Downstream”, The Rainmakers 10 page

Then the front door jerked open, startling his heart up into his throat in a single nimble bound and he thought It's one of them, one of the Tommyknockers, it's going to rush down here and grab me and eat me up! He was barely able to stifle a scream.

The silhouette in the doorway was thin—much too thin, he thought, to be Bobbi Anderson. who had never been beefy but who was solidly built and pleasantly round in all the right places. But the voice, shrill and wavering though it was, was unmistakably Bobbi's... and Gardener relaxed a little, because Bobbi sounded even more terrified than he felt, standing by the mailbox and looking at the house.

“Who is it? Who's there?”

“It's Gard, Bobbi.”

There was a long pause. There were footfalls on the porch.

Cautiously: “Gard? Is it really you?”

“Yeah.” He worked his way over the hard, biting stones of the driveway to the lawn. And he asked the question he had come all this way and deferred his own suicide to ask: “Bobbi, are you all right?”

The quaver left Bobbi's voice, but Gardener could still not see her clearly—the sun had long since gone behind the trees, and the shadows were thick. He wondered where Peter was.

“I'm fine,” Bobbi said, just as if she had always looked so terribly thin, just as though she had always greeted arrivals in her dooryard with a shrill voice full of fear.

She came down the porch steps, and passed out of the shadow of the overhanging porch roof. As she did, Gardener got his first good look at her in the ashy twilight. He was struck by horror and wonder.

Bobbi was coming toward him, smiling, obviously delighted to see him. Her jeans fluttered and flapped on her, and so did her shirt; her face was gaunt, her eyes deep in their sockets, her forehead pale and somehow too wide, the skin taut and shiny. Bobbi's uncombed hair flopped against the nape of her neck and lay over her shoulders like waterweed cast up on a beach. The shirt was buttoned wrong. The fly of her jeans was three-quarters of the way down. She smelled dirty and sweaty and... well. as if she might have had an accident in her pants and then forgotten to change them.

A picture suddenly flashed into Gardener's mind: a photo of Karen Carpenter taken shortly before her death, which had allegedly resulted from anorexia nervosa. It had seemed to him the picture of a woman already dead but somehow alive, a woman who was all smiling teeth and shrieking feverish eyes. Bobbi looked like that now.

Surely she had lost no more than twenty pounds—that was all she could afford to lose and stay on her feet—but Gard's shocked mind kept insisting it was more like thirty, had to be.

She seemed to be on the last raggedy end of exhaustion. Her eyes, like the eyes of that poor lost woman on the magazine cover, were huge and glittery, her smile the huge brainless grin of a KO'd fighter just before his knees come unhinged.

“Fine!” this shambling, dirty, stumbling skeleton reiterated, and as Bobbi approached, Gardener could hear the waver in her voice again—not fear, as he'd thought, but utter exhaustion. “Thought you'd given up on me! Good to see you, man!”

“Bobbi... Bobbi, Jesus Christ, what .

Bobbi was holding out a hand for Gardener to shake. It trembled wildly in the air, and Gardener saw how thin, how woefully, incredibly thin Bobbi Anderson's arm had become.

“A lot of stuff going on,” Bobbi croaked in her wavering voice. “A lot of work done, a hell of a lot more left to do, but I'm getting there, getting there, wait'll you see—”

“Bobbi, what

“Fine, I'm fine,” Bobbi repeated, and she fell forward, semi-conscious, into Gardener's arms. She tried to say something else but only a loose gargle and a little spit came out. Her breasts were small, wasted pads against his forearm.

Gardener picked her up, shocked by how light she was. Yes, it was thirty, at least thirty. It was incredible, but not, unfortunately, deniable. He felt recognition that was both shocking and miserable: This isn't Bobbi at all. It's me. Me at the end of a jag.

He carried Bobbi swiftly up the steps and into the house.

Chapter 8

Modifications

He put Bobbi on the couch and went quickly to the telephone. He picked it up, meaning to dial 0 and ask the operator what number he should dial to get the nearest rescue unit. Bobbi needed a trip to the Derry Home Hospital and right away. A breakdown, Gardener supposed (although in truth he was so tired and confused that he hardly knew what to think). Some kind of breakdown. Bobbi Anderson seemed like the last person in the world to go over the top, but apparently she had.

Bobbi said something from the couch. Gardener didn't catch it at first; Bobbi's voice was little more than a harsh croak.

“What, Bobbi?”

“Don't call anybody,” Bobbi said. She managed a little more volume this time, but even that much effort seemed to nearly exhaust her. Her cheeks were flushed, the rest of her face waxen, and her eyes were as bright and feverish as blue gemstones -diamonds, or sapphires, perhaps. “Don't... Gard, not anybody!”

Anderson fell back against the couch, panting rapidly. Gardener hung up the telephone and went to her, alarmed. Bobbi needed a doctor, that was obvious, and Gardener meant to get her one... but right now Bobbi's obvious agitation seemed more important.

“I'll stay right with you,” he said, taking her hand, “if that's what's worrying you. God knows you stuck with me through enough sh—”

But Anderson had been shaking her head with mounting vehemence. “Just need sleep,” she whispered. “Sleep... and food in the morning. Mostly sleep. Haven't had any... three days. Four, maybe.”

Gardener looked at her, shocked again. He put together what Bobbi had just said with the way she looked.

“What rocket have you been riding?'and why? his mind added. “Bennies? Reds?” He thought of coke and then rejected it. Bobbi could undoubtedly afford coke if she wanted it, but Gardener didn't think even “basing could keep a man or woman awake for three or four days and melt better than thirty pounds off in—Gardener calculated the time since he had last seen Anderson—in no more than three weeks.

“No dope,” Bobbi said. “No drugs.” Her eyes rolled and glittered. Spit

drizzled helplessly from the corners of her mouth and she sucked it back. For an instant Gardener saw an expression in Bobbi's face he didn't like... one that scared him a little. It was an Anne expression. Old and crafty. Then Bobbi's eyes slipped closed, revealing lids stained the delicate purplish color of total exhaustion. When she opened her eyes again it was just Bobbi lying there... and Bobbi needed help.

“I'm going to phone for the rescue unit,” Gardener said, getting up again. “You look really unwell, B—”

Bobbi's thin hand reached out and caught his wrist as Gardener turned to the phone. It held him with surprising strength. He looked down at Bobbi, and although she still looked terribly exhausted and almost desperately wasted, that feverish glitter was gone from her eyes. Now her gaze was straight and clear and sane.

“If you call anybody,” she said, her voice still wavering a little but almost normal, “we're done being friends, Gard. I mean that. Call the rescue unit, or Derry Home, even old Doc Warwick in town, and that's the end of the line for us. You'll never see the inside of my house again. The door will be closed to you.”

Gardener looked at Bobbi with mounting dismay and horror. If he could have persuaded himself in that moment that Bobbi was delirious, he would gladly have done so... but she obviously wasn't.

“Bobbi you—'—don't know what you're saying? But she did; that was the horror of it. She was threatening to end their friendship if Gardener didn't do what she wanted, using their friendship as a club for the first time in all the years Gardener had known her. And there was something else in Bobbi Anderson's eyes: the knowledge that her friendship was maybe the last thing on earth that Gardener valued.

Would it make any difference if I told you how much you look like your sister, Bobbi?

No—he saw in her face nothing would make any difference.

“—don't know how bad you look,” he finished lamely.

“No,” Anderson agreed, and a ghost of a smile surfaced on her face. “I got an idea, though, believe me. Your face... better than any mirror. But, Gard—sleep is all I need. Sleep and...” Her eyes slipped shut again, and she opened them with an obvious effort. “Breakfast,” she finished. “Sleep and breakfast.”

“Bobbi, that isn't all you need.”

“No.” Bobbi's hand had not left Gardener's wrist and now it tightened again. “I need you. I called for you. With my mind. And you heard, didn't you?”

“Yes,” Gardener said uncomfortably. “I guess I did.”

“Gard...” Bobbi's voice slipped off. Gard waited, his mind in a turmoil. Bobbi needed medical help... but what she had said about ending their friendship if Gardener called anyone...

The soft kiss she put in the middle of his dirty palm surprised him. He

looked at her, startled, looked at her huge eyes. The fevered glitter had left them; all he saw in them now was pleading.

“Wait until tomorrow,” Bobbi said. “If I'm not better tomorrow... a thousand times better... I'll go. All right?”

“Bobbi—”

“All right?” The hand tightened, demanding Gardener to say it was.

“Well... I guess .

“Promise me.”

“I promise.” Maybe, Gardener added mentally. If you don't go to sleep and then start to breathe funny. If I don't come over and check you around midnight and see your lips look like you've been eating blueberries. If you don't pitch a fit.

This was silly. Dangerous, cowardly... but most of all just silly. He had come out of the big black tornado convinced that killing himself would be the best way to end all of his misery and ensure that he caused no more misery in others. He had meant to do it; he knew that was so. He had been on the edge of jumping into that cold water. Then his conviction that Bobbi was in trouble

(I called and you heard didn't you)

had come and he was here. Now, ladies and gentlemen, he seemed to hear Allen Ludden saying in his quick, light, quizmaster's voice, here is your toss-up question. Ten points if you can tell me why Jim Gardener cares about Bobbi Anderson's threat to end their friendship, when Gardener himself means to end it by committing suicide? What? No one? Well, here's a surprise! I don't know, either!

“Okay,” Bobbi was saying. “Okay, great.”

The agitation which had almost been terror slipped away—the fast gasping for breath slowed and some of the color faded from her cheeks. So the promise had been worth something, at least.

“Sleep, Bobbi.” He would sit up and watch for any change. He was tired, but he could drink coffee (and take one or two of whatever Bobbi'd been taking, if he came across them). He owed Bobbi a night's watching. There were nights when she had watched over him. “Sleep now.” He gently disengaged his wrist from Bobbi's hand.

Her eyes closed, then slowly opened one last time. She smiled, a smile so sweet that he was in love with her again. She had that power over him. “Just... like old times, Gard.”

“Yeah, Bobbi. Like old times.”

“I... love you .

“I love you too. Sleep.”

Her breathing deepened. Gardener sat beside her for three minutes, then five, watching that madonna smile, becoming more and more convinced she was asleep. Then, very slowly, Bobbi's eyes struggled open again.

“Fabulous,” she whispered.

“What?” Gardener leaned forward. He wasn't sure what she'd said.

“What it is... what it can do... what it will do

She's talking in her sleep, Gardener thought, but he felt a recurrence of the chill. That crafty expression was back in Bobbi's face. Not on it but in it, as if it had grown under the skin.

“You should have found it... I think it was for you, Gard

“What was?”

“Look around the place,” Bobbi said. Her voice was fading. “You'll see. We'll finish digging it up together. You'll see it solves the... problems... all the problems...”

Gardener had to lean forward now to hear anything. “What does, Bobbi?”

“Look around the place,” Bobbi repeated, and the last word drew out, deepening, and became a snore. She was asleep.

Gardener almost went to the phone again. It was close. He got up, but halfway across the living room he diverted, going to Bobbi's rocking chair instead. He would watch for a while first, he thought. Watch for a while and try to think what all this might mean.

He swallowed and winced at the pain in his throat. He was feverish, and he suspected the fever was no little one-degree job, either. He felt more than unwell; he felt unreal.

Fabulous... what it is... what it can do...

He would sit here for a while and think some more. Then he would make a pot of strong coffee and dump about six aspirins into it. That would take care of the aches and fever, at least temporarily. Might help keep him awake, too.

...what it will do...

Gard closed his eyes, dozing himself. That was all right. He might doze, but not for long; he'd never been able to sleep sitting up. And Peter was apt to appear at any time; he would see his old friend Gard, jump into his lap, and get his balls. Always. When it came to jumping into the chair with you and getting your balls, Peter never failed. Hell of an alarm clock, if you happened to be sleeping. Five minutes, that's all. Forty winks. No harm, no foul.

You should have found it. I think it was for you, Gard...

He drifted, and his doze quickly deepened into sleep so deep it was close to coma.

shusshhhhh...

He's looking down at his skis, plain brown wood strips racing over the snow, hypnotized by their liquid speed. He doesn't realize this state of near hypnosis

until a voice on his left says: “One thing you bastards never remember to mention at your fucking Communist antipower rallies is just this: in thirty years of peaceful nuclear-power development, we've never been caught once.

Ted is wearing a reindeer sweater over faded jeans. He skis fast and well. Gardener, on the other hand, is completely out of control.

“You're going to crash,” a voice on his right says. He looks over and it is ArglebargleArglebargle has begun to rot. His fat face, which had been flushed with alcohol on the night of the party, is now the yellow-gray of old curtains hanging in dirty windows. His flesh has begun to slough downward, pulling and splitting. Arglebargle sees his shock and terror. His gray lips spread in a grin.

“That's right,” he says. “I'm dead. It really was a heart attack. Not indigestion, not my gall-bladder. I collapsed five minutes after you were gone. They called an ambulance and the kid I hired to tend bar got my heart started again with CPR, but I died for good in the ambulance.”

The grin stretches; becomes as moony as the grin of a dead trout lying on the deserted beach of a poisoned lake.

“I died at a stoplight on Storrow Drive,” Arglebargle says.

“No,” Gardener whispers. This... this is what he has always feared. The final, irrevocable, drunken act.

“Yes,” the dead man insists as they speed down the hill, drifting closer to the trees. “I invited you into my house, gave you food and drink, and you repaid me by killing me in a drunken argument.”

“Please... I.. .”

“You what? You what?” from his left again. The reindeer on Ted's sweater have disappeared. They have been replaced by yellow radiation warning symbols. “You nothing, that's what! Where do you latter-day Luddites think all that power comes from?”

“You killed me,” Arberg drones from his right, “but you'll pay. You're going to crash, Gardener.”

“Do you think we get it from the Wizard of Oz?” Ted screams. Weeping sores suddenly erupt on his face. His lips bubble, peel, crack, begin to suppurate. One of his eyes shimmers into the milkiness of cataract. Gardener realizes with mounting horror that he is looking into a face exhibiting symptoms of a man in the last advanced stages of radiation sickness.

The radiation symbols on Ted's shirt are turning black.

“You'll crash, you bet,” Arglebargle drones on. “Crash.”

He is weeping with terror now, as he wept after shooting his wife, hearing the unbelievable report of the gun in his hand, watching as she staggered backward against the kitchen counter, one hand clapped to her cheek like a woman uttering a shocked “My land! I NEVER!” And then the blood squirting through her fingers and his mind in a last desperate effort to deny it all had thought Ketchup, relax, that's just ketchup. Then beginning to weep as he was now.

“As far as you guys are concerned, all your responsibility ends at the wall plate where you plug in.” Pus runs and dribbles down Ted's face. His hair has fallen out. The sores cover his skull. His mouth spreads in a grin as moony as Arberg's. Now in a last extremity of terror Gardener realizes he is skiing out of control down Straight Arrow flanked by dead men. “But you'll never stop us, you know. No one will. The pile is out of control, you see. Has been since... oh, around 1939, I'd reckon. We reached critical mass along about 1965. It's out of control. The explosion will come soon.”

“No... no...”

“You've been riding high, but those who ride highest fall hardest,” Arberg drones. “Murder of a host is the foulest murder of all. You're going to crash... crash... crash!”

How true it is! He tries to turn but his skis remain stubbornly on course. Now he can see the big, hoary old pine. Arglebargle and Ted the Power Man are gone and he thinks: Were they Tommyknockers, Bobbi?

He can see a red swatch of paint around the pine's gnarly trunk... and then it begins to flake and split. As he slides helplessly toward the tree he sees that it has come alive, that it has split open to swallow him. The yawning tree grows and swells, seems to rush toward him, grows tentacles and there is a horrible rotten blackness in its center, with red paint around it like the lipstick of some sinister whore, and he can hear dark winds howling in that black, squirming, mouth and

he doesn't wake up then, as much as it seems he has—everyone knows that even the most outlandish dreams feel real, that they may even have their own spurious logic, but this is not real, cannot be. He has simply exchanged one dream for another. Happens all the time.

In this dream he has been dreaming about his old skiing accident—for the second time that day, can you believe it? Only this time the tree he struck, the one which almost killed him, grows a rotted mouth like a squirming knothole. He snaps awake and finds himself sitting in Bobbi's rocking chair, too relieved by simple waking to care that he's stiff all over, and that his throat is now so sore that it feels like it's been lined with barbed wire.

He thinks: I'm going to get up and make myself a dose of coffee and aspirin. Wasn't I going to do that before? He starts to get up and that's when Bobbi opens her eyes. That's also when he knows he is dreaming, must be, because green rays of light shoot from Bobbi's eyes—Gardener is reminded of Superman's X-ray vision in the comic-books, the way the artist always drew it in lime-colored beams. But the light which comes from Bobbi's eyes is swamplike and somehow dreadful... there is something rotted about it, like the drifting glow of St Elmo's fire in a swamp on a hot night.

Bobbi sits up slowly and looks around... looks toward Gardener. He tries to tell her no... Please don't put that light on me.

No words come out and as that green light hits him he sees that Bobbi's eyes are blazing with it—at its source it is as green as emeralds, as bright as sun-fire. He cannot look at it, has to avert his eyes. He tries to bring an arm up to shield his face but he can't, his arm is too heavy. It'll burn, he thinks, it'll burn, and then in a few days the first sores will show up, you'll think they're pimples at first because that's what radiation sickness looks like when it starts, just a bunch of pimples, only these pimples never heal, they only get worse... and worse...

He hears Arberg's voice, a disembodied holdover from the previous dream, and now there seems to be triumph in his drone: “I knew you were going to crash, Gardener!”

The light touches him... washes over him. Even with his eyes squeezed tightly shut it lights the darkness as green as radium watch-dials. But there is no real pain in dreams, and there is none here. The bright green light is neither hot nor cold. It is nothing. Except...

His throat.

His throat is no longer sore.

And he hears this, clearly and unmistakably: “per cent off! This is the sort of price reduction that may never be repeated! EVERYONE gets credit! Recliners! Waterbeds! Living room s—”

The plate in his skull, talking again. Gone almost before it was fairly begun.

Like his sore throat.

And that green light was gone, too.

Gardener opens his eyes... cautiously.

Bobbi is lying on the couch, eyes shut, deeply asleep... just as she was. What's all this about rays shooting out of eyes? Good God!

He sits in the rocking chair again. Swallows. No pain. The fever has gone down a lot, too.

Coffee and aspirin, he thinks. You were going to get up for coffee and aspirin, remember?

Sure, he thinks, settling more comfortably into the rocking chair and closing his eyes. But no one gets coffee and aspirin in a dream. I'll do it just as soon as I wake up.

Gard, you are awake.

But that, of course, could not be. In the waking world, people don't shoot green beams from their eyes, beams that cure fevers and sore throats. Dreams si, reality no.

He crosses his arms over his chest and drifts away. He knows no more—either sleeping or waking -for the rest of that night.

When Gardener woke up, bright light was streaming into his face through the western window. His back hurt like a bastard, and when he stood up his neck gave a wretched, arthritic creak that made him wince. It was quarter of nine. He looked at Bobbi and felt a moment of suffocating fear—in that moment he was sure Bobbi was dead. Then he saw that she was just so deeply, movelessly asleep that she gave a good impression of being dead. It was a mistake anyone might have made. Bobbi's chest rose in slow, steady pulls with long but even pauses in between. Gardener timed her and saw she was breathing no more than six times a minute.

But she looked better this morning—not great, but a lot better than the haggard scarecrow who had reeled out to greet him last night.

Doubt if I looked much better, he thought, and went into Bobbi's bathroom to shave.

The face looking back from the mirror wasn't as bad as he had feared, but he noted with some dismay that his nose had bled again in the night—not a lot, but enough to have covered his philtrum and most of his upper lip. He got a facecloth out of the cupboard to the right of the sink and turned on the hot water to wet it down.

He put the facecloth under the water flowing from the hot tap with all the absentmindedness of long habit—with Bobbi's water heater, you just about had time for a cup of coffee and a smoke before you got a lukewarm stream—and that was on a good d

“Youch!”

He pulled his hand back from water so hot it was steaming. Okay, that was what he got for assuming Bobbi was just going to go clipclopping down the road of life without ever getting her damned water heater fixed.

Gardener put his scalded palm to his mouth and looked at the water coming out of the tap. It had already fogged the lower edge of the shaving mirror on the back of the medicine cabinet. He reached out, found the tap's handle almost too hot to touch, and used the facecloth to turn it off. Then he put in the rubber plug, drew a little more hot water—cautiously!—and added a generous dollop of cold. The pad of flesh below his left thumb had reddened a little.

He opened the medicine cabinet and moved things around until he came to the prescription bottle of Valium with his own name on the label. If that stuff improves with age, it ought to be great, he thought. Still almost full. Well, what did he expect? Whatever Bobbi had been using, it sure as hell had been the opposite of Valium.

Gardener didn't want it, either. He wanted what was behind it, if it was still

Ali! Success!

He pulled out a double-edge razor and a package of blades. He looked a little sadly at the layer of dust on the razor—it had been a long time since he'd shaved in the morning here at Bobbi's—and then rinsed it off. At least she didn't throw it out, he thought. That would have been worse than the dust.

A shave made him feel better. He concentrated on it, drawing it out while his thoughts ran their own course.

He finished, replaced the shaving stuff behind the Valium and cleaned up. Then he looked thoughtfully at the tap with the H on its handle, and decided to go down cellar and see what sort of magnificent water heater Bobbi had put in. The only other thing to do was watch Bobbi sleep, which she seemed to be doing well on her own.

He crossed into the kitchen thinking that he really did feel well, especially now that the aches from a night in Bobbi's rocking chair were starting to work out of his back and neck. You're the guy who's never been able to sleep sitting up, right? he jeered softly at himself. Crashing out on breakwaters is more your style, right? But this ribbing was nothing like the harsh, barely coherent self-mockery of the day before. The one thing he always forgot in the grip of the hangovers and the terrible post-jag depressions was the feeling of regeneration that sometimes came later. You could wake up one day realizing you hadn't put any poison in your system the night before... the week before... maybe the whole month before... and you felt really good.

As for what he had been afraid must be the onset of the flu, maybe even pneumonia—that was gone, too. No sore throat. No plugged nose. No fever. God knew he had been a perfect target for a germ, after eight days drinking, sleeping rough, and finally hitching back to Maine in his bare feet during a rainstorm. But it had passed off in the night. Sometimes God was good.

He paused in the middle of the kitchen, his smile drifting away into a momentary expression that was puzzled and a little disquieted. A fragment of his dream—or dreams—came slipping back

(radio ads in the night... does that have something to do with feeling well this morning?)

and then it faded again. He dismissed it, content with the fact that he felt well and Bobbi looked well—better, anyway. If Bobbi wasn't awake by ten o'clock, ten-thirty at the latest, he would wake her up. If Bobbi felt better and spoke rationally, fine. They could discuss whatever had happened to her (SOMETHING sure did, Gardener thought, and wondered absently if she had gotten some terrible news report from home... a bulletin that would undoubtedly have been served up by Sister Anne). They would go on from there. If she still even slightly resembled the spaced-out and rather creepy Bobbi Anderson who had greeted him the night before, Gardener was going to call a doctor whether Bobbi liked it or not.

He opened the cellar door and fumbled for the old-fashioned toggle switch on the wall. He found it. The switch was the same. The light wasn't. Instead of the feeble flow from two sixty-watt bulbs—the only illumination in Bobbi's cellar since time out of mind—the cellar lit up with a brisk white glare. It looked as bright as a discount department store down there. Gardener started down, hand reaching for the rickety old banister. He found a thick and solid new one instead. It was held firmly against the wall with new brass fittings. Some of the stair treads, which had been definitely queasy, had also been replaced.

Gardener reached the bottom of the steps and stood looking around, his surprise now bordering on some stronger emotion—it was almost shock. That slightly moldy root-cellar smell was gone, too.

She looked like a woman running on empty, no joke. Right out on the ragged edge. She couldn't even remember how many days it had been since she'd gotten any sleep. No wonder. I've heard of home improvement, but this is ridiculous. She couldn't have done it all herself, though. Could she? Of course not.

But Gardener suspected that, somehow, Bobbi had.

If Gardener had awakened here instead of on the breakwater at Arcadia Point, with no memory of the immediate past, he wouldn't have known he was in Bobbi's cellar, although he had been here countless times before. The only reason he was sure of it now was because he had gotten here from Bobbi's kitchen.

That rooty smell wasn't entirely gone, but it was diminished. The cellar's dirt floor had been neatly raked—no, not just raked, Gardener saw. Cellar dirt got old and sour after a while; you had to do something about it if you planned to be spending much time belowground. Anderson had apparently brought in a fresh load of dirt and had spread it around to dry before raking. Gardener supposed that was what had sweetened the atmosphere of the place.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 665