Yes, but Alan… suppose Polly’s one of them?
That thought poked some buried association loose, but he was unable to grasp it before it floated away.
Alan slowly hung up the telephone, cutting it off in mid-ring as he settled it into its cradle.
3
Polly could stand it no longer. She rolled on her side, reached for the telephone… and it stilled in mid-ring.
Good, she thought. But was it?
She was lying on her bed, listening to the sound of approaching thunder. It was hot upstairs-as hot as the middle of July-but opening the windows was not an option, because she’d had Dave Phillips, one of the local handymen and caretakers, put on her storm windows and doors just the week before. So she had taken off the old jeans and shirt she had worn on her expedition to the country and folded them neatly over the chair by the door. Now she lay on the bed in her underwear, wanting a little nap before she got up and showered, but unable to go to sleep.
Some of it was the sirens, but more of it was Alan; what Alan had done. She could not comprehend this grotesque betrayal of all she had believed and all she had trusted, but neither could she escape it. Her mind would turn to something else (those sirens, for instance, and how they sounded like the end of the world) and then suddenly it would be there again, how he had gone behind her back, how he had sneaked. It was like being poked by the splintery end of a board in some tender, secret place.
Oh Alan, how could you? she asked him-and herself-again.
The voice which replied surprised her. It was Aunt Evvie’s voice, and beneath the dry lack of sentiment that had always been her way, Polly felt a disquieting, powerful anger.
If you had told him the truth in the first place, girl, he never would have had to.
Polly sat up quickly. That was a disturbing voice, all right, and the most disturbing thing about it was the fact that it was her own voice. Aunt Evvie was many years dead. This was her own subconscious, using Aunt Evvie to express its anger the way a shy ventriloquist might use his dummy to ask a pretty girl for a date, andStop it, girl-didn’t I once tell you this town “sfull of ghosts? Maybe it is me. Maybe it is.
Polly uttered a whimpering, frightened cry and then pressed her hand against her mouth.
Or maybe it isn’t. In the end, who it is don’t matter much, does it?
The question is this, Trisha: Who sinned first? Who lied first?
Who covered up first? Who cast the first stone?
“That’s not fair!” Polly shouted into the hot room, and then looked at her own frightened, wide-eyed reflection in the bedroom mirror. She waited for the voice of Aunt Evvie to come back, and when it didn’t, she slowly lay back down again.
Perhaps she had sinned first, if omitting part of the truth and telling a few white lies was sinning. Perhaps she had covered up first. But did that give Alan the right to open an investigation on her, the way a law officer might open an investigation on a known felon? Did it give him the right to put her name on some interstate law-enforcement wire… or send out a tracer on her, if that was what they called it… or… or…
Never mind, Polly, a voice-one she knew-whispered. Stop tearing yourself apart over what was very proper behavior on your part. I mean, after all! You heard the guilt in his voice, didn’t you?
“Yes!” she muttered fiercely into the pillow. “That’s right, I did!
What about that, Aunt Evvie?” There was no answer… only a queer, light tugging (the question is this Trisha) at her subconscious mind. As if she had forgotten something, left something out (would you like a sweet Trisha) of the equation.
Polly rolled restlessly onto her side, and the azka tumbled across the fullness of one breast. She heard something inside scratch delicately at the silver wall of its prison.
No, Polly thought, it’s just something shifting. Something inert.
This idea that there really is something alive in there… it’s)just your imagination.
Scratch-scritch-scratch.
The silver ball jiggled minutely between the white cotton cup of her bra and the coverlet of the bed.
Scratchy-scri’tch-scratch.
That thing is alive, Trisha, Aunt Evvie said. That thing is alive, and you know it, Don’t be silly, Polly told her, tossing over to the other side.
How could there possibly be some creature in there? I suppose it might be able to breathe through all those tiny holes, but what in God’s name would it eat?
Maybe, Aunt Evvie replied with soft implacability, i’t’s eating You, Trisha.
“Polly,” she murmured. “My name is Polly.”
This time the tug at her subconscious mind was strongersomehow alarming-and for a moment she was almost able to grasp it. Then the telephone began to ring again. She gasped and sat up, her face wearing a look of tired dismay. Pride and longing were at war there.
Talk to him, Trisha-what can it hurt? Better still, listen to him.
You didn’t do much of that before, did you?
I don’t want to talk to him. Not after what he did.
But you still love him.
Yes; that was true. The only thing was, now she hated him as well.
The voice of Aunt Evvie rose once more, gusting angrily in her mind. Do you want to be a ghost all your life, Trisha? What’s the matter with you, girl?
Polly reached out for the telephone in a mockery of decisiveness.
Her hand-her limber, pain-free hand-faltered just short of the handset.
Because maybe it wasn’t Alan. Maybe it was Mr. Gaunt.
Maybe Mr. Gaunt wanted to tell her that he wasn’t finished with her yet, that she hadn’t finished paying yet.
She made another move toward the telephone-this time the tips of her fingers actually brushed the plastic casing-and then she drew back.
Her hand clutched its partner and they folded into a nervous ball on her belly. She was afraid of Aunt Evvie’s dead voice, of what she had done this afternoon, of what Mr. Gaunt (or Alan!) might tell the town about her dead son, of what yonder confusion of sirens and racing cars might mean.
But more than all of these things, she had discovered, she was afraid of Leland Gaunt himself. She felt as if someone had tied her to the clapper of a great iron bell, a bell which would simultaneously deafen her, drive her mad, and crush her to a pulp if it began to ring.
The telephone fell quiet.
Outside, another siren began to scream, and as it began to fade toward the Tin Bridge, the thunder rolled again. Closer than ever now.
Take it off, the voice of Aunt Evvie whispered. Take it off, honey. You can do it-his power is over need, not will. Take it off. Break his hold on you.
But she was looking at the telephone and remembering the night-was it less than a week ago?-when she had reached for it and struck it with her fingers, knocking it to the floor. She remembered the pain which had clawed its way up her arm like a hungry ratwith broken teeth. She couldn’tgo back to that. She just couldn’t.
Could she?
Something nasty is going on in The Rock tonight, Aunt Evvie said.
Do you want to wake up tomorrow and have to figure out how much of it was YOUR nastiness? Is that really a score you want to add up, Trisha?
“You don’t understand,” she moaned. “It wasn’t on Alan, it was on Ace! Ace Merrill! And he deserves whatever he gets!”
The implacable voice of Aunt Evvie returned: Then so do you, honey. So do you.
4
At twenty minutes past six on that Tuesday evening, as the thunderheads neared and real dark began to overtake twilight, the State Police officer who had replaced Sheila Brigham in dispatch came out into the Sheriff’s Office bullpen. He skirted the large area, roughly diamond-shaped, which was marked with C R I M E - S C E N E tape and hurried over to where Henry Payton stood.