Dreamcatcher (80 page)

On that early afternoon in November the store was empty save for the proprietor, a gentleman named Deke McCaskell. Like most other folks, he had spent the morning glued to the TV. All the coverage (repetitive stuff, for the most part, and with that part of the North Woods cordoned off, no good pictures of anything but Army, Navy, and Air Force hardware) had led up to the President's speech. Deke called the President Mr. Okeefenokee, on account of the fucked-up way he'd been elected—couldn't anybody down there fucking count? Although he had not exercised his own option to vote since the Gipper (now
there
had been a President), Deke hated President Okeefenokee, thought he was an oily, untrustworthy motherfucker with big teeth (good-looking wife, though), and he thought the President's eleven o'clock speech had been the usual blah-dee-blah. Deke didn't believe a word old Okeefenokee said. In his view, the whole thing was probably a hoax, scare tactics calculated to make the American taxpayer more willing to hike defense spending and thus taxes. There was nobody out there in space, science had proved it. The only aliens in America (except for President Okeefenokee himself, that was) were the beaners who swam across the border from Mexico. But people were scared, sitting home and watching TV. A few would be in later for beer or bottles of wine, but for now the place was as dead as a cat run over in the highway.

Deke had turned off the TV half an hour ago—enough was enough, by the Christ—and when the bell over his door jangled at quarter past one, he was studying a magazine from the rack at the back of the store, where a sign proclaimed
B 21 OR B GONE
. This particular periodical was titled
Lasses in Glasses,
a fair title since all the lasses within
were
wearing spectacles. Nothing else, but glasses,
sí.

He looked up at the newcomer, started to say something like “How ya doin” or “Roads gettin slippery yet,” and then didn't. He felt a bolt of unease, followed by a sudden certainty that he was going to be robbed . . . and if robbery was all, he'd be off lucky. He never
had
been robbed, not in the twelve years he'd owned the place—if a fellow wanted to risk prison for a handful of cash, there were places in the area where bigger handfuls could be had. A guy would have to be . . .

Deke swallowed.
A guy would have to be crazy,
he'd been thinking, and maybe this guy
was,
maybe he was one of those maniacs who'd just offed his whole family and then decided to ramble around a bit, kill a few more folks before turning one of his guns on himself.

Deke wasn't paranoid by nature (he was
lumpish
by nature, his ex-wife would have told you), but that didn't change the fact that he felt suddenly menaced by the afternoon's first customer. He didn't care very much for the fellows who sometimes turned up and loafed around the store, talking about the Patriots or the Red Sox or telling stories about the whoppers
they'd caught up to the Reservoir, but he wished for a few of them now. A whole gang of them, actually.

The man just stood there inside the door at first, and yeah, there was something wrong with him. He was wearing an orange hunting coat and deer season hadn't started yet in Massachusetts, but that could have been nothing. What Deke didn't like were the scratches on the man's face, as if he had spent at least some of the last couple of days going cross-country through the woods, and the haunted, drawn quality of the features themselves. His mouth was moving, as though he was talking to himself. Something else, too. The gray afternoon light slanting in through the dusty front window glinted oddly on his lips and chin.

That sonofabitch is drooling,
Deke thought.
Be goddamned if he ain't.

The newcomer's head snapped around in quick little tics while his body remained perfectly still, reminding Deke of the way an owl remains perfectly still on its branch as it looks for prey. Deke thought briefly of sliding out of his chair and hiding under the counter, but before he could do more than begin to consider the pros and cons of such a move (not a particularly quick thinker, his ex-wife would have told you that, as well), the guy's head did another of those quick flicks and was pointing right at him.

The rational part of Deke's mind had been harboring the hope (it was not quite an articulated idea) that he was imagining the whole thing, just suffering the whimwhams from all the weird news and weirder
rumors, each dutifully reported by the press, coming out of northern Maine. Maybe this was just a guy who wanted smokes or a six-pack or maybe a bottle of coffee brandy and a stroke-book, something to get him through a long, sleety night in a motel outside of Ware or Belchertown.

That hope died when the man's eyes met his.

It wasn't the gaze of a family-murdering maniac off on his own private cruise to nowhere; it almost would have been better if that had been the case. The newcomer's eyes, far from empty, were too full. A million thoughts and ideas seemed to be crossing them, like one of those big-city tickertapes being run at super-speed. They seemed almost to be hopping in their sockets.

And they were the
hungriest
eyes Deke McCaskell had seen in his entire life.

“We're closed,” Deke said. The words came out in a croak that didn't sound like his voice at all. “Me and my partner—he's in the back—we closed for the day. On account of the goings-on up north. I—
we,
I mean—just forgot to flip over the sign. We—”

He might have run on for hours—days, even—but the man in the hunting coat interrupted him. “Bacon,” he said. “Where is it?”

Deke knew, suddenly and absolutely, that if he didn't have bacon, this man would kill him. He might kill him anyway, but without bacon . . . yes, certainly. He
did
have bacon. Thank God, thank Christ, thank Okeefenokee and all the hopping rag-heads, he
did
have bacon.

“Cooler in back,” he said in his new, strange voice. The hand lying on top of his magazine felt as cold as a block of ice. In his head, he heard whispering voices that didn't seem to be his own. Red thoughts and black thoughts.
Hungry
thoughts.

An inhuman voice asked,
What's a cooler?
A tired voice,
very
human, responded:
Go on up the aisle, handsome. You'll see it.

Hearing voices,
Deke thought.
Aw, Jesus, no. That's what happens to people just before they flip out.

The man moved past Deke and up the center aisle. He walked with a heavy limp.

There was a phone by the cash-register. Deke looked at it, then looked away. It was within reach, and he had 911 on the speed-dialer, but it might as well have been on the moon. Even if he was able to summon enough strength to reach for the phone—

I'll know,
the inhuman voice said, and Deke let out a breathless little moan. It was inside his head, as if someone had planted a radio in his brain.

There was a convex mirror mounted over the door, a gadget that came in especially handy in the summer, when the store was full of kids headed up to the Reservoir with their parents—the Quabbin was only eighteen miles from here—for fishing or camping or just a picnic. Little bastards were always trying to kite stuff, particularly the candy and the girly magazines. Now Deke looked into it, watching with dread fascination as the man in the orange coat approached the cooler. He stood there a moment, gazing in, then grabbed not just one package of bacon but all four of them.

The man came back down the middle aisle with the bacon, limping along and scanning the shelves. He looked dangerous, he looked hungry, and he also looked dreadfully tired—like a marathon runner going into the last mile. Looking at him gave Deke the same sense of vertigo he felt when he looked down from a high place. It was like looking not at one person but at several, overlaid and shifting in and out of focus. Deke thought fleetingly of a movie he'd seen, some daffy cunt with about a hundred personalities.

The man stopped and got a jar of mayonnaise. At the foot of the aisle he stopped again and snagged a loaf of bread. Then he was at the counter again. Deke could almost smell the exhaustion coming out of his pores. And the craziness.

He set his purchases down and said, “Bacon sandwiches on white, with mayo. Those are the best.” And smiled. It was a smile of such tired, heartbreaking sincerity that Deke forgot his fear for a moment.

Without thinking, he reached out. “Mister, are you all r—”

Deke's hand stopped as if it had run into a wall. It trembled for a moment over the counter, then flew up and slapped his own face—
crack!
It drew slowly away and stopped, floating like a Hovercraft. The third and fourth fingers folded slowly down against the palm.

Don't kill him!

Come out and stop me!

If you make me try, you might get a surprise.

These voices were in his head.

His Hovercraft hand floated forward and the first two fingers plunged into his nostrils, plugging them. For a moment they were still, and then oh dear Christ they began to dig. And while Deke McCaskell had many questionable habits, chewing his nails was not one of them. At first his fingers didn't want to move much up there—close quarters—but then, as the lubricating blood began to flow, they became positively frisky. They squirmed like worms. The dirty nails dug like fangs. They shoved up farther, burrowing brainward . . . he could feel cartilage tearing . . . could hear it . . .

Stop it, Mr. Gray, stop it!

And suddenly Deke's fingers belonged to him again. He pulled them free with a wet plop. Blood pattered down on the counter, on the rubber change-pad with the Skoal logo on it, also on the unclad lass in glasses whose anatomy he had been studying when this creature had come in.

“How much do I owe you, Deke?”

“Take it!” Still that crow-croak, but now it was a
nasal
croak, because his nostrils were plugged with blood. “Aw, man, just take it and go! The fuck outta here!”

“No, I insist. This is commerce, in which items of real worth are exchanged for currency plain.”

“Three dollars!” Deke cried. Shock was setting in. His heart was beating wildly, his muscles thrumming with adrenaline. He believed the creature might be going, and this made everything infinitely worse: to be so close to a continued life and still know it could
be snatched away at this fucking loony's least whim.

The loony brought out a battered old wallet, opened it, and rummaged for what seemed an age. Saliva drizzled steadily from his mouth as he bent over the wallet. At last he came out with three dollars. He put them on the counter. The wallet went back into his pocket. He rummaged in his nasty-looking jeans (
rode hard and put away wet,
Deke thought), came out with a fistful of change, and laid three coins on the Skoal pad. Two quarters and a dime.

“I tip twenty percent,” his customer said with unmistakable pride. “Jonesy tips fifteen. This is better. This is more.”

“Sure,” Deke whispered. His nose was full of blood.

“Have a nice day.”

“You . . . you take it easy.”

The man in the orange coat stood with his head lowered. Deke could hear him sorting through possible responses. It made him feel like screaming. At last the man said, “I will take it any way I can get it.” There was another pause. Then: “I don't want you to call anyone, partner.”

“I won't.”

“Swear to God?”

“Yeah. Swear to God.”

“
I'm
like God,” his customer remarked.

“Yeah, okay. Whatever you—”

“If you call someone, I'll know. I'll come back and fix your wagon.”

“I won't!”

“Good idea.” He opened the door. The bell jangled. He went out.

For a moment Deke stood where he was, as if frozen to the floor. Then he rushed around the counter, bumping his upper leg hard on the corner. By nightfall there would be a huge black bruise there, but for the moment he felt nothing. He turned the thumb-lock, shot the bolt, then stood there, peering out. Parked in front of the store was a little red shit-box Subaru, mudsplattered, also looking rode hard and put away wet. The man juggled his purchases into the crook of one arm, opened the door, and got in behind the wheel.

Drive away,
Deke thought.
Please, mister, for the love of God just drive away.

But he didn't. He picked something up instead—the loaf of bread—and pulled the tie off the end. He took out roughly a dozen slices. Next he opened the jar of mayonnaise, and, using his finger as a knife, began to slather the slices of bread with mayo. After finishing each slice, he licked his finger clean. Each time he did, his eyes slipped closed, his head tipped back, and an expression of ecstasy filled his features, radiating out from the mouth. When he had finished with the bread, he picked up one of the packages of meat and tore off the paper covering. He opened the plastic inner envelope with his teeth and shook out the pound of sliced bacon. He folded it and put it on a piece of bread, then put another piece on top. He tore into the sandwich as ravenously as a wolf. That expression of divine enjoyment never left his face; it was the look of a man enjoying
the greatest gourmet meal of his life. His throat knotted as each huge bite went down. Three such bites and the sandwich was gone. As the man in the car reached for two more pieces of bread, a thought filled Deke McCaskell's brain, flashing there like a neon sign.
It's even better this way! Almost alive! Cold, but almost alive!

Deke backed away from the door, moving slowly, as if underwater. The grayness of the day seemed to invade the store, dimming the lights. He felt his legs come unhinged, and before the dirty board floor tilted up to meet him, gray had gone to black.