"My God," someone muttered, and it was impossible to tell if the voice belonged to a man or a woman.
"One arm is covered with poison ivy. Her legs are covered with ulcerations which would be running if her condition were not so-"
"Hey, can't you stop it?" Jack Jackson hollered, standing up. His face was white, furious, miserable. "Don't you have any damn decency?"
"Decency is not my concern, Jack. I'm only reporting her condition as it is. She's comatose, malnourished, and most of all, she's very, very old. I think she's going to die. If she was anyone else, I would state that as a certainty. But ... like all of you, I dreamed of her. Her and one other."
The low mutter again, like a passing breeze, and Stu felt the hackles on the nape of his neck first stir and then come to attention.
"To me, dreams of such opposing configurations seem mystical," George said. "The fact that we all shared them seems to indicate a telepathic ability at the very least. But I pass on parapsychology and theology just as I pass on decency, and for the same reason: neither of them is my field. If the woman is from God, He may choose to heal her. I cannot. I will tell you that the fact that she is still alive at all seems a miracle of sorts to me. That is my statement. Are there any questions?"
There weren't. They looked at him, stunned, some of them openly weeping.
"Thank you," George said, and returned to his seat in a dead sea of silence.
"All right," Stu whispered to Glen. "You're on."
Glen approached the podium without introduction and gripped it familiarly. "We've discussed everything but the dark man," he said.
That mutter again. Several men and women instinctively made the sign of the cross. An elderly woman on the left-hand aisle placed her hands rapidly across her eyes, mouth, and ears in an eerie imitation of Nick Andros before refolding them over the bulky black purse in her lap.
"We've discussed him to some degree in closed committee meetings," Glen went on, his tone calm and conversational, "and the question came up in private as to whether or not we should bring the question up in public. The point was made that no one in the Zone really seemed to want to talk about it, not after the funhouse dreams we all had on the way here. That perhaps a period of recuperation was needed. Now, I think, is the time to bring the subject up. To drag him out into the light, as it were. In police work, they have a handy gadget called an Ident-i-Kit, which a police artist uses to create the face of a criminal from various witnesses' recollections of him. In our case we have no face, but we do have a series of recollections that form at least an outline of our Antagonist. I've talked to quite a few people about this and I would like to present you with my own Ident-i-Kit sketch.
"This man's name seems to be Randall Flagg, although some people have associated the names Richard Frye, Robert Freemont, and Richard Freemantle with him. The initials R.F. may have some significance, but if so, none of us on the Free Zone Committee know what it is. His presence-at least in dreams-produces feelings of dread, disquiet, terror, horror. In case after case, the physical feeling associated with him is one of coldness."
Heads were nodding, and that excited hum of conversation broke out again. Stu thought they sounded like boys who had just discovered sex, were comparing notes, and were excited to find that all reports put the receptacle in approximately the same place. He covered a slight grin with his hand, and reminded himself to save that one for Fran later on.
"This Flagg is in the West," Glen continued. "Equal numbers of people have 'seen' him in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland. Some people-Mother Abagail was among them-claim that Flagg is crucifying people who step out of line. All of them seem to believe that there is a confrontation shaping up between this man and ourselves, and that Flagg will stick at nothing to bring us down. And sticking at nothing includes quite a lot. Armored force. Nuclear weapons. Perhaps ... plague."
"I'd like to catch hold of that dirty bastard!" Rich Moffat called shrilly. "I'd give him a dose of the everfucking plague!"
There was a tension-relieving burst of laughter, and Rich got a hand. Glen grinned easily. He had given Rich his cue and his line half an hour before the meeting, and Rich had delivered admirably. Old baldy had been right as rain about one thing, Stu was discovering: a background in sociology often came in handy at large meetings.
"All right, I've outlined what I know about him," he went on. "My last contribution before throwing the meeting open to discussion is this: I think Stu is right in telling you that we have to deal with Harold and Nadine in a civilized way if they're caught, but like him, I think that is unlikely. Also like him, I believe they did what they did on this man Flagg's orders."
His words rang out strongly in the hall.
"This man has got to be dealt with. George Richardson told you mysticism isn't his field of study. It isn't mine, either. But I tell you this: I think that dying old woman somehow represents the forces of good as much as Flagg represents the forces of evil. I think that whatever power controls her used her to bring us together. I don't think that power intends to forsake us now. Maybe we need to talk it over and let some air into those nightmares. Maybe we need to begin deciding what we're going to do about him. But he can't just walk into this Zone next spring and take over, not if you people are standing watch. Now I'll turn the meeting back to Stu, who'll chair the discussion."
His last sentence was lost in a crash of applause, and Glen went back to his seat feeling pleased. He had stirred them with a big stick ... or was the phrase played them like a violin? It didn't really matter. They were more mad than scared, they were ready for a challenge (although they might not be so eager next April, after they'd had a long winter to cool off in) ... and most of all, they were ready to talk.
And talk they did, for the next three hours. A few people left as midnight came and went, but not many. As Larry had suspected, no good hard advice came out of it. There were wild suggestions: a bomber and/ or a nuclear stockpile of their own, a summit meeting, a trained hit squad. There were few practical ideas.
For the final hour, person after person stood up and recited his or her dream, to the seemingly endless fascination of the others. Stu was once again reminded of the endless bull sessions about sex he had participated in (mostly as a listener) during his teenage years.
Glen was both amazed and heartened by their growing willingness to talk, and by the charged atmosphere of excitement that had taken over the dull blankness with which they had begun the meeting. A large catharsis, long overdue, was going on, and he was also reminded of sex-talk, but in a different way. They talk like people, he thought, who have kept the huddled-up secrets of their guilts and inadequacies to themselves for a long time, only to discover that these things, when verbalized, were only life-sized after all. When the inner terror sowed in sleep was finally harvested in this marathon public discussion, the terror became more manageable ... perhaps even conquerable.
The meeting broke up at one-thirty in the morning, and Glen left it with Stu, feeling good for the first time since Nick's death. He left feeling they had gone the first hard steps out of themselves and toward whatever battleground there would be.
He felt hope.
The power went on at noon on September 5, as Brad had promised.
The air raid siren atop of the County Courthouse went on with a huge, braying whoop, scaring many people into the streets, where they looked wildly up into the blameless blue sky for a glimpse of the dark man's air force. Some ran for their cellars, where they stayed until Brad found a fused switch and turned the siren off. Then they came up, shamefaced.
There was an electrical fire on Willow Street, and a group of a dozen volunteer firepeople promptly rushed over and put it out. A manhole cover exploded into the air at the Broadway-and-Walnut intersection, went nearly fifty feet, and came down on the roof of the Oz Toyshop like a great rusty tiddledywink.
There was a single fatality on what the Zone came to call Power Day. For some unknown reason, an auto-body shop on outer Pearl Street exploded. Rich Moffat was sitting in a doorway across the street with a bottle of Jack Daniel's in his newsboy's pouch, and a flying panel of corrugated steel siding struck him and killed him instantly. He would break no more plate-glass windows.
Stu was with Fran when the fluorescents buzzed into life in the ceiling of her hospital room. He watched them flicker, flicker, flicker, and finally catch with the old familiar light. He was unable to look away until they had been glowing solidly for nearly three minutes. When he looked at Frannie again, her eyes were shiny with tears.
"Fran? What's wrong? Is it the pain?"
"It's Nick," she said. "It's so wrong that Nick isn't alive to see this. Hold me, Stu. I want to pray for him if I can. I want to try."
He held her, but didn't know if she prayed or not. He suddenly found himself missing Nick very much, and hating Harold Lauder more than he ever had before. Fran was right. Harold had not just killed Nick and Sue; he had stolen their light.
"Shh," he said. "Frannie, shh."
But she cried for a long time. When the tears were finally gone, he used the button to raise her bed and turned on the night table lamp so she could see to read.
Stu was being shaken awake, and it took him a long time to come all the way around. His mind ran over a slow and seemingly endless list of people who might be trying to rob his sleep. It was his mother, telling him it was time to get up and light the stoves and get ready for school. It was Manuel, the bouncer in that sleazy little Nuevo Laredo whorehouse, telling him his twenty dollars was used up and it would be another twenty if he wanted to stay all night. It was a nurse in a white all-over suit who wanted to take his blood pressure and a throat culture. It was Frannie.
It was Randall Flagg.
The last thought brought him up like a dash of cold water in the face. It was none of those people. It was Glen Bateman, with Kojak at his knee.
"You're a hard man to wake up, East Texas," Glen said. "Like a stone post." He was only a vague shape in nearly total darkness.
"Well, you could have turned on the damn light to start with."
"You know, I clean forgot all about that."
Stu switched on the lamp, squinted against the sudden bright light, and peered owlishly at the wind-up alarm clock. It was quarter to three in the morning.
"What are you doing here, Glen? I was sleepin, in case you didn't happen to notice."
He got his first good look at Glen as he put the clock down. He looked pale, scared ... and old. The lines were drawn deeply into his face and he looked haggard.
"What is it?"
"Mother Abagail," Glen said quietly.
"Dead?"
"God help me, I almost wish she were. She's awake. She wants us."
"The two of us?"
"The five of us. She-" His voice roughened, went hoarse. "She knew Nick and Susan were dead, and she knew Fran was in the hospital. I don't know how, but she did."
"And she wants the committee?"
"What's left of it. She's dying and she says she has to tell us something. And I don't know if I want to hear it."
Outside the night was cold-not just chilly but cold. The jacket Stu had pulled from the closet felt good, and he zipped it all the way to the neck. A frosty moon hung overhead, making him think of Tom, who had instructions to come back to them and report when the moon was full. This moon was just a trifle past the first quarter. God knew where that moon was looking down on Tom, on Dayna Jurgens, on Judge Farris. God knew it was looking down on strange doings here.
"I got Ralph up first," Glen said. "Told him to go over to the hospital and get Fran."
"If the doctor wanted her up and around, he would have sent her home," Stu said angrily.
"This is a special case, Stu."
"For someone who doesn't want to hear what that old woman has to say, you seem to be in an all-fired hurry to get to her."
"I'm afraid not to," Glen said.
The jeep drew up in front of Larry's house at ten minutes past three. The place was blazing with light-not gaslamps now, but good electric lights. Every second streetlamp was on, too, not just here but all over town, and Stu had stared at them all the way over in Glen's jeep, fascinated. The last of the summer bugs, sluggish with the cold, were beating lackadaisically against the sodium globes.
They got out of the jeep just as headlights swung around the corner. It was Ralph's clattering old truck, and it pulled up nose to nose with the jeep. Ralph got out, and Stu went quickly around to the passenger side, where Frannie sat with her back resting against a plaid sofa cushion.
"Hey, babe," he said softly.
She took his hand. Her face was a pale disk in the darkness.
"Bad pain?" Stu asked.
"Not so bad. I took some Advil. Just don't ask me to do the hustle."
He helped her out of the truck and Ralph took her other arm. They both saw her wince as she stepped away from the cab.
"Want me to carry you?"
"I'll be fine. Just keep your arm around me, huh?"
"Sure will."
"And walk slow. Us grammies can't go very fast."
They crossed behind Ralph's truck, more shuffling than walking. When they reached the sidewalk, Stu saw Glen and Larry standing in the doorway, watching them. Against the light they looked like figures cut from black construction paper.
"What is it, do you think?" Frannie murmured.
Stu shook his head. "I don't know."
They got up the walk, Frannie very obviously in pain now, and Ralph helped Stu get her in. Larry, like Glen, looked pale and worried. He was wearing faded jeans, a shirt that was untucked and buttoned wrong at the bottom, and expensive mocs on bare feet.
"I'm sorry like hell to have to get you out," he said. "I was in with her, dozing off and on. We've been keeping watch. You understand?"
"Yes. I understand," Frannie said. For some reason the phrase keeping keeping watch watch made her think of her mother's parlor ... and in a kinder, more forgiving light than she had ever thought of it before. made her think of her mother's parlor ... and in a kinder, more forgiving light than she had ever thought of it before.
"Lucy had been in bed about an hour. I snapped out of my doze, and -Fran, can I help you?"
Fran shook her head and smiled with an effort. "No, I'm fine. Go on".
"-and she was looking at me. She can't talk above a whisper, but she's perfectly understandable." Larry swallowed. All five of them were now standing in the hallway. "She told me the Lord was going to take her home at the sunrise. But that she had to talk to those of us God hadn't taken first. I asked her what she meant and she said God had taken Nick and Susan. She knew." knew." He let out a ragged breath and ran his hands through his long hair. He let out a ragged breath and ran his hands through his long hair.
Lucy appeared at the end of the hall. "I made coffee. It's here when you want it."
"Thank you, love," Larry said.
Lucy looked uncertain. "Should I come in with you folks? Or is it private, like the committee?"
Larry looked at Stu, who said quietly, "Come on along. I got an idea that stuff don't cut ice anymore."
They went up the hall to the bedroom, moving slowly to accommodate Fran.
"She'll tell us," Ralph said suddenly. "Mother will tell us. No sense fretting."
They went in together, and Mother Abagail's bright, dying gaze fell upon them.
Fran knew about the old woman's physical condition, but it was still a nasty shock. There was nothing left of her but a pemmican-tough membrane of skin and tendon binding her bones. There was not even a smell of putrescence and oncoming death in the room; instead there was a dry attic smell ... no, a parlor parlor smell. Half the length of the IV needle hung out of her flesh, simply because there was nowhere for it to go. smell. Half the length of the IV needle hung out of her flesh, simply because there was nowhere for it to go.
Yet the eyes had not changed. They were warm and kind and human. That was a relief, but Fran still felt a kind of terror ... not strictly fear, but perhaps something more sanctified-awe. Was it awe? An impending feeling. Not doom, but as though some dreadful responsibility was poised above their heads like a stone.
Man proposes-God disposes.
"Little girl, sit down," Mother Abagail whispered. "You're in pain."
Larry led her to an armchair and Fran sat down with a thin, whistling sigh of relief, although she knew even sitting would pain her after a while.
Mother Abagail was still watching her with those bright eyes.
"You're quick with child," she whispered.
"Yes ... how ..."
"Shhhhh ..."