The Regulators - Stephen King [149]
His hand reaches the panel and he begins snapping the switches down. The green telltales above them wink out; red telltales below them wink on. With each flicked switch, his knowledge of what's going on upstairs dims out more. He is not turning off the senses of the wax dummy his aunt is now covering with kisses, he's not sure he could do that if he wanted to, but he can block them off . . . and he is.
Finally there's nothing left but his mind. It will have to be enough. With his hand pressing down on the switches he has just turned so they cannot fly back up, Seth reaches out to Aunt Audrey, praying he can still find her in all this dark.
The Wyler House/Regulator Time
At the instant Audrey sweeps the boy off the toilet and into her arms, something blasts by Johnny Marinville, something which feels simultaneously as hot as a fever and as cold as frog-jelly. His head fills with a swirl of garish red light that makes him think of honkytonk neon and country music. When it clears, his ability to see everything and sequence even overlapping events has been restored. It's as if the thing that passed him administered some sort of electroshock. That, and a sickly flush across his thoughts that feels like slime.
As Audrey rises with Seth in her arms (the Underoos slip off his foot and he is entirely naked now), Johnny sees that swirl of avid light swing around the boy's head like a corona around the head of baby Jesus in an old painting. Then, like a swarm of termites, it settles, coating his cheeks, his ears, his sweaty hair. It crams into his open glazed eyes and lights his teeth scarlet.
'No!' Audrey shrieks. 'Get out of him! Get OUT, you bastard!'
She leaps for the bathroom door with the boy in her arms. Seth's head seems to be burning. Johnny reaches out — for her? Seth? both? He doesn't know and it doesn't matter because she bursts past him into the filthy kitchen, shrieking and clawing at the dancing swarm of light around Seth's head. Her hand slides uselessly through the red stuff. As she and the boy pass him, Johnny's head is filled with a horrible machine-like buzzing sound. He screams, clapping his hands to his ears. It is only for a moment, as Audrey bolts by, but it is a moment which seems all but eternal, just the same. How can there be any boy left under that sound? he wonders. How in God's name can there be anything left under that sound?
'Let him GO!'she shrieks. 'Let him GO, cocksucker, let him GO!'
Then the kitchen doorway is no longer empty. Cammie Reed is standing there with the .30-.06 in her hands.
Tak's Place/Tak's Time
When it reaches Seth and finds all its usual ways in blocked, its rather indulgent respect for the boy's abilities breaks down for the first time since it sensed Seth's extraordinary mind passing by and called out to that mind with all of its strength. What replaces the indulgence first is realization; anger follows in its wake.
It has been wrong, it seems — Seth has known all along that Tak can re-enter, even during evacuation. Has known and has successfully hidden that knowledge, the way a clever gambler will hide an extra ace up his sleeve. In the end, though, not even that matters; it will get in anyway. There is no way the boy can keep it out. There will be no seige here; Seth Garin is his home now, and he will not be held out of his home.
As the woman carries Seth's body past the writer and into the kitchen, Tak assaults the boy's eyes, the ports of entry closest to that wonderful brain, and begins shoving at them like a burly cop shoving at a door being held by a weak man. It knows a moment of utterly uncharacteristic panic when at first nothing happens — it is like pushing against a brick wall. Then the bricks begin to soften and give way. Triumph flashes up in its cold mind. Soon . . . another moment . . . two, at most . . .
Seth's Place/Seth's Time
Under his hand, two of the switches are moving up. Even when he redoubles his efforts to hold them