More circles of light broke free of the main body and streamed across the road in cometary splendor. Eddie saw flies and tiny jeweled hummingbirds and what appeared to be winged frogs. Beyond them...
The taillight of Cullum's truck flashed bright, but Eddie was so busy goggling that he would have rear-ended the man had Roland not spoken to him sharply. Eddie threw the Galaxie into Park without bothering to either set the emergency brake or turn off the engine. Then he got out and walked toward the blacktop driveway that descended the steep wooded slope. His eyes were huge in the delicate light, his mouth hung open. Cullum joined him and stood looking down. The driveway was flanked by two signs: CARA LAUGHS on the left and 19 on the right.
"Somethin, ain't it?" Cullum asked quiedy.
You got that right, Eddie tried to reply, and still no words would come out of his mouth, only a breathless wheeze.
Most of the light was coming from the woods to the east of the road and to the left of the Cara Laughs driveway. Here the trees-mosdy pines, spruces, and birches bent from a latewinter ice storm-were spread far apart, and hundreds of figures walked solemnly among them as though in a rustic ballroom, their bare feet scuffing through the leaves. Some were pretty clearly Children of Roderick, and as roont as Chevin of Chayven. Their skins were covered with the sores of radiation sickness and very few had more than a straggle of hair, but the light in which they walked gave them a beauty that was almost too great to look upon. Eddie saw a one-eyed woman carrying what appeared to be a dead child. She looked at him with an expression of sorrow and her mouth moved, but Eddie could hear nothing. He raised his fist to his forehead and bent his leg.
Then he touched the corner of one eye and pointed to her. I see you, the gesture said... or so he hoped. I see you very well. The woman bearing the dead or sleeping child returned the gesture, and then passed from sight.
Overhead, thunder cracked sharply and lightning flashed down into the center of the glow. An ancient fir tree, its lusty trunk girdled with moss, took the bolt and split apart down its center, falling half one way and half the other. The inside was on fire. And a great gust of sparks-not fire, not this, but something with the ethereal quality of swamplight-went twisting up toward the hanging swags of the clouds. In those sparks Eddie saw tiny dancing bodies, and for a moment he couldn't breathe.
It was like watching a squadron of Tinker Bells, there and then gone.
"Look at em," John said reverently. "Walk-ins! Gorry, there's hundreds! 1 wish my friend Donnie was here to see."
Eddie thought he was probably right: hundreds of men, women, and children were walking through the woods below them, walking through the light, appearing and disappearing and then appearing again. As he watched, he felt a cold drop of water splash his neck, followed by a second and a third. The wind swooped down through the trees, provoking another upward gush of those fairy-like creatures and turning the tree that had been halved by lightning into a pair of vast crackling torches.
"Come on," Roland said, grabbing Eddie's arm. "It's going to come a downpour and this'll go out like a candle. If we're still on this side when it does, we'll be stuck here."
"Where-" Eddie began, and then he saw. Near the foot of the driveway, where the forest cover gave way to a tumble of rocks falling down to the lake, was the core of the glow, for the time being too bright to look at. Roland dragged him in that direction. John Cullum remained hypnotized for a moment longer by the walk-ins, then tried to follow them.
"No!" Roland called over his shoulder. The rain was falling harder now, the drops cold on his skin and the size of coins.
"You have your work, John! Fare you well!"
"And you, boys!" John called back. He stopped and raised his hand in a wave. A bolt of electricity cut across the sky, momentarily lighting his face in brilliant blue and deepest black. "And you!"
"Eddie, we're going to run into the core of the light,"
Roland said. "It's not a door of the old people but of the Prim-that is magic, do ye ken. It'll take us to the place we want, if we concentrate hard enough."
"Where-"
"There's no time! Jake's told me where, by touch! Only hold my hand and keep your mind blank! I can take us!"
Eddie wanted to ask him if he was absolutely sure of that, but there was no time. Roland broke into a run. Eddie joined him.
They sprinted down the slope and into the light. Eddie felt it breathing over his skin like a million small mouths. Their boots crackled in the deep leaf cover. To his right was the burning tree. He could smell the sap and the sizzle of its cooking bark.
Now they closed in on the core of the light. At first Eddie could see Kezar Lake through it and then he felt an enormous force grip him and pull him forward through the cold rain and into that brilliant murmuring glare. For just a moment he glimpsed the shape of a doorway. Then he redoubled his grip on Roland's hand and closed his eyes. The leaf-littered ground ran out beneath his feet and they were flying.
Chapter VII:REUNION