The Regulators (richard bachman)

by Stephen King

  All during this Seth was fine. He kept eating his cereal amp; his face didn’t change, but sometimes you just know it’s him, and that he’s listening and understanding at least a little. Then Herb said, “And if we absolutely can’t find it, we’ll get you a new one,” amp; everything went to hell.

  Seth’s cereal bowl went flipping across the room, spilling milk and cereal all over the kitchen floor. It hit the wall amp; broke. The drawer under the stove came open, and all the things I keep under there-frying pans, cookie-sheets, muffin-tins-came flying out. The sink faucets turned on. The dishwasher supposedly can’t start with the door open, but it did amp; water went all over the floor. The vase I keep on the window-shelf over the sink flew all the way across the room amp; broke against the wall. Scariest of all was the toaster. It was on, I was making a couple of slices to have with my o.j… amp; all at once it glowed bright red inside the slots, as if it was a furnace instead of a little counter-gadget. The handle went up amp; the toast flew all the way up to the ceiling. It was black and smoking. Looked nuclear. It landed in the sink.

  Seth got up and walked out of the room. His stalky walk. Herb and I just looked at each other for a second or two, amp; then he said, “That toast would probably taste okay with a little peanut butter on it.” I just gaped at him at first but then I started laughing. That got him started. We laughed amp; laughed, with our heads down on the kitchen table. Trying to keep him from hearing, I guess, except that’s stupid-Seth doesn’t always have to hear to know. I’m not sure it’s mind-reading he does, exactly, but it’s something.

  When I finally got control of myself enough to look up, Herb was getting the mop for under the dishwasher. He was still kind of chuckling and wiping at his eyes. Thank God for him. I went to get the dustpan and brush for the broken vase.

  “I guess he’s sort of committed to the old Dream Floater,” is all Herb said. And why say anymore'? That pretty well covers it.

  Now it’s three in the afternoon and we have “been all over the geedee house”, as my old school-friend Jan would say. Seth has tried to help, in his own peculiar way. It kinda broke my heart to see him turning up the sofa cushions, as if his missing van could’ve slipped under there like a quarter or a crust of pizza. Herb started out hopeful, saying it was too big amp; bright to miss, amp; I thought he was right. As a matter of fact I still think he’s right, so how come we can’t find it? From where I’m writing at the kitchen table I can see Herb down on his knees by the hedge at the back of the yard, poking along with the handle of a rake. I’d like to tell him to stop-it’s the third time he’s been along there-but I don’t have the heart.

  Noises upstairs. Seth’s getting up from his nap, so I need to finish this. Put it out of sight. Try to put it out of mind, too. That should be okay, though. I think Seth has more success picking up what Herb is thinking than he does with me. No real reason, but the feeling is strong. And I’ve been careful not to tell Herb that I’m keeping a journal.

  I know what anyone reading the journal would say: we’re nuts. Nuts to keep him. Something is wrong with him. Badly wrong, and we don’t know what it is. We know it’s dangerous, though. So why do it? Why go on? I don’t know, exactly. Because we love him? Because he’s controlling us? No. Sometimes there are things like that (Herb twisting his lip or me slapping myself), things like a powerful hypnosis, but not often. He’s mostly just Seth, a child in the prison of his own mind. He’s also the last little bit of my brother.

  But sure, beyond all that (and over it, and under it, and around it) is just loving. And every night when Herb and I lie down, I see in my husband’s eyes what he must see in mine-that we made it thru another one, amp; if we made it thru today, we can make it thru tomorrow. At night it’s easy to tell yourself that it’s just another aspect of Seth’s autism, really no big deal.

  Footsteps overhead. He’s going to the bathroom. When he finishes, he’ll come downstairs, hoping we’ve found his missing toy. But which one will hear the bad news'? Seth, who’ll only look disappointed (and maybe cry a little)? Or the other one? The stalky one who throws things when he can’t have what he wants?

  I have thought about taking him back to the doctor, sure, of course, I’m sure Herb has, too… but not seriously. Not after the last time. We were both there amp; we both saw the way the other one, the not-Seth, hides. How Seth makes it possible for it to hide: autism is one hell of a big shield. But the real problem here is not autism, it doesn’t matter what all the doctors in the world see or don’t see. When I open my mind amp; set aside all I hope amp; all I wish, I know that. And when we tried to talk to the doctor, tried to tell him why we were really there, we couldn’t. If anyone ever reads this, I wonder if you’ll be able to understand how horrible that is, to have something that feels like a hand laid over the back of your mouth, a guard between your vocal cords and your tongue. WE COULDN’T FUCKING TALK.

  I’m so afraid.

  Afraid of the stalky one, yes, but afraid of other things, as well.

  Some I can’t even express, and some I can express all too well. But for now, the thing I’m most afraid of is what might happen to us if we can’t find Dream Floater. That stupid goddam pink van. Where can the damned thing be? If only we could find it-

  Chapter Eight

  At the moment of Kirsten Carver’s death, Johnny was thinking of his literary agent, Bill Harris, and Bill’s reaction to Poplar Street: pure, unadulterated horror. Good agent that he was, he had managed to maintain a neutral, if slightly glazed, smile on the ride from the airport, but the smile began to slip when they entered the suburb of Wentworth (which a sign proclaimed to be OHIO’s “GOOD CHEER” COMMUNITY!), and it gave way entirely when his client, who had once been spoken of in the same breath with John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, and (after Delight) Vladimir Nabokov, pulled into the driveway of the small and perfectly anonymous suburban house on the corner of Poplar and Bear. Bill had stared with a kind of dazed incomprehension at the lawn sprinkler, the aluminum screen door with the scrolled M in the center of it, and that avatar of suburban life, a grass-stained power-mower, standing in the driveway like a gasoline god waiting to be worshipped. From there Bill had turned his gaze upon a kid roller-blading down the far sidewalk with Walkman earphones on his head, a melting ice-cream cone from Milly’s in his hand, and a happy brainless grin on his pimply face. Six years ago this had been, in the summer of 1990, and when Bill Harris, power agent, had looked back at Johnny again, the smile had been gone.

  You can’t be serious, Bill had said in a flat, disbelieving voice. Oh, Bill, but I think I am, Johnny had responded, and something in his tone seemed to get through to Bill, enough at least so that when he spoke again he’d sounded plaintive rather than disbelieving. But why? he asked. Dear Jesus, why here? I can sense my IQ dropping and I just fucking got here. I feel an almost irresistible urge to subscribe to Reader’s Digest and listen to talk radio. So you tell me why. I think you owe me that. First the goddam puddy-tat detective, and now a neighborhood where fruit cocktail is probably considered a delicacy. Tell me what the deal is, okay? And Johnny had said okay, the deal is, it’s all over.

  No, of course not. Belinda had said that. Not Bill Harris but Belinda Josephson. Just now.

  Johnny cleared his mind with an effort and looked around. He was sitting on the living-room floor, holding one of Kirsten’s hands in both of his. The hand was cold and still. Belinda was leaning over Kirstie with a dishtowel in her hand and a square of white linen-it looked to Johnny like a for-best table napkin-folded over her shoulder like a waiter’s towel. Belinda’s eyes were tearless, but there was nevertheless an expression of love and sorrow on her face that moved Johnny’s heart, and made him think of how it must have been when the two Marys-Magdalene and the one Matthew simply called “the other Mary”-had prepared the body of Jesus for its interral in Joseph of Arimathaea’s tomb. Brad’s wife was wiping Kirsten’s blood-masked face with the dishtowel, uncovering what remained of her features.

 
“Did you say-” Johnny began.

  “You heard me.” Belinda held the stained dishtowel out without looking, and Brad took it.

  She took the napkin off her shoulder, unfolded it, and spread it over Kirsten’s face. “God have mercy on her soul.”

  “I second that,” Johnny said. There was something hypnotic about the small red poppies blooming on the white linen napkin, three on one side of the draped shape that was Kirsten’s nose, two on the other, maybe half a dozen above her brow. Johnny put his hand to his own brow and wiped away a palmful of sweat. “Jesus, I’m so sorry.”

  Belinda looked at him, then at her husband. “We’re all sorry, I guess. The question is, what’s next?”

  Before either man could answer, Cammie Reed came into the room from the kitchen. Her face was pale but composed. “Mr Marinville?”

  He turned to her. “Johnny,” he said.

  She had to mull it over-another classic case of shock-slowed thinking-before understanding that he wanted her to call him by his first name. Then she got it and nodded. “Johnny, okay, sure. Did you find the pistol? And are there bullets to go with it?”

  “Yes to both.”

  “Can I have them? My boys want to go for help. I’ve thought it over and have decided to give them my permission. If you’ll let them take David’s gun, that is.”

  “I don’t have any objection to giving up the gun,” Johnny said, not knowing if he was telling the complete truth about that or not, “but leaving shelter could be extremely dangerous, don’t you think?”

  She gave him a level look, no sign of impatience in her eyes or voice, but she fingered a spot of blood on her blouse as she spoke. A souvenir of Ellen Carver’s nosebleed. “I’m aware of the danger, and if it were a question of using the street, I’d say no. But the boys know a path which runs through the greenbelt behind the houses on this side. They can use it to go over to Anderson Avenue. There’s a deserted building over there that used to be a moving company’s warehouse-”

  “Veedon Brothers,” Brad said, nodding.

  “-and a waterpipe that runs from the lot behind it all the way over to Columbus Broad, where it empties into a stream. If nothing else, they can get to a working phone and report what’s going on here.”

  “Cam, do either of your boys know how to use a gun?” Brad asked.

  Again the level stare, one which did not quite come out and ask Why do you insult my intelligence? “They both took a safety course with their dad two years ago. The primary focus was on rifles and hunting safety, but handguns were covered, yes.”

  “If Jim and Dave know about this path, the shooters who are doing this may, too,” Johnny said. “Have you thought about that?”

  “Yes.” The impatience finally showing, but only a little. Johnny admired her control. “But these… lunatics… are strangers. They have to be. Have you ever seen any of those vans before today?”

  I may have, at that, Johnny thought. I’m not sure where yet, but if I can just get a little time to think…

  “No, but I believe-” Brad began.

  “We moved here in 1982, when the boys were three,” Cammie said. “They say there’s a path that hardly anyone knows about or uses except for kids, and they say there’s a pipe. I believe them.”

  Sure you do, Johnny thought, but that’s secondary. So’s the hope of their bringing back help. You just want them out of here, don’t you? Of course you do, and I don’t blame you.

  “Johnny,” she said, perhaps assuming his silence meant he was against the idea, “there were boys not much older than my sons fighting in Vietnam not so long ago.”

  “Some even younger,” he said. “I was there. I saw them.” He got up, pulled the pistol from the waistband of his slacks with one hand, pulled the box of cartridges out of his shirt pocket with the other. “I’ll be glad to turn this over to your boys… but I’d like to go along with them.”

  Cammie glanced down at Johnny’s belly-not as large as Brad’s, but still considerable. She didn’t ask him why he wanted to go, or what good he thought he could do. Her mind was, at least for the time being, colder than that. She said, “The boys play soccer in the fall and run track in the spring. Can you keep up with them?”

  “Not in the mile or the four-forty, of course not,” he replied. “On a path through the woods, and maybe through a viaduct? I think so.”

  “Are you kidding yourself, or what?” Belinda asked abruptly. It was Cammie she was talking to, not Johnny. “I mean, if there was still a working phone within earshot of Poplar Street, do you think we’d still be sitting here with dead people lying out front and a house burning to the ground?”

  Cammie glanced at her, touched the blood-spot on her blouse again, then looked back at Johnny. Behind her, Ellie was peering around the corner into the living room. The girl’s eyes were wide with shock and grief, her mouth and chin streaked with blood from her nose.

  “If it’s okay with the boys, it’s okay with me,” Cammie said, not addressing Belinda’s question at all. Cammie Reed currently had no interest in speculation. Maybe later, but not now. Now there was only one thing that did interest her: rolling the dice while she judged the odds were still heavily in her favor. Rolling them and getting her sons out the back door.

  “It will be,” he said, and handed her the gun and the cartridges before heading back toward the kitchen. They were good boys, which was nice, and they were also boys who had been programmed to go along, in nine cases out of ten, with what their elders wanted. In this situation, that was even nicer. As Johnny walked, he touched the object he had stowed in his left front pants pocket. “But before we go, it’s important that I talk to someone. Very important.”

  “Who?” Cammie asked.

  Johnny picked Ellen Carver up. He hugged her, kissed one bloodstained cheek, and was glad when her arms went around his neck and she hugged him back fiercely. You couldn’t buy a hug like that. “Ralphie Carver,” he said, and carried Ralphie’s sister back into the kitchen.

  As it happened, Tom Billingsley did have a couple of guns kicking around, but first he found Collie a shirt. It wasn’t much-an old Cleveland Browns tee with a rip under one arm-but it was an XL, and better than trying the path through the greenbelt naked from the waist up. Collie had used the route often enough to know there were blackberry bushes, plus assorted other prickers and brambles, out there.

  “Thanks,” he said, pulling the shirt on as Old Doc led them past the Ping-Pong table at the far end of his basement.

  “Don’t mention it,” Billingsley said, reaching up and tugging the string that turned on the fluorescents. “Can’t even remember where it came from. I’ve always been a Bengals fan, myself.”

  In the corner beyond the Ping-Pong table was a jumble of fishing equipment, a few orange hunting vests, and an unstrung bow. Old Doc squatted with a grimace, moved the vests, and uncovered a quilt that had been rolled and tied with twine. Inside it were four rifles, but two of them were in pieces. Billingsley held up the ones that were whole. “Should do,” he said.

  Collie took the.30-.06, which probably made a lot more sense for a woods patrol than his service pistol, anyway (and would raise fewer questions if he had to shoot someone). That left Ames with the other, smaller gun. A Mossberg. “It’s only chambered for.22s,” Doc said apologetically as he rummaged in a cabinet mounted next to the fusebox and laid out cartons of cartridges on the Ping-Pong table, “but it’s a damned fine gun, just the same. Holds nine in a row for more go. What do you think?”

  Ames offered a grin Collie couldn’t help liking. “I think oy vey, such a deal,” he said, taking the Mossy. Billingsley laughed at that-a cracked old man’s chortle-and led them back upstairs.

  Cynthia had put a pillow under Marielle’s head, but she was still lying on the living-room floor (under the picture of Daisy, the mathematically inclined Corgi, actually). They hadn’t dared move her; Billingsley was afraid his stitches might tear open again. She was still alive, which was good, and still uncon
scious, which might also be good, considering what had happened to her. But she was breathing in great, irregular gasps that did not sound good to Collie at all. It sounded like the kind of breathing that might stop any time.

  Her husband, the charming Gary, was sitting in a kitchen chair which he had turned around so he could at least look at his wife while he drank. Collie saw that the bottle he had found contained Mother DeLucca’s Best Cooking Sherry, and felt his stomach turn over.

  Gary saw him looking (or perhaps felt it), and looked over at Collie. His eyes were red and puffy. Sore-looking. Miserable. Collie hunted in his heart and found some sympathy for the man. Not much, though. “Losser damn arm,” he told Collie in a furry, confiding voice. “Gaw hepper.” Collie thought this over and translated it as Drunkish for either Got to help her or God help her.

  “Yes,” he said. “We’re going to get her some help.”

  “Aw be here awreddy. Losser mahfuhn arm. Zin the mahfuhn fritch!”

  “I know.”

  Cynthia joined them. “You used to be a vet, didn’t you, Mr Billingsley?”

  Billingsley nodded.

  “I thought so. Could you come here? Take a look at something out the front door?”

  “Do you think that’s safe?”

  “For the time being, I think so. The thing that’s out there… well, I’d rather you looked for yourself.” She glanced at the other two men. “Selves.”

  She led Billingsley across the living room to the door looking out on Poplar Street. Collie glanced at Steve, who shrugged. Collie’s assumption was that the girl wanted to show Billingsley how the houses across the street had changed, although what that had to do with Billingsley’s being a vet he didn’t know.

  “Holy shit,” he said to Steve as they reached the door. “They’ve gone back to normal! Or did we just imagine they’d changed in the first place?” It was the Geller house he kept staring at. Ten minutes ago, when he and the hippie and the counter-girl had been looking out this same door, he could have sworn that the Geller place had turned into an adobe-the sort of thing you saw in pictures of New Mexico and Arizona back when they were territories. Now it was clad in plain old Ohio aluminum siding again.