by Stephen King
“I over-reacted. And dinner’s on me.”
“Like hell it is. And don’t look at him. Look at me. Smile, Janey.”
Jane smiled. Nodded. Wondered what in God’s name was going on now.
“You were watching his hands,” Susy said, and laughed. Jane joined in. “I was watching what happened to his shirt when he bent over to get his bag. He’s got enough stuff under there to stock a Woolworth’s notions counter. Only I don’t think he’s carrying the kind of stuff you can buy at Woolworth’s.”
Jane threw back her head and laughed again, feeling like a puppet. “How do we handle it?” Susy had five years’ seniority on her, and Jane, who only a minute ago had felt she had the situation under some desperate kind of control, now only felt glad to have Susy beside her.
“We don’t. Tell the Captain while we’re taxiing in. The Captain speaks to customs. Your friend there gets in line like everyone else, except then he gets pulled out of line by some men who escort him to a little room. It’s going to be the first in a very long succession of little rooms for him, I think.”
“Jesus.” Jane was smiling, but chills, alternately hot and cold, were racing through her.
She hit the pop-release on her harness when the reverse thrusters began to wind down, handed the Thermos to Susy, then got up and rapped on the cockpit door.
Not a terrorist but a drug-smuggler. Thank God for small favors. Yet in a way she hated it. He had been cute.
Not much, but a little.
8
He still doesn’t see, the gunslinger thought with anger and dawning desperation. Gods!
Eddie had bent to get the papers he needed for the ritual, and when he looked up the army woman was staring at him, her eyes bulging, her cheeks as white as the paper things on the backs of the seats. The silver tube with the red top, which he had at first taken for some kind of canteen, was apparently a weapon. She was holding it up between her breasts now. Roland thought that in a moment or two she would either throw it or spin off the red top and shoot him with it.
Then she relaxed and buckled her harness even though the thump told both the gunslinger and the prisoner the air-carriage had already landed. She turned to the army woman she was sitting with and said something. The other woman laughed and nodded, but if that was a real laugh, the gunslinger thought, he was a river-toad.
The gunslinger wondered how the man whose mind had become temporary home for the gunslinger’s own ka, could be so stupid. Some of it was what he was putting into his body, of course . . . one of this world’s versions of devil-weed. Some, but not all. He was not soft and unobservant like the others, but in time he might be.
They are as they are because they live in the light, the gunslinger thought suddenly. That light of civilization you were taught to adore above all other things. They live in a world which has not moved on.
If this was what people became in such a world, Roland was not sure he didn’t prefer the dark. “That was before the world moved on,” people said in his own world, and it was always said in tones of bereft sadness . . . but it was, perhaps, sadness without thought, without consideration.
She thought I/he—meant to grab a weapon when I/he—bent down to get the papers. When she saw the papers she relaxed and did what everyone else did before the carriage came down to the ground again. Now she and her friend are talking and laughing but their faces— her face especially, the face of the woman with the metal tube—are not right. They are talking, all right, but they are only pretending to laugh . . . and that is because what they are talking about is I/him.
The air-carriage was now moving along what seemed a long concrete road, one of many. Mostly he watched the women, but from the edges of his vision the gunslinger could see other air-carriages moving here and there along other roads. Some lumbered; some moved with incredible speed, not like carriages at all but like projectiles fired from guns or cannons, preparing to leap into the air. As desperate as his own situation had become, part of him wanted very much to come forward and turn his head so he could see these vehicles as they leaped into the sky. They were man-made but every bit as fabulous as the stories of the Grand Featherex which had supposedly once lived in the distant (and probably mythical) kingdom of Garlan—more fabulous, perhaps, simply because these were man-made.
The woman who had brought him the popkin unfastened her harness (this less than a minute since she had fastened it) and went forward to a small door. That’s where the driver sits, the gunslinger thought, but when the door was opened and she stepped in he saw it apparently took three drivers to operate the air-carriage, and even the brief glimpse he was afforded of what seemed like a million dials and levers and lights made him understand why.
The prisoner was looking at all but seeing nothing—Cort would have first sneered, then driven him through the nearest wall. The prisoner’s mind was completely occupied with grabbing the bag under the seat and his light jacket from the overhead bin . . . and facing the ordeal of the ritual.
The prisoner saw nothing; the gunslinger saw everything.
The woman thought him a thief or a madman. He—or perhaps it was I, yes, that’s likely enough—did something to make her think that. She changed her mind, and then the other woman changed it back . . . only now I think they know what’s really wrong. They know he’s going to try to profane the ritual.
Then, in a thunderclap, he saw the rest of his problem. First, it wasn’t just a matter of taking the bags into his world as he had the coin; the coin hadn’t been stuck to the prisoner’s body with the glue-string the prisoner had wrapped around and around his upper body to hold the bags tight to his skin. This glue-string was only part of his problem. The prisoner hadn’t missed the temporary disappearance of one coin among many, but when he realized that whatever it was he had risked his life for was suddenly gone, he was surely going to raise the racks . . . and what then?
It was more than possible that the prisoner would begin to behave in a manner so irrational that it would get him locked away in gaol as quickly as being caught in the act of profanation. The loss would be bad enough; for the bags under his arms to simply melt away to nothing would probably make him think he really had gone mad.
The air-carriage, ox-like now that it was on the ground, labored its way through a left turn. The gunslinger realized that he had no time for the luxury of further thought. He had to do more than come forward; he must make contact with Eddie Dean.
Right now.
9
Eddie tucked his declaration card and passport in his breast pocket. The steel wire was now turning steadily around his guts, sinking in deeper and deeper, making his nerves spark and sizzle. And suddenly a voice spoke in his head.
Not a thought; a voice.
Listen to me, fellow. Listen carefully. And if you would remain safe, let your face show nothing which might further rouse the suspicions of those army women. God knows they’re suspicious enough already.
Eddie first thought he was still wearing the airline earphones and picking up some weird transmission from the cockpit. But the airline headphones had been picked up five minutes ago.
His second thought was that someone was standing beside him and talking. He almost snapped his head to the left, but that was absurd. Like it or not, the raw truth was that the voice had come from inside his head.
Maybe he was receiving some sort of transmission—AM, FM, or VHF on the fillings in his teeth. He had heard of such th—
Straighten up, maggot! They’re suspicious enough without you looking as if you’ve gone crazy!
Eddie sat up fast, as if he had been whacked. That voice wasn’t Henry’s, but it was so much like Henry’s when they had been just a couple of kids growing up in the Projects, Henry eight years older, the sister who had been between them now only a ghost of memory; Selina had been struck and killed by a car when Eddie was two and Henry ten. That rasping tone of command came out whenever Henry saw him doing something that might end with Eddie occupying a pine
box long before his time . . . as Selina had.
What in the blue fuck is going on here?
You’re not hearing voices that aren’t there, the voice inside his head returned. No, not Henry’s voice—older, dryer . . . stronger. But like Henry’s voice . . . and impossible not to believe. That’s the first thing. You’re not going crazy. I AM another person.
This is telepathy?
Eddie was vaguely aware that his face was completely expressionless. He thought that, under the circumstances, that ought to qualify him for the Best Actor of the Year Academy Award. He looked out the window and saw the plane closing in on the Delta section of Kennedy’s International Arrivals Building.
I don’t know that word. But I do know that those army women know you are carrying . . .
There was a pause. A feeling—odder beyond telling—of phantom fingers rummaging through his brain as if he were a living card catalogue.
. . . heroin or cocaine. I can’t tell which except—except it must be cocaine because you’re carrying the one you don’t take to buy the one you do.
“What army women?” Eddie muttered in a low voice. He was completely unaware that he was speaking aloud. “What in the hell are you talking ab—”
That feeling of being slapped once more . . . so real he felt his head ring with it.
Shut your mouth, you damned jackass!
All right, all right! Christ!
Now that feeling of rummaging fingers again.
Army stewardesses, the alien voice replied. Do you understand me? I have no time to con your every thought, prisoner!
“What did you—” Eddie began, then shut his mouth. What did you call me?
Never mind. Just listen. Time is very, very short. They know. The army stewardesses know you have this cocaine.
How could they? That’s ridiculous!
I don’t know how they came by their knowledge, and it doesn’t matter. One of them told the drivers. The drivers will tell whatever priests perform this ceremony, this Clearing of Customs—
The language of the voice in his head was arcane, the terms so off-kilter they were almost cute . . . but the message came through loud and clear. Although his face remained expressionless, Eddie’s teeth came together with a painful click and he drew a hot little hiss in through them.
The voice was saying the game was over. He hadn’t even gotten off the plane and the game was already over.
But this wasn’t real. No way this could be real. It was just his mind, doing a paranoid little jig at the last minute, that was all. He would ignore it. Just ignore it and it would go awa—
You will NOT ignore it or you will go to jail and I will die! the voice roared.
Who in the name of God are you? Eddie asked reluctantly, fearfully, and inside his head he heard someone or something let out a deep and gusty sigh of relief.
10
He believes, the gunslinger thought. Thank all the gods that are or ever were, he believes!
11
The plane stopped. The FASTEN SEAT BELTS light went out. The jetway rolled forward and bumped against the forward port door with a gentle thump.
They had arrived.
12
There is a place where you can put it while you perform the Clearing of Customs, the voice said. A safe place. Then, when you are away, you can get it again and take it to this man Balazar.
People were standing up now, getting things out of the overhead bins and trying to deal with coats which were, according to the cockpit announcement, too warm to wear.
Get your bag. Get your jacket. Then go into the privy again.
Pr—
Oh. Bathroom. Head.
If they think I’ve got dope they’ll think I’m trying to dump it.
But Eddie understood that part didn’t matter. They wouldn’t exactly break down the door, because that might scare the passengers. And they’d know you couldn’t flush two pounds of coke down an airline toilet and leave no trace. Not unless the voice was really telling the truth . . . that there was some safe place. But how could there be?
Never mind, damn you! MOVE!
Eddie moved. Because he had finally come alive to the situation. He was not seeing all Roland, with his many years and his training of mingled torture and precision, could see, but he could see the faces of the stews—the real faces, the ones behind the smiles and the helpful passing of garment bags and cartons stowed in the forward closet. He could see the way their eyes flicked to him, whiplash quick, again and again.
He got his bag. He got his jacket. The door to the jetway had been opened, and people were already moving up the aisle. The door to the cockpit was open, and here was the Captain, also smiling . . . but also looking at the passengers in first class who were still getting their things together, spotting him—no, targeting him—and then looking away again, nodding to someone, tousling a youngster’s head.
He was cold now. Not cold turkey, just cold. He didn’t need the voice in his head to make him cold. Cold—sometimes that was okay. You just had to be careful you didn’t get so cold you froze.
Eddie moved forward, reached the point where a left turn would take him into the jetway—and then suddenly put his hand to his mouth.
“I don’t feel well,” he murmured. “Excuse me.” He moved the door to the cockpit, which slightly blocked the door to the first class head, and opened the bathroom door on the right.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to exit the plane,” the pilot said sharply as Eddie opened the bathroom door. “It’s—”
“I believe I’m going to vomit, and I don’t want to do it on your shoes,” Eddie said, “or mine, either.”
A second later he was in with the door locked. The Captain was saying something. Eddie couldn’t make it out, didn’t want to make it out. The important thing was that it was just talk, not yelling, he had been right, no one was going to start yelling with maybe two hundred and fifty passengers still waiting to deplane from the single forward door. He was in, he was temporarily safe . . . but what good was it going to do him?
If you’re there, he thought, you better do something very quick, whoever you are.
For a terrible moment there was nothing at all. That was a short moment, but in Eddie Dean’s head it seemed to stretch out almost forever, like the Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy Henry had sometimes bought him in the summer when they were kids; if he were bad, Henry beat the shit out of him, if he were good, Henry bought him Turkish Taffy. That was the way Henry handled his heightened responsibilities during summer vacation.
God, oh Christ, I imagined it all, oh Jesus, how crazy could I have b—
Get ready, a grim voice said. I can’t do it alone. I can COME FORWARD but I can’t make you COME THROUGH. You have to do it with me. Turn around.
Eddie was suddenly seeing through two pairs of eyes, feeling with two sets of nerves (but not all the nerves of this other person were here; parts of the other were gone, freshly gone, screaming with pain), sensing with ten senses, thinking with two brains, his blood beating with two hearts.
He turned around. There was a hole in the side of the bathroom, a hole that looked like a doorway. Through it he could see a gray, grainy beach and waves the color of old athletic socks breaking upon it.
He could hear the waves.
He could smell salt, a smell as bitter as tears in his nose.
Go through.
Someone was thumping on the door to the bathroom, telling him to come out, that he must deplane at once.
Go through, damn you!
Eddie, moaning, stepped toward the doorway . . . stumbled . . . and fell into another world.
13
He got slowly to his feet, aware that he had cut his right palm on an edge of shell. He looked stupidly at the blood welling across his lifeline, then saw another man rising slowly to his feet on his right.
Eddie recoiled, his feelings of disorientation and dreamy dislocation suddenly supplanted by sharp terror; this man was dead and didn’t know it.
His face was gaunt, the skin stretched over the bones of his face like strips of cloth wound around slim angles of metal almost to the point where the cloth must tear itself open. The man’s skin was livid save for hectic spots of red high on each cheekbone, on the neck below the angle of jaw on either side, and a single circular mark between the eyes like a child’s effort to replicate a Hindu caste symbol.
Yet his eyes—blue, steady, sane—were alive and full of terrible and tenacious vitality. He wore dark clothes of some homespun material; the shirt, its sleeves rolled up, was a black faded almost to gray, the pants something that looked like bluejeans. Gunbelts crisscrossed his hips, but the loops were almost all empty. The holsters held guns that looked like .45s—but .45s of an incredibly antique vintage. The smooth wood of their handgrips seemed to glow with their own inner light.
Eddie, who didn’t know he had any intention of speaking—anything to say—heard himself saying something nevertheless. “Are you a ghost?”
“Not yet,” the man with the guns croaked. “The devil-weed. Cocaine. Whatever you call it. Take off your shirt.”
“Your arms—” Eddie had seen them. The arms of the man who looked like the extravagant sort of gunslinger one would only see in a spaghetti western were glowing with lines of bright, baleful red. Eddie knew well enough what lines like that meant. They meant blood-poisoning. They meant the devil was doing more than breathing up your ass; he was already crawling up the sewers that led to your pump.
“Never mind my fucking arms!” the pallid apparition told him.
“Take off your shirt and get rid of it!”
He heard waves; he heard the lonely hoot of a wind that knew no obstruction; he saw this mad dying man and nothing else but desolation; yet from behind him he heard the murmuring voices of deplaning passengers and a steady muffled pounding.
