"All right, the joke is over," Rachel said in a tight, scared voice. "Who - "
And suddenly the planchette began to write.
It moved with lightning speed, dragging their fingers with it, snapping their arms out and back and around in a way which would have been funny if it weren't for the helpless, caught expressions on all three girls' faces. Nadine thought later that it was as if her arms had been caught in an exercise machine. The writing before had been in stilted, draggling letters - messages that looked as if they had been written by a seven-year-old. This writing was smooth and powerful... big, slanting capital letters that slashed across the white page. There was something both relentless and vicious about it.
NADINE, NADINE, NADINE, the whirling planchette wrote. HOW I LOVE NADINE TO BE MY TO LOVE MY NADINE TO BE MY QUEEN IF YOU IF YOU IF YOU ARE PURE FOR ME IF YOU ARE CLEAN FOR ME IF YOU ARE IF YOU ARE DEAD FOR ME DEAD YOU ARE
The planchette swooped, raced, and began again, lower down.
YOU ARE DEAD WITH THE REST OF THEM YOU ARE IN THE DEADBOOK WITH THE REST OF THEM NADINE IS DEAD WITH THEM NADINE IS ROTTEN WITH THEM UNLESS UNLESS
It stopped. Thrummed. Nadine thought, hoped - oh how she hoped - that it was over, and then it raced back to the edge of the paper and began again. Jane shrieked miserably. The faces of the other girls were shocked white o 's of wonder and dismay.
THE WORLD THE WORLD SOON THE WORLD IS DEAD AND WE WE WE NADINE NADINE I I I WE WE WE ARE WE ARE WE
Now the letters seemed to scream across the page:
WE ARE IN THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD NADINE
The last word howled itself across the page in inch-high capital letters and then the planchette whirled from the tablet, leaving a long streak of graphite behind like a shout. It fell on the floor and snapped in two.
There had been an instant of shocked, immobile silence, and then Jane Fargood had burst into high, weeping hysterics. The thing had ended with the housemother coming upstairs to see what was wrong; Nadine remembered, and she had been about to call the infirmary for Jane when the girl had managed to get hold of herself a little.
Through the whole thing Rachel Timms had sat on her bed, calm and pale. When the housemother and most of the other girls (including the horse-faced girl, who undoubtedly felt that a prophetess is without much honor in her own land) had left, she had asked Nadine in a flat, strange voice: "Who was it, Nadine?"
"I don't know," Nadine had answered truthfully. She hadn't had the slightest idea. Not then.
"You didn't recognize the handwriting?"
"No."
"Well, maybe you just better take that... that note from beyond or whatever it is... and go back to your room."
"You asked me to sit down!" Nadine flashed at her. "How was I supposed to know anything like... like that would happen? I did it to be polite, for God's sake!"
Rachel had had the good grace to flush at that; she had even offered a little apology. But Nadine had never seen much of the girl after that, and Rachel Timms had been one of the few girls Nadine had ever felt really close to during her first three semesters at college.
From then until now she had never touched one of these triangular spiders made of pressed fiberboard.
But the time had... well, it had slouched around at last, hadn't it?
Yes indeed.
Heart beating loudly, Nadine sat down on the picnic bench and pressed her fingers lightly to two of the planchette's three sides. She could feel it begin to move under the balls of her fingers almost immediately, and she thought of a car with its engine idling. But who was the driver? Who was he, really? Who would climb in, and slam the door, and put his sun-blackened hands on the wheel? Whose foot, brutal and heavy, shod in an old and dusty cowboy boot, would come down on the accelerator and take her... where?
Driver, where you taking us?
Nadine, beyond help or hope of succor, sat upright on the bench at the crest of Flagstaff Mountain in the black trench of morning, her eyes wide, that feeling of being on the border stronger than ever. She stared east, but felt his presence coming from behind her, pressing heavy on her, dragging her down like weights tied to the feet of a dead woman: Flagg's dark presence, coming in steady, inexorable waves.
Somewhere the dark man was abroad in the night, and she spoke two words like an incantation to all the black spirits that had ever been - incantation and invitation:
"Tell me."
And beneath her fingers, the planchette began to write.
BOOK II ON THE BOARDER Chapter 54
Excerpts from the Minutes of the Permanent Free Zone Committee Meeting
August 19, 1990
This meeting was held at the apartment of Stu Redman and Fran Goldsmith. All members of the Free Zone Committee were present.