The Regulators - Stephen King [142]
I outgrew them, he thinks, and that is the truth of it. Autistic or not, only eight or not, he has gotten too old for shoot-'em-up Westerns and Saturday-morning cartoons. He suddenly understands that this is almost certainly the bottom truth, and one Tak would never understand: he outgrew them. He has the Cassie Styles figure in his pocket (when he needs a pocket he just imagines one; it's handy) because he still loves her a little, but otherwise? No. The only question is whether or not he can escape them, sweet fantasies which might have been laced with poison all along.
And the time has come to find that out.
Beside the photo of Allen Symes, a little shelf just out of the wall. Seth has seen and admired the shelves in the Carver hallway, each dedicated to its own Hummel figure, and this one was created with those in mind. Enough light seeps through the cracks in the door to see what's on it — not a Hummel shepherd or milkmaid but a red PlaySkool telephone.
He picks it up and spins out two-four-eight on the plastic phone's rotary dial. It's the Carvers' house number. In his ear the toy phone rings . . . rings . . . rings. But is it ringing on the other end? Does she hear it? Do any of them hear it?
'Come on,' he whispers. He is entirely aware and alert; in this deep-inside place he's no more autistic than Steve Ames or Belinda Josephson or Johnny Marinville . . . is, in fact, something of a genius.
A frightened genius, right now.
'Come on . . . please, Aunt Audrey, please hear . . . please answer . . . '
Because time is short, and the time is now.
Main Street, Desperation/Regulator Time
The telephone in the Carver living room begins to ring, and as if this is some kind of signal aimed directly at his deepest and most delicate neural centers, Johnny Marinville's unique ability to see and sequence breaks down for the first time in his life. His perspective shivers like the shapes in a kaleidoscope when the tube is twirled, then falls apart in prisms and bright shards. If this is how the rest of the world sees and experiences during times of stress, he thinks, it's no wonder people make so many bad decisions when the heat is on. He doesn't like experiencing things this way. It's like having a high fever and seeing half a dozen people standing around your bed. You know that four of them are actually there . . . but which four? Susi Geller is crying and screaming her mother's name. The Carver kids are both awake again, of course; Ellen, her capacity to endure in relative stoicism finally gone, seems to be having a kind of emotional convulsion, screaming at the top of her lungs and pounding Steve's back as he tries to embrace and comfort her. And Ralphie wants to whale on his big sister! 'Stop huggin Margrit!' he storms at Steve as Cynthia attempts to restrain him. 'Stop huggin Margrit the Maggot! She shoulda give me all the candybar! She shoulda give me ALLLLL of it'n none a this would happen!' Brad starts for the living room — to answer the phone, presumably — and Audrey grabs his arm. 'No,' she says, and then, with a kind of surreal politeness: 'It's for me.' And Susi is on her feet now, Susi is running down the hall toward the front door to see what's happened to her mother (a very unwise idea, in Johnny's humble opinion). Dave Reed tries to restrain her again and this time can't, so he follows her instead, calling her name. Johnny expects the boy's mother to restrain him, but Cammie lets him go while from out back coyotes that look like no coyotes which ever existed on God's earth lift their crooked snouts and sing mad love songs to the moon.
All of this at once, swirling like litter caught in a cyclone.
He's on his feet without even realizing it, following Brad and Belinda into the living room, which looks as if the Green Giant stomped through it in a snit. The kids are still shrieking from the pantry, and Susi is howling from the end of the