I mentioned nine million dollars, three per book, in other words, expecting her to laugh… but an has to start somewhere, and I always choose the highest ground I I think I must have Roman military officers somewhere back in r family tree.” Ethiopian rug-merchants, more like/t, I thought, but didn’t say. I felt the do when the dentist has gone a little heavy on the Novocain your lips and tongue as well as your bad tooth and the patch surrounding it. If I tried to talk, I’d probably only flap and spit. Harold was almost purring. A three-book contract for the mature Michael Noonan. Tall tickets, baby. time I didn’t feel like laughing. This time I felt like screaming. went on, happy and oblivious.

Harold didn’t know the book-tree had died. Harold didn’t know the new Mike Noonan had shortness of breath and projectile-vomiting fits every time write. want to hear how she came back to me, Michael?” it on me.”

“Well, nine’s obviously high, but it’s as good a place to start as any. We feel this new book is a big step forward for him.” This is extraordinary. Extraordinary. Now, I haven’t given anything away, wanted to talk to you first, of course, but I think we’re looking at seven-point-five, minimum. In fact—”

“No.” He paused a moment. Long enough for me to realize I was gripping the phone so hard it hurt my hand. I had to make a conscious effort to relax my grip. “Mike, if you’ll just hear me out—”

“I don’t need to hear you out. I don’t want to talk about a new contract.”

“Pardon me for disagreeing, but there’ll never be a better time. Think about it, for Christ’s sake. We’re talking top dollar here. If you wait until after Helen’s Promise is published, I can’t guarantee that the same offer—”

“I know you can’t,” I said. “I don’t want guarantees, I don’t want offers, I don’t want to talk contract.”

“You don’t need to shout, Mike, I can hear you.” Had I been shouting? Yes, I suppose I had been. “Are you dissatisfied with Putnam?

I think Debra would be very distressed to hear that. I also think Phyllis Grann would do damned near anything to address any concerns you might have.” Are you sleeping with Debra, Harold? I thought, and all at once it seemed like the most logical idea in the world—that dumpy, fiftyish, balding little Harold Oblowski was making it with my blonde, aristocratic, Smith-educated editor. Are you sleeping with her, do you talk about my future while you’re lying in bed together in a reom at the Plaza? Are the pair of you trying to figure how many golden eggs you can get out of this tired old goose bejre you finally wring its neck and turn it into paltg? Is that what you’re up to? “Harold, I can’t talk about this now, and I won’t talk about this now.”

“What’s wrong? Why are you so upset? I thought you’d be pleased. Hell, I thought you’d be over the fucking moon.”

“There’s nothing wrong. It’s just a bad time for me to talk long-term contract. You’ll have to pardon me, Harold. I have something coming out of the oven.”

“Can we at least discuss this next w—”

“No,” I said, and hung up. I think it was the first time in my adult life I’d hung up on someone who wasn’t a telephone salesman.,I had nothing coming out of the oven, of course, and I was too upset to think about putting something in. I went into the living room instead, short whiskey, and sat down in front of the T. I sat there: almost four hours, looking at everything and seeing nothing. Outside, storm continued cranking up. Tomorrow there would be trees down over Derry and the world would look like an ice sculpture. At quarter past nine the power went out, came back on for thirty sec-or so, then went out and stayed out. I took this as a suggestion to stop about Harold’s useless contract and how Jo would have chortled the idea of nine million dollars. I got up, unplugged the blacked-out TV it wouldn’t come blaring on at two in the morning (I needn’t have wor-the power was off in Derry for nearly two days), and went upstairs; my clothes at the foot of the bed, crawled in without even both-to brush my teeth, and was asleep in less than five minutes. I don’t how long after that it was that the nightmare came.

It was the last dream I had in what I now think of as my “Manderley the culminating dream. It was made even worse, I suppose, by unrelievable blackness to which I awoke. It started like the others. I’m walking up the lane, listening to the crick-the loons, looking mostly at the darkening slot of sky overhead. the driveway, and here something has changed; someone has put the LAUGHS sign. I lean closer and see it’s a radio sta- WBLM, it says. 102.9, PORTLAND’s ROCK AND ROLL BLIMP. sticker I look back up into the sky, and there is Venus. I wish her as I always do, I wish for Johanna with the dank and vaguely smell of the lake in my nose… g lumbers in the woods, rattling old leaves and breaking a It sounds big. there, a voice in my head tells me. Something has taken out you, Michael. A three-book contract, and that’s the worst kind. I can never move, I can only standhere. I’ve got walker’s block. that’s just talk. I can walk. This time I can walk. I am delighted.

I have had a major breakthrough. In the dream I think This changes everything/This changes everything! Down the driveway I walk, deeper and deeper into the clean but sour smell of pine, stepping over some of the fallen branches, kicking others out of the way. I raise my hand to brush the damp hair off my forehead and see the little scratch running across the back of it. I stop to look at it, curious. No time r that, the dream-voice says. Get down there. You’ve got a book to write. I can’t write, I reply. Thatpart’s over. I’m on the backjrty now. No, the voice says. There is something relentless about it that scares me. Writer’s walk, not writer’s block, and as you can see, it’s gone. Now hurry up and get down there. I’m ajaid, I tell the voice. Afraid of what? Well… what if Mrs. Danvers is down there? The voice doesn’t answer. It knows I’m not afraid of Rebecca de Winter’s housekeeper, she’s just a character in an old book, nothing but a bag of bones. So I begin walking again. I have no choice, it seems, but at every step my terror increases, and by the time I’m halfway down to the shadowy sprawling bulk of the log house, fear has sunk into my bones like fever.

Something is wrong here, something is all twisted up. I’ll run away, I think. I’ll run back the way I came, like the gingerbread man I’ll run, run all the way back to Derry, if that’s what it takes, and I’ll never come here anymore. Except I can hear slobbering breath behind me in the growing gloom, and padding footsteps. The thing in the woods is now the thing in the driveway. It’s right behind me. if I turn around the sight of it will knock the sanity out of my head in a single roundhouse slap.

Something with red eyes, something slumped and hungry. The house is my only hope of safety. I walk on. The crowding bushes clutch like hands.

In the light of a rising moon (the moon has never risen before in this dream, but I have never stayed in it this long before), the rustling leaves look like sardonic faces. I see winking eyes and smiling mouths.

Below me are the black of the house and I know that there will be no power when I get the storm has knocked the power out, I will flick the lightswitch down, up and down, until something reaches out and takes my and pulls me like a lover deeper into the dark. I am three quarters of the way down the driveway now. I can see the steps leading down to the lake, and I can see the float out on the water, a black square in a track of moonlight. Bill Dean has it out. I can also see an oblong something lying at the place where driveway ends at the stoop. There has never been such an object What can it be? Another two or three steps, and I know. It’s a coffin, the one Frank Arlen for… because, he said, the mortician was trying to stick it to me. and lying on its side with the top partway open, enough for. to see it’s empty. I think I want to scream. I think I mean to turn around and run back: the driveway—I will take my chances with the thing behind me. But I can, the back door of Sara Laughs opens, and a terrible figure darting out into the growing darkness. It is human, this figure, it’s not. It is a crumpled white thing with baggy arms upraised.