“Yes, I suppose he will.”

“You could come with us, Ruthie.”

She looked at him for a long time. “Did Hilly do something, Ev? I see his name in your head. I can't see anything else-just that. Winking on and off like a neon sign.”

He looked at her, seemingly unsurprised by her tacit admission that she -sensible Ruth McCausland-was either reading his mind or believed she was.

“Maybe. He acts like he did. This… this half-swoon he's in… if that's what it is… could be he did something he's sorry for now. If so, it wasn't his fault, Ruthie. Whatever's going on here in Haven… that was what really did it.”

A screen door banged. She looked over toward the Applegates” and saw several of the men on their way back.

Ev glanced around and then looked back at Ruth.

“Come with us, Ruth.”

“And leave my town? Ev, I can't.”

“All right. If Hilly should remember.

“Get in touch with me,” she said.

“If I can,” Ev muttered. “They can make it tough, Ruthie.”

“Yes,” Ruth said. “I know they can.”

“They're coming, Ruth,” Henry Applegate said, and fixed Ev Hillman with a cold, appraising look. “Lots of good folks.”

“Fine,” Ruth said.

Ev looked unwinkingly back at Applegate for a moment and then moved away. An hour or so later, while Ruth was organizing the searchers and getting them ready for their first sweep, she saw Ev's old Valiant back down the Browns” driveway and turn toward Bangor. A small, dark shape-Hilly-was propped up in the passenger seat like a department-store mannequin.

Good luck, you two, Ruth thought. She wished-achingly!-that she was also on her way out of this feverish nightmare.

When the old man's car disappeared over the first hill, Ruth looked around and saw some twenty-five men and half a dozen women, some on this side of the road, some on the other. They were all standing motionless, simply watching

(loving)

her. Again she thought their shapes were changing, twisting, becoming inhuman; they were “becoming,” all right, they were becoming something she didn't even dare think of… and so was she.

“What are you gawking at?” she called out, too shrilly. “Come on! Let's try to find David Brown.!”

They didn't find him that night, nor on Monday, which was a hot white beating silence. Bobbi Anderson and her friend were part of the search; the roar of the digging machinery behind the old Garrick farm had stopped for a while. The friend, Gardener, looked pale and ill and hungover. Ruth doubted if he'd make it through the day when she first saw him. If he showed signs of dropping out of his place in the sweep, leaving a hole which could conceivably have caused them to overlook the lost boy, Ruth would send him back to Bobbi's right away… but he kept up, hungover or not.

By then, Ruth herself had already suffered a minor collapse, laboring under the double strain of trying to find David and resist the creeping changes in her own mind.

She had snatched two hours of uneasy sleep before dawn on Monday morning, then went back out, drinking cup after cup of coffee and bumming more and more cigarettes. There was no question in her mind of bringing in outside help. If she did, the outsiders would become aware very quickly-within hours, she thought-that Haven had changed its name to Weirdsville. The Haven lifestyle-so to speak -rather than the missing boy would rapidly become the source of their attention. And then David would be lost for good.

The heat continued long after sundown. There was distant thunder but no breeze, no rain. Heat lightning flickered. In the thickets and blowdowns and choked second growth, mosquitoes hummed and buzzed. Branches crackled. Men cursed as they stumbled through wet places or clambered over deadfalls. Flashlight beams zigzagged aimlessly. There was a sense of urgency but not of cooperation; there were, in fact, several fistfights before Monday midnight. Mental communication had not fostered a sense of peace and harmony in Haven; in fact, it seemed to have done exactly the opposite. Ruth kept them moving as best she could.

Then, shortly after midnight-early Tuesday morning, that would have been-the world simply swam away from her. It went fast, like a big fish that looks lazy until it gives a sudden powerful flick of its tail and disappears. She saw the flashlight tumble out of her fingers. It was like watching something happen in a movie. She felt the hot sweat on her cheeks and forehead suddenly turn chilly. The increasingly vicious headache that had racked her all day broke with a sudden painless pop. She heard this, as if, in the center of her brain, someone had pulled the string on a noisemaker. For a moment she could actually see brightly colored crepe streamers drifting down through the twisted gray channels of her cerebellum. Then her knees buckled. Ruth fell forward into a tangle of shrubs. She could see thorns in the slanted glow of her flashlight, long and cruel-looking, but the bushes felt as comfy as goosedown pillows.

She tried to call out and could not.

They heard anyway.

Feet approaching. Beams crissing and crossing. Someone

(Jud Tarkington)

bumped into someone else

(Hank Buck)

and a momentary hateful exchange flared between them

(you stay out of my way, strawfoot)

(I'll thump you with this light Buck swear to God I will)

then the thoughts focused on her with real and undeniable

(we all love you Ruth)

sweetness-but oh, it was a grasping sweetness, and it frightened her. Hands touched her, turned her over, and

(we all love you and we'll help you “become'),

lifted her gently.

(And I love you, too… now please, find him. Concentrate on that, concentrate on David Brown. Don't fight, don't argue.)

(we all love you Ruth…)

She saw that some of them were weeping, just as she saw (although she didn't want to) that others were snarling, lifting and dropping their lips, then lifting them again, like dogs about to fight.

Ad McKeen took her home and Hazel McCready put her to bed. She drifted off into wild, confused dreams. The only one she could remember when she woke up Tuesday morning was an image of David Brown gasping out the last of his life in an almost airless void-he was lying on black earth beneath a black sky filled with glaring stars, earth that was hard and parched and cracked. She saw blood burst from the membranes of his mouth and nose, saw his eyes burst, and that was when she came awake, sitting up in bed, gasping.

She called the town hall. Hazel answered. Just about every other ablebodied man and woman in town was out in the woods, Hazel said, searching. But if they didn't find him by tomorrow… Hazel didn't finish.

Ruth rejoined the search, which had now moved ten miles into the woods, at ten o'clock on Tuesday morning.

Newt Berringer took a look at her and said, “You got

(no business being out, Ruth)

land you know it,” he finished aloud.

“It is my business, Newt,” she said with uncharacteristic curtness. “Now leave me alone to get about it.”

She stayed with it all that long, sweltering afternoon, calling until she was too hoarse to speak. When twilight began to come down again, she allowed Beach Jernigan to ferry her back to town. There was something under a tarp in the back of Beach's truck. She had no idea what it was, and didn't want to know. She wanted desperately to stay in the woods, but her strength was failing and she was afraid that if she collapsed again, they wouldn't let her come back. She would force herself to eat, then sleep six hours or so.

She made herself a ham sandwich and passed up the coffee she really wanted for a glass of milk. She went up to the schoolroom, sat down, and put her small meal on her desk. She sat looking at her dolls. They looked back at her with their glassy eyes.