Ned joined them for a closer look at the stranger, and to insinuate
himself between the guy and Sandy. When he got to their table, he was
surprised to see that Sandy had a bottle of beer and had opened one for
him, too. He did not drink much; Sandy drank less.
"You'll need it when you hear what they have to tell us," Sandy said.
"In fact, you might even need a couple more bottles."
The guy's name was Dominick Corvaisis, and he had an amazing tale that
drove all worries of infidelity from Ned's mind. When Corvaisis was
finished, Ernie and Faye had an incredible story of their own, and that
was when Ned first learned about the ex-Marine's fear of the dark.
"But I remember we were evacuated," Ned said. "We couldn't have been
here at the motel those three days, 'cause I remember we had a sort of
mini-vacation at home-watching TV, reading Louis L'Amour."
"I believe that's what you were told to remember," Corvaisis said. "Did
anyone visit you at the trailer during that time? Any neighbors drop
by? Anyone who could confirm that you were actually there?"
"We're outside Beowawe, where we don't really have neighbors. Far as I
remember, we didn't see anybody who could swear we was there."
Sandy said, "Ned, they wondered if anything strange has been happening
to either of us."
Ned met his wife's eyes. Without words, he let her know it was up to
her whether she told them about the changes she had been undergoing.
Corvaisis said, "The two of you were here the night it happened.
Whatever it was, it started while I was having dinner. So you must have
been a part of it. But the memory was stolen from you."
The thought of strangers messing with his mind gave Ned the creeps.
Uneasy, he studied the five Polaroid snapshots that Faye had fanned out
on the table, especially the picture of Corvaisis staring empty-eyed.
To Sandy, Faye said, "Honey, Ernie and I would have to've been blind not
to've noticed the changes in you recently. I don't mean to embarrass
you, and I don't want to pry, but if those changes might be related to
whatever happened to us, then we ought to know about it."
Sandy reached for Ned's hand, held it. Her love for him was so evident
that he was ashamed of himself for the ridiculous thoughts of betrayal
that had preoccupied him earlier.
Staring intently at her beer, she said, "Most all my life, I've had the
lowest opinion of myself. I'll tell you why, because you've got to know
how bad it was for me when I was a kid if you want to understand how
miraculous it is that I ever found any self-respect. It was Ned who
first lifted me up, believed in me, gave me a chance to be somebody."
Her hand tightened on his. "Almost nine years ago, he started courting
me, and he was the first person ever treated me like a lady. He married
me knowing that inside I was tied up in tangled knots, and he's spent
eight years doing his best to untie and untangle them. He thinks I
don't know how hard he's tried to help me, but I know all right."
Her voice cracked with emotion. She paused for a swallow of beer.
Ned was unable to speak.
Sandy said, "The thing is . . . I want everyone to know that maybe
what happened the summer before last, the thing none of us remembers . .
. maybe it did have a powerful effect on me. But if Ned hadn't taken
me under his wing all those years ago, I never would've had a chance."
Love enwrapped Ned as if it were bands of iron, closing his throat,
constricting his chest, applying a pleasant pressure to his heart.
She glanced at him, returned her gaze to the bottle of beer, and
recounted a childhood in hell. She did not describe her father's
violations of her in explicit detail, and she spoke demurely-almost
primly-of her periodic exploitation as a child prostitute under the
management of a Vegas pimp. Her account of this monstrous abuse was all
the more shocking and moving because she related it without drama.
Everyone at the table listened in a silence resulting not merely from
shock but from respect for her suffering and from a certain reverence
for her ultimate triumph.
When Sandy finished, Ned embraced her, held her close. He was amazed by
her strength. He had always known she was special, and the things she
told them tonight only strengthened his love and admiration.
Though he was deeply saddened by what had been done to Sandy, he was
delighted that she was at last able to talk about it. Surely this meant
that the past had lost its hold on her.
Faye and Ernie commiserated with her in the awkward manner of friends
who want to help but who know they can offer only words.
Everyone needed another beer. Ned got five bottles of Dos Equis out of
the cooler and brought them to the table.
Corvaisis, who no longer seemed like the enemy to Ned, shook his head
and blinked as if Sandy's story had left him in a daze of horror. "This
turns things upside down. I mean, if our unremembered experience had
one basic effect on the rest of us, it was terror. Oh, I benefited
because I was brought out of my shell; I share that with Sandy. But
Ernie, Dr. Weiss, Lomack, and me . . . we were for the most part left
with a residue of fear. Now Sandy tells us the effect on her was
strictly beneficial, not frightening in the least. How could it affect
us so differently? You really have no fear, Sandy?"
"None," Sandy said.
Ever since Ernie pulled a chair up to the table, he'd been sitting with
his shoulders hunched and his head lowered, as if protecting his neck
from attack. Now, with one hand clamped around a bottle of Dos Equis,
he leaned back and relaxed, though not much. "Yeah, fear's the core of
it. But you remember that place along the interstate I told you about,
little more than a quarter-mile from here? I'm sure something weird
happened there, something that relates to the brainwashing. But when I'm
standing at that place, I feel more than just fear. My heart starts to
race . . . and I get excited . . . but it's not entirely a bad
excitement. Fear's a part of it, yeah, maybe the biggest part of it,
but there's a stew of other emotions, as well."
Sandy said, "I think the place Ernie's talking about is where I often
wind up when I take the truck out for a ride. I'm . . . drawn there."
Ernie leaned forward, excited. "I knew it! Coming back from the
airport this morning, as we were passing that place, you let the truck
slow way down. And I said to myself, 'Sandy feels it, too." "
Faye said, "Sandy, what exactly do you feel when you're drawn to that
piece of ground?"
With a smile so warm that Ned could almost feel the heat of it, Sandy
said, "Peace. I feel at peace there. It's hard to explain . . . but
it's as if the rocks, dirt, and trees all radiate harmony, tranquility."
"I don't feel peaceful there," Ernie said. "Fear, yes. A queer
excitement. An eerie sense that something . . . shattering will
happen. Something that I'm eager for, even though it scares the hell
out of me."
"And I feel none of what you feel," Sandy said.
&
nbsp; "We ought to go there," Ned suggested. "See if the place affects the
rest of us."
"In the morning," Corvaisis said. "When it's light."
Faye said, "I can see this might've had a different effect on each of
us. But why has it changed Dom's and Sandy's and Ernie's lives-and the
lives of that Mr. Lomack in Reno and Dr. Weiss in Boston-yet done
nothing to Ned and me. Why aren't we having problems, too?"
Dom said, "Maybe the brainwashers did a better job on you and Ned."
That thought gave Ned the heebie-jeebies again.
For a while they discussed their situation, and then Ned suggested that
Corvaisis try to re-create his actions on that Friday night, July 6, up
to the point where his memories were erased. "You recollect the early
part of the evening better than we do. And when you came in the first
time tonight, you were close to remembering something important."
"Close," Corvaisis agreed, "but at the last moment, when I felt the
memory within grasp, it scared the crap out of me . . . and the next
thing I knew, I was running for the door. Made quite a spectacle of
myself. I was totally freaked out. It was such a visceral thing,
instinctual, so utterly uncontrollable, that I think it would probably
happen again if I made a second attempt to force the memories."
"Still, it's worth a try," Ned said.
"And you've got us for moral support this time," Faye said.
Corvaisis needed coaxing, which Ned interpreted as meaning that the
experience earlier this evening had been considerably more unnerving
than words could express. But at last the writer got up and, carrying
his glass of beer, went to the front door of the diner. He stood with
his back to the exit, chugged a long swallow of Dos Equis. He looked
around the room, trying hard to see the people of that other time.
He said, "There were three or four men sitting at the counter. Maybe a
dozen customers altogether. I can't remember their faces." Moving away
from the door, he walked past Ned and the others, to the next table,
where he pulled out a chair and sat with his back turned partly toward
them. "This is where I sat. Sandy waited on me. I took a bottle of
Coors while I looked at the menu. Ordered the ham-and-egg sandwich.
French fries, coleslaw. As I was salting the fries, the shaker slipped
out of my hand. Salt spilled on the table. I threw a pinch over my
shoulder. Silly gesture. Threw it too hard. Dr. Weiss! Ginger Weiss
was the woman I threw the salt on. I didn't remember that before, but I
can see her clearly now. The blond in the photo."
Faye tapped the Polaroid snapshot of Dr. Weiss that was on the table in
front of Ned.
Still sitting alone at the other table, Corvaisis said, "Quite a
beautiful woman. Pixie-cute yet also sophisticated-looking, a really
interesting mix. Could hardly take my eyes off her."
Ned looked more closely at the photo of Ginger Weiss. He supposed she
might, indeed, be unusually attractive when her face was not so pale and
slack, when her eyes were not so cold, empty, dead.
In a voice that had grown odd, as if he were actually speaking to them
from out of the past, Corvaisis said, "She sits in the corner booth by
the window, facing this way. Sunset is near. The sun's out there on
the horizon, balanced like a big red ball, and the diner's filled with
orange light slanting in through the windows. Almost like firelight.
Ginger Weiss looks especially lovely in that light. I can hardly keep
from staring openly at her. . . . Twilight now. I've got a second
beer." He sipped some Dos Equis. When he continued, his voice was
softer: "The plains are all purple ... then black ...
night . . ."
Like Ernie and Faye and Sandy, Ned was spellbound by the writer's
struggle to remember, for it stirred in him, at last, faint and
shapeless-but compelling-memories of his own. He began to recall that
particular evening out of the many he'd spent in the Tranquility Grille.
The young priest had been here, the one in the Polaroid snapshot now
lying on the table. And the young couple with their little girl.
"Not long after nightfall ... nursing my second beer mainly so I can
stare at Ginger Weiss a little longer." Corvaisis looked left, right,
raised his right hand to his ear. "An unusual sound of some kind. I
remember that much. A distant rumble . . . getting louder." He was
silent for awhile. "Can't remember what happened next. Something . .
. something ...
but it just won't come."
As the writer spoke of the rumbling, Ned Sarver experienced the vaguest
possible memory of that frightening, swelling sound, but he could not
clearly call it to mind. He felt as if Corvaisis had brought him to the
into which he must look, and now they were turning away without shining
a light down in those black depths. Heart racing, he said, "Concentrate
on remembering the sound, the exact sound, and maybe that'll bring the
rest of it back to you."
Corvaisis pushed his chair back from the table, got up. "Rumbling . . .
like thunder, very distant thunder ... but growing closer." He stood
beside the table, seeking the direction from which the sound had come,
looking left, right, up, down at the floor.
Suddenly Ned heard the noise, not in memory but in reality, not back
there in the past but now. The hollow roll of faraway thunder. But it
came in one endless peal, not a series of rising and falling crashes,
and it was growing louder, louder. . . .
Ned looked at the others. They heard it, too.
Louder. Louder. Now he could feel the vibrations in his bones.
He could not remember what had happened that night, but he knew the
astonishing events they had endured had started with this sound.
He pushed back his chair and got up. He was awash in a rising tide of
fear, and he had to fight against the urge to run.
Sandy stood, and there was fear in her face, as well. Though the
unknown events seemed to have had an entirely positive effect on her,
she was frightened now. She put one hand on Ned's arm for reassurance.
Ernie and Faye were frowning, looking around for the source of the
noise, but they did not yet appear frightened. Their memory of the
sound was apparently more thoroughly scrubbed away, so they could not as
easily connect it with the events of that Friday night in July.
Another sound arose, underlying the thunderlike rumble: a queer,
ululating whistle. That, too, was unpleasantly familiar to Ned.
It was happening again. Whatever had taken place that night more than
eighteen months ago was somehow being repeated. Jesus, happening all
over again, and Ned heard himself saying, "No, no. No!"
Corvaisis backed a couple of steps away from his table, cast a glance at
Ned and the others. He was white-faced.
The growing roar began to resonate in the window glass, behind the
closed blinds. A loose pane, unseen, started rattling in its frame.
The Levolor blinds were vibrating now, adding a jangly chorus.
Sandy's hold
on Ned became a panicky clutch.
Ernie and Faye were on their feet, and they were no longer merely
bewildered but as afraid as everyone else.
The ululant whistle had grown in volume with the thunder. Now it became
piercingly shrill, an oscillating electronic shriek.
"What is it?" Sandy cried, and the continuous fulminations attained such
volume and power that the walls of the Tranquility Grille shook.
On the table at which Corvaisis had been sitting, the beer glass fell on
its side, cracking, spilling what Dos Equis remained in it.
Ned looked at the table beside him and saw the objects on it-ketchup
bottle, mustard dispenser, salt and pepper shakers, ashtray, glasses,
plates, and silverware-bouncing, clinking against one another, moving
back and forth across the surface. A beer glass toppled, and another,
and the ketchup bottle.
Wide-eyed, Ned and the others turned this way and that, as if in
anticipation of the imminent materialization of a demonic entity.
Throughout the room, objects fell off tables. The clock with the Coors
logo leapt from the hook on which it hung, crashed to the floor.
This very thing had happened that night in July-Ned remembered as much.
But he could not remember what had come next.
"Stop it!" Ernie shouted with the conviction and authority of a Marine
officer accustomed to obedience-but without effect.