Stephen King's N. by Stephen King, Marc Guggenheim, Alex Maleev Read Free Book Online Page B

there, I…
    [N. stands up and walks slowly around the couch in a deliberate circle. His steps—both grave and prancing, like the steps of a child playing ring-a-rosie—are somehow awful. As he circles, he reaches out to touch stones I cannot see. One…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight. Because eight keeps things straight. Then he stops and looks at me. I have had patients in crisis—many—but I have never seen such a haunted stare. I see horror, but not insanity; I see clarity rather than confusion. It must all be a delusion, of course, but there can be no doubt that he understands it completely.
    [I say, “When you got there, you touched them.”]
    Yes, I touched them, one after the other. And I can’t say I felt the world grow safer—more solid, more there—with every stone I touched, because that wouldn’t be true. It was every two stones. Just the even numbers, do you see? That turning darkness began to recede with each pair, and by the time I got to eight, it was gone. The hay inside the stones was yellow and dead, but the darkness was gone. And somewhere—far off—I heard a bird sing.
    I stepped back. The sun was fully up by then, and the ghost-river over the real one had entirely disappeared. The stones looked like stones again. Eight granite outcroppings in a field, not even a circle, unless you worked to imagine one. And I felt myself divide. One part of my mind knew the whole thing was just a product of my imagination, and that my imagination had some kind of disease. The other part knew it was all true. That part even understood why things had gotten better for awhile.
    It’s the solstice, do you see? You see the same patterns repeated all over the world—not just at Stonehenge, but in South America and Africa, even the Arctic! You see it in the American midwest—my daughter even saw it, and she knows nothing about this! Crop circles, she said! It is a calendar—Stonehenge and all the others, marking not just days and months but times of greater and lesser danger.
    That split in my mind was tearing me apart. Is tearing me apart. I’ve been out there a dozen more times since that day, and on the twenty-first—the day of the appointment with you I had to cancel, do you remember?
    [I tell him I do, of course I do.]
    I spent that whole day in Ackerman’s Field, watching and counting. Because the twenty-first was the summer solstice. The day of highest danger. Just as the winter solstice in December is the day when the danger is lowest. It was last year, it will be again this year, it has been every year since the beginning of time. And in the months ahead—until fall, at least—I’ve got my work cut out for me. The twenty-first…I can’t tell you how awful it was out there. The way that eighth stone kept shimmering out of existence. How hard it was to concentrate it back into the world. The way the darkness would gather and recede…gather and recede…like the tide. Once I dozed off and when I looked up there was an inhuman eye—a hideous three-lobed eye—looking back at me. I screamed, but I didn’t run. Because the world was depending on me. Depending on me and not even knowing it. Instead of running, I raised my camera and looked through the viewfinder. Eight stones. No eye. But after that I stayed awake.
    Finally the circle steadied, and I knew I could go. At least for that day. By then the sun was setting again, as it had on the first evening; a ball of fire sitting on the horizon, turning the Androscoggin into a bleeding snake.
    And Doc—whether it’s real or just a delusion, the work is just as hard. And the responsibility! I’m so tired. Talk about having the weight of the world on your shoulders…
    [He’s back on the couch again. He is a big man, but now he looks small and shriveled. Then he smiles.]
    At least I’ll get a break come winter. If I make it that far. And you know what? I think we’ve finished, you and I. As they used to say on the radio, “This concludes today’s program.” Although…who