Stephen King's N. (7 page)

I thought, I have no camera to look through and make it come back.

I thought, I have to make this stop while I can still tell myself nothing is happening. Right or wrong, I was less concerned with the fate of the world than with losing hold of my own perceptions; losing hold of my idea of the world. I did not believe in N.’s delusion for even a moment, but that darkness…

I didn’t want it to get a foothold, do you see? Not even a toehold.

I had put the key back into the torn envelope and tucked the envelope into my hip pocket, but I was still holding the Baggie. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I raised it in front of my eyes and looked at the stones through it. They were a little distorted, a little bleary even when I pulled the plastic tight, but still clear enough. There were eight again, right enough, and that perceived darkness…

That funnel

Or tunnel

…was gone. (Of course it was never there to begin with.) I lowered the Baggie—not without some trepidation, I admit it—and looked at the stones dead-on. Eight. Solid as the foundation of the Taj Mahal. Eight.

I walked back down the road, successfully fighting the compulsion to take one more look. Why look again? Eight is eight. Let’s get that straight. (My little joke.)

I have decided against the article. Best to put the whole business of N. behind me. The important thing is that I actually went there, and faced—I am quite sure this is true—the insanity that is in all of us, the Dr. B.’s of the world as well as the N.’s. What did they call it in WWI? “Going to see the elephant.” I went to see the elephant, but that does not mean I have to draw the elephant. Or in my case write a description of the elephant.

And if I thought I saw more? If for a few seconds…

Well, yes. But wait. That only shows the strength of the delusion that captured poor N. Explains his suicide in a way no note can. Yet some things are best left alone. This is probably just such a case. That darkness…

That funnel-tunnel, that perceived—

In any case, I’m done with N. No book, no article. “Turn the page.” The key undoubtedly opens the lock on the chain at the end of the road, but I’ll never use it. I threw it away.

“And so to bed,” as the late great Sammy Pepys used to say.

Red sun tonight, sailor’s delight shining over that field. Mist rising from the hay? Perhaps. From the green hay. Not the yellow.

The Androscoggin will be red tonight, a long snake bleeding in a dead birth canal. (Fancy!) I would like to see that. For whatever reason. I admit it.

This is just tiredness. It will be gone tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning I may even want to reconsider the article. Or the book. But not tonight.

And so to bed.

July 18, 2007

Fished the key out of the trash this morning and put it in my desk drawer. Throwing it away seems too much like admitting something might be. You know.

Well. And anyway: it’s just a key.

July 27, 2007

All right, yes, I admit it. I have been counting a few things and making sure there are even numbers around me. Paper clips. Pencils in the jar. Things of that nature. Doing this is strangely soothing. I have caught N.’s cold for sure. (My little joke, but not a joke.)

My mentor-psychiatrist is Dr. J. in Augusta, now Chief of Staff at Serenity Hill. I called him and we had a general discussion—which I framed as research for a paper I might deliver this winter at the Chicago convention—a lie, of course, but sometimes, you know, it’s easier to—about the transitive nature of OCD symptoms, from patient to analyst. J. confirmed my own researches. The phenomena isn’t common, but it’s not a complete rarity, either.

He said, “This doesn’t have any personal concern for you, Johnny, does it?”

Keen. Perceptive. Always was. And has lots of info about yours truly!

“No,” I said. “I’ve just gotten interested in the subject. In fact, it’s become something of a compulsion.”

We ended the conversation laughing and then I went to the coffee table and counted the books there. Six. That’s good. Six is a fix. (N.’s little rhyme.) I checked my desk to make sure the key was there and of course it is, where else would it be? One key. Is one good or bad? “The cheese stands alone,” you know. Probably not germane, but something to think about!

I started out of the room, then remembered there were magazines on the coffee table as well as books and counted those, as well. Seven! I took the People with Brad Pitt on the cover and threw it in the trash.

Look, if it makes me feel better, what harm? And it was only Brad Pitt!

And if this gets worse, I will come clean with J. This is a promise I make to myself.

I think a Neurontin scrip might help. Although it’s an anti-seizure medication, strictly speaking, in cases like mine it’s been known to help. Of course…

August 3, 2007

Who am I kidding? There are no cases like this, and Neurontin doesn’t help. Tits on a bull.

But counting helps. Strangely soothing. And something else. The key was on the wrong side of the drawer I put it in! That was intuition but intuition is not to be SNEEZED AT. I moved it. Better. Then put another key (safe-deposit box) on the other side. Seems to balance it. Six is a fix but two is true (joke). Good sleep last night.

Well, no. Nightmares. The Androscoggin at sunset. A red wound. A birth canal. But dead.

August 10, 2007

Something is wrong out there. The eighth stone is weakening. There is no sense telling myself this isn’t so, because every nerve in my body—every cell in my skin!!—proclaims it’s true. Counting books (and shoes, yes, that’s true, N.’s intuition and not to be “sneezed at”) helps, but does not fix THE BASIC PROBLEM. Not even Placing Diagonals helps too much, although it certainly…

Toast crumbs on the kitchen counter, for instance. You line them up with the blade of a knife. Line of sugar on the table, HA! But who knows how many crumbs? How many grains of sugar? Too many to count!!

This must end. I’m going out there.

I will take a camera.

August 11, 2007

The darkness. Dear Christ. It was almost complete. And something else.

The darkness had an eye.

August 12

Did I see anything? Actually?

I don’t know. I think I did, but I don’t know.

There are 23 words in this entry.

26 is better.

August 19

I picked up the phone to call J., tell him what’s going on with me, then put it down. What would I tell him? Besides: 1-207-555-1863=11. A bad number.

Valium helps more than Neurontin. I think. As long as I don’t overdue it

Sept 16

Back from Motown. Covered with sweat. Shaking. But eight again. I fixed it. I! Fixed it! IT! Thank God. But…

But!

I cannot live my life this way.

No, but—I WAS JUST IN TIME. IT WAS ON THE VERGE OF GETTING OUT. The protections only hold so long and then a house-call is necessary! (My little joke.)

I saw the 3-lobed eye N. spoke of. It belongs to nothing from this world or this universe.

It is trying to eat its way thru.

Except I don’t accept this. I let N.’s obsession get a finger in my psyche (it’s playing stinkyfinger with me if you get my little joke) and it has continued to widen the gap, slipping in a second finger, a third, a whole pulling hand. Opening me up. Opening up my

But!

I saw with my own eyes. There is a world behind this world, filled with monsters

Gods

HATEFUL GODS!

One thing. If I kill myself, what? If it’s not real, the torment still ends. If it is real, the eighth stone out there solidifies again. At least until someone else—the next “CARETAKER”—goes heedlessly prospecting up that road and sees…

Makes suicide almost look good!

October 9, 2007

Better lately. My ideas seem more my own. And when I last went out to Ackerman’s Field (2 days ago), my worries were all for naught. There were 8 stones there. I looked at them—solid as houses—and saw a crow in the sky. It swerved to avoid the airspace over the stones, “ziss is true,” (joke) but it was there. And as I stood at the end of the road with my camera hung over my neck (nix pix in Motton stix, those stones don’t photograph, N. was right about that much, anyway; possibly radon??), I wondered how I ever could have thought there were only 7. I admit that I counted my steps back to my car (and then paced around a little when an odd number brought me to the driver’s door), but these things do not let go all at once. They are CRAMPS in the MIND! Yet maybe…

Do I dare hope I’m getting better?

October 10, 2007

Of course there is another possibility, loath as I am to admit it: that N. was right about the solstices. We are moving away from one and toward the other now. Summer gone; winter ahead. Which, if true, is good news only in the short term. If I should have to deal with such wracking mental spasms next spring…and the spring after that…

I couldn’t, that’s all.

How that eye haunts me. Floating in the gathering darkness.

Other things behind it

CTHUN!

November 16, 2007

Eight. Always were. I’m sure now. Today the field was silent, the hay dead, the trees at the foot of the slope bare, the Androscoggin gray steel beneath an iron sky. The world waiting for snow.

And my God, best of all: a bird roosting on one of those stones!

A BIRD!

Realized only when I was driving back to Lewiston that I didn’t bother counting my steps when going back to the car.

Here is the truth. What must be the truth. I caught a cold from one of my patients, but now I’m getting better. Cough gone, sniffles drying up.

The little joke was on me all along.

December 25, 2007

I shared Christmas dinner and the ritual exchange of presents with Sheila and her family. When Don took Seth to the candlelight ritual at the church (I’m sure the good Methodists would be shocked if they knew the pagan roots of such rites), Sheila squeezed my hand and said, “You’re back. That’s good. I was worried.”

Well, you can’t fool your own flesh and blood, it seems. Dr. J. may only have suspected something was wrong, but Sheila knew. Dear Sheila.

“I had a sort of crisis this summer and fall,” I said. “A crisis of the spirit, you might call it.”

Although it was more a crisis of the psyche. When a man begins to think the only purpose served by his perceptions is to mask the knowledge of terrible other worlds—that is a crisis of the psyche.

Sheila, always practical, said: “As long as it wasn’t cancer, Johnny. That’s what I was afraid of.”

Dear Sheila! I laughed and hugged her.

Later on, while we were doing a final polish on the kitchen (and sipping eggnog), I asked her if she remembered why we used to call the Bale Road Bridge the Fail Road Bridge. She cocked her head and laughed.

“It was your old friend who thought that up. The one I had such a crush on.”

“Charlie Keen,” I said. “I haven’t seen him in a dog’s age. Except on TV. The poor man’s Sanjay Gupta.”

She whacked my arm. “Jealousy doesn’t become you, dear. Anyway, we were fishing from the bridge one day—you know, with those little poles we all had—and Charlie peered over the side and said, ‘You know, anyone who fell off this thing could not fail to kill themselves.’ It just struck us funny, and we laughed like maniacs. You don’t remember that?”

But then I did. Bale Road Bridge became Fail Road Bridge from that day on. And what old Charlie said was true enough. Bale Stream is very shallow at that point. Of course it flows into the Androscoggin (probably you can see the merging-point from Ackerman’s Field, although I never noticed), which is a lot deeper. And the Androscoggin flows to the sea. World leads onto world, doesn’t it? Each deeper than the last; this is a design all the earth proclaims.

Don and Seth came back in, Sheila’s big guy and her little guy, all dusted with snow. We had a group hug, very New Age, and then I drove home listening to Christmas carols. Really happy for the first time in ever so long.

I believe these notes…this diary…this chronicle of madness avoided (perhaps by bare inches, I think I really did almost “go over the bridge”)…can end now.

Thank God, and merry Christmas to me.

April 1, 2008

It’s April Fool’s, and the fool is me. I woke from a dream of Ackerman’s Field.

In it the sky was blue, the river was a darker blue in its valley, the snow was melting, the first green grass was poking through the remaining ribbons of white, and once more there were only seven stones. Once more there was darkness in the circle. Only a smudge for now, but it will deepen unless I take care of it.

I counted books after waking (sixty-four, a good number, even and divisible all the way down to 1—think about it), and when that didn’t turn the trick I spilled coffee onto the kitchen counter and made a diagonal. That fixed things—for now—but I will have to go out there and make another “house call.” Must not dither-dather.

Because it’s starting again.

The snow is almost gone, the summer solstice is approaching (still over the horizon but approaching), and it has started again.

I feel

God help me, I feel like a cancer patient who has been in remission and wakes one morning to discover a big fat lump in his armpit.

I can’t do this.

I must do this.

[Later]

There was still snow on the road, but I got up to “AF” all right. Left my car in the cemetery parking lot and walked. There were indeed only seven stones, as in my dream. Looked thru the viewfinder of my camera. 8 again. 8 is fate and keeps the world strait. Good deal.

For the world!

Not such a good deal for Dr. Bonsaint.

That this should be happening again; my mind groans at the prospect.

Please God don’t let it be happening again.

April 6, 2008

Took longer today to make 7 into 8, and I know I have much “long distance” work ahead of me, i.e. counting things and making diagonals and—not placing, N. was wrong about that—it’s balancing that needs to be done. It’s simbolic, like the break and whine in communion.

I’m tired, though. And the solstitch is so far away.