Dreamcatcher

tape behind them, a big fat roll of it. He must have looked right past it a dozen times.
He grabbed it, stuffed it in his coat pocket-he had remembered to put that on, at least,
although he hadn’t bothered to zip it up-and turned to go. And that was when Beaver began to screaming. His calls had been barely there, but Jonesy had no trouble at all hearing the screams. They were big, lusty, filled with pain.
Jonesy sprinted for the door.
8

Beaver’s Mom had always said the toothpicks would kill him, but she had never
imagined anything like this.
Sitting there on the closed toilet seat, Beaver felt in the bib pocket of his overalls for
a pick to chew on, but there weren’t any-they were scattered all over the floor. Two or three had landed clear of the blood, but he’d have to rise up off the toilet seat a little to get them-rise up and lean forward.
Beaver debated.
Sit tight

, Jonesy had said, but surely the thing in the toilet was gone;
dive, dive, dive
, as they said in the submarine war movies. Even if it wasn’t, he’d only be lifting his ass for a second or two. If the thing jumped, Beaver could bring his weight right
back down again, maybe break its scaly little neck for it (always assuming it
had
one).
He looked longingly at the toothpicks, Three or four were close enough so he could

just reach down and pick them up, but he wasn’t going to put bloody toothpicks in his mouth, especially considering where the blood had come from. There was something else,
too. That funny furry stuff was growing on the blood, growing in the gutters of grout between the tiles, as well-he could see it more clearly than ever. It was on some of the toothpicks, too… but not on those which had fallen clear of the blood. Those were clean

and white, and if he had ever in his life needed the comfort of something in his mouth, a
little piece of wood to gnaw on, it was now.
“Fuck it,” the Beav murmured, and leaned forward, reaching out. His stretching
fingers came up just short of the nearest clean pick. He flexed the muscles of his thighs and his butt came up off the seat. His fingers closed on the toothpick-
ah, got it-
and

something hit the closed lid of the toilet seat at just that moment, hit it with terrifying force, driving it up into his unprotected balls and knocking him forward. Beaver grabbed
at the shower curtain in a last-ditch effort to maintain his balance, but it pulled free of the bar in a metallic clitter-clack of rings. His boots slipped in the blood and he went sprawling forward onto the floor like a man blown out of an ejection seat. Behind him he

heard the toilet seat fly up hard enough to crack the porcelain tank.
Something wet and heavy landed on Beaver’s back. Something that felt like a tail or a
worm or a muscular segmented tentacle curled between his legs and seized his already aching balls in a contracting python’s grip. Beaver screamed, chin lifting from the bloody
tiles (a red crisscross pattern tattooed faintly on his chin), eyes bulging. The thing lay wet

and cold and heavy from the nape of his neck to the small of his back, like a rolled-up breathing rug, and now it began to utter a feverish high-pitched chattering noise, the sound
of a rabid monkey.
Beaver screamed again, wriggled toward the door on his belly, then lurched up onto
all fours, trying to shake the thing off. The muscular rope between his legs squeezed again,
and there was a low popping sound from somewhere in the liquid haze of pain that was
now his groin.

Oh Christ
, the Beav thought.
Mighty Christ bananas, I think that was one of my balls
.
Squealing, sweating, tongue dancing in and out of his mouth like a demented party-
favor, Beaver did the only thing he could think of: rolled over onto his back, trying to crush the whatever-it-was between his spine and the tiles. It chittered in his ear, almost deafening him, and began to wriggle frantically. Beaver seized the tail curled between his

legs, smooth and hairless on top, thorny-as if plated with hooks made of clotted hair-underneath. And wet. Water? Blood? Both?
“
Ahhh! A hhh! Oh God let go! Fuckin thing, let go! Jesus! My fuckin sack! Jeesus!”
Before he could get either hand beneath the tail, a mouthful of needles sank into the
side of his neck. He reared up, bellowing, and then the thing was gone. Beaver tried to get
to his feet. He had to push with his hands because there was no strength in his legs, and his

hands kept slipping. In addition to McCarthy’s blood, the bathroom floor was now covered
with murky water from the cracked toilet tank and the tiled surface was a skating rink.
As he finally got up, he saw something clinging to the doorway about halfway up. It
looked like some kind of freak weasel-no legs but with a thick reddish-gold tail. There was no real head, only a kind of slippery-looking node from which two feverish black eyes stared.

The lower half of the node split open, revealing a nest of teeth. The thing struck at
Beaver like a snake, the node lashing forward, the hairless tail curled around the doorjamb. Beaver screamed and raised a hand in front of his face. Three of the four fingers on it-all but the pinky-disappeared. There was no pain, either that or the pain from
his ruptured testicle swallowed it whole. He tried to step away, but the backs of his knees

struck the bowl of the battered toilet. There was nowhere to go.
That thing was
in
him?
Beaver thought; there was time for that much.
It was
in
him?
Then it uncoiled its tall or its tentacle or whatever it was and leaped at him, the top

half of its rudimentary head full of its stupidly furious black eyes, the lower half a packet of bone needles. Far away, in some other universe where there still might be sane life, Jonesy was calling his name, but Jonesy was late, Jonesy was way late.
The thing that had been in McCarthy landed on the Beav’s chest with a smack. It
smelled like McCarthy’s wind-a heavy reek of oil and ether and methane gas. The

muscular whip that was its lower body wrapped around Beaver’s waist. Its head darted forward and its teeth closed on Beaver’s nose.
Screaming, beating at it with his fists, Beaver fell backward onto the toilet. The ring
and the lid had flown up against the tank when the thing came out. The lid had stayed up,
but the ring had fallen back into place. Now the Beav landed on it, broke it, and dropped

ass-first into the toilet with the weasel-thing clutching him around the waist and chewing
his face.
“Beaver! Beav, what-”
Beaver felt the thing stiffen against him-it literally stiffened, like a dick getting hard.

The grip of the tentacle around his waist tightened, then loosened. Its black-eyed idiotic face whipped around toward the sound of Jonesy’s voice, and Beav saw his old friend through a haze of blood, and with dimming eyes: Jonesy standing slack-jawed in the doorway, a roll of friction tape (
won’t need that now
, Beaver thought,
nah

) in one dangling hand. Jonesy standing there utterly defenseless in his shocked horror. This thing’s next meal.
“Jonesy, get outta here!” Beaver shouted. His voice was wet, strained through a
mouthful of blood. He sensed the thing getting ready to leap and wrapped his arms around
its pulsing body as if it were his lover. “Get out! Shut the door! B-”
Burn it
, he wanted to say.
Lock it in, lock both of us in, burn it, burn it alive, I’m going to sit here ass-deep in

this fucking toilet with my arms wrapped around it, and if I can die smelling it roast, I can
die happy
. But the thing was struggling too hard and fucking Jonesy was just standing there with that roll of friction tape in his hand and his jaw dropped, and goddam if he didn’t look like Duddits, dumb as a stone boat and never going to improve. Then the thing

turned back to Beaver, its earless noseless node of a head drawn back, and before that head darted forward and the world detonated for the last time, Beaver had a final, partial
thought:
Those toothpicks, damn, Mamma always said-
Then the exploding red and blooming black and somewhere far off the sound of his
own screams, the final ones.
9

Jonesy saw Beaver sitting in the toilet with something that looked like a giant red-gold worm clinging to him. He called out and the thing turned toward him, no real head,
just the black eyes of a shark and a mouthful of teeth. Something in the teeth, something
that couldn’t be the mangled remains of Beaver Clarendon’s nose but probably was.
Run away!
he screamed at himself, and then:
Save him! Save Beaver!

Both imperatives had equal power, and the result kept him frozen in the doorway,
feeling as if he weighed a thousand pounds. The thing in Beaver’s arms was making a noise, a crazed chattering sound that got into his head and made him think of something,
something from a long time ago, he didn’t know just what.
Then Beaver was screaming at him from his awkward sprawl in the toilet, telling him

to get out, to shut the door, and the thing turned back to the sound of his voice as if recalled to temporarily forgotten business, and it was Beaver’s eyes it went for this time,
his fucking eyes, Beaver writhing and screaming and trying to hold on as the thing chattered and chattered and bit, its tail or whatever it was flexing and tightening around Beaver’s waist, pulling Beaver’s shirt out of his overalls and then slithering inside against

his bare skin, Beaver’s feet jerking on the tiles, the heels of his boots spraying bloody water in thin sheets, his shadow flailing on the wall, and that mossy stuff was everywhere
now, it grew so fucking
fast
-
Jonesy saw Beaver thrash backward in a final throe; saw the thing let go its grip and

leap clear just as the Beav rolled off the toilet, his upper half falling into the tub on top of McCarthy, old Mr Behold-I-Stand-at-the-Door-and-Knock. The thing hit the floor and
slithered around-Christ, it was quick-and started toward him. Jonesy took a step backward

and swept the bathroom door shut just before the thing hit it, making a thump almost exactly like the one it had made when it hit the underside of the toilet seat. It hit hard enough to shiver the door against the jamb. Light flickered in shutters from beneath the door as it moved restlessly on the tiles, and then it slammed into the door again. Jonesy’s
first thought was to run and get a chair, put it under the doorknob, but how dumb was that,

as his kids said, how fucking brainless, the door opened
in
, not out. The real question was whether the thing understood the function of the doorknob, and if it could reach it.
As if it had read his mind-and who could say that was impossible?-there was a
slithering sound on the other side of the door and he felt the doorknob trying to turn, Whatever the thing was, it was incredibly strong. Jonesy had been holding the knob with

his right hand; now he added his left, as well. There was a bad moment when the pressure
on the knob continued to mount, when he felt sure the thing in there would be able to turn
the knob in spite of his doubled grip, and Jonesy almost panicked, almost turned and ran.
What stopped him was his memory of how quick it was.
It’d run me down before I
could get halfway across the room
, he thought, wondering in the back of his mind why the room had to be so goddam big in the first place.

It’d run me down, go up my leg, and then
right up my-
Jonesy redoubled his grip on the doorknob, cords standing out on his forearms and on
the sides of his neck, lips skinned back to show his teeth. His hip hurt, too. His goddam
hip, if he
did
try to run his hip would slow him down even more thanks to the retired professor, fucking elderly asshole shouldn’t have been driving in the first place, thanks a

lot, prof, thanks a fucking pantload, and if he couldn’t hold the door shut and he couldn’t
run, what then?
What had happened to Beaver, of course. It had had the Beav’s nose stuck in its teeth
like a shish kebab.
Moaning, Jonesy held the knob. For a moment the pressure increased even more, and then it stopped. From behind the thin wood of the door, the thing yammered angrily.
Jonesy could smell the ethery aroma of starter fluid.

How was it holding on in there? It had no limbs, not that Jonesy had been able to see,
just that reddish tail-thing, so how-
He heard the minute
crackle-crunch-splinter
of wood on the other side of the door, directly in front of his own head by the sound, and knew. It was clinging by its teeth. The
idea filled Jonesy with unreasoning horror. That thing had been inside McCarthy, he had
absolutely no doubt of it. Inside McCarthy and growing like a giant tapeworm in a horror

movie. Like a cancer, one with teeth. And when it had grown enough, when it was ready
to go to bigger and better things, you might say, it had simply chewed its way out.
“No, man, no,” Jonesy said in a watery, almost weeping voice.
The knob of the bathroom door began trying to turn the other way. Jonesy could see it
in there, on its side of the bathroom door, battened to the wood like a leech with its teeth,

its tall or single tentacle wrapped around the doorknob like a loop ending in a hangman’s
noose, pulling-
“No, no,
no
,” Jonesy panted, hanging onto the knob with all of his strength. It was on
the verge of slipping away from him. There was sweat on his face and on his Palms, too,
he could feel it.
In front of his bulging, frightened eyes, a constellation of bumps appeared in the wood. Those were where its teeth were planted and working deeper all the time. Soon the

points would burst through (if he didn’t lose his grip on the doorknob first, that was) and
he’d actually have to
look
at the fangs that had torn his friend’s nose off his face.
That brought it home to him: Beaver was dead. His old friend.
“You killed him!” Jonesy cried at the thing on the other side of the door. His voice
quivered with sorrow and terror. “You killed the Beav!”
His cheeks were hot, the tears which now began to course down them even hotter.

Beaver in his black leather jacket (
What a lot of zippers!
Duddits’s Mom had said on the day they met her), Beaver next door to shitfaced at the Senior Prom and dancing like a Cossack, arms folded across his chest and his feet kicking, Beaver at Jonesy and Carla’s
wedding reception, hugging Jonesy and whispering fiercely in his ear, “You got to be happy, man. You got to be happy for all of us.” And that had been the first he knew that

Beaver wasn’t-Henry and Peter, of course, about them there had never been a question, but
the
Beav
? And now Beaver was dead, Beaver was lying half in and half out of the tub, lying noseless on top of Mr Richard Fucking I-Stand-at-the-Door-and-Knock McCarthy.
“
You killed him, you fuck!
” he shouted at the bulges in the door-there had been six of
them and now there were nine, hell, a dozen.

As if surprised by his rage, the widdershins pressure on the doorknob eased again.
Jonesy looked around wildly for anything that might help him, saw nothing, then looked
down. The roll of friction tape was there. He might be able to bend and snatch it up, but
then what? He would need both hands to pull lengths of tape off it, both hands and his

teeth to rip them, and even supposing the thing gave him time, what was the good of it, when he could barely hold the doorknob still against its pressure?
And now the knob began to turn again. Jonesy held it on his side, but he was getting
tired now, the adrenaline in his muscles starting to decay and turn to lead, his palms more
slippery than ever, and that smell the ethery smell, was clearer now and somehow
purer

, untainted by the wastes and gases of McCarthy’s body, and how could it be so strong on
this side of the door? How could it unless-
In the half-second or so before the rod connecting the doorknobs on the inside and outside of the bathroom door snapped, Jonesy became aware that it was darker now. just a

little. As if someone had crept up behind him, was standing between him and the light, him and the back door-The rod snapped. The knob in Jonesy’s hand pulled free and the bathroom door immediately swung in a little, pulled by the weight of the eelish thing clinging to it. Jonesy shrieked and dropped the knob. It hit the roll of tape and bounced askew.
He turned to run and there stood a gray man.
He-
it-

was a stranger, but in a way no stranger at all. Jonesy had seen representations of him on a hundred “Weird mysteries” TV shows, on the front pages of a thousand tabloid newspapers (the kind that shouted their serio-comic horrors at you as you stood prisoner in the supermarket checkout lanes), in movies like
ET
and
Close Encounters
and
Fire in the Sky
; Mr Gray who was an
X-Files
staple.

All the images had gotten the eyes night, at least, those huge black eyes that were just
like the eyes of the thing that had chewed its way out of McCarthy’s ass, and the mouth
was close-a vestigial slit, no more than that-but its gray skin hung in loose folds and swags, like the skin of an elephant dying of old age. From the wrinkles there ran listless

yellow-white streams of some pussy substance; the same stuff ran like tears from the comers of its expressionless eyes. Clots and smears of it puddled across the floor of the big room, across the Navajo rug beneath the dreamcatcher, back toward the kitchen door
through which it had entered. How long had Mr Gray been there? Had he been outside, watching Jonesy run from the snowmobile shed to the back door with the useless roll of

friction tape in his hand?
He didn’t know. He only knew that Mr Gray was dying, and Jonesy had to get past
him because the thing in the bathroom had just dropped onto the floor with a heavy thud.
It would be coming for him.
Marcy
, Mr Gray said.
He spoke with perfect clarity, although the vestige of a mouth never moved. Jonesy
heard the word in the middle of his head, in the same precise place where he had always
heard Duddits’s crying.

“What do you want?” The thing in the bathroom slithered across his feet, but Jonesy
barely noticed it. Barely noticed it curl between the bare, toeless feet of the gray man.
Please stop
, Mr Gray said inside Jonesy’s head. It was the click. More; it was the line. Sometimes you saw the line; sometimes you heard it, as he had heard the run of Defuniak’s guilty thoughts that time.
I can’t stand it, give me a shot, where’s Marcy?
Death looking for me that day,

Jonesy thought
. Missed me in the street, missed me in
the hospital-if only by a room or two-been looking ever since. Finally found me.
And then the thing’s head exploded, tore wide open, releasing a red-orange cloud of
ether-smelling particles. Jonesy breathed them in.
Chapter Eight
ROBERTA
1
With her hair now all gray, a widow at fifty-eight (but still a birdie-woman who
favored flowered print dresses, those things hadn’t changed), Duddits’s mother sat in front

of the television in the ground-floor apartment in West Derry Acres which she and her son
now shared. She had sold the house on Maple Lane after Alfie died. She could have afforded to keep it-Alfie had left plenty of money, the life insurance had paid out plenty
more, and there was her share of the imported auto-parts company he’d started in 1975 on

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