The Waste Lands dt-3

by Stephen King

  Jake moaned.

  Snap out of it! What’s wrong with you?

  He didn’t know. He only knew he was supposed to be lying in the street right now, getting ready to die while the fat woman screamed and the guy in the nailhead worsted suit threw up and the man in black pushed through the gathering crowd.

  And in part of his mind, that did seem to be happening.

  The faintness began to return. Jake suddenly dropped his lunch sack to the pavement and slapped himself across the face as hard as he could. A woman on her way to work gave him a queer look. Jake ignored her. He left his lunch lying on the sidewalk and plunged into the intersection, also ignoring the red DONT WALK light, which had begun to stutter on and off again. It didn’t matter now. Death had approached… and then passed by without a second glance. It hadn’t been meant to happen that way, and on the deepest level of his existence he knew that, but it had.

  Maybe now he would live forever.

  The thought made him feel like screaming all over again.

  6

  His HEAD HAD CLEARED a little by the time he got to school, and his mind had gone to work trying to convince him that nothing was wrong, really nothing at all. Maybe something a little weird had happened, some sort of psychic flash, a momentary peek into one possible future, but so what? No big deal, right? The idea was actually sort of cool-the kind of thing they were always printing in the weird supermarket newspapers Greta Shaw liked to read when she was sure Jake’s mother wasn’t around-papers like the National Enquirer and Inside View. Except, of course, in those papers the psychic flash was always a kind of tactical nuclear strike-a woman who dreamed of a plane crash and changed her reservations, or a guy who dreamed his brother was being held prisoner in a Chinese fortune cookie factory and it turned out to be true. When your psychic flash consisted of knowing that a Kiss song was going to play next on the radio, that a fat lady had a doll wrapped in a red towel in her Bloomingdale’s bag, and that a pretzel vendor was going to drink a bottle of Yoo-Hoo instead of a can, how big a deal could it be?

  Forget it, he advised himself. It’s over.

  A great idea, except by period three he knew it wasn’t over; it was just beginning. He sat in pre-algebra, watching Mr. Knopf solving simple equations on the board, and realized with dawning horror that a whole new set of memories was surfacing in his mind. It was like watching strange objects float slowly toward the surface of a muddy lake.

  I’m in a place I don’t know, he thought. I mean, I will know it-or would have known it if the Cadillac had hit me. It’s the way station-but the part of me that’s there doesn’t know that yet. That part only knows it’s in the desert someplace, and there are no people. I’ve been crying, because I’m scared. I’m scared that this might be hell.

  By three o’clock, when he arrived at Mid-Town Lanes, he knew he had found the pump in the stables and had gotten a drink of water. The water was very cold and tasted strongly of minerals. Soon he would go inside and find a small supply of dried beef in a room which had once been a kitchen. He knew this as clearly and surely as he’d known the pretzel vendor would select a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, and that the doll peeking out of the Bloomingdale’s bag had blue eyes.

  It was like being able to remember forward in time.

  He bowled only two strings-the first a 96, the second an 87. Timmy looked at his sheet when he turned it in at the counter and shook his head. “You’re having an off-day today, champ,” he said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Jake said.

  Timmy took a closer look. “You okay? You look really pale.”

  “I think I might be coming down with a bug.” This didn’t feel like a lie, either. He was sure as hell coming down with something.

  “Go home and go to bed,” Timmy advised. “Drink lots of clear liquids-gin, vodka, stuff like that.”

  Jake smiled dutifully. “Maybe I will.”

  He walked slowly home. All of New York was spread out around him, New York at its most seductive-a late-afternoon street serenade with a musician on every corner, all the trees in bloom, and everyone apparently in a good mood. Jake saw all this, but he also saw behind it: saw himself cowering in the shadows of the kitchen as the man in black drank like a grinning dog from the stable pump, saw himself sobbing with relief as he-or it-moved on without discovering him, saw himself falling deeply asleep as the sun went down and the stars began to come out like chips of ice in the harsh purple desert sky.

  He let himself into the duplex apartment with his key and walked into the kitchen to get something to eat. He wasn’t hungry, but it was, habit. He was headed for the refrigerator when his eye happened on the pantry door and he stopped. He realized suddenly that the way station- and all the rest of that strange other world where he now belonged- was behind that door. All he had to do was push through it and rejoin the Jake that already existed there. The queer doubling in his mind would end; the voices, endlessly arguing the question of whether or not he had been dead since 8:25 that morning, would fall silent.

  Jake pushed open the pantry door with both hands, his face already breaking into a sunny, relieved smile… and then froze as Mrs. Shaw, who was standing on a step-stool at the back of the pantry, screamed. The can of tomato paste she had been holding dropped out of her hand and fell to the floor. She tottered on the stool and Jake rushed forward to steady her before she could join the tomato paste.

  “Moses in the bullrushes!” she gasped, fluttering a hand rapidly against the front of her housedress. “You scared the bejabbers out of me, Johnny!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He really was, but he was also bitterly disappointed. It had only been the pantry, after all. He had been so sure-

  “What are you doing, creeping around here, anyway? This is your bowling day! I didn’t expect you for at least another hour! I haven’t even made your snack yet, so don’t be expecting it.”

  “That’s okay. I’m not very hungry, anyway.” He bent down and picked up the can she had dropped.

  “Wouldn’t know it from the way you came bustin in here,” she grumbled.

  “I thought I heard a mouse or something. I guess it was just you.”

  “I guess it was.” She descended the step-stool and took the can from him. “You look like you’re comin down with the flu or something, Johnny.” She pressed her hand against his forehead. “You don’t feel hot, but that doesn’t always mean much.”

  “I think I’m just tired,” Jake said, and thought: If only that was all it was. “Maybe I’ll just have a soda and watch TV for a while.”

  She grunted. “You got any papers you want to show me? If you do, make it fast. I’m behind on supper.”

  “Nothing today,” he said. He left the pantry, got a soda, then went into the living room. He turned on Hollywood Squares and watched vacantly as the voices argued and the new memories of that dusty other world continued to surface.

  7

  His MOTHER AND FATHER didn’t notice anything was wrong with him- his father didn’t even get in until 9:30-and that was fine by Jake. He went to bed at ten and lay awake in the darkness, listening to the city outside his window: brakes, horns, wailing sirens.You died.

  I didn’t, though. I’m right here, safe in my own bed.

  That doesn’t matter. You died, and you know it.

  The hell of it was, he knew both things.

  I don’t know which voice is true, but I know I can’t go on like this. So just quit it, both of you. Stop arguing and leave me alone. Okay? Please?But they wouldn’t. Couldn’t, apparently. And it came to Jake that he ought to get up-right now-and open the door to the bathroom. The other world would be there. The way station would be there and the rest of him would be there, too, huddled under an ancient blanket in the stable, trying to sleep and wondering what in hell had happened.

  I can tell him, Jake thought excitedly. He threw back the covers, suddenly knowing that the door beside his bookcase no longer led into the bathroom but to a world that smelled of he
at and purple sage and fear in a handful of dust, a world that now lay under the shadowing wing of night. I can tell him, but I won’t have to… because I’ll be IN him… I’ll BE him!

  He raced across his darkened room, almost laughing with relief, and shoved open the door. And-

  And it was his bathroom. Just his bathroom, with the framed Marvin Gaye poster on the wall and the shapes of the Venetian blinds lying on the tiled floor in bars of light and shadow.

  He stood there for a long time, trying to swallow his disappointment. It wouldn’t go. And it was bitter.

  Bitter.

  8

  THE THREE WEEKS BETWEEN then and now stretched like a grim, blighted terrain in Jake’s memory-a nightmare wasteland where there had been no peace, no rest, no respite from pain. He had watched, like a helpless prisoner watching the sack of a city he had once ruled, as his mind buckled under the steadily increasing pressure of the phantom voices and memories. He had hoped the memories would stop when he reached the point in them where the man named Roland had allowed him to drop into the chasm under the mountains, but they didn’t. Instead they simply recycled and began to play themselves over again, like a tape set to repeat and repeat until it either breaks or someone comes along, and shuts it off.

  His perceptions of his more-or-less real life as a boy in New York City grew increasingly spotty as this terrible schism grew deeper. He could remember going to school, and to the movies on the weekend, and out to Sunday brunch with his parents a week ago (or had it been two?), but he remembered these things the way a man who has suffered malaria may remember the deepest, darkest phase of his illness: people became shadows, voices seemed to echo and overlap each other, and even such a simple act as eating a sandwich or obtaining a Coke from the machine in the gymnasium became a struggle. Jake had pushed through those days in a fugue of yelling voices and doubled memories. His obsession with doors-all kinds of doors-deepened; his hope that the gunslinger’s world might lie behind one of them never quite died. Nor was that so strange, since it was the only hope he had.

  But as of today the game was over. He’d never had a chance of winning anyway, not really. He had given up. He had gone truant. Jake walked blindly east along the gridwork of streets, head down, with no idea of where he was going or what he would do when he got there.

  9

  AFTER WALKING FOR A while, he began to come out of this unhappy daze and take some notice of his surroundings. He was standing on the corner of Lexington Avenue and. Fifty-fourth Street with no memory at all of how he had come to be there. He noticed for the first time that it was an absolutely gorgeous morning. May 9th, the day this madness had started, had been pretty, but today was ten times better-that day, perhaps, when spring looks around herself and sees summer standing nearby, strong and handsome and with a cocky grin on his tanned face. The sun shone brightly off the glass walls of the midtown buildings; the shadow of each pedestrian was black and crisp. The sky overhead was a clear and blameless blue, dotted here and there with plump foul-weather clouds.

  Down the street, two businessmen in expensive, well-cut suits were standing at a board wall which had been erected around a construction site. They were laughing and passing something back and forth. Jake walked in their direction, curious, and as he drew closer he saw that the two businessmen were playing tic-tac-toe on the wall, using an expensive Mark Cross pen to draw the grids and make the X’s and O’s. Jake thought this was a complete gas. As he approached, one of them made an O in the upper right-hand corner of the grid and then slashed a diagonal line through the middle.

  “Skunked again!” his friend said. Then this man, who looked like a high-powered executive or lawyer or big-time stockbroker, took the Mark Cross pen and drew another grid.

  The first businessman, the winner, glanced to his left and saw Jake. He smiled. “Some day, huh, kid?”

  “It sure is,” Jake said, delighted to find he meant every word.

  “Too nice for school, huh?”

  This time Jake actually laughed. Piper School, where you had Outs instead of lunch and where you sometimes stepped out but never had to take a crap, suddenly seemed far away and not at all important. “You know it.”

  “You want a game? Billy here couldn’t beat me at this when we were in the fifth grade, and he still can’t.”

  “Leave the kid alone,” the second businessman said, holding out the Mark Cross pen. “This time you’re history.” He winked at Jake, and Jake amazed himself by winking back. He walked on, leaving the men to their game. The sense that something totally wonderful was going to happen- had perhaps already begun to happen-continued to grow, and his feet no longer seemed to be quite touching the pavement.

  The WALK light on the corner came on, and he began to cross Lexington Avenue. He stopped in the middle of the street so suddenly that a messenger-boy on a ten-speed bike almost ran him down. It was a beautiful spring day-agreed. But that wasn’t why he felt so good, so suddenly aware of everything that was going on around him, so sure that some great thing was about to occur.

  The voices had stopped.

  They weren’t gone for good-he somehow knew this-but for the time being they had stopped. Why?

  Jake suddenly thought of two men arguing in a room. They sit facing each other over a table, jawing at each other with increasing bitterness. After a while they begin to lean toward each other, thrusting their faces pugnaciously forward, bathing each other with a fine mist of outraged spittle. Soon they will come to blows. But before that can happen, they hear a steady thumping noise-the sound of a bass drum-and then a jaunty flourish of brass. The two men stop arguing and look at each other, puzzled.

  What’s that? one asks.

  Dunno, the other replies. Sounds like a parade.

  They rush to the window and it is a parade-a uniformed band marching in lock-step with the sun blazing off their horns, pretty majorettes twirling batons and strutting their long, tanned legs, convertibles decked with flowers and filled with waving celebrities.

  The two men stare out the window, their quarrel forgotten. They will undoubtedly return to it, but for the time being they stand together like the best of friends, shoulder to shoulder, watching as the parade goes by-

  10

  A HORN BLARED, STARTLING Jake out of this story, which was as vivid as a powerful dream. He realized he was still standing in the middle of Lexington, and the light had changed. He looked around wildly, expecting to see the blue Cadillac bearing down on him, but the guy who had tooted his horn was sitting behind the wheel of a yellow Mustang convertible and grinning at him. It was as if everyone in New York had gotten a whiff of happy-gas today.

  Jake waved at the guy and sprinted to the other side of the street. The guy in the Mustang twirled a finger around his ear to indicate that Jake was crazy, then waved back and drove on.

  For a moment Jake simply stood on the far corner, face turned up to the May sunshine, smiling, digging the day. He supposed prisoners condemned to die in the electric chair must feel this way when they learn they have been granted a temporary reprieve.

  The voices were still.

  The question was, what was the parade which had temporarily diverted their attention? Was it just the uncommon beauty of this spring morning?

  Jake didn’t think that was all. He didn’t think so because that sensation of knowing was creeping over him and through him again, the one which had taken possession of him three weeks ago, as he approached the corner of Fifth and Forty-sixth. But on May 9th, it had been a feeling of impending doom. Today it was a feeling of radiance, a sense of goodness and anticipation. It was as if… as if…

  White. This was the word that came to him, and it clanged in his mind with clear and unquestionable lightness.

  “It’s the White!” he exclaimed aloud. “The coming of the White!”

  He walked on down Fifty-fourth Street, and as he reached the corner of Second and Fifty-fourth, he once more passed under the umbrella of ka-tet.

  11<
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  HE TURNED RIGHT, THEN stopped, turned, and retraced his steps to the corner. He needed to walk down Second Avenue now, yes, that was unquestionably correct, but this was the wrong side again. When the light changed, he hurried across the street and turned right again. That feeling, that sense of

  (Whiteness)

  rightness, grew steadily stronger. He felt half-mad with joy and relief. He was going to be okay. This time there was no mistake. He felt sure that he would soon begin to see people he recognized, as he had recognized the fat lady and the pretzel vendor, and they would be doing things he remembered in advance.

  Instead, he came to the bookstore.

  12

  THE MANHATTAN RESTAURANT OF THE MIND, the sign painted in the window read. Jake went to the d(x»r. There was a chalkboard hung there; it looked like the kind you saw on the wall in diners and lunchrooms.TODAY’s SPECIALS

  From Florida! Fresh-Broiled John D. MacDonald Hardcovers 3 for $2.50 Paperbacks 9 for $5.00

  From Mississippi! Pan-Fried William Faulkner Hardcovers Market Price Vintage Library Paperbacks 75$ each

  From California! Hard-Boiled Raymond Chandler Hardcovers Market Price Paperbacks 7 for $5.00

  FEED YOUR NEED TO READJake went in, aware that he had, for the first time in three weeks, opened a door without hoping madly to find another world on the other side. A bell jingled overhead. The mild, spicy smell of old books hit him, and the smell was somehow like coming home.

  The restaurant motif continued inside. Although the walls were lined with shelves of books, a fountain-style counter bisected the room. On Jake’s side of the counter were a number of small tables with wire-backed Malt Shoppe chairs. Each table had been arranged to display the day’s specials: Travis McGee novels by John D. Mac-Donald, Philip Marlowe novels by Raymond Chandler, Snopes novels by William Faulkner. A small sign on the Faulkner table said: Some rare 1st eds available-pls ask. Another sign, this one on the counter, read simply: BROWSE! A couple of customers were doing just that. They sat at the counter, drinking coffee and reading. Jake thought this was without a doubt the best bookstore he’d ever been in.