simpler. But he couldn't believe that. Part of him was still convinced that David was alive. Perhaps it was only wishful thinking, but somehow Ev didn't think so - he had done plenty of that in his time, and this didn't feel like it. This was a strong, pulsing intuition in his mind: David is alive. He is lost, and he is in danger of dying, oh, most certainly ... but he can still be saved. If. If you can make up your mind to do something. And if what you make up your mind to do is the right thing. Long odds for an old fart like you, who pisses a dark spot on his pants every once in a while these days when he can't get to the john in time. Long, long odds.
Late Monday evening he had awakened, from a dozing sleep, trembling in Hilly's hospital room - the nurses often turned a leniently blind eye to him and allowed him to stay far past regular visiting hours. He'd had a dreadful nightmare. He had dreamed he was in some dark and stony place - needletipped mountains sawed at a black sky strewn with cold stars, and a wind as sharp as an icepick whined in narrow, rocky defiles. Below him, by starlight, he could see a huge flat plain. It looked dry and cold and lifeless. Great cracks zigzagged across it, giving it the look of crazy-paving. And from somewhere, he could hear David's thin voice: 'Help me, Grandpa, it hurts to breathe! Help me, Grandpa, it hurts to breathe! Help me! I'm scared! I didn't want to do the trick but Hilly made me and now I can't find my way home!'
He sat looking at Hilly, his body bathed in sweat. lt ran down his face like tears.
He got up, went over to Hilly, and bent close to him. 'Hilly,' he said, not for the first time. 'Where's your brother? Where is David?'
Only this time Hilly's eyes opened. His watery, unseeing stare chilled Everett - it was the stare of a blind sibyl.
'Altair-4,' Hilly said calmly, and with perfect clarity. 'David is on Altair-4 and there's Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door.'
His eyes slipped shut and he slept deeply again.
Ev stood over him, perfectly motionless, his skin the color of putty.
After a while, he began to shudder.
8
He was the town in exile.
If Ruth McCausland had been Haven's heart and conscience, then Ev Hillman at seventy-three (and not nearly so senile as he had lately come to fear) was its memory. He had seen much of the town in his long life there, and had heard more; he had always been a good listener.
Leaving the hospital that Monday evening, he detoured by the Derry Mr Paperback where he invested nine dollars in a Maine Atlas - a compendium of large maps which showed the state in neat pieces, 600 square miles in each piece. Turning to map 23, he found the town of Haven. He had also bought a compass at the book-and-magazine shop, and now, without wondering why he was doing it, he drew a circle around the town. He did not plant the compass's anchor in Haven Village to do this, of course, because the village was actually on the edge of the township.
David is on Altair-4
David is on Altair-4 and there's Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door.
Ev sat frowning over the map and the circle he had drawn, wondering if what Hilly had said had any significance.
Should have gotten a red pencil, old man. Haven ought to be circled in red now. On this map ... on every map.
He bent closer. His far vision was still so perfect that he could have told a bean from a kernel of corn if you set both on a fencepost forty yards away, but his near vision was going to hell fast, now, and he had left his reading glasses back at Marie and Bryant's - and he had an idea that if he went back to get them, he might find he had more to worry about than reading small print. For the time being it was better -safer - to just get along without them.
With his nose almost on the page, he examined the place where the compass needle had gone in. lt was spang on the Derry Road, just a bit north of Preston Stream, and a bit east of what he and his friends had called Big Injun Woods when they were