Dreamcatcher

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.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
Henry reached into the brown bag and brought out the little creation of string, so like

a cobweb, which had hung over Duddits’s bed here, and over the bed at the Maple Lane
house before Alfie had died.
“Duddits, where did you get this?” he asked, but of course he knew. This
dreamcatcher was smaller than the one which had hung in the main room at Hole in the Wall, but was otherwise its twin.
“Eeeyer,” Duddits said. He had never taken his eyes off Henry. It was as if he could

still not entirely believe that Henry was here. “Eeeyer ent ooo cee. Or eye Issmuss ass-eek.”
Although his mind-reading ability was fading rapidly as his body beat back the byrus,
Owen understood this easily enough;
Beaver sent to me,
Duddits said.
For my Christmas
last week.

Down’s sufferers had difficulty expressing concepts of time past and time to come, and Owen suspected that to Duddits the past was always last week, the future always next week. It seemed to Owen that if everyone thought that way, there would be a
lot less grief and rancor in the world.
Henry looked at the little string dreamcatcher a moment longer, then returned it to the
brown bag just as Roberta bustled back in. Duddits broke into a huge grin when he saw

what she’d gone for. “Oooby-Doo!” he cried. “Ooby-Doo unnox!” He took it and gave her
a kiss on each cheek.
“Owen,” Henry said. His eyes were bright. “I have some
extremely
good news.” “Tell
me.” “The bastards just hit a detour-jackknifed tractor-trailer just shy of Exit 28. It’s going to cost them ten, maybe twenty minutes.”

“Thank Christ. Let’s use them.” He glanced at the coat-tree in the corner. Hanging from it was a huge blue duffel coat with RED SOX WINTER BALL printed on the back
in bright scarlet. “That yours, Duddits?”
“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?
This wasn’t the time to ask such questions, and Owen was almost glad.
“I said I wouldn’t pack his lunchbox, but of course I did. In the end, I did.”
Roberta looked at it-at Duddits holding it, shifting it from hand to hand as he
struggled into the enormous parka, which had also been a gift from the Boston Red Sox.

His face was unbelievably pale against the bright blue and even brighter yellow of the lunchbox. “I knew he was going. And that I wasn’t.” Her eyes searched Henry’s face.
“Please may I not go, Henry?”
“If you do, you could die in front of him,” Henry said-hating the cruelty of it, also hating how well his life’s work had prepared him to push the right buttons. “Would you
want him to see that, Roberta?”

“No, of course not.” And, as an afterthought, hurting him all the way to the center of
his heart: “Damn you.”
She went to Duddits, pushed Owen aside, and quickly ran up her son’s zip per. Then
she took him by the shoulders, pulled him down, and fixed him with her eyes. Tiny, fierce
little bird of a woman. Tall, pale son, floating inside his parka. Roberta had stopped crying.
“You be good, Duddie.”
“I eee ood, Umma.”
“You mind Henry.”
“I-ill, Umma. I ine Ennie.”
“Stay bundled up.”

“I-ill.”
Still obedient, but a little impatient now, wanting to be off, and how all this took Henry back: trips to get ice cream, trips to play minigolf (Duddits had been weirdly good
at the game, only Pete had been able to beat him with any consistency), trips to the movies; always
you mind Henry
or
you mind Jonesy or you mind your friends; always you
be good, Duddie
and
I ee oood, Umma.

She looked him up and down. “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.
Duddits gave her another perfunctory kiss, but his brilliant green eyes shifted

between Henry and the door. Duddits was anxious to be off. Because he knew the people
after Henry and his friend were close? Because it was an adventure, like all the adventures
the five of them had had in the old days? Both? Yes, probably both. Roberta let him go,
her hands leaving her son for the last time.
“Roberta,” Henry said. “Why didn’t you tell any of us this was happening? Why
didn’t you call?”
“Why didn’t you ever come?”

Henry might have asked another of his own-Why didn’t
Duddits call?-
but the very question would have been a lie. Duddits had called repeatedly since March, when Jonesy
had had his accident. He thought of Pete, sitting in the snow beside the overturned Scout,
drinking beer and writing DUDDITS over and over again in the snow. Duddits, marooned
in Never-Never Land and dying there, Duddits sending his messages and receiving back

only silence. Finally one of them had come, but only to take him away with nothing but a
bag of pills and his old yellow lunchbox. There was no kindness in the dreamcatcher. They
had meant only good for Duddits, even on that first day; they had loved him honestly.
Still, it came down to this.
“Take care of him, Henry.” Her gaze shifted to Owen. “You too. Take care of my
son.”
Henry said, “We’ll try.”
15

There was no place to turn around on Dearborn Street; every driveway had been
plowed under. In the strengthening morning light, the sleeping neighborhood looked like a
town deep in the Alaskan tundra. Owen threw the Hummer in reverse and went flying backward down the street, the bulky vehicle’s rear end wagging clumsily from side to side. Its high steel bumper smacked some snow-shrouded vehicle parked at the curb, there

was a tinkle of breaking glass, and then they again burst through the frozen roadblock of
snow at the intersection, swerving wildly back into Kansas Street, pointing toward the turnpike. During all this Duddits sat in the back seat, perfectly complacent, his lunchbox
on his lap.
Henry, why did Duddits say Jonesy wants war? What war?
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. The skin beneath looked chapped and irritated, but not really hurt.
Like getting over a cold,
Henry marvelled.
Really not more serious than that.
“He didn’t say war, Owen.”
“War,” Duddits agreed from the back seat. He leaned forward to look at the big green
sign reading 95 SOUTHBOUND. “Onesy ont
war.

Owen’s brow wrinkled; a dust of dead byrus flakes sifted down like dandruff.
“What-”
“
Water,”
Henry said, and reached back to pat Duddit’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.”
16

Roberta went into Duddits’s room and began to pick up the litter of his clothes-the way he left them around drove her crazy, but she supposed she wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. She had been at it scarcely five minutes before a weakness overcame
her legs, and she had to sit in his chair by the window. The sight of the bed, where he had

come to spend more and more of his time, haunted her. The dull morning light on the pillow, which still bore the circular indentation of his head, was inexpressibly cruel.
Henry thought she’d let Duddits go because they believed the future of the whole
world somehow hinged on finding Jonesy, and finding him fast. But that wasn’t it. She had
let him go because it was what Duddits wanted. The dying got signed baseball caps; the

dying also got to go on trips with old friends.
But it was hard.
Losing him was so hard.
She put her handful of tee-shirts to her face in order to blot out the sight of the bed
and there was his smell: Johnson’s shampoo, Dial soap, and most of all,
worst
of all, the arnica cream she put on his back and legs when his muscles hurt.
In her desperation she reached out to him, trying to find him with the two men who
had come like the dead and taken him away, but his mind was gone.

He’s blocked himself off from me,
she thought. They had enjoyed
(mostly
enjoyed) their own ordinary telepathy over the years, perhaps only different in minor degree from
the telepathy most mothers of special children experienced (she had heard the word
rapport

over and over again at the support-group meetings she and Alfie sometimes attended), but that was gone now. Duddits had blocked himself off, and that meant he knew something terrible was going to happen.
He knew.
Still holding the shirts to her face and inhaling his scent, Roberta began to cry again.
17
Kurtz had been okay
(mostly

okay) until they saw the road-flares and blue police lightbars flashing in the grim morning light, and beyond it, a huge semi lying on its side
like a dead dinosaur. Standing out front, so bundled up his face was completely invisible,
was a cop waving them toward an exit ramp.
“Fuck!” Kurtz spat. He had to fight an urge to draw the nine and just start spraying

away. He knew that would be disaster-there were other cops running around the stalled semi-but he felt the urge, all but ungovernable, just the same. They were so close! Closing
in, by the hands of the nailed-up Christ! And then stopped like this! “Fuck, fuck,
fuck!”
“What do you want me to do, boss?” Freddy had asked. Impassive behind the wheel,
but he had drawn his own weapon-an automatic rifle-across his lap. “If I nail it, I think we

can skate by on the night. Gone in sixty seconds.”
Again Kurtz had to fight the urge to just say
Yeah, punch it, Freddy, and if one of
those bluesuits gets in the way, bust his gut for
him. Freddy might get by… but he might not. He wasn’t the driver he thought he was, that Kurtz had already ascertained. Like too

many pilots, Freddy had the erroneous belief that his skills in the sky were mirrored by skills on the ground. And even if they did get by, they’d be marked. And that was not acceptable, not after General Yellow-Balls Randall had hollered Blue Exit. His Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card had been revoked. He was strictly a vigilante now.
Got to do the smart thing,
he thought.
That’s why they pay me the big bucks.

“Be a good boy and just go the way he’s pointing you,” Kurtz said. “In fact, I want
you to give him a wave and a big thumb’s-up when you take the ramp. Then keep moving
south and get back on the turnpike at your earliest opportunity.” He sighed. “Lord love a
duck.” He leaned forward, close enough to Freddy to see the whitening fuzz of Ripley in
his right ear. He whispered, ardent as a lover, “And if you ditch us, laddie-buck, I’ll put a

round in the back of your neck.” Kurtz touched the place where the soft nape joined the
hard skull. “Right here.”
Freddy’s wooden-Indian face didn’t change. “Yes, boss.” Next, Kurtz had gripped the
now-nearl-comatose Perlmutter by the shoulder and had shaken him until Pearly’s eyes at
last fluttered open.
“Lea” me “lone, boss. Need to sleep.”
Kurtz placed the muzzle of his nine-millimeter against the back of his former aide’s
head. “Nope. Rise and shine, buck. Time for a little debriefing.”

Pearly had groaned, but he had also sat up. When he opened his mouth to say
something, a tooth had tumbled out onto the front of his parka. The tooth had looked perfect to Kurtz. Look, Ma, no cavities.
Pearly said that Owen and his new buddy were still stopped, still in Derry. Very good.
Yummy. Not so good fifteen minutes later, as Freddy sent the Humvee trudging down
another snow-covered entrance ramp and back onto the turnpike. This was Exit 28, only

one interchange away from their target, but a miss was as good as a mile.
“They’re on the move again,” Perlmutter said. He sounded weak and washed out.
“Goddammit!” He was full of rage-sick and useless rage at Owen Underhill, who
now symbolized (at least to Abe Kurtz) the whole sorry, busted operation.
Pearly uttered a deep groan, a sound of utter, hollow despair. His stomach had begun

to rise again. He was clutching it, his cheeks wet with perspiration. His normally unremarkable face had become almost handsome in his pain.
Now he let another long and ghastly fart, a passage of wind which seemed to go on
and on. The sound of it made Kurtz think of gadgets they’d constructed at summer camp a
thousand or so years ago, noisemakers that consisted of tin cans and lengths of waxed string. Bullroarers, they’d called them.

The stench that filled the Humvee was the smell of the red cancer growing in Pearly’s
sewage-treatment plant, first feeding on his wastes, then getting to the good stuff. Pretty
horrible. Still, there was an upside. Freddy was getting better and Kurtz had never caught
the damned Ripley in the first place (perhaps he was immune; in any case, he had taken
off the mask and tossed it indifferently in back fifteen minutes ago). And Pearly, although

undoubtedly ill, was also valuable, a man with a really good radar jammed up his ass. So
Kurtz patted Perlmutter on the shoulder, ignoring the stench. Sooner or later the thing inside him would get out, and that would likely mean an end to Pearly’s usefulness, but Kurtz wouldn’t worry about that until he had to.
“Hold on,” Kurtz said tenderly. “Just tell it to go back to sleep again.”
“You… fucking… idiot!” Perlmutter gasped.

“That’s right,” Kurtz agreed. “Whatever you say, buck.” After all, he
was
a fucking
idiot. Owen had turned out to be a cowardly coyote, and who had put him in the damn henhouse?
They were passing Exit 27 now. Kurtz looked up the ramp and fancied he could
almost see the tracks of the Hummer Owen was driving. Somewhere up there, on one side
of the overpass or the other, was the house to which Owen and his new friend had made
their inexplicable detour. Why?

“They stopped to get Duddits,” Perlmutter said. His belly was going down again and
the worst of his pain seemed to have passed. For now, at least. “Duddits? What kind of name is that?” “I don’t know. I’m picking this up from his mother. Him I can’t see. He’s
different, boss. It’s almost as if he’s a grayboy instead of human.” Kurtz felt his back prickle at that.
“The mother thinks of this guy Duddits as both a boy and a man,” Pearly said. This

was the most unprompted communication from him Kurtz had gotten since they’d left
Gosselin’s. Perlmutter sounded almost interested, by God.
“Maybe he’s retarded,” Freddy said. Perlmutter glanced over at Freddy. That could
be. Whatever he is, he’s sick.” Pearly sighed. “I know how he feels.”
Kurtz patted Perlmutter’s shoulder again. “Chin up, laddie. What about the fellows
they’re after? This Gary Jones and the supposed Mr Gray?” He didn’t much care, but there

was
the possibility that the course and progress of Jones-and Gray, if Gray existed outside of Owen Underhill’s fevered imagination-would impact upon the course and progress of Underhill, Devlin, and… Duddits?
Perlmutter shook his head, then closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the
seat again. His little spate of energy and interest seemed to have passed. “Nothing,” he said. “Blocked off.”
“Maybe not there at all?”

“Oh, something’s there,” Perlmutter said. “It’s like a black hole.” Dreamily, he said:
“I hear so many voices. They’re already sending in the reinforcements…”
As if Perlmutter had conjured it, the biggest convoy Kurtz had seen in twenty years
appeared in the northbound lanes of 1-95. First came two enormous plows, as big as elephants, running side by side with their clifflike blades spurning up snow on either side,

baring both lanes all the way down to the pavement. Behind them, a pair of sand-trucks,
also running in tandem. And behind the sand-trucks, a double line of Army vehicles and
heavy ordnance. Kurtz saw shrouded shapes on flatbed haulers and knew they could only
be missiles. Other flatbeds held radar dishes, range-finders, God knew what else.

Interspersed among them were big canvasback troop-carriers, their headlamps glaring in the brightening daylight. 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. If any of Katie Gallagher’s Imperial Valleys were still operating up there, Kurtz hoped they would

soon cease what they were doing and head for Canada. Raising their hands in the air and
calling out
Il n’y a pas d’infection ici
wouldn’t do them any good, certainly; that ploy had already been tried. And it was all so meaningless. In his heart of hearts, Kurtz knew Owen
had been right about at least one thing: it was over up there. They could shut the barn door, praise God, but the horse had been stolen.

“They’re going to close it down for good,” Perlmutter said. “The Jefferson Tract just
became the fifty-first state. And it’s a police state.”
“You can still key on Owen?”
“Yes,” Perlmutter said absently. “But not for long. He’s getting better, too. Losing the
telepathy.”
“Where is he, buck?”
“They just passed Exit 25. They might have fifteen miles on us. Not much more.”
“Want me to punch it a little?” Freddy asked.
They had lost their chance to head Owen off because of the goddam semi. The last

thing in the world Kurtz wanted was to lose another chance by skidding off the road.
“Negative,” Kurtz said. “For the time being, I think we’ll just lay back and let em run.” He crossed his arms and looked out at the linen-white world passing by. But now the
snow had stopped, and as they continued south, road conditions would doubtless improve.
It had been an eventful twenty-four hours. He had blown up an alien spacecraft, been

betrayed by the man he had regarded as his logical successor, had survived a mutiny and a
civilian riot, and to top it all off, he had been relieved of his command by a sunshine soldier who had never heard a shot fired in anger. Kurtz’s eyes slipped shut. After a few
moments, he dozed.
18
Jonesy sat moodily behind his desk for quite awhile, sometimes looking at the phone
which no longer worked, sometimes at the dreamcatcher which hung from the ceiling (it

wafted in some barely felt air-current), sometimes at the new steel shutters with which that
bastard Gray had blocked his vision. And always that low rumble, both in his ears and shivering his buttocks as he sat in his chair. It could have been a rather noisy furnace, one
in need of servicing, but it wasn’t. It was the plow, beating its way south and south and south. Mr Gray behind the wheel, likely wearing a DPW cap stolen from his most recent

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