doubt if that alone would have been enough to get even Litchfield to... you know, tattle. The other thing-what you said he called sensory problems-went right by me. I was too amazed by the idea of anyone thinking you could possibly be prematurely senile, I guess, even though I've been having my own sensory problems lately."
You.
"Yes ma'am. Then, just a little bit ago, you said something even more interesting. You said you started to see Janet in a really funny way. A really scary way. You couldn't remember what you said just before the two of them walked out, but you knew exactly how you felt.
You're seeing the other part of the world-the rest of the world.
Shapes around things, shapes inside things, sounds within sounds.
I call it the world of auras, and that's what you're experiencing.
Isn't it, Lois?"
She looked at him silently for a moment, then put her hands over her face. "I thought I was losing my mind," she said, and then said it again: "Oh Ralph, I thought I was losing my mind."
He hugged her, then let her go and tilted her chin up. "No more tears," he said. "I didn't bring a spare hanky."
"No more tears," she agreed, but her eyes were already brimming again. "Ralph, if you only knew how awful it's been-"
"I do know."
She smiled radiantly. "Yes... you do, don't you?"
"What made that idiot Litchfield decide you were slipping into senility-except Alzheimer's is probably what he had in mindwasn't just Insomnia but insomnia accompanied by something else... something he decided were hallucinations. Right?"
"I guess, but he didn't say anything like that at the time. When I told him about the things I'd been seeing-the colors and all-he seemed very understanding."
"Uh-huh, and the minute you were out the door he called your son and told him to get the hell down to Derry and do something about old Mom, who's started seeing people walking around in colored envelopes with long balloon-strings floating up from their heads."
"You see those, too? Ralph, you see those, too?"
"Me too," he said, and laughed. It sounded a bit loonlike, and he wasn't surprised. There were a hundred things he wanted to ask her; wasn't he felt crazed with impatience. And there was something else, something so unexpected he hadn't even been able to identify it at first: he was horny. Not just interested; actually horny.
Lois was crying again. Her tears were the color of mist on a still lake, and they smoked a little as they slipped down her cheeks.
Ralph knew they would taste dark and mossy, like fiddleheads in spring.
"Ralph... this... this is... oh my!"
"Bigger than Michael Jackson at the Super Bowl, isn't it?" She laughed weakly. "Well, just... you know, just a little."
"There's a name for what's happening to us, Lois, and it's not insomnia or senility or Alzheimer's Disease. It's hyper-reality."
"Hyper-reality," she murmured. "God, what an exotic word!"
"Yes, it is. A pharmacist down the street at Rite Aid, Joe Wyzer, told it to me. Only there's a lot more to it than he knew. More than anyone in their right minds would guess."
"Yes, like telepathy... if it's really happening, that is. Ralph, are we in our right minds?"
"Did your daughter-in-law take your earrings?"
"I... she... yes." Lois straightened. "Yes, she did."
"No doubts?"
"No."
"Then you've answered your own question. We're sane, all right... but I think you're wrong about the telepathy part. It isn't minds we read, but auras. Listen, Lois, there's all sorts of things I want to ask you, but I have an idea that right now there's only one thing I really have to know. Have you seen-" He stopped abruptly, wondering if he really wanted to say what was on the tip of his tongue.
"Have I seen what?"
"Okay. This is going to sound crazier than anything you've told me, but I'm not crazy. Do you believe that? I'm not. "I believe you," she said simply, and Ralph felt a vast weight slip from his heart. She was telling the truth. There was no question about it;
her belief shone all around her. "Okay, listen. Since this started happening to you, have you seen certain people who don't look like they belong on Harris Avenue-?
People who don't look like they belong anywhere in the ordinary world?" Lois was looking at him with puzzled incomprehension. "They're bald, they're very short, they wear white smock tops, and what they look like more than anything are the drawings of space aliens they sometimes have on the front pages of those tabloid newspapers