Thinner - By Stephen King Page 0,22

seem to pick up no speed. Although he was on the Main Street sidewalk, he felt as if he was running in thick, sticky mud. At any moment the skeleton that had been Michael Houston would reach out and he - it - would touch his shoulder. Or perhaps that bony hand would begin to scrabble at his throat.

'Toot-sweet, toot-sweet, toot-sweet!' Houston's squalling, ratlike voice screamed. The voice was drawing closer and closer; Halleck knew that if he turned his head, the apparition would be close to him, so very close - sparkling eyes bulging from sockets of naked bone, the uncovered jawbone jerking and snapping.

He saw Yard Stevens shamble out of Heads Up, his beige barber's smock flapping over a chest and a belly that were now nonexistent. Yard was screeching in a horrid, crowlike voice, and when he turned toward Halleck, he saw it was not Yard at all, but Ronald Reagan. 'Where's the rest of me?' he screamed. 'Where's the rest of me? WHERE'S THE REST OF ME?'

'Thinner,' Michael Houston was now whispering into Halleck's ear, and now what Halleck had feared happened: those finger bones touched him, twiddling and twitching at his sleeve, and Halleck thought he would go mad at the feeling. 'Thinner, so much thinner, toot-de-sweet, and thin - de-thin, it was his wife, Billy-boy, his wife, and you're in trouble. oh-baby, sooo much trouble. . .'

Chapter Eight. Billy's Pants

Billy jerked awake, breathing hard, his hand clapped across his mouth. Heidi slept peacefully beside him, deeply buried in a quilt. A mid-spring wind was running around the eaves outside.

Halleck took one quick, fearful look around the bedroom, assuring himself that Michael Houston - or a scarecrow version of him - was not in attendance. It was just his bedroom, every corner of it known. The nightmare began to drain away ... but there was still enough of it left so that he scooted over next to Heidi. He did not touch her - she woke easily - but he got into the zone of her warmth and stole part of her quilt.

Just a dream.

Thinner, a voice in his mind answered implacably.

Sleep came again. Eventually.

The morning following the nightmare, the bathroom scales showed him at 215, and Halleck felt hopeful. Only two pounds. Houston had been right, coke or not. The process was slowing down. He went downstairs whistling and ate three fried eggs and half a dozen link sausages.

On his ride to the train station, the nightmare recurred to him in vague fashion, more as a feeling of deja vu than actual memory. He looked out the window as he passed Heads Up (which was flanked by Frank's Fine Meats and Toys Are Joys) and for just a moment he expected to see a half-score of lurching, shambling skeletons, as if comfortable, plushy Fairview had somehow been changed into Biafra. But the people on the streets looked okay; better than okay. Yard Stevens, as physically substantial as ever, waved. Halleck waved back and thought: Your metabolism is warning you to quit smoking, Yard. The thought made him smile a little, and by the time his train pulled into Grand Central, the last vestiges of the dream were forgotten.

His mind at rest on the matter of his weight loss, Halleck neither weighed himself nor thought much about the matter for another four days . . . and then an embarrassing thing very nearly happened to him, in court and in front of Judge Hilmer Boynton, who had no more sense of humor than your average land turtle. It was stupid; the kind of thing you have bad dreams about when you're a grade-school kid.

Halleck stood to make an objection and his pants started to fall down.

He got halfway up, felt them sliding relentlessly down his hips and buttocks, bagging at the knees, and he sat down very quickly. In one of those moments of almost total objectivity - the ones which come unbidden and which you would often just as soon have forgotten Halleck realized that his movement must have looked like some sort of bizarre hop. William Halleck, attorney-at-law, does his Peter Rabbit riff. He felt a blush mount into his cheeks.

'Is it an objection, Mr Halleck, or a gas attack?'

The spectators - mercifully few of them - tittered.

'Nothing, your Honor,' Halleck muttered. 'I ... I changed my mind.'

Boynton grunted. The proceedings droned on and Halleck sat sweating, wondering just how he was going to get up.

The judge called a recess ten minutes later.