It

he remembered leaving the bathroom door partially open and the fluorescent light in there on. He always left the light on when staying in a strange place; it saved you barking your shins if you had to get up in the night to pee.
That clicked reality into place. It had been a dream, all some crazy dream. He was in a Holiday Inn. This was Derry, Maine. He had chased his wife here, and, in the middle of a crazy nightmare, he had fallen out of bed. That was all; that was the long and the short of it.
That wasn’t just a nightmare.
He jumped as if the words had been spoken beside his ear instead of inside his own mind. It didn’t seem like his own interior voice at all — it was cold, alien . . . but somehow hypnotic and believable.
He got up slowly, fumbled a glass of water off the table beside the bed, and drank it down. He ran shaky hands through his hair. The clock on the table said ten past three.
Go back to sleep. Wait until morning.
That alien voice answered: But there will be people around in the morning — too many people. And besides, you can beat them down there this time. This time you can be first.
Down there? He thought of his dream: the water, the dripping dark.
The light suddenly seemed brighter. He turned his head, not wanting to but helpless to stop. A groan slipped out of his mouth. A balloon was tied to the knob of the bathroom door. It floated at the end of a string about three feet long. The balloon glowed, full of a ghostly white light; it looked like a will– o– t h e – wisp glimpsed in a swamp, floating dreamily between trees overhung with gray ropes of moss. An arrow was printed on the balloon’s gently bulging skin, an arrow that was blood-scarlet.
It was pointing at the door leading out into the hall.
It doesn’t really matter who I am, the voice said soothingly, and Tom realized now that it wasn’t coming fr om either his own head or from beside his ear; it was coming from the balloon, from the center of that strange lovely white light. All that matters is that I am goingto see that everything turns out to your satisfaction, Tom. I want to see her take a whuppin; I want to see them all take a whuppin. They’ve crossed my path once too often . . . and much too late in the day for them. So listen, Tom. Listen very carefully. All together now . . . follow the bouncing ball . . .
Tom listened. The voice from the balloon explained.
It explained everything.
When it was done, it popped in one final flash of light and Tom began to dress.
2
Audra
Audra also had nightmares.
She awoke with a start, sitting bolt-upright in bed, the sheet pulled around he r waist, her small breasts moving with her quick, agitated breathing.
Like Tom’s, her dreaming had been a jumbled, distressful experience. Like Tom, she had had the sensation of being someone else — or rather, of having her own consciousness deposited (and partially submerged) in another body and another mind. She had been in a dark place with a number of others around her, and she had been aware of an oppressive sensation of danger — they were going into the danger deliberately and she wanted to scream at them to stop, to explain to her what was happening . . . but the person with whom she had merged seemed to know, and to believe it was necessary.
She was also aware that they were being chased, and that their pursuers were catching up, little by little.
Bill had been in the dream, but his story about how he had forgotten his childhood must have been on her mind, because in her dream Bill was only a boy, ten or twelve years old — he still had all his hair! She was holding his hand, and was dimly aware that she loved him very much, and that her willingness to go on was based on the rock-solid belief that Bill would protect her and all of them, that Bill, Big Bill, would somehow bring them through this and back into the daylight again.
Oh but s he was so terrified.
They came to a branching of many tunnels and Bill stood there, looking from one to the next, and one of