Hank pushed it.

Pits started to scream. Then the screams began to fade, as if someone inside were turning down his volume. At the same time someone seemed to be turning down his vividness, his physical coherence… his there-ness. Pits Barfield faded like a photograph. Now his mouth was moving soundlessly, his skin was milk.

A little piece of reality-a piece of reality roughly the size of a Dutch door's lower half-seemed to open behind him. There was a feeling that reality-Haven reality -had rotated on some unknowable axis, like a trick bookcase in a haunted-house spoof. Behind Pits now was an eerie purple-black landscape.

Hank's hair began to flutter about his ears; his collar stuttered with a sound like a silenced automatic weapon; the litter on the asphalt-candy wrappers, flattened cigarette packages, a couple of Humpty Dumpty potato chip bags-zoomed across the pavement and into that hole. They were drawn on the river of air which flowed into that nearly airless other place. Some of that litter went between Pits's legs. And some, Hank thought, seemed to pass right through them.

Then, suddenly, as if he himself had become as light as the litter which had been on the market's paved apron, Pits was vacuumed into that hole. His Gallery magazine went after him, pages flapping like batwings. Good for you, fuckface, Hank thought, now you got something to read in the repple-depple. Pits's chair toppled over, scraped across the asphalt, and lodged half-in, half-out of that opening. A wind-tunnel of air was now rushing around Hank. He bent over his radio, finger coming to rest on the Stop button.

Just before he pushed it, he heard a high, thin cry coming from that other place. He looked up, thinking: That ain't Pits.

It came again.

“… hilly…”

Hank frowned. It was a kid's voice. A kid's voice, and there was something familiar about it. Something

“… over yet? I want to come ho-oome.

There was a bright, toneless jingle as the window in Cooder's market, which had blown inward in the town-hall explosion the previous Sunday, was now sucked outward. A glass-storm flew all around Hank, leaving him miraculously untouched.

“… please, it's hard to breeeeeeathe.

Now the B amp; M Beans on special which had been pyramided in the market's front window began to fly around Hank as they were sucked through the doorway in reality he had somehow opened. Five-pound bags of lawn food and ten-pound bags of charcoal slithered across the pavement with dry, papery sounds.

Gotta shut the sucker up, Hank thought, and as if to confirm this judgement, a can of beans slammed into the back of his head, bounced high in the air, then zoomed into that purple-black bruise.

“Hilleeeeee-”

Hank hit the Stop button. The doorway disappeared at once. There was a woody crunch as the chair lodged in the opening was cut in two, on an almost perfect diagonal. Half of the chair lay on the asphalt. The other half was nowhere to be seen.

Randy Kroger, the German who had owned Cooder's since the late fifties, grabbed Hank and turned him around. “You're payin for that display window, Buck,” he said.

“Sure, Randy, whatever you say,” Hank agreed, dazedly rubbing the lump that was rising on the back of his head.

Kroger pointed at the strange, slanting half-chair lying on the asphalt. “You're paying for the chair, too,” he announced, and strode back inside.

That was how July ended.

Monday, August 1st:

John Leandro finished talking, knocked back the rest of his beer, and asked David Bright: “So what do you think he'll say?”

Bright thought for a moment. He and Leandro were in the Bounty Tavern, a wildly overdecorated Bangor pub with only two real marks in its favor-it was almost directly across the street from the editorial offices of the Bangor Daily News, and on Mondays you could get Heineken for a buck and a quarter a bottle.

“I think he'll start by telling you to hurry over to Derry and finish getting the rest of the Community Calendar,” Bright said. “Then I think he might ask you if you've thought about psychiatric help.”

Leandro looked absurdly crushed. He was only twenty-four, and the last two stories he had covered-the disappearance (read: presumed murder) of the two state troopers, and the suicide of a third-had whetted his appetite for the high-voltage stuff. When stacked up against being in on a grim midnight hunt for the bodies of two state troopers, reporting on the Derry Amvets” covered-dish supper wasn't much. He didn't want the heavy stuff to end. Bright felt almost sorry for the little twerp-trouble was, that was what Leandro was. Being a twerp at twenty-four was acceptable. He was pretty sure, however, that Johnny Leandro was still going to be a twerp at forty-four… sixty-four… at eighty-four, if he lived that long.

A twerp of eighty-four was a slightly awesome and wholly frightening idea. Bright decided to order another beer after all.

“I was just joking,” Bright said.

“Then you think he will let me follow it up?”

“No.”

“But you just said

“I was joking about the psychiatric-help part,” Bright said patiently. “That's what I was joking about.”

“He” was Peter Reynault, the city editor. Bright had learned a good many years ago that city editors had one thing in common with God Himself, and he suspected that Johnny Leandro was about to learn it himself very soon now. Reporters might propose, but it was city editors like Peter Reynault who eventually disposed.

“But-”

“You have nothing to follow up,” Bright said.

If Haven's inner circle-those who had made the trip into Bobbi Anderson's shed -could have heard what Leandro said next, his life expectancy might well have sunk to days… maybe mere hours.

“I've got Haven to follow up,” was what he said, and quaffed the rest of his Heineken Dark in three long swallows. “Everything starts there. The kid disappears in Haven, the woman dies in Haven, Rhodes and Gabbons are coming back from Haven. Dugan commits suicide. Why? Because he loved the McCausland woman, he says. The McCausland woman from Haven.”

“Don't forget lovable old Gramps,” Bright said. “He's running around saying his grandson's disappearance was a conspiracy. I kept expecting him to start whispering about Fu Manchu and white slavery.”

“So what is it?” Leandro asked dramatically. “What's going on in Haven?”

“It is the insidious doctor,” Bright said. His beer arrived. He no longer wanted it. He only wanted to get out of here. Bringing up loveable old Gramps had been a mistake. Thinking about loveable old Gramps made him feel a trifle uneasy. Gramps was obviously off his rocker, but there had been something about his eyes…

“What?”

Dr Fu Manchu. If you see Nayland Smith hanging around, I think you've got the story of the century.” Bright leaned forward and whispered hoarsely: “White slavery. Remember who you heard it from when you get the call from the New York Times.”

“I don't think that's very funny, David.”

An eighty-four-year-old twerp, Bright thought again. Imagine it.

“Or, here's one,” Bright said. “Little green men. The invasion of earth is already underway, see, only no one knows it. And-TA-DA! No One Will Believe This Heroic Young News-Hawk! Robert Redford Stars as John Leandro in This Nail-Biting Saga of-”

The bartender wandered down and said, “You want to turn it down?”

Leandro got up, his face stiff. He dropped three dollar bills on the bar. “Your sense of humor is adolescent, David.”

“Or try this,” Bright said dreamily. “It's both Fu Manchu and green men from space. An alliance formed in hell. And no one knows but you, Johnny. Klaatu barada nictu!”

“Well, I don't care if Reynault lets me follow it up or not,” Leandro said, and Bright saw that he might have twanged Johnny's strings just a little too hard; the twerp was furious. “My vacation starts next Friday. I may just go down to Haven. Follow it up on my own time.”