Sometimes he would lie in the dark and think he heard chuckling noises coming from the drains and he would think You're going nuts, old-timer. Except he wasn't. Sometimes he wished he were.
He had tried to talk to some of the nurses about what he believed had happened to David-what he knew had happened to David. They pitied him. He did not see their pity at first; his eyes were only opened after he had made the mistake of talking to the reporter. That had opened his eyes. He thought the nurses admired him for his loyalty to Hilly, and felt sorry for him because Hilly seemed to be slipping away… but they also thought him mad. Little boys did not disappear during tricks performed in back-yard magic shows. You didn't even have to go to nursing school to know that.
After a while in Derry alone, half out of his mind with worry for Hilly and David and contempt for what he now saw as cowardice on his part and fear for Ruth McCausland and the others in Haven, Ev had done some drinking at the little bar halfway down Lower Main. In the course of a conversation with the bartender, he heard the story of a fellow named John Smith, who had taught in the nearby town of Cleaves Mills for a while. Smith had been in a coma for years, had awakened with some sort of psychic gift. He went nuts a few years ago-had tried to assassinate a fellow named Stillson, who was a U. S. representative from New Hampshire.
“Dunno if there was ever any truth to the psychic part of it or not,” the bartender said, drawing Ev a fresh beer. B'lieve most of that stuff is just eyewash, myself. But if you've got some wild-ass tale to tell -” Ev had hinted he had a story to tell that would make The Amityville Horror look tame-'then Bright at the Bangor Daily News is the guy you ought to tell it to. He wrote up the Smith guy for the paper. He drops in here for a beer every once in a while, and I'll tell you, mister, he believed Smith had the sight.”
Ev had had three beers, rapidly, one after another-just enough, in other words, to believe that simple solutions might be possible. He went to the pay phone, laid out his change on the shelf, and called the Bangor Daily News. David Bright was in, and Ev spoke to him. He didn't tell him the story, not over the phone, but said that he had a tale to tell, and he didn't understand what it all meant, but he thought people ought to know about it, fast.
Bright sounded interested. More, he sounded sympathetic. He asked Ev when he could come up to Bangor (that Bright did not speak of coming to Derry to interview the old man should have tipped Ev to the idea that he might have overestimated both Bright's belief and sympathy), and Ev had asked if that very night would be okay.
“Well, I'll be here another two hours,” Bright said. “Can you be here before midnight, Mr Hillman?”
“Bet your buns,” the old man snapped, and hung up. When he walked out of Wally's Spa on Lower Main, there was fire in his eyes and a spring in his step. He looked twenty years younger than the man who had shuffled in.
But it was twenty-five miles up to Bangor, and the three beers wore off. By the time Ev got to the News building he was sober again. Worse, his head was fuzzy and confused. He was aware of telling the story badly, of circling around again and again to the magic show, to the way Hilly had looked, to his certainty that David Brown had really disappeared.
At last he stopped… only it was not so much a stopping as a drying up of an increasingly sluggish flow.
Bright was tapping a pencil against the side of his desk, not looking at Ev.
“You never actually looked under the platform at the time, Mr Hillman?”
“No… no. But…”
Now Bright did look at him, and he had a kind face, but in it Ev saw the expression which had opened his eyes-the man thought he was just as mad as a March hare.
“Mr Hillman, all of this is very interesting
“Never mind,” Ev said, getting up. The chair he had been sitting in bumped back so rapidly it almost fell over. He was dimly aware of word-processor terminals tapping, phones ringing, people walking back and forth in the city room with papers in their hands. Mostly he was aware that it was midnight, he was tired and sick with fear, and this fellow thought he was crazy. “Never mind, it's late, you'll be wanting to get home to y'family, I guess.”
“Mr Hillman, if you'd just see it from my perspective, you'd understand that-”
“I do see it from your side,” Ev said. “For the first time, I guess. I have to go, too, Mr Bright. I got a long drive ahead of me and visitin” hours start at nine. Sorry to've wasted y'time.”
He got out of there fast, furiously reminding himself what he should have remembered in the first place, that there was no fool like an old fool, and he guessed tonight's work showed him off as just about the biggest fool of all. Well, so much for trying to tell people what was happening in Haven. He was old, but he was damned if he'd ever put up with another look like that.
Ever, in his life.
That resolution lasted exactly fifty-six hours-until he got a look at the headlines on Monday's papers. Looking at them, he found himself wanting to go and see the man in charge of investigating the disappearance of the two state cops. The News said his name was Dugan, and mentioned that he had also known Ruth McCausland well-would, in fact, take time off from an extremely hot case to speak briefly at the lady's funeral. Must have known her pretty damned well, it seemed to Ev.
But when he searched for any of the previous night's fire and excitement, he found only sour dread and hopelessness. The two stories on the front page had taken most of the guts he had left. Haven's turning into a nest of snakes and now they are starting to bite. I have to convince someone of that, and how am I going to do it? How am I going to convince anyone that there's telepathy going on in that town, and Christ knows what else? How, when I can barely remember how I knew things were going on? How, when I never really saw nothing myself? How? Most of all, how'm I supposed to do it when the whole goddam thing is staring them in the face and they don't even see it? There's a whole town going loony just down the road and no one has got the slightest idea it's happening.
He turned to the obituary page again. Ruth's clear eyes looked up at him from one of those strange newsprint pictures that are nothing but densely packed dots. Her eyes, so clear and straightforward and beautiful, looked calmly back at him. Ev guessed that there had been at least five and maybe as many as a dozen men in Haven who had been in love with her, and she had never even known it. Her eyes seemed to deny the very idea of death, to declare it ridiculous. But dead she was.
He remembered taking Hilly out while the search party gathered.
You could come with us, Ruthie.
Ev, I can't… Get in touch with me.
He had tried just once, thinking that if Ruth joined him in Derry, she would be out of danger… and she could backstop his story. In his state of confusion and misery and, yes, even homesickness, Ev wasn't even sure which was more important to him. In the end it didn't matter. He had tried three times to dial Haven direct, the last one after speaking to Bright, and none of the calls took. He tried once with, operator assistance, and she told him there must be lines down. Would he try later? Ev said he would, but hadn't. He had lain down in the dark instead, and listened to the drains chuckle.
Now, less than three days later, Ruth had gotten in touch with him. Via the obituary page.
He looked up at Hilly. Hilly was sleeping. The doctors refused to call it a coma -his brain patterns were not the brain patterns of a comatose patient, they said; they were the brain patterns of a person in deep sleep. Ev didn't care what they called it. He knew Hilly was slipping away, and whether it was into a state called autism-Ev didn't know what the word meant, but he had heard one of the doctors mutter it to another in a low voice he hadn't been meant to overhear-or one called coma didn't make any difference at all. They were just words. Slipping away was what it came down to, and that was quite terrible enough.