Saw an eyeball peepin” through a smokey cloud behind the green door…

He got up and went through the house to the kitchen in time to see them heading into Bobbi's rampant garden. He counted noses quickly, making sure that they were all there, then headed for the cellar. Bobbi kept a spare keyring down there.

He opened the cellar door and paused one final time.

Do you really want to do this?

No; no, he did not. But he meant to do it. And he discovered that, more than fear, he felt a great sense of loneliness. There was literally no one else he could turn to for help. He had been in the desert with Bobbi Anderson forty days and forty nights, and now he was in the desert on his own. God help him.

To bell with it, he thought. Like the old World War I platoon sergeant was supposed to have said, Come on, you guys, you want to live forever?

Gardener went downstairs to get Bobbi's keyring.

It was there, hanging on its nail with every key neatly labeled. The only catch was the shed key was gone. It had been here; he was quite sure of that. When had he last seen it here? Gard tried to remember and couldn't. Bobbi taking precautions? Maybe.

He stood in the New and Improved Workshop, sweat on his forehead and sweat on his balls. No key. That was great. So what was he supposed to d… Grab Bobbi's ax and make like Jack Nicholson in The Shining? He could see it. Smash, crash, bash: Heeeeere's GARDENER! Except that might be a bit hard to cover up before the pilgrims got back from The Viewing of the Sac-red Hatch.

Gardener stood in Bobbi's workshop, feeling time slipping away, feeling Old and Unimproved. How long would they be out there, anyway? No way of telling, was there? No way at all.

Okay, where do people put keys? Always assuming she really was just taking precautions and not just hiding it from you?

A thought struck him so hard he actually slapped his forehead. Bobbi hadn't taken the key. Nor had anyone been trying to hide it. The key had disappeared when Bobbi had supposedly been in Derry Home Hospital recovering from sunstroke. He was almost positive of that, and what memory would not or could not supply, logic did.

Bobbi hadn't been in Derry Home; she had been in the shed. Had one of the others taken the spare key, to tend her when Bobbi needed tending? Did they all have copies? Why bother? No one in Haven was into stealing these days; they were into “becoming.” The only reason the shed was kept locked was to keep him, Gardener, out. So they could just

Gardener remembered watching them arrive on one of the occasions after the “something” had happened to Bobbi… the “something” that had been a lot more serious than heat prostration.

He closed his eyes and saw the Caddy. KYLE-1. They get out and…

…and Archinbourg splits off from the rest for a moment or two. You're up on one elbow, looking out the window at them, and if you think of it at all, you think he must have stepped around there to tap a kidney. But he didn't. He went around to get the key. Sure, that's what he did. Went around to get the key.

It wasn't much, but it was enough to get him moving. He ran back up the cellar stairs, headed for the door, then doubled back. In the bathroom there was an ancient pair of Foster Grant sunglasses on top of the medicine cabinet-they had come to rest up there with the finality that trivial objects manage to obtain only in a single man or woman's quarters (like the makeup which had belonged to Newt Berringer's wife). Gardener took the sunglasses down, blew a thick coating of dust from the lenses, wiped them carefully, then folded the bows and put them in his breast pocket.

He went out to the shed.

He stood by the padlocked plank door for a moment, looking out along the path which led to the dig. Dusk had advanced far enough now so that the woods beyond the garden were a massy blue-gray with no detail to them. He saw no bobbing line of returning flashlights.

But they could turn up. At any time at all, they could turn up and catch you with your arm all the way down in the jam-jar.

I think they'll spend a pretty good while out there mooning over it. They've got the kleig lights.

But you don't know for sure.

No. Not for sure.

Gardener shifted his gaze back to the plank door. Between the planks he could see that green light, and he could hear a dim, unpleasant noise, like an old-fashioned washing machine with a gutful of clothes and thick suds.

No-not just one washing machine; more like a whole line of them, not quite in sync.

That light was pulsing in time to the low slurping sound.

I don't want to go in there.

There was a smell. Even that, Gardener thought, was slightly sudsy, bland with a faint hint of rancidity. Old soap. Cakey soap.

But it's no bunch of washing machines. That sound's alive. It's not telepathic typewriters inside there, not New and Improved water heaters, it's something alive, and I don't want to go in there.

But he was going to. After all, hadn't he come back from the dead just to look inside Bobbi's shed and catch the Tommyknockers at their strange little benches? He supposed he had.

Gard went around to the far side of the shed. There, hanging on a rusty nail under the eaves, was the key. He reached up with a hand that trembled and took it down. He tried to swallow. At first he couldn't. His throat felt as if it had been coated with dry, heated flannel.

A drink. Just one drink. I'll go into the house long enough to get just one, a short peg. Then I'll be ready.

Fine. Sounded great. Except he wasn't going to do it, and he knew he wasn't. The drinking part was done. So was the delaying part. Holding the key tightly in his damp hand, Gardener went around to the door. He thought: Don't want to go in. Don't even know if I can. Because I'm so afraid

Stop it. Let that part be over, too. Your Tommyknocker Phase.

He looked around again, almost hoping to see the line of flashlights coming out of the woods, or to hear their voices.

But you wouldn't, because they talk in their heads.

No flashlights. No movements. No crickets. No birdsong. The only sound was the sound of washing machines, the sound of amplified, leaky heartbeats:

Slisshh-slisshhh-slissshhh…

Gardener looked at the pulsing green light fingering its way through the cracks between the boards. He reached into his pocket, took out the old sunglasses, and put them on.

It had been a long time since he had prayed, but he prayed now. It was short, but a prayer for all that.

“God, please,” Jim Gardener said into the dim summer dusk, and slid the key into the padlock.

He expected a blast of head-radio, but none came. Until it didn't, he hadn't realized that his stomach was tight and sucked in, like a man expecting an electric shock.

He licked his lips and turned the key.

A small noise, barely audible over the low slooching noises from the shed: -click!

The hasp sprang up a little from the body of the lock. He reached for it with an arm that felt like lead. He pulled it free, clicked the hasp down, and put it into his left front pocket with the key still sticking out. He felt like a man in a dream. It was not a good one to be having.

The air in there had to be good-well, perhaps not okay; perhaps none of the air in Haven was exactly okay anymore. But it was about the same as the air outside, Gard thought, because the shed was a sieve of cracks. If there was such a thing as a pure Tommyknocker biosphere, this couldn't be it. At least, he didn't think so.