The Regulators - Stephen King [104]
'Don't you ever cross the street on your own!' I told him. 'Don't you ever\' Shook him again in spite of myself. Stupid; might as well shake a lump of wax.
This time when the EMTs came out, they were using their stretcher. Wm. Hobart was on it. 'Seems like just lately if it wasn't for bad luck, those Hobarts wouldn't have any luck at all,' Tom said.
This is supposed to be Mr Hobart's vacation week, but he will be spending at least some of it in County General. He fell downstairs, broke his leg hip. Kim told me later that he drinks, church deacon at Zion's Covenant or not. Maybe he does drink, but I don't think that's why he fell downstairs.
July 3, 1995
There's no Stalky Little Boy. Never was. There's a thirty inside of Seth — not an id, not another manifestation of his personality, not a hitchhiker, but something like a tapeworm. It can think. And talk. It talked to me today.
It calls itself Tak.
July 6, 1995
Someone shot the Hobarts' pet Angora cat last night. Apparently nothing left but blood fur. Kim says Irene H. is hysterical, thinks everyone on the street is out to get them because they know the Hobarts are going to heaven the rest of us are going to hell. 'So they are making this hell on earth for us' is what she told Kim. She begged Kim to tell her who did it, said Hugh was devastated, wouldn't come out of his room, just lay there on his bed, crying saying it was all his fault cause he was a sinner. When Kim said she didn't know and didn't think anyone on Poplar Street would shoot the Hobarts' cat, Mrs Hobart said Kim was just like the rest told her they weren't friends anymore. Kim very upset, but not as upset as I am.
What in God's name should I do? It hasn't hurt anyone too badly yet, but —
July 8, 1995
Oh God, thank you. A Mayflower van turned on to the street at just past nine this morning stopped in front of the Hobarts'. They are moving out.
July 16, 1995
Oh you fucking little bastard you shit. Oh how could you. Oh you bastard if I could get at you. If you let Seth go I could get at you. Oh God God God. My fault? Yes. HOW MUCH my fault is the question. Dear Jesus how can I live without him? How go on with this? I didn't know there could be this much pain in the whole wide world how much my fault HOW MUCH? You bastard Tak you bastard. I'm done writing in this book. What good did I ever think it could do anyway?
Oh Herb, I'm so sorry, I love you, I'm sorry.
October 19, 1995
Got an answer to my letter today, ages after I'd given up expecting one. My respondent was a mining engineer named Allen Symes. He works at a place called the China Pit, in the town of Desperation, Nevada. Says he saw Bill and his family, but nothing happened, he just showed them the mine and they went on, nothing happened.
He's lying. I'll probably never know why, or what happened out there, but I know that much. He's lying.
God help me.
CHAPTER TEN
1
It all happened fast, but Johnny's half-wonderful, half-terrible ability to see and sequence kept up.
Entragian, dying but too badly hurt to know it, was crawling toward one of the primitive cacti at the left side of the path, his head hanging so low it left a swath of blood on the ground-growth. His skull gleamed between hanging flaps of hair like a bleary pearl. He looked scalped.
In the middle of the path, a bizarre waltz was going on. The creature from the ravine — a sinister Picasso mountain lion with jutting orange teeth — was up on its hind legs, paws on Steve Ames's shoulders. If Steve had dropped his arms when the cat clawed the puny .22 away from him, he would have been dead already. He had crossed them over his chest instead, however, and now his elbows and forearms were against the cat's chest.
'Shoot it!' he screamed. 'For Christ's sake, shoot it!'
Neither twin made a move for the dropped pistol. They were not identical twins, but their faces now wore identical expressions of anguish.
The mountain lion (it hurt Johnny's eyes just to look at it) uttered a womanish shrieking