the cold night air, Mr Gray would be in and battening on him like a vampire. Because that part of JonesyWorld wasn't safe. That part was conquered territory.

Hobson's choice. Fucked either way.

'Come out.' Mr Gray at last spoke through the door, and in Jonesy's own voice. 'I'll make it quick. You don't want to roast in there . . . or do you?'

Jonesy suddenly saw the desk standing in front of the window, the desk that hadn't even been here when he first found himself in this room. Before he'd fallen asleep it had just been a plain wooden thing, the sort of bottom-of-the-line model you might buy at Office Depot if you were on a budget. At some point - he couldn't remember exactly when - it had gained a phone. Just a plain black phone, as utilitarian and undecorative as the desk itself.

Now, he saw, the desk was an oak rolltop, the twin of the one in his Brookline study. And the phone was a blue Trimline, like the one in his office at Jay. He wiped a palmful of piss-warm sweat off his forehead, and as he did it he saw what he had brushed with the top of his head.

It was the dreamcatcher.

The dreamcatcher from Hole in the Wall.

'Holy shit,' he whispered. 'I'm decorating the place.'

Of course he was, why not? Didn't even prisoners on Death Row decorate their cells? And if he could add a desk and a dreamcatcher and a Trimline phone in his sleep, then maybe? Jonesy closed his eyes and concentrated. He tried to call up an image of his study in Brookline. For a moment this gave him trouble, because a question intruded: if his memories were out there, how could he still have them in here? The answer, he realized, was probably simple. His memories were still in his head, where they had always been. The cartons in the storeroom were what Henry might call an externalization, his way of visualizing all the stuff to which Mr Gray had access.

Never mind. Pay attention to what needs doing. The study in Brookline. See the study in Brookline.

'What are you doing?' Mr Gray demanded. The smarmy self-confidence had left his voice. 'What the doodlyfuck are you doing?'

Jonesy smiled a little at that - he couldn't help it - but he held onto his image. Not just the study, but one wall of the study . . . there by the door leading into the little half-bath . . . yes, there it was. The Honeywell thermostat. And what was he supposed to say? Was there a magic word, something like alakazam?

Yeah.

With his eyes still closed and a trace of a smile still on his sweat-streaming face, Jonesy whispered: 'Duddits.'

He opened his eyes and looked at the dusty, nondescript wall.

The thermostat was there.

3

'Stop it!' Mr Gray shouted, and even as Jonesy crossed the room he was amazed by the familiarity of that voice; it was like listening to one of his own infrequent tantrums (the wild disorder of the kids' rooms was a likely flashpoint) on a tape recorder. 'You just stop it! 7'his has got to stop!'

'Kiss my bender, beautlful,' Jonesy replied, and grinned. How many times had his kids wished they could say something like that to him, when he started quacking? Then a nasty thought occurred to him. He'd probably never see the inside of his Brookline duplex again, but if he did, it would be through eyes which now belonged to Mr Gray. The cheek the kids kissed ('Eeu, scratchy, Daddy!' Misha would say) would now be Mr Gray's cheek. The lips Carla kissed would likewise be Mr Gray's. And in bed, when she gripped him and guided him into her -

Jonesy shivered, then reached for the thermostat . . . which, he saw, was set to 120. The only one in the world that went so high, no doubt. He backed it half a turn to the left, not knowing what to expect, and was delighted to feel an immediate waft of cool air on his cheeks and brow. He turned his face gratefully up to catch the breeze more fully, and saw a heating/cooling grate set high in one wall. One more fresh touch.

'How are you doing that?' Mr Gray shouted through the door. 'Why doesn't your body incorporate the byrus? How can you be there at all?'

Jonesy burst out laughing. There was simply no way to hold it in.

'Stop that,' Mr Gray said, and now his voice was chilly. This was the voice Jonesy had used when he had given Carla his ultimatum: rehab or divorce, hon, you choose. 'I can do more than just turn up the heat, you know. I can burn you out. Or make you blind yourself.'

Jonesy remembered the pen going into Andy Janas's eye - that terrible thick popping sound - and winced. Yet he recognized a bluff when he heard one. You're the last and I'm your delivery - system, Jonesy thought. You won't beat the machinery up too much. Not until your mission's accomplished, anyhow.

He walked slowly back to the door, reminding himself to be wary. . . because, as Gollum had said of Bilbo Baggins, it was tricksy, precious, aye, very tricksy.

'Mr Gray?' he asked softly.

No answer.

'Mr Gray, what do you look like now? What do you look like when you're yourself? A little less gray and a little more pink? A couple more fingers on your hands? Little bit of hair on your head?

Starting to get some toesies and some testes?'

No answer.

'Starting to look like me, Mr Gray? To think like me? You don't like that, right? Or do you?'

Still no answer, and Jonesy realized Mr Gray was gone. He turned and hurried across to the window, aware of even more changes: a Currier and Ives woodcut on one wall, a Van Gogh print on another - Marigolds, a Christmas gift from Henry - and on this desk the Magic 8-Ball he kept on his desk at home. Jonesy barely noticed these things. He wanted to see what Mr Gray was up to, what had engaged his attention now.

4

For one thing, the interior of the truck had changed. Instead of the olive-drab plainness of Andy Janas's government-issue pickup (clipboard of papers and forms on the passenger side, squawking radio beneath the dash), he was now in a luxy Dodge Ram with a club cab, gray velour seats, and roughly as many controls as a Learjet. On the glove compartment was a sticker reading I ??my BORDER, COLLIE. The border collie in question was still present and accounted for, asleep in the passenger-side footwell with its tail curled neatly around it. It was a male named Lad. Jonesy sensed that he could access the name and the fate of Lad's master, but why would he want to? Somewhere north of their present position, Janas's Army truck was now off the road, and the driver of this one would be lying nearby. Jonesy had no idea why the dog had been spared.

Then Lad lifted his tail and farted, and Jonesy did.

5

He discovered that by looking out the Tracker Brothers' office window and concentrating, he could look out through his own eyes. The snow was coming down more heavily than ever, but like the Army truck, the Dodge was equipped with four-wheel drive, and it poked along steadily enough. Going the other way, north toward Jefferson Tract, was a chain of headlights set high off the road: Army convoy trucks. Then, ahead on this side, a reflectorized sign - white letters, green background - loomed out of the flying Snow. DERRY NEXT 5 EXITS.

The city plows had been out, and although there was hardly any traffic (there wouldn't have been much at this hour even on a clear night), the turnpike was in passable shape. Mr Gray increased the Ram's speed to forty miles an hour. They passed three exits Jonesy knew well from his childhood (KANSAS STREET, AIRPORT, UPMILE HILL/STRAWFORD PARK) then slowed.

Suddenly Jonesy thought he understood.

He looked at the boxes he'd dragged in here, most marked DUDDITS, a few marked DERRY. The latter ones he'd taken as an afterthought. Mr Gray thought he still had the memories he needed - the information he needed - but if Jonesy was right about where they were going (and it made perfect sense), Mr Gray was in for a surprise. Jonesy didn't know whether to be glad or afraid, and found he was both.

Here was a green sign reading EXIT 25 - WITCHAM STREET. His hand flicked on the Ram's turnsignal.

At the top of the ramp, he turned left onto Witcham, then left again, half a mile later, onto Carter Street. Carter went up at a steep angle, heading back toward Upmile Hill and Kansas Street on the other side of what had once been a high, wooded ridge and the site of a thriving Micmac Indian village. The street hadn't been plowed in several hours, but the four-wheel drive was up to the task. The Ram threaded its way among the snow-covered humps on either side - cars that had been street-parked in defiance of municipal snow-emergency regulations.

Halfway up Mr Gray turned again, this time onto an even narrower track called Carter Lookout. The Ram skidded, its rear end fishtailing. Lad looked up briefly, whined, then put his nose back down on the floormat as the tires took hold, biting into the snow and puffing the Ram the rest of the way up.

Jonesy stood at his window on the world, fascinated, waiting for Mr Gray to discover . . . well, to discover.

At first Mr Gray wasn't dismayed when the Ram's high beams showed nothing at the crest but more swirling snow. He was confident he'd see it in a few seconds, of course he would . . . just a few more seconds and he'd see the big white tower which stood here overlooking the drop to Kansas Street, the tower with the windows marching around it in a rising spiral. In just a few more seconds . . .

Except now there were no more seconds. The Ram had chewed its way to the top of what had once been called Standpipe Hill. Here Carter Lookout - and three or four other similar little lanes - ended in a large open circle. They had come to the highest, most open spot in Derry. The wind howled like a banshee, a steady fifty miles an hour with gusts up to seventy and even eighty. In the Ram's high beams, the snow flew horizontally, a storm of daggers.

Mr Gray sat motionless. Jonesy's hands slid off the wheel and clumped to either side of Jonesy's body like birds shot out of the sky. At last he muttered, 'Where is it?'

His left hand rose, fumbled at the doorhandle, and at last pulled it up. He swung a leg out, then fell to Jonesy's knees in a snowdrift as the howling wind snatched the door out of his hand. He got up again and floundered around to the front of the truck, his jacket rippling around him and the legs of his jeans snapping like sails in a gale. The wind-chill was well below zero (in the Tracker Brothers' office, the temperature went from cool to cold in the space of a few seconds), but the redblack cloud which now inhabited most of Jonesy's brain and drove Jonesy's body could not have cared less.

Where is it?' Mr Gray screamed into the howling mouth of the storm. Where's the fucking STANDPIPE?'

There was no need for Jonesy to shout; storm or no storm, Mr Gray would hear even a whisper.

'Ha-ha, Mr Gray,' he said. 'Hardy-fucking-har. Looks like the joke's on you. The Standpipe's been gone since 1985.'

6

Jonesy thought that if Mr Gray had remained still, he would have done a full-fledged pre-schooler's tantrum, perhaps right down to the rolling around in the snow and the kicking of the feet; in spite of his best efforts not to, Mr Gray was bingeing on Jonesy's emotional chemistry set, as helpless to stop now that he had started as an alcoholic with a key to McDougal's Bar.

Instead of throwing a fit or having a snit, he thrust Jonesy's body across the bald top of the hill and toward the squat stone pedestal that stood where he had expected to find the storage facility for the city's drinking water: seven hundred thousand gallons of it. He fell in the snow, floundered back up, limped forward on Jonesy's bad hip, fell again and got up again, all the time spitting Beaver's litany of childish curses into the gale: doodlyfuck, kiss my bender, munch my meat, bite my bag, shit in your fuckin hat and wear it backward, Bruce. Coming from Beaver (or Henry, or Pete), these had always been amusing. Here, on this deserted hill, screamed into the teeth of the storm by this lunging, falling monster that looked like a human being, they were awful.

He, it, whatever Mr Gray was, at last reached the pedestal, which stood out clearly enough in the glow cast by the Ram's headlights. It had been built to a child's height, about five feet, and of the plain rock which had shaped so many New England stone walls. On top were two figures cast in bronze, a boy and a girl with their hands linked and their heads lowered, as if in prayer or in grief.

The pedestal was drifted to most of its height in snow, but the top of the plaque screwed to the front was visible. Mr Gray fell to Jonesy's knees, scraped snow away, and read this:

TO THOSE LOST IN THE STORM

MAY 31, 1985

AND TO THE CHILDREN

ALL THE CHILDREN

LOVE FROM BILL, BEN, BEV, EDDIE, RICHIE, STAN, MIKE

THE LOSERS' CLUB

Spray-painted across it jagged red letters, also perfectly visible in the truck's headlights, was this further message:

7

Mr Gray knelt looking at this for nearly five minutes, ignoring the creeping numbness in Jonesy's extremities. (And why would he take care? Jonesy was just your basic rental job, drive it as hard as you want and butt out your cigarettes on the floormat.) He was trying to make sense of it. Storm? Children? Losers? Who or what was Pennywise? Most of all, where was the Standpipe, which Jonesy's memories had insisted was here?

At last he got up, limped back to the truck, got in, and turned up the heater. In the blast of hot air, Jonesy's body began to shake. Soon enough, Mr Gray was back at the locked door of the office, demanding an explanation.

'Why do you sound so angry?' Jonesy asked mildly, but he was smiling. Could Mr Gray sense that? 'Did you expect me to help you? Come on, pal - I don't know the specifics, but I have a pretty good idea what the overall plan is: twenty years from now and the whole planet is one big redheaded ball, right? No more hole in the ozone layer, but no more people, either.'

'Don't you smartass me! Don't you dare!'

Jonesy fought back the temptation to taunt Mr Gray into another tantrum. He didn't believe his unwelcome guest would be capable of huffing down the door between them no matter how angry he became, but what sense was there in putting that idea to the test? And besides, Jonesy was emotionally exhausted, his nerves jumping and his mouth full of a burnt-copper taste.

'How can it not be here?'

Mr Gray brought one hand down on the center of the steering wheel. The horn honked. Lad the border collie raised his head and looked at the man behind the wheel with large, nervous eyes. 'You can't lie to me! I have your memories!'

'Well . . . I did get a few. Remember?'

'Which ones? Tell me.'

'Why should I?' Jonesy asked. 'What'll you do for me?'

Mr Gray fell silent. Jonesy felt him accessing various files. Then, suddenly, smells began to waft into the room from under the door and through the heating and cooling vent. They were his favorite aromas: popcorn, coffee, his mother's fish chowder. His stomach immediately began to roar.

'Of course I can't promise you your mother's chowder,' Mr Gray said. 'But I'll feed you. And you're hungry, aren't you?'

'With you driving my body and pigging out on my emotions, it'd be a wonder if I wasn't,' Jonesy replied.

'There's a place south of here - Dysart's. According to you, it's open twenty-four hours a day, which is a way of saying all the time.

Or are you lying about that, too?'

'I never lied,' Jonesy replied. 'As you said, I can't. You've got the controls, you've got the memory banks, you've got everything but what's in here.'

'Where is there? How can there be a there?'

'I don't know,' Jonesy said truthfully. 'How do I know you'll feed me?'

'Because I have to,' Mr Gray said from his side of the door, and Jonesy realized Mr Gray was also being truthful. If you didn't pour gas into the machine from time to time, the machine stopped running. 'But if you satisfy my curiosity, I'll feed you the things you like. If you don't . . .'

The smells from under the door changed, became the greenly assaultive odor of broccoli and brussels sprouts.

'All right,' Jonesy said. 'I'll tell you what I can, and you feed me pancakes and bacon at Dysart's. Breakfast twenty-four hours a day, you know. Deal?'

'Deal. Open the door and we'll shake on it.'

Jonesy was surprised into a smile - it was Mr Gray's first attempt at humor, and really not such a bad one. He glanced into the rearview mirror and saw an identical smile on the mouth which was no longer his. That was a little creepy.

'Maybe we'll skip the handshake part,' he said.

'Tell me.'

'Yes, but a word of warning - break a promise to me, and you'll never get to make another one.'

'I'll keep it in mind.'

The truck sat at the top of Standpipe Hill, rocking slightly on its springs, its headlamps blazing out cylinders of snow-filled light, and Jonesy told Mr Gray what he knew. It was, he thought, the perfect place for a scary story.

8

The years of 1984 and '85 were bad ones in Derry. In the summer of 1984, three local teenagers had thrown a gay man into the Canal, killing him. In the ten months which followed, half a dozen children had been murdered, apparently by a psychotic who sometimes masqueraded as a clown.

'Who is this John Wayne Gacey?' Mr Gray asked. 'Was he the one who killed the children?'

'No, just someone from the midwest who had a similar modus operandi,' Jonesy said. 'You don't understand many of the cross-?connections my mind makes, do you? Bet there aren't many poets out where you come from.'

Mr Gray made no reply to this. Jonesy doubted if he knew what a poet was. Or cared.

'In any case,' Jonesy said, 'the last bad thing to happen was a kind of freak hurricane. It hit on May thirty-first, 1985. Over sixty people died. The Standpipe blew over. It rolled down that hill and into Kansas Street.' He pointed to the right of the truck, where the land sloped sharply away into the dark.

'Almost three quarters of a million gallons of water ran down Upmile Hill, then into downtown, which more or less collapsed. I was in college by then. The storm happened during my Finals Week. My Dad called and told me about it, but of course I knew - it was national news.'

Jonesy paused, thinking, looking around the office which was no longer bare and dirty but nicely finished (his subconscious had added both a couch that he had at home and an Eames chair he'd seen in the Museum of Modem Art catalogue, lovely but out of his financial reach) and really quite pleasant . . . certainly nicer than the blizzardy world his body's usurper was currently having to deal with.

'Henry was in school, too. Harvard. Pete was bumming around the West Coast, doing his hippie thing. Beaver was trying a junior college downstate. Majoring in hashish and video games, is what he said later.' Only Duddits had been here in Derry when the big storm blew through . . . but Jonesy discovered he didn't want to speak Duddits's name.

Mr Gray said nothing, but Jonesy got a clear sense of his impatience. Mr Gray cared only about the Standpipe. And how Jonesy had fooled him.

'Listen, Mr Gray - if there was any fooling going on, you did it to yourself I got a few of the DERRY boxes, that's all, and brought them in here while you were busy killing that poor soldier.'

'The poor soldiers came in ships from the sky and massacred all of my kind that they could find.'

'Spare me. You guys didn't come here to welcome us into the Galactic Book Circle.'

'Would things have been any different if we had?'

'You can also spare me the hypotheticals,' Jonesy said. 'After what you did to Pete and the Army guy, I could care less about having an intellectual discussion with you.'

'We do what we have to do.'

'That might be, but if you expect me to help you, you're mad.'

The dog was looking at Jonesy with even more unease appar?ently not used to masters who held animated conversations with themselves.

'The Standpipe fell over in 1985 - sixteen years ago - but you stole this memory?'

'Basically, yeah, although I don't think you'd have much luck with that in a court of law, since the memories were mine to begin with.'

'What else have you stolen?'

'That's for me to know and you to think about.'

There was a hard and ill-tempered thump at the door. Jonesy was once more reminded of the story about The Three Little Pigs. Huff and puff, Mr Gray; enjoy the dubious pleasures of rage.

But Mr Gray had apparently left the door.

'Mr Gray? 'Jonesy called. 'Hey, don't go 'way mad, okay?' Jonesy guessed that Mr Gray might be off on another infor?mation search. The Standpipe was gone but Derry was still here; ergo, the town's water had to be coming from somewhere. Did Jonesy know the location of that somewhere?

Jonesy didn't. He had a vague memory of drinking a lot of bottled water after coming back from college for the sum?mer, but that was all. Eventually water had started coming out of their taps again, but what was that to a twenty-one-year-old whose biggest concern had been getting into Mary Shratt's pants? The water came, you drank it. You didn't worry about where it came from as long as it didn't give you the heaves or the squatters.

A sense of frustration from Mr Gray? Or was that just his imagination? Jonesy most sincerely hoped not.

This had been a good one . . . what the four of them, in the days of their misspent youth, would undoubtedly have called 'a fuckin pisser'.

9

Roberta Cavell woke up from some unpleasant dream and looked to her right, half-expecting to see only darkness. But the comforting blue numbers were still glowing from the clock by her bed, so the power hadn't gone out. That was pretty amazing, considering the way the wind was howling.

1:04 A.M., the blue numbers said. Roberta turned on the bedside lamp - might as well use it while she could - and drank some water from her glass. Was it the wind that had awakened her? The bad dream? It had been bad, all right, something about aliens with deathrays and everyone running, but she didn't think that was it, either.

Then the wind dropped, and she heard what had waked her: Duddits's voice from downstairs. Duddits . . . singing? Was that possible? She didn't see how, considering the terrible afternoon and evening the two of them had put in.

'Eeeyer - eh!'' for most of the hours between two and five - Beaver's dead! Duddits seemingly inconsolable, finally bringing on a nosebleed. She feared these. When Duddits started bleeding, it was sometimes impossible to get him stopped without taking him to the hospital. This time she had been able to stop it by pushing cotton - wads into his nostrils and then pinching his nose high up, between the eyes. She had called Dr Briscoe to ask if she could give Duddits one of his yellow Valium tablets, but Dr Briscoe was off in Nassau, if you please. Some other doctor was on call, some whitecoat johnny who had never seen Duddits in his life, and Roberta didn't even bother to call him. She just gave Duddits the Valium, painted his poor dry lips and the inside of his mouth with one of the lemon - flavored glycerine swabs that he liked - the inside of his mouth was always developing cankers and ulcers. Even when the chemo was over, these persisted. And the chemo was over. None of the doctors - not Briscoe, not any of them - would admit it, and so the plastic catheter stayed in, but it was over. Roberta would not let them put her boy through that hell again.

Once he'd taken his pill, she got in bed with him, held him (being careful of his left side, where the indwelling catheter hid under a bandage), and sang to him. Not Beaver's lullaby, though. Not today.

At last he had begun to quiet, and when she thought he was asleep, she had gently pulled the cotton wads from his nostrils. The second one stuck a little, and Duddits's eyes had opened - that beautiful flash of green. His eyes were his true gift, she sometimes thought, and not that other business . . . seeing the line and all that went with it.

'Urnma?'

'Yes, Duddie.'

'Eeeyer in hen?'

She felt such sorrow at that, and at the thought of Beaver's absurd leather jacket, which he had loved so much and finally worn to tatters. If it had been someone else, anyone else but one of his four childhood friends, she would have doubted Duddie's premonition. But if Duddits said Beaver was dead, then Beaver almost certainly was.

'Yes, honey, I'm sure he's in heaven. Now go to sleep.'

For another long moment those green eyes had looked into hers, and she had thought he would start crying again - indeed, one tear, large and perfect, did roll down his stubbly cheek. It was so hard for him to shave now, sometimes even the Norelco started little cuts that dribbled for hours. Then his eyes had closed again and she had tiptoed out.

After dark, while she was making him oatmeal (all but the blandest foods were now apt to set off vomiting, another sign that the end was nearing), the whole nightmare started again. Terrified already by the increasingly strange news coming out of the Jefferson Tract, she had raced back to his room with her heart hammering. Duddits was sitting upright again, whipping his head from side to side in a child's gesture of negation. The nosebleed had re-started, and at each jerk of his head, scarlet drops flew. They spattered his pillowcase, his signed photograph of Austin Powers ('Groovy,baby!' was written across the bottom), and the bottles on the table: mouthwash, Compazine, Percocet, the multi-vitamins that seemed to do absolutely no good, the tall jar of lemon swabs.

This time it was Pete he claimed was dead, sweet (and not terribly bright) Peter Moore. Dear God, could it be true? Any of it? All of it?

The second bout of hysterical grief hadn't gone on as long, probably because Duddits was already exhausted from the first. She had gotten the nosebleed stanched again - lucky her - and had changed his bed, first helping him to his chair by the window. There he'd sat, looking out into the renewing storm, occasionally sobbing, sometimes heaving great, watery sighs that hurt her inside. Just looking at him hurt her: how thin he was, how pale he was, how bald he was. She gave him his Red Sox hat, signed across the visor by the great Pedro Martinez (you get so many nice things when you're dying, she sometimes mused), thinking his head would be cold there, so close to the glass, but for once Duddits wouldn't put it on. He only held it on his lap and looked out into the dark, his eyes big and unhappy.

At last she had gotten him back into bed, where once again her son's green eyes looked up at her with all their terrible dying brilliance.

'Eeet in hen, ooo?'

'I'm sure he is.' She hadn't wanted to cry, desperately hadn't wanted to - it might set him off again - but she could feel the tears brimming. Her head was pregnant with them, and the inside of her nose tasted of the sea each time she pulled in breath.

'In hen wif Eeeyer?'

'Yes, honey.'

'I eee Eeeyer n Eeet in hen?'

'Yes, you will. Of course you will. But not for a long while.'

His eyes had closed. Roberta had sat beside him on the bed, looking down at her hands, feeling sadder than sad, more alone than lonely.

Now she hurried downstairs and yes, it was singing, all right. Because she spoke such fluent Duddits (and why not? it had been her second language for over thirty years), she translated the rolling syllables without even thinking much about them: Scooby-Dooby-Doo,where are you? We got some work to do now. I've been telling you, Scooby-Doo, we need a helping hand, now.

She went into his room, not knowing what to expect. Certainly not what she found: every light blazing, Duddits fully dressed for the first time since his last (and very likely final, according to Dr Briscoe) remission. He had put on his favorite corduroy pants, his down vest over his Grinch tee-shirt, and his Red Sox hat. He was sitting in his chair by the window and looking out into the night. No frown now; no tears, either. He looked out into the storm with a bright-eyed eagerness that took her back to long before the disease, which had announced itself with such stealthy, easy-to-overlook symptoms: how tired and out of breath he got after just a short game of Frisbee in the back yard, how big the bruises were from even little thumps and bumps, and how slowly they faded. This was the way he used to look when . . .

But she couldn't think. She was too flustered to think.

'Duddits! Duddle, what - '

'Umma! Ere I unnox?'

Mumma! Where's my lunchbox?

'In the kitchen, but Duddie, it's the middle of the night. It's snowing! You aren't . . .'

Going anywhere was the way that one ended, of course, but the words wouldn't cross her tongue. His eyes were so brilliant, so alive. Perhaps she should have been glad to see that light so strongly in his eyes, that energy, but instead she was terrified.

'I eed I unnox! I eed I unch!'

I need my lunchbox, I need my lunch.

'No, Duddits.' Trying to be firm. 'You need to take off your clothes and get back into bed. That's what you need and all you need. Here. I'll help you.'

But when she approached, he raised his amis and crossed them over his narrow chest, the palm of his right hand pressed against his left cheek, the palm of his left against the right cheek. From earliest childhood, it was all he could muster in the way of defiance. It was usually enough, and it was now. She didn't want to upset him again, perhaps start another nosebleed. But she wasn't going to put up a lunch for him in his Scooby lunchbox at one-fifteen in the morning. Absolutely not.

She retreated to the side of his bed and sat down on it. The room was warm, but she was cold, even in her heavy flannel nightgown. Duddits slowly lowered his arms, watching her wanly.

'You can sit up if you want,' she said, 'but why? Did you have a dream, Duddie? A bad dream?'

Maybe a dream but not a bad one. Not with that eager look on his face, and now she recognized it well enough: it was the way he had looked so often back in the eighties, in the good years before Henry, Pete, Beaver, and Jonesy had all gone their separate ways, calling less frequently and coming by to see him less frequently still as they raced toward their grownup lives and forgot the one who had to stay behind.

It was the look he got when his special sense told him that his friends were coming by to play. Sometimes they'd all go off together to Strawford Park or the Barrens (they weren't supposed to go there but they did, both she and Alfie had known that they did, and one of their trips there had gotten them all on the front page of the newspaper). Sometimes Alfie or one of their moms or dads would take them to Airport Minigolf or to Fun Town in Newport, and on those days she would always pack Duddits sandwiches and cookies and a thermos of milk in his Scooby - Doo lunchbox.

He thinks his friends are coming. It must be Henry and Jonesy he's thinking of, because he says Pete and Beav -

Suddenly a terrible image came to her as she sat on Duddits's bed with her hands folded in her lap. She saw herself opening the door to a knock that came at the empty hour of three in the morning, not wanting to open it but helpless to stop herself. And the dead ones were there instead of the living ones. Beaver and Pete were there, returned to the childhood in which they had been living on the day she had first met them, the day they had saved Duddie from God knew what nasty trick and then brought him home safe. In her mind's eye Beaver was wearing his many-zippered motorcycle jacket and Pete was wearing the crewneck sweater of which he had been so proud, the one with NASA on the left breast. She saw them cold and pale, their eyes the lusterless grape-black glaze of corpses. She saw Beaver step forward - no smile for her now, no recognition of her now; when Joe 'Beaver' Clarendon put out his pallid starfish hands, he was all business. We've come for Duddits, Missus Cavell. We're dead, and now he is, too.

She clasped her hands tighter as a shudder twisted through her body. Duddits didn't see; he was looking out the window again, his face eager and expectant. And very softly, he began to sing again.

'Ooby-Ooby-Ooo, eh ah ooo? Eee aht-sum urk-ooo ooo ow . . .'

10

'Mr Gray?'

No answer. Jonesy stood at the door of what was now most definitely his office, not a trace of Tracker Brothers left except for the dirt on the windows (the matter-of-fact pornography of the girl with her skirt raised had been replaced by Van Gogh's Marigolds), feeling more and more uneasy. What was the bastard looking for?

'Mr Gray, where are you?'

No answer this time either, but there was a sense of Mr Gray returning . . . and he was happy. The son of a bitch was happy.

Jonesy didn't like that at all.

'Listen,' Jonesy said. Hands still pressed to the door of his sanctuary; forehead now pressed to it, as well. 'I've got a proposal for you, my friend - you're halfway human already; why not just go native? We can coexist, I guess, and I'll show you around. Ice cream's good, beer's even better. What do you say?'

He suspected Mr Gray was tempted, as only an essentially formless creature could be tempted when offered form - a trade right out of a fairy-tale.

Not tempted enough, however.

There was the spin of the starter, the roar of the truck's motor.

'Where are we going, chum? Always assuming we can get off Standpipe Hill, that is?'

No answer, only that disquieting sense that Mr Gray had been looking for something . . . and found it.

Jonesy hurried across to the window and looked out in time to see the truck's headlights sweep across the pillar erected to memorialize the lost. The plaque had drifted in again, which meant they must have been here awhile.

Slowly, carefully, now pushing its way through bumper-high drifts, the Dodge Ram started back down the hill.

Twenty minutes later they were on the turnpike again, once more headed south.