fleetingly if it was possible for a person to die of perceptual overload. Upper Harris Avenue was a fiercely glowing wonderland filled with overlapping spheres and cones and crescents of color. The trees, which were still a week or more away from the climax of their fall transformation, nonetheless burned like torches in Ralph's eyes and mind. The sky had gone past color; it was a vast blue sonic boom.
The telephone lines on Derry's west side were still above ground, and Ralph stared fixedly at them, vaguely aware that he had stopped breathing and should probably start again soon if he didn't want to pass out. jagged yellow spirals were running briskly up and down the black wires, reminding Ralph of how barber-poles had looked when he was a kid. Every now and then this bumblebee pattern was broken by a spiky red vertical stroke or a green flash that seemed to spread both ways at once, obliterating the yellow rings for a moment before fading out.
You're watching people talk, he thought numbly. Do you know, that, Ralph? Aunt Sadie in Dallas is chatting with her favorite nephew who lives in Derry,-a farmer in Haven is jawing with the dealer he buys his tractor parts from,-a minister is trying to help a troubled parishioner. Those are voices, and I think the bright strokes and flashes are coming from people in the grip of some strong emotion-love or hate, happiness orjealousy.
And Ralph sensed that all he was seeing and all he was feeling was not all; that there was a whole world still waiting just beyond the current reach of his senses. Enough, perhaps, to make even what he was seeing now seem faint and faded. And if there was more, how could he possibly bear it without going mad? Not even putting his eyes out would help; he understood somehow that his sense of ' "these things came mostly from his lifelong acceptance of seeing sight as his primary sense. But there was, in fact, a lot more than seeing going on here.
In order to prove this to himself he closed his eyes... and went right on seeing Harris Avenue. It was as if his eyelids had turned to glass. The only difference was that all the usual colors had reversed themselves, creating a world that looked like the negative of a color photograph. The trees were no longer orange and yellow but the bright, unnatural green of lime Gatorade. The surface of Harris Avenue, repaved with fresh asphalt in June, had become a great white way, and the sky was an amazing red lake. He opened his eyes again, almost positive that the auras would be gone, but they weren't; the world still boomed and rolled with color and movement and deep, resonating sound.
When do I start seeing them? Ralph wondered as he began to walk slowly down the hill again. When do the little bald doctors start coming out of the woodwork?
There were no doctors in evidence, however, bald or otherwise; no angels in the architecture; no devils peering up from the sewer gratings. There was only"Look out, Roberts, watch where you're going, can't you?"
The words, harsh and a little alarmed, seemed to have actual physical texture; it was like running a hand over oak panelling in some ancient abbey or ancestral hall. Ralph stopped short and saw Mrs. Perrine from down the street. She had stepped off the sidewalk into the gutter to keep from being bowled over like a tenpin, and now she stood ankle-deep in fallen leaves, holding her net shopping bag in one hand and glaring at Ralph from beneath her thick salt-andpepper eyebrows. The aura which surrounded her was the firm, nononsense gray of a West Point uniform.
"Are you drunk, Roberts?" she asked in a clipped voice, and suddenly the riot of color and sensation fell out of the world and it was just Harris Avenue again, drowsing its way through a lovely weekday morning in mid-autumn.
"Drunk? Me? Not at all. Sober as a judge, honest."
He held out his hand to her. Mrs. Perrine, over eighty but not giving in to it so much as a single inch, looked at it as if she believed Ralph might have a joy-buzzer hidden in his palm. Wouldn't put it past you, Roberts, her cool gray eyes said. Wouldn't put it past you at all. She stepped back onto the sidewalk without Ralph's aid.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Perrine. I wasn't watching where I was going."