Dreamcatcher(199)

The dreamcatcher was still okay. Swaying back and forth in great looping arcs, but still okay. Jonesy fixed his eyes on it. He had thought himself ready to die, but he didn't want to go like this, not in this stinking office. Outside of it, they had once done something good, something almost noble. To die in here, beneath the dusty, indifferent gaze of the woman pinned to the bulletin board . . . that didn't seem fair. Never mind the rest of the world; he, Gary Jones of Brookline, Massachusetts, once of Derry, Maine, lately of the Jefferson Tract, deserved better.

'Please, I deserve better than this!' he cried to the swaying cobweb shape in the air, and on the disintegrating desk behind him, the telephone rang.

Jonesy wheeled around, groaning at the fiery, complicated pain in his hip. The phone on which he'd called Henry earlier had been his office phone, the blue Trimline. The one on the cracked surface of the desk now was black and clunky, with a dial instead of buttons and a sticker on it reading MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU. It was the phone he'd had in his childhood room, the one his parents had given him for his birthday. 949-7784, the number to which he had charged the call to Duddits all those years ago.

He sprang for it, ignoring his hip, praying the line wouldn't disintegrate and disconnect before he could answer.

'Hello? Hello!' Swaying back and forth on the shaking, vibrating floor. The whole office now going up and down like a ship on a heavy sea.

Of all the voices he might have expected, Roberta's was the last. 'Yes, Doctor, hold on for your call.'

There was a click so loud it hurt his head, then silence. Jonesy groaned and was about to put the phone down when there was another click.

'Jonesy?' It was Henry. Faint, but undoubtedly Henry.

'Where are you?' Jonesy shouted. 'Christ, Henry, the place is falling apart! I'm falling apart!'

'I'm in Gosselin's,' Henry said, 'only I'm not. Wherever you are, you're not. We're in the hospital where they took you after you got hit . . .' A crackle on the line, a buzz, and then Henry came back, sounding closer and stronger. Sounding like a lifeline in all this disintegration. not there, either!'

'What?'

'We're in the dreamcatcher, Jonesy! We're in the dreamcatcher and we always were! Ever since '78! Duddits is the dreamcatcher, but he's dying! He's holding on, but I don't know how long . . . ' Another click followed by another buzz, bitter and electric.

'Henry! Henry!'

' . . . come out!' Faint again now. Henry sounded desperate. 'You have to come out, Jonesy! Meet me! Run along the dreamcatcher and meet me! There's still time! We can take this son of a bitch! Do you hear me? We can - '

There was another click and the phone went dead. The body of his childhood phone cracked, split open, and vomited out a senseless tangle of wires. All of them were red-orange; all of them were contaminated with the byrus.

Jonesy dropped the phone and looked up at the swaying dreamcatcher, that ephemeral cobweb. He remembered a line they'd been fond of as kids, pulled out of some comedian's routine: Wherever you are, there you are. That had been right up there with Same shit, different day, had perhaps even taken over first place as they grew older and began to consider themselves sophisticated. Wherever you are, there you are. Only according to Henry's call just now, that wasn't true. Wherever they thought they were, they weren't.

They were in the dreamcatcher.

He noted that the one swaying in the air above the ruins of his desk had four central spokes radiating out from the center. Many connecting threads were held together by those spokes, but what held the spokes together was the center  -  the core where they merged.

Run along the dreamcatcher and meet me! There's still time!

Jonesy turned and sprinted for the door.

10

Mr Gray was also at a door  -  the one into the shaft house. It was locked. Considering what had happened with the Russian woman, this didn't surprise him much. Locking the barn door after the horse had been stolen was Jonesy's phrase for it. If he'd had one of the kim, this would have been easy. As it was, he wasn't too perturbed. One of the interesting side effects of having emotions, he had discovered, was that they caused you to think ahead, plan ahead, so that you wouldn't trigger an all-out emotional attack if things went wrong.

It might be one reason these creatures had survived as long as they had.

Jonesy's suggestion that he give in to all this  -  go native had been his phrase for it, one that struck Mr Gray as both mysterious and exotic  -  wouldn't quite leave his mind, but Mr Gray pushed it aside. He would accomplish his mission here, satisfy the imperative. After that, who knew? Bacon sandwiches, perhaps. And what Jonesy's mind identified as a 'cocktail'. This was a cool and refreshing drink, slightly intoxicating -

A gust of wind rolled off the Reservoir, slapping wet snow into his face, momentarily blinding him. It was like the snap of a. wet towel, returning him to the here and now, where he had a job to finish.

He sidled to the left on the rectangular granite stoop, slipped, then dropped to his knees, ignoring the howl from Jonesy's hip. He hadn't come all this way  -  black light-years and white miles  -  either to fall back down the steps and break his neck or to tumble into the Quabbin and die of hypothermia in that chilly water.

The stoop had been placed atop a mound of crushed stone. Leaning over the left side of the stoop, he brushed snow away and began feeling for a loose chunk. There were windows flanking the locked door, narrow but not too narrow.