Ruth. Not Bobbi's friend - he's immune, somehow. He doesn't hear voices. He doesn't 'become.' Except drunk. That's what Bobbi's voice says: 'Gard becomes drunk.' But as for the rest of them ... if you meddle into their business ... they'll kill you, Ruth. Gently. With love. So just stand back. Let it happen.
But if she did, her town would be destroyed ... not changed, the way its name had been changed again and again, not hurt, as that sweet-talking preacher had hurt it, but destroyed. And she would be destroyed with it, because the force was already nibbling away at the core of her. She felt it.
All right, then ... what do you do?
For the time being, nothing. Things might get better on their own. In the meantime, was there any way she could guard her thoughts?
She began to experiment with tongue-twisters: She sells seashells down by the seashore. Betty Bitter bought some butter. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. With a little practice she found she could keep one of them playing constantly in the back of her mind. She walked downtown to the market, got some ground meat and two ears of fresh corn for her dinner, and spoke pleasantly with Madge Tilletts at the checkout counter and Dave Rutledge, who was sitting in his accustomed place at the front of the store, caning a chair slowly with his old, bunched, and arthritic hands. Except old Dave wasn't looking as old as he used to these days. Nowhere near.
Both of them looked at her. wary, surprised puzzled.
They hear me ... but not very well. I'm jamming them! I really am!
She didn't know how successfully, and it wouldn't do to bank on her ability to do it - but it worked. That didn't mean they couldn't read her if several of them linked up and worked together at picking her brain. She sensed that might be possible. But it was something, at least, one arrow in a previously empty quiver.
That night, Saturday night, she decided she would wait until Tuesday noon -roughly sixty hours. If things continued to deteriorate, she would go to the state-police barracks in Derry, seek out some of her husband's old friends - Monster Dugan for a start - and tell them what was going on forty miles or so downstate on Route 9. It was maybe not the best of plans, but it would have to do. Ruth McCausland fell asleep. And dreamed of batteries in the earth.
BOOK II. TALES OF HAVEN Chapter 6. Ruth McCausland, Concluded
1
The disappearance of David Brown rendered Ruth's plan obsolete. After David disappeared, she found herself unable to leave town. Because David was gone and they all knew it ... but they also knew that David was somehow still in Haven.
Always during the becoming came a time which might have been called 'the dance of untruth.' For Haven, this time commenced with the disappearance of David Brown and unfolded itself during the subsequent search.
Ruth was just sitting down to the local news when the phone rang. Marie Brown was hysterical, barely coherent.
'Calm down, Marie,' Ruth said, and thought it was good she had eaten an early supper. She might not get another chance to eat for quite a while. At first the only clear fact she seemed able to get from Marie was that her boy David was in some kind of trouble, trouble that had started at a back yard magic show, and Hilly had gotten hysterical
'Put Bryant on,' Ruth said.
'But you'll come, won't you?' Marie wept. 'Please, Ruth, before dark. We can still find him, I know we can.'
'Of course I'll come,' Ruth said. 'Now put Bryant on.'
Bryant was dazed but able to give a clearer picture of what had happened. It still sounded crazy, but then, what else was new in Haven these days? After the magic show, the audience had wandered away, leaving Hilly and David to clean up. Now David was gone. Hilly had fainted, and now had no memory of what had happened that afternoon at all. All he knew for sure was that when he saw David, he had to give him all the G.I. Joes. But he didn't remember why.
'You better come over quick as you can,' Bryant said.
Going out, she paused for a moment on her way to her Dart and looked at Haven Village's main street with real hate. What have you done now? she thought. Goddam you, what have you done now?