Dreamcatcher

But there was absolutely no way of telling if the lump in the doorway had once been
the Beav, or indeed if it had once been anyone at all. There was only that suggestive shape. Something glinted in the spongy mass of growth and Henry leaned a little closer,
wondering even as he did it if microscopic bits of the fungus were already growing on the
wet, unprotected surfaces of his eyes. The thing he spotted turned out to be the bathroom

doorknob. Off to one side, sporting its own fuzz of growth, was a roll of friction tape. He
remembered the mess scattered across the surface of the worktable out back, the yanked-
open drawers. Had this been what Jonesy had been out there looking for? A goddam roll
of tape? Something in his head-maybe the click, maybe not-said it was. But why? In God’s
name, why?
In the last five months or so, as the suicidal thoughts came more frequently and

visited for longer and longer periods of time, chatting in their pidgin language, Henry’s curiosity had pretty much deserted him. Now it was raging, as if it had awakened hungry.
He had nothing to feed it. Had Jonesy wanted to tape the door shut? Yeah? Against what?
Surely he and the Beav must have known it wouldn’t work against the fungus, which would just send its fingers creeping under the door.

Henry looked into the bathroom and made a low grunting sound. Whatever obscene
craziness had gone on, it had started and ended in there-he had no doubt of it. The room
was a red cave, the blue tiles almost completely hidden under drifts of the stuff. It had grown up the base of the sink and the toilet, as well. The seat’s lid was back against the
tank, and although he couldn’t be positive-there was too much overgrowth to be positive-

he thought that the ring itself had been broken inward. The shower curtain was now a solid
red-gold instead of filmy blue; most of it had been tom off the rings (which had grown their own vegetable beards) and lay in the tub.
Jutting from the edge of the tub, also overgrown with fungus, was a boot-clad foot.

The boot was a Doc Marten, Henry was sure of it. He had found Beaver after all, it seemed. Memories of the day they had rescued Duddits suddenly filled him, so bright and
clear it might have been yesterday. Beaver wearing his goofy old leather jacket, Beaver taking Duddits’s lunchbox and saying
You like this show? But they never change their
clothes!
And then saying-

“Fuck me Freddy,” Henry told the overgrown cabin. “That’s what he said, what he
always
said.” Tears running from his eyes and down his cheeks. If it was just wetness the fungus wanted and judging by the jungle growing out of the toilet-bowl, it liked wetness
just fine-it could land on him and have a feast.
Henry didn’t much care. He had Jonesy’s rifle. The fungus could start on him, but he could make sure that he was long gone before it ever got to the dessert course. If it came

to that.
It probably would.
5
He was sure he’d seen a few rug-remnants heaped up in one comer of the shed.
Henry debated going out and getting them. He could lay them down on the bathroom
floor, walk over them, and get a better look into the tub. But to what purpose? He knew
that was Beaver, and he had no real desire to see his old friend, author of such witticisms
as
Kiss my bender

, being overgrown by red fungus as the pallid corpse in that long-ago medical offprint had been growing its own colony of toadstools. If it might have answered
some of his questions about what had happened, yes, perhaps. But Henry didn’t think that
likely.
Mostly what he wanted was to get out of here. The fungus was creepy, but there was
something else. An even creepier sensation that he was not alone.

Henry backed away from the bathroom door. There was a paperback on the dining
table, a pattern of dancing devils with pitchforks on its cover. One of Jonesy’s, no doubt,
already growing its own little colony of crud.
He became aware of a whickering noise from the west, one that quickly rose to a
thunder. Helicopters, and not just one, this time. A lot. Big ones. They sounded as if they

were coming in at rooftop level, and Henry ducked without even being aware of it. Images
from a dozen Vietnam War movies filled his head and he was momentarily sure that they
would open up with their machine-guns, spraying the house. Or maybe they’d hose it down with napalm.
They passed over without doing either, but came close enough to rattle the cups and

dishes on the kitchen shelves. Henry straightened up as the thunder began to fade, becoming first a chatter and then a harmless drone. Perhaps they had gone off to join the
animal slaughter at the east end of Jefferson Tract. Let them. He was going to get the fuck
out of here and-
And what? Exactly what?
While he was thinking this question over, there was a sound from one of the two

downstairs bedrooms. A rustling sound. This was followed by a moment of silence, just long enough for Henry to decide it was his imagination pulling a little more overtime.
Then there came a series of low clicks and chitters, almost the sound of a mechanical toy-a
tin monkey or parrot, maybe-on the verge of running down. Gooseflesh broke out all over
Henry’s body. The spit dried up in his mouth. The hairs on the back of his neck began to
straighten in bunches.

Get out of here, run!
Before he could listen to that voice and let it get a hold on him, he crossed to the bedroom door in big steps, unshouldering the Garand as he went. The adrenaline dumped
into his blood, and the world stood forth brightly. Selective perception, that
unacknowledged gift to the safe and cozy, fell away and he saw every detail: the trail of

blood which ran from bedroom to bathroom, a discarded slipper, that weird red mold growing on the wall in the shape of a handprint. Then he went through the door.
It was on the bed, whatever it was; to Henry it looked like a weasel or a woodchuck
with its legs amputated and a long, bloody tail strung out behind it like an afterbirth. Only

no animal he’d ever seen-with the possible exception of the moray eel at the Boston Seaquarium-had such disproportionately large black eyes. And another similarity: when it
yawned open the rudimentary line that was its mouth, it revealed a nest of shocking fangs,
as long and thin as hatpins.
Behind it, pulsing on the blood-soaked sheet, were a hundred or more orange-and-
brown eggs. They were the size of large marbles and coated with a murky, snotlike slime.

Within each Henry could see a moving, hairlike shadow.
The weasel-thing rose up like a snake emerging from a snake-charmer’s basket and
chittered at him. It lurched on the bed Jonesy’s bed-but seemed unable to move much. Its
glossy black eyes glared. Its tail (except Henry thought it might actually be some sort of
gripping tentacle) lashed back and forth, then laid itself over as many of the eggs as it could reach, as if protecting them.

Henry realized he was saying the same word,
no
, over and over in a monotonous drone, like a helpless neurotic who has been loaded up on Thorazine. He shouldered the
rifle, aimed, and tracked the thing’s repulsive wedge of a head as it twitched and dodged.
It knows what this is, it knows at least that much
, Henry thought coldly, and then he squeezed the trigger.
It was close range and the creature wasn’t up to much in the way of evasion; either

laying its eggs had exhausted it or it wasn’t doing well in the cold-with the main door open, Hole in the Wan had gotten quite cold indeed. The report was very loud in the closed room, and the thing’s upraised head disintegrated in a liquid splatter that blew back
against the wall in strings and clots. Its blood was the same red-gold as the fungus. The
decapitated body tumbled off the bed and onto a litter of clothes Henry didn’t recognize: a

brown coat, an orange flagman’s vest, a pair of jeans with cuffs (none of them had ever worn cuffed jeans; in junior high school, those who did had been branded shitkickers).
Several of the eggs tumbled off with the body. Most landed on either the clothes or the litter of Jonesy’s books and remained whole, but a couple hit the floor and broke open.
Cloudy stuff like spoiled eggwhite oozed out, about a tablespoonful from each egg. Within

it were those hairs, writhing and twisting and seeming to glare at Henry with black eyes
the size of pinheads. Looking at them made him feel like screaming.
He turned and walked jerkily out of the room on legs with no more feeling in them
than the legs of a table. He felt like a puppet being manipulated by someone who means
well but has just begun to learn his craft. He had no real idea where he was going until he
reached the kitchen and bent over the cabinet under the sink.

“I am the eggman, I am the eggman, I am the walrus! Goo-goo-joob!”
He didn’t sing this but declaimed it in a loud, hortatory voice he hadn’t realized was
in his repertoire. It was the voice of a ham actor from the nineteenth century. That idea called up an image God knew why-of Edwin Booth dressed as d’Artagnan, plumed hat
and all, quoting from the lyrics of John Lennon, and Henry uttered two loud laugh-syllables-
Ha! Ha!
I’m going insane

, he thought… but it was okay. Better d’Artagnan reciting “I Am the
Walrus” than the image of that thing’s blood splattering onto the wall, or the mold-covered
Doc Marten sticking out of the bathtub, or, worst of all, those eggs splitting open and releasing a load of twitching hairs with eyes. All those eyes looking at him.
He moved aside the dish detergent and the floor-bucket, and there it was, the yellow

can of Sparx barbecue lighter fluid. The inept puppeteer who had taken him over advanced
Henry’s arm in a series of jerks, then clamped his right hand on the Sparx can. He carried
it back across the living room, pausing long enough to take the box of wooden matches from the mantel.
“I am he and you are me and we are all together!” he declaimed, and stepped briskly

back into Jonesy’s bedroom before the terrified person inside his head could seize the controls, turn him, and make him run away. That person wanted to make him run until he
fell down unconscious. Or dead.
The eggs on the bed were also splitting open. Two dozen or more of those hairs were
crawling around on the blood-soaked sheet or squirming on Jonesy’s pillow. One raised its
nub of a head and chittered at Henry, a sound almost too thin and high-pitched to be heard.

Still not allowing himself any pause, if he paused he would never get started again (in
any direction save doorward, that was), Henry took two steps to the foot of the bed. One
of the hairs came sliding across the floor toward him, propelling itself with its tail like a
spermatozoon under a microscope.
Henry stepped on it, thumbing the red plastic cap off the spout of the can as he did.
He aimed the spout at the bed and squeezed, flicking his wrist back and forth, making sure

he got plenty on the floor as well. When the lighter fluid hit the hairlike things, they made
high, mewling cries like kittens which had just been born.
“Eggman… eggman…
walrus!
”
He stepped on another of the hairs and saw that a third was clinging to the leg of his
jeans, holding on with its wisp of a tail and trying to bite through the cloth with its still soft teeth.
“Eggman,” Henry muttered, and scraped it off with the side of his other boot. When it

tried to squirm away he stepped on it. He was suddenly aware that he was drenched with
sweat, sopping from head to toe, if he went out into the cold like this (and he would have
to; he couldn’t stay here), he’d probably catch his death.
“Can’t stay here, can’t take no
rest!
” Henry cried in his new hortatory voice.
He opened the matchbox, but his hands were shaking so badly he spilled half of them

on the floor. More of the threadlike worms were crawling toward him. They might not
know much, but they knew he was the enemy, all right; they knew that.
Henry got hold of a match, held it up, put his thumb against the tip. A trick Pete had

taught him in the way back when. It was your friends who always taught you the finer things, wasn’t it? Like how to give your old pal Beaver a Viking funeral and get n’d of these noisome little snakelets at the same time.
“
Eggman!”
He scratched the tip of the match and it popped fire. The smell of the burning sulfur
was like the smell that had greeted him when he stepped into the cabin, like the smell of
the burly woman’s farts.
“
Walrus!”

He flung the match at the foot of the bed, where there was a crumpled duvet now soaked with lighter fluid. For a moment the flame guttered down blue around the little stick, and Henry
thought it would go out. Then there was a soft
flump
sound, and the duvet grew a modest crown of yellow flames.
“
Goo-goo-joob!”
The flames crawled up the sheet, turning the blood soaked into it black. It reached the

mass of jelly-coated eggs, tasted them, and found them good. There was a series of thick
popping sounds as the eggs began to burst. More of those mewling cries as the worms burned. Sizzling noises as fluid ran out of the burst eggs.
Henry backed out of the room, squirting lighter fluid as he went. He got halfway
across the Navajo rug before the can ran empty. He tossed it aside, scratched another match, and tossed it. This time the
flump!

was immediate, and the flames sprang up orange. The heat baked against his sweat-shiny face, and he felt a sudden urge-it was both
strong and joyful-to cast the painters” masks aside and simply stride into the fire. Hello heat, hello summer, hello darkness, my old friend.
What stopped him was as simple as it was powerful. If he pulled the pin now, he would have suffered the unpleasant awakening of all his quiescent emotions to no

purpose. He would never be clear on the details of what had happened here, but he might
get at least some answers from whoever was flying the helicopters and shooting the animals. If they didn’t just shoot him, too, that was.
At the door, Henry was struck by a memory so clear that his heart cried out inside him: Beaver kneeling in front of Duddits, who is trying to put on his sneaker backwards.
Let me fix that, man

, Beaver says, and Duddits, looking at him with a wide-eyed perplexity that you could only love, replies.
Fit neek?
Henry was crying again. “So long, Beav,” he said. “Love you, man-and that’s straight
from the heart.” Then he stepped out into the cold.
6
He walked to the far end of Hole in the Wall, where the woodpile was. Beside it was another tarp, this one ancient, black fading to gray. It was frost-frozen to the ground, and

Henry had to yank hard with both hands in order to pull it free. Under it was a tangle of
snowshoes, skates, and skis. There was an antediluvian ice-auger, as well.
As he looked at this unprepossessing pile of long-dormant winter gear, Henry
suddenly realized how tired he was… except
tired
was really too mild a word. He had just come ten miles on foot, much of it at a fast trot. He had also been in a car accident and

discovered the body of a childhood friend. He believed both his other two childhood friends were likewise lost to him.
If I hadn’t been suicidal to begin with, I’d be stark-raving crazy by now
, he thought,
and then laughed. It felt good to laugh, but it didn’t make him feel any less tired. Still, he
had to get out of here. Had to find someone in authority and tell them what had happened.
They might already know-based on the sounds, they sure as shit knew something,

although their methods of dealing with it made Henry feel uneasy-but they might not know about the weasels. And the eggs. He, Henry Devlin, would tell them-who better? He
was the eggman, after all.
The rawhide lacings of the snowshoes had been chewed by so many mice that the
shoes were little more than empty frames. After some sorting, however, he found a stubby

pair of crosscountry skis that looked as if they might have been state-of-the-art around 1954 or so. The clamps were rusty, but when he pushed them with both thumbs, he was
able to move them enough to take a reluctant grip on his boots.
There was a steady crackling sound coming from inside the cabin now. Henry laid
one hand on the wood and felt the heat. There was a clutch of assorted ski-poles leaning

under the eave, their handgrips buried in a dirty cobweb caul. Henry didn’t like to touch
that stuff-the memory of the eggs and the weasel-thing’s wriggling spawn was still too fresh-but at least he had his gloves on. He brushed the cobwebs aside and sorted through
the poles, moving quickly. He could now see sparks dancing inside the window beside his
head.

He found a pair of poles that were only a little short for his lanky height and skied clumsily to the comer of the building. He felt like a Nazi snow-trooper in an Alistair MacLean film, with the old skis on his feet and Jonesy’s rifle slung over his shoulder. As
he turned around, the window beside which he had been standing blew out with a
surprisingly loud report-as if someone had dropped a large glass bowl from a second-story

window. Henry hunched his shoulders and felt pieces of glass spatter against his coat. A
few landed in his hair. It occurred to him that if he had spent another twenty or thirty seconds sorting through the skis and poles, that exploding glass would have erased most of
his face.
He looked up at the sky, spread his hands palms-out beside his cheeks like Al Jolson,
and said, “Somebody up there likes me! Hotcha!”

Flames were shooting through the window now, licking up under the eaves, and he
could hear more stuff breaking inside as the heat-gradient zoomed. Lamar Clarendon’s father’s camp, originally built just after World War Two, now burning merry hell. It was a
dream, surely.
Henry skied around the house, giving it a wide berth, watching as gouts of sparks rose from the chimney and swirled toward the low-bellied clouds. There was still a steady

crackle of gunfire off to the east. Someone was bagging their limit, all right. Their limit
and more. Then there was that explosion in the west-what in God’s name had that been?
No way of telling. If he got back to other people in one piece, perhaps they would tell him.
“If they don’t just decide to bag me, too,” he said. His voice came out in a dry croak,
and he realized he was all but dying of thirst. He bent down carefully (he hadn’t been on

skis of any type in ten years or more), scooped up a double handful of snow, and took a
big mouthful. He let it melt and trickle down his throat. The feeling was heavenly. Henry
Devlin, psychiatrist and onetime author of a paper about the Hemingway Solution, a man
who had once been a virgin boy and who was now a tall and geeky fellow whose glasses

always slid down to the tip of his nose, whose hair was going gray, whose friends were either dead, fled, or changed, this man stood in the open gate of a place to which he would
never come again, stood on skis, stood eating snow like a kid eating a Sno-Cone at the Shrine Circus, stood and watched the last really good place in his life bum. The flames came through the cedar shingles. Melting snow turned to steaming water and ran hissing

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