'Yeah, everything's . . .' She said something else, but he caught it no more than he had caught whatever Stark had said after telling Thad that the house in Castle Rock was Endsville . . . the place where all rail service terminates.
Thad lay inside his own sweaty outline on the sheet, slowly releasing his pillow. He rubbed his face with his bare arm, and waited for the dream to let go of him, waited for the shakes to let go of him. They did, but with surprising slowness. At least he had managed not to wake Liz. He stared thoughtlessly into the darkness, not trying to make sense of the dream, only wanting it to go away, and some endless time later Wendy awoke in the next room and began to cry to be changed. William of course awoke moments later, deciding he needed to be changed (although when Thad took off his diapers he found them quite dry). Liz woke at once and sleepwalked into the nursery. Thad went with her, considerably more awake and grateful for once that the twins needed servicing in the middle of the night. The middle of this night, anyway. He changed William while Liz changed Wendy, neither of them speaking much, and when they went back to bed, Thad was grateful to find himself drifting toward sleep again. He'd had an idea that he was probably through sleeping for the night. And when he had first awakened with the image of Liz's explosive decomposition still fresh behind his eyes, he had thought he would never sleep again.
It'll be gone in the morning, the way dreams always are..This was his last waking thought of the night, but when he woke the next morning he
remembered the dream in all its details (although the lost and lonely echo of his footfalls in the bare corridor was the only one which retained its full emotional color), and it did not fade as days went by, the way dreams usually do.
That was one of the rare ones he kept with him, as real as a memory. The key that was a typewriter key, the lineless palm, and the dry, almost uninflected voice of George Stark, telling him from behind his shoulder that he wasn't done with him, and that when you f**ked with this high-toned son of a bitch, you were f**king with the best..
Chapter Three
Graveyard Blues
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