Different Seasons - Stephen King [200]
19
I came awake in the middle of the night, disoriented, wondering why it was so chilly in my bedroom and who had left the windows open. Denny, maybe. I had been dreaming of Denny, something about body-surfing at Harrison State Park. But it had been four years ago that we had done that.
This wasn't my room: this was someplace else. Somebody was holding me in a mighty bearhug. Somebody else was pressed against my back, and a shadowy third was crouched beside me, head cocked in a listening attitude.
'What the fuck?' I asked in honest puzzlement.
A long drawn-out groan in answer. It sounded like Vern.
That brought things into focus, and I remembered where I was but what was everybody doing awake in the middle of the night? Or had I only been asleep for seconds? No, that couldn't be, because a thin sliver of moon was floating dead centre in an inky sky.
'Don't let it get me,' Vern gibbered. 'I swear I'll be a good boy, I won't do nothin' bad, I'll put the ring up before I take a piss, I'll I'll ' With some astonishment I realized that I was listening to a prayer-or at least the Vern Tessio equivalent of a prayer.
I sat bolt upright, scared. 'Chris?'
'Shut up, Vern,' Chris said. He was the one crouching and listening. 'It's nothing.'
'Oh yes it is,' Teddy said ominously. 'It's something.'
'What is?' I asked. I was still sleepy and disoriented, unstrung from my place in space and time. It scared me that I had come in late on whatever had developed-too late to defend myself properly, maybe.
Then, as if to answer my question, a long and hollow scream rose languidly from the woods-it was the sort of scream you might expect from a woman dying in extreme agony and extreme fear.
'Oh-dear-to-Jesus!' Vern whimpered, his voice high and filled with tears. He reapplied the bearhug that had wakened me, making it hard for me to breathe and adding to my own terror. I threw him loose with an effort but he scrambled right back beside me like a puppy which can't think of anyplace else to go.
'It's that Brower kid,' Teddy whispered hoarsely. 'His ghost's out walkin' in the
woods.'
'Oh God!' Vern screamed, apparently not crazy about that idea at all. 'I promise I won't hawk no more dirty books out of Dahlie's Market! I promise I won't give my carrots to the dog no more I I I ' He floundered there, wanting to bribe God with everything but unable to think of anything really good in the extremity of his fear. 'I won't smoke no more unfiltered cigarettes! I won't say no bad swears! I won't put my Bazooka in the offerin plate! I won't -'
'Shut up, Vern,' Chris said, and beneath his usual authoritative toughness I could hear the hollow boom of awe. I wondered if his arms and back and belly were as stiff with gooseflesh as my own were, and if the hair on the nape of his neck was trying to stand up in hackles, as mine was.
Vern's voice dropped to a whisper as he continued to expand the reforms he planned to institute if God would only let him live through this night.
'It's a bird, isn't it?' I asked Chris.
'No. At least, I don't think so. I think it's a wildcat My dad says they scream bloody murder when they're getting ready to mate. Sounds like a woman, doesn't it?'
'Yeah,' I said. My voice hitched in the middle of the word and two ice-cubes broke off in the gap.
'But no woman could scream that loud,' Chris said and then added helplessly: 'Could she, Gordie?'
'It's his