Dreamcatcher(135)

'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 g*y 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 f**kin 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.