Gwendy’s Final Task

17

THE MORNING AFTER RICHARD Farris’s surprise Thanksgiving visit dawned clear and cold in the town of Castle Rock, Maine. Overnight, a storm sweeping across the upper half of the state took an unexpected dip to the south and slowed its roll just long enough to clip Castle County on its way out to sea, dropping six inches of wet snow on the frozen streets and lawns. Gwendy could hear the plows working even before she opened her eyes.

Slipping out of bed shortly before seven, after a brief stint of troubled sleep, Gwendy got dressed in the dark and left her husband dreaming peacefully beneath the covers. Before she stepped into the hallway, she took a single backward glance at the only man she’d ever truly loved. No more secrets after today, she silently promised, easing the door closed behind her.

Trying hard to remain calm, Gwendy checked the alarm system (the panel display was back to reading READY TO ARM; no big surprise there) and turned on the coffee-maker in the kitchen before heading out to the garage.

Using the old wooden stepladder her father had passed down to her the previous summer, Gwendy slowly ascended the rungs until she was able to reach the highest row of metal shelving that ran along the length of the garage’s cluttered back wall. She scooted aside an old Tupperware container labeled FISHING TACKLE & BOBBERS, and—breathing heavy with the effort; at fifty-seven, she wasn’t nearly as spry as she once was—carefully took down a cardboard box marked SEWING SUPPLIES. Once she was safely down, she placed the box on the cold concrete floor at her feet, dropped to a knee and opened the flaps. Gooseflesh immediately broke out across her forearms.

The button box, snug in its canvas bag, was waiting for her inside.

She felt the short hairs on the back of her neck begin to tingle, and heard that familiar faint whisper of something in the far corner of her brain. She quickly closed up the box, got to her feet and backed away.

This goddamned thing. How I hate it. How I loathe it.

She shivered, listening to the echo of Farris’s voice in the dim silence of the garage, remembering his pale sickly face, scarecrow limbs, rotting and missing teeth.

And then his final words came to her, practically pleading by then: It’s the only place they won’t come for it. You have to try, Gwendy, before it’s too late. You’re the only one I trust.

“Why me?” she asked, barely recognizing the sound of her own voice.

She waited for an answer, but none came. Certainly not God, asking her if she was there when He made the world.

Summoning her courage, she climbed the ladder again and returned the cardboard box to its hiding place on the top shelf. Locking the garage door—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that—she went back inside to the kitchen and poured herself a mug of hot coffee. She sipped it staring out the window above the sink at the snow-covered back yard, once again promising herself that she was going to tell Ryan everything. She was too old and too frightened to go it alone this time around—third time’s a charm, she thought—but it was more than that. She owed her husband the truth after all these years, and it would feel good to finally tell it. Damn good.

But that conversation would have to wait until later tonight.

She had a busy day to get through first.

Every year, bright and early on Black Friday morning, her old friend Brigette Desjardin would swing by the house and pick her up. They’d grab a quick breakfast at the Castle Rock Diner before heading off on a ninety-minute road trip to Portland. Once there, they’d lace up their Reeboks and spend the day braving the overflow crowds at not one, not two, but all three of the city’s massive shopping malls. They usually returned home late in the evening, the trunk and back seat of Brigette’s bright red BMW crammed full with shopping bags and gift boxes, bragging about the great deals they’d gotten and complaining about swollen feet from all the walking and chapped lips from all the talking. And all of the greeting: that, too, because a surprising number of people still recognized Gwendy from her stint in the House. For some of those folks, Gwendy Peterson was practically an old family friend; she’d been part of their lives for that long. Political demi-celebrity aside, Christmas shopping with Brigette was a holiday tradition Gwendy always enjoyed and looked forward to. And she liked people, for the most part.

This year would obviously be a different story. All of a sudden, thanks to the man in the little black hat, she had more important matters to worry about than shoe sales and triple value coupons.

She considered bailing out altogether—in fact, she picked up the telephone and went so far as to punch in half of Brigette’s number, only to hang up. A last-minute cancellation would give rise to more questions than she was prepared to answer. No, she told herself, she’d just have to “suck it up, buttercup,” as her father liked to say.

Ryan had his own Black Friday activities to participate in. First up, a Chinese buffet for lunch with the guys on the bowling team, followed by a three-game, best-average-score-takes-all competition at the Rumford Rock ’N Bowl (the annual winner was awarded a two-foot-high, gold-plated trophy resembling a kicking donkey’s backside; Ryan had taken it home three years running). After bowling, they would head over to Billy Franklin’s bachelor pad where they’d feast on catered Mexican food and watch college football on the big-screen television. Ryan usually rolled home around eight or nine at night suffering from a serious case of dragon breath and immediately rushed upstairs in search of the big plastic container of Tums. He’d spend half the night moaning and groaning in the bathroom and wake up the next morning swearing that he wasn’t going back next year. They could keep their damn trophy. The two of them would have a good laugh about it over breakfast—just toast and a big glass of ice water for Ryan—knowing full well that he didn’t mean a word of it.

So, yes, she decided, she’d suck it up, buttercup, and they’d both get through their respective busy days. Then they’d come home, change into their PJs, grab a bottle of good red wine and a couple of glasses, and rendezvous in the bedroom. And after all these years, she’d tell him everything.

Only it didn’t turn out that way.

Gwendy held up her end of the deal just fine. At first, as was to be expected, she was distracted and quiet. She barely touched her omelet, home fries, and toast at breakfast. Once they got in the car, she found herself staring out the window at the passing countryside, daydreaming about the button box and Richard Farris’s pale, waxy skin. And those perfectly smooth, unlined hands of his; she couldn’t stop thinking about those. She did her best to keep up with the conversation—nodding when she sensed it was appropriate and tossing in the occasional comment or two—but Brigette wasn’t fooled. Halfway to Portland, she turned down the car radio and asked Gwendy if something was wrong. Gwendy shook her head and apologized, claiming she had a lingering headache from the previous night and hadn’t gotten much sleep (at least that much was true). She made a show of popping three Advil tablets and singing along with Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs” when it came on the radio—and that seemed to do the trick for Brigette.

By the time they parked the car and waded into the frenzy, Gwendy actually found herself smiling and laughing. Brigette, with that childlike enthusiasm and goofy sense of humor of hers, had a way of turning back the clock and making the rest of the world melt away. Gwendy often told her husband that spending an afternoon with Brigette Desjardin was a little like stepping into a time machine and traveling back to the late 1970s. Her simple enjoyment of life was contagious.

Both women scored major coups at the first boutique they entered—a half price carryall purse for Gwendy; a pair of knee-high leather boots for Brigette—and that set the tone for the rest of the day. They spent the next eight hours giggling and gossiping like a couple of happy teenagers.

Often—actually more often than she would have expected—Gwendy was approached by men and women who said they were going to vote for her. One of them, an older women with perfectly coifed pink hair, touched her on the elbow and whispered, “Just don’t tell my husband.”

After grabbing soup and salads for dinner at a bursting-at-the-seams Cracker Barrel just off I-95, Gwendy finally made it home at 7:45pm. She immediately shucked her clothes, leaving them in a messy pile on the bathroom floor, and slipped into a warm bubble bath. An hour later, dressed in her favorite silk pajamas Ryan had smuggled home from an assignment in Vietnam, she dozed off on the family room sofa with a true crime paperback laying open in her lap.

Some time later she was awakened by a ringing doorbell. Big dummy forgot his keys, she thought, getting up from the sofa. She glanced at the antique grandfather clock on her way to the foyer and was surprised to see that it was after midnight. Still, she wasn’t worried until she looked into the peephole and saw Norris Ridgewick standing on the porch. Norris, who once upon a time held the title of Castle County Sheriff for almost two decades, had retired a year earlier and now spent most of his days fishing at Dark Score Lake.

She yanked open the door and immediately knew from the look in her old friend’s eyes that Ryan was not coming home tonight. Or ever. Before Ridgewick could manage a single word, Gwendy let loose a sob that tore at her chest and stumbled back to the sofa with tears streaming down her cheeks.

Norris plodded into the house, head down, and closed the door behind him. Sitting down on the arm of the sofa, he placed a hand on Gwendy’s shoulder. As he explained what had happened—a hit-and-run, her husband of so many years taken in mere instants—Gwendy scooted to the far side of the couch and curled into a fetal position, hugging her legs tight to her chest.

“He wouldn’t have suffered,” Norris said, and then added the very thing she had been thinking: “I know that’s no consolation.”

“Where?” Thinking it must have been in the Rock ’N Bowl’s parking lot, probably some guy in a pickup truck pulling out too fast after too many beers, maybe reaching down to tune the radio.

“Derry.”

“Where?” Thinking she must have misheard. Derry was over a hundred miles north of the Rock ’N Bowl and Billy Franklin’s Rumford apartment.

Norris, perhaps thinking she wanted the actual location, consulted his notebook. “He was crossing Witcham Street. Near the bottom of what they call Up-Mile Hill.”

“Witcham Street in Derry? Are you sure?”

“Sorry to say, dear, but I am.”

“What was he doing there?” Still not able to believe this news. It was like a stone lodged in her throat. No, lower: on her heart.

Norris Ridgewick gave her an odd look. “You don’t know?”

Gwendy shook her head.

In the days following her husband’s funeral, Gwendy found herself searching for an answer to that question with a dogged persistence that bordered on obsession. She discovered from talking to several members of Ryan’s bowling team that he had called them early on Black Friday and canceled on the annual tournament, as well as Billy Franklin’s after-party. He gave no reason, just claimed that something important had come up.

None of it made any sense to Gwendy. It surely wasn’t work-related—Ryan was supposed to be taking it easy until after the New Year, a fact she confirmed in a phone call with his editor—much less an assignment that would’ve required him to make the two-hour drive to Derry on the day after Thanksgiving.

What she knew about Derry wasn’t good. It was a dark and dreary town with a violent history. There were an unsettling number of child murders and disappearances lurking in its past, as well as detailed documentation of strange sightings and weird goings-on. Toss in a series of deadly floods and the fact that Derry was home to one of the most blatantly anti-LGBT communities in the state, and you had yourself a place that most non-locals avoided like poison sumac.

A woman Gwendy had become close with during a long ago fund-raising campaign claimed that back when she was a teenager living in Derry, she’d once been chased down a dark street by a giggling man dressed as a circus clown. The man had had razors for teeth and huge round silver eyes … or so she said. She was only able to get away from him by running into the Derry Police Station screaming her terrified head off. While the officer in charge fetched a glass of water and tried his best to calm her, two other policemen went outside to search for the man. They returned fifteen minutes later—faces flushed, eyes wide, breathing heavy—claiming that they hadn’t seen a thing. The streets were deserted. But they had sounded scared, the woman told Gwendy. And they had looked it, too. She was certain they weren’t telling the truth. The officer in charge drove the girl home later that night in his squad car and watched her from the driveway until she was safely inside.

And there was this: when Gwendy was growing up, her father claimed on more than one occasion—usually after reading something troubling in the newspaper or drinking too many cans of Black Label beer—that Derry was haunted. When he was in his early twenties, years before he married Gwendy’s mom, he’d once lived for six months in a cramped studio apartment overlooking the canal that split the town in two. He spent his days peddling cheap insurance policies door to door. He’d despised his time in Derry, and fled the town as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Although usually practical to his bones, Alan Peterson told his daughter he believed that some places were built on bad ground, thereby ensuring they would forever remain cursed. He insisted that Derry was one of those places.

Many longtime residents of Maine wore their well-earned reputation for coming across as surly and mistrusting to outsiders—if not downright hostile at times—as a sort of badge of honor. Gwendy knew this and accepted it, even going so far in years past as to poke fun at the stereotype in several of her novels, as well as a handful of political speeches. “I told that flat-landah to git his ass on back down the rud to N’Yawk” was always good for a warm-up laugh before getting down to business.

But even she was shocked—and angered—by the treatment she received upon her subsequent visit to Derry. In the company of the investigating detective, Ward Mitchell, she spent half an hour at the intersection of Witcham and Carter Streets, where Ryan had died. Mitchell at least was polite—she was, after all, a high-profile politician who’d just lost her husband—but he answered her questions without a hint of warmth. Witnesses? None. Ryan’s cell phone? No sign. She thanked him, bid him a happy New Year, and sent him on his way.

She parked her rental in a nearby garage and set off on foot. Stopping at a handful of shops and restaurants, as well as a rundown bar named the Falcon—many of these establishments bearing red-white-and-blue PAUL MAGOWAN FOR SENATE signs in their front windows—she introduced herself to the employees and explained what had happened to her husband just a few weeks earlier. Then she’d pulled out a photograph of Ryan from her purse and showed it to them, politely asking if anyone had happened to see or speak with him.

In response, she’d received any number of ill-mannered grunts and dismissive headshakes. And no one whispered that they were going to vote for her.

Giving up on the local townspeople, Gwendy’s final stop of the afternoon was a return visit to the Derry Police Station, where Detective Mitchell greeted her coolly. “I forgot something—what about surveillance video?”

He shook his head. “No cameras anywhere downtown. Oh, maybe in a few stores, but that’s all of it. This isn’t a nanny state you know, like California.”

“If it had happened in California,” Gwendy said tartly, “you might have a license plate, Detective. Has that occurred to you?”

“Very sorry for your loss, Ms. Peterson,” he said, pulling a pile of paperwork toward him. His cheap sport-coat pulled open and she saw his gun in a shoulder rig. Something else, too. A Magowan campaign button on the breast pocket of his shirt.

“You’ve been a great help, Detective.”

He ignored the sarcasm. “Always glad to assist.”

After describing her unsettling visit to Norris Ridgewick at lunch two days later, Gwendy found herself giving serious consideration to Norris’s suggestion that she hire a private detective to look further into the matter. He even gave her a business card of someone he knew and trusted. She meant to call and set up an appointment, but before she knew it Christmas was there, and New Years Eve, and she had her elderly father to take care of.

Not to mention a Senate campaign to run. Shortly after Ryan’s death, Pete Riley had called to ask her (dread in his voice) if she wanted to declare herself out of the race. “I’d understand if you did. I’d hate it, but I’d understand.”

There were a great many issues that she cared about—Magowan’s pledge to resume clear-cutting the forests up north was a major one—but it was the button box she was thinking about when she replied. “I’m running.”

“Thank God. Just don’t say I’m in it to win it. That didn’t work so well for Hilary.”

She gave a dutiful laugh, although it wasn’t funny. What neither of them said was that the election was less than a year away and early polls had Gwendy Peterson lagging by almost twelve points.

The gray days of winter arrived. The first nor’easter of 2020 blasted Castle Rock during the third week of January, dumping nearly two feet of snow and toppling trees and telephone poles. Most of the town lost power for three days, and a sophomore girl from Castle Rock High lost her right eye in a sledding accident. January turned into February, February into March. The sun rose each morning, and so did Gwendy Peterson. She was too old and out of shape to start jogging again, but she began walking a daily three-and-a-half mile route, usually in the frigid hours just after dawn when the streets were silent and still. She stopped dyeing her hair and let the gray grow out. She also started writing a new book about a haunted town. A thousand words here, five hundred words there, even scribbling a short chapter on a Dunkin’ Donuts napkin during one of her campaign stops. Anything to blunt the keen edge of her grief.

And all of that time, hidden away in a cardboard box marked SEWING SUPPLIES, the button box waited. Sometimes, when the house was as quiet as a church, Gwendy could hear it talking out there in the garage, that faint whisper of something, echoing deep in the corners of her brain. When that happened, she usually told it to shut the hell up and turned up the volume on the television or the radio. Usually.

Did the idea of pressing the red button and blasting the town of Derry (and all those awful people) off the face of the planet ever enter Gwendy’s conscious? As a matter of fact it did, and on more than one occasion. How about the shiny black button? Did she ever think about pressing the old Cancer Button and ending the whole shebang? Was she ever so tempted in her grief? The sorry truth: she was.

But Gwendy also remembered what Richard Farris had told her that nightmarish evening on the screened-in back porch—the box’s last seven proprietors all dead, many of their families in the ground right alongside them—and it occurred to her that perhaps what the button box wanted most of all was a voluntary act of madness and mass destruction from its most faithful guardian. Talk about a win—the win of all wins—for the bad guys. And exactly who were the bad guys?

Around that time, the plague that Farris had warned her about—the media was calling it the Corona Virus or COVID-19, depending on which channel you watched; Gwendy couldn’t help but think of it as the Button Box Virus because she knew it had been responsible—finally made landfall in the United States. Only a handful of people had died so far, but many others had fallen sick and were being admitted to hospitals. Schools and colleges all across the country were sending students home to learn online. Concerts and sporting events were being cancelled. Half the country was wearing masks and practicing safe social distancing; the other half—led by a frozen-like-adeer-in-the-headlights President Trump—believed it was all a big hoax designed to steal their constitutional rights. So far, there was no sign of the stacked up body bags that Farris had told her about, but Gwendy had no doubt they were coming. And soon.

Some late nights, when she was feeling particularly small and alone, curled up like an orphaned child on her side of the spacious king size bed or lying awake in a hotel room after a campaign stop, unable to find sleep despite a warm bath and several glasses of wine, Gwendy was certain that the button box was responsible for taking Ryan away from her. A life for a life, she thought. It saved my mother and took my lover. The goddam box had always been like that—it preferred to keep things square.

In March of 2020, she got a phone call on her personal cell, a number known to only a handful of people. Perhaps a dozen in total. UNKNOWN CALLER showed in the window. Because spammers were now required to display an actual callback number (legislation she had enthusiastically voted for), Gwendy took the call.

“Hello?”

Breathing on the other end.

“Say something, or I’m hanging up.”

“It was a Cadillac that hit your husband.” The voice was male, and although he wasn’t using one of those voice-distorting gadgets, he was clearly trying to disguise his voice. “Old. Fifty, maybe sixty years, but in beautiful shape. Purple. Or could have been red. Fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview.”

“Who is this? How did you get this number?”

Click.

Gone.

Gwendy closed her eyes and ran a review of all the people who had her private cell number (in those days she was still capable of such a mental task). She came up empty. It was only later that she realized she had also given her number to Ward Mitchell of the Derry PD. She doubted it had been him, with his chilly eyes and Magowan campaign button, but it would have been entered into the department’s computer system, and she had an intuition that it had been a cop who called her … but she never found out who.

Or why.