The Outsider_A Novel

by Stephen King

  What if he’s lying? What if he can give it, but not take it away? Or what if it’s not really there at all? What if he’s not there? What if you’re just crazy?

  These thoughts he also pushed away. He opened the gun case, took out the Winchester, and mounted the sight. It put the parking lot and the entrance to the cave right in front of him. If they came, they would be as big as the ticket booth he’d gone around.

  Jack crawled into the shade of an overhanging rock (first checking for snakes, scorpions, or other wildlife) and had a drink of water, swallowing a couple of pep-pills with it. He added a toot from the four-gram bottle Cody had sold him (no freebies when it came to Colombian marching powder). Now it was just a stakeout, like dozens he’d been on during his career as a cop. He waited, dozing intermittently with the Winchester laid across his lap but always alert enough to detect movement, until the sun was low in the sky. Then he got to his feet, wincing at the stiffness in his muscles.

  “Not coming,” he said. “At least not today.”

  No, the man with the finger tattoos agreed. (Or Jack imagined he agreed.) But you’ll be back here tomorrow, won’t you?

  Indeed he would. For a week, if that was what it took. A month, even.

  He headed back down, moving carefully; the last thing he needed after hours in the hot sun was a busted ankle. He stowed his rifle in the lockbox, drank some more water from the bottle he’d left in the truck’s cab (it was now tepid going on hot) and drove back to the highway, this time turning toward Tippit, where he might be able to buy some supplies: sunblock for sure. And vodka. Not too much, he had a responsibility to fulfil, but maybe enough so he could lie down on his crappy swaybacked bed without thinking about how that shoe had been pushed into his hand. Jesus, why had he ever gone out to that fucking barn in Canning Township?

  He passed Claude Bolton’s car going back the other way. Neither noticed the other.

  9

  “All right,” Lovie Bolton said when Claude was down the road and out of sight. “What’s this all about? What is it you didn’t want my boy to hear?”

  Yune ignored her for the moment, turning to the others. “The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office sent a couple of deputies out to look at the places Holly photographed. They found a pile of bloody clothes in that abandoned factory with the swastika spray-painted on the side. One of the items was an orderly’s jacket with a tag reading PROPERTY OF HMU sewn into it.”

  “Heisman Memory Unit,” Howie said. “When they analyze the blood on the clothes, what do you want to bet it turns out to be from one or both of the Howard girls?”

  “Plus any fingerprints they find will belong to Heath Holmes,” Alec added. “They may be blurry, if he’d started his change.”

  “Or not,” Holly said. “We don’t know how long the change takes, or even if it’s the same every time.”

  “The sheriff up there has questions,” Yune said. “I put him off. Considering what we might be dealing with, I hope I can put him off forever.”

  “You folks need to stop talking amongst yourselves and fill me in,” Lovie said. “Please. I’m worried about my boy. He’s as innocent as those other two men, and they are both dead.”

  “I understand your concern,” Ralph said. “One minute. Holly, when you were filling the Boltons in on the ride from the airport, did you tell them about the graveyards? You didn’t, did you?”

  “No. Just hit the high spots, you said. So that’s what I did.”

  “Oh, hold it,” Lovie said. “Just hold the phone. There was a movie I saw when I was a girl in Laredo, one of those wrestling women movies—”

  “Mexican Wrestling Women Meet the Monster,” Howie said. “We saw it. Ms. Gibney brought a copy. Not Academy Award material, but interesting, just the same.”

  “That was one of the ones Rosita Muñoz was in,” Lovie said. “The cholita luchadora. We all wanted to be her, me and my friends. I even dressed up like her one Halloween. My mother made my costume. That movie about the cuco was a scary one. There was a professor . . . or a scientist . . . I don’t remember which, but El Cuco took his face, and when the luchadoras finally tracked him down, he was living in a crypt or a vault in the local graveyard. Isn’t that how the story went?”

  “Yes,” Holly said, “because that’s part of the legend, at least the Spanish version of it. The cuco sleeps with the dead. Like vampires are supposed to do.”

  “If this thing actually exists,” Alec said, “it is a vampire, at least sort of. It needs blood to make the next link in the chain. To perpetuate itself.”

  Once again Ralph thought, Do you people hear yourselves? He liked Holly Gibney a lot, but he also wished he’d never met her. Thanks to her there was a war going on in his head, and he wished mightily for a truce.

  Holly turned to Lovie. “That empty factory where the Ohio police found the bloody clothes is close to the graveyard where Heath Holmes and his parents are buried. More clothes were found in a barn not far from an old graveyard where some of Terry Maitland’s ancestors are buried. So here’s the question: Is there a graveyard close to here?”

  Lovie considered. They waited. At last she said, “There’s a boneyard in Plainville, but nothing in Marysville. Hell, we don’t even have a church. There used to be one, Our Lady of Forgiveness, but it burned down twenty years ago.”

  “Shit,” Howie muttered.

  “How about a family plot?” Holly asked. “Sometimes people bury on their property, don’t they?”

  “Well, I don’t know about other folks,” the old lady said, “but we never had one. My momma and daddy are buried back in Laredo, and their momma and daddy, too. Way back it’d be Indiana, which is where my people migrated down from after the Civil War.”

  “What about your husband?” Howie asked.

  “George? All his people were from Austin, and that’s where he’s buried, right next to his parents. I used to take the bus once in a while to visit him, usually on his birthday, took flowers and all, but since I got this goddam COPD, I haven’t been.”

  “Well, I guess that’s that,” Yune said.

  Lovie seemed not to hear. “I could sing, you know, back when I still had my wind. And I played guitar. I came to Austin from Laredo after high school, because of the music. Nashville South, they call it. I got a job in the paper factory on Brazos Street while I was waitin for my big break at the Carousel or the Broken Spoke or wherever. Makin envelopes. I never did get my big break, but I married the foreman. That was George. Never regretted it until he retired.”

  “I think we’re drifting off the subject,” Howie said.

  “Let her talk,” Ralph said. He had that little tingle, the feel of something coming. Still over the horizon, but yes, coming. “Go on, Mrs. Bolton.”

  She looked doubtfully at Howie, but when Holly nodded and smiled, Lovie smiled back, lit another cigarette, and went on.

  “Well, after he got his thirty in and had his pension, George moved us out here to the back of beyond. Claude was just twelve—we had him late, long after we decided God wasn’t going to give us no children. Claude never liked Marysville, missed the bright lights and his worthless friends—bad company was always my boy’s downfall—and I didn’t care for it much either at first, although I have come to enjoy the peace of it. When you get old, peace is about all you want. You folks might not believe that now, but you’ll find out. And that idea of a family plot ain’t such a bad one, now I think of it. I could do worse than going into the ground out back, but I s’pose Claude will end up dragging my meat and bones to Austin, so I can lay with my husband, like I did in life. Won’t be long now, neither.”

  She coughed, looked at her cigarette with distaste, and buried it with the others in the overfilled ashtray, where it smoldered balefully.

  “You know why we happened to end up in Marysville? George had the idea he was going to raise alpacas. After they died, which didn’t take long, it was going to be goldendoodles. If you don’t know, goldendoodles are a cross bet
ween golden retrievers and poodles. You think eeva-lution ever approved of a mix like that? I goddam doubt it. His brother put the notion in his head. No greater fool than Roger Bolton ever walked the earth, but George thought their fortunes was made. Roger moved down here with his family and the two of em went partners. Anyway, the goldendoodle pups died, just like the alpacas. George and me were a little tight for money after that, but we had enough to get by. Roger, though, he poured his whole savings into that damn fool scheme. So he looked around for work and . . .”

  She stopped, an expression of amazement dawning on her face.

  “What about Roger?” Ralph asked.

  “Damn,” Lovie Bolton said. “I’m old, but that’s no excuse. It was right in front of my face.”

  Ralph leaned forward and took one of her hands. “What are you talking about, Lovie?” Going to her first name, as he always eventually did in the interrogation room.

  “Roger Bolton and his two sons—Claude’s cousins—are buried not four miles from here, along with four other men. Or maybe ’twas five. And those children, of course, them twins.” She shook her head slowly back and forth. “I was so mad when Claude got six months in Gatesville for stealing. And ashamed. That’s when he started using drugs, you know. But I saw later it was God’s mercy. Because if he’d been here, he would have been with them. Not his dad, by then George had already had two heart attacks and couldn’t go, but Claude . . . yes, he would have been with them.”

  “Where?” Alec asked. He was leaning forward now, staring intently.

  “The Marysville Hole,” she said. “That’s where those men died, and that’s where they remain.”

  10

  She told them it had been like the part in Tom Sawyer when Tom and Becky get lost in the cave, only Tom and Becky eventually got out. The Jamieson twins, just eleven years old, never did. Nor did those who tried to rescue them. The Marysville Hole took them all.

  “That’s where your brother-in-law got work after the dog business failed?” Ralph asked.

  She nodded. “He’d done some explorin there—not in the public part, but on the Ahiga side—so when he applied, they hired him on as a guide quick as winkin. Him and the other guides used to take tourists down in groups of a dozen or so. It’s the biggest cave in all of Texas, but the most popular part, what folks really wanted to see, was the main chamber. It was quite a place, all right. Like a cathedral. They called it the Chamber of Sound, because of the what-do-you-call-em, acoustics. One of the guides would stand at the bottom, four or five hundred feet down, and whisper the Pledge of Allegiance, and the people at the top would hear every word. Echoes seemed to go on forever. Also, the walls were covered with Indian drawings, I forget the word for em—”

  “Pictographs,” Yune said.

  “That’s it. You got a Coleman gas lamp when you went in, so you could look at em, or up at the stalactites hangin down from the ceiling. There was an iron spiral staircase that went all the way to the bottom, four hundred steps or more, around and around and around. It’s still there, I shouldn’t wonder, although I wouldn’t trust it these days. It’s damp down there, and iron rusts. Only time I took them stairs, it made me dizzy as hell, and I wasn’t even lookin up at the stalactites, like most of em. You want to believe I took the elevator back to the top. Goin down is one thing, but only a pure-d fool climbs up four hundred steps if she don’t have to.

  “The bottom was two, maybe three hundred yards across. There were colored lights set up to show off all the mineral streaks in the rocks, there was a snack bar, and there were six or eight passageways to explore. They had names. Can’t recall all of them, but there was the Navajo Art Gallery—where there were more pictographs—and the Devil’s Slide, and Snake’s Belly, where you had to bend over and even crawl in places. Can you imagine?”

  “Yes,” Holly said. “Oough.”

  “Those were the main ones. There were even more leadin off from them, but they were closed off, because the Hole isn’t just one cave but dozens of em, goin down and down, some never explored.”

  “Easy to get lost,” Alec said.

  “You bet. Now here’s what happened. There were two or three openins leadin away from the Snake’s Belly passageway that weren’t boarded over or barred up, because they were considered too small to bother with.”

  “Only they weren’t too small for the twins,” Ralph guessed.

  “That’s the nail, sir, and you hit it on the head. Carl and Calvin Jamieson. Couple of pint-sizers lookin for trouble, and they sure found it. They were with the party that went into Snake’s Belly, right behind their ma and pa at the end of the line, but not with em when they came out. The parents . . . well, I don’t have to tell you how they took on, do I? My brother-in-law wasn’t the one leadin the group the Jamieson family was a part of, but he was in the search party that went after em. Headed it up would be my guess, although I have no way of knowin.”

  “His sons were also part of it?” Howie asked. “Claude’s cousins?”

  “Yessir. The boys worked part-time at the Hole themselves, and came on the run as soon as they heard. Lots of folks came, because the news spread like wildfire. At first it looked like it wasn’t going to be no problem. They could hear the boys callin from all the openins leadin off from the Snake’s Belly, and they knew exactly which one they went into, because when one of the guides shone his flashlight, they could see a little plastic Chief Ahiga Mr. Jamieson bought one of the boys in the gift shop. Musta fallen out of his pocket while he was crawlin. As I say, they could hear em yellin, but couldn’t none of the grown-ups fit in that hole. Couldn’t even reach the toy. They hollered for the boys to come to the sound of their voices, and if there wasn’t room to turn around to just back up. They shone their lights in and waved em around, and at first it sounded like the kids were gettin closer, but then their voices started to fade, and faded some more, until finally they were gone. You ask me, they were never close to begin with.”

  “Tricky acoustics,” Yune said.

  “Sí, señor. So then Roger said they should go around to the Ahiga side, which he knew pretty well from his explorin, what they call spee-lunkin. Once they got there, they heard those boys again, clear as day, cryin and yellin, so they got rope and lights from the equipment buildin and went in to fetch em out. Seemed like the right thing, but it was the end of em, instead.”

  “What happened?” Yune asked. “Do you know? Does anybody?”

  “Well, like I told you, that place is a goddam maze. They left one man behind to pay out rope and tie on more in case they needed it. That was Ev Brinkley. He left town shortly after. Went to Austin. Brokenhearted, he was . . . but at least alive, and able to walk in the sunlight. Those others . . .” Lovie sighed. “No more sunlight for them.”

  Ralph thought about that—the horror of it—and saw what he felt on the faces of the others.

  “Ev was down to his last hundred feet of free-rope when he heard somethin he said sounded like a cherry-bomb a kid set off in a tawlit bowl with the lid shut. What musta happened is some goddam fool fired a pistol, hopin to lead the boys to the rescue party, and there was a cave-in. It wasn’t Roger done that, I’d bet a thousand dollars it wasn’t. Old Rog was a fool about many things, especially those dogs, but never fool enough to fire a gun in a cave, where the ricochet could go anywhere.”

  “Or where the sound could bring down a piece of ceiling,” Alec said. “It must have been like firing a shotgun to start an avalanche up in the high country.”

  “So they were crushed,” Ralph said.

  Lovie sighed and resettled her cannula, which had come askew. “Nawp. Might’ve been better if they were. At least it woulda been quick. But people in the big cavern—the Chamber of Sound—could hear em callin for help, just like those lost lads. By then there were sixty or seventy men and women out there, eager to do whatever they could. My George had to be there—his brother and his nephews were among those trapped, after all—and finally I gave up on keepin him hom
e. I went with him, to make sure he didn’t try to do some damn fool thing like tryin to pitch in. That would’ve killed him for sure.”

  “And when this accident happened,” Ralph said, “Claude was in the reformatory?”

  “Gatesville Trainin School is what I believe they called it, but yes, a reformatory’s what it was.”

  Holly had produced a yellow legal pad from her carry-bag, and was bent over it, taking notes.

  “By the time I got to the Hole with George, it was dark. The parkin lot’s a good size, but it was damn near full. They’d set up big lights on posts, and with all the trucks and people scurryin around, it was like they were makin a Hollywood movie. They went in through the Ahiga entrance carryin ten-cell flashlights, wearin hardhats and puffy coats like flak jackets. They followed the rope to the cave-in. A long way, some of it through standin water. The rockfall was pretty bad. Took em all that night and half the next morning to clear it enough to get past. By then, people in the big cave couldn’t hear the lost ones callin no more.”

  “Your brother-in-law’s bunch wasn’t waiting for rescue on the other side, I take it,” Yune said.

  “No, they were gone. Roger or one of the others might have thought he knew a way back to the big cave, or they might’ve been afraid more of the ceiling was gonna cave in. No way to tell. But they left a trail, at least to start with; marks on the walls and litter on the floor, coins and screws of paper. One man even left his bowling card from the Tippit Lanes. One more punch and he’d’ve got himself a free string. That was in the paper.”

  “Like Hansel and Gretel, leaving breadcrumbs behind,” Alec mused.

  “Then everything just stopped,” Lovie said. “Right in the middle of a gallery. The marks, the dropped coins, the balls of paper. Just stopped.”