DORIS LESSING, The Golden Notebook 12 page

He retched, bringing up the salt water dyed blue. He saw undissolved chunks of blue pills in the vomitus, as well. Some looked more or less intact. How many did she get me to take?

Then he threw up again... again... again. It was an encore performance of the projectile vomiting in the woods—some overworked circuit in his brain persistently triggering the gag reflex, a deadly hiccuping that could kill.

At last it slowed, then stopped.

Pills in the sink. Bluish water in the sink.

Blood in the sink. A lot.

He staggered backward, came down on the bad ankle, screamed, fell on the floor. He found himself looking into one of Bobbi's glazed eyes across the lumpy terrain of the linoleum, and closed his own. Immediately his mind began to drift away... but in that blackness there were voices. No—many voices blended into one. He recognized it. It was the voice of the Shed People.

They were coming for him, as he supposed he had always known they would... in time.

Stop him... stop him... stop him!

Get moving or they won't have to stop you. They'll shoot you or disintegrate you or whatever they want to do to you while you're snoozing on the floor.

He got to his knees, then managed to get to his feet with the help of the counter. He thought there was a box of No-Doz pills in the bathroom cabinet, but doubted if his stomach would hold them down after the latest insult he had dealt it. Under other circumstances it might have been worth the experiment, but Gardiner was afraid that if the projectile vomiting started again, it might not stop.

Just keep moving. If it gets really bad, take a few steps on that ankle. That'll sharpen you up in a hurry.

Would it? He didn't know. All he knew was he had to move fast right now and wasn't sure he would be able to move for long at all.

He hop-staggered to the kitchen door and looked back one final time. Bobbi, who had rescued Gardener from his demons time after time, was little more than a hulk now. Her shirt was still smoking. In the end he hadn't been able to save her from hers. Just put her out of their reach.

Shot your best friend. Good fucking deal, uh?

He put the back of his hand against his mouth. His stomach grunted. He shut his eyes and forced the vomiting down before it could start.

He turned, opened them again, and started across the living room. The idea was to look for something solid, hop to it, and then hold onto it. His mind kept wanting to be that silver Puffer balloon it became just before he was carried away by the big black twister. He fought it as well as he could and marked things and hopped to them. If there was a God, and if He was

good, perhaps they all would bear his weight and he would make it across this seemingly endless room like Moses and his troops had the desert.

He knew that the Shed People would arrive soon. He knew that if he was still here when they did, his goose wasn't just cooked; it was nuked. They were afraid he might do something to the ship. Well, yes. Now that you mentioned it, that was part of what he had in mind, and he knew he would be safest there.

He also knew he couldn't go there. Not yet.

He had business in the shed first.

He made it out onto the porch where he and Bobbi had sat up late on so many summer evenings, Peter asleep on the boards between them. Just sitting here, drinking beers, the Red Sox playing their nightly nine at Fenway, or Comiskey Park, or some damn place, but playing mostly inside Bobbi's radio; tiny baseball men dodging between tubes and circuits. Sitting here with cans of beer in a bucket of cold well water. Talking about life, death, God, politics, love, literature. Maybe even once or twice about the possibility of life on other planets. Gardener seemed to remember such a conversation or two, but perhaps that was only his tired mind goofing with him. They had been happy here. It seemed a very long time ago.

It was Peter his tired mind fixed on. Peter was really the first goal, the first piece of furniture he had to hop to. This wasn't exactly true—the attempted rescue of David Brown had to come prior to ending Peter's torment, but David Brown did not offer him the emotional pulse-point he required; he had never seen David Brown in his life. Peter was different.

“Good old Peter,” he remarked to the still hot afternoon (was it yet afternoon? By God it was). He reached the porch steps and then disaster struck. His balance suddenly deserted him. His weight came down on the bad ankle. This time he could almost see the splintered ends of the bones digging into each other. Gardener uttered a high, mewling shriek—not the scream of a woman but of a very young girl in desperate trouble. He grabbed for the porch railing as he collapsed sideways.

During her frantic early July, Bobbi had fixed the railing between the kitchen and the cellar, but had never bothered with the one between the porch and the dooryard. It had been rickety for years, and when Gard put his weight on it, both of the rotted uprights snapped. Ancient wood-dust puffed out into the summer sunlight... along with the heads of a few startled termites. Gard pitched sideways off the porch, yelling miserably, and fell into the dooryard with a solid meat thump. He tried to get up, then wondered why he was trying. The world was swaying in front of his eyes. He saw first two mailboxes, then three. He decided to forget the whole thing and go to sleep. He closed his eyes.

In this long, strange and painful dream he was having, Ev Hillman felt/saw Gardener fall, and heard Gardener's thought

(forget the whole thing go to sleep)

clearly. Then the dream began to break up and that seemed good; it was hard to dream. It made him hurt all over, made him ache. And it hurt to combat the green light. If sunlight was too bright

(he remembered it a little sunlight)

you could close your eyes but the green light was inside, always inside—a third eye that saw and a green light that burned. There were other minds here.

One belonged to THE WOMAN “ the other to THE LESS-MIND which had once been Peter. Now THE LESS-MIND Could only howl. It howled sometimes for BOBBI to come and let it free from the green light but mostly it only howled as it burned in the torment of the draining. THE WOMAN also screamed for release, but sometimes her thoughts cycled into appalling images of hate that Ev could barely stand. So: yes. Better

(better)

to go to sleep

(easier)

and let it all go but there was David.

David was dying. Already his thoughts—which Ev had received clearly at first—were falling into a deepening spiral that would end first in unconsciousness and then, swiftly, in death.

So Ev fought the dark.

Fought it and began to call:

Get up! Get up! You out there in sunlight! I remember sunlight! David Brown deserves his time of sunlight. So get up! Get up! Get UP! GET

UP GET UP GET UP!

The thought was a steady beat in Gardener's head. No; not a beat. It was something like a car, only the wheels were glass, they were cutting into his brain as the car motored slowly across it.

deserves his time of sunlight David Brown GET up David GET David up David Brown! GET UP! DAVID BROWN! GET up! GET UP, DAMMIT!

“All right!” Gardener muttered through a mouth that was full of blood. “All right, I hear you, leave me alone!”

He managed to get to his knees. He tried to get to his feet. The world grayed out. No good. At least the rasping, cutting voice in his head had let

up a little... he sensed its owner was somehow looking out of his eyes, using them like dirty windows,

(dreaming through them)

seeing some of what he saw.

He tried to get to his feet again and was again unable.

“My asshole quotient is still very high,” Gardener croaked. He spat out two teeth and began to crawl through the dirt of the dooryard toward the shed.

Haven came after Jim Gardener.

They came in cars. They came in pickup trucks. They came on tractors. They came on motorcycles. Mrs Eileen Crenshaw, the Avon lady who had been so bored at Hilly Brown's SECOND GALA MAGIC SHOW, came driving her son Galen's dune-buggy. The Reverend Goohringer rode behind her, the remaining strands of his graying hair blowing back from his sunburned pate. Vern Jernigan came in a hearse he had been trying to convert into a camper before the “becoming” got into high gear. They filled the roads. Ashley Ruvall wove between those on foot like a slalom racer, pedaling his bike like a madman. He had returned home long enough to get something he called a Zap Gun. This spring it had only been an outgrown toy, gathering dust in the attic. Now, equipped with a 9-volt battery and the circuit board from his little brother's Speak “n” Spell, it was a weapon the Pentagon would have found interesting. It blew holes in things. Big holes. This was strapped onto the carrier of his bike, where he had once carried newspapers for delivery. They came in a ripping hurry and there were some accidents. Two people were killed when Early Hutchinson's VW collided with the Fannins” station wagon, but such minor things stopped no one. Their mental chant filled the hollow spaces in the air with a steady, rhythmic cry: Before he can do anything to the ship! Before he can do anything to the ship! It was a fine summer's day, a fine day for a killing, and if anyone needed killing it was James Eric Gardener, and so they came, well over five hundred of them in all, good country people who had learned some new tricks. They came. And they brought their new weapons with them.

By the time Gardener got halfway to the shed, he began to feel better—perhaps he was getting a second wind. More likely, he supposed, was the possibility that he really had gotten rid of almost all the Valium and was now starting to get on top of the rest.

Or maybe the old man was somehow feeding him strength.

Whatever it was, it was enough to get him on his feet again and start hopping toward the shed. He clutched at the door for a moment, heart galloping wildly in his chest. He happened to glance down, and saw a hole in the door. It was round. The edges stuck out in a jagged bracelet of white splinters. It had a chewed look, that hole.

The vacuum cleaner that ran the buttons. This is how it got out. It had a New and Improved cutting attachment. Christ, these people really are crazy.

He worked his way around the building and a cold certainty came to him: the key would be gone.

Oh Christ, Gard, give it a rest! Why would it

But it was. It was gone. The nail where it had hung was empty.

Gardener leaned against the side of the shed, exhausted and trembling, his body sheened with sweat. He looked down and the sun gleamed off something on the ground—the key. The nail slanted down a bit. He had put the key back in a hurry and had probably pulled the nail down a bit in the soft wood himself. It had simply slid off.

He bent painfully, picked it up, and began to shamble around to the front again. He was exquisitely aware of how fast time was passing. They would arrive soon; how could he possibly get his business done in the shed and then get out to the ship before they did? Since it was impossible, it was probably best to ignore it.

By the time he got back to the shed door, he could hear the faint sound of motors. He stabbed the key at the lock and missed the keyway. The sun was bright, his shadow little more than a puddle hanging from his heels. Again. This time the key socked home. He turned it, shoved the door open, and lurched into the shed.

Green light enfolded him.

It was strong—stronger than it had been the last time he was here. That big piece of cobbled-together equipment

(the transformer)

was glowing brightly. It was cycling, as it had been before, but the cycles were faster now. Thin green fire ran across the silvery road maps of circuit boards.

He looked around. The old man, floating in his green bath, was looking back at Gardener with his one good eye. That gaze was tortured... but sane.

Use the transformer to save David

“Old man, they are coming for me,” Gardener croaked. “I'm out of time.”

Corner, far corner.

He looked and saw something that looked a bit like a television antenna, a bit like a large coat-hanger mobile, and a bit like those back-yard devices on which women hang clothes, turning them to do so.

“That?”

Take it out into the dooryard.

Gardener didn't question. There was no time. The thing stood on a small square platform. Gardener supposed its circuits and batteries were in that.

Close-up, he saw that the things which looked like the bent arms of a TV antenna were really narrow steel tubes. He seized the central pole. The thing wasn't heavy, but it was awkward. He was going to have to put some weight on his shattered ankle, like it or not.

He looked back at the tank in which Ev Hillman floated.

You sure about this, old-timer?

But it was the woman who answered. Her eyes opened. Looking into them was like looking into the witches” caldron in Macbeth. For a moment Gard forgot all his pain and weariness and sickness. He was held in thrall by that poisoned gaze. In that instant he understood all the truth and all the power of the fearsome woman Bobbi had called Sissy, and the reason Bobbi had fled from her, as from a fiend. She was a fiend. She was a witch. And even now, in her fearful agony, her hate held.

Take it, you stupid man! I'll run it!

Gardener put his hurt foot down and screamed as a savage hand reached all the way up from his ankle to seize the soft double sac of his testicles.

The old man:

wait wait

It rose on its own. Not far; only an inch or two. The green swamplight brightened even more.

You'll have to guide it, son.

This he was able to manage. It wavered across the green shed like the skeleton of a crazy beach umbrella, nodding and dipping, casting weird elongated shadows on the walls and floor. Gardener hopped clumsily after it, not wanting, not daring, to look back into that insane woman's eyes. Over and over his mind played a single thought: Bobbi Anderson's sister was a witch... a witch... a witch...

He guided the bobbing umbrella out into the sunlight.

Freeman Moss arrived first. He swung the pulp-truck in which Gard had once hitched a ride into Bobbi's dooryard and was out almost before the laboring, farting engine had died. And by Christ, chummy, if the cocksucker wasn't right there, front and center, holding onto something that looked like a woman's clothes whirligig. Man looked like a winded runner. He was holding one of his feet—the left—up, like a dog with a thorn in its paw. That sneaker was bright red, dripping blood.

Looks like Bobbi put at least one good one into you, you snake.

Her murdering pal apparently heard the thought. He looked up and smiled wearily. He was still holding onto the whirligig with the platform stand on the bottom. He was supporting himself on it.

Freeman walked toward him, leaving the driver's door of the old truck hanging open. There was something childlike and winning in the man's grin, and in a moment Freeman understood what it was: with his missing teeth, it was the Halloween punkin grin of a little, boy.

Jesus, I sorta liked you—why'd you have to be such a fuckup?

“What you doing out here, Freeman?” Gardener asked. “You should have stuck home. Watched the Red Sox. The fence is all whitewashed.”

You sonofawhore!

Moss was wearing a down-filled vest but no shirt beneath; the vest was simply the first thing to come to hand as he rushed out of the house. Now he brushed it aside, revealing not a gimmick or a gadget but a Colt Woodsman, He pulled it out. Gardener stood looking at him, holding the whirligig's post, foot up.

Close your eyes. I'll make it quick. I can do that, at least.

(GET DOWN ASSHOLE GET DOWN OR YOU'LL LOSE YOUR HEAD WHEN HE LOSES HIS I DON'T GIVE A TIN SHIT WHO GOES SO GET DOWN IF YOU WANT TO LIVE)

In the tank, Anne Anderson's eyes blazed with stricken hate and fury; her teeth were gone but her bare gums ground together ground together ground together and a trail of small bubbles floated up.

The light pulsed faster and faster, like a carousel speeding up. It became strobelike. The hum rose to a low electric moan, and there was a rich smell of ozone in the shed's air.

On the one lit VDT screen the word

PROGRAM?

was replaced with

DESTROY

It began to flash rapidly, over and over again.

(GET DOWN ASSHOLE OR STAY UP I DON'T CARE WHICH)

Gardener ducked. His bad foot hit the ground. Pain leaped up his leg again. He dropped into the dust on his hands and knees.

Over his head, the whirligig began to spin, slowly at first. Moss stared at it, the gun sagging slightly for a moment in his hand. Realization crossed his face during the last instant he still had one. Then the slender pipes spilled green fire into the dooryard. For a moment the beach-umbrella illusion was perfect and complete. It looked exactly like a big green one that has been partially lowered so that its circular hem touches the ground. But this umbrella was made of fire, and Gard crouched below it, eyes squinted, one hand in front of his face, grimacing as if from strong heat... but there was no heat, at least not here, underneath Sissy's poison toadstool.

Freeman Moss was at the edge of the parasol. His pants blazed up, then the down vest. For a moment the flames were green; then they flared yellow.

He screamed and staggered backward, dropping the gun. Over Gardener's head, the whirligig spun faster. The skeletal metal arms, which had drooped comically downward, were pulled more and more erect by centrifugal force. The parasol's fire-hem bellied outward, and Moss's shoulders and face were enveloped in sheeting flame as he backed away. In Gard's head, that hideous mental wailing began again. He tried to block it out, but there was no way—simply no way. He caught a wavery glimpse of a face running like warm chocolate, then covered his face like a kid at a scary movie.

The flames spun around Bobbi's dooryard in a widening gyre, making a black spiral of dooryard dirt fused into a gritty sort of glass. Moss's pulp-truck and Bobbi's blue pickup were both in the thing's final circumference; the shed was barely beyond it, although its shape danced like a demon in the heat-haze. It was very hot at the edge of the circle, if not where Gard crouched; no doubt of that.

The paint on the hood of Moss's truck and on the sides of the pickup first bubbled, then blackened, then burst into flame, burning down to clean white steel. The litter of bark, sawdust, and woodchips in the back of Moss's truck blazed up like dry kindling in a woodstove. The two big trash-barrels in Bobbi's pickup, made of heavy pressed gypsum, also caught fire and burned like sconces. The dark circle at the edge of the fire-parasol's range became a brand in the shape of a saucer. The army blanket covering the torn seat in the cab of Moss's truck sprang alight, then the seat-covers beneath, then the tindery stuffing; now the entire cab was flickery furnace orange, with the skeletons of springs peering up through the glare.

Freeman Moss staggered backward, twisting and turning, looking like a movie stuntman who has forgotten his flame-suit. He collapsed.

Even overmastering Moss's dying screams, Anne Anderson's mental cry:

Eat shit and die! Eat shit and d

Then, suddenly, something let go in whatever remained of her—there was a final brilliant flare of green light, a sustained pulse that lasted nearly two seconds. The heavy hum of the transformer rose a notch, and every board in the shed picked it up and rattled in sympathetic vibration.

Then the hum dropped back to its former sleepy drone; Anne's head slumped forward in the liquid, her hair trailing like that of a drowned woman. On the computer screen,

DESTROY

winked out like a blown candle and became

PROGRAM?

again.

The fiery parasol wavered, then disappeared. The whirligig, which had been spinning at a mad rate, began to slow, squeaking rhythmically, like an unlatched gate in a mild breeze. The pipes sank back to their former angle. It squeaked once more, then stopped.

The gas tank of Bobbi's truck suddenly exploded. More yellow flames shouted at the sky. Gard felt a piece of metal whiz by him.

He raised his head and stared stupidly at the blazing truck, thinking: Bobbi and I used to go to the Starlite Drive-In over in Derry in that truck sometimes. I think we even got laid there once during some stupid Ryan O'Neal picture. What happened? Lord, what happened?

In his mind, the old man's voice, almost exhausted, but somehow imperative:

Quick! I can power the transformer when the rest come, but you got to be quick! The boy! David! Quick, man!

Not much time, Gardener thought wearily. Jesus, there never is.

He started back toward the open door of the shed, sweating, cheeks waxy-pale. He paused at that dark burned ring in the dirt, and then hopped clumsily over it. He somehow didn't want to touch it. He tottered on the edge of balance and then managed to hop on. As he made his way back inside the shed, the twin gas tanks of Moss's truck went up with a furious roar. The cab tore free of the body. The truck flipped over on its side like a tiddlywink. Burning chunks of seat-cover and seat-stuffing began to float out of the open passenger window and floated upward like blazing feathers. Most fell back into the dooryard and went out. A few, however, wafted their way over to the porch, and three or four actually floated through the open door on the first faint puff of the easterly wind which would soon come up. One of these burning cotton puffs alighted on a paperback novel which Gardener had left on the table just inside the door a week ago. The cover caught on fire.

In the living room, another burning fragment of seat-stuffing lit up a rag rug which Mrs Anderson had made in her bedroom and sent surreptitiously to Bobbi one day when Anne was gone.

When Jim Gardener came out of the shed again, the entire house was on fire.

The light in the shed was at its lowest level ever—a dim and watery green the color of stagnant pond-water.

Gardener looked cautiously toward Anne, afraid of those blazing eyes. But there was nothing to be afraid of. She only floated, head bent forward as if in deep thought, her hair trailing upward.

She's dead, son. If you're going to get the boy, it has to be now. I don't know how long I can provide the power. And I can't be divided, with half of myself looking out for them and half running the transformer.

He stared out at Gardener, and Gard felt deep pity... and admiration for the old bastard's brute courage. Could he have done half as much, gone half as far, if their positions had been reversed? He doubted it.

You're in a lot of pain, aren't you?

I ain't exactly feeling in the pink, son, if that's what you mean. But I'll get through it... if you get going, that is.

Get going. Yes. He had dilly-dallied too long, far too long.

His mouth popped open in another wrenching yawn, and then he stepped toward the equipment in and around that orange crate—what the old man called the transformer.

PROGRAM?

the keyless computer screen beckoned.

Hillman could have told Gardener what to do, but Gardener didn't need to be told. He knew. He also remembered the nosebleed and the blast of sound he'd taken as a result of his single experiment with Moss's levitation gadget. This made that thing look like a box of Lincoln Logs. Still, he had gone quite a ways down the path to “becoming” himself since then, like it or not. He would just have to hope it was enou

Oh shit, son, hold the phone, we got company

Then a louder voice overrode Hillman's, a voice Gard vaguely recognized but could not put a name to.

(BACK OFF BACK OFF HOLD ON ALL OF YOU)

Just 1 think just one or maybe two

That was the old man's exhausted mental voice again. Gardener felt his concentration go out to the whirligig in the dooryard. In the shed, the light began to grow bright once more, and the killing pulses began.

Dick Allison and Newt Berringer were still two miles from Bobbi's place when Freeman Moss's mental shrieks began. Moments before, they had swerved past Elt Barker. Now Dick looked up into the rearview mirror and saw Elt's Harley swerve across the road and go leaping through the air. For a moment Elt looked like Evel Knievel, white hair or no. Then he separated from the bike and landed in the scrub.

Newt hit the brakes with both feet and his truck screamed to a stop in the middle of the road. He looked at Dick with large eyes that were both frightened and furious.

Son of a bitch has got a gadget!

Yeah. Fire. Some kind of

Abruptly Dick raised his mental voice to a shout. Newt picked it up, amplified it. From Kyle Archinbourg's Cadillac, Kyle and Hazel McCready joined in.

(BACK OFF BACK OFF HOLD ON ALL OF YOU)

They stopped, holding their positions. They were not great takers of orders as a rule, these Tommyknockers, but Moss's hideous screams, fading now, were great persuaders. All stopped, that was, except for a blue Oldsmobile Delta 88 with a bumper-sticker on the back reading REALTORS SELL IT BY THE ACRE.

When the command came to back off and hold position, Andy Bozeman was already in sight of the Anderson place. His hate had grown exponentially—Gardener lying bleeding and dead was all he could think of. He came slewing into Bobbi's driveway in a wild power turn. The Olds's rear end broke free when Bozeman stamped the brake; the big car nearly tipped over.

I'll whitewash your fence, you fucking asshole—I'll give you a dead rat and a string to swing it on, oh you bastard.

His wife pulled the molecule-exciter out of her purse. It looked like a Buck Rogers blaster which had been created by a fairly bright lunatic. Its frame had once been part of a garden tool marketed under the trade name of Weed Eater. She leaned out the car window and pulled the trigger utterly at random. The east end of Bobbi's farmhouse exploded into a caldron of fire. Ida Bozeman grinned a cheerful, reptilian grin.

As the Bozemans began to get out of the Olds, the whirligig started to spin. A moment later the green parasol of flame began to form. Ida Bozeman tried to aim what she called her “molecule disco” at it, but too late. If her first shot had hit the whirligig instead of the house, everything might have been different... but it didn't.

The two of them went up like firetrees. A moment later the Olds exploded with three payments still due on it.

Now, with the screams of Freeman Moss just beginning to fade from their minds, the screams of Andy and Ida Bozeman took their place. Newt and Dick waited them out, grimacing.

At last they faded.

Ahead, Dick Allison could see other vehicles parked on both sides of Route 9, and in the middle. Frank Spruce was leaning out of the cab of his big tanker truck, looking toward Newt and Dick urgently. He/they sensed the others—all the others -on this road, on other roads; some were standing in the fields they had been cutting across. All of them waiting for something—some decision.

Dick turned toward Newt.

Fire.

Yes. Fire.

Can we put it out?

There was a short mental silence as Newt thought about it; Dick could sense him wanting to simply push it aside and go on to where Gardener was. What Dick wanted wasn't complicated: he wanted to rip out Jim Gardener's gizzard. But that wasn't the answer and they both knew it—all the Shed People, even Adley, knew it. The stakes were higher now. And Dick was confident Jim Gardener was going to lose his gizzard anyway, in one fashion or another.

Crossing the Tommyknockers was a bad idea. It made them mad. This was a truth many races on other worlds had found out long before today's festivities in Haven.

He and Newt both looked out toward the tree-bordered field where Elt Barker had crashed. The grasses and the plumes of the trees were blowing—not hard, but clearly blowing in a wind which blew from east to west. Not even enough breeze to qualify as a cap o'wind. but Dick thought it showed signs of brisking.

Yes we can put out the fire, Newt replied at last.

Stop the fire and the drunk too? Can we be sure of that?

Another long, thinking pause, and then Newt came to the answer that Dick had already suspected.

I don't know if we can do both. I know one or the other but I don't know if we can do both.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 521