The tommyknockers by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King [Stephen King]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SF
ISBN: 9781442006188
Published: 2009-08-15T07:00:00+00:00

5

It was, of course, Hilly’s grandfather, Ev, who made the connection. Ev Hillman, who could have rightly been called the town in exile, Ev Hillman, who had come back from Big II with two small steel plates in his head as a result of a German potato-masher which had exploded near him during the Battle of the Bulge.

He spent the Monday morning after Haven’s explosive Sunday where he had been spending all of his mornings—in Room 371 of the Derry Home Hospital, watching over Hilly. He had taken a furnished room down on Lower Main Street, and spent his nights—his largely sleepless nights—there after the nurses finally turned him out.

Sometimes he would lie in the dark and think he heard chuckling noises coming from the drains and he would think: You’re going nuts, old-timer. Except he wasn’t. Sometimes he wished he were.

He had tried to talk to some of the nurses about what he believed had happened to David—what he knew had happened to David. They pitied him. He did not see their pity at first; his eyes were only opened after he had made the mistake of talking to the reporter. That had opened his eyes. He thought the nurses admired him for his loyalty to Hilly, and felt sorry for him because Hilly seemed to be slipping away ... but they also thought him mad. Little boys did not disappear during tricks performed in back yard magic shows. You didn’t even have to go to nursing school to know that.

After a while in Derry alone, half out of his mind with worry for Hilly and David and contempt for what he now saw as cowardice on his part and fear for Ruth McCausland and the others in Haven, Ev had done some drinking at the little bar halfway down Lower Main. In the course of a conversation with the bartender, he heard the story of a fellow named John Smith, who had taught in the nearby town of Cleaves Mills for a while. Smith had been in a coma for years, had awakened with some sort of psychic gift. He went nuts a few years ago—had tried to assassinate a fellow named Stillson, who was a U.S. representative from New Hampshire.

“Dunno if there was ever any truth to the psychic part of it or not,” the bartender said, drawing Ev a fresh beer. “B’lieve most of that stuff is just eyewash, myself. But if you’ve got some wild-ass tale to tell”—Ev had hinted he had a story to tell that would make The Amityville Horror look tame—“then Bright at the Bangor Daily News is the guy you ought to tell it to. He wrote up the Smith guy for the paper. He drops in here for a beer every once in a while, and I’ll tell you, mister, he believed Smith had the sight.”

Ev had had three beers, rapidly, one after another—just enough, in other words, to believe that simple solutions might be possible. He went to the pay phone, laid out his change on the shelf, and called the Bangor Daily News.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.