“And?”

“The tests don’t support the hypothesis. People who stop dreaming e)r suffer from constant dream interruptions have all sorts of problems, including loss of cognitive ability and emotional stability.

They also start to suffer perceptual problems like hyper-reality.”

Beyond Wyzer, at the far end of the counter, sat a fellow reading a copy of the Derry News. Only his hands and the top of his head were visible. He was wearing a rather ostentatious pinky-ring on his left hand. The headline at the top of the front page read ABORTION RIGHTS ADVOCATE AGREESTO SPEAK IN DERRY NEXT MONTH. Below it, in slightly smaller type, was a subhead: Pro-Life Groups Promise Organized Protests.

In the center of the page was a color picture of Susan Day, one that did her much more justice than the flat photographs on the poster he had seen in the window of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes. In those she had looked ordinary, perhaps even a bit sinister; in this one she was radiant. Her long, honey-blonde hair had been pulled back from her face. Her eyes were dark, intelligent, arresting. Hamilton Davenport’s pessimism had been misplaced, it seemed. Susan Day was coming after all.

Then Ralph saw something which made him forget all about Ham Davenport and Susan Day.

A gray-blue aura had begun to gather around the hands of the man reading the newspaper, and around the Just-visible crown of his head.

It seemed particularly bright around the onyx pinky-ring he wore.

It did not obscure but seemed to clarify, turning the ringstone into something that looked like an asteroid in a really realistic science-fiction movie “What did you say, Ralph?”

“Hmm?” Ralph drew his gaze away from the newspaper reader’s pinky-ring

???? with an effort. "I don’t know was talking? I guess I asked you what

???? hyper-reality is.”

???? "Heightened sensory awareness,” Wyzer said. "Like taking an LSD trip

???? without having to ingest any chemicals.”

“Oh,” Ralph said, watching as the bright gray-blue aura began to form complicated runic patterns on the nail of the finger Wyzer was using to mash up crumbs. At first they looked like letters written in frost… then sentences written in fog… then odd, gasping faces.

He blinked and they were gone.

“Ralph? You still there?” remedies don’t work “Sure, you bet.

But listen, Joe-if the folk drugs and the stuff in Aisle 3 doesn’t work and the prescription could actually make things worse instead of better, what does that leave? Nothing, right?”

“You going to eat the rest of that?” Wyzer said, pointing at Ralph’s plate, Chilly gray-blue light drifted off the tip of his finger like Arabic letters written in dry-ice vapor.

“Nope. I’m full. Be my guest.”

Wyzer pulled Ralph’s plate to him. “Don’t give up so fast,” he said.

“I want you to come back to the pharm with me so I can give you a couple of business cards. My advice, as your friendly neighborhood drug-pusher, is that you give these guys a try.”

“What guys?” Ralph watched, fascinated, as Wyzer opened his mouth to receive the last bite of pie. Each of his teeth was lit with a fierce gray glow. The fillings in his molars glowed like tiny suns.

The fragments of crust and apple filling on his tongue crawled with

(lucid Ralph lucid)

light. Then Wyzer closed his mouth to chew, and the glow was gone.

(I James Roy Hong and Anthony Forbes. Hong is an acupuncturist with offices on Kansas Street. Forbes is a hypnotist with a place over on the east side-Hesser Street, I think. And before you yell quack-” I’m not going to yell quack,” Ralph said quietly. His hand rose to touch the Magic Eye, which he was still wearing under his shirt.

“Believe me, I’m not.”

“Okay, good. My advice is that you try Hong first. The needles look scary, but they only hurt a little, and he’s got something going there.

I don’t know what the hell it is or how it works, but I do know that when I went through a bad patch two winters ago, he helped me a lot. Forbes is also good-so I’ve heard-but Hong’s my pick. He’s busy as hell, but I might be able to help you them.

What do you say?”

Ralph saw a bright gray glow, no thicker than a thread, slip from the corner of Wyzer’s eye and slide down his cheek like a supernatural tear. It decided him. “I say let’s go.”

Wyzer clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man! Let’s pay LIP and get out of here.” He produced a quarter. “Flip you for the check?”

Halfway back to the pharmacy, Wyzer stopped to look at a poster which had been put up in the window of an empty storefront between the Rite Aid and the diner. Ralph only glanced at it. He had seen it before, in the window of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes.

“Wanted for murder,” Wyzer marvelled. “People have lost all goddam sense of perspective, do you know it?”

“Yes,” Ralph said. “If we had tails, I think most of us would spend all day chasing them and trying to bite them off.”

“The poster’s bad enough,” Wyzer said this!” He was pointing at something beside the poster, something which had been written in the dirt which coated the outside of the empty display window. Ralph leaned close to read the short message. KILL THIS CUNT, it said.

Below the words was an arrow pointing at the left hand photo of Susan Day.

“Jesus,” Ralph said quietly.

“Yeah,” Wyzer agreed. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped away the message, leaving in Place of the words a bright silvery fan-shape which Ralph knew only he could see.

“but look at He followed Wyzer to the rear of the pharmacy and stood in the doorway of an office not much bigger than a public-toilet cubicle while Wyzer sat on the only piece of furniture-a high stool that would have looked at home in Ebenezer Scrooge’s counting-house and phoned the office of James Roy Heng, acupuncturist. Wyzer pushed the phone’s speaker button so Ralph could follow the conversation.

Hong’s receptionist (someone named Audra, who seemed to know Wyzer on a basis a good deal warmer than a merely professional one) at first said Dr. Hong could not possibly see a new patient until after Thanksgiving. Ralph’s shoulders slumped. Wyzer raised an open palm in his direction-wait a minute, Ralph-and then proceeded to talk Audra into finding (mr perhaps creating) an opening for Ralph in early october. That was almost a month away, but a lot better than Thanksgiving.

“Thanks, Audra,” Wyzer said. “We still on for dinner tonight?”

“Yes,” she said. “Now turn off the damned speaker, Joe-I have something that’s for your ears only.”

Wyzer did it, listened, laughed until tears-to Ralph they looked like gorgeous liquid pearls-stood in his eyes. Then he smooched twice into the phone and hung up.

“You’re all set,” he said, handing Ralph a small white card with the time and date of the appointment written on the back. “October fourth, not great, but really the best she could do. Audra’s good people,”

“It’s fine.”

“Here’s Anthony Forbes’s card, in case you want to call him in the interim.”

“Thanks,” Ralph said, taking the second card. “I owe you.”

“The only thing you owe Me is a return visit SO I can find out how it went. I’m concerned, There are doctors who won’t prescribe anything for insomnia, you know. They like to say that no one ever died from lack of sleep, but I’m here to tell you that’s crap.”

Ralph supposed this news should have frightened him, but he felt pretty steady, at least for the time being. The auras had gone away-the bright gray gleams in Wyzer’s eyes as he’d laughed at whatever Hong’s receptionist had said had been the last. He was starting to think they had just been a mental fugue brought on by a combination of extreme tiredness and Wyzer’s mention of hyper-reality. There was another reason for feeling good-he now had an appointment with a man who had helped this man through a similar bad patch.