Outsider

by Stephen King

  ‘Not quite so bad.’ No burn on them at all, in fact; it was just on the back of his neck. Where someone had touched him out at that abandoned barn. Caressed him with just his fingertips. ‘Thanks, Sandy.’

  ‘Blonds and redheads get it the worst. If it doesn’t get better, you should get it looked at.’

  He left without replying, thinking of the man in his dream. The one lurking behind the shower curtain.

  I gave it to you, but I can take it back. Would you like me to take it back?

  He thought, It will go away on its own, like any other sunburn.

  Maybe so, but maybe not, and it really did hurt worse now. He could hardly bear to touch it, and he kept thinking of the open sores eating into his mother’s flesh. At first the cancer had crawled, but once it really took hold, it galloped. By the end it was eating into her throat and vocal cords, turning her screams into growls, but listening through the closed door of her sickroom, eleven-year-old Jack Hoskins had still been able to hear what she was telling his father: to put her out of her misery. You’d do it for a dog, she’d croaked. Why won’t you do it for me?

  ‘Just a sunburn,’ he said, starting his car. ‘That’s all it is. A fucking sunburn.’

  He needed a drink.

  11

  It was five that afternoon when a Texas Highway Patrol car drove up Rural Star Route 2 and turned into the driveway at Box 397. Lovie Bolton was on her front porch with a cigarette in her hand and her oxygen tank in its rubber-wheeled carrier beside her rocking chair.

  ‘Claude!’ she rasped. ‘We got a visitor! It’s the State Patrol! Better come on around here and see what he wants!’

  Claude was in the weedy backyard of the little shotgun house, taking in wash off the line and folding it neatly into a wicker basket. Ma’s washing machine was all right, but the dryer had shit the bed shortly before he arrived, and these days she was too short of breath to hang out the clothes herself. He meant to buy her a new dryer before he left, but kept putting it off. And now the THP, unless Ma was wrong, and she probably wasn’t. She had plenty of problems, but her eyes were fine.

  He walked around the house and saw a tall cop getting out of a black-and-white SUV. At the sight of the gold Texas logo on the driver’s side door, Claude felt his gut tighten. He hadn’t done anything for which he could be arrested in a long, long time, but that tightening was a reflex. Claude reached into his pocket and gripped his six-year NA medallion, as he often did in moments of stress, hardly aware he was doing it.

  The trooper tucked his sunglasses into his breast pocket as Ma struggled to rise from her rocker.

  ‘No, ma’am, don’t get up,’ he said. ‘I’m not worth it.’

  She cackled rustily and settled back. ‘Ain’t you some big one. What’s your name, Officer?’

  ‘Sipe, ma’am. Corporal Owen Sipe. I’m pleased to meet you.’ He shook the hand not holding the cigarette, minding the old lady’s swollen joints.

  ‘Same goes right back, sir. This is my son, Claude. He’s down from Flint City, kind of heppin me out.’

  Sipe turned to Claude, who let go of his chip and held out his own hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Bolton.’ He held onto Claude’s hand for a moment, studying it. ‘Got a little ink on your fingers, I see.’

  ‘Got to see both to get the whole message,’ Claude said. He held out the other hand. ‘I did em myself, in jail. But if you’re here to see me, you probably know that.’

  ‘CANT and MUST,’ Trooper Sipe said, ignoring the question. ‘I’ve seen finger tattoos before, but never those.’

  ‘Well, they tell a story,’ Claude said, ‘and I pass it on when I can. It’s how I make amends. I’m clean these days, but it was a hard struggle. Went to a lot of AA and NA meetings while I was locked up. At first it was just because they had doughnuts from Krispy Kreme, but eventually what they were saying took hold. I learned that every addict knows two things: he can’t use and he must use. That’s the knot in your head, see? You can’t cut it and you can’t untie it, so you have to learn to rise above it. It can be done, but you have to remember the basic situation. You must but you can’t.’

  ‘Huh,’ Sipe said. ‘Sort of a parable, isn’t it?’

  ‘These days he don’t drink nor drug,’ Lovie said from her rocker. ‘He don’t even use this shit.’ She cast the stub of her cigarette into the dirt. ‘He’s a good boy.’

  ‘I’m not here because anyone thinks he’s done something bad,’ Sipe said mildly, and Claude relaxed. A little. You never wanted to relax too much when the State Patrol swung by for an unexpected visit. ‘Got a call from Flint City, closing out a case would be my best guess, and they need you to verify something about a man named Terry Maitland.’

  Sipe brought out his phone, diddled with it, and showed Claude a picture.

  ‘Is this the belt buckle the Maitland fella was wearing the night you saw him? And don’t ask me what that means, because I sure don’t know. They just sent me out here to ask the question.’

  This was not why Sipe had been sent out, but the message from Ralph Anderson, relayed to Sipe by Captain Horace Kinney, was to make sure everything stayed friendly, with no suspicions aroused.

  Claude examined the phone, then handed it back. ‘Can’t be positive – that was a while ago – but it sure looks like it.’

  ‘Well, thank you. Thank you both.’ Sipe pocketed his phone and turned to go.

  ‘That’s it?’ Claude asked. ‘You drove all the way out here to ask one question?’

  ‘That’s the long and short of it. I guess someone really wants to know. Thank you for your time. I’ll pass this along on my way back to Austin.’

  ‘That’s a long drive, Officer,’ Lovie said. ‘Why don’t you come in first, and have a glass of sweet tea? It’s only from a mix, but it ain’t bad.’

  ‘Well, I can’t come in and sit, want to get home before dark if I can, but I’d take a taste out here, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘We don’t mind a bit. Claude, go in and get this nice man a glass of tea.’

  ‘Small glass,’ Sipe said, holding his thumb and finger a smidge apart. ‘Two swallows and I’m down the road.’

  Claude went in. Sipe leaned a shoulder against the side of the porch, looking up at Lovie Bolton, whose good-natured face was a river of wrinkles.

  ‘Your boy treats you pretty good, I guess?’

  ‘I’d be lost without him,’ Lovie declared. ‘He sends me a ’lotment every other week, and comes down when he can. Wants to get me in an old folks’ home in Austin, and I might go one of these days if he could afford it, which right now he can’t. He’s the best kind of son, Trooper Sipes: hellraiser early, trustworthy later on.’

  ‘I heard that,’ Sipe said. ‘Say, he ever take you out to the Big 7, down the road there? They make one hell of a breakfast.’

  ‘I don’t trust roadside cafés,’ she said, taking her cigarettes from the pocket of her housedress and clamping one between her dentures. ‘Got ptomaine in one over Abilene way back in ’74, and like to die. My boy takes over the cookin when he’s here. He ain’t no Emeril, but he ain’t bad. Knows his way around a skillet. Don’t burn the bacon.’ She dropped him a wink as she lit up, Sipe smiling and hoping there was a tight seal on her tank and she wasn’t going to blow them both to hell.

  ‘I bet he made you breakfast this morning,’ Sipe said.

  ‘You bet he did. Coffee, raisin toast, and scrambled eggs with plenty of butter, just the way I like em.’

  ‘Are you an early riser, ma’am? I only ask because, with the oxygen and all—’

  ‘Him and me both,’ she said. ‘Up with the sun.’

  Claude came back out with three glasses of iced tea on a tray, two tall ones and a shortie. Owen Sipe drank his in two gulps, smacked his lips, and said he had to be off. The Boltons watched him go, Lovie in her rocker, Claude sitting on the steps, frowning at the rooster-tail of dust marking the trooper’s progress back to the main road.

  ‘See how much nicer t
he cops are when you ain’t been doin nothin bad?’ Lovie asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Claude said.

  ‘Drove all the way out here just to ask about some belt buckle. Think of that!’

  ‘That wasn’t why he came, Ma.’

  ‘No? Then why?’

  ‘Not sure, but that wasn’t it.’ Claude put his glass down on the step and looked at his fingers. At CANT and MUST, the knot he had finally risen above. He stood up. ‘I better get the rest of those clothes off the line. Then I want to go over to Jorge’s and ask if I can help him out tomorrow. He’s roofin.’

  ‘You’re a good boy, Claude.’ He saw tears standing in her eyes, and was moved by them. ‘You come here and give your ma a big old hug.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Claude said, and did just that.

  12

  Ralph and Jeannie Anderson were getting ready to go to the meeting at Howie Gold’s office when Ralph’s cell phone rang. It was Horace Kinney. Ralph spoke to him while Jeannie put on her earrings and slipped into her shoes.

  ‘Thank you, Horace. I owe you one.’ He ended the call.

  Jeannie was looking at him expectantly. ‘Well?’

  ‘Horace sent a THP trooper out to the Bolton place in Marysville. He had a cover story, but what he was really there for—’

  ‘I know what he was there for.’

  ‘Uh-huh. According to Mrs Bolton, Claude cooked them breakfast around six o’clock this morning. If you saw Bolton downstairs at four—’

  ‘I saw the clock when I got up to pee,’ Jeannie said. ‘It was 4:06.’

  ‘MapQuest says the distance between Flint City and Marysville is four hundred and thirty miles. He never could have made it from here to there in time to make breakfast at six, honey.’

  ‘The mother could have been lying.’ She said it without much conviction.

  ‘Sipe – the trooper Horace sent – said he didn’t pick that up on his radar, and thinks he would’ve.’

  ‘So it’s Terry all over again,’ she said. ‘A man in two places at the same time. Because he was here, Ralph. He was.’

  Before he could answer, the doorbell rang. Ralph shrugged on a sportcoat to cover the Glock on his belt and went downstairs. District Attorney Bill Samuels stood on the front stoop, looking strangely unlike himself in jeans and a plain blue tee-shirt.

  ‘Howard called me. Said there was going to be a meeting – “an informal get-together about the Maitland business,” is how he put it – at his office, and suggested I might like to come. I thought we could go together, if that’s all right.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Ralph said, ‘but listen, Bill – who else have you told? Chief Geller? Sheriff Doolin?’

  ‘Nobody. I’m no genius, but I didn’t hit my head falling out of the dumb-tree, either.’

  Jeannie joined Ralph at the door, checking her purse. ‘Hello, Bill. I’m surprised to see you here.’

  Samuels’s smile was without humor. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m surprised to be here. This case is like a zombie that won’t stay dead.’

  ‘What does your ex think about all this?’ Ralph asked, and when Jeannie gave him a frown: ‘Just tell me if I’m stepping out of line.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve discussed it,’ Samuels said. ‘Except that’s not quite right. She discussed and I listened. She thinks I played a part in getting Maitland killed, and she’s not entirely wrong.’ He tried to smile and couldn’t quite make it. ‘But how were we to know, Ralph? Tell me that. It was a slam-dunk, wasn’t it? Looking back … knowing all we did … can you honestly say you would have done anything different?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ralph said. ‘I wouldn’t have arrested him in front of the whole fucking town, and I would have made sure he went into the courthouse by the back door. Come on, let’s go. We’re going to be late.’

  MACY’S TELLS GIMBELS

  July 25th

  1

  As it turned out, Holly did not fly business class, although she could have if she had opted for the 10:15 Delta flight, which would have put her in Cap City at 12:30. Because she wanted some extra time in Ohio, however, she booked an arduous three-stage trip on puddle-jumpers that would probably bounce her all over the uneasy July air. Cramped and not particularly pleasant, but bearable. What she found less bearable was the knowledge that she wouldn’t arrive in Flint City until six PM, and that was if all her arrangements worked out perfectly. The meeting at Attorney Gold’s office was scheduled for seven, and if there was one thing Holly hated above all others, it was being late for a scheduled appointment. Being late was the wrong way to get off on the right foot.

  She packed her few things, checked out of the hotel, and drove the thirty miles to Regis. She went first to the house where Heath Holmes had been staying with his mother on his vacation. It was closed up, the windows boarded across, likely because vandals had been using them for target practice. On the lawn, which badly needed mowing, was a sign that read FOR SALE CONTACT FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF DAYTON.

  Holly looked at the house, knew that the local kids would soon be whispering that it was haunted (if they weren’t already), and mused on the nature of tragedy. Like measles, mumps, or rubella, tragedy was contagious. Unlike those diseases, there was no vaccine. The death of Frank Peterson in Flint City had infected his unfortunate family and spread through the entire town. She doubted if that was quite the case in this suburban community, where fewer people had long-term ties, but the Holmes family was certainly gone; nothing left of them but this empty house.

  She debated taking a photo of the boarded-up house with the FOR SALE sign in the foreground – a picture of sorrow and loss if there ever was one – and decided not to. Some of the people she was going to meet might understand, might feel those things, but most of them probably would not. To them it would just be a picture.

  She drove from the Holmes residence to the Peaceful Rest Cemetery, on the outskirts of town. Here she found the family reunited: father, mother, and only son. There were no flowers, and the stone marking the resting place of Heath Holmes had been pushed over. She imagined the same thing might have happened to Terry Maitland’s stone. Sorrow was catching; so was anger. His was a small marker, nothing on it but the name, the dates, and a bit of dried scum that might have been the residue of a thrown egg. With some effort, she set it up again. She had no illusions that it would stay that way, but a person did what a person could.

  ‘You didn’t kill anyone, Mr Holmes, did you? You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ She found some posies on a nearby grave, and borrowed a few to scatter on Heath’s. Picked flowers were a poor remembrance – they died – but better than nothing. ‘You’re stuck with it, though. Nobody here would ever believe the truth. I don’t think the people I’m going to meet tonight will believe it, either.’

  She would try to convince them, just the same. A person did what a person could, whether it was setting up gravestones or trying to convince twenty-first-century men and women that there were monsters in the world, and their greatest advantage was the unwillingness of rational people to believe.

  Holly looked around and saw a vault on a nearby low hill (in this part of Ohio, all the hills were low). She walked to it, gazed at the name chiseled in the granite over the lintel – GRAVES, how appropriate – and walked down the three stone steps. She peered inside at the stone benches, where one could sit and meditate on the Graves of yesteryear here entombed. Had the outsider hidden here after his filthy work was done? She didn’t believe so, because anyone – maybe even one of the vandals who had pushed over Heath Holmes’s stone – might wander over for a peek inside. Also, the sun would shine into the meditation area for an hour or two in the afternoons, giving it a bit of fugitive warmth. If the outsider was what she believed he was, he would prefer darkness. Not always, no, but for certain periods of time. Certain crucial periods. She hadn’t finished her research yet, but she was almost sure of that much. And something else: murder might be its life’s work, but sorrow was its food. Sorrow and anger.<
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  No, it hadn’t taken its rest in this vault, but she believed it had been in this cemetery, perhaps even before the deaths of Mavis Holmes and her son. Holly thought (she knew it might only be a fancy) she could smell its presence. Brady Hartsfield had had that same smell about him, the stink of the unnatural. Bill had known it; the nurses who had cared for Hartsfield had known it, too, even though he was supposedly in a state of semi-catatonia.

  She walked slowly to the little parking lot outside the cemetery gates with her bag banging against her hip. Her Prius waited alone in the sizzling summer heat. She walked past it, then turned a slow three-sixty, studying every aspect of the surrounding area. She was close to farm country – she could smell the fertilizer – but this was a transitional belt of industrial abandonment, ugly and barren. There would be no pictures of it in the Chamber of Commerce promotional brochures (assuming Regis had a Chamber of Commerce). There were no points of interest. There was nothing to attract the eye; it was repelled instead, as if the very earth was saying go away, there is nothing for you here, goodbye, don’t come again. Well, there was the cemetery, but few people would visit Peaceful Rest once winter came, and the north wind would freeze those few away after the briefest of visits to make their manners to the dead.

  Yonder to the north were train tracks, but the rails were rusty and there were weeds growing up between the crossties. There was a long-deserted train station, its windows boarded up like those of the Holmes house. Beyond it, on a spur, stood two lonely boxcars, their wheels buried in vines. They looked as if they had been there since the Vietnam era. Near the deserted station were long-abandoned storage facilities and what she assumed were obsolete repair sheds. Beyond those, a broken factory stood hip-deep in sunflowers and bushes. A swastika had been spray-painted on crumbling pink bricks that had been red a long, long time ago. On one side of the highway that would take her back to town, a leaning billboard proclaimed ABORTION STOPS A BEATING HEART! CHOOSE LIFE! On the other side was a long low building with a sign on its roof reading SPE DY ROBO CAR WASH. In its empty parking lot was another sign, one she’d seen once already today: FOR SALE CONTACT FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF DAYTON.