NADINE, NADINE, NADINE, the whirling planchette wrote. HOW I LOVE NADINE TO BE MY TO LOVE MY NADINE TO BE MY QUEEN IF YOU IF YOU IF YOU ARE PURE FOR ME IF YOU ARE CLEAN FOR ME IF YOU ARE IF YOU ARE DEAD FOR ME DEAD YOU ARE

The planchette swooped, raced, and began again, lower down.

YOU ARE DEAD WITH THE REST OF THEM YOU ARE IN THE DEADBOOK WITH THE REST OF THEM NADINE IS DEAD WITH THEM NADINE IS ROTTEN WITH THEM UNLESS UNLESS

It stopped. Thrummed. Nadine thought, hoped—oh how she hoped—that it was over, and then it raced back to the edge of the paper and began again. Jane shrieked miserably. The faces of the other girls were shocked white o ’s of wonder and dismay.

THE WORLD THE WORLD SOON THE WORLD IS DEAD AND WE WE WE NADINE NADINE I I I WE WE WE ARE WE ARE WE

Now the letters seemed to scream across the page:

WE ARE IN THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD NADINE

The last word howled itself across the page in inch-high capital letters and then the planchette whirled from the tablet, leaving a long streak of graphite behind like a shout. It fell on the floor and snapped in two.

There had been an instant of shocked, immobile silence, and then Jane Fargood had burst into high, weeping hysterics. The thing had ended with the housemother coming upstairs to see what was wrong; Nadine remembered, and she had been about to call the infirmary for Jane when the girl had managed to get hold of herself a little.

Through the whole thing Rachel Timms had sat on her bed, calm and pale. When the housemother and most of the other girls (including the horse-faced girl, who undoubtedly felt that a prophetess is without much honor in her own land) had left, she had asked Nadine in a flat, strange voice: “Who was it, Nadine?”

“I don’t know,” Nadine had answered truthfully. She hadn’t had the slightest idea. Not then.

“You didn’t recognize the handwriting?”

“No.”

“Well, maybe you just better take that… that note from beyond or whatever it is… and go back to your room.”

“You asked me to sit down!” Nadine flashed at her. “How was I supposed to know anything like… like that would happen? I did it to be polite, for God’s sake!”

Rachel had had the good grace to flush at that; she had even offered a little apology. But Nadine had never seen much of the girl after that, and Rachel Timms had been one of the few girls Nadine had ever felt really close to during her first three semesters at college.

From then until now she had never touched one of these triangular spiders made of pressed fiberboard.

But the time had… well, it had slouched around at last, hadn’t it?

Yes indeed.

Heart beating loudly, Nadine sat down on the picnic bench and pressed her fingers lightly to two of the planchette’s three sides. She could feel it begin to move under the balls of her fingers almost immediately, and she thought of a car with its engine idling. But who was the driver? Who was he, really? Who would climb in, and slam the door, and put his sun-blackened hands on the wheel? Whose foot, brutal and heavy, shod in an old and dusty cowboy boot, would come down on the accelerator and take her… where?

Driver, where you taking us?

Nadine, beyond help or hope of succor, sat upright on the bench at the crest of Flagstaff Mountain in the black trench of morning, her eyes wide, that feeling of being on the border stronger than ever. She stared east, but felt his presence coming from behind her, pressing heavy on her, dragging her down like weights tied to the feet of a dead woman: Flagg’s dark presence, coming in steady, inexorable waves.

Somewhere the dark man was abroad in the night, and she spoke two words like an incantation to all the black spirits that had ever been—incantation and invitation:

“Tell me.”

And beneath her fingers, the planchette began to write.

Excerpts from the Minutes of the Permanent Free Zone Committee Meeting

August 19, 1990

This meeting was held at the apartment of Stu Redman and Fran Goldsmith. All members of the Free Zone Committee were present.

Stu Redman offered congratulations to all of us, including himself, on being elected to the Permanent Committee. He made a motion that a letter of thanks to Harold Lauder be drafted and signed by each member of the Committee. It passed unanimously.

Stu: “Once we get the old business taken care of, Glen Bateman has a couple of items. I don’t know what they are any more than you do, but I suspect one of them has to do with the next public meeting. Right, Glen?”

Glen: “I’ll wait my turn.”

Stu: “That’s baldy for you. The main difference between an old drunk and an old bald college professor is the professor waits his turn before he starts talkin the ears off your head.”

Glen: “Thank you for those pearls of wisdom, East Texas.”

Fran said she could see Stu and Glen were having a wonderful time but wanted to know if they could get down to business, as all her favorite TV shows started at nine. This comment was greeted with more laughter than it probably deserved.

The first real item of business was our scouts in the West. To recap, the committee has decided to ask Judge Farris, Tom Cullen, and Dayna Jurgens to go. Stu suggested that the people who nominated each of them be the ones to broach the subject to their own nominees—that is, Larry Underwood asks the Judge, Nick will have to talk to Tom—with Ralph Brentner’s help—and Sue will talk to Dayna.

Nick said that working with Tom might take a few days, and Stu said that brought up the point of when to send them. Larry said they couldn’t be sent together or they might all get caught together. He went on to say that both the Judge and Dayna would probably suspect that we had sent more than one spy, but as long as they didn’t know the actual names, they couldn’t tattle. Fran said that tattle was hardly the word, considering what the man in the West might do to them—if he is a man.

Glen: “I wouldn’t be so gloomy, if I were you, Fran. If we give our Adversary credit for even a modicum of intelligence, he’ll know we wouldn’t give our—operatives, I guess one could call them—any information we considered vital to his interests. He’ll know that torture could do him very little good.”

Fran: “You mean he’ll probably pat them on the head and tell them not to do it anymore? I have an idea he might torture them just because torture is one of the things he likes. What do you say to that?”

Glen: “I guess there’s not much I can say.”

Stu: “That decision’s been made, Frannie. We’ve all agreed that we’re sending our people into a dangerous situation, and we all know that making the decision sure wasn’t any fun.”

Glen suggested that we agree tentatively to this schedule: The Judge would go out on August twenty-sixth, Dayna on the twenty-seventh, and Tom on the twenty-eighth, none of them to know about the others and each to leave on a different road. That would allow the time necessary to work with Tom, he added.

Nick said that, with the exception of Tom Cullen, who will be told when to come back by means of a post-hypnotic suggestion, the other two must be told to come back when their own discretion advises them to, but that the weather could become a factor—there can be heavy snow in the mountains by the first week of October. Nick suggested that each of them should be advised to spend no more than three weeks in the West.

Fran said they could swing around to the south if the snow came early in the mountains but Larry disagreed, pointing out that the Sangre de Cristo chain would be in the way, unless they swung all the way down to Mexico. And if they had to do that, we probably wouldn’t see them again until spring.

Larry said if that was the case, perhaps we ought to give the Judge a headstart. He suggested August 21, day after tomorrow.