Lisey’s Story (58 page)

Up ahead was a sign reading
CASTLE ROCK
15. As they passed it, the sun sailed behind the building clouds. When Amanda next spoke her voice was quieter. “You mean to do it to him before he can do it to you, don't you? Kill him and get rid of the body in that other world.” Up
ahead of them, thunder rumbled. Lisey waited.
Are we doing the sister thing?
she thought.
Is that what this is?

“Why, Lisey? Other than that I guess you can?”

“He hurt me. He
fucked
with me.” She didn't think she sounded like herself at all, but if truth was the sister thing—she thought it was—then this was it, sure. “And let me tell you, honey: the next time he fucks with me is going to be the last time he fucks with anybody.”

Amanda sat looking straight ahead at the unrolling road with her arms folded under her scant bosom. At last she said, almost to herself, “You always were the steel in his spine.”

Lisey looked at her, more than surprised. She was shocked. “Say
what?
”

“Scott. And he knew it.” She lifted one of her arms and looked at the red scar there. Then she looked at Lisey. “Kill him,” she said with chilling indifference. “I have no problem with that.”

Lisey swallowed and heard a click in her throat. “Look, Manda, I really don't have any clear idea what I'm doing. You have to know that up front. I'm pretty much flying blind here.”

“Oh, you know what, I don't believe that,” Amanda said, almost playfully. “You left messages saying that you'd see him at eight o'clock in Scott's study—one on your answering machine, and one with that Pittsburgh professor, in case Dooley called there. You mean to kill him and that's fine. Hey, you gave the cops their shot, didn't you?” And before Lisey could reply: “Sure you did. And the guy waltzed right past them. Almost cut your tit off with your own can opener.”

Lisey came around a curve and found herself behind another waddling pulp-truck; it was like the day she and Darla had come back from admitting Amanda all over again. Lisey squeezed the brake, once more feeling guilty that she was driving barefoot. Old ideas died hard.

“Scott had plenty of spine,” she said.

“Yep. And he used it all getting out of his childhood alive.”

“What do you know about that?” Lisey asked.

“Nothing. He never said anything about what life was like when he was a kid. Didn't you think I noticed? Maybe Darla and Canty didn't, but I did, and he knew I did. We knew each other, Lisey—the way the only two people not drinking at a big booze-up know each other. I think that's why he cared about me. And I know something else.”

“What?”

“You better pass this truck before I strangle on his exhaust.”

“I can't see far enough.”

“You can see
plenty
far enough. Besides, God hates a coward.” A brief pause. “That's something else people like Scott and me know all about.”

“Manda—”

“Pass him! I'm
strangling
here!”

“I really don't think I have enough—”

“Lisey's got a
boyfriend!
Lisey and Zeke, up in a tree, K-I-S-S-I—”

“Beanpole, you're being a puke.”

Amanda, laughing: “Kissy-kissy, facey-facey, little Lisey!”

“If something's coming the other way—”

“First comes
love
, then comes
marritch
, then comes Lisey with a—”

Without allowing herself to think about what she was doing, Lisey mashed the Beemer's accelerator with her bare foot and swung out. She was dead even with the pulp-truck's cab when
another
pulp-truck appeared over the brow of the next hill, traveling toward them.

“Oh shit, somebody pass me the bong, we're fucked now!” Amanda cried. No rusty giggles now; now she was full-out laughing. Lisey was also laughing. “Floor it, Lisey!”

Lisey did. The BMW scooted with surprising gusto, and she nipped back into her own lane with plenty of time to spare. Darla, she reflected, would have been screaming her head off by this point.

“There,” she said to Amanda, “are you happy?”

“Yes,” Amanda said, and put her left hand over Lisey's right one, caressing it, making it give up its death-grip on the steering wheel. “Glad to be here, very glad you came for me. Not all of me wanted to
come back, but so much of me was just . . . I don't know . . . sad to be away. And afraid that pretty soon I wouldn't even care. So thank you, Lisey.”

“Thank Scott. He knew you'd need help.”

“He knew that you would, too.” Now Amanda's tone was very gentle. “And I bet he knew only one of your sisters would be crazy enough to give it.”

Lisey took her eyes off the road long enough to glance at Amanda. “Did you and Scott talk about me, Amanda? Did you talk about me over there?”

“We talked. Here or there, I don't remember and I don't think it matters. We talked about how much we loved you.”

Lisey could not reply. Her heart was too full. She wanted to cry, but then she wouldn't be able to see the road. And maybe there had been enough tears, anyway. Which was not to say there wouldn't be more.

So they rode in silence for awhile. There was no traffic once they passed the Pigwockit Campground. The sky overhead was still blue, but the sun was now buried in the oncoming clouds, rendering the day bright but queerly shadeless. Presently Amanda spoke in an uncharacteristic tone of thoughtful curiosity. “Would you have come for me even if you didn't need a partner in crime?”

Lisey considered this. “I like to think so,” she finally said.

Amanda lifted the Lisey-hand closest to her and planted a kiss on it—truly it was as light as a butterfly's wing—before replacing it on the steering wheel. “I like to think so, too,” she said. “It's a funny place, Southwind. When you're there, it seems as real as anything in
this
world, and better than
everything
in this world. But when you're here . . .” She shrugged. Wistfully, Lisey thought. “Then it's only a moonbeam.”

Lisey thought of lying in bed with Scott at The Antlers, watching the moon struggle to come out. Listening to his story and then going with him.
Going
.

Amanda asked, “What did Scott call it?”

“Boo'ya Moon.”

Amanda nodded. “I was at least close, wasn't I?”

“You were.”

“I think most kids have a place they go to when they're scared or lonely or just plain bored. They call it NeverLand or the Shire, Boo'ya Moon if they've got big imaginations and make it up for themselves. Most of them forget. The talented few—like Scott—harness their dreams and turn them into horses.”

“You were pretty talented yourself. You were the one who thought up Southwind, weren't you? The girls back home played that for
years
. I wouldn't be surprised if there are girls out on the Sabbatus Road still playing a version of it.”

Amanda laughed and shook her head. “People like me were never meant to really cross over. My imagination was just big enough to get me in trouble.”

“Manda, that's not true—”

“Yes,” Amanda said. “It is. The looneybins are full of people like me.
Our
dreams harness
us
, and they whip us with soft whips—oh, lovely whips—and we run and we run, always in the same place . . . because the ship . . . Lisey, the sails never open and the ship never weighs its anchor . . .”

Lisey risked another look. Tears were running down Amanda's cheeks. Maybe tears didn't fall on those stone benches, but yes, here they were the smucking human condish.

“I knew I was going,” Amanda said. “All the time we were in Scott's study . . . all the time I was writing meaningless numbers in that stupid little notebook, I
knew
 . . .”

“That little notebook turned out to be the key to everything,” Lisey said, remembering that
HOLLYHOCKS
as well as
mein gott
had been printed there . . . something like a message in a bottle. Or another bool—
Lisey, here's where I am, please come find me
.

“Do you mean it?” Amanda asked.

“I do.”

“That's so funny. Scott gave me those notebooks, you know—damn near a lifetime supply. For my birthday.”

“He did?”

“Yes, the year before he died. He said they might come in handy.” She managed a smile. “I guess one of them actually did.”

“Yes,” Lisey said, wondering if
mein gott
was written on the backs of all the others, in tiny dark letters just below the trade name. Someday, maybe, she would check. If she and Amanda got out of this alive, that was.

When Lisey slowed in downtown Castle Rock, preparing to turn in at the Sheriff's Office, Amanda clutched her arm and asked what in God's name she thought she was doing. She listened to her sister's reply with mounting amazement.

“And what am I supposed to do while you're making your report and filling out forms?” Amanda asked in tones etched with acid. “Sit on the bench outside Animal Registry in these pajamas, with my tits poking out on top and my woofy showing down south? Or should I just sit out here and listen to the radio? How are you going to explain showing up barefoot? Or what if someone from Greenlawn has already called to tell the Sheriff's Department that they ought to keep an eye out for the writer's widow, she was visiting her sister up there at Crackerjack Manor and now they're both gone?”

Lisey was what her less-than-brilliant father would have called hard flummoxed. She had been so fixated on the problems of getting Manda back from Nowhere Land and coping with Jim Dooley that she had completely forgotten their current state of
dishabille
, not to mention any possible repercussions of the Great Escape. By now they were nestled in a slant-parking-space in front of the brick Sheriff's Department building, with a visiting State Police cruiser to their left and a Ford sedan with
CASTLE COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPT
. painted on the side to their right, and Lisey began to feel decidedly claustrophobic. The title of a country song—“What Was I Thinking?”—popped into her mind.

Ridiculous, of course—she wasn't a fugitive, Greenlawn wasn't a prison, and Amanda wasn't exactly a prisoner, but her bare feet . . . how was she going to explain her smucking bare feet? And—

I haven't been thinking at all, not really, I've just been following the steps. The recipe. And this is like turning a page in the cookbook and finding the next one blank
.

“Also,” Amanda was continuing, “there's Darla and Canty to think about. You did fine this morning, Lisey, I'm not criticizing, but—”

“Yes you are,” Lisey said. “And you're right to criticize. If this isn't a mess already, it soon will be. I didn't want to go to your house too soon or stay there too long in case Dooley's keeping an eye on that, too—”

“Does he know about me?”

I got an idear you got some kind of sister-twister goin on as well, isn't that so?

“I think . . .” Lisey began, then stopped. That kind of equivocation wouldn't do. “I
know
he does, Manda.”

“Still, he's not Karnak the Great. He can't be both places at the same time.”

“No, but I don't want the cops coming by, either. I don't want them in this at all.”

“Drive us up to the View, Lisey. You know, Pretty View.”

Pretty View was what locals called the picnic area overlooking Castle Lake and Little Kin Pond. It was the entrance to Castle Rock State Park, and there was plenty of parking, even a couple of Portosans. And at mid-afternoon, with thunderstorms rolling in, it would very likely be deserted. A good place to stop, think, take stock, and kill some time. Maybe Amanda really
was
a genius.

“Come on, get us off Main Street,” Amanda said, plucking at the neckline of her pajama top. “I feel like a stripper in church.”

Lisey backed carefully out onto the street—now that she wanted nothing to do with the County Sheriff's Department, she was absurdly sure she was going to get into a fender-bender before she could put it behind her—and turned west. Ten minutes later she was turning in at the sign reading

CASTLE ROCK STATE PARK
PICNIC AND RESTROOM FACILITIES AVAILABLE MAY–OCTOBER
THIS PARK CLOSES AT SUNDOWN
BARREL-PICKING PROHIBITED FOR YOUR HEALTH BY LAW

Lisey's was the only car in the parking lot, and the picnic area was deserted—not even a single backpacker getting high on nature (or Montpelier Gold). Amanda walked toward one of the picnic tables. The soles of her feet were very pink, and even with the sun hidden, she was clearly nude under the green pajamas.

“Amanda, do you really think that's—”

“If someone comes I'll nip right back into the car.” Manda looked back over her shoulder and flashed a grin. “Try it—the grass feels positively
slinky
.”

Lisey walked to the edge of the pavement on the balls of her feet, then stepped up into the green. Amanda was right, slinky was the one, the perfect fish from Scott's pool of words. And the view to the west was a straight shot to the eye and heart. Thunderheads were pouring toward them through the ragged teeth of the White Mountains, and Lisey counted seven dark spots where the high slopes had been smudged away by cauls of rain. Brilliant lightnings flashed inside those stormbags and between two of them, connecting them like some fantastic fairy bridge, was a double rainbow that arched over Mount Cranmore in a frayed loophole of blue. As Lisey watched that hole closed and another, over some mountain whose name she did not know, opened, and the rainbow reappeared. Below them Castle Lake was a dirty dark gray and Little Kin Pond beyond it a dead black goose-eye. The wind was rising but it was improbably warm, and when her hair lifted from her temples, Lisey lifted her arms as though she would fly—not on a magic carpet but on the ordinary alchemy of a summer storm.