The Tommyknockers by Stephen King Read Free Book Online

fell still. It didn’t know. So in its place came Anne’s voice, telling her for the third time that she was getting funny in the head, getting weird like Uncle Frank, saying they’d be measuring her for one of those canvas coats you wear backwards soon; they’d cart her up to the asylum in Bangor or the one in Juniper Hill, and she could rave about flying saucers in the woods while she wove baskets. It was Sissy’s voice, all right; she could call her on the phone right now, tell her what had happened, and get that scripture by chapter and by verse. She knew it.
    But was it right?
    No. It wasn’t. Anne would equate her sister’s mostly solitary life with madness no matter what Bobbi did or said. And yes, the idea that the thing in the earth was some sort of spaceship certainly was mad . . . but was playing with the possibility, at least until it was disproven, mad? Anne would think so, but Anderson did not. Nothing wrong with keeping an open mind.
    Yet the speed with which the possibility had occurred to her . . .
    She got up and went inside. Last time she had fooled with that thing in the woods, she had slept for twelve hours. She wondered if she could expect a similar sleep marathon this time. She felt almost tired enough to sleep twelve hours, God knew.
    Leave it alone, Bobbi. It’s dangerous.
    But she wouldn’t, she thought, pulling off her OPUS FOR PRESIDENT T-shirt. Not just yet.
    The trouble with living alone, she had discovered—and the reason why most people she knew didn’t like to be alone even for a little while—was that the longer you lived alone, the louder those voices on the right side of your brain got. As the yardsticks of rationality began to shrink in the silence, those voices did not just request attention; they demanded it. It was easy to become frightened of them, to think they meant madness after all.
    Anne would sure think they did, Bobbi thought, climbing into bed. The lamp cast a clean and comforting circle of light on the counterpane, but she left the thesis she’d been reading on the floor. She kept expecting the cramps that usually accompanied her occasional early and heavy menstrual flow, but so far they hadn’t come. Not that she was anxious for them to put in an appearance, you should understand.
    She crossed her hands behind her head and looked at the ceiling.
    No, you’re not crazy at all, Bobbi , she thought. You think Gard’s getting wiggy but you’re perfectly all right — isn’t that also a sign that you’re wobbling? There’s even a name for it . . . denial and substitution. “I’m all right, it’s the world that’s crazy.”
    All true. But she still felt firmly in control of herself, and sure of one thing: she was saner in Haven than she had been in Cleaves Mills, and much saner than she had been in Utica. A few more years in Utica, a few more years around Sissy, and she would have been as mad as a hatter. Anderson believed Anne actually saw driving her close relatives crazy as part of her . . . her job? No, nothing so mundane. As part of her sacred mission in life.
    She knew what was really troubling her, and it wasn’t the speed with which the possibility had occurred. It was the feeling of certainty. She would keep an open mind,but the struggle would be to keep it open in favor of what Anne would call “sanity.” Because she knew what she had found, and it filled her with fear and awe and a restless, moving excitement.
    See, Anne, ole Bobbi didn’t move up to Sticksville and go crazy; ole Bobbi moved up here and went sane. Insanity is limiting possibilities, Anne, can you dig it? Insanity is refusing to go down certain paths of speculation even though the logic is there . . . like a token for the turnstile. See what I mean? No? Of course you don’t. You don’t and you never did. Then go away, Anne. Stay in Utica