would be enough to do the job. But that’s not all. The thing is, you have to knock that house of cards down at a specific moment in time. Until then, it must stand.

I knew where Dunning was going to be on the afternoon of Sunday, October 5, 1958, and I didn’t want to risk changing his course by so much as a single jot or tittle. Even crossing eyes with him in The Lamplighter might have done that. You could snort and call me excessively cautious; you could say such a minor matter would be very unlikely to knock events off-course. But the past is as fragile as a butterfly’s wing. Or a house of cards.

I had come back to Derry to knock Frank Dunning’s house of cards down, but until then I had to protect it.

7

I bade Chaz Frati goodnight and went back to my apartment. My bottle of Kaopectate was in the bathroom medicine cabinet, and my new souvenir pillow with the Standpipe embroidered on it in gold thread was on the kitchen table. I took a knife from the silverware drawer and carefully cut the pillow along a diagonal. I put my revolver inside, shoving it deep into the stuffing.

I wasn’t sure I’d sleep, but I did, and soundly. Do your best and let God do the rest is just one of many sayings Christy dragged back from her AA meetings. I don’t know if there’s a God or not—for Jake Epping, the jury’s still out on that one—but when I went to bed that night, I was pretty sure I’d done my best. All I could do now was get some sleep and hope my best was enough.

8

There was no stomach flu. This time I awoke at first light with the most paralyzing headache of my life. A migraine, I supposed. I didn’t know for sure, because I’d never had one. Looking into even dim light produced a sick, rolling thud from the nape of my neck to the base of my sinuses. My eyes gushed senseless tears.

I got up (even that hurt), put on a pair of cheap sunglasses I’d picked up on my trip north to Derry, and took five aspirin. They helped just enough for me to be able to get dressed and into my overcoat. Which I would need; the morning was chilly and gray, threatening rain. In a way, that was a plus. I’m not sure I could have survived in sunlight.

I needed a shave, but skipped it; I thought standing under a bright light—one doubled in the bathroom mirror—might cause my brains simply to disintegrate. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to get through this day, so I didn’t try. One step at a time, I told myself as I walked slowly down the stairs. I was clutching the railing with one hand and my souvenir pillow with the other. I must have looked like an overgrown child with a teddy bear. One step at a ti—

The banister snapped.

For a moment I tilted forward, head thudding, hands waving wildly in the air. I dropped the pillow (the gun inside clunked) and clawed at the wall above my head. In the last second before my tilt would have become a bone-breaking tumble, my fingers clutched one of the old-fashioned wall sconces screwed into the plaster. It pulled free, but the electrical wire held just long enough for me to regain my balance.

I sat down on the steps with my throbbing head on my knees. The pain pulsed in sync with the jackhammer beat of my heart. My watering eyes felt too big for their sockets. I could tell you I wanted to creep back to my apartment and give it all up, but that wouldn’t be the truth. The truth was I wanted to die right there on the stairs and have done with it. Are there people who have such headaches not just occasionally but frequently? If so, God help them.

There was only one thing that could get me back on my feet, and I forced my aching brains not just to think of it but see it: Tugga Dunning’s face suddenly obliterated as he crawled toward me.

His hair and brains leaping into the air.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, yeah, okay.”

I picked up the souvenir pillow and tottered the rest of the way down the stairs. I emerged into an overcast day that seemed as bright as a Sahara afternoon. I felt for my keys. They weren’t there. What I found where they should have been was a good-sized hole in my right front pants pocket. It hadn’t been there the night before, I was almost sure of that. I turned around in small, jerky steps. The keys were lying on the stoop in a litter of spilled change. I bent down, wincing as a lead weight slid forward inside my head. I picked up the keys and made my way to the Sunliner.

And when I tried the ignition, my previously reliable Ford refused to start. There was a click from the solenoid. That was all.

I had prepared for this eventuality; what I hadn’t prepared for was having to drag my poisoned head up the stairs again. Never in my life had I wished so fervently for my Nokia. With it, I could have called from behind the wheel, then just sat quietly with my eyes closed until Randy Baker came.

Somehow, I got back up the stairs, past the broken banister and the light fixture that dangled against the torn plaster like a dead head on a broken neck. There was no answer at the service station

—it was early and it was Sunday—so I tried Baker’s home number.

He’s probably dead, I thought. Had a heart attack in the middle of the night. Killed by the obdurate past, with Jake Epping as the unindicted co-conspirator.

My mechanic wasn’t dead. He answered on the second ring, voice sleepy, and when I told him my car wouldn’t start, he asked the logical question: “How’d you know yesterday?”

“I’m a good guesser,” I said. “Get here as soon as you can, okay? There’ll be another twenty in it for you, if you can get it going.”

9

When Baker replaced the battery cable that had mysteriously come loose in the night (maybe at the same moment that hole was appearing in the pocket of my slacks) and the Sunliner still wouldn’t start, he checked the plugs and found two that were badly corroded. He had extras in his large green toolkit, and when they were in place, my chariot roared to life.

“It’s probably not my business, but the only place you should be going is back to bed. Or to a doctor. You’re as pale as a ghost.”

“It’s just a migraine. I’ll be okay. Let’s look in the trunk. I want to check the spare.” We checked the spare. Flat.

I followed him to the Texaco through what had become a light, steady drizzle. The cars we passed had their headlights on, and even with the sunglasses, each pair seemed to bore holes through my brain. Baker unlocked the service bay and tried to blow up my spare. No go. It hissed air from half a dozen cracks almost as fine as pores in human skin.

“Huh,” he said. “Never seen that before. Tire must be defective.”

“Put another one on the rim,” I said.

I went around to the back of the station while he did it. I couldn’t stand the sound of the compressor. I leaned against the cinderblock and turned my face up, letting cold mist fall on my hot skin. One step at a time, I told myself. One step at a time.

When I tried to pay Randy Baker for the tire, he shook his head. “You already give me half a week’s pay. I’d be a dog to take more. I’m just worried you’ll run off the road, or something. Is it really that important?”