Zelda stood there.
She was hunched and twisted, her body so cruelly deformed that she had actually become a dwarf, little more than two feet high; and for some reason Zelda was wearing the suit they had buried Gage in. But it was Zelda, all right, her eyes alight with an insane glee, her face a raddled purple; it was Zelda screaming, "I finally came back for you, Rachel, I'm going to twist your back like mine and you'll never get out of bed again never get out of bed again NEVER GET OUT OF BED AGAIN-"
Church was perched on one of her shoulders and Zelda's face swam and changed, and Rachel saw with spiraling, sickening horror that it really wasn't Zelda at all-how could she have made such a stupid mistake? It was Cage. His face was not black but dirty, smeared with blood. And it was swollen, as if he had been terribly hurt and then put back together again by crude, uncaring hands.
She cried his name and held her arms out. He ran to her and climbed into them, and all the time one hand remained behind his back, as if with a bunch of posies picked in someone's back meadow.
"I brought you something, Mommy!" he screamed. "I brought you something, Mommy!
I brought you something, I brought you something!"
60
Louis Creed woke up with the sun blazing full in his eyes. He tried to get up and grimaced at the stab of pain in his back. It was huge. He fell back on the pillow and glanced down at himself. Still fully dressed. Christ.
He lay there for a long moment, steeling himself against the stiffness that had settled into every muscle, and then he sat up.
"Oh, shit," he whispered. For a few seconds the room seesawed gently but perceptibly. His back throbbed like a bad tooth, and when he moved his head, it felt as if the tendons in his neck had been replaced by rusty bandsaw blades.
But his knee was really the worst. The Ben-Gay hadn't done a thing for it. He should have given himself a f**king cortisone shot. His pants were drawn tightly against the knee by the swelling; it looked like there was a balloon under there.
"Really jobbed it," he muttered. "Boy, oh boy, did I ever."
He bent it very slowly so he could sit on the edge of the bed, lips pressed so tightly together that they were white. Then he began to flex it a bit, listening to the pain talk, trying to decide just how bad it really was, if it might be-Gage! Is Gage back?
That got him on his feet in spite of the pain. He lurched across the room like Matt Dillon's old sidekick Chester. He went through the door and across the hail into Gage's room. He looked around wildly, his son's name trembling on his lips.
But the room was empty. He limped down to Ellie's room, which was also empty, and then into the spare room. That room, which faced the highway, was also empty. But-.
There was a strange car across the road. Parked behind Jud's truck.
So what?
So a strange vehicle over there could mean trouble, that was so what.
Louis drew the curtain aside and examined the vehicle more closely. It was a small blue car, a Chevette. And curled up on top of it, apparently sleeping, was Church.
He looked for a long time before letting the curtain go. Jud had company, that was all-so what? And it was maybe too early to worry about what was or was not going to happen with Gage; Church hadn't come back until almost one o'clock, and it was only nine o'clock now. Nine o'clock on a beautiful May morning. He would simply go downstairs and make some coffee, get out the heating pad and wrap it around his knee, and-and what's Church doing on top of that car?
"Oh, come on," he said aloud and began to limp back down the hail. Cats slept anywhere and everywhere; it was the nature of the beast.
Except Church doesn't cross the road anymore, remember?
"Forget it," he muttered and paused halfway down the stairs (which he was working his way down almost sidesaddle). Talking to himself, that was bad. That was-What was that thing in the woods last night?
The thought came to him unbidden, making him tighten his lips the way the pain in his knee had done when he swung it out of' bed. He had dreamed about the thing in the woods last night. His dreams of Disney World had seemed to blend naturally and with a deadly ease into dreams of that thing. He dreamed that it had touched him, spoiling all good dreams forever, rotting all good intentions.