From a Buick 8(106)

Does it think? Curt had asked. I could remember strong morning sun on his face and ? I think ? a paper cup of coffee in his hand. Does it watch and think, wait for its chances, pick its moments?

I'm almost sure not, I had replied, but I'd been troubled. Because almost covers a lot of territory, doesn't it? Maybe the only word in the language that covers more is if.

But it saved its biggest horror show for a time when this place was almost entirely deserted, Ned's father had said. Thoughtful. Setting his coffee aside so he could turn his Stetson over and over in his hands, an old habit of his. If I was right about the day, that hat was less than five hours from being knocked from his head and cast bloody into the weeds, where it would later be found among the McDonald's wrappers and castaway Coke cans. As if it knew. As if it can think. Watch. Wait.

I had laughed. It was one of those gruff little ha-ha laughs that don't really have much amusement in them. I told him he was cuckoo on the subject. I said, Next thing you'll be telling me it sent out a ray or something to make that Norco tanker crash into the schoolbus that day.

He made no verbal reply, but his eyes had looked a question at me. How do you know it didn't?

And then I had asked the boy's question. I had asked ?

A warning bell went off inside my head, very dim and deep. I stepped back from the window and raised my hands to my face, as if I thought I could block off that tidal ache simply by blocking off sight of the Buick. And sight of Ned, looking so white and lost behind the oversized steering wheel. It had taken hold of him and just now, briefly, it had taken hold of me. Had tried to sidetrack me with a lot of old useless memories. Whether or not it had consciously waited for its chance to get at Ned didn't matter. What mattered was that the temperature in there was going down fast, almost diving, and if I intended doing something, now was the time.

Maybe you ought to get some backup in on this, the voice in my head whispered. It sounded like my own voice, but it wasn't. Might be someone in the barracks. I'd check, if I were you. Not that it matters to me. Doing one more piece of mischief before I sleep, that's what matters to me. Pretty much all that matters to me. And why? Because I can, hoss ? just because I can.

Backup seemed like a good idea. God knows I was terrified at the idea of going into Shed B on my own and approaching the Buick in its current state. What got me going was the knowledge that I had caused this. I was the one who had opened Pandora's Box.

I ran around to the hutch, not pausing at the side door although I registered the smell of gasoline, heavy and rich. I knew what he'd done. The only question was how much gas he'd poured under the car and how much he'd saved back in the can.

The door to the hutch was secured with a padlock. For years it had been left open, the curved steel arm just poked through the hasp to keep the door from swinging open in a breeze. The lock was open that night, too. I swear that's the truth. It wasn't noontime bright out there, but there was enough glow from the open side door to see the lock clearly. Then, as I reached for it, the steel post slid down into the hole on the body of the lock with a tiny audible click. I saw that happen . . . and I felt it, too. For just a moment the pulse in my head sharpened and focused. It was like a gasp of effort.

I keep two keyrings: cop-keys and personals. There were about twenty on the 'official' ring, and I used a trick I'd learned a long time before, from Tony Schoondist. I let the keys fall on my palm as they would, like pickup sticks, then simply felt among them without looking. It doesn't always work but this time it did, likely because the key to the hutch padlock was smaller than all the others except the one to my locker downstairs, and the locker key has a square head.

Now, faintly, I heard the humming begin. It was faint, like the sound of a motor buried in the earth, but it was there.

I took the key my fingers had found and rammed it into the padlock. The steel arm popped up again. I yanked the lock out of the hasp and dropped it on the ground. Then I opened the door to the hutch and stepped inside.

The little storage space held the still and explosive heat which belongs only to attics and sheds and cubbyholes that have been closed up for a long time in hot weather. No one came out here much anymore, but the things which had accumulated over the years (except for the paint and the paint thinner, flammable items that had been prudently removed) were still here; I could see them in the faint wash of light. Stacks of magazines, the kind men read, for the most part (women think we like to look at naked women but mostly I think we like tools). The kitchen chair with the tape-mended seat. The cheap police-band radio from Radio Shack. The videocam, its battery undoubtedly dead, on its shelf next to the old box of blank tapes. A bumper sticker was pasted to one wall: SUPPORT THE MENTALLY HANDICAPPED, TAKE AN FBI AGENT TO LUNCH. I could smell dust. In my head the pulse that was the Buick's voice was getting stronger and stronger.

There was a hanging lightbulb and a switch on the wall, but I didn't even try it. I had an idea the bulb would be dead, or the switch would be live enough to give me a real walloper of a shock.

The door swung shut behind me, cutting off the moonlight. That was impossible, because when it was left to its own devices, the door always swung the other way, outward. We all knew it. It was why we left the padlock threaded through the hasp. Tonight, however, the impossible was selling cheap. The force inhabiting the Buick wanted me in the dark. Maybe it thought being in the dark would slow me down.

It didn't. I'd already seen what I needed: the coil of yellow rope, still hanging on the wall below the joke sticker and next to a forgotten set of jumper cables. I saw something else, too. Something Curt Wilcox had put up on the shelf near the videocam not long after the E.T. with the lashing pink ropes had made its appearance.