“Was it Cathy's?” Shelley Chatsworth screamed. “Was it that place?”
“Yes,” Roger said. He seemed eerily calm. “Yes, it was.”
Downstairs there had been a momentary silence. It was followed by a running thud of footsteps coming up the stairs. The kitchen door burst open and Chuck came in, looking for his mother.
“Mom? What is it? What's wrong?”
“It appears that we may owe you for our son's life,” Roger said in that same eerily calm voice. Johnny had never seen a face that white. Roger looked like a ghastly living waxwork.
“It burned?” Chuck's voice was incredulous. Behind him, others were crowding up the stairs now, whispering in low, affrighted voices. “Are you saying it burned down?”
No one answered. And then, suddenly, from somewhere behind him, Patty Strachan began to talk in a high, hysterical voice. “It's his fault, that guy there! He made it happen! He set it on fire by his mind, just like in that book Carrie. You murderer! Killer! You…
Roger turned toward her. “SHUT UP!” He roared.
Patty collapsed into wild sobs.
“Burned?” Chuck repeated. He seemed to be asking himself now, inquiring if that could possibly be the right word.
“Roger?” Shelley whispered. “Rog? Honey?”
There was a growing mutter on the stairs, and in the playroom below, like a stir of leaves. The stereo clicked off. The voices murmured.
Was Mike there? Shannon went, didn't she? Are you sure? Yes, I was all ready to leave when Chuck called me. My mother was there when that guy freaked out and she said she felt like a goose was walking on her grave, she asked me to come here instead. Was Casey there? Was Ray there? Was Maureen Ontello there? Oh my God, was she? Was…
Roger stood up slowly and turned around. “I suggest,” he said, “that we find the soberest people here to drive and that we all go down to the hospital. They'll need blood donors.”
Johnny sat like a stone. He found himself wondering if he would ever move again. Outside, thunder rumbled.
And followed on its heels like an inner clap, he heard his dying mother's voice:
Do your duty, John.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
August 12, 1977
Dear Johnny,
Finding you wasn't much of a trick-I sometimes think if you have enough free cash, you can find anyone in this country, and the cash I got. Maybe I'm risking your resentment stating it as baldly as that, but Chuck and Shelley and I owe you too much to tell you less than the truth. Money buys a lot, but it can't buy off the lightning. They found twelve boys still in the men's room opening off the restaurant, the one where the window had been nailed shut. The fire didn't reach there but the smoke did, and all twelve of them were suffocated. I haven't been able to get that out of my mind, because Chuck could have been one of those boys. So I had you “tracked down”, as you put it in your letter. And for the same reason, I can't leave you alone as you requested. At least not until the enclosed check comes back canceled with your endorsement on the back.
You'll notice that it's a considerably smaller check than the one you returned about a month ago. I got in touch with the EMMC Accounts Department and paid your outstanding hospital bills with the balance of it. You're free and clear that way, Johnny. That I could do, and I did it-with great pleasure, I might add.
You protest you can't take the money. I say you can and you will You will, Johnny. I traced you to Ft. Lauderdale, and if you leave there I will trace you to the next place you go, even if you decide on Nepal. Call me a louse who won't let go if you want to; I see myself more as “the Hound of Heaven”. I don't want to hound you, Johnny. I remember you telling me that day not to sacrifice my son. I almost did. And what about the others? Eighty-one dead, thirty more terribly maimed and burned. I think of Chuck saying maybe we could work out some kind of a story, spin a yarn or something, and me saying with all the righteousness of the totally stupid, “I won't do that, Chuck. Don't ask me.” Well, I could have done something. That's what haunts me. I could have given that butcher Carrick ~3,ooo to pay off his help and shut down for the night. It would have come to about ~37 a life. So believe me when I say I don't want to hound you; I'm really too busy hounding myself to want to spare the time. I think I'll be doing it for quite a few years to come. I'm paying up for refusing to believe anything I couldn't touch with one of my five senses. And please don't believe that paying the bills and tendering this check is just a sop to my conscience. Money can't buy off the lightning, and it can't buy an end to bad dreams, either. The money is for Chuck, although he knows nothing about it.
Take the check and I'll leave you in peace. That's the deal. Send it on to UNICEF, if you want, or give it to a home for orphan bloodhounds, or blow it all on the ponies. I don't care. Just take it.
I'm sorry you felt you had to leave in such a hurry, but I believe I understand. We all hope to see you soon. Chuck leaves for Stovington Prep on September 4.
Johnny, take the check. Please.
All regards,
Roger Chatsworth
September 1 1977
Dear Johnny,
Will you believe that I'm not going to let this go? Please. Take the check.
Regards,
Roger
Dear Johnny,
September 10, 1977
Charlie and l were both so glad to know where you are, and it was a relief to get a letter from you that sounded so natural and like yourself. But there was one thing that bothered me very much, son. I called up Sam Weizak and read him that part of your letter about the increasing frequency of your headaches. He advises you to see a doctor, Johnny, without delay. He is afraid that a clot may have formed around the old scar tissue. So that worries me, and it worries Sam, too. You've never looked really healthy since you came out of the coma, Johnny, and when I last saw you in early June, I thought you looked very tired. Sam didn't say, but I know what he'd really like you to do is to catch a plane out of Phoenix and come on home and let him be the one to look at you. You certainly can't plead poverty now!
Roger Chatsworth has called here twice, and I tell him what I can. I think he's telling the truth when he says it isn't conscience-money or a reward for saving his son's life. I believe your mother would have said that the man is doing penance the only way he knows how. Anyway, you've taken it, and I hope you don't mean it when you say you only did it to “get him off your back”. I believe you have too much grit in you to do anything for a reason like that.
Now this is very hard for me to say, but l will do the best I can. Please come home, Johnny. The publicity has died down again I can hear you saying, “Oh bullshit, it will never die down again, not after this” and I suppose you are right in a way, but you are also wrong. Over the phone Mr. Chatsworth said, “If you talk to him, try to make him understand that no psychic except Nostradamus has ever been much more than a nine-days” wonder. “I worry about you a lot, son. I worry about you blaming yourself for the dead instead of blessing your. self for the living, the ones you saved, the ones that were at the Chatsworths” house that night. I worry and I miss you, too. “I miss you like the dickens,” as your grand-mother used to say. So please come home as soon as you can.
Dad
P. S. I'm sending the clippings about the fire and about your part in it. Charlie collected them up. As you will see, you were correct in guessing that “everyone who was at that lawn party will spill their guts to the papers”. I suppose these clippings may just upset you more, and if they do, just toss them away. But Charlie's idea was that you may look at them and say, “That wasn't as bad as I thought, I can face that. “I hope it turns out that way.