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.You stay be-hind this rope here or you'll spend the night in myholding cell.'With the beam of his flashlight he traced the course of the rope for them and then held it up so Johnnycould pass beneath.They walked down the slope toward the snow-mounded shapes of the benches.Behind them the reporters gathered at the rope, pooling their few lights so that Johnny and GeorgeBannerman walked in a dull sort of spotlight,file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste.20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20deadzone.htm (225 of 370)7/28/2005 9:23:00 PMStephen King: The Dead Zone'Flying blind,' Bannerman said.'Well, there's nothing to see, anyway,' Johnny said.'Is there?''No, not now.I told Frank he could take that rope down anytime.Now I'm glad he didn't get around to it.You want to go over to the bandstand?''Not yet.Show me where the cigarette butts were.' They went on a little farther and then Bannermanstopped.'Here,' he said, and shone his light on a bench that was little more than a vague hump pokingout of a drift.Johnny took off his gloves and put them in his coat pockets.Then he knelt and began to brush the snowaway from the seat of the bench.Again Bannerman was struck by the haggard pallor of the man's face.On his knees before the bench he looked like a religious penitent, a man in desperate prayer.Johnny's hands went cold, then mostly numb.Melted now ran off his fingers.He got down to thesplintered, weatherbeaten surface of the bench.He seemed to see it very clearly, almost with magnifyingpower.It had once been green, but now much of the paint had flaked and eroded away.Two rusted steelbolts held the seat to the backrest.He seized the bench in both hands, and sudden weirdness flooded him he had felt nothing so intensebefore and would feel something so intense only once ever again.He stared down at the bench, frowning, gripping it tightly in his hands.It -.(A summer bench)How many hundreds of different people had sat here at one time or another, listening to 'God BlessAmerica', to 'Stars and Stripes Forever' ('Be hind to your web-footed friends.for a duck may besomebody's moooother.'), to the Castle Rock Cougars' fight song? Green summer leaves, smoky hazeof fall like a memory of cornhusks and men with rakes in mellow dusk.The thud of the big snare drum.Mellow gold trumpets and trombones.School band uniforms.(for a duck.may be.somebody's mother.)Good summer people sitting here, listening.applauding, holding programs that had been designed andprinted in the Castle Rock High School graphic arts shop.But this morning a killer had been sitting here.Johnny could feel him.Dark tree branches etched against a gray snow-sky like runes.He(I) am sitting here, smoking, waiting,file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste.20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20deadzone.htm (226 of 370)7/28/2005 9:23:00 PMStephen King: The Dead Zonefeeling good, feeling like he(I) could jump right over the roof of the world and land lightly on two feet.Humming a song.Something by the Rolling Stones.Can't get that, but very dearly everything is.iswhat?All right.Everything is all right) everything is gray and waiting for snow, and Em.'Slick,' Johnny muttered.'I'm slick, I'm so slick.'Bannerman leaned forward, unable to catch the words over the howling wind.'What?''Slick,' Johnny repeated.He looked up at Bannerman and the Sheriff involuntarily took a step backward.Johnny's eyes were cool and somehow inhuman.His dark hair blew wildly around his white face, andoverhead the winter wind screamed through the black sky.His hands seemed welded to the bench.'I'm so fucking slick,' he said clearly.A triumphant smile had formed on his lips.His eyes stared throughBannerman.Bannerman believed.No one could be acting this, or putting it on.And the most terriblepart of it was.he was 'reminded of someone.The.the tone of voice.Johnny Smith was gone; heseemed to have been replaced by a human blank.And lurking behind the planes of his ordinary features,almost near enough to touch.was another face.The face of the killer.The face of someone he knew.'Never catch me because I'm too slick for you.' A little laugh escaped him, confident, lightly taunting.'Iput it on every time, and if they scratch.or bite.they don't get a bit of me.because I'm so SLICK !'His voice rose to a triumphant, crazy shriek that competed with the wind, and Bannerman fell backanother step, his flesh crawling helplessly, his balls tight and cringing against his guts.Let it stop, he thought.Let it stop now.Please.Johnny bent his head over the bench.Melting snow dripped between his bare fingers.(Snow.Silent snow, secret snow -)(She put a clothespin on it so I'd know how it felt.How it felt when you got a disease.A disease from oneof those nasty-fuckers, they're all nasty.fuckers, and they have to be stopped, yes, stopped, stop them,stop, the stop, the STOP - OH MY GOD THE STOP SIGN -!)He was little again.Going to school through the silent, secret snow.And there was a man looming out ofthe shifting whiteness, a terrible man, a terrible black grinning man with eyes as shiny as quarters, andthere was a red STOP sign clutched in one gloved hand.him!.him!.him!file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste.20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20deadzone.htm (227 of 370)7/28/2005 9:23:00 PMStephen King: The Dead Zone(OH MY GOD DON'T.DON'T LET HIM GET ME.MOMMA.DON'T LET HIM GET MEEEEE.)Johnny screamed and fell away from the bench, his hands suddenly pressed to his cheeks [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]