Looking around, she saw people she had lived with all her life-Harleys and Crenshaws and Browns and Duplisseys and Andersons and Clarendons-staring up at the sky, their faces rotted swampfire green. They stood in front of the post office, the drugstore, the Junque-A-Torium, the Haven Lunch, the Northern National Bank; they stood in front of the school and the Shell station, eyes filled with green fire, mouths hanging stupidly agape.

Their teeth were falling out.

Justin Hurd turned to her and grinned, lips pulling back to show bare pink gums. In the crazy light of her dream, the saliva streaking those gums looked like snot.

“Feel'th good,” Justin lisped, and she thought: Get out of here! They all have to get out of here right now! If they don't they are going to die the same way Ralph did!

Now Justin was walking toward her and she saw with mounting horror that his face was shriveling and changing-it was becoming the bulging, stitched face of Lumpkin, her scarecrow doll. She looked around wildly and saw that they had all become dolls. Mabel Noyes turned and stared at her and Mabel's blue eyes were as calculating and avaricious as ever, but her lips were plumped up in the Cupid's-bow smile of a china doll.

“Tommyknockerths,” Mabel lisped in a chiming, echoing voice, and Ruth woke up with a gasp, wide-eyed in the dark.

Her headache was gone, at least for the time being. She came out of the dream directly into wakefulness with the thought: Ruth, you have to leave right now. Don't even take time to pack a bag-just pull on some clothes, get in the Dart, and GO!

But she could not do that.

Instead, she lay down again. After a long time, she slept.

When the report came in that the Paulsons” house was burning, the Haven Volunteer Fire Department turned out… but they were surprisingly slow about it. Ruth was there ten minutes before the first pumper showed up. She would have torn Dick Allison's head off when he finally showed up, except she had known both of the Paulsons were dead… and, of course, Dick Allison had known, too. That was why he hadn't bothered to hurry, but that did not make Ruth feel a bit better. Quite the opposite.

That knowing, now. What exactly was that?

Ruth didn't know what it was.

Even grasping the fact of the knowing was almost impossible. On the day the Paulsons” house burned, Ruth realized that she had been knowing things she had no right to know for a week or more. But it seemed so natural! It didn't come with trumpets and bells. The knowing was as much a part of her-of everyone in Haven now-as the beat of her heart. She no more thought about it than she thought about her heartbeat thudding softly and steadily in her ears.

Only she had to think about it, didn't she? Because it was changing Haven… and the changes were not good.

Some few days before David Brown disappeared, Ruth realized with dull, dawning dismay that she had been ostracized by the town. No one spat at her when she walked down the street in the morning from her house to her office in the town hall… no one threw stones… she sensed much of the old kindness in their thoughts… but she knew people were turning to follow her progress as she walked. She did this with her head up, her face serene, just as if her head wasn't throbbing and pounding like a rotted tooth, just as if she hadn't spent the previous night (and the one before that, and the one before that, and…) tossing and turning, dozing into horrible, half-remembered dreams and then clawing her way out of them again.

They were watching her… watching and waiting for…

For what?

But she knew: they were waiting for her to “become.”

In the week between the fire at the Paulsons” and Hilly's SECOND GALA MAGIC SHOW, things began to go wrong for Ruth.

The mail, now. That was one thing.

She kept on getting bills and circulars and catalogues, but there were no letters. No personal mail of any kind. After three days of this, she took a stroll down to the post office. Nancy Voss only stood behind the counter like a lump, looking at her expressionlessly. By the time Ruth finished speaking, she thought she could actually feel the weight of the Voss woman's stare. It felt like two small dusty black stones were lying on her face.

In the silence, she could hear something in the office humming and making spiderlike scritching noises. She had no idea what it

(except it sorts the mail for her)

might be but she didn't like the sound of it. And she didn't like being here with this woman, because she had been sleeping with Joe Paulson, and she had hated “Becka, and

Hot outside. Hotter still in here. Ruth felt sweat break out over her body.

“Have to fill out a mail complaint form,” Nancy Voss said in a slow, inflectionless voice. She slid a white card across the counter. “Here you go, Ruth.” Her lips pulled back in a cheerless grin.

Ruth saw half the woman's teeth were gone.

From behind them, in the silence: Scratch-scratch, scritchy-scratch, scratchscratch, scritchy-scratch.

Ruth began to fill out the form. Sweat darkened big circles around the armpits of her dress. Outside, the sun beat steadily down on the postoffice parking lot. It was ninety in the shade, had to be, and not a breath of wind stirring, and Ruth knew the paving in that lot would be so soft that you could tear off a chunk with your fingers if you wanted and begin to chew it…

State the Nature of Your Problem, the form read.

I'm going crazy, she thought, that is the nature of my problem. Also, I am having my first menstrual period in three years.

In a firm hand she began to write that she had gotten no first-class mail for a week and wished for the matter to be looked into.

Scratch -scratch, scritchy -scratch.

“What's that noise?” she asked, without looking up from the form. She was afraid to look up.

“Mail-sorting gadget,” Nancy droned. “I thought it up.” She paused. “But you know that, don't you, Ruth?”

“How could I know a thing like that unless you told me?” Ruth asked, and with a tremendous effort she made her voice pleasant. The pen she was using trembled and blotted the form-not that it mattered; her mail wasn't coming because Nancy Voss was throwing it out. That was part of the knowing, too. But Ruth was tough; her face remained clear and firm. She met Nancy's eyes directly, although she was afraid of that dusty black gaze, afraid of its weight.

Go on and speak up, Ruth's gaze said. I am not afraid of the likes of YOU. Speak up… but if you expect me to scutter away, squeaking like a mouse, get ready for a surprise.

Nancy's gaze wavered and dropped. She turned away. “Call me when you get the card filled out,” she said. “I've got too much work to do to just stand around shooting the breeze. Since Joe died, the work's piled up out of all season. That's probably why your mail isn't

(GET OUT OF TOWN YOU BITCH GET OUT WHILE WELL STILL LET YOU GO)

coming just on time, Missus McCausland.”

“Do you think so?” Keeping her voice light and pleasant now required a superhuman effort. Nancy's last thought had slammed into her like an uppercut. It had been as bright and clear as a lightning stroke. She looked down at the complaint form and saw a large black

(tumor)

blot spreading over it. She crumpled it and threw it away.

Nancy hadn't answered her question. Was pretending she hadn't heard, Ruth thought. But she had heard, all right.

Scritch -scritch -scratch.

The door opened behind her. She turned and saw Bobbi Anderson come in.