"Yes, I can hear you," Tom said, and the quality of his voice made Stu look up sharply.
It was different from Tom's usual voice, but in a way Stu could not quite put his hand to. It reminded him of something which had happened when he was eighteen, and graduating from high school. They had been in the boys' locker room before the ceremony, all the guys he'd been going to school with since... well, since the first day of the first grade in at least four cases, and almost as long in many others. And for just a moment he had seen how much their faces had changed between those old days, those first days, and that moment of insight, standing on the tile floor of the locker room with the black robe in his hands. That vision of change had made him shiver then, and it made him shiver now. The faces he had looked into had no longer been the faces of children... but neither had they yet become the faces of men. They were faces in limbo, faces caught perfectly between two well-defined states of being. This voice, coming out of the shadowland of Tom Cullen's subconscious, seemed like those faces, only infinitely sadder. Stu thought it was the voice of the man forever denied.
But they were waiting for him to go on, and go on he must.
"I'm Stu Redman, Tom."
"Yes. Stu Redman."
"Nick is here."
"Yes, Nick is here."
"Ralph Brentner is here, too."
"Yes, Ralph is, too."
"We're your friends."
"I know."
"We'd like you to do something, Tom. For the Zone. It's dangerous."
"Dangerous..."
Trouble crossed over Tom's face, like a cloud shadow slowly crossing a midsummer field of corn.
"Will I have to be afraid? Will I have to..." He trailed off, sighing.
Stu looked at Nick, troubled.
Nick mouthed: Yes.
"It's him," Tom said, and sighed dreadfully. It was like the sound a bitter November wind makes in a stand of denuded oaks. Stu felt that shudder inside him again. Ralph had gone pale.
"Who, Tom?" Stu asked gently.
"Flagg. His name is Randy Flagg. The dark man. You want me to..." That sick sigh again, bitter and long.
"How do you know him, Tom?" This wasn't in the script.
"Dreams... I see his face in dreams."
I see his face in dreams. But none of them had seen his face. It was always hidden.
"You see him?"
"Yes..."
"What does he look like, Tom?"
Tom didn't speak for a long time. Stu had decided he wasn't going to answer and he was preparing to go back to the "script" when Tom said: "He looks like anybody you see on the street. But when he grins, birds fall dead off telephone lines. When he looks at you a certain way, your prostate goes bad and your urine burns. The grass yellows up and dies where he spits. He's always outside. He came out of time. He doesn't know himself. He has the name of a thousand demons. Jesus knocked him into a herd of pigs once. His name is Legion. He's afraid of us. We're inside. He knows magic. He can call the wolves and live in the crows. He's the king of nowhere. But he's afraid of us. He's afraid of... inside."
Tom fell silent.
The three of them stared at each other, pallid as gravestones. Ralph had seized his hat from his head and was kneading it convulsively in his hands. Nick had put one hand over his eyes. Stu's throat had turned to dry glass.
His name is Legion. He is the king of nowhere.
"Can you say anything else about him?" Stu asked in a low voice.
"Only that I'm afraid of him, too. But I'll do what you want. But Tom... is so afraid." That dreadful sigh again.
"Tom," Ralph said suddenly. "Do you know if Mother Abagail... if she's still alive?" Ralph's face was desperately set, the face of a man who has staked everything on one turn of the cards.
"She's alive." Ralph leaned against the back of his chair with a great gust of breath. "But she's not right with God yet," Tom added.
"Not right with God? Why not, Tommy?"
"She's in the wilderness, God has lifted her up in the wilderness, she does not fear the terror that flies at noon or the terror that creeps at midnight... neither will the snake bite her nor the bee sting her... but she's not right with God yet. It was not the hand of Moses that brought water from the rock. It was not the hand of Abagail that turned the weasels back with their bellies empty. She's to be pitied. She will see, but she will see too late. There will be death. His death. She will die on the wrong side of the river. She - "
"Stop him," Ralph groaned. "Can't you stop him?"
"Tom," Stu said.
"Yes."
"Are you the same Tom that Nick met in Oklahoma? Are you the same Tom we know when you're awake?"
"Yes, but I am more than that Tom."
"I don't understand."
He shifted a little, his sleeping face calm.
"I am God's Tom."
Completely unnerved now, Stu almost dropped Nick's notes.
"You say you'll do what we want."
"Yes."
"But do you see... do you think you'll come back?"
"That's not for me to see or say. Where shall I go?"