His Challenger was standing nearby, and he had never in his life wanted so much to just get in and go. But he didn't dare.
He walked around the building and there was nothing. Nothing at all. just expanses of cinderblock, painted an unpleasant snotgreen.
An odd piece of graffiti had been spray-painted on the back of the garage, and Ace looked at it for some moments, not understanding why it made his skin crawl.
YOG-SOTHOTH RULES,
it read in faded red letters.
He arrived back at the garage door and thought, Now what?
Because he could think of nothing else, he got back into the Challenger and just sat there, looking at the garage door. At last, he laid both hands on the horn and honked a long, frustrated blast.
At once the garage door began to roll silently up on its tracks.
Ace sat watching it, gape-mouthed, and his first urge was to simply start the Challenger up and drive away as fast as he could and as far as he could. Mexico City might do for a start. Then he thought of Mr. Gaunt again and got slowly out of his car. He walked over to the garage as the door came to rest below the ceiling inside.
The interior was brightly lit by half a dozen two-hundred-watt bulbs hanging at the ends of thick electrical cords. Each bulb had been shaded with a piece of tin shaped into a cone, so that the lights cast circular pools of brightness on the floor. On the far side of the cement floor was a car covered with a dropcloth. There was a table littered with tools standing against one wall. Three crates were stacked against another wall. On top of them was an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder.
The garage was otherwise empty.
"Who opened the door?" Ace asked in a dry little voice. "Who opened the f**king door?"
But to this there was no answer.
3
He drove the Challenger inside and parked it against the rear wall-there was plenty of room. Then he walked back to the doorway.
There was a control box mounted on the wall next to it. Ace pushed the DOWN button. The waste ground on which this enigmatic blockhouse of a building stood was filling up with shadows, and they made him nervous. He kept thinking he saw things moving out there.
The door rolled down without a single squeak or rattle. While he waited for it to close all the way, Ace looked around for the sonic sensor which had responded to the sound of his horn. He couldn't see it. It had to be here someplace, though-garage doors did not open all by themselves.
Although, he thought, if shit like that happens anywhere in this town, Whipple Street's probably the place.
Ace walked over to the stack of crates with the tape recorder on top. His feet made a hollow gritting sound on the cement. YogSothoth rules, he thought randomly, and then shivered. He didn't know who the f**k Yog-Sothoth was, probably some Rastafarian reggae singer with ninety pounds of dreadlocks growing out of his dirty scalp, but Ace still didn't like the sound that name made in his head. Thinking about that name in this place seemed like a bad idea. It seemed like a dangerous idea.
A scrap of paper had been taped to one of the recorder's reels.
Two words were written on it in large capital letters:
PLAY ME.
Ace pulled off the note and pushed the PLAY button. The reels began to turn, and when he heard that voice, he jumped a little.
Still, whose voice had he expected? Richard Nixon's?
"Hello, Ace," Mr. Gaunt's recorded voice said. "Welcome to Boston. Please remove the tarp from my car and load the crates.
They contain rather special merchandise which I expect to need quite soon now. I'm afraid you'll have to put at least one crate in the back seat; the Tucker's trunk leaves something to be desired.
Your own car will be quite safe here, and your ride back will be uneventful. And please remember this-the sooner you get back, the sooner you can begin investigating the locations on your map.
Have a pleasant trip."
The message was followed by the empty hiss of tape and the low whine of the capstan drive.
Ace left the reels turning for almost a minute, nevertheless.
This whole situation was weird... and getting weirder all the time.
Mr. Gaunt had been here during the afternoon-had to have been, because he had mentioned the map, and Ace hadn't laid eyes on either the map or Mr. Leland Gaunt until this morning. The old buzzard must have taken a plane down while he, Ace, was driving.
But why? What the f**k did it all mean?
He hasn't been here, he thought. I don't care if it's impossible or not-he hasn't been here. Look at that goddam tape recorder, for instance. Nobody uses tape recorders like that anymore. And look at the dust on the reels. The note was dusty, too. This set-up has been waiting for you a long time. Maybe it's been sitting here and catching dust ever since Pangborn sent you to Shawshank.
Oh, but that was crazy.
That was just bullshit.
Nevertheless, there was a deep core-part of him that believed it was true. Mr. Gaunt hadn't been anywhere near Boston this afternoon.
Mr. Gaunt had spent the afternoon in Castle RockAce knew it-standing by his window, watching the passersby, perhaps even removing the