Tearing herself away from this powerful vision is one of the hardest things Lisey has ever done. It's like trying to rise after days of hard work and only a few hours of heavy and beautifully restful sleep. She discovers she's no longer on the sand but sitting on a bench in the third tier up from the little beach, looking out at the water with her chin propped on her palm. And she sees that the moonlight is losing its orange glow. It has become buttery, and will soon turn to silver.
How long have I been here? she asks herself, dismayed. She has an idea it's not really been that long, somewhere between fifteen minutes and half an hour, but even that is far too long...although she certainly understands how this place works now, doesn't she?
Lisey feels her eyes being drawn back to the pool - the peace of the pool, where now only two or three people (one is a woman with either a large bundle or a small child in her arms) are wading in the deepening evening - and forces herself to look away, up at the rock horizons that encircle this place and at the stars peeping through the darkening blue above the granite and the few trees that fringe it up there. When she begins to feel a little more like herself, Lisey stands up, turns her back on the water, and locates Scott again. It's easy. That yellow knitted african all but screams, even in the gathering dark. She goes to him, stepping up from one level to the next, as she would at a football stadium. She detours away from one of the shrouded creatures...but she's close enough to see the very human shape beneath its gauzy wrappings; hollow eyesockets and one hand that peeps out.
It is a woman's hand, with chipped red polish on the nails.
When she reaches Scott, her heart is pumping hard and she feels a little out of breath, even though the climb hasn't been difficult. In the distance the laughers have begun cackling up and down the scale, sharing their endless joke. Back the way she came, faint but still audible, she hears the fitful tinkle of Chuckie G.'s bell, and she thinks, Order's up, Lisey! Come on, let's hustle!
"Scott?" she murmurs, but Scott doesn't look at her. Scott is looking raptly at the pool, where the faintest hazy mist - a mere exhalation - has begun to rise in the light of the rising moon. Lisey allows herself only one quick glance that way before returning her regard firmly to her husband. She's learned her lesson about looking too long at the pool. Or so she hopes. "Scott, it's time to come home."
Nothing. No response whatsoever. She remembers protesting that he wasn't crazy, writing stories didn't make him crazy, and Scott telling her I hope you stay lucky, little Lisey. But she hadn't, had she? Now she knows a lot more. Paul Landon went bad-gunky and wound up raving his life away chained to a post in the cellar of an isolated farmhouse. His younger brother has married and had an undeniably brilliant career, but now the bill has come due.
Your garden-variety catatonic, she thinks, and shivers.
"Scott?" she murmurs again, almost directly into his ear. She has taken both of his hands in hers. They are cool and smooth, waxy and lax. "Scott, if you're in there and you want to come home, squeeze my hands."
For the longest time there's nothing but the sound of the laughing things deep in the woods, and somewhere closer by the shocking, almost womanish cry of a bird. Then Lisey feels something that is either wishful thinking or the barest twitch of his fingers against hers.
She tries to think what she should do next, but the only thing she's sure of is what she shouldn't do: let the night swim up around them, dazzling her with silvery moonlight from above even as it drowns her in shadows rising from below. This place is a trap. She's sure that anyone who stays at the pool for very long will find it impossible to leave. She understands that if you look at it for a little while, you'll be able to see anything you want to. Lost loves, dead children, missed chances - anything.
The most amazing thing about this place? That there aren't more people hanging out on the stone benches. That they aren't packed in shoulder-to-shoulder like spectators at a smucking World Cup soccer match.
She catches movement in the corner of her eye and looks up the path leading from the beach to the stairs. She sees a stout gentleman wearing white pants and a billowing white shirt open all the way down the front. A great red gash runs down the left side of his face. His iron-gray hair is standing up at the back of his oddly flattened-looking head. He looks around briefly, then steps from the path to the sand.
Beside her, speaking with great effort, Scott says: "Car crash."
Lisey's heart takes a wild spring in her chest, but she's careful not to look around or to squeeze down too tightly on his hands, although she cannot forbear a slight twitch. Striving to keep her voice even, she says: "How do you know?"
No answer from Scott. The stout gentleman in the billowing shirt spares one more dismissive glance for the silent folk sitting on the stone benches, then turns his back on them and wades into the pool. Silver tendrils of moonsmoke rise around him, and Lisey once more has to drag her eyes away.
"Scott, how do you know?"
He shrugs. His shoulders also seem to weigh a thousand pounds - that, at least, is how it looks to her - but he manages. "Telepathy, I suppose."