Then, last year (it would not have surprise d Mike Hanlon or any of the others at that point to have known that it was, in fact, on the same day that George Denbrough had been murdered), Patrick had discovered the rusty Amana refrigerator — one of the larger dumpoids in the belt surrounding the dump itself.
Like Bev, he had heard the cautionary warnings about such abandoned appliances, about how thirty –squirty million kids got their stupid selves smoked in them each year. Patrick had stood looking at the refrigerator for a long time, idly playing pocket-pool with himself. That excitement was back, stronger than it had ever been, except for the time he had fixed Avery. The excitement was back because, in the chilly yet fuming wastes that passed for his mind, Patrick Hockstetter had had an idea.
The Luces, who lived three houses down from the Hockstetters, missed their cat, Bobby, a week later. The Luce kids, who couldn't remember a time when Bobby hadn't been there, spent hours combing the neighborhood for him. They even pooled their money and pu t an ad in the Derry News Lost and Found column. Nothing came of it. And if any of them had seen Patrick that day, bulkier than ever in his mothball-smelling winter parka (after the floodwaters receded in that fall of '57, it had come off bitterly cold almost at once), carrying a cardboard carton, they would have thought nothing of it.
The Engstroms, a block over and almost directly behind the Hockstetter home, lost their cocker pup about ten days before Thanksgiving. Other families lost dogs and cats over the next six or eight months, and Patrick of course had taken them all, not to mention a dozen unremarked strays from the Hell's Half-Acre area of Derry.
He put them into the rusty Amana near the dump, one by one. Each time he brought another animal down, his heart thundering in his chest, his eyes hot and watery with excitement, he would expect to find that Mandy Fazio had pulled the Amana's latch or popped the hinges with his sledgehammer. But Mandy never touched that particular refrigerator. Perhaps he didn't realize it was there, perhaps the force of Patrick's will kept him away . . . or perhaps some other force did that.
The Engstroms' cocker lasted the longest. In spite of the single-number cold, it was still alive when Patrick came back fo r the third time in as many days, although it had lost all of its original friskiness (it had been wagging its tail and lapping his hands frantically when he originally hauled it out of the box and stuffed it into the refrigerator). When he came back a day after putting it in, the puppy had damn near gotten away. Patrick had to chase it almost
all the way to the dump before he was able to jump it and get hold of one rear leg. The puppy had nipped Patrick with its sharp little teeth. Patrick didn't mind. In spite of the nips, he had taken the cocker back to the refrigerator and bundled it back in. He had a hard-on when he did it. This was not uncommon.
On the second day the puppy had tried to get out again, but it moved much too slowly. Patrick shoved it back in, slammed the Amana's rusty door, and leaned against it. He could hear the puppy scratching against the door. He could hear its muffled whines. 'Good dog,' said Patrick Hockstetter. His eyes were closed and he was breathing fast. 'That's a good dog.' On the third day the puppy could only roll its eyes toward Patrick's face when the door opened. Its sides were heaving rapidly and shallowly. When Patrick returned the next day, the cocker was dead with a cake of foam frozen around its mouth and muzzle. This made Patrick think of coconut Popsicles, and he laughed quite hard as he hauled the frozen corpse from his killing-bottle and threw it in the bushes.
The supply of victims (which Patrick thought of, when he thought of them at all, as 'test animals') had been thin this summer. Questions of reality aside, his sense of self-preservation was well developed, his intuition exquisite. He suspected he was suspected. By whom he was not sure: Mr Engstrom? Perhaps. Mr Engstrom had turned around and given Patrick a long speculative look in the A&P one day this spring. Mr Engstrom had been buying cigarettes and Patrick had been sent for bread. Mrs Josephs? Maybe. She sat in her parlor window with a telescope sometimes and was, according to Mrs Hockstetter, a 'nosy parker.' Mr Jacubois, who had an ASPCA sticker on the back bumper of his car? Mr Nell? Someone else? Patrick didn't know for sure, but his intuition told him he was suspected, and he never argued with his intuition. He had taken a few wandering animals from among the rotted tenements in the Half-Acre, picking only those that looked thin or diseased, but that was all.
He discovered, however, that the refrigerator near the dump had gotten an oddly powerful hold over him. He began to draw pictures of it in school when he was bored. He sometimes dreamed of it at night, and in his dreams the Amana was perhaps seventy feet tall, a whited sepulchre, a ponderous crypt iced in chilly moonlight. In these dreams the giant door would swing open and he would see huge eyes staring out at him. He would awake in a cold sweat, but he found he could not give up the joys of the refrigerator entirely.
Today he had finally found out who had suspected. Bowers. Knowing that Henry Bowers held the secret of his killing-bottle in his hands left Patrick as close to panic as he was ever apt to get. This was not very close at all, in truth, but he still found this — not fear exactly, but mental unrest — oppressive and unpleasant. Henry knew. Knew that Patrick sometimes broke the rules.
His latest victim had been a pigeon he discovered on Jackson Street two days ago. The pigeon had been struck by a car and couldn't fly. Patrick went home, got his box out of the garage, and put the pigeon inside. The pigeon pecked the back of Patrick's hand several times, leaving shallow, bloody digs. Patrick didn't mind. When he checked the refrigerator the next day, the pigeon had been quite dead, but Patrick hadn't removed the corpse then. Now, following Henry's threat to tell, Patrick decided he better get rid of the pigeon's body right away. Perhaps he would even get a bucket of water and some rags and scrub out the interior of the refrigerator. It didn't smell very good. If Henry told and Mr Nell came down to check, he might be able to tell that something — several somethings, in fact — had died in there.
If he tells, Patrick thought, standing in the grove of pines and looking at the rusty Amana, I'll tell that he broke Eddie Kaspbrak's arm. Of course they probably knew that already, bu t they couldn't prove anything because all of them said they had been playing out at Henry's house that day and Henry's crazy father had backed them up. But if he tells, I'll tell. Tit for tat.
Never mind that now. What he had to do now was get rid of the bird. He would leave the refrigerator door open and then come back with the rags and the water and clean it up. Good.
Patrick opened the refrigerator door on his own death.
At first he was simply puzzled, unable to cope in any way with what he was seeing. It meant nothing to him at all. It had no context. Patrick merely stared, his head cocked to one side, his eyes wide.
The pigeon was nothing but a skeleton surrounded by a ragged fall of feathers. There was no flesh left on its body at all. And around it, stuck on the refrigerator's inner walls, hanging from the underside of the freezer compartment, dangling from the wire shelves, were dozens of flesh-colored objects that looked like big macaroni shells. Patrick saw that they were moving slightly, fluttering, as if in a breeze. Except there was no breeze. He frowned.
Suddenly one of the shell-like things unfurled insectile wings. Before Patrick could do more than register the fact, it had flown across the space between the refrigerator and Patrick's left arm. It struck with a smacking sound. There was an instant of heat. It faded and Patrick's arm felt just like always again . . . but the shell-like creature's pale flesh turned first pink, and then, with shocking suddenness, rose-red.