Dugan stared at him for a moment, utterly flummoxed. Not even Alice in Wonderland had been this mad.
'What in the name of God are you talking about?'
Don't argue with me, just do it.' Ev turned his face away from Dugan, presenting him with the back of his head. 'I got two pieces of steel plate in, my head. War souvenir. Bigger one's back there. See the place where the hair don't grow?'
'Yes, but
'Time is short! Put your ear up close to that scar and listen!'
He did ... and felt unreality wash over him. The back of the old man's head was playing music. It was tinny and distant but perfectly identifiable. It was Frank Sinatra singing 'New York, New York.'
Butch Dugan began to giggle. Soon he was laughing. Then he was roaring, arms wrapped around his stomach. He was out here in the back of the beyond with an old man whose head had just turned into a music-box. By God, this was better than Ripley's Believe It or Not.
Butch laughed and gasped and wept and roared and
The old man's callused palm slammed across his face. The shock of being slapped like a small child surprised Butch out of his hysteria as much as the pain had done. He blinked at Ev, one hand going to his cheek.
'It started a week and a half before I left town,' Ev said grimly. 'Blasts of music in my head. They were stronger when I got out this way, and I should have thought about that before now, but I didn't. They're stronger now. Everything is. So I got no time for you to get the screaming yaw-haws. Are you going to be all right?'
The flush spreading over Dugan's face mostly hid the red mark Ev's hand had made. The screaming yaw-haws. That pretty well described it. First he had puked, and then he had had a fit of hysterics like a teenage girl. This old man wasn't just showing him up; he was pulling past him in second gear.
'I'll be fine,' he said.
'You believe now that something's going on here? That something in Haven has changed?'
'Yes. I . . .'He swallowed. 'Yes,' he repeated.
'Good.' Ev stepped on the gas and roared back onto the road. 'This ... thing ... it's changing everyone in town, Trooper Dugan. Everyone but me. I get music in my head, but that's all. I don't read minds ... and I don't get ideas.'
'What do you mean, "ideas"? What kind of ideas?'
'All kinds.' The Cherokee's speedometer touched sixty, then began to edge past it. 'Thing is, I have no proof of what's going on. None at all. You thought I was right off 'n my head, didn't you?'
Dugan nodded. He was holding on tight to the dashboard in front of him. He felt sick to his stomach again. The sun was too bright, dazzling on the windshield and the chrome.
'The reporter and the nurses did, too. But there's something in the woods, and I'm going to find it, and I'm going to take some pitchers of it, and I'm going to take you out, and we're going to do some loud talking, and maybe we'll find a way to get my grandson David back and maybe we won't, but either way we ought to be able to shut down whatever's going on here before it's too late. Ought to? We got to.'
Now the speedometer needle hung just below seventy.
'How far?' Dugan managed through closed teeth. He was going to puke again, and soon; he just hoped he could hold on until they got to wherever they were going.
'The old Garrick farm,' Ev said. 'Less than a mile.'
Thank God, Dugan thought.
14
'It's not Gard,' Bobbi said. 'Gard's passed out on the porch of the house.'
'How do you know?' Adley McKeen asked. 'You can't read him.'
'I can, though,' Bobbi said. 'A little more every day. He's still on the porch, I tell you. He's dreaming about skiing.'
They looked at Bobbi silently for a moment - about a dozen men standing across the street from the Methodist church, in front of the Haven Lunch.
'Who is it, then?' Joe Summerfield asked at last.
'I don't know,' Bobbi said. 'Only that it's not Gard.' Bobbi was swaying mildly on her feet. Her face was that of a woman who was fifty, not thirtyseven. There were brown circles of exhaustion under her eyes. The men seemed not to notice.
From the church, voices were raised in 'Holy, Holy, We Adore Thee.'