search; Ruth's report, detailed and complete as always, made it clear that David Brown, four, could hardly have wandered outside their search area unless he'd been abducted -a possibility they would now have to consider. Her report was accompanied by topographical maps. These were annotated in her careful, no-nonsense handwriting, and made it clear she had conducted the search thoroughly.
'Careful and thorough you were, Ruthie,' Monster Dugan told her that evening. His brow was furrowed in a frown so huge each line looked like an earthquake fissure. 'You always have been. But I never knew you to pull a John Wayne stunt like this before.'
'Butch, I'm sorry
'Yeah, well . . .' He shrugged. 'Done is done, huh?'
'Yes,' she said, and smiled wanly. lt had been one of Ralph's favorite sayings.
Butch asked a lot of questions, but not the one she needed to answer* Ruth, what's wrong in Haven? The high winds had cleansed the town's atmosphere; none of the outsiders sensed anything was wrong.
But the winds hadn't ended the trouble. The bad magic was still going on. Whatever it was, it seemed to continue by itself after a certain point. Ruth guessed that point had been reached. She wondered what a team of doctors, conducting mass physicals in Haven, might find. Iron shortages in the women? Men with suddenly receding hairlines? Improved visual acuity (especially peripheral vision) matched by a surprisingly high loss of teeth? People who seemed so bright they were spooky, so in tune with you they almost seemed to be - ha-ha - reading your mind?
Ruth herself lost two more teeth Wednesday night. One she found on her pillow Thursday morning, a grotesquely middle-aged offering to the tooth fairy. The other was nowhere to be found. She supposed she had swallowed it. Not that it mattered.
The compulsion to blow up the town hall became a maddening mental poison ivy, itching at her brain all the time. The doll-voices whispered and whispered. On Friday she made a final effort to save herself.
She determined to leave town after all - it was not hers anymore. She guessed that staying even this long had been one of the traps the Tommyknockers had laid for her - and, like the David Brown trap, she had blundered into it, as confused as a rabbit in a snare.
She thought her old Dodge wouldn't start. They would have fixed it. But it did.
Then she thought she would not be allowed out of Haven Village, that they would stop her, smiling like Moonies and sending their endless rustly we-all-love-you-Ruth thoughts. She wasn't.
She rolled down Main Street and out into the country, sitting bolt upright and white-knuckled, a graven smile on her face, tongue-twisters
(she sells pickled peppers bitter butter)
flying through her head. She felt her gaze being pulled toward the town-hall clock tower
(a signal Ruth send)
(yes the explosion the lovely)
(bang blow it blow it all the way to Altair-4 Ruth)
and resisted with all her might. This compulsion to blow up the town hall to call attention to what was going on here was insane. lt was like setting your house on fire to roast a chicken.
She felt better when the brick tower was out of sight.
once on Derry Road, she had to resist an urge, to get the Dart moving as fast as it would go (which, considering its years, was still surprisingly fast). She felt like a lucky escapee from a den of lions - one who has escaped more by good luck than good sense. As the village dropped behind her and those rustling voices fell away, she began to feel that someone must be giving belated chase.
She glanced again and again into the rearview mirror, expecting to see vehicles chasing after her, wanting to bring her back. They would insist that she come back.
They loved her too much to let her go.
But the road had remained clear. No Dick Allison screaming after her in one of the town's three fire engines. No Newt Berringer in his big old mint-green Olds-88. No Bobby Tremain in his yellow Dodge Challenger.
As she approached the Haven-Albion town line, she put the Dart up to fifty. The closer she got to the town line - which she had begun to think of, rightly or not, as the point at which her escape would become irrevocable, the more she found the last two weeks seeming like some black, twisted nightmare.
Can't go back. Can't.
Her foot on the Dart's accelerator pedal kept growing heavier.
At the end, something warned her - perhaps