Scratchy-scri'tch-scratch.
That thing is alive, Trisha, Aunt Evvie said. That thing is alive, and you know it, Don't be silly, Polly told her, tossing over to the other side.
How could there possibly be some creature in there? I suppose it might be able to breathe through all those tiny holes, but what in God's name would it eat?
Maybe, Aunt Evvie replied with soft implacability, i't's eating You, Trisha.
"Polly," she murmured. "My name is Polly."
This time the tug at her subconscious mind was strongersomehow alarming-and for a moment she was almost able to grasp it. Then the telephone began to ring again. She gasped and sat up, her face wearing a look of tired dismay. Pride and longing were at war there.
Talk to him, Trisha-what can it hurt? Better still, listen to him.
You didn't do much of that before, did you?
I don't want to talk to him. Not after what he did.
But you still love him.
Yes; that was true. The only thing was, now she hated him as well.
The voice of Aunt Evvie rose once more, gusting angrily in her mind. Do you want to be a ghost all your life, Trisha? What's the matter with you, girl?
Polly reached out for the telephone in a mockery of decisiveness.
Her hand-her limber, pain-free hand-faltered just short of the handset.
Because maybe it wasn't Alan. Maybe it was Mr. Gaunt.
Maybe Mr. Gaunt wanted to tell her that he wasn't finished with her yet, that she hadn't finished paying yet.
She made another move toward the telephone-this time the tips of her fingers actually brushed the plastic casing-and then she drew back.
Her hand clutched its partner and they folded into a nervous ball on her belly. She was afraid of Aunt Evvie's dead voice, of what she had done this afternoon, of what Mr. Gaunt (or Alan!) might tell the town about her dead son, of what yonder confusion of sirens and racing cars might mean.
But more than all of these things, she had discovered, she was afraid of Leland Gaunt himself. She felt as if someone had tied her to the clapper of a great iron bell, a bell which would simultaneously deafen her, drive her mad, and crush her to a pulp if it began to ring.
The telephone fell quiet.
Outside, another siren began to scream, and as it began to fade toward the Tin Bridge, the thunder rolled again. Closer than ever now.
Take it off, the voice of Aunt Evvie whispered. Take it off, honey. You can do it-his power is over need, not will. Take it off. Break his hold on you.
But she was looking at the telephone and remembering the night-was it less than a week ago?-when she had reached for it and struck it with her fingers, knocking it to the floor. She remembered the pain which had clawed its way up her arm like a hungry ratwith broken teeth. She couldn'tgo back to that. She just couldn't.
Could she?
Something nasty is going on in The Rock tonight, Aunt Evvie said.
Do you want to wake up tomorrow and have to figure out how much of it was YOUR nastiness? Is that really a score you want to add up, Trisha?
"You don't understand," she moaned. "It wasn't on Alan, it was on Ace! Ace Merrill! And he deserves whatever he gets!"
The implacable voice of Aunt Evvie returned: Then so do you, honey. So do you.
4
At twenty minutes past six on that Tuesday evening, as the thunderheads neared and real dark began to overtake twilight, the State Police officer who had replaced Sheila Brigham in dispatch came out into the Sheriff's Office bullpen. He skirted the large area, roughly diamond-shaped, which was marked with C R I M E - S C E N E tape and hurried over to where Henry Payton stood.
Payton looked dishevelled and unhappy. He had spent the previous five minutes with the ladies and gentlemen of the press, and he felt as he always did after one of these confrontations: as if he had been coated with honey and then forced to roll in a large pile of ant-infested hyena-shit. His statement had not been as well prepared or as unassailably vague-as he would have liked. The TV people had forced his hand. They wanted to do live updates during the six-to-six-thirty time-slot when the local news was broadcast-felt they had to do live updates-and if he didn't throw them some kind of bone, they were apt to crucify him at eleven. They had almost crucified him anyway. He had come as close as he ever had in his entire career to admitting he didn't have a f**king clue. He had not left this impromptu press conference; he had escaped it.
Payton found himself wishing he had listened more closely to Alan.
When he arrived, it had seemed that the job was essentially damage control. Now he wondered, because there had been another murder since he took the case-a woman named Myrtle Keeton.