The Regulators - Stephen King [133]
5
'The thing inside Seth is named Tak.'
'Is it a demon, Aud?' Old Doc asked. 'Some kind of demon?'
'No. It has no . . . no religion, I suppose you'd say. Unless TV counts. It's more like a tumor, I think. One that's conscious and enjoys cruelty and violence. It's been inside him for almost two years now. I heard a story once about a Vermont woman who found a black widow spider in her sink. It apparently came into the house in an empty box her husband brought home from the supermarket where he worked. The box had been full of bananas from South America. The spider had gotten in with them when they were packed. That's pretty much how Tak got to Poplar Street, I think. Except we're talking about a black widow with a voice. It called Seth when he and his family were crossing the desert. Crossing Nevada. It sensed him, someone it could use, passing close by, and called him.'
She looked down at her hands, which were knotted tightly together in her lap. Kim Geller was standing in the living-room doorway now, drawn back by Audrey's story. Audrey looked up again. She spoke to them all, but it was Johnny her eyes kept returning to.
'I think it was weak at first, but not too weak to understand that Seth's family posed a threat to it. I don't know how much they knew or suspected, but I do know that my last phone conversation with my brother was very strange. I think Bill could have told me a lot . . . if Tak had let him.'
'It can do that?' Steve asked. 'Impose control over people like that?'
She gestured at her swollen mouth. 'My hand did this,' she said, 'but I wasn't running it.'
'Christ,' Cynthia said. She looked nervously at the knives hanging on their magnetized steel runners over the kitchen counter. 'That's bad. Very.'
'It could be worse, though,' Audrey said. 'Tak can only physically control at short range.'
'How short?' Cammie asked.
'Usually no more than twenty or thirty feet. Beyond that, its physical influence runs out in a hurry. Usually. Now, all bets are off. Because it's never been so loaded with energy.'
'Let her tell her story,' Johnny said. He could feel time almost as a tangible thing, slipping away from them. He didn't know if he was getting that from Audrey or if it was coming from inside himself, and he didn't care. Time was short. He had never felt an intuition so strongly in his whole life. Time was short.
'There's a boy still in there,' she said, speaking slowly and with great emphasis. 'A sweet, special child named Seth Garin. And the most despicable thing is that Tak has used what the child loves to do its killing. In the case of my brother and his family, it was Tracker Arrow, one of the MotoKops' Power Wagons. They were in California, at the end of the trip that took them through Nevada, when it happened. I don't know where Tak got enough energy to summon Tracker Arrow out of Seth's thoughts and dreams at that stage of its development. Seth is its basic power-supply, but Seth isn't enough. It needs more in order to really crank up.'
'It's a vampire, isn't it?' Johnny said. 'Only what it draws off is psychic energy instead of blood.'
She nodded. 'And the energy it uses is most abundantly available when someone is in pain. In the case of Bill and the rest of his family, maybe someone in the neighborhood died or was hurt. Or — '
'Or maybe there was someone it could hurt itself,' Steve said. 'A handy bum, for instance. Just some old wino pushing a shopping cart. Whoever it was, I bet he died with a smile on his face.'
Audrey looked at him, her face sad and sickened. 'You know.'
'Not much, but what I know fits what you're saying,' Steve told her. 'There's a guy like that back there.' He hooked a thumb in the general direction of the greenbelt. 'Entragian recognized him. Said he'd been on the street two or three times before since the start of the summer. He got in your nephew's hooking range, didn't he? How?'
'I don't know,' she said dully. 'I must have been away.'
'Where?' Cynthia asked. She'd had the idea that Mrs Wyler was sort of a recluse.
'Never mind,'