where he'd bought gum and cream sodas. He passed the Dickerson house and the Pakaski house, the Murrays, the Boyds, the Vernons, the Constantines. But no one was home. No one was anywhere. It was empty, the entire town. And dead quiet. He couldn't even hear the ocean, and you could always hear the ocean in Hull.
It was terrible - his town, and everyone gone. He sat down on the seawall along Ocean Avenue and searched the empty beach and he sat and waited but no one came. They were all dead, he realized, long dead and long gone. He was a ghost, come back through the centuries to his ghost town. It wasn't here any longer. He wasn't here any longer. There was no here.
He found himself in a great marble hall next, and it was filled with people and gurneys and red IV bags and he immediately felt better. No matter where this was, he wasn't alone. Three children - two boys and a girl - crossed in front of him. All three wore hospital smocks, and the girl was afraid. She clutched her brothers' hands. She said, "She's here. She'll find us."
Andrew Laeddis leaned in and lit Teddy's cigarette. "Hey, no hard feelings, right, buddy?"
Laeddis was a grim specimen of humanity - a gnarled cord of a body, a gangly head with a jutting chin that was twice as long as it should have been, misshapen teeth, sprouts of blond hair on a scabby, pink skull - but Teddy was glad to see him. He was the only one he knew in the room.
"Got me a bottle," Laeddis said, "if you want to have a toot later." He winked at Teddy and clapped his back and turned into Chuck and that seemed perfectly normal.
"We've gotta go," Chuck said. "Clock's ticking away here, my friend."
Teddy said, "My town's empty. Not a soul."
And he broke into a run because there she was, Rachel Solando, shrieking as she ran through the ballroom with a cleaver. Before Teddy could reach her, she'd tackled the three children, and the cleaver went up and down and up and down, and Teddy froze, oddly fascinated, knowing there was nothing he could do at this point, those kids were dead.
Rachel looked up at him. Her face and neck were speckled with blood. She said, "Give me a hand."
Teddy said, "What? I could get in trouble."
She said, "Give me a hand and I'll be Dolores. I'll be your wife.
She'll come back to you."
So he said, "Sure, you bet," and helped her. They lifted all three children at once somehow and carried them out through the back door and down to the lake and they carried them into the water. They didn't throw them. They were gentle. They lay them on the water and the children sank. One of the boys rose back up, a hand flailing, and Rachel said, "It's okay. He can't swim."
They stood on the shore and watched the boy sink, and she put her arm around Teddy's waist and said, "You'll be my Jim. I'll be your Dolores. We'll make new babies."
That seemed a perfectly just solution, and Teddy wondered why he'd never thought of it before.
He followed her back into Ashecliffe and they met up with Chuck and the three of them walked down a long corridor that stretched for a mile. Teddy told Chuck: "She's taking me to Dolores. I'm going home, buddy."
"That's great!" Chuck said. "I'm glad. I'm never getting off this island."
"No?"
"No, but it's okay, boss. It really is. I belong here. This is my home."
Teddy said, "My home is Rachel."
"Dolores, you mean."
"Right, right. What did I say?"
"You said Rachel."
"Oh. Sorry about that. You really think you belong here?" Chuck nodded. "I've never left. I'm never going to leave. I mean, look at my hands, boss."
Teddy looked at them. They looked perfectly fine to him. He said as much.
Chuck shook his head. "They don't fit. Sometimes the fingers turn into mice."
"Well, then I'm glad you're home."
"Thanks, boss." He slapped his back and turned into Cawley and Rachel had somehow gotten far ahead of them and Teddy started walking double-time.
Cawley said, "You can't love a woman who killed her children."
"I can," Teddy said, walking faster. "You just don't understand." "What?" Cawley wasn't moving his legs, but he was keeping pace with Teddy just the same, gliding. "What don't I understand?" "I can't be alone. I can't face that. Not in this fucking world. I need her. She's my