by Stephen King
“There was one survivor,” Dan Bell says, startling her out of her reverie.
Holly points at the bluescreen, as if the newsreel were still playing there. “Someone survived that?”
“Only for a day,” Brad says. “The newspapers called him the Boy Who Fell from the Sky.”
“But it was someone else who coined the phrase,” Dan says. “Back then in the New York metro area, there were three or four independent TV stations as well as the networks. One of them was WLPT. Long gone now, of course, but if something was filmed or taped, chances are good that you can find it on the Internet. Prepare yourself for a shock, young lady.” He nods at Brad, who begins poking at his tablet again.
Holly learned at her mother’s knee (and with her father’s tacit approval) that overt displays of emotion weren’t just embarrassing and unpleasant but shameful. Even after years of work with Allie Winters, she usually keeps her feelings bottled up and tightly capped, even among friends. These are strangers, but when the next clip starts on the big screen, she screams. She can’t help it.
“That’s him! That’s Ondowsky!”
“I know,” Dan Bell says.
11
Only most people would say it wasn’t, and Holly knows this.
They’d say Oh yes, there’s a resemblance, just as there’s a resemblance between Mr. Bell and his grandson, or between John Lennon and his son Julian, or between me and Aunt Elizabeth. They’d say I bet it’s Chet Ondowsky’s grandfather. Gosh, the apple sure doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?
But Holly, like the old man in the wheelchair, knows.
The man holding the old-fashioned WLPT microphone is fuller in the face than Ondowsky, and the lines on that face suggest he’s ten, maybe even twenty years older. His crewcut is salt-and-pepper, and it comes to a slight widow’s peak that Ondowsky doesn’t have. He has the beginning of jowls, and Ondowsky doesn’t have those, either.
Behind him, some firefighters scurry about in the sooty snow, picking up packages and luggage, while others turn hoses on the remains of the United plane and two burning brownstones behind it. Just pulling away is a big old Cadillac of an ambulance with its lights flashing.
“This is Paul Freeman, reporting from the Brooklyn site of the worst air crash in American history,” the reporter says, puffing out white vapor with every word. “All were killed onboard this United Airlines jet except for one boy.” He points to the departing ambulance. “The boy, as yet unidentified, is in that ambulance. He is—” The reporter calling himself Paul Freeman pauses dramatically. “—The Boy Who Fell from the Sky! He was thrown from the rear section of the plane, still on fire, and landed in a snowbank. Horrified bystanders rolled him in the snow and put out the flames, but I saw him loaded into the ambulance, and I can tell you that his injuries looked severe. His clothes were almost entirely burned off, or melted into his skin.”
“Stop it there,” the old man commands. His grandson does so. Dan turns to Holly. His blue eyes are faded but still fierce. “Do you see it, Holly? Do you hear it? I’m sure to the viewing audience he just looked and sounded horrified, doing his job under difficult conditions, but—”
“He’s not horrified,” Holly said. She’s thinking of Ondowsky’s first report from the Macready School bombing. Now she sees that with clearer eyes. “He’s excited.”
“Yes,” Dan says, and nods. “Yes indeed. You understand. Good.”
“Thank God someone else does,” Brad says.
“The boy’s name was Stephen Baltz,” Dan says, “and this Paul Freeman saw the burned boy, perhaps heard his screams of pain—because witnesses said the boy was conscious, at least to begin with. And do you know what I think? What I have come to believe? That he was feeding.”
“Of course he was,” Holly says. Her lips feel numb. “On the boy’s pain and on the horror of the bystanders. On the death.”
“Yes. Get ready for the next one, Brad.” Dan sits back in his chair, looking tired. Holly doesn’t care. She needs to know the rest. She needs to know everything. The old fever is on her.
“When did you go looking for this? How did you find out?”
“I first saw the clip you just watched the evening of the crash, on The Huntley-Brinkley Report.” He sees her puzzlement and smiles a little. “You’re too young to remember Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. It’s now called NBC Nightly News.”
Brad says, “If an indie station arrived at some big news event first, and got good footage, they’d sell the report to one of the networks. That’s what must have happened with this, and how Grampa got to see it.”
“Freeman got there first,” Holly muses. “Are you saying… do you think Freeman caused those planes to crash?”
Dan Bell shakes his head so emphatically that the cobwebby remains of his hair fly. “No, just struck lucky. Or played the odds. Because there are always tragedies in big cities, aren’t there? Chances for a thing like him to feed. And who knows, a creature like him may be attuned to the approach of major disasters. Maybe he’s like a mosquito—they can smell blood from miles away, you know. How can we know, when we don’t even know what he is? Run the next one, Brad.”
Brad starts the clip, and the man who comes on the big screen is once more Ondowsky… but he’s different. Thinner. Younger than “Paul Freeman,” and younger than the version of Ondowsky doing his report near the blown-out side of the Macready School. But it’s him. The face is different, the face is the same. The microphone he’s holding has the letters KTVT attached to it. Three women are standing with him. One of them is wearing a Kennedy political button. Another has a placard, crumpled and somehow forlorn, that reads ALL THE WAY WITH JFK IN ’64!
“This is Dave Van Pelt, reporting from Dealey Plaza, across from the Texas School Book Depository, where—”
“Freeze it,” Dan says, and Brad does. Dan turns to Holly. “It’s him again, right?”
“Yes,” Holly says. “I’m not sure anyone else would see it, I’m not sure how you saw it so long after the plane crash report, but it is. My father once told me something about cars. He said the companies—Ford, Chevrolet, Chrysler—offer lots of different models, and they change them from year to year, but they’re all from the same template. He… Ondowsky…” But words fail her and she can only point to the black-and-white image on the screen. Her hand is trembling.
“Yes,” Dan says softly. “Very well put. He’s different models, but from the same template. Except there are at least two templates, maybe more.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll get to that.” His voice is rustier than ever, and he drinks some more tea to lubricate it. “I only saw this report by chance, because I was a Huntley-Brinkley man when it came to the evening news. But after Kennedy was shot, everyone turned over to Walter Cronkite, including me. Because CBS had the best coverage. Kennedy was shot on a Friday. This report was on the CBS Evening News the following day, the Saturday. What news people call a backgrounder. Go ahead, Brad. But take it from the top.”
The young reporter in the horrible plaid sport coat begins again. “This is Dave Van Pelt, reporting from Dealey Plaza, across from the Texas School Book Depository, where John F. Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was fatally shot yesterday. I’m here with Greta Dyson, Monica Kellogg, and Juanita Alvarez, Kennedy supporters who were right here where I’m standing when the shots were fired. Ladies, can you tell me what you saw? Miss Dyson?”
“Shots… blood… there was blood from the back of his poor head…” Greta Dyson is weeping so hard she can barely be understood, which Holly supposes is sort of the point. Viewers at home are probably weeping right along with her, thinking that her grief stands for theirs. And for the grief of a nation. Only the reporter…
“He’s eating it up,” she says. “Just pretending to be concerned, and not doing a very good job of it, at that.”
“Absolutely,” Dan says. “Once you look at it the right way, it’s impossible to miss. And lo
ok at the other two ladies. They’re crying, too. Hell, a lot of people were crying that Saturday. And in the weeks that followed. You’re right. He’s eating it up.”
“And you think he knew it was going to happen? Like a mosquito smelling blood?”
“I don’t know,” Dan says. “I just don’t know.”
“We do know he only started working at KTVT that summer,” Brad says. “I wasn’t able to find out much about him, but that much I did get. From a history of the station on the Internet. And he was gone by the spring of 1964.”
“The next time he turns up—that I know about, anyway—is in Detroit,” Dan says. “1967. During what was known at the time as the Detroit Rebellion, or the 12th Street Riot. It started when the police raided an after-hours bar, a so-called blind pig, and spread city-wide. Forty-three killed, twelve hundred injured. It was the top news story for five days, which was how long the violence went on. This is from another independent station, but it got picked up by NBC and ran on the nightly news. Go ahead, Brad.”
A reporter is standing in front of a burning storefront, interviewing a black man with blood running down his face. The man is almost incoherent with grief. He says that’s his dry-cleaning business burning down across the way, and he doesn’t know where his wife and daughter are. They have disappeared into the city-wide melee. “I have lost everything,” he says. “Everything.”
And the reporter, this time calling himself Jim Avery? He’s a small-city TV guy for sure. Stouter than “Paul Freeman,” verging on fat, and short (his interviewee towers over him), and balding. Different model, same template. It’s Chet Ondowsky buried in that fat face. It’s also Paul Freeman. And Dave Van Pelt.
“How did you tip to this, Mr. Bell? How in heaven’s name—”
“Dan, remember? It’s Dan.”
“How could you see the resemblance wasn’t just a resemblance?”
Dan and his grandson look at each other and exchange a smile. Holly, watching this momentary byplay, thinks again, Different models, same template.
“You noticed the pictures in the hall, right?” Brad asks. “That was Grampa’s other job when he was on the cops. He was a natural for it.”
Once again, the penny drops. Holly turns to Dan. “You were a sketch artist. That was your other police job!”
“Yes, although I did a lot more than sketch. I was no cartoonist. I did portraits.” He thinks, then adds, “You’ve heard people say they never forget a face? Mostly they’re exaggerating or outright lying. I’m not.” The old man speaks matter-of-factly. If it’s a gift, Holly thinks, it’s as old as he is. Maybe once it blew his mind. Now he takes it for granted.
“I’ve seen him work,” Brad says. “If not for the arthritis in his hands, he could turn around, face the wall, and do you in twenty minutes, Holly, and every detail would be right. Those pictures in the hall? All people who were caught based on Grampa’s portraits.”
“Still—” she begins doubtfully.
“To remember faces is only part of it,” Dan says. “It doesn’t help when it comes to getting a likeness of a perpetrator, because I’m not the one who saw him. You understand?”
“Yes,” Holly says. She’s interested in this for reasons other than his ID of Ondowsky in his many different guises. She’s interested in it because in her own work as an investigator, she is still learning.
“The witness comes in. In some cases—like a carjacking or a robbery—several witnesses come in. They describe the doer. Only it’s like the blind men with the elephant. You know that story?”
Holly does. The blind man who grabs the tail says it’s a vine. The one who grabs the trunk thinks it’s a python. The one who grabs the leg is sure it’s the bole of a big old palm tree. Eventually the blind men get into a brawl about who is right.
“Every witness sees the guy in a slightly different way,” Dan says. “And if it’s one witness, he or she sees him in different ways on different days. No, no, they say, I was wrong, the face is too fat. It’s too thin. He had a goatee. No, it was a mustache. His eyes were blue. No, I slept on it and I guess they were actually gray.”
He takes another long pull of O2. Looking more tired than ever. Except for the eyes in their purple pouches. They are bright. Focused. Holly thinks that if the Ondowsky-thing saw those eyes, he might be afraid. Might want to shut them before they saw too much.
“My job is to look past all the variations and see the similarities. That’s the real gift and what I put in my pictures. It’s what I put in my first pictures of this guy. Look.”
From the side pocket of his chair he takes a small folder and hands it to her. Inside are half a dozen pieces of thin drawing paper going brittle with age. There’s a different version of Charles “Chet” Ondowsky on each one. They are not as detailed as his rogue’s gallery in the front hall, but they are still extraordinary. In the first three she’s looking at Paul Freeman, Dave Van Pelt, and Jim Avery.
“Did you draw these from memory?” she asks.
“Yes,” Dan says. Again not boasting, just stating a fact. “Those first three were drawn soon after I saw Avery. Summer of ’67. I’ve made copies, but those are the originals.”
Brad says, “Remember the time-frame, Holly. Grampa saw these men on TV before VCRs, DVRs, or the Internet. For ordinary viewers, you saw what you saw and then it was gone. He had to rely on memory.”
“And these others?” She’s spread out the other three like a fan of cards. Faces with different hairlines, different eyes and mouths, different lines, different ages. All different models from the same template. All Ondowsky. She can see it because she’s seen the elephant. That Dan Bell saw it back in the day is amazing. Genius, really.
He points to the drawings she’s holding, one after another. “That one’s Reginald Holder. He reported from Westfield, New Jersey, after John List killed his whole family. Interviewed sobbing friends and neighbors. The next one is Harry Vail, reporting from Cal State Fullerton after a janitor named Edward Allaway shot and killed six people. Vail was on the scene before the blood was dry, interviewing survivors. The last one, his name escapes me—”
“Fred Liebermanenbach,” Brad says. “Correspondent for WKS, Chicago. He covered the Tylenol poisonings in 1982. Seven people died. Talked to grieving relatives. I have all these video clips, if you want to see them.”
“He’s got plenty of clips, we’ve uncovered seventeen different versions of your Chet Ondowsky,” Dan says.
“Seventeen?” Holly is flabbergasted.
“Those are just the ones we know of. No need to look at all of them. Slide those first three drawings together and hold them up to the TV, Holly. It’s not a lightbox, but it should do.”
She holds them in front of the bluescreen, knowing what she’ll see. It’s one face.
Ondowsky’s face.
An outsider.
12
When they go downstairs, Dan Bell isn’t exactly sitting in the stair-chair; it’s more like lolling. No longer just tired, exhausted. Holly really doesn’t want to trouble him further, but will have to.
Dan Bell also knows they’re not done. He asks Brad to bring him a knock of whiskey.
“Grampa, the doctor said—”
“Fuck the doctor and the horse he rode in on,” Dan says. “It’ll brighten me up. We’ll finish, you show Holly that last… thing… and then I’ll lie down. I slept through last night, and I bet I will again tonight. This is such a weight off my shoulders.”
But now it’s on mine, Holly thinks. I wish Ralph was here. I wish for Bill even more.
Brad brings his gramps a Flintstone jelly glass with barely enough whiskey in it to cover the bottom. Dan gives it a sour look but accepts it without comment. From the side pocket of his wheelchair he takes a bottle of pills with a geriatric-friendly screw-off cap. He shakes out a pill and half a dozen others spill onto the floor.
“Balls,” says the old man. “Pick those up, Brad.”
“I’ll get them,” Holly says, an
d does. Dan, meanwhile, puts the pill in his mouth and swallows it with the whiskey.
“Now I know that’s not a good idea, Grampa,” Brad says, sounding prissy.
“At my funeral, no one will say I died young and handsome,” Dan replies. Some color has come into his cheeks, and he’s sitting up straight in his chair again. “Holly, I have perhaps twenty minutes before that almost useless dram of whiskey wears off. Half an hour at most. I know you have more questions, and we have one more thing for you to look at, but let’s try to be brief.”
“Joel Lieberman,” she says. “The psychiatrist you saw in Boston starting in 2018.”
“What about him?”
“You didn’t go to him because you thought you were crazy, did you?”
“Of course not. I went for the same reasons I imagine you went to see Carl Morton, with his books and lectures about people with weird neuroses. I went to tell everything I knew to someone who was paid to listen. And to find someone else who had reasons to believe the unbelievable. I was looking for you, Holly. Just as you were looking for me.”
Yes. It’s true. Still, she thinks, it’s a miracle we got together. Or fate. Or God.
“Although Morton changed all the names and locations for his article, it was easy for Brad to track you down. The thing calling itself Ondowsky wasn’t there reporting from the Texas cave, by the way. Brad and I looked at all the news footage.”
Holly says, “My outsider didn’t show up on tape or film. There was footage where he should have been part of a crowd, but he wasn’t there.” She taps the drawings of Ondowsky in his various guises. “This perp is on TV all the time.”
“Then he’s different,” the old man says, and shrugs. “The way housecats and bobcats are different but similar—same template, different models. As for you, Holly, you were barely mentioned in the news reports, and never by name. Only as a private citizen who helped with the investigation.”
“I asked to be kept out of it,” Holly mutters.
