Dreamcatcher

by Stephen King

Dreams age faster than dreamers, that is a fact of life Pete has discovered as the years pass. Yet the last ones often die surprisingly hard, screaming in low, miserable voices at the back of the brain.

You grew up, became a man, had to adjust to taking less than you hoped for; you discovered the dream-machine had a big OUT OF ORDER sign on it.

We don’t know the days that will change our lives. Probably just as well.

Things changed, but only a fool believed they only changed for the worse.

Funny to compare the ending of your life to a sneeze, but that was probably what it came to. Just kerchoo, and then hello darkness, my old friend.

It meant no more than anything else in the end, but it did not hurt to remember, especially when your soul was dark, that once you had confounded the odds and behaved decently.

No, the big deal is that kids sometimes disappear in Derry,

Henry was crying again. “So long, Beav,” he said. “Love you, man—and that’s straight from the heart.”

Sympathy for the devil? Please. There was no god, no devil, no sympathy. And once you realized that, you were in trouble. Your days as a viable, paying customer in the great funhouse that was Kulture Amerika were numbered.

Seeing someone shot in the head took a lot of the fuck-you out of a man.

TO THOSE LOST IN THE STORM MAY 31, 1985 AND TO THE CHILDREN ALL THE CHILDREN LOVE FROM BILL, BEN, BEV, EDDIE, RICHIE, STAN, MIKE THE LOSERS’ CLUB

“After that we’re going to be heroes. Not because we want to, but because there are no other options.”

we have met the enemy and he is us, Pogo had once said.

Lots of things are buried in Derry.

The moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on.

Morphine, death’s sleekest engine.

All those years they’d thought they were playing with Duddits, he had been playing with them. And on that day behind Tracker Brothers, who had found whom? Who had saved whom?

You’re the dreamcatcher, aren’t you? Their dreamcatcher. You always were.

Some dreams die and fall free, that is another of the world’s bitter truths. How many bitter truths there are.

The body is either stupid or infinitely wise, but in either case it is spared the terrible witchery of thought; it only knows how to stand its ground and fight until it can fight no more.

The universe, she is a bitch. NORMAN MACLEAN