“What’s going on in there, Sheila?” he asked. “Tell me quick.”
His ears were ringing so badly from the gunshot and the succeeding echo that he could almost swear he heard a telephone somewhere.
22
Henry Beaufort felt like a snowman melting in the sun. His legs were giving way beneath him. He crumpled slowly into a kneeling position with the ringing, unanswered phone still tolling in his ear.
His head swam with the mingled stench of booze and burning fur.
Another hot smell was mingling with these now. He suspected it was Hugh Priest.
He was vaguely aware that this wasn’t working and he ought to dial another number for help, but he didn’t think he could. He was beyond wringing another number out of the telephone-this was it. So he knelt behind the bar in a growing pool of his own blood, listening to the chimney-hoot of air from the hole in his chest, clinging desperately to consciousness. The Tiger didn’t open for an hour yet, Billy was dead, and if no one answered this telephone soon, he would also be dead when the first customers came trickling in for their various happy-hour potations.
“Please,” Henry whispered in a. screamy, breathless voice.
“Please answer the phone, someone please answer this fucking phone.”
23
Sheila Brigham began to regain some control, and Alan got the most important thing out of her right away: she had decommissioned Hugh with the butt of the shotgun. No one was going to try to shoot them when they went through the door.
He hoped.
“Come on,” he said to Norris, “let’s go.”
“Alan… When she came out… I thought.
“I know what you thought, but no harm was done. Forget it, Norris. John’s inside. Come on.”
They went to the door and stood on either side of it. Alan looked at Norris. “Go in low,” he said.
Norris nodded his head.
Alan grabbed the doorknob, jerked the door open, and lunged inside. Norris went in under him in a crouch.
John had managed to find his feet and stagger most of the way to the door. Alan and Norris hit him like the front line of the old Pittsburgh Steelers and John suffered a final painful indignity: he was knocked flat by his colleagues and sent skidding across the tiled floor like one of the weights in a barroom bowling game. He struck the far wall with a thud and let out a scream of pain which was both surprised and somehow weary.
“Jesus, that’s john!” Norris cried. “What a French fire-drill!”
“Help me with him,” Alan said.
They hurried across the room to John, who was slowly sitting up on his own. His face was a mask of blood. His nose was canted severely to the left. His upper lip was swelling like an overinflated innertube. As Alan and Norris reached him, he cupped one hand under his mouth and spat a tooth into it.
“He’th cray the,” John said in a mushy, dazed voice. “Theela hit him with the thotgun. I think thee killed him.”
“John, are you all right?” Norris asked.
“I’m a fuckin meth,” John said. He leaned forward and vomited extravagantly between his own spread legs to prove it.
Alan looked around. He was vaguely aware that it wasn’t just his ears; a telephone really was ringing. But the phone wasn’t the important thing now. He saw Hugh lying face-down by the rear wall and went over. He dropped his ear against the back of Hugh’s shirt, listening for a heartbeat. All he could hear at first was the ringing in his ears. The goddam telephones were ringing on every desk, it sounded like.
“Answer that fucking thing or take it off the hook!” Alan snapped at Norris.
Norris went to the closest phone-it happened to be on his own desk-punched the button that was flashing, and picked it up.
“Don’t bother us now,” he said. “We have an emergency situation here. You’ll have to call back later.” He dropped it back into its cradle without waiting for a response.
24
Henry Beaufort took the telephone-the heavy, heavy telephoneaway from his ear and looked at it with dimming, unbelieving eyes. “What did you say?” he whispered. Suddenly he could no longer hold the telephone receiver; it was just too damned heavy. He dropped it on the floor, slowly collapsed onto his side, and lay there panting.
25
As far as Alan could tell, Hugh was all finished. He grabbed him by the shoulders, rolled him over… and it wasn’t Hugh at all.
The face was too completely covered with blood, brains, and bits of bone for him to be able to tell who it was, but it surely wasn’t Hugh Priest.
“What in the fuck is going on here?” he said in a low, amazed voice.
26
Danforth “Buster” Keeton stood in the middle of the street, handcuffed to his own Cadillac, and watched Them watching him. Now that the Chief Persecutor and his Deputy Persecutor were gone, They had nothing else to watch.
He looked at Them and knew Them for what They were-each and every one of Them.
Bill Fullerton and Henry Gendron were standing in front of the barber shop. Bobby Dugas was standing between them with a barber’s apron still snapped around his neck and hanging down in front of him like an oversized dinner napkin. Charlie Fortin was standing in front of the Western Auto. Scott Garson and his puke lawyer friends Albert Martin and Howard Potter were standing in front of the bank, where they had probably been talking about him when the ruckus broke out.
Eyes. Fucking eyes. There were eyes everywhere. All looking at him. “I see you!” Buster cried suddenly. “I see You all! All You
People! And I know what to do! Yes! You bet!”
He opened the door of his Cadillac and tried to get in. He couldn’t do it. He was cuffed to the outside doorhandle. The chain between the cuffs was long, but not that long.
Someone laughed. Buster heard that laugh quite clearly. He looked around. Many residents of Castle Rock stood in front of the businesses along Main Street, looking back at him with the black buckshot eyes of intelligent rats. Everyone was there but Mr. Gaunt. Yet Mr. Gaunt was there; Mr. Gaunt was inside Buster’s head, telling him exactly what to do. Buster listened… and began to smile.
27
The Budwelser truck Hugh had almost sideswiped in town stopped at a couple of the little mom-n-pops on the other side of the bridge and finally pulled into the parking lot of The Mellow Tiger at 4:01 p.m.
The driver got out, grabbed his clipboard, hitched up his green khaki pants, and marched toward the building. He stopped five feet away from the door, eyes widening. He could see a pair of feet in the bar’s doorway.
“Holy Joe!” the driver exclaimed. “You okay, buddy?”
A faint wheezing cry drifted to his ears:… help…
The driver ran inside and discovered Henry Beaufort, barely alive, crumpled behind the bar.
28
“Ith Lethter Pratt,” John LaPointe croaked. Supported by Norris on one side and Sheila on the other, he had hobbled over to where Alan knelt by the body.
“Who?” Alan asked. He felt as if he had accidentally stumbled into some mad comedy. Ricky and Lucy Go to Hell. Hey Lester, you got some ’splainin to do.
“Lethter Pratt,” John said again with painful patience. “He’th the Phidthical Educaythun teather at the high thcool.”
“What’s he doing here?” Alan asked.
John LaPointe shook his head wearily. “Dunno, Alan. He jutht came in and went cray the.”
“Somebody give me a break,” Alan said. “Where’s Hugh Priest?