Tommyknockers, Knocking at the Door

He winked one of his strange eyes at Newt. Ibis odd mixture of human and alien was both hideous and hilarious at the same time.

Not gone, Newt. The assholes DEAD.

Newt looked at Dick thoughtfully for a moment, then began to smile.

They moved in, all of them together, drawing in toward Bobbi's house like a tightening noose.

Carrying a heavy head.

The phrase chimed constantly in the back of Gard's mind as he turned toward the monitor screen-it seemed to have been there for a long time. Once, and for a Jim Gardener who no longer existed, his poems had formed around such lines, like pearls around chips of grit.

Carrying a heavy head now, boss.

Was it from some chain-gang movie, like Cool Hand Luke? A song? Yeah. Some song. Something which seemed oddly mixed in his mind, something from the West Coast sixties, a waif-faced psychedelic flower-child wearing a Hell's Angels jacket and carrying a bike-chain wrapped around one thin white violinist's hand…

Your mind, Gard, something happening to your mind

Yeah, you're fucking-A, big daddy, I'm carrying a heavy head, that's what, I was born to be wild, I been caught in the crosstown traffic, and if they say I never loved you, you know they are a liar. Carrying a heavy head. I can feel every vein, artery, and capillary in it swelling up, getting plump, standing out the way the veins on our hands used to when we were kids and wrapped a dozen rubber bands around our wrists and left them there to see what would happen. Carrying a heavy head. If I looked into a mirror right now, I know what I'd see-green light spilling out of my pupils like the pencil-beams of flashlights. Heavy head-and if you joggle it, it will burst. Yes. So be careful, Gard. Be careful, son

Yeah old man yeah.

David

Yeah.

That feeling of dipping and swaying out over the drop. He remembered the news film of Karl Wallenda, that grand old man of the aerialists, failing from the wire in Puerto Rico-gripping for the line, finding it, holding for a minute-then, gone.

Gardener dismissed it from his mind. He tried to dismiss everything from his mind and prepared to be a hero. Or die trying.

PROGRAM?

Gard pushed the earphone deep into his ear and frowned at the screen. Drove the heavy ram of his thoughts toward it. Felt pain flare; felt the balloon of his brain swell a little more. The pain faded; the feeling of increased swelling remained. He stared at the screen.

ALTAIR-4

Okay… what next? He listened for the old man to tell him, but there was nothing. Either his mental link to the transformer had excluded the old man or the old man didn't know. Did it really matter which? Nope.

He looked at the screen.

CROSS-FILE WITH

The screen suddenly filled up with 9s, from top to bottom and side to side. Gardener stared at this with consternation, thinking: Oh Jesus Christ, I broke it!

The 9s disappeared. For just a moment

OH JESUS CHRIST I BROKE IT

glimmered on the screen like a ghost. Then the screen showed:

CROSS-FILE READY

He relaxed a little. The machine was okay. But his brain really was stretched to capacity, and he knew it. If this machine. which was being powered by the old man and whatever was left of Peter, could bring the boy back, he might actually be able to walk away… or hop. considering his ankle. But if it was going to try and draw from him as well, his brain would pop like a party noisemaker.

But this really wasn't the time to think of that, was it?

Licking his lips with his numb tongue, he looked at the screen.

CROSS-FILE WITH DAVID BROWN

9s across the screen.

9s for eternity.

CROSS-FILE SUCCESSFUL

Okay. Good. What next? Gardener shrugged. He knew what he was trying to do; why dance?

BRING DAVID BROWN BACK FROM ALTAIR-4

9s across the screen. Two eternities this time. Then a message appeared which was so simple, so logical, and yet so loony that Gard would have screamed laughter if he hadn't known it would blow every working circuit he had left.

WHERE DO YOU WANT TO PUT HIM?

The urge to laugh passed. The question had to be answered. Where indeed? Home plate of Yankee Stadium? Piccadilly Circus? On the breakwater jutting out from the beach in front of the Alhambra Hotel? None of those places, of course not -but not here in Haven. Christ, no. Even if the air didn't kill him, which it probably would, his parents were turning into monsters.

So, where?

He looked up at the old man, and the old man was looking back at him urgently, and suddenly it came to him-there was really only one place to put him, wasn't there?

He told the machine.

He waited for it to ask for further clarification, or to say it couldn't be done, or to suggest a system of commands he would be unable to execute. Instead, there were more 9s. This time they stayed forever. The green pulsing from the transformer became almost too bright to look at.

Gard closed his eyes and in the greenish deep-sea darkness behind his lids he thought he could hear, faintly, the old man screaming.

Then the power that had filled his mind left. Bingo! It was gone. Just like that. Gardener staggered backward, the earphone popping free and hitting the floor. His nose was still bleeding and he had soaked a fresh shirt. How many pints of blood were in the human body? And what had happened? There had been no

TRANSFER SUCCESSFUL

or

TRANSFER UNSUCCESSFUL

or even

A TALL DARK TOMMYKNOCKER WILL ENTER YOUR LIFE

What had it all been for? He realized miserably that he was never going to know. Two lines of Edwin Arlington Robinson came to him: So on we worked, and waited for the light, / And went without the meat, and cursed the bread…

No light, boss; no light. If you wait for it they'll burn you in your tracks, and here's a fence ain't even half whitewashed yet.

No light; just a dull blank screen. He looked toward the old man and the old man was lolling forward, head down, exhausted.

Gardener was crying a little. His tears were mixed with blood. Dull pain radiated from the plate in his head, but that stuffed, near-to-bursting feeling was gone. So was the sense of power. He missed the latter, he discovered. Part of him longed for it to come back, no matter what the consequences.

Get moving, Gard.

Yes, okay. He had done what he could for David Brown. Maybe something had happened; maybe nothing. Maybe he had killed the kid; maybe David Brown, who had probably played with Star Wars action figures and wished he could meet an E. T. like Elliot had in the movie, was now just a cloud of dissipating atoms somewhere in deep space between Altair-4 and here. It was not for him to know. But he had reached this piece of furniture and held it long enough-too long, maybe. He knew it was time to move on.

The old man raised his head.

Old man, do you know?

If he's safe? No. But son, you did your best. I thank you. Now please please son please

Fading… the old man's mental voice was fading

please let me out of this

down a long hallway and

look on one of those shelves back there

Now Gardener had to strain to hear.

pleas oh PLEA

Faint, a whisper; the old man's head lolling forward, remains of thin white hair floating in green brew.

Peter's legs moved dreamily as he chased rabbits in his dim sleep… or looked for Bobbi, his darling.

Gard hopped over to the back shelves. They were dark, dusty, greasy. Here were old forgotten Buss fuses and a Maxwell House can full of bolts and washers and hinges and keys with locks whose location and purpose had long since been forgotten.