Gwendy’s Final Task

Suddenly Winston appears very clear to her, very bright and in focus, almost as if he’s somehow lit from within, and everything else around him falls away. Thinking about it later, she’ll be reminded of a moment from the second time she had the button box in her possession, when she stepped inside the mind of a madman the Castle Rock newspaper called The Tooth Fairy. And, of course, when her old friend Charlotte Morgan knew she was thinking of the Great Pyramid.

Although Gareth Winston is still smiling, he’s not smiling inside. He’s never smiling inside. But he is in love. The man he’s in love with is sitting behind the wheel of a car. Gareth is in the passenger seat, looking at him. It may be impolite to stare, but Gareth can’t tear his eyes away from that face. Gareth thinks it’s the face of a blond angel. He thinks he would give away everything he owns if the blond angel allowed him just one kiss.

Only in this flash—it lasts maybe two seconds, four at most—Gwendy sees the driver as he really is. His real face is old, haggard, and rotting from the inside out. His eyes are milky with cataracts. His lower lip has lost all its tension and sags away from blackening teeth. She has a terrible premonition that Richard Farris will look this way before too long.

The car is big. And old. The acre of hood is a weirdly vibrant green that hurts her eyes to look at. The word on the oversized steering wheel—

Winston jerks back, breaking their grip. His eyes are wide in their pockets of fat. “Jesus, woman!” No humble I’m-sorry in that voice now. He sounds pissed off. And scared. “What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Gwendy says. The vision is already fading. If she can’t get to her little notebook soon, it will be entirely gone, like a dream ten minutes after waking. “Static electricity, I guess.”

Dr. Dale Glen goes floating by, peering at something on his iPad. “Very likely. It’s common up here.” He says it without looking up from whatever he’s reading.

“Whew, it was strong, whatever it was,” Winston says, and manages a fake comic-book laugh: Ha! Ha! “You’ll have to excuse me, Senator. I have some emails I need to answer.”

Off he goes, leaving Gwendy by the lavatory door. She has to try twice to unlatch it. Adesh floats by and asks if she’s okay. She doesn’t say anything—isn’t sure she can—but nods, her hair floating above her head like seaweed. She finally opens the door and pulls herself inside. She fumbles for the button that will light the IN USE panel on the outside (there are no locks in the common area, a safety precaution in case someone has a medical emergency) and tries to raise the lid on the toilet. It won’t come. A red panel lights up, saying PRESSURIZE.

Right, almost forgot (now she forgets so much). She thumbs the button to the right of the toilet and the red light goes out. There’s a low humming as the toilet does whatever it’s supposed to do so she can lift the lid without yanking all of the air in the tiny capsule first into the bowl and then into space. It occurs to her that if Kathy is up front in the control area, she will have seen the warning light blink on and then off. And if she’s not there, Sam Drinkwater or Dave Graves probably is. She hopes they’ll just shrug it off. Probably they will, but it’s not good. Forgetting such elementary things from their training sessions is definitely NG.

Gwendy lowers her coverall, sits, and turns the proper dial to its lowest setting. She feels a gentle sucking sensation that means her pee will go down instead of just floating around under her butt in globules. She lowers her face into her hands as she urinates. Something just happened when she took Gareth Winston’s hand. Something important. Something about a car. Or two cars, of different colors? Possibly something about Ryan as well, but probably not; probably she’s mixing up Norris’s communique with what just happened when she took Gareth Winston’s hand.

Whatever it was, it’s gone.

Goddamn what’s happening to me, Gwendy thinks. Goddamn it to hell.

She might be able to get it back if she ate one of the chocolates, and it’s a tempting idea, but she must not. Even one was dangerous, and it probably doesn’t matter.

Does it?

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