The one thing you absolutely cannot do is drift off to sleep. No, that would be bad.
I'd better hear from the Prof by eight tonight, or next time the hurtin will be a lot worse, Dooley had told her, and Dooley had set things up so she was in a lose-lose situation. He had also told her to tend herself and not tell anyone he'd been here. So far she'd done that, but not because she was afraid of being killed. In a way, knowing that he meant to kill her anyway gave her a leg up. She didn't have to worry anymore about trying to reason with him, at least. But if she called the Sheriff's Department...well...
"You can't go on a bool hunt when the house is full of great big clutter-bugging deputies," she said. "Also..."
Also, I believe that Scott's still having his say. Or trying to.
"Honey," she told the empty room, "I only wish I knew what it was."
3
She looked over at the digital clock on the bedside table and was astounded to see it was only twenty to eleven. Already this day seemed a thousand years long, but she suspected that was because she had spent so much of it re-living the past. Memories screwed up perspective, and the most vivid ones could annihilate time completely while they held sway.
But enough about the past; what was happening right now?
Well, Lisey thought, let's see. In the Kingdom of Pittsburgh, the former King of the Incunks is no doubt suffering the sort of terror my late husband used to call Stinky Testicle Syndrome. Deputy Alston's over in Cash Corners, inspecting a little house-fiah. Aaaason suspected, deah. Jim Dooley? Maybe laid up in the woods near here, whittling on a stick with my Oxo can opener in his pocket, waiting for the day to pass. His PT
Cruiser could be tucked away in any one of a dozen deserted barns or sheds on the View, or in the Deep Cut, across the Harlow town line. Darla's probably on her way to the Portland Jetport to pick up Canty. Good Ma would say she's gone tooting. And Amanda?
Oh, Amanda's gone, babyluv. Just as Scott knew she would, sooner or later. Didn't he do everything but reserve her a smucking room? Because it takes one to know one. As the saying is.
Out loud she said: "Am I supposed to go to Boo'ya Moon? Is that the next station of the bool? It is, isn't it? Scott, you goon, how do I do that with you dead?"
You're getting ahead of yourself again, aren't you?
Sure - carrying on about her inability to reach a place she had as yet not given herself permission to fully remember.
You've got to do a lot more than lift that curtain and peep under the hem.
"I've got to rip it down," she said dismally. "Don't I?"
No answer. Lisey took that for a yes. She rolled over on her side and picked up the silver spade. The inscription winked in the morning sunlight. She wrapped the bloody piece of african around the handle, then took hold of it that way.
"All right," she said, "I'll rip it down. He asked me if I wanted to go, and I said all right. I said Geronimo."
Lisey paused, thinking.
"No. I didn't. I said it his way. I said Geromino. And what happened? What happened then?"