Dreamcatcher

by Stephen King

Mr. Gray had discovered murder.

In spite of his horror—or perhaps because of it—Jonesy burst out laughing as his hands wiped the blood from the tiled wall with a Dysart’s towel. Mr. Gray had accessed Jonesy’s knowledge concerning body concealment and/ or disposal, and had found the mother-lode. As a lifelong connoisseur of horror movies, suspense novels, and mysteries, Jonesy was, in a manner of speaking, quite the expert. Even now, as Mr. Gray dropped the bloody towel on the chest of the Trooper’s sodden uniform (the Trooper’s jacket had been used to wrap the badly bludgeoned head), a part of Jonesy’s mind was running the disposal of Freddy Miles’s corpse in The Talented Mr. Ripley, both the film version and Patricia Highsmith’s novel. Other tapes were running, as well, so many overlays that looking too deeply made Jonesy dizzy, the way he felt when looking down a long drop. Nor was that the worst part. With Jonesy’s help, the talented Mr. Gray had discovered something he liked more than crispy bacon, even more than bingeing on Jonesy’s well of rage. Mr. Gray had discovered murder.

Maybe we deserve to be turned into nothing but a bunch of red spores blowing in the wind. That might be the best thing, God help us.

Jonesy felt Mr. Gray reaching out, reaching back. Mr. Gray could touch Henry’s mind but not get inside it—like Jonesy, Henry was to some degree different. No matter; there was the man with Henry, Overhill or Underhill. From him, Mr. Gray was able to get a good fix.

Jonesy felt Mr. Gray reaching out, reaching back. Mr. Gray could touch Henry’s mind but not get inside it—like Jonesy, Henry was to some degree different. No matter; there was the man with Henry, Overhill or Underhill. From him, Mr. Gray was able to get a good fix. They were seventy miles behind, maybe more . . . and pulling off the turnpike? Yes, pulling off in Derry. Mr. Gray cast back farther yet, and discovered more pursuers. Three of them . . . but Jonesy felt this group’s main focus was not Mr. Gray, but Overhill/ Underhill. He found that both incredible and inexplicable, but it seemed to be true. And Mr. Gray liked that just fine. He didn’t even bother to look for the reason why Overhill/ Underhill and Henry might be stopping.

Mr. Gray was just getting warmed up.

Mr. Gray’s main concern was switching to another vehicle, a snowplow, if Jonesy’s driving skills would allow him to operate it. It would mean another murder, but that was all right with the increasingly human Mr. Gray. Mr. Gray was just getting warmed up.

“I want to see my mommy.”

Owen Underhill is standing on the slope very near to the pipe which juts out of the foliage, and he sees them help the muddy, wild-eyed girl—Josie—out of the pipe. He sees Duddits (a large young man with shoulders like a football player’s and the improbable blond hair of a movie idol) sweep her into a hug, kissing her dirty face in big smacks. He hears her first words: “I want to see my mommy.”

“I don’t need a guilt-trip from someone who was planning to barbecue a few hundred civilians,”

“I don’t need a guilt-trip from someone who was planning to barbecue a few hundred civilians,” Henry grumbled. Owen stamped on the brake with both feet, throwing them forward into their harnesses again, this time hard enough to lock them. The Humvee skidded to a diagonal stop in the street. “Shut the fuck up.” Don’t be talking shit you don’t understand. “I’m likely going to be a” dead man because of “you, so why don’t you just keep all your fucking” self-indulgent (picture of a spoiled-looking kid with his lower lip stuck out) “rationalizing bullshit” to yourself. Henry stared at him, shocked and stunned. When was the last time someone had talked to him that way? The answer was probably never. “I only care about one thing,” Owen said. His face was pale and strained and exhausted. “I want to find your Typhoid Jonesy and stop him. All right? Fuck your precious tender feelings, fuck how tired you are, and fuck you. I’m here.”

“I don’t need lessons in morality from a guy planning to blow his overeducated, self-indulgent brains out.”

The night was gone, but it had been replaced by a pallid, creepy morning light that wasn’t much better, and they were out there, Pete and Beav, the dead ones had come for her son.

It was her after-midnight fantasy made real, and when the knock came at the door, Roberta was unable to get up. Her legs felt like water. The night was gone, but it had been replaced by a pallid, creepy morning light that wasn’t much better, and they were out there, Pete and Beav, the dead ones had come for her son.

I’ll just sit here and eventually they’ll go away, they’ll have to go away, because with dead people you have to invite them in and if I just sit tight—

This wasn’t Duddits, couldn’t be—it was some sickly uncle or older brother, pale and apparently bald beneath his pushed-back Red Sox cap.

Henry opened his mouth—to say what he never knew, because nothing came out. He was thunderstruck, dumbstruck. This wasn’t Duddits, couldn’t be—it was some sickly uncle or older brother, pale and apparently bald beneath his pushed-back Red Sox cap. There was stubble on his cheeks, crusts of blood around his nostrils, and deep dark circles beneath his eyes. And yet— “Ennie! Ennie! Ennie!”

The majority of the dead were wearing their driver’s licenses, but there were also Visa and Discover cards, Blue Cross cards, and hunting licenses. One woman with a large black hole in her forehead had been tagged with her Blockbuster Video card.

Jonesy now thought he knew how Fortunato must have felt when Montressor bricked him up in the wine-cellar.

Written across the inside, easily readable through the glass: GIVE UP COME OUT. Jonesy had a brief memory of The Wizard of Oz—SURRENDER DOROTHY written across the sky—and wanted to laugh.

A series of violent bangs, almost as loud as thunderclaps, made him cry out and jump to his feet. His first thought was that Mr. Gray was using one of those SWAT squad door-busters, battering his way in. It wasn’t the door, though. It was the window, and in some ways that was even worse. Mr. Gray had put industrial gray shutters—steel, they looked like—across his window. Now he wasn’t just imprisoned; he was blind, as well. Written across the inside, easily readable through the glass: GIVE UP COME OUT. Jonesy had a brief memory of The Wizard of Oz—SURRENDER DOROTHY written across the sky—and wanted to laugh. He couldn’t. Nothing was funny, nothing was ironic. This was horrible. “No!” he shouted. “Take them down! Take them down, damn you!” No answer. Jonesy raised his hands, meaning to shatter the glass and beat on the steel shutters beyond, then thought, Are you crazy? That’s what he wants! The minute you break the glass, those shutters disappear and Mr. Gray is in here. And you’re gone, buddy.

Roberta looked at Owen, her face seeming to grow older with every sentence he spoke. It was as if some malign time-lapse photography were at work.

There was such a valley, he knew that now. A trough of years. He would not, could not, say he had never suspected that such geography existed, but how in God’s name could he have suspected so little?

Henry had unrolled the top of the bag and looked inside. What he saw there, lying on top of the box of lemon-flavored glycerine swabs, transfixed him. He replied to Owen, but his voice seemed to be coming from the far end of some previously undisclosed—hell, unsuspected—valley. There was such a valley, he knew that now. A trough of years. He would not, could not, say he had never suspected that such geography existed, but how in God’s name could he have suspected so little? “They just passed Exit 29,” he said. “Twenty miles behind us now. Maybe even closer.”

So he had . . . and Duddits had seen him. Only last night, or had Duddits seen him on that day, nineteen years ago? Did Duddits’s gift also involve a kind of time travel?

“Ine!” Duddits said, smiling and nodding. “I-acket.” And, as Owen reached for it: “Ooo saw us ine Osie.” He got that one, too, and it sent a chill up his back. You saw us find Josie. So he had . . . and Duddits had seen him. Only last night, or had Duddits seen him on that day, nineteen years ago? Did Duddits’s gift also involve a kind of time travel?

Every dreamcatcher was also a trap.

“I love you, Douglas. You have always been a good son to me, and I love you so very much. Give me a kiss, now.” He kissed her; her hand stole out and caressed his beard-sandy cheek. Henry could hardly bear to look, but he did look, was as helpless as any fly caught in any spiderweb. Every dreamcatcher was also a trap.

Henry tried to send the answer telepathically, but Owen could no longer hear him. The patches of byrus on Owen’s face had all turned white, and when he scratched absently at his cheek, he pulled clumps of the stuff out with his nails.

“Water,” Henry said, and reached back to pat Duddits’s bony knee. “Jonesy wants water is what he was trying to say. Only it’s not Jonesy who wants it. It’s the other one. The one he calls Mr. Gray.”

Not hundreds of men but thousands, prepared for God knew what—World War Three, hand-to-hand combat with two-headed creatures or maybe the intelligent bugs from Starship Troopers, plague, madness, death, doomsday.

To be stuck like this after all the mysteries you’ve read, his mind’s version of Henry taunted him. Not to mention all those science-fiction movies where the aliens arrive, everything from The Day the Earth Stood Still to The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. All of that and you still can’t figure this guy out? Can’t follow his smoke down from the sky and see where he’s camped?

He was a motor without a transmission, a cart without a horse; he was Donovan’s Brain, kept alive in a tank of cloudy fluid and dreaming useless dreams.

Think like Hercule Poirot, he told himself. Exercise those little gray cells. Never mind your memories for the time being, think about Mr. Gray. Think logically. What does he want?

Think like Hercule Poirot, he told himself. Exercise those little gray cells. Never mind your memories for the time being, think about Mr. Gray. Think logically. What does he want? Jonesy stopped. What Gray wanted was obvious, really. He had gone to the Standpipe—where the Standpipe had been, anyway—because he wanted water. Not just any water; drinking water. But the Standpipe was gone, destroyed in the big blow of ’85—ha, ha, Mr. Gray, gotcha last—and Derry’s current water supply was north and east, probably not reachable because of the storm, and not concentrated in one place, anyway. So Mr. Gray had, after consulting Jonesy’s available store of knowledge, turned south again. Toward—

This world was inimical to the byrus, and this world’s inhabitants fought with a surprising vigor which arose from deep wells of emotion. Bad luck. But now the last surviving grayboy had had an unbroken chain of good luck;

Suddenly it was all clear. The strength ran out of his legs and he collapsed to the carpeted floor, ignoring the flare of pain in his hip. The dog. Lad. Did he still have the dog? “Of course he does,” Jonesy whispered. “Of course the son of a bitch does, I can smell him even in here. Farting just like McCarthy.” This world was inimical to the byrus, and this world’s inhabitants fought with a surprising vigor which arose from deep wells of emotion. Bad luck. But now the last surviving grayboy had had an unbroken chain of good luck; he was like some daffy in-the-zone Vegas crapshooter rolling a string of sevens: four, six, eight, oh goddam, a dozen in a row. He had found Jonesy, his Typhoid Mary, had invaded him and conquered him. He had found Pete, who had gotten him where he wanted to go after the flashlight—the kim—had given out. Next, Andy Janas, the Minnesota boy. He had been hauling the corpses of two deer killed by the Ripley. The deer had been useless to Mr. Gray . . . but Janas had also been hauling the decomposing body of one of the aliens. Fruiting bodies, Jonesy thought randomly. Fruiting bodies, what’s that from? No matter. Because Mr. Gray’s next seven had been the Dodge Ram, old Mr. I ♥ MY BORDER COLLIE. What had Gray done? Fed some of the gray’s dead body to the dog? Put the dog’s nose to the corpse and forced him to inhale of that fruiting body? No, eating was much more likely; c’mon, boy, chow time. Whatever process started the weasels, it began in the gut, not the lungs. Jonesy had a momentary image of McCarthy lost in the woods. Beaver had asked What the hell have you been eating? Woodchuck turds? And what had McCarthy replied? Bushes . . . and things . . . I don’t know just what . . . I was just so hungry, you know . . . Sure. Hungry. Lost, scared, and hungry. Not noticing the red splotches of byrus on the leaves of some of the bushes, the red speckles on the green moss he crammed into his mouth, gagging it down because somewhere back there in his tame oh-gosh oh-dear lawyer’s life, he had read that you could eat moss if you were lost in the woods, that moss wouldn’t hurt you. Did everyone who swallowed some of the byrus (grains of it, almost too small to be seen, floating in the air) incubate one of the vicious little monsters that had torn McCarthy apart and then killed the Beav? Probably not, no more than every woman who had unprotected sex got pregnant. But McCarthy had caught . . . and so had Lad.

Quabbin Reservoir. The water supply for Boston and the adjacent metropolitan area.

He knows about the cottage,” Jonesy said. Of course. The cottage in Ware, some sixty miles west of Boston. And he’d know the story of the Russian woman, everyone knew it; Jonesy had passed it on himself. It was too gruesomely good not to pass on. They knew it in Ware, in New Salem, in Cooleyville and Belchertown, Hardwick and Packardsville and Pel-ham. All the surrounding towns. And what, pray tell, did those towns surround? Why, the Quabbin, that was what they surrounded. Quabbin Reservoir. The water supply for Boston and the adjacent metropolitan area. How many people drank their daily water from the Quabbin? Two million? Three? Jonesy didn’t know for sure, but a lot more than had ever drunk from the supply stored in the Derry Standpipe. Mr. Gray, rolling seven after seven, a run for the ages and now only one away from breaking the bank. Two or three million people. Mr. Gray wanted to introduce them to Lad the border collie, and to Lad’s new friend. And delivered in this new medium, the byrus would take.

By the time Mr. Gray passed the Gardiner exit, the first one below Augusta, the snow-cover on the ground was considerably less and the turnpike was slushy but two lanes wide again.

He’s listening to the dog like it’s a fucking radio, Kurtz marvelled.

“Let me get this straight, Archie. Mr. Gray is in Jonesy—” “Yes—” “And they have a dog with them that can read their minds?” “The dog hears their thoughts, but he doesn’t understand them. He’s still only a dog. Boss, I’m thirsty.” He’s listening to the dog like it’s a fucking radio, Kurtz marvelled. “Freddy, next exit. Drinks all around.” He resented having to make a pit-stop—resented losing even a couple of miles on Owen—but he needed Perlmutter. Happy, if possible.

Up ahead was the rest area where Mr. Gray had traded his plow for the cook’s Subaru, where Owen and Henry had also briefly pulled in because the line went in there. The parking lot was crammed, but among the three of them they had enough change for the vending machines out front.

Porky Pig could have given a speech at that particular time and gotten that particular result,”

The American people, especially those in New England, came to their narrowly elected leader for help . . . for comfort and reassurance. He responded with what may have been the greatest my fellow-Americans speech of all time.

Shaft 12 was what he wanted; Jonesy said so, and Jonesy couldn’t lie, much as he might have liked to. There was a Massachusetts Water Authority office at the Winsor Dam, on the south end of the Quabbin Reservoir. Jonesy could get him that far, and then Mr. Gray would do the rest.

Jonesy couldn’t sit behind the desk anymore—if he did, he’d start to blubber. From blubbering he would no doubt progress to gibbering, from gibbering to yammering, and once he started to yammer, he’d probably be out and rushing into Mr. Gray’s arms, totally bonkers and ready to be extinguished.

You’ve been making it bigger. Walking around it and making it bigger. Because you were restless. It’s your room, after all. I bet you could make it as big as the Waldorf-Astoria ballroom, if you wanted to . . . and Mr. Gray couldn’t stop you.

The problem was the lead, the goddam lead that Mr. Gray had.

A line from Thomas Wolfe occurred to him—o lost, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Thomas Wolfe, whose thesis had been that you can’t go home again.

Beaver and Pete are in heaven where they sitteth at the right hand of God the Father all righty, maker of heaven and earth forever and ever, Jesus’ sake, hey man.

What had savor was the idea of going to the door behind which his reluctant host was imprisoned and yelling: “I fixed you, didn’t I? I fixed your little red wagon, didn’t I?”

What had savor was the idea of going to the door behind which his reluctant host was imprisoned and yelling: “I fixed you, didn’t I? I fixed your little red wagon, didn’t I?” What a wagon, red or otherwise, had to do with any of this Mr. Gray didn’t know, but it was an emotional bullet of fairly high caliber from Jonesy’s armory—it had a deep and satisfying childhood resonance. And then he would stick Jonesy’s tongue (my tongue now, Mr. Gray thought with undeniable satisfaction) between Jonesy’s lips and “give him the old raspberry.” As for the followers, he wanted to drop Jonesy’s pants and show them Jonesy’s buttocks. This was as senseless as What goes around comes around, as senseless as little red wagon, but he wanted to do it.

And here was something else—there was no pleasure in meeting its mind, none of the warmth that comes when like encounters like. The mind of the byrum felt cold . . . rancid . . . “Alien,” he muttered.

Basically, they had just done what these creatures did best: they “got mad,” which was really the same thing as “going mad” but more socially acceptable. Oh, but on such a scale!

As he drove west on I-90, past little towns (shitsplats, Jonesy thought them, but not without affection) like Westborough, Grafton, and Dorothy Pond (getting closer now, maybe forty miles to go), he looked for a place to put his new and uneasy consciousness where it wouldn’t get him in trouble. He tried Jonesy’s kids, then backed away—far too emotional. Tried Duddits again, but that was still a blank; Jonesy had stolen the memories. Finally he settled on Jonesy’s work, which was teaching history, and his specialty, which was grue-somely fascinating. Between 1860 and 1865, it seemed, America had split in two, as byrus colonies did near the end of each growth cycle. There had been all sorts of causes, the chief of which had to do with “slavery,” but again, this was like calling shit or vomit reprocessed food. “Slavery” meant nothing. “Right of secession” meant nothing. “Preserving the Union” meant nothing. Basically, they had just done what these creatures did best: they “got mad,” which was really the same thing as “going mad” but more socially acceptable. Oh, but on such a scale!

The man who could not for the life of him train himself out of using the word sir? That man was gone. Thin though it was, he thought Pearly’s countenance had somehow richened. He’s turning into Ma Joad, Kurtz thought, and almost giggled.

Pride was the belt you could use to hold up your pants even after your pants were gone.

Owen’s eyes filled with tears. It was the most beautiful room in the world. He felt that way because Duddits felt that way. And Duddits felt that way because it was where his friends went, and he loved them.

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

“I’m in Gosselin’s,” Henry said, “only I’m not. Wherever you are, you’re not. We’re in the hospital where they took you after you got hit . . .” A crackle on the line, a buzz, and then Henry came back, sounding closer and stronger. Sounding like a lifeline in all this disintegration. “. . . not there, either!”

He remembered a line they’d been fond of as kids, pulled out of some comedian’s routine: Wherever you are, there you are.

Jonesy dropped the phone and looked up at the swaying dreamcatcher, that ephemeral cobweb. He remembered a line they’d been fond of as kids, pulled out of some comedian’s routine: Wherever you are, there you are. That had been right up there with Same shit, different day, had perhaps even taken over first place as they grew older and began to consider themselves sophisticated. Wherever you are, there you are. Only according to Henry’s call just now, that wasn’t true. Wherever they thought they were, they weren’t. They were in the dreamcatcher.

He hadn’t come all this way—black light-years and white miles—either to fall back down the steps and break his neck or to tumble into the Quabbin and die of hypothermia in that chilly water.

Mr. Gray had discovered another unlovely human emotion: panic. He had come all this way—light-years through space, miles through the snow—to be balked by Jonesy’s muscles, which were weak and out of shape, and the iron shaft cover, which was much heavier than he had expected.

Thanks to Jonesy, the human corrosion of doubt was also part of his makeup now, and for the first time he realized that he might be balked—yes, even here, so close to his goal that he could hear it, the sound of rushing water starting on its sixty-mile underground journey.

Never mind the movie, Henry almost snarls, and Jonesy turns his attention to the figure in the bed, the gray thing with the byrus-speckled sheet pulled up to its chest, which is a plain gray expanse of poreless, hairless, nippleless flesh.

Never mind the movie, Henry almost snarls, and Jonesy turns his attention to the figure in the bed, the gray thing with the byrus-speckled sheet pulled up to its chest, which is a plain gray expanse of poreless, hairless, nippleless flesh. Although he can’t see now because of the sheet, Jonesy knows there is no navel, either, because this thing was never born. It is a child’s rendering of an alien, trolled directly from the subconscious minds of those who first came in contact with the byrum. They never existed as actual creatures, aliens, ETs. The grays as physical beings were always created out of the human imagination, out of the dreamcatcher, and knowing this affords Jonesy a measure of relief. He wasn’t the only one who got fooled. At least there is that.

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.