He was singing because the TV was on. She could now remember this as clearly as anything in her life, and she wondered how she ever could have forgotten it. Time to get off Memory Lane, Lisey - time to go home.
Everybody out of the pool, as the saying was. Lisey had gotten what she'd come here for, had gotten it while caught up in that last terrible memory of the long boy. Her breast still hurt, but the fierce throbbing was down to a dull ache. She had felt worse as a teenager, after spending a long hot day in a bra that was too small for her. From where she knelt chin-deep in the water she could see that the moon, now smaller and almost pure silver, had risen above all but the highest of the trees in the graveyard. And now a new fear rose to trouble her: what if the long boy came back? What if it heard her thinking about it and came back? This was supposed to be a safe place and Lisey thought it probably was - from the laughers and the other nasty things that might live in the Fairy Forest, at least - but she had an idea that the long boy might not be bound by any rules that held the other things away from here. She had an idea the long boy was...different. The title of some old horror story first occurred to her, then clanged in her mind like an iron bell: "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad." This was followed by the title of the only Scott Landon book she had ever hated: Empty Devils.
But before she could start back to the sand, before she could even get to her feet again, Lisey was struck by yet another memory, this one far more recent. It was of waking in bed with her sister Amanda just before dawn and finding that past and present had gotten all tangled together. Worse still, Lisey had come to believe that she wasn't in bed with her sister at all, but with her dead husband. And in a way, that had been true. Because although the thing in bed with her had been wearing Manda's nightgown and had spoken in Manda's voice, it had used the interior language of their marriage and phrases only Scott could have known.
You have a blood-bool coming, the thing in bed with her had said, and along had come the Black Prince of the Incunks with her own Oxo can opener in his nasty bag of tricks. It goes behind the purple. You've already found the first three stations. A few more and you'll get your prize.
And what prize had the thing in bed with her promised? A drink. She had guessed a Coke or an RC Cola because those had been Paul's prizes, but now she knew better. Lisey lowered her head, buried her battered face in the pool, and then, without allowing herself to think about what she was doing, took two quick swallows. The water in which she stood was almost hot, but what she took in her mouth was cool and sweet and refreshing. She could have drunk a good deal more, but some intuition told her to stop at two sips. Two was just the right number. She touched her lips and found that the swelling there was almost gone. She wasn't surprised.
Not trying to be quiet (and not bothering to be grateful, at least not yet), Lisey floundered back to the beach. It seemed to take forever. No one was wading near shore now, and the beach was empty. Lisey thought she saw the woman she'd spoken to sitting on one of the stone benches with her companion, but couldn't be sure because the moon hadn't risen quite enough. She looked a bit higher, and her gaze fixed on one of the wrapped figures a dozen or so benches up from the water. Moonlight had coated one side of this creature's gauzy head with thin silver gilt, and a queer certainty came to her: that was Scott, and he was watching her. Didn't the idea make a kind of crazy sense? Didn't it, if he had held onto enough consciousness and will to come to her in the moments before dawn, as she lay in bed with her catatonic sister? Didn't it, if he was determined to have his say just one more time?
She felt the urge to call his name, even though to do so would surely be dangerous madness. She opened her mouth and water from her wet hair ran into her eyes, stinging them. Faintly, she heard the wind tinkling Chuckie G.'s bell.
It was then that Scott spoke to her, and for the last time.
- Lisey.
Infinitely tender, that voice. Calling her name, calling her home.
- Little
15
"Lisey," he says. "Babyluv."
He's in the rocking chair and she's sitting on the cold floor, but he's the one doing the shivering. Lisey has a sudden brilliant memory of Granny D saying Afeard and shidderin in the dark and it hits her that he's cold because now all of the african is in Boo'ya Moon. But that's not all - the whole frigging room is cold. It was chilly before but now it's cold, and the lights are out, as well.